MBTB's Mystery Book Blog

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, by Katherine Howe (hardcover, $25.99)

2009-07-12T18:46:00.000-07:00

I thought I had found another Alice Hoffman as I began Katherine Howe’s debut novel, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, perhaps a little practical magic overlaying a story of romance. Yes and no. It has definite Hoffman vibes, but with a little Da Vinci Code, Stephen King, and academic discourse thrown in to create a charming and different mix.

Connie Goodwin is a doctoral candidate at Harvard. Her specialty is early American colonialism. Although it is only a minor part of her specialty, she is drawn into a retrospection of witchcraft and the famous Salem witch trials. Coincidentally (or is it?), Grace, her mother with whom she has a strained relationship, asks Connie to clean up and get ready to sell Grace’s mother’s home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, a town near the more famous town of Salem. The house has been abandoned for twenty years and appears derelict, and Connie reluctantly agrees to spend her summer cleaning the house, while doing research on her dissertation in Salem.

Almost immediately upon fighting her way past the abundant and tangled vegetation obscuring the house and entering the dusty but solid 200-year-old home, Connie opens a family Bible and a key falls out. The hollow stem of the key contains a piece of paper with the faint words, "Deliverance Dane," written on it. And so the adventure begins. In her quest for an important thesis topic, Connie has hopes that Deliverance Dane, whoever or whatever it is, will fill the need. In an alternating story set in the 1700s, the reader sees the answers Connie seeks unfolding slowly throughout the book.

What distinguishes this book from a light supernatural romance – a genre that abounds these days – is the historic detail and academic sheen Katherine Howe brings to the story. There is the requisite romance – after all, what is Samantha without her Darren – but even it has its teaching moments, since Connie’s love interest is a restorer of colonial buildings and art. Howe is masterful at bringing into realistic and ordinary surroundings the story of “cunning women,” whose natural talents were mistaken for magic, yet raising the possibility of “vernacular magic,” an extraordinary explanation for those talents. Her depiction of the Salem witch trials is moving and explores human frailties. Even the Da Vinci Code/Stephen King moments are forgiveable, despite the tip towards the sensational away from the quotidian, because of the very human level Howe maintains in her character of Connie Goodwin.

Landscape of Lies, by Peter Watson (trade, $14.95)

2009-07-08T18:40:00.000-07:00

Before there was The Da Vinci Code, there was Landscape of Lies. A more intelligent, less sensational, less riddled with religious quackery version of the famous best-seller, Landscape also seeks a hidden treasure, its hiding place to be discovered by deciphering the clues in a painting.

Art dealer Michael Whiting and farmer (!) Isobel Sadler, whose family owns the painting, combine forces in modern times to find religious relics hidden during Henry VIII’s purge of the monasteries of England. While Watson peppers his story with chase scenes and a thoroughly blackguardly villain, the better part of the story is spent in quiet contemplation in libraries, churches, and restoration workshops and over dinner in a little country village. Strangely, although there are scenes, especially the romantic ones, that seem a little dated – the book was written in 1989 – it is easy to become fascinated by the history around which the author spins his story.

I loved the detail, and I’m not just talking about the academic hoo-hah. For instance, when the characters drive down a road, the author inserts little comments (such as, the characters must be getting near a town because of the approaching “electricity cables”) that bring the drive to life. However, I think the story would have benefited if the two main characters both had been men or women, dispensing with the blah romantic comings and goings.

The Secret Speech, by Tom Rob Smith (hardcover, $24.99)

2009-06-19T08:04:00.000-07:00

Tom Rob Smith has taken a historical fact -- in the 1950s Nikita Krushchev denounced Stalin in a radical speech before a closed session of the Soviet government -- and has spun a suspenseful and moving tale around it.

Leo Demidov of Child 44, Smith's award-winning debut novel, is now a homicide inspector in Moscow. He is no longer a part of the secret police, no longer sends people off to miserable lives in the gulags or to their deaths, if they are luckier.

He and his wife, Raisa, are raising two children, sisters who are orphans because of Leo. Zoya, 14 years old, hides her hatred of Demidov for the sake of her younger sister, who has come to care for Leo and his wife. But at night Zoya sometimes stands over a sleeping Leo with a kitchen knife in her hand, willing herself to plunge it into him to avenge her parents' deaths. Leo and Raisa, on the other hand, love the sisters unequivocally and with great passion. If Leo can patchwork this unlikely family together, then maybe he can begin to atone for the years he spent as an agent.

Copies of Krushchev’s “secret speech” are being copied and distributed all over the country, and people responsible for advancing and participating in Stalin’s regime of terror are being murdered. This becomes clear to Leo when he is asked to investigate the deaths. Everything Leo holds dear is threatened when he discovers he, too, is a target. His atonement has come too late.

Whether Smith is developing the big picture (the Soviet Union in turmoil) or the small picture (Leo’s agony as he tries to save each member of his disintegrating family), he wraps pathos and tension around a core story of a nation and individuals seeking redemption.

A minor quibble: Smith resorts to employing a larger-than-life character, a female terrorist named “Fraera,” who probably would be better suited to a Terminator movie. A person would be hard put to find a comparable character in a Le Carré or Martin Cruz Smith book, for instance. Complaints of mythic abilities aside, Fraera brings the action forward, melding Leo’s past life and its atrocities and his current life as detective and father. As the Soviet Union questions its foundations and political precepts, Leo must navigate the political hierarchy for help without knowing in whom he can really trust. Alliances and allegiances are many-layered and made of shifting sands.

In the end, the book is about hope and trust. It is about freefalling in dangerous situations and trusting that there will be a safety net at the end, that moral ambiguity will be resolved, that family will stand united in the end. Whether it really ends that way is irrelevant; to move through life, to put one foot in front of the other, it is necessary to hope.

The Likeness, by Tana French (trade, $15.00)

2009-06-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

SPOILER ALERT: This review of Tana French’s second book discusses Tana French’s first book, In the Woods, and some of its plot turns, so if you haven’t read the first book, don’t read this review.

Tana French is the mistress of ambiguity. In her follow-up to the critically acclaimed In the Woods, French again has created a story in which the reader might be left to wonder what really happened.

In the Woods famously ended with its major mystery still unsolved, and the symbiotic and charismatic relationship that Cassie Maddox had with her Murder Squad partner Rob Ryan in tatters. The Likeness picks up about six months later. Cassie now has formed a romantic relationship with Sam O'Neill, the third partner in the doomed Murder Squad team. She has shipped out of the Murder Squad and works in the domestic violence unit. Even though she has a companion and a job, Cassie has lost the life in which she was happy and sure of her direction, and she still has not come to terms with who she is now. Hovering in a state of ambivalence, she is waiting.

Sam, who is still with the Murder Squad, calls Cassie in a panic. He has pulled a case involving the death of a woman who is a dead ringer for Cassie. Her name, it turns out, is Lexie Madison. How is that possible, Cassie wonders, because that is the alias she used when she was working undercover as a young police officer. She and Frank Mackey, her supervisor at the time, created Lexie. Lexie is a figment of their imagination. How could Cassie’s invention and doppelganger be lying dead in a little town outside Dublin?

At first reluctant to become involved in another murder case, Cassie finally agrees to pose as Lexie, infiltrate Lexie’s life, walk in Lexie’s shoes, find Lexie’s murderer.

Lexie was a postgrad student in college. She shared a home with four other postgrads. If those last two sentences lead you to anticipate a college girl gone wild story or “Animal House Goes Irish,” then you’ve underestimated Tana French. Lexie and her friends were grown-ups, it appears. They worked on renovating their generations-old home, while studying esoteric literary topics. They were rarely apart and vibrated to the same note. In a world in which their age-mates are made of lighter, more transient stuff, Lexie and her housemates were serious about and committed to their communal living.

Cassie slides into Lexie’s life with surprising ease. She finds balm for her own problems among Lexie’s fey friends. Could one of them be responsible for murdering Lexie? Or is it one of the villagers who inexplicably holds the occupants of the house in high dudgeon? What if the killer was actually after Cassie and mistakenly found Lexie?

French’s lengthy book (466 pages) builds the tension slowly. Maybe too slowly. After the revelatory scene at the end, I thought that it was amazing the guilty party/parties hadn’t cracked sooner. In any event, I enjoyed the book. I love Cassie and wish her well.

For those of us who were shocked (simply shocked) that French had left us hanging at the end of In the Woods, there is some solace. French is kind enough to toss us a few references to what happened after the events of the first book, so we can have a modicum of closure. I’m still hoping her third book will return to Rob’s story.

An Expert in Murder, by Nicola Upson

2009-06-03T15:25:00.000-07:00

For those of who lament that “they don’t write ‘em like they used to,” this is a charming update of the classic British cozy, appropriately set in the ‘30’s and with one of the queens of the classic British cozy as heroine: Josephine Tey.

The story is set early in Tey’s career, when she is more famous as a playwright under the pseudonym Gordon Daviot than as a mystery author writing as Josephine Tey. On her way to London to see her latest production, she makes the acquaintance of an avid fan – who is later found dead amid props that suggest a connection to Tey’s play. Happily, Tey is good friends with the detective assigned to the case, the suave but troubled Archie Penrose, and agrees to use her insider knowledge of the production to help him investigate.

Upson, who has worked in and written about theater much of her life, uses her own insider knowledge to create a vivid glimpse into London’s West End at a time when England was still reeling from the last Great War and beginning to brace for the next one. Her research included interviews with John Guilgud, who starred in the actual production of Richard of Bordeaux and knew Tey well, and upon whom she has based her portrait of her show’s star.

Appropriately for a classic cozy, if a bit tiresomely for a modern reader, the mechanics of the mystery are a bit creaky, and the resolution a bit melodramatic. But this hardly distracts from the warm and fuzzy glow that envelopes readers as they sink into Upson’s elegant prose and are surrounded by her engaging and eccentric cast of characters.

The second in this series, An Angel with Two Faces, will be out in hardcover next month.

Darkness Under Heaven, by F. J. Chase ($7.99)

2009-06-02T20:03:00.000-07:00

This is a movie in book form. That is to say, there is no actual movie, but the book is eighty percent dialogue and twenty percent short, declarative sentences with not much style, and it begs to be turned into an action movie.

Too much dialogue. Too much clever bantering between the male and female main characters. No style. Kill or be killed philosophy. All signs that usually point to my slamming the book shut as soon as possible. So why did I read every page?

Imagine a Bruce Willis action character who looks like Telly Savalas. Imagine an Angelina Jolie action character who looks like Christine Lahti (at least that’s how I picture her). Imagine China at war with Taiwan. Imagine our main characters are trapped in China. Imagine neither one can speak Chinese. If you can imagine this, you have the basic elements of the book and they may or may not appeal to you, but the interest for me, and why I am favorably reviewing this book, is in the details.

F. J. Chase is a pseudonym of “a former military officer and national security commentator.” (Endearingly, he dedicates his book to his mother.) I found his depiction of Chinese military and political propriety fascinating and his insight into the Chinese mind authentic, if not flattering. Chase instructs the reader on how to make bombs, camouflage, and break-in tools, and how to survive in catastrophic circumstances -- even those of your own making. Not that I know how to do any of the above, but Chase writes with authority and I have no reason to doubt that his do-it-yourself scenarios are possible.

That’s it in a nutshell. Caucasian man and woman try to escape an Asian country at war using their wits.

Got an airplane you need to ride for a long time? Take this book. If it puts you to sleep, hey, what’s wrong with that? If it keeps your heart pumping, that’s good, too!

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, by Alan Bradley (hardcover, $23)

2009-05-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

Writers need to be careful with precocious children characters. A little goes a long way. Having said that, I mostly enjoyed Flavia de Luce, heroine of Alan Bradley’s novel, who is eleven years old and brimming with eccentricities.

In 1950, it was not untoward for a girl to hope for a career in science, although it probably would have been a little unusual for a girl to have a well-stocked laboratory in her family’s mansion. And it would have been really unusual for a girl to maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of poisons.

Flavia is the difficult youngest daughter in an eccentric aristocratic family. Her father is distant and reclusive, her mother died while Flavia was quite young, and her sisters are dismissive of her. She marches to her own drummer and tries to find her proper place in a world full of mysteries.

When not busy poisoning her sister, Flavia detects. When first a dead bird and then a dead person plop themselves on her doorstep, she takes to solving these mysteries with great enthusiasm.

Flavia is not another Nancy Drew, however. Bradley adds depth to his book in the characters of Flavia’s father and the gardener. There’s a little unevenness as Bradley tries to balance the buoyancy of a young girl with a passion and the sadness of men who’ve seen too much badness.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that in the end I didn’t really like Flavia’s father all that much. Flavia deserves better.

(P.S. I've been in England for the last three weeks, walking Wainwright's Coast to Coast walk, and haven't had much of a chance to read.)

Paper Butterfly, by Diane Wei Liang (hardcover, $24

2009-05-06T22:23:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed Eye of Jade, Liang's first book in her series, quite a lot. Written in English but with what feels like a very flavorful taste of authentic Beijing, Eye of Jade captured what it must be like to be a progressive woman in Communist China but saddled with traditional, centuries-old cultural expectations.

In the first book we gradually learned Mei Wang's back story, which is unfortunately not repeated in any detail in this second book, so the reader is left sort of clueless about her relationship with her mother. It must suffice for you to know that there is more than meets the eye and a resolution is surely to come in a future book.

Mei Wang is a private detective. A female private detective. In a country that outlaws private detectives, male or female. Although she started her adult life full of promise and on the right side of the law -- i.e., in a government post with good promotional possibilities -- she now works for herself with only one lowly helper, an immigrant from a rural area of China. Both the story of how she fell from grace and the descriptions of what she has to deal with to solve her clients' problems highlight what a moribund and corrupt society Wang lives in. Fortunately, she is a person clever enough to negotiate its Byzantine (or perhaps "Manchurian" is a better word) structures.

Wang is hired to find a missing pop singer. For the first half of the book, this story alternates with one of a man released from an isolated prison in which, we discover, he has been kept for participating in the student protest at Tiananmen Square. The book heads these two stories towards each other. It doesn't matter that you can probably guess what's coming; it is the journey that counts.

I felt the first book conveyed the patience and tenacity of Mei Wang better than this one, mostly because it dealt with Wang's early life, but also because the story had a center of quiet before the illumination, something this one lacks. And unfortunately, some of the characters in the second book are more parodies than realistic depictions, and that creates a dissonance that makes it difficult to thoroughly enjoy this book.

Open and Shut, by David Rosenfelt ($7.99) (c 2003)

2009-04-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

I was racing through a preview copy of Mike Carey's latest in his Fix Castor series, Dead Men's Boots (sorry, not out until July), when I screeched to a halt. It wasn't because Carey's book had lost steam – to the contrary, his books (including The Devil You Know and The Vicious Circle) pitch headlong down the literary demon-filled path. I stopped because I stumbled across a used book for sale, one that had been out of print and hard to get for far too long, one I had never had a chance to read.

David Rosenfelt's Open and Shut begins his great Andy Carpenter series. Andy is a lawyer with a sense of humor, sometimes with too developed a sense of humor for judges, fellow attorneys, his estranged wife, and investigator girlfriend -- but not for Rosenfelt's readers!

Andy is a criminal defense attorney. His father, Nelson, was a legendary prosecutor. Nelson has urged Andy to represent on appeal a man Nelson had completely and competently sent to death row. Andy accepts what seems to be a lost cause to please his father. Before long, Andy truly believes his client is an innocent man, a belief that flies in the face of the massive evidence, however circumstantial, to the contrary.

Andy's life apparently has not been complicated enough by this case; three startling and life-changing events also occur. Nelson dies. Andy's estranged wife returns for a reconciliation, putting Andy's girlfriend/investigator in the intolerable position of having to work for her now ex-boyfriend. Nelson has left Andy $22 million. Surprise!

Rosenfelt writes with energy, humor, and an insider's knowledge – although Rosenfelt is not a lawyer -- of the vagaries and variances of the legal system.

The good news is Warner Books has recently re-released Open and Shut. And, lucky you, you don't have to scrounge around for a mangy dog-eared copy like I did.

(Speaking of dogs … one of the unforgettable characters is Andy's golden retriever, Tara. Rosenfelt had the real Tara, and he has started the Tara Foundation to rescue golden retrievers, 4000 of them to date.)

The Reliable Wife, by Robert Goolrick (hc, $23.95)

2009-04-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

From the first paragraph of The Reliable Wife, I heard music. Robert Goolrick has a poet's rhythm with his words. His writing sounds like water moving towards high tide. He uses repetition, adding a few more words or another thought each time to finally build to the climactic revelation or pronouncement. Goolrick also has an artist's eye with presentation. The story starts with simplicity and builds to opulence and decadence. It starts with inhibition and ends with a tempest.

Within the first few paragraphs we meet Ralph Truitt. He is waiting on a snow-laden platform for a woman to arrive by train. We learn he carries sorrow, humiliation, and hope. But just as Ralph patiently waits for the woman to arrive, the reader must wait to learn about these burdens. Does it seem strange that hope would be a burden? Ralph has spent half of his life without needing hope and the other half bringing his hope to the painful climax that led him to the platform, waiting for a train.

A "simple honest woman," Catherine Land, steps off the train. She has sent Ralph a letter with this declaration, and he has sent for her to become his wife.

It is 1907 and Catherine has come to a Wisconsin town dark and heavy with the beginning of the winter snow. Within hours, in the heavy, fast-falling snow, she has lost the last tangible reminders of her old life. Just as the landscape and houses are buried under the snow, Catherine and Ralph's prior lives are buried deep within themselves. Goolrick dots his story with tales of people driven mad by winter and isolation, and what they must face about themselves when there is nothing else to distract them.

The tale accelerates when Ralph asks Catherine to travel to St. Louis to find his runaway son and bring him home. It is at this point that the layers begin to tear away, that we discover the story that has only been hinted at so far.

What begins with starkness and distance and rectitude becomes a tale of sensuality and an overflowing of emotion. The characters struggle to tear away their misery, and they begin by tearing away their layers of clothing. They stand naked before each other, but are terribly hidden otherwise. Goolrick masterfully shows us their pain and their passion.

This is a high-intensity tale of sex and repression and murderous thoughts, of people longing to forgive themselves and each other, of incredible pain. In describing what formed Ralph's character, Goolrick says: "That his mother had said, needle to the bone, that the way to goodness, the only way, was through pain and suffering. He could have said that grief had left him wholly good." There's enough pain and suffering to go around, but will they find redemption?

The Collaborator of Bethlehem, by Matt Beynon Rees (trade, $13.95)

2009-04-15T09:48:00.000-07:00

Matt Beynon Rees, a British ex-journalist, has given us a person-sized view of a globally transfixing political situation.

Omar Yussef is a middle-aged man, a husband, father, and grandfather, who teaches high school-aged girls in a U.N. sponsored school in Bethlehem. He is the neutral eyes through which we see ordinary Muslim citizens, violent Palestinian jihad movements, the dwindling Christian community, Westerners who have come to supply aid, and off-screen Israeli military forces. They mix together in Bethlehem, a town burdened by fights between the "Martyrs Brigade," a Palestinian militia group, and Israeli forces. The ordinary citizens, Muslims and Christians alike, are caught in the crossfire.

Yussef is not a radical. It is not obvious that he has a strong political viewpoint. Even though his family was relocated from its home village to make room for Jewish settlements, Yussef's father taught his family to make the best of it and not look back in anger. (Yussef cannot help, however, longing for the quiet, simpler times that life in his village represents.) Yussef, in turn, preaches tolerance to his students and practices it in his personal associations.

Rees has created a character who is our moral lynchpin. He accepts people as people, regardless of their religious or political affiliations. He presses on through his feelings of cowardice to perform acts of bravery. He is the irritating burr under the saddle that goads others into action. But he is not without his own shortcomings. Some are significant: he is an alcoholic and the disease has left him physically diminished before his time. Some are milder: he modestly lusts after a neighbor's wife, despite actually loving and treasuring his wife of many years. He misjudges people and is not afraid to admit his errors.

When two of his ex-students, both adults now, run afoul of the Martyrs Brigade, Yussef must seek justice for them. Despite their unofficial status, the Martyrs Brigade, it is hinted, really runs the government. Yussef will not receive much help from the official elements, including the police, in his quest. It is this Quixote-like quest that brings Yussef into shadowy places to find out who has been collaborating with the Israelis and has caused the deaths of people he loves.

While this novel is not a political polemic, it deals sensitively with divisive issues without making them the centerpiece. We yearn, with Yussef, for a time when different cultures could exist side by side and mutually celebrate a part of the world where history has written its mark for far longer than for most.

Despite the setting and violent incidents depicted in the book, this is not an action-filled thriller. It is a thought-provoking, very different look at a community in crisis. Don't read it for the mystery (a real "Yussef" would have been killed on page 100), but for what it might bring you in understanding.

State of the Onion, by Julie Hyzy ($7.99)

2009-04-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

This is the first in the series Julie Hyzy started about a fairly young female chef at the White House. (The White House.)

Olivia "Ollie" Paras is one of a small group of permanent kitchen staff for the White House. The staff must plan minutely and organize excessively to feed the fictional first family and assorted diplomats and high-mucky-mucks. The executive chef, her beloved mentor and boss, is scheduled to retire and Ollie is one of the candidates to be his replacement. But first she must dig herself out of the big, big hole she seems to have created, with the Secret Service, an assassin, and a TV food star helping to bury her.

If she knew then what she knows now … Ollie certainly wouldn't have played "hero." She would never have clunked the man running away from the Secret Service with the commemorative skillet. In addition, she thinks there's an assassin who's marked her as the next target because she can identify him. Then again, maybe there isn't an assassin. (And if there is an assassin, he's a remarkably inept one.) Suspicious characters lurk around every corner and under every saucepan.

However, this is a charming book with a charming lead character. It feels like an insider's look at the White House kitchen. The talk of creating fine cuisine to match the first lady's mood or visiting foreign dignitaries makes me wish more dishes had been described. State of the Onion is served up with dollops of romance and humor.

The Redbreast, by Jo Nesbø (trade, $14.99) (c2000, trans. from Norwegian)

2009-04-04T13:36:00.000-07:00

This Norwegian novel has won a number of awards. Mr. Nesbø has created a dark Scandanavian police procedural to rival those of Sweden's Sjöwall/Wahlöö and Henning Mankell.

The setup is rather lengthy; it wasn't until page 200 that things got going. The whole book is a hefty 500+ pages, but there is no wasted motion after page 200. In fact, I found that first part rather tedious, as the author switches between a 1942 WWII story and one set in 1999 (the book came out in 2000), but I have no complaints about what comes after. And, I admit it, that first part is necessary to understand the murderer's psyche.

In brief, several Norwegian men fight on the side of Germany and Hitler in WWII. Some may have defected, or not. Some may have murdered each other, or not. Something heroic may have occurred, or not. A wounded soldier and a nurse fall in love. All these threads have repercussions for the contemporary stories. In 1999, an old man is facing his own imminent demise and decides that he must avenge old wrongs. Men and women, ones who have something to do with that WWII group, begin to die.

Harry Hole is a drunkard with emotional baggage from a prior case which is mentioned but never elucidated. He is a homicide inspector who, to correct an unfortunate mistake, is promoted to the POT, which I gather is an FBI-type organization and one which no longer exists in Norway. He is assigned the task of monitoring neo-Nazi activities. Nazism is the common thread tying together the WWII story and the contemporary storylines. Plural. There are a couple of cases Hole is either assigned or takes upon himself to handle. We assume in some mysterious way Nesbø will tie them all together, and it is his genius that he does.

In the great tradition of dysfunctional police inspectors, Hole must fight his own demons in order to rescue or avenge those he loves. Instead of closing in on himself, he expands to embrace love. Instead of becoming incapacitated by his losses, he stubbornly bullies his way through the system to find resolution.

The relationship between Hole and his former partner Ellen Gjelten exemplifies the very human nature of Nesbø's characterizations. Even most of the bad guys are so human in their failings. Even if they are over the top, they are not parodies. Not that that would stop a reader from hoping for a proper comeuppance!

Scoop, by Hannah Dennison ($6.99)

2009-04-01T16:55:00.000-07:00

The blurb on the cover of this book really intrigued me: "A delightful heroine who would be right at home in a Jane Austen novel." Yes, I can see protagonist Vicky Hill perhaps as one of the daughters whom Mr. Bennet describes in Pride and Prejudice as "the silliest girls in England."

In Scoop, the second book in the series, Vicky is a news reporter for a small village in Devon who frequently Thinks! In! Grandiose! Headlines! The residents of this village are poorly stereotyped: the bullying do-gooder, the handsome love interest (?) who constantly addresses her as "doll," and the local waitress, Topaz, who is also the Lady of the Manor, plus many more.

The premise for the mystery itself was very simplistic and unrealistic. A farmer and champion hedge cutter (!) had been electrocuted while clipping a hedge near a power line. Vicky knew something was fishy because the town council had just placed a sign on the existing power pole saying, "Look Out! Look Up!" to warn people that there was an overhead power line. This seems like an incredibly implausible premise to me on which to launch an investigation, nor was it enough for this reader to continue the book. I thought the biggest mystery was why Vicky felt compelled to investigate this in the first place.

Just hedge your bets and clip on by!

Chasing Darkness, by Robert Crais ($9.99)

2009-03-30T23:40:00.000-07:00

This is the twelfth book starring Elvis Cole, private eye. Sidekick Joe Pike is back in the box and only out for special occasions. Everything is as it should be.

The plot is very serious, weighted with potential police corruption and serial killings, but it is tempered by what Crais does very well, little touches of eccentricity. Elvis' quirkiness shines through, from his choice of a Pinnochio clock to his oddly temperamental cat.

Carol Starkey, resurrected after dying in an explosion and now late of the bomb squad (Demolition Angel), makes an appearance in Chasing Darkness as a homicide detective. She gives such a welcome and different perspective to the book, I looked ahead to read just her parts. She's got the woo-hoos for our boy, but Elvis is still carrying a gigantic Lucy torch. Let's chip in together and get a big bucket of water for that torch.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch … A case Elvis had a few years ago comes back to haunt him. The defendant Elvis helped exonerate of murder is found dead, with a scrapbook full of incriminating photographs of murder victims lying nearby, including one of the woman he was charged with murdering. If Elvis' original research was accurate, then the dead man, morally repugnant though he may be, is innocent. So the question is, who is the real killer? Unfortunately, a potential crack appears in his original theory, and the what-ifs begin. Two more women were murdered after the dead man was freed, and the thought that he might be responsible drives Elvis to desperate measures.

Elvis tries to reconstruct the stories of the serial killer's victims. He eventually finds that a high-ranking member of the police department has put the department's files in lockdown, with only select members of a task force authorized to access them. Is it to protect the files or to obscure misconduct?

Crais does a great job of creating interesting characters, a complex plot, and a thoughtful and lyrical last paragraph.

Betrayals by Carla Neggers ($7.99) (c1990)

2009-03-23T17:17:00.000-07:00

In the romantic suspense genre, Carla Neggers' books are usually reliably well written and enjoyable, following the traditional romantic formula. Her characters are defined and "normal," so although the women and men are good-looking, they are also intelligent, ethical and independent minded. The storylines are fast-paced and the plots are credible. The characters are often related to characters in previous books, so there is a sense of revisiting someone you know and liked and being updated about their lives after the end of their stories. Neggers' books satisfy one's indulgence for a guilt-free romantic romp with substance.

That said, Betrayals fails hopelessly to come up to the standard I have expected in a Carla Neggers story. This book was originally released in 1990, and what a difference 19 years have made in honing Ms. Neggers' writing skills! The book spans approximately 30 years, revolving around two families that are linked by secrets and tragedy. The irritating central players all have various pieces of the puzzle, but are unwilling to share to bring a timely solution to this overlong, tedious story, preferring to "go it alone" to resolve the mystery. The only subplot missing from this story was the traditional meeting at midnight in the unlit tower on a dark, stormy night.

Not a book I would recommend.

Pushing Up Daisies, by Rosemary Harris ($6.99)

2009-03-23T17:11:00.000-07:00

This is the first book in a new series about a New York City media producer, Paula, who gives up her lifestyle in New York to start over as a gardener in a small Connecticut town. The book is an easy, light read, with a credible mystery, humorous without being silly. There are a few "huh?" moments when the protagonist makes a leap in logic that are difficult to follow.

The mystery begins with an event that took place 50 years in the past that has a connection to a present day murder. Some leaps, some obvious clues, but she ties it all together nicely, along with lots of gardening references to a grand old estate (where the action takes place) that she has been hired to restore to its former glory.

There is a good cast of secondary characters/friends: Babe, café owner, ex-70s rocker chick, à la Stevie Nicks, lots of pithy advice and innuendo from her days on the road; Liz, her New York City media friend who brings her "Sex and the City" lifestyle advice to Paula when she comes for what she thinks is a "Ralph Lauren" spa weekend in the country! All in all, a good, quick, enjoyable read.

Silent on the Moor, by Deanna Raybourn (trade, $13.95)

2009-03-22T19:20:00.000-07:00

Continuing the tale begun in Silent in the Grave and Silent in the Sanctuary, Raybourn takes her main character, enlightened widow Lady Julia Grey, and plops her in the Yorkshire moors in this latest episode. Set in the late 1800s, Julia has found that life is better if she can be with the man she loves, Nicholas Brisbane, and can solve mysteries by his side.

Half-Gypsy, half-aristocrat, Brisbane is the tortured, intense hero who came to Julia's rescue when her husband was murdered in the first book of the series. He and Julia subsequently began their courtship dance, which at times had them spinning rapidly away from each other. After one such separation, Julia decides that enough is enough. She will journey to the Yorkshire moors where Brisbane has ensconced himself in a derelict, forbidding estate, and demand a clarification of their relationship.

If only it were that simple.

What Julia, her eccentric sister Portia, and eccentric brother Valerius discover is an odd household composed primarily of the prior inhabitants. The Allenbys and their staff are still in residence, whereas Brisbane spends his time haunting the moors, looking for lost sheep, he says. The prior master of the house collapsed and died from complications of malaria, a disease caught in the course of his global explorations. He specialized in ancient Egyptian history, and his office is littered with all sorts of Egyptian artifacts. The family was plunged into poverty upon his death, and everything was bought by Brisbane, including the artifacts. All these elements weave their way into the story.

When Julia discovers that Brisbane's ties to the Allenbys and the land go back to childhood, she tries her best to work herself further into his life. Luckily for the reader this means we get to have some of the questions answered that cropped up in the prior books.

Julia is precociously a feminist, but the book is not about that. There are other "anachronistic" elements: Portia is involved in a romantic relationship with another woman; Valerius wants to be a doctor, which appalls his father because it is a "trade;" Brisbane is a private investigator who uses scientific methods. But they all work because it doesn't feel contrived.

There is something so satisfying about Raybourn's books. Her pacing is excellent, her characters are interesting, and she mixes the gothic with the practical to great effect.

P.S. This book and the re-issue of Silent in the Sanctuary have the WORST covers. They convey exactly the opposite of what the books actually are. The bodice ripper covers belie the intelligent and well-written prose that lies within. Read the books anyway!

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, by Kate Summerscale (trade, $16.00)

2009-03-19T20:13:00.000-07:00

Just in case you think that our modern world with its modern technology ( e.g., Court TV) was responsible for creating the avid viewer of sordid legal proceedings (e.g., O. J. Simpson), or that somehow before modern media led us down the soiled path of voyeurism, we were virtuous and open-minded, it didn't and we weren't. Maybe we present-day people have elevated voyeurism to a "higher" level, but Kate Summerscale's reality-based book shows that humankind always has been right there, ready to participate in the hullabaloo surrounding a juicy scandal.

Summerscale has rummaged through a tower of books and other source materials to bring us the story of one of the first modern police detectives and his most spectacular and controversial case. She sets her stage well by adding an authentic background detail here and there, so her reader gets a real sense of the time, 1860s England. This is mystery as history.

Jack Whicher was one of the first Scotland Yard detectives. He followed clues (look for Summerscale's aside on the etymology of "clue"), looked to forensics and autopsies for information, and attempted to understand the psychology of motives. A long time after the fact, forensically speaking, Whicher is called in to help solve the murder of the three-year-old son of a middle-class couple. The case appears to be a locked room mystery, with one of the many inhabitants of the house certainly the murderer.

Alas, no suspect is found with the smoking gun in hand, the vial of poison in pocket, or the bloody knife in boot. Thus Whicher must rely merely on his suspicions. Suspicious detail after suspicious detail are laid out by the author as Whicher develops his circumstantial case, and his suspicions lead him to believe strongly that a specific person indeed did kill the child.

However, after Whicher presents his case before a judge, the citizenry -- alerted and aroused by the media, a surprisingly multitudinous bunch -- weighs in, "American Idol"-style. It seems as though for every individual suspect there is a vociferous group promoting his or her guilt. Whicher is alternately vilified and romanticized. Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens were influenced by the method and presence of Whicher, enough so that he is the model for some of their characters.

Summerscale presents us with an eminently readable tale. She draws us in slowly with increasingly dramatic revelations about the various characters. We are presented with everything from the mundane to the salacious, and all these details may have some bearing in the final analysis. Perhaps you, too, will be able to see why England went ga-ga over the case.

The Last Gig, by Norman Green (hardcover, $25.95)

2009-03-13T12:19:00.000-07:00

Norman Green is the author of the superb Shooting Dr. Jack and The Angel of Montague Street. I want to cry when one of his books ends, both because the book is ending and because Green is the Itzhak Perlman of noir and knows how to play a reader's emotional strings.

Green's other books have been darker, his protagonists on the edge or fully on the other side of respectability. In The Last Gig, Green has a female protagonist, Alessandra Matillo, who is as tough, as rough, as street-smart as Green's male protagonists have been. Al is a budding private eye and, one would thus expect, mostly on the respectable side of the line, and one would be mostly right. At the moment she practices on repos and catching restaurant staff waving sticky fingers over the restaurant owner's dough -- the green, inedible kind.

At last a break comes along, a smuggling case that Al takes over. However, Al doesn't know who is shadier, the client or the smuggler. Al's boss has a complex, long-standing relationship with Daniel Caughlan, whose transport company is threatened by a cocaine smuggling operation being run through his business. Soon Al is involved not only in determining which of Caughlan's employees helped set up the cocaine smuggling, but also in finding out who killed Caughlan's young son, a nascent Stevie Ray Vaughn, and what impact this all has on her boss.

Green juggles a mob story with an insider's look at the music industry, and mixes it up with Al's dysfunctional family history. Family, for better or worse, is at the heart of Green's books. It is the complicated relationships between parent and child, siblings, cousins that provide the emotional background. Sometimes family is all you can count on. And sometimes family counts you out.

In Al's case, her mother committed suicide when she was a child, her father deserted her, and she roamed the meaner-than-mean streets of Brooklyn until her uncle and his domestic partner (gay and proud of it) track her down and take her in. Now her beloved Tio Bobby is dying, and it provides the catalyst for Al to put aside her tough-Puerto-Rican-chick persona and find the revelation and redemption all of Green's best main characters seek.

Green believes in action, lots of it. He believes in twists. He believes in redemption. The combination so far has led to some very satisfying books.

The Arsenic Labyrinth, by Martin Edwards (trade, $14.95) (c2007)

2009-03-08T21:26:00.000-07:00

Poisoned Pen Press is famous for bringing American readers books they otherwise wouldn't be able to easily obtain. In this case, they have brought us Martin Edwards, a CWA-nominated British author who has written the popular (in England) Lake District mysteries.

These are top-notch mysteries in the British fashion without excessive gore, little swearing (at least in this book) and no graphic sex. That's not to say that they are cute and toothless. DCI Hannah Scarlett, the heroine of the series, is a modern, no-nonsense detective. In The Arsenic Labyrinth, the third in the series, she has been relegated to the Cold Case Squad. It is meant as a punishment, but in fact the assignment suits her talents admirably. Daniel Kind is an historian who has moved to the Lake District to escape the helter-skelter of Oxford and London. Together they have managed to disentangle mysteries set in the picturesque Lake District.

Although I have not read the other two books (The Coffin Trail and The Cipher Garden), Edwards is a good enough writer that I didn't feel asea. Relationships built in the other novels are completely explained and brought forward within this book.

The reader can understand the relationships and motives because they are written at a fundamentally human level. At the same time, the story is also a good mystery, complete with red herrings, and the writing is smooth and evocative of what makes the Lake District special.

The Bridge of Sighs, by Olen Steinhauer (trade $13.95) (c2003)

2009-03-03T11:21:00.000-08:00

I'd like "The Volga Boatman" to be playing in the background as you read this review, please.

This is a novel rife with Eastern European despair. Another one. I think I've read more than my share within the last few months. It's time for you to take up the burden. I'm going to be re-reading Janet Evanovich for a while.

Burden. Repression. Devotion. Aaarrgh. Let's all run screaming from the room now, because there's no hope, there's no light at the end of the post-WWII fracturing Eastern European tunnel.

Now that I have that out of my system, I can return to the review.

Actually, this is an interesting book, an Edgar Award finalist, even.

The story takes place in 1948 in an unnamed Eastern European country, bitten off perhaps from Romania or Hungary. There was corruption and repression under the monarchy before WWII, and there is still corruption and repression now that the country has been "liberated" by the Communists. Emil Brod is a brand new detective with the People's Militia. Emil's family's history is tragic and probably representative of so many of the real stories from that era. War pushed his family apart: his parents were killed in separate battle incidents, and his grandparents took young Emil to the starving countryside where both Jews and non-Jews were fleeing. When Emil was a little older, he ran away from the fighting but wound up on a seal boat in the Arctic where life was perhaps even harsher, bleaker, and more treacherous than on the frontlines of the war. This is the history that Emil brings with him to the police station on his first day.

Inexplicably, Emil is met by hostile silence from his fellow officers. Then he is assigned a hot potato of a political homicide. As he ventures to solve the case, we see through Emil's eyes the decadence, resignation, and paranoia that have descended on his fellow citizens. Russian soldiers are everywhere and it is obvious his country is again captive. The murder merely serves as a vehicle so Steinhauer can give us a history lesson, which was fine with me. That part I found fascinating.

But Emil suffers. He suffers excessively. Too much. Enough already. And the romance? What was his attraction? What was hers? Explain. Is it the 9/11 phenomenon? In the face of death and despair, people choose life and love and do wacky things? Maybe don't explain. No romance would have done just as well and not interrupted a fine telling of a trying time.

This is the first in a five-book series by American author Olen Steinhauer that follows Emil and his fellow officers through the decades from just after World War II through to the 1980s.

Murder...Suicide...Whatever..., by Gwen Freeman (trade, $14.95)

2009-02-24T18:09:00.000-08:00

This is a book put out by a small company, Capital Crime Press, and it flew under the radar until a customer pointed it out to me.

I must say I found it quite entertaining. Not as rambunctious as Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series but with enough of Stephanie's sassiness to give it a "if you like..." recommendation. There is a clever resolution, a half-brother heroine Fifi Cutter should be awarded sainthood for tolerating, and teasing hints about Fifi's dysfunctional family tossed in periodically to spice the mix.

Lost, by Michael Robotham (trade, $13.95)

2009-02-23T21:10:00.000-08:00

I've finished the trilogy! Lost is actually the second of the three, beginning with Suspect and ending with Night Ferry, but I started with Night Ferry. I don't think my enjoyment was diminished for reading out of order, but now I grok certain things better.

In Lost, Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz is the first-person narrator. He was an ancillary character in Suspect, which featured first-person narrator Joe O'Loughlin, a psychologist who appears as the second banana in Lost. Ali Barba is yet another second banana in Lost, and she is the star of Night Ferry. Are you Lost yet?

It's remarkable to me that Robotham is capable of inventing three very different voices and making them sound so real. O'Loughlin is a slightly arrogant, sophisticated (and intelligent) psychologist. Ruiz is a rough, abrupt, controlling (and intelligent) detective inspector. Ali Barba is a young, ambitious, complex (and intelligent) Sikh detective.

He is my new go-to author. His language is rich, his plots are complex, and I can't wait to turn the page. But I've now read all his books. [Insert mask of tragedy here.]

Lost begins with Ruiz being fished out of the river. One of his fingers is missing and there is a big hole in his leg where he has been shot. And to add insult to injury, he doesn't remember what happened. He suffers from transient global amnesia, and this means he has to backtrack through the last few weeks of his life to figure out how he wound up in the river. It doesn't take long to realize that whatever he was doing was not officially sanctioned and he is now anathema to the department. Without Her Majesty's government behind him, Ruiz must now rely on his (now) friend Joe, whose Parkinson's symptoms are steadily worsening, and Ali Barba, who has taken a leave to help her former partner.

In teasing Memento-like fashion, the story's layers are peeled back to reveal the gem at the center.

And now I must wait to see if Robotham has yet another trick or two up his sleeve.

The Shanghai Moon (hardcover, $24.95), by S. J. Rozan

2009-02-16T19:10:00.000-08:00

Rozan is the author of one of my favorite mystery series. Her two private investigators, Lydia Chin and Bill Smith, are as different as night and day, and Rozan masterfully gives them their own voices. Her books alternate between Chin's and Smith's points of view, so sometimes Rozan writes with the tone of a feminine iron butterfly and at other times with a masculine world-weary soul. They are partners whose partnership has seen better times. When The Shanghai Moon opens, they have been incommunicado for a month after their last case, trying to redefine for themselves their work and personal relationships.

In fact, it took Rozan seven years to return to her honored series. There were those of us who were fearful she never would return. However, it is far easier for fans to wait to see what happens than for an author to re-energize herself after eight novels in a series. The Shanghai Moon was worth waiting for.

Lydia Chin is a modern Chinese woman in New York City, but at the same time, she bows to many conventional Chinese traditions. She lives with her mother, a doting, nagging, interfering stereotypical Chinese mother. And there is great joy and laughter in listening in on their exchanges. With one foot in the tough p.i. world and the other in the Chinese community, Lydia is uniquely suited to working on certain cases. When a fellow p.i. asks for Lydia's assistance in finding some jewelry stolen from China, she is able to maneuver through Chinatown for information.

Eventually, Lydia needs Bill's help to find The Shanghai Moon, a legendary brooch that seems to have left a trail of dead bodies on its way to New York, and they effect a reconciliation of sorts.

Rozan gives us a little history lesson as she follows the path of the brooch that was created to commemorate the marriage of a Jewish woman, who escaped from Nazi Germany and resettled in Shanghai, and an aristocratic Chinese man. The tale is more about the past than the present, and it wasn't a past I knew anything about. Jews escaping to Shanghai? Without padding her book to excessive dimensions, Rozan eloquently gives us the sadness, alienation, and romance of the times.

I hope the way Rozan ends her book means that she intends to continue her Chin/Smith saga. I can only hope.