Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Ice Shear is M. P. Cooley’s debut novel, and it’s terrific.  June Lyons is a former FBI agent, now a police officer, who has come back to live in the upstate New York town where she was born, Hopewell Falls.  If you change the second syllable of the first word to less, you have a description of this small town; it has fallen on hard times without much hope for the future.

June is living with her young daughter, Lucy, and her father, a retired detective on the Hopewell Falls’ police force.  June’s husband, Kevin, also a former FBI agent, died three years ago, prompting her return home. 

It’s a place where murder is rare, perhaps one per year, but today is the day for the body of Danielle Brouillette, daughter of the town’s representative to the U.S. Congress, to be found on the frozen banks of the Mohawk River.  At first glance it looks as if Danielle might have fallen from the cliffs above the river, but a closer examination shows that she was dead before hitting the ice spike that tore her body apart.

Danielle was a beautiful, bright, and troubled young woman.  Exceedingly headstrong, she was expelled from college in California for unacceptable behavior and substance abuse issues.  She didn’t get in touch with her parents for several months after this, and when she did it was to turn up on their doorstep with her new husband.  Her well-to-do and politically powerful parents refused to accept him, and so the estrangement between Danielle and her parents continued.

Danielle’s husband, Marty Jelickson, is a former member of the outlaw motorcycle gang the Abominations.  Marty’s father, Zeke, is the head of the gang, and Marty’s younger brother Ray is also a member.  Now the Abominations, including Marty’s parents, are headed to Hopewell Falls for Danielle’s funeral, and June is certain there will be a major confrontation between the two sets of parents.

Ms. Cooley draws a wonderful picture of this small New York town, financially devastated by the Great Recession.  The downtown is nearly nonexistent, jobs are few and menial, and young people move out as soon as they can.  So why was Danielle so eager to leave California and return home?

The characters are extremely well-drawn.  June has the problems of most single mothers, not enough time with her child and stress at work.  There’s tension between the police force, the district attorney Jerry Defoe, and the FBI, which has been called to join the investigation since the victim was the daughter of a congresswoman. 

The FBI agent sent to assist the police is Hale Bascom, who was a close friend of June’s and Kevin’s until the latter got cancer; then he disappeared from their lives.  June hasn’t spoken to or seen Hale since before Kevin’s death, and she has bitter feelings toward him now.

Ice Shear marks the beginning, I hope, of a new series.  You can read more about M. P. Cooley at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

There must be something wonderful in the state of Maine to product such amazing mystery authors.  I’ve blogged about books written by Tess Gerritsen, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Paul Doiron, and Gerry Boyle, and now I’m adding D. A. Keeley to my list.

Bitter Crossing introduces Peyton Cote, a U.S. Border Patrol agent, recently back from her posting in Texas to her home state of Maine.  Although there is more action in El Paso than in tiny Garrett, it doesn’t take long after Peyton’s return for things to start happening in this part of Aroostook County, across from New Brunswick, Canada.  She receives a tip that a major shipment of marijuana is being dropped in an open area in the forest, and when she goes there she sees a bundle in the middle of the field.  But when she opens the package, there’s a baby girl inside, barely alive.

Peyton requested the transfer to her hometown mainly for personal reasons.  She wants her seven-year-old son to have more contact with his father, although she has doubts about Jeff’s commitment to Tommy.  Her ex is great at promises to Tommy, promises he rarely keeps.  Jeff would like to reconcile with Peyton, and she’s torn between wanting to have as little as possible to do with him and feeling that their son needs his father in his life.

Life isn’t easy in this northern part of Maine, and times are bad financially.  Years of hard work in the potato fields, once the mainstay of Aroostook County, can be gone in a flash when a blight decimates the harvest.  It’s no wonder that some members of Peyton’s generation look for easier ways to make money, including buying and selling drugs.

Peyton is using Kenny Radke, a former schoolmate, as a snitch.  Under a not-so-subtle threat of reporting to his parole officer that she found drugs in his car, she gets Kenny to tell her about the drug drop.  But now that there were no drugs found in the forest, only the infant whose presence doesn’t come under Border Patrol jurisdiction, an angry Peyton talks to Kenny again.  This time she’s trying to find out where Kenny’s tip came from, and he reluctantly gives her the scant information he has about a tall white guy he played poker with and the names of two locals who were at the game.

Peyton is also trying to help her younger sister, Elise, with her marital issues.  Elise got married young to her college professor, a man who was later convicted of two drug-related felonies.  He’s gone from job to job, with infidelities along the way, and now Elise is keeping her own secret from Peyton. 

Bitter Crossing is a terrific novel, filled both with an exciting plot and believable characters.  Peyton Cote is a strong woman, devoted to her family and her job.  The problem is, sometimes it seems almost impossible to balance the two.  This is a mystery that will keep you reading until the last page.

You can read more about D. A. Kelley at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

Linda Wallheim is a typical Mormon wife and mother.  Her husband Kurt is the bishop of a ward, the community’s leader, and Linda is a stay-at-home wife, with the youngest of their five sons about to graduate from high school.  She is a devoted member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, although a questioning one, and events in their small Utah town are going to give her more reasons to question than she ever had before.

An early morning visit by a member of their ward, Jared Helm, and his young daughter Kelly brings the news that Jared’s wife has left their home.  He claims that he doesn’t know where Carrie is, only that she left a note saying that she wasn’t going to return.  Jared has come to see the bishop to get his reassurance that he hasn’t done anything wrong and that the church is behind him.

Then Carrie’s parents, Judy and Aaron Weston, come to the bishop for help.  They are certain, they say, that Jared is behind Carrie’s disappearance and possibly her death.  They tell Linda and Kurt that Carrie was desperately afraid of her husband, that he had threatened and abused her, keeping her away from her parents. 

They have gone to the police but were told that Carrie wasn’t gone long enough to declare her a missing person.  Linda suggests calling a press conference and asking for the public’s help, and the Westons agree to do that.  In the meantime, Linda has formed a strong attachment with five-year-old Kelly, and she is upset and disturbed when Jared’s father moves into Jared’s house and seems reluctant to let Linda spend any time with his granddaughter.

At the same time, the Wallheims’ neighbor, Tobias Torstensen, is very ill but refusing to go to the hospital for treatment despite entreaties from his wife Anna.  Anna is his second wife, the stepmother of his two sons.  And when Tobias dies shortly afterwards, he leaves a number of unanswered questions about his first wife and the plans for his burial.

Mette Ivie Harrison has written a fine novel, interspersing doctrines of the Mormon church with the stories of the Helms and the Torstensens.  Explanations are needed, because much of the novel depends on understanding the rules of the church, many of which are different from other Christian sects. 

As the bishop’s wife Linda Wallheim has no direct power, but she tries to be aware of issues surrounding her.  She is angry at herself for not seeing the trouble between Carrie and Jared Helm, thinking she might have been able to prevent the young wife from running away, and she is concerned about her own intense interest in young Kelly.  Is it because she is worried about the type of father and grandfather the girl has or is it because in Kelly she sees the child she might have had if her only daughter had not been stillborn?

The Bishop’s Wife is a fascinating look into a religion unfamiliar to many of us.  Linda Wallheim’s doubts and concerns are real, as are the sudden, strong feeling she gets about people, either pro or con.  She is sure of herself one minute, doubting herself the next.  She is a very human character.

You can read more about Mette Ivie Harrison at this web site. 

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site. 

I had a habit when I was a child–if a book was too suspenseful, I would turn to the last page to see how it ended.  Reading A String of Beads brought back that memory because I had to stop myself from doing it again.  Thomas Perry knows how to write a novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

Jane Whitefield, born of a white mother and a Seneca Indian father, is now a doctor’s wife, ostensibly living a quiet life as a volunteer teacher of the Seneca language and a fund-raiser for her husband’s hospital in New York State.  But all of her adult life she has had a secret–she helps innocent people who are in danger leave their current lives and begin again with new names, new jobs, new habits.  She’s best described as a guide to a new life.  When she married Dr. Carey McKinnon she promised to give up that part of her life, but she keeps being drawn back into it when she knows someone is in danger.

In A String of Beads, Jane is approached by the eight clan mothers of the various branches of her tribe.  Jane’s activities have been known to the mothers for some time, they tell her, but there hasn’t been a reason until this moment for them to ask for her help.  The string of beads in the title is called by the Senecas ote-ko-a.  The giving of the ote-ko-a symbolizes the mothers’ request for Jane to find one of their tribe members; her acceptance of the beads is her agreement to do so.  

Jimmy Sanders, a childhood friend of Jane’s, is being sought by the police as a suspect in a murder.  All the mothers agree with Jane that Jimmy could never have killed a man, but foolishly he has run away, and they are asking Jane to find him.  She sets out the following morning to retrace the trip that she and Jimmy took when they were teenagers, thinking that in his desire to evade the police he may have have gone back to that familiar trail; in fact she finds him there.

However, the police aren’t the only ones searching for Jimmy, and in fact they aren’t the most dangerous ones.  The man who is the murderer and who set Jimmy up for the crime is anxious for Jimmy to be found and jailed, or else simply killed.  The question before Jane and Jimmy is why has someone gone to so much trouble to incriminate him.   

A String of Beads is the eighth Jane Whitefield novel.  As with all series mysteries, we know that the protagonist will survive, but the author must make us care that she does so.  With Jane, the reader is in awe of her cleverness and determination to protect her charge from whomever is trying to kill him.  In this book, the childhood that Jane and Jimmy shared makes her even more determined to keep him safe and find out who is behind the murder and why Jimmy was chosen to be the “fall guy.”

Thomas Perry will keep you turning the pages ever more quickly with his inspiring heroine and brilliant plot.  This is another terrific mystery from the author.  He never disappoints.

You can read more about Thomas Perry at this web site. 

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site. 

I’m delighted to let you know that there’s a fourth John Madden mystery that has just been published.  Originally billed as a trilogy extending from World War I to World War II, Rennie Airth’s new novel takes place two years after World War II ends.

What becomes a series of seemingly unrelated murders begins, for John, with the death of Oswald Gibson, a meek and unassuming man who is shot while fishing near his home.  Oswald is a man who has spent his life trying not to upset or confront people, according to all those who knew him, including his brother.  He took “turn the other cheek” to the extreme, so why would someone kill him?

The second inexplicable thing about the death is the unfinished letter found in his desk.  It was written to the commissioner of Scotland Yard, saying that Oswald was trying to get in touch with someone who had worked at the Yard a long time ago, someone named John Madden.  Why did Oswald start writing the letter, only to leave it unfinished and unsent?

As John recounts the story of Oswald’s murder to his wife Helen, she says, “It’s obvious there’s been a mistake.  I don’t believe you two ever met.”  John agrees, but he responds, “But if I can’t remember his name, how is it that he knows mine?”

John Madden is certain he never heard of or met Oswald.  Nor did he know the man who turned out to have been the first victim, a Scottish doctor shot in his office several weeks before Oswald’s death.

When we first met John Madden in River of Darkness, it was just after the end of the Great War, in which he had served.  He suffered both physically and emotionally during the war, the latter because of the deaths of his wife and child.  But it is also in that novel that he meets and falls in love with Dr. Helen Blackwell, and together they begin a new chapter in their lives.

There is no war that does not leave its scars on both soldiers and civilians.  What John and the detectives at Scotland Yard are finding is that those scars can be so deep that the passing of years, even decades, doesn’t heal them.  And that’s when murder steps in.

Rennie Airth has created a wonderful protagonist in John Madden, a man of integrity and courage.  His ability is legendary at the Yard and has not diminished with his retirement, and it is with a sense of relief that his former colleagues welcome him into the investigation of these two murders.  John now has reached middle age, but his skills are still as apparent as they were when we first met him nearly three decades earlier.

You can read more about Rennie Airth at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

The new, all-woman Philadelphia law firm of Rosato & DiNuncio is doing well, with an ever-increasing client base.  The two partners, Bennie Rosato and Mary DiNuncio, are excited about the new addition to this list, Bendaflex, but the firm’s associate, Judy Carrier, is less than happy. 

Bendaflex is a firm that manufactures asbestos, and it has just lost a liabilities case involving hundreds of their former workers.  Judy is upset that Bennie has agreed to take on this client, and she’s horrified to learn that she will be the attorney trying the cases, attempting to have Bendaflex pay as little as possible both to the employees who were injured by exposure to the company’s product and to the families of those who died because of it.

In addition, a family medical issue is playing out.  Judy has always been extremely close to her mother’s sister, her Aunt Barb, probably closer than she is to her own mother.  So she is devastated to learn that her aunt has been diagnosed with stage II breast cancer.   Barb has kept her illness from her sister and niece in the hope that chemotherapy would eradicate the cancer cells, but some remain. 

Now she has to tell them that she will undergo a mastectomy in two days.  Barb’s sister Delia, Judy’s mother, wants to stay in Philadelphia to care for her, but Barb has already arranged for a close friend to help her, and she introduces Judy and Delia to Iris Juarez.

Iris entered the United States illegally from Mexico years ago.  The two women met when Iris became the housekeeper when Barb’s husband was ill.  They share a love of gardening, and Barb is confident that having Iris stay with her while she’s recuperating is a win-win for everyone; she will pay Iris, who is in a low-paying job, for her time and she will enjoy having Iris’ company and help. 

Delia is angry that her sister would prefer Iris to her.  Then Iris gets a phone call which obviously upsets her, and she says she needs to leave for work.  Several hours later police arrive at Barb’s house with the devastating news that Iris has been found dead in her car, apparently of a heart attack.

Betrayed covers numerous issues that confront the single, professional woman.  One is the feeling of being torn in so many directions, as Judy wants to spend time with her aunt but feels enormous pressure to be available for her clients.  Second is how to handle the Bendaflex situation, since Bennie is adamant, despite Judy’s protests, about not refusing this work.   Third is Judy’s relationship with Frank, a man she cares for and who loves her.  She is beginning to wonder if their very different outlooks on and approaches to life can ever be reconciled.

Lisa Scottoline has written books about each member of the law firm, and each novel is a portrait of its protagonist.  These women are most definitely not carbon copies of each other; rather, each has a distinctive personality and brings both strengths and weaknesses to the firm and to her own life.  Betrayed is a wonderful addition to Ms. Scottoline’s body of work.

You can read more about Lisa Scottoline at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

Portland, Maine police detective Joe Burgess is feeling his age.  It’s not simply the long hours and his belief that the cops can never catch up with the criminals, it’s his new-found family responsibilities and his awareness of the racial and religious tensions that are evident since people from Somalia and the Sudan have moved into the city.

As Joe is sitting in his police car, enjoying a brief moment of quiet, a young boy runs up to the car shouting, “Fire at the mosque and someone’s in there.”  Joe rushes to the building and finds, by breaking into a locked closet, a teenage girl holding an infant.  With the help of a bystander, Joe is able to get the girl and baby out of the building alive, but the baby dies by the time he arrives at the hospital.

When Joe goes to the house of the mosque’s leader, Imam Muhamud Ibrahim, he is surprised by the lack of interest shown by the clergyman and his followers about the fire.  Although Joe understands that the violent political history of Somalia has made these immigrants fearful and distrustful of the police, he is still taken aback by the lack of cooperation he’s receiving.  No one will admit to knowing anything about the girl and the infant.

Maine’s overall population is 95 percent white, 85 percent white in Portland.  The influx of African refugees, mainly from the Sudan and Somalia, has brought racial and cultural tensions to a high point.   As with other earlier immigrant groups, the Sudanese and Somalis have brought tribal ties and tribal conflicts with them, and their manner of dress and worship mark them as culturally different from the majority of Mainers.  None of this is helping Joe or his fellow officers find out who is behind the mosque’s fire. 

The girl in the hospital is not Somali or Sudanese, although it looks as if the baby she was holding was part African.  The girl has not spoken a word since she was rescued from the fire, and it is obvious that she is terrified of something or someone.  That she has reason to be is made clear when an attempt is made to abduct her from her hospital room.

In this, the fourth novel in the Joe Burgess series, Kate Flora has portrayed her protagonist and his colleagues in a state of flux.  Joe is not the only one with family/personal issues that are intruding on his police performance.   Stan Perry is even more argumentative than usual, possibly because his girlfriend has just announced that she is pregnant, unnerving news for a man who has no desire to be a father.   Terry Kyle is trying to balance his work schedule with being the sole caregiver for his children and fearful that any misstep might mean that his mentally ill ex-wife could get custody.

Kate Flora has written a deeply moving mystery of a police force and a city as a whole grappling with newcomers from a very different place.  The characters are extremely well-written, realistic and believable, and the plot rings all too true in today’s complex world.

You can read more about Kate Flora at this web site.

 Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site. 

January 3, 2015

This About Marilyn is just a brief note to thank all the readers of my blog and to update some of you.  The last two days of October and the first four days of November found me at a local hospital with a severe case of pancreatitis.  During the six days I was there I read a total of four pages on my Kindle.  I simply could not keep my eyes open to read.  Every few hours I would pick up the Kindle and try to read a chapter, but it was no use.  It actually took more than a week after I returned home before I could read more than four or five pages a day.

Perhaps some of you noticed that I missed two consecutive weeks of blogging–there are no reviews on November 1st or November 8th.  I returned home from the hospital on November 5th, which explains why there was no post on   November 1st.  For the following week I was simply exhausted and was sleeping sixteen to eighteen hours a day.  Honestly, writing a review or even uploading one I had written in advance (I usually have two or three written in advance) was beyond me.  Of course, it’s ironic that the backup reviews were unable to serve their purpose as I was too tired to send them out.  As they say, the best laid plans….

When I posted a review on November 15th, a number of you wrote that it was good to know I was feeling well enough to write.  Those e-mails came from relatives and friends who knew about my illness; other readers, I’m sure, simply thought I was on vacation or taking a hiatus for a couple of weeks.

I’m so glad to be back to my usual good health, reading and writing weekly for Marilyn’s Mystery Reads.  In addition to the usual new year’s wishes for good health and happiness for all, I’m adding the hope that lots and lots of new, wonderful mysteries are published.

Marilyn

War has a long reach, way past the time of its supposed end.  This is made abundantly clear in Val McDermid’s latest mystery, The Skeleton Road.

Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie, head of the Historic Cases Unit in Edinburgh, is familiar with the Balkans War as something that happened years ago.  That much is true, since the war ended in 1995, but the memories of those who lived through the murders, rapes, and ethnic cleansings are still vivid.

A surveyor examining the roof of a building scheduled for demolition in Edinburgh finds a human skull hidden in a turret.  It becomes a case for the police when a bullet hole is discovered in the middle of the remains and a case for the HCU (what Americans call cold cases units) because forensic examination dates the skull as having been on the roof for about seven or eight years.

Maggie Blake is a professor of geopolitics at Oxford, an internationally known expert on the Balkans War.   She was teaching in Dubrovnik when she met Colonel Dimitar Petrovic, nicknamed Mitja, of the Croatian Army.  The two became lovers and spent the beginning of the war together in Dubrovnik, he doing intelligence work and she continuing to teach and write, until the situation in the city became so dangerous that he made her leave.  After the war they lived together in Oxford, until one day Mitja left their apartment and never returned.

Then the reader is introduced to two men working at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.  Alan Macanespie and Theo Proctor haven’t been overly diligent in doing their jobs, but their new boss is about to change that.  Wilson Cagney knows that the tribunal is about to wind up its work, and he wants to clear up all the loose ends.

What is apparent to Wilson is that there were too many cases where a suspected war criminal was about to be captured and tried when the suspect was assassinated.  Whether the killer is a mole in the tribunal or someone from the war seeking personal vengeance, Wilson doesn’t care.  He wants the assassin found before the tribunal is history.

Val McDermid weaves these three seemingly disparate stories into a totally cohesive novel.  The country formerly called Yugoslavia had a long and difficult history, with territories from the former Austro-Hungarian empire being joined, forcibly or otherwise, by the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.  The country was ruled by the fascists during World War II, then by the communists after the war.  But even seventy years after the end of the Second World War, memories of who was on what side linger, and the Croats and the Serbs remember particularly well.  And all roads seem to lead to the skull in Edinburgh.

The Skeleton Road is a wonderfully engaging read, combining not only an excellent plot but an important history lesson skillfully woven into the story.  The characters and their motivations are real, and the reader will be drawn into this novel from the beginning and will stay involved until the very last page.

You can read more about Val McDermid at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

North of Boston is an excellent title for Elisabeth Elo’s debut mystery novel.  But it could also be called Here, There, and Everywhere because the story ranges from Boston to Florida to Labrador.  It’s a terrific, fast ride that will leave the reader breathless.

Pirio Kasparav has just survived four hours in the freezing waters of Boston harbor after a collision between her friend’s lobster boat and a huge freighter/tanker.  Both she and the lobster boat’s owner, Ned Rizzo, are thrown into the water, but while Pirio survives, Ned’s body is never found, even after hours of searching by the Coast Guard.

Now Pirio has become a sort of instant mini-celebrity due to her survival in water with temperature no human “should” have been able to endure.  She doesn’t have any explanation for why her body didn’t shut down, but the Navy is interested and wants to fly her down to Florida for a series of physical and mental tests.  Pirio thinks she had enough tests as a defiant adolescent to last a lifetime, but a weekend in sunny Florida sounds too good to miss.

In the meantime, there is Ned’s funeral to deal with, along with the alcoholism of Pirio’s best friend Thomasina, the mother of Noah, the ten-year-old child resulting from the brief romance of Thomasina and Ned.  With a history of drugs and alcohol, Thomasina is certainly not the ideal mother, and Pirio is reluctantly forced to pick up the slack when her friend is put in jail overnight, leaving Noah on his own.

After an interview with a commander from the Coast Guard, Pirio believes that the authorities are too willing to call the collision an accident and investigate no further.   Angry and frustrated by the government’s lack of concern, Pirio decides to look into the matter herself.  “Because if a child’s parent has to be killed in a freak accident, that child deserves to see an aftermath of concern and accountability,” she thinks.  We empathize as Pirio is drawn into the investigation, tracking down how Ned became the owner of the lobster boat immediately after quitting his job at Ocean Catch, as she puts herself in danger while trying to find the answers to give to Noah.

Elisabeth Elo has surrounded Pirio with a group of fascinating characters.  Thomasina, whom Pirio has known since they were adolescents in boarding school together, is a mess–a woman with a genius  I.Q. who drinks, takes drugs, and is available for nearly any man who is close by; Noah, her gifted son, bereft by his father’s death and wondering how the collision between his father’s lobster boat and the never-found freighter/tanker could have happened; the mysterious “Larry Wozniack,” who crashes Ned’s funeral, pretending to have been a friend of the deceased; and Johnny O, a friend and co-worker with Ned at Ocean Catch and formerly Pirio’s lover.  

North of Boston is an exciting read, a novel that’s hard to put down.  In this, the author’s first novel, she has introduced a charismatic heroine to the Boston mystery scene.

You can read more about Elisabeth Elo at this web site. 

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

How much do you know about anyone, even the person you’ve married?  And what happens when his/her past isn’t what you expected?

Hannah and Mark are practically newlyweds, having been married only eight months.  They met in New York, where Hannah was working at the time, and he was on a business trip.  After their wedding she decides to move back to London, her birthplace, reluctant to have an international marriage; in doing so she is giving up a successful advertising career in Manhattan.

The company Mark started more than a decade earlier, DataPro, is doing extremely well, and although Hannah has been looking for work ever since she returned to England, they appear to be doing very well financially and have an extremely comfortable lifestyle.

As the novel opens Hannah is driving to pick up Mark at Heathrow Airport in London after his business trip to New York, but although his plane arrives he’s not on it.  Getting more anxious by the hour as Mark doesn’t return her phone calls, she finally hears from him the next morning.  He’s full of apologies for his no-show, citing business, and promises to return in three days.

But before Hannah had heard from him, she had called his assistant Neesha at DataPro, who was surprised that Hannah and Mark weren’t together.  When Neesha lets slip that she had thought they were spending the weekend in Rome, Hannah’s anxiety grows stronger.

Still disturbed, but also angry at herself for her worry/distrust, Hannah starts going through Mark’s personal papers in his home office. She knows where his papers are kept, but his personal file isn’t where she had last seen it.  Seeking to put her mind at ease, Hannah goes to his office to look for it.  She looks through his desk until she locates the file and is stunned to learn that Mark has just taken out a huge second mortgage on their home; he had told her the house was virtually mortgage-free.

Even more upsetting, toward the bottom of the file she discovers that her husband has closed all of his savings accounts.  Then there’s the final piece of paper:  her personal account, holding all of the savings she’d accumulated during her years in New York and which Mark had told her was strictly for her own use, has been cleared out.  From the £46,800 she’d deposited, only £29.02 remain.

Before We Met is the story of what seems to be a perfect courtship and marriage.  When Mark returns, he has an answer for every question that Hannah asks, but her uneasiness never completely goes away.  She realizes how little she really knows about her husband.  His parents are dead, he and his younger brother are estranged, all of the friends he has introduced her to are people he has recently met.  Is there more to his past than he has told her?

Lucie Whitehouse has written a true thriller, with an exciting plot and perfectly drawn characters.  The story is told from Hannah’s perspective in the third person, and we are totally aware of all her thoughts.  Her worries seem legitimate, but so do Mark’s answers to her questions.  And the more questions she asks, the more questions she has.

Lucie Whitehouse doesn’t have a web site of her own, but there are several posts about her on the Internet.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

Jack Reacher is back, and that’s a good thing.  Actually, it’s a great thing because no matter how quickly Lee Child adds another novel to this series, it’s not often enough for me.

 Although Reacher has been out of the army for years (he was in military intelligence) and has no fixed address, the powers-that-be are able to find him.  As Reacher says, “You can leave the army, but the army doesn’t leave you.”  Especially when you have talents that organization needs.

An unknown sniper has tried to assassinate the president of France, and the U.S. military is afraid the gunman might be an American.  When Reacher is taken to meet with his former commander, General O’Day, he’s told that the list of possible gunmen has been narrowed down to four–one from Russia, one from Israel, one from Great Britain, and John Knott, the American that Jack Reacher put in prison to serve a fifteen year sentence. 

But now it’s sixteen years later, and Knott has been released.  Naturally he’s been under close surveillance, but although he returned to his Arkansas home when he completed his prison term his home is empty and his whereabouts unknown.  Knott was an expert sniper when he was in the army, and while he was in prison he devoted himself to vigorous exercise to keep in combat-ready shape.

The army believes that the sniper is going to attack one of the members of the G8, the organization of eight leading industrial countries, to redeem himself after his failed attempt on the French president.   Knott is known to be able to shoot to kill at fourteen hundred yards; if he is the gunman, he is a very dangerous man indeed.

When Reacher and CIA employee Casey Nice get to Knott’s home it’s deserted, as expected.  But inside the run-down house there are multiple photos of Reacher with bullet holes and knife wounds in various parts of his body.  It’s all too clear that if Knott is the sniper who is trying to assassinate a member of the G8, Reacher is another of his targets.   As Reacher recognizes, the army’s plan is for him to be used as bait to get to John Knott.  As the novel’s title says, it’s very personal.

Lee Child’s novels are nearly impossible to put down.  It’s not that the reader doesn’t know that Reacher will be victorious (after all, he’s the hero of the series), but the cleverness of the plotting and the incredible detail keep one riveted.  Even if you, like me, are totally unfamiliar with the military or snipers, Personal will have you hooked until the last page.

You can read more about Lee Child at this web site. 

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads blog at her web site.

In the midst of getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, I heard the news of the death of P. D. James.  Although at age 94 her passing was certainly not unexpected, it still saddens me to think that no more of her wonderful mysteries will be forthcoming.

Amid all the personal remembrances that have been written just since her death yesterday and all the other yet to come, I’d like to add my own.  I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. James more than thirty years ago at Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge, which I believe was one of the first stores of its type, specializing in all forms of mystery and suspense novels. 

Kate Mattes hosted many authors over the years, both novices to the publishing world and famous ones, including Robert B. Parker, Sara Paretsky, and of course Ms. James.  To me Ms. James was the epitome of the English writer.  I remember her as petite, with brown hair and wearing what the British call a “twin set,” also brown.  I can’t remember if she wore pearls, but I’ve added them to the picture of her in my mind.  Of course I still have the book she inscribed to me, Innocent Blood.  “To Marilyn, With every good wish from the author, P. D. James.”

Like many other readers, I was an immediate fan after reading her first novel, Cover Her Face.  But I must confess that her two novels featuring private investigator Cordelia Gray were my favorites.  From interviews the authors gave, she stopped writing about the P.I. because she wanted a more authentic protagonist, and at that time there were no women detectives in Scotland Yard.  Thus Adam Dalgliesh became her best-known creation.  However, I still retain a special warm spot for the inexperienced but intrepid Cordelia Gray.

Baroness James of Holland Park, as she was known after receiving a life peerage in 1991, did not have an easy life.  Her husband, a physician, returned from World War II with mental problems, leaving Ms. James to support their young family as well as dealing with his frequent stays in psychiatric hospitals.   She worked for many years for the British government and finally achieved great fame years after her husband’s early death.  Her novels were all carefully plotted, totally believable, and featured both settings and characters that held the reader from the first page to the last.  They were a joy to read and re-read.

If there was one more thing to be thankful for yesterday, it was having had the works of Phyllis Dorothy James to read over these past decades.

You can read more about P. D. James at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

The chief of police in Painters Mills, Ohio holds what seems to be dual citizenship.  Kate Burkholder was born into the town’s Amish community but left it to become, as they say in Pennsylvania Dutch, an Englischer.  That term, used both for men and women, simply denotes anyone who doesn’t follow the Amish way.  But Kate, having grown up as Amish, both speaks their language and understands their way of life better than most Englischers can.

Thirty-five years ago, there was a horrific murder in the town.  Kate was just a child then, but she knows the tragic story of the Hochstetlers.  Four masked people broke into the family’s farmhouse looking for money from the family’s business; it was believed that the family kept their cash in the house because of the Amish distrust of banks.  The intruders killed the family’s father and abducted the mother, and a lighted lantern left on the basement steps burned the four younger children to death.  Only the teenage son Billy, who was running after the getaway car carrying his mother, escaped with his life.

Now, all these years later, four respected members of Painters Mills have been receiving threatening notes.  Dale Michaels is the first to die, having received these messages:  I know what you did; I know what all of you did; Meet me or I go to the police; Hochstetler farm. 1 a.m.  Come alone.  When Dale arrives at the farm at the appointed hour, he sees the figure of Wanetta Hochstetler, the family’s mother who was abducted and assumed dead for thirty-five years.  And then Dale is shot to death.

Kate Burkholder didn’t know Dale Michaels, nor did she expect three people to be murdered within a week in her town.  What could tie these victims together?  And why had each victim received notes similar to Dale’s?

Kate is undergoing her own personal trial with her live-in partner, John Tomasetti.  His wife and two daughters were killed three years earlier as retribution for arrests he made as an FBI agent, and now one of the convicted men has been released on a technicality.  John can’t put this tragedy behind him, and his desire for revenge is threatening the relationship he has with Kate.

Linda Castillo continues the exciting Kate Burkholder series with this latest entry.  Reading about the Amish community in  Painters Mills is, for most of us, like taking a trip to a foreign country.  There are many things that set the members of the group apart from the majority–living without electricity, modest dress, traveling in buggies, ending education at the close of the eighth grade.  But readers can easily relate to their emotions and love of family.  As the late author Maya Angelou put it, “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”  Ms. Castillo proves this once again in the outstanding The Dead Will Tell.

You can read more about Linda Costello at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site.

I’m not sure how Wallace Stroby does it, but he’s done it again.  He’s made me follow a gun-carrying thief, a woman with a long criminal history, and hope she doesn’t get caught.  And I always thought I had high morals.

Shoot the Woman first is the third in the Crissa Stone series; I reviewed Kings of Midnight previously on this blog.  In Shoot the Woman First, Crissa is involved with a male trio of thieves who plan to steal from a city drug lord.  She knows her colleague Larry well and has worked with him before, knows Chuck slightly, but it’s the unknown fourth man, Cordell, Chuck’s cousin, who brought the plan to the others.

Cordell is young and doesn’t have much experience, but he knows how the gang members get their money to a different car each time on a different street, using a Tigers baseball cap as the signal for the car loaded with drug money.  Another car is the lookout, heavily armed, but Cordell insists he knows the gang’s plans inside out and he, along with Crissa, Larry, and Chuck, can take the money  without a problem.  He estimates the haul to be somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a million dollars, which is a nice neighborhood to be in.

Of course, things don’t go exactly as planned.  The quartet does get away with the money, but Crissa is shot and the drug gang is after them.   And then the situation gets even worse.

All credit to Wallace Stroby for making Crissa Stone such a believable character.  Even as you know she’s a crook, an unapologetic one at that, you are hoping she will end up with the money and her freedom.  She has emotions and feelings that sometimes get the better of her, and in Shoot the Woman First these feelings of loyalty and responsibility lead her into further danger.  Even as she tells herself that what she’s doing is foolish and dangerous, she continues to do it because it seems to be the right thing to do.  Crissa disproves the old adage that there’s no honor among thieves.

The novel has a number of very strong characters.  In addition to Crissa, each member of her team is distinct–Larry, a friend of long standing, in whom she has complete confidence; Chuck, with whom she has worked in the past only once; and Cordell, an unknown quantity, a beginner in this business, but necessary because he knows where the money is and has a plan to get it.  There are also the members of the drug gang led by Marquis, a young guy who thinks he has all the answers, and Burke, a former Detroit cop who has gone over to the dark side.

The novel’s title comes from something that Burke tells Cordell.  In a situation where there are multiple targets, men and women, “…you shoot the woman first.”  When Cordell wants to know why, Burke responds, “Because in a gang or a crew or whatever, a woman’s got to be three times as tough, three times as committed, three times as hard-ass for the men to take her seriously.”  Burke is right, and he’s just described Crissa Stone.  Shoot the Woman First is a terrific addition to this hard-boiled series, and I hope the novels keep on coming.

You can read more about Wallace Stroby at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads blog at her web site.