September 2006

Welcome back to the Morgue! This month, we're overstocked with mystery reviews and features that make us wish that "32 days hath September," just to have time to read them all. 

There are 24 mystery book reviews this issue, with titles from Libby Fischer Hellmann, Kathy Brandt, and Denise Hamilton. But that's just the beginning.

You'll also find The Secret Life of a Middle-Aged Woman, the latest "How I Write" essay, this month by Deb Baker, author of two new series.

And the interview for September is with Cornelia Read, author of A Field of Darkness, the first mystery (and Read's first novel) in the Maddie Dare series, which has gotten admiring remarks and reviews all over the mystery world.

The latest chapter in our on (and on and on)going serial mystery "Murder By Committee," is by Robert Fate, whose debut Baby Shark has gathered a good deal of acclaim on its own.

It's a good month to be a mystery fan at the Morgue. Pull up a slab and dive right in!

In this month's issue:

How I Write: The Secret Life Of A Middle-Aged Woman, by Deb Baker
The Mystery Morgue Interview: Cornelia Read

Reviews:
Heart of the World, by Linda Barnes
Under Pressure, by Kathy Brandt
For Whom the Minivan Rolls, by Jeffrey Cohen
Echo Park, by Michael Connelly
Philippine Fever, by Bruce Cook
47 Rules of Highly Effective Bank Robbers, by Troy Cook
See Delphi and Die, by Lindsey Davis
White Tiger, by Michael Allen Dymmoch
The Shape of Sand, by Marjorie Eccles
Baby Shark, by Robert Fate
Prisoner of Memory, by Denise Hamilton
Sugar Skull, by Denise Hamilton
A Shot to Die For, by Libby Fischer Hellmann
Holmes on the Range, by Steve Hockensmith
Still River, by Harry Hunsicker
Street Legal, by Bill Kent
The Seventh Survivor, by Lori Lacefield
Down by the Riverside: A Shady Grove Mystery, by Jackie Lynn
Field of Blood, by Denise Mina
Every Fear, by Rick Mofina
Bleeding Hearts, by Ian Rankin
Indian Pipes, by Cynthia Riggs
The Interpretation of Murder, by Jed Rubenfeld
Perfection, by Walter Satterthwait

Ongoing Story:
"Murder By Committee," Chapter 28, by Robert Fate

Link to Archives

 

How I Write: The Secret Life Of A Middle-Aged Woman
by Deb Baker

Deb Baker is a late bloomer.

For example, she didn't attain a college degree until shortly after her forty-fifth birthday. She married in her thirties and had her last child at thirty-eight. Somewhere in all this trying to catch up to everyone else, she spent fourteen glorious months in Scottsdale, Arizona, soaking up the sun, eating green chile stew, sipping Margaritas, and climbing Camelback Mountain. Hence, the setting for the Gretchen Birch doll collecting mystery series.

After several of her short stories appeared in literary magazines, Deb made the jump to longer fiction. Although Murder Passes the Buck was her first full-length novel, the manuscript spent years and years in rewrites before it was ready for full-frontal viewing.

Her break came when she entered the manuscript in the Authorlink International First Novelist Contest and it won, not only the mystery category, but also Best of Show. That led to an offer from Berkley to write the doll series.

I'm a new author with two series going. Two mysteries every year. The pressure's on. Established writers with multiple series tell me to two-time it. Write them together. I can't do that, I'm pretty sure.

I stare at a blank computer screen waiting for inspiration. Nothing. My outline is gone, thrown away long ago when my characters took a sharp turn and veered from the path I tried to force them to take.

A brisk walk, the other-side-of-the-brain thing, has produced a single page. I'm out of ideas.  Another dead end. Characters going nowhere.

The clock is ticking, not in seconds like it should but in weeks flying by, deadlines looming.

I give up and stalk to my car in despair, shopping list in hand. Errands to run, meals to cook.

As I pull out on the street, my story wraps around me and pulls me in.

My name is Gretchen Birch. I'm thirtyish with a bod like Kathleen Turner or Sharon Stone. My mother, the primary suspect in a recent murder, is missing and the homeless man running away from me is the path to her and the key to Martha's murder.

The man runs like a desert coyote, like his life depends on it, his arms pumping hard, his eyes, when he glances back, are frightened.  I begin to gain on him. Closer and closer. I can hear my breath, usually controlled when I run distances, pounding in my ears. Now it comes out ragged and I struggle to establish a rhythm. The sweltering heat beating down from the desert sun is unbearable. I reach out for him...

#

The pen flies on the notebook page while cars slow down and pass, heads turned to see what is holding them up. Someone honks. Another gestures obscenely. This isn't exactly a parking lane, but my mind can't seem to retain anything for long, certainly not long enough to get back to my computer. A floodgate has opened, the words spill out. They have to be preserved right this minute.

My car is back in the driveway, errands forgotten. My fingers fly on the keypad. There. I've made it through another day.

#

Early morning and I stare at the computer screen. Coffee is supposed to make me smarter. Three cups in, it isn't working. I'll stop to shower since nothing creative is coming to me. I've cleaned up yesterday's work, tidied the pages, but what about today?

I step into the shower and it begins again.

The Arizona Monsoon, Nina explains as we drive, starts in July and ends some time in August. It brings torrential rains and damaging hail, water that the hard-packed earth can't absorb. 

Streets become rapidly moving rivers, tearing out trees and destroying buildings.

"Surely, you're exaggerating," I say.

Nina shakes her head. "Six inches of fast-moving water can knock you right off your feet. I've seen cars swept away."

I glance back and see black sky out-distancing us and swirling clouds approaching fast. Ahead, in the boulevards, palm trees bow under the increasing force of the wind.

A blue unmarked car skids to a stop and Detective Albright leaps out. His eyes pierce mine. Dark, wavy hair, a body-builder's physic, the smell of Chrome cologne in the air...

#

Shower water sloshes at my feet as I rush through the house, a bath towel clenched to my naked body. I hurry past the kitchen and my husband arches a questioning brow. I don't have time to explain. My fingers pound the keys and eventually I pause to look out the window and smile. Unexpected plot twists and turns. Even I am surprised at the unfolding story. Another good day of writing.

But what about tomorrow?

Maybe I should put some clothes on.

Why can't I write like everybody else?

 

The Mystery Morgue Interview: Cornelia Read

Cornelia Read's first novel, A Field of Darkness, has received unusually enthusiastic acclaim from such authors as Lee Child, Ayelet Waldman, Harley Jane Kozak and Laura Lippman, and publications like Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews and Publisher's Weekly.  She describes herself (in the third person) this way:

Cornelia Read knows old-school WASP culture firsthand, having been born into the tenth (and last) generation of her mother's family to live on Oyster Bay's Centre Island. She was subsequently raised near Big Sur by divorced hippie-renegade parents. Her childhood mentors included Sufis, surfers, single moms, Black Panthers, Ansel Adams, draft dodgers, striking farmworkers, and Henry Miller's toughest ping-pong rival.

At fifteen, Read returned east, attending boarding school and college on full scholarship. While in New York, she did time as a debutante at the Junior Assemblies, worming her way back into the Social Register following her expulsion when a regrettable tantrum on the part of her mother's boyfriend's wife landed them all on "Page Six" of the New York Post.

Today, her Bostonian Great-Grandmother Fabyan's Society of Mayflower Descendants membership parchment is proudly displayed at the back of Read's tiny linen closet in Berkeley, California. She continues to rebel against familial tradition by staying married to a lovely sane man who is gainfully employed. They have twin daughters, the younger of whom has severe autism.

In this interview, she talks about her similarities to her protagonist, how to escape baseball bat-wielding assailants in a New York alley, and why you shouldn't let a famous photographer drive your children home.

Interview by Jeffrey Cohen

How does your background differ from your protagonist, Maddie Dare's, and where are they similar?

The bulk of Maddie's background is identical to mine. We were both born in Manhattan but mostly grew up in California, we have the same tattoo, went to the same schools, worked for similar small weekly newspapers in Syracuse in the late '80s, and, perhaps most importantly, "our money is so old there's none left."

She has a much nicer gun, however—and she's a far better shot than I am.

Some things from my own family history I've given her unchanged, including a forebear named Captain John Underhill, who led the massacre of Connecticut's Pequot tribe in 1637.

Other ancestral events have been tweaked a bit for fictional purposes. Maddie's great-grandmother Dodie, for instance, saw her husband die aboard an ocean liner named the Glamis Castle, which burned at sea on its maiden voyage off Atlantic City, New Jersey.

My maternal grandmother christened an ocean liner named the Morro Castle in 1930, which burned at sea four years later off Asbury Park, New Jersey, but there were no family members aboard when that happened.

Dodie's house in Field is a replica of my father's parents' place in Purchase, New York. I moved it from Westchester County to Long Island and gave it to Mom's family.

Is Maddie a reaction to the tough-gal mystery heroines like V.I. Warshawski and Kinsey Millhone?  What's the genesis of the character?

Maddie definitely owes a great deal to ground-breaking heroines like V.I. and Kinsey. I wanted her to be a rugged chick in that tradition—capable and smart enough to save her own butt when the going gets tough. 

I think she's different in that her life is more complicated. Maddie's not a loner, she's not a professional sleuth. She's got a husband and a snarky boss and a big weird extended family. All those people have conflicting standards and expectations that she's trying to live up to, even though nobody could ever possibly satisfy all those agendas in the same lifetime. I'm pretty sure V.I. and Kinsey would know better, but Maddie's way less evolved and confident than they are.

In that sense, she's a lot like me. I guess that's the genesis of the character.

Okay, explain how Ansel Adams was a childhood mentor.

He lived at the end of our road in California, when we were kids, and used to hire us to take phone messages when he and his wife went out to dinner—sort of human answering machines. He paid us a dollar an hour, and never mentioned it when we ate all his Triscuits and Wheat Thins.

Ansel was kind of an inadvertent mentor. He was a genius in the realm of photography, but something of a Mr. Magoo in real life. Like, he could never remember where we lived when he drove us home—he'd go right past our driveway and drop us off alongside Highway One, every time, then get more confused and drive off in the opposite direction from his house, once we were out of the car.

The man didn't have a clue about much of actual life—his wife Virginia kept everything from devolving into utter chaos. I have my own troubles with navigating reality. My husband calls me "the lightning rod for entropy in the universe."

Ansel struck me as a man who made sense of things best through a viewfinder and in his darkroom. As someone who's a bit detached from, say, getting the laundry put away the same week I fold it, but who finds a certain illuminating sense of balance and order in tackling a blank page, Ansel's a damn fine inspiration.

How does your husband feel about Dean, Maddie's husband?

I think he's vastly entertained by his fictional doppelganger. He was quite pleased when a bunch of great women he works with read the galleys and started calling him Dean around the office.

"I used to be just the old cranky balding guy who signed the checks," he explains. "Now I'm the strapping young Harley-riding blonde genius in red high tops."

What's it like to be a debutante raised by divorced hippies near Big Sur?  How does that result in a desire to write mystery novels?

Well, it was pretty damn bizarre, as you might imagine. I ended up talking a lot about my favorite t-shirt from second grade when I was on tour this year. It was apple green, with an R. Crumb cartoon on the front—a chick crawling out of an egg with the caption "Just Like Being Born Stoned." I wore that on the plane one summer when I was shipped back east to my grandparents on Long Island.

They stopped off to buy me a kilt and tassel loafers on the way home from the airport. And a replacement shirt, of course. I was all bummed because I knew I'd have to wear that getup to school back in California, and that the other kids wouldn't want me sitting next to them on the bus.

I was always the fish with at least one fin out of water: tassel loafers at the peace march, R. Crumb t-shirt at the yacht club, and too broke to have anybody take it for charmingly intentional tongue-in-cheek eccentricity.

I figured I might as well write about it—no way I'd ever make a living as a laundress, though I did a chambermaid stint at the Tickle Pink Hotel one summer.

I think a lot of writers start out as outsiders, somehow. You get good at observation when you don't fit, and when you're at the helm of the fictional version you can tweak it all to put yourself at the heart of the action. The happy ending as wish fulfillment... geek becomes hero. In stories I wrote as a kid, the thinly disguised protagonist always had a lot of friends and got a pony at the end.

How does one go from being raised by hippies to boarding school, and eventually the Social Register? Do you rebel by being as "straight" as possible?

Well, two words: financial aid. It helps when the hippie parents went to boarding school themselves, because you sometimes get an alumnae scholarship.

The Social Register happened before that. Mom stayed in it, and they automatically list "juniors" alongside parents starting at age thirteen. The hard part was getting back in after we got thrown out when I was in college. I'm pretty sure that had something to do with my mother's boyfriend's wife writing a letter of complaint to the editors.

Your first novel, A Field of Darkness, has been widely praised and extremely well-reviewed.  Does that relax you or increase the pressure for a second book?

I'm a total wuss so it's terrifying. I'm convinced the first book was a fluke. The initial response to A Field of Darkness has been so kind and generous that I worry a great deal about readers finding the sequel a disappointment.

Some people found Field itself disappointing, given the reviews and blurbs I was lucky enough to get early on.

I've gotten lots of Amazon comments along the lines of, "this is not a book that deserves the praise that's been heaped upon it," and, "I just hate it when I spend money for a book that's had all kinds of glowing reviews and in no way lives up to the hype." One blogger called Field "absolute bollocks" and "much-ballyhooed tripe."

Granted, those readers may very well have disliked the hell out of it without the benefit of any buzz at all. I'd be lying my butt off if I said harsh reviews didn't make me feel like crap, but Maddie's not a character whom I ever thought would have universal appeal, and I'm ready to take my licks on the quality of the writing itself.

I wrote a post on DorothyL saying I will always defend the right of anyone to hate my book. I mean that sincerely, it's just a bummer to think somebody felt like they were suckered into reading it.

At the end of the day, I am tremendously grateful that people felt A Field of Darkness worthy of their attention—positive and negative—and only hope my next book turns out halfway decent.

How did Lee Child help you begin your literary career?

I have no doubt whatsoever that the ballyhoo is due to Lee. We met at the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference in Corte Madera, California, three summers ago. I signed up to do a consultation with a faculty member, and totally scored in getting him. He read the first twenty pages of Field and offered to give me a blurb when I'd finished revisions for my agent, Rolph Blythe.

I sent him the full manuscript that November, and he read it in a weekend. He not only emailed me a wonderful blurb that Sunday night, but listed it as one of his five favorite books of 2004 at Mystery Ink Online the following week, even though Rolph hadn't yet submitted it to publishers.

Lee was on the Book Passage faculty again in the summer of 2005, and invited me to tour with him since our books would be coming out the same month in 2006. That was tricky for our publishers to coordinate, but his publicist Maggie Griffin and Susan Richman at Mysterious Press pulled out all the stops to make it work. I got to do four joint events with him this summer—in Scottsdale, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Houston. Lee's fans are magnificent, and made it even more of a pleasure to tag along with him, start to finish.

It was all so fun I can't believe it actually happened.

Is A Field of Darkness intended as the beginning of a Maddie Dare series?  What's the future like for Maddie?

The next book, called The Crazy School, is due out next June. Maddie and Dean have moved to the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts, where she's teaching at a boarding school for emotionally disturbed kids. The students are great, but the administration's so creepy Dean tells her "if you stay in that place another week, they're going to shave your head and make you sell flowers in an airport."

Field was about the preppy half of my upbringing. Crazy School takes on the aftershocks of the hippie stuff.

How has raising a child with severe autism affected the way you write?  Will you write about autism in the future?  How is your daughter doing, if it's not prying?

Ah, Jeff, that's the hardest question of all. I don't think I would have finished a novel without the impact of my daughter's autism on my life. It's made everything deeper—more painful, more joyful.

I would ask you the same question, especially since I find I can't read too much about autism and Asperger's, except for your books. I mostly want to escape it when I read, and it makes me crazy to have it made a flavor-of-the-month "hook" by someone who doesn't get it. You write about this stuff as it is—part of our lives. Intrinsic. My hat is permanently off to you for that, and I'm in your debt.

(Editor's note: Ms. Read is being excessively effusive. She's not at all in my debt, and I don't write about anything the way it really is. But she's a very nice person.)

I read an amazing article by Ian Rankin two years ago in the Sunday Times. It was called "Saved by my Son From Oblivion," and in it he described how his son's diagnosis of Angelman's Syndrome had affected his writing.

Rankin and his wife were coping with the initial trauma of that just as he was working on Black and Blue, the Rebus novel that became his breakout work. He wrote in the article:

"Not that my publishers had sounded overly impressed when I'd pitched them the story line. But those hospital visits added another, vital ingredient to my writing. The book became angry as I put Rebus through the physical and emotional wringer. All the frustration I felt, all the questions about destiny and chance, were channelled into my writing. It became my therapy and seemed to work."

Reading that paragraph just about killed me. I felt so wretched for them that I burst into tears, and yet I was so relieved that somebody else knew. Same thing happened the first time I read one of Ken Bruen's Jack Taylor novels. I started sobbing on a BART train while we were in the tunnel under San Francisco Bay, when the character Grace was born with Downs. I was sitting there going: He knows. He totally gets it. And I'm so damn sorry he does.

Lila changed my writing. "All the frustration I felt, all the questions about destiny and chance..." I couldn't put it better.

I hope to write about autism in the future, if I get to continue with Madeline. I'd really like to kill Bruno Bettelheim, for one thing. Barbara D'Amato did it brilliantly in Death of a Thousand Cuts, but if ever a guy deserved to die twice, Bettelheim does. Well, three times, since he's already dead in real life.

As for my daughter's prognosis, it's pretty dismal. She is a lovely, cheerful, affectionate kid—our nickname for her is "The Dalai Lila"—but she can't speak, and wouldn't know not to walk in front of an oncoming truck. She will need round-the-clock care for the rest of her life, and I try not to think about what will happen when my husband and I are gone. The responsibility will fall on our first-born daughter, Lila's twin sister. I hope we can make enough money to lessen the burden for her as much as possible.

What's your routine like?  Are you one of those maniacs who writes every morning at 5 a.m. for a specified number of hours?

Oh please, I'd kill to be one of those totally organized 5 a.m. maniacs. Especially since I bet they put their laundry away immediately upon folding it, stacked up as perfectly as some fresh pile of sweaters at The Gap.

I take the girls to their respective schools in the morning, and then try to resist the siren call of blogs and email. I have to get right into typing if I'm going to get anything of my own done that day.

On the days I succumb to temptation, I try to tell myself I'm letting my subconscious work out kinks in the plot—like how Robert Cray digs tunnels in his backyard when he's hit a wall designing super computers. I think that's a total lie, though. Besides which, I don't get the benefit of all those tunnels. Just imagine how much laundry I could squirrel away in those!

What's been the best part of this adventure for you?

Oh my God, all of it. I still can't believe it's happened. Right down to having actually finished a novel. Touring with Lee was one of the coolest things I've ever gotten to do, no question, but it's all good—even the harsh reviews on Amazon. They make it actually seem real.

I keep saying it's like somebody put acid in my coffee, but luckily it's good acid. It doesn't seem real. Haven't felt this good since I outgrew that R. Crumb t-shirt.

Your novel has a terrific, dry sense of humor. Does that come naturally to you, or do you find it a difficult part of the process?

You are very kind, and it means a lot to have you compliment my sense of humor, since yours is so great.

I think it probably comes too naturally to me—I have to work to tone it down. When I was on the humor panel at the Backspace Conference this summer, I talked a bit about my writing teacher in college who said, "you're using humor to avoid true emotion."

Now I happen to think humor is true emotion, if not the truest emotion, but I have to be careful to avoid offending people who don't react to pain and trauma with a quip. That's always my first impulse, and it's not always great to let it rip out loud.

On the other hand, it's mostly served me well, in writing and real life.

I remember once cutting through an alleyway in Greenwich Village late at night with my friend Sarah, when we were twelve years old. These two hulking guys carrying baseball bats cornered us behind a Dumpster and raised the bats over their heads.

One of them looked me in the eye, waggled his bat, and said, "Hey kid, I'm insane..."

I looked right back at him and said, "Dude, this is New York City, I'd hardly call that unusual."

They totally cracked up and dropped the bats. Sarah and I sprinted back out onto the street, screaming our heads off. A little humor can go a loooooong way.

 

Reviews

Heart of the World
by Linda Barnes
St. Martin's Minotaur
Hardcover, 321 pages, $24.95
ISBN: 0312332874
Reviewed by Jack Quick

Boston PI Carlotta Carlyle is doing some "big digging" of her own in this 11th adventure.  This time, however, the case is a very personal one.  Paolina, Carlotta's teenaged "Little Sister" whom she loves like a daughter, has disappeared and no one except Carlotta seems to care.  Carlyle, a part-time taxi driver and part-time PI is, very believable in her native Boston as she struggles with her relationship with Mafioso Sam Gianelli.  Unfortunately, she doesn't seem to travel well.

It doesn't take long for Carlyle to begin to suspect that Paolina didn't run away on her own, but was kidnapped.  She hopes the kidnappers were in the employ of Paolina's biological father, a Colombian drug lord known as Roldan.  However, there is the possibility that it was enemies of Roldan who engineered the snatch.

Carlotta travels first to Miami and tracks down Roldan's lawyer and from there it is on to Bogotá.  While well written, as are previous Carlyle adventures, it is here that the story begins to break down a bit.  With her height and red hair, Carlotta fits pretty well into Irish dominated Boston.  In Bogotá both work against her, even though she conveniently speaks Spanish.

In the midst of all this Sam decides to propose to Carlotta, which leads to an emotional ending that screams for a sequel soon. 

Overall another good entry from Barnes, but I would suggest that future adventures remain fueled on New England clam chowder.

Under Pressure
by Kathy Brandt
Signet
Paperback, 259 pages, $6.99
ISBN: 0451218787
Reviewed by Carl Brookins

Hannah Sampson is hot.  Well, wouldn't you be if an inter-island turbo-jet crashed almost in your lap?  This is author Brandt's third outing with detective Hannah Sampson, and it's a good one, which is not surprising if you've read the others.

This novel has pace and passion, lust and lechery, murder and mayhem, an exotic location and some really good characters.  What's not to like?  Plus readers will be faced with some puzzles not easily unwound.

The setting, the British Virgin Islands in the tropical Caribbean Sea, is an archipelago washed by sun, sea and mostly benign trade winds that blow in almost constantly from somewhere around Africa.  Except during hurricane season, which is approaching as the story opens. 

On a Saturday morning, diving detective Sampson of the Tortola police department is in the water off Tortola's airport training a young officer in underwater crime scene forensic procedures.  Water rescues and underwater recovery is an important part of the department's operation.  The morning flight, a turbo-jet lifts off and almost immediately plunges into the sea a short distance from the police boat.  Hannah and her trainee go immediately to the rescue and in a graphic and well-executed tension-filled scene, rescue some of the twelve people aboard.  The scene becomes an excellent introduction to most of the important characters.

A large part of the book involves the investigation by Hannah and her partner, Stark, of the crash and whether this was an act of sabotage, or something else entirely.  These questions are well-handled and once the facts are established, the change in direction by the two detectives involved is entirely believable.  With a looming hurricane as background, it becomes clear that solution to murder must come quickly.

The minor characters enrich the book and Brandt nails the best secondary character, ten-year-old Simon, a crash victim who lost his father when the plane went down.  I enjoyed this book and the locale, except for the occasional times when Brandt lets her concerns for unchecked development in this island paradise slow things down.  It's clear the author knows these islands and the inhabitants well, just as she knows diving.  Even if there are a few preachy scenes, this is a solid, enjoyable read.

 

For Whom the Minivan Rolls
by Jeffrey Cohen
Bancroft Press
Hardcover, 261 pages, $19.95
ISBN: 1890862185
Reviewed by Kerry Hammond

Aaron Tucker is a freelance reporter, husband and dad—but not necessarily in that order.  His everyday routine is interrupted when a local attorney requests that he investigate the disappearance of one of the richest women in town.  Not being an investigator, or even technically an investigative reporter, he tries to decline. Aaron quickly realizes this is not going to be an option when the missing woman's husband won't take no for an answer.  Slowly he becomes entangled in the mysterious affair and is the recipient of a threatening phone call demanding he stop the investigation.

Through Tucker's investigations, Cohen introduces the reader to a fictitious small town in New Jersey along with its quirky residents, who happen to be in the middle of a mayoral election.  It's a town where everyone seems to know everyone else, even if they don't necessarily like each other. 

Tucker is a very likeable character, with enough dry humor to keep you chuckling.  His family life is just disorganized and crazy enough to be completely realistic.  The story twists and turns so many times that you will still be guessing in the end, and most likely guessing wrong.  Cohen weaves a great story and I can't wait for Aaron Tucker's next adventure. 

Echo Park
by Michael Connelly
Little, Brown
Hardcover, 384 pages, $26.99
ISBN: 0316734950
Reviewed by Gloria Feit

Echo Park, the latest book by Michael Connelly, opens with a scene in 1993 at a Hollywood apartment complex when LAPD detective Harry Bosch discovers a car belonging to Marie Gesto, a young woman who had gone missing ten days earlier.  The cops are never able to solve the case, and Marie's body is never found. 

Fast forward to 2006.  Harry, now a member of the Open-Unsolved Unit, has been haunted by the case ever since, periodically reviewing the evidence, keeping in touch with the young woman's parents and determined to find out what happened to her, although he has become convinced she is no longer alive.  One day he is told that a man about to go on trial for two brutal killings has said he committed several other murders over the years, including that of Marie Gesto, and Harry is called in to reopen the case and take the man's confession.  In so doing, he is shown evidence that he and his former partner ignored a lead in the original investigation that could have led to finding the killer, thereby preventing all his subsequent crimes; Harry is devastated. 

All of Bosch's well-known personal demons are unleashed.  As he says: "...taking it straight to the heart is the way of the true detective.  The only way."  Of course, taking it straight to the heart is what makes Harry so vulnerable, and such a wonderful protagonist.  The present investigation is complicated by the fact that the prosecutor handling the case is a man now vying for the DA's job in an upcoming election.  Never one to "go along" and bow to political pressure, Bosch must now walk a tightrope, which means investigating on his own when necessary, no matter where it leads.

As are the earlier books in the series, and indeed all of Michael Connelly's books, the book is well-written and –plotted, and thoroughly engrossing.  Minor quibble:  The ending was a bit of a letdown for me; I'm not sure why.  That notwithstanding, plan to read this book when you have no pressing engagements, because it's nearly impossible to put down once you've started reading.

 

Philippine Fever
by Bruce Cook
Capital Crime Press
Paperback, 287 pages, $14.95
ISBN: 0977627675
Reviewed by Suzanne Epstein

Sam Haine is an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives division of US Homeland Security. He is sent to the Philippines to investigate the death of Harvey Tucker, exporter of fighting gamecocks, and possible importer of Chinese firearms heading for a Texas paramilitary group. Tucker's tortured body was found in a dumpster behind a Manila sex club.

Haine's liaison is Detective Raymond "Bogie" Lorenzano, with the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation. The search for Tucker's killer, and more importantly, the why, leads them on a convoluted trail involving sex trade workers, corrupt politicians, multinational dealers in weapons, and transportation of people for illicit purposes. Haine quickly discovers that Philippine culture and mores are nothing like those of the United States. There is a wealthy, educated ruling class, and there is abject poverty where survival depends on doing whatever one must just to live from day to day.

Cook, who has worked in Manila, has provided the reader with a vicarious tour of the steamy underbelly of Manila. He includes enough history to help the reader understand the current situation, and he has managed to do this and still keep the action fast-paced, suspenseful, and believable. In our post-9/11 world, the ominous threat of terrorist activity, along with the problems of multiple agencies keeping each other out of the loop, give this book a very realistic 21st century feel.

In addition to Haine and Bogie, Cook has populated the story with a diverse and colorful group of characters, including a beautiful and brilliant Fiscal (like a D.A.), a cop who moonlights as a Cher impersonator, desperate cabbies and urchins, power-hungry politicians, and many more.

This novel is violently and sexually graphic. But if you enjoy fast-paced, gritty, thrillers set in exotic locations, this is a book that will have you turning pages as fast as you can.

47 Rules of Highly Effective Bank Robbers
by Troy Cook
Capital Crime Press
Paperback, 282 pages, $14.95
ISBN: 100977627667
Reviewed by Theodore Feit  

An unusual assortment of characters populates this first novel.  First there is Dwayne Evans, a sadistic psycho bank robber and author of the 47 rules, who began training his nine-year old daughter, Tara, as an apprentice/assistant.  Then there's Max Williams, the bored son of a small-town sheriff.  And, lastly, a Vietnam veteran/seminarian who performs illegal operations on criminals, like removing bullets.

It is not so much the story as much as the situations and descriptions that make this book so readable.  For a debut, it is quite charming and the tale is different.  Dwayne and Tara barrel along robbing banks together, until she meets Max.  This happens at the same time she is becoming fed up with her father's increasing tendency to kill patrons and employees of the banks.  She decides to leave Dwayne and hooks up with Max, who becomes enchanted not only with Tara but also with a life of crime.  His father, of course, is a by-the-book law enforcement officer, complicating life. 

Dwayne refuses to let Tara go, and chases the couple, threatening to kill Max.  Sheriff Williams rushes to capture the bank robbers and save his son.  Added into the mix is an FBI contingent, led by an inept agent whose U.S. Senator father supports his idiot son with money and airplanes.

The plot thickens toward the conclusion with a kind of soppy ending, which really does not detract from the novel.  It's a fast read and would be a good take-along to the beach.

 

See Delphi and Die
by Lindsey Davis
St. Martin's Minotaur
Hardcover, 301 pages, $24.95
ISBN: 0312357656
Reviewed by Caryn St.Clair

Fans of Davis's Marcus Didius Falco series will be very pleased with See Delphi and Die, the latest entry in this long series. In this outing, Aulus is traveling to Athens to study when he becomes sidetracked investigating a murder of a young bride on a sight seeing tour. Falco's father-in-law asks Falco to go to Greece, find Aulus and get him back on the road to Athens. Falco soon learns that two young women have disappeared and turned up dead while traveling with the Seven Sights Travel Agency.  Falco packs up his wife Helen, two nephews, stepdaughter and dog and they set out for Olympia. They choose to follow the route taken by the tour company in hopes of finding witnesses and clues.  Things do not go well for Falco's group. People try to kill Falco and his young nephews, Aulus and another tourist disappear, and people avoid telling Falco what they know about the tour.

For readers interested in historical mysteries of this time period, but are hesitant to pick up a book so far in to a series, this book is a perfect place to start. See Delphi and Die leaves behind much of the series' extensive supporting cast of characters when Falco travels to Greece in this outing. By having only a few of the characters from previous books appear, this book allows first time readers to get acquainted with Falco and Helen without feeling lost in the complex relationships that have built over the course of the series.

While this mystery is typical of the Falco books, this book, by setting the story mostly in Greece, Davis gives the reader something different. As regular readers of the series know, the Falco books give readers a glimpse into ordinary life in first century Rome making historical figures, learned about in history or Latin class, come alive. This book treats first century Greece in the same fashion. The reader is immersed in everyday life for Greeks under Roman control.  In some ways the book is nearly a travelogue as Falco and company visit the various temples and sites around first Olympia, then Corinth, Delphi and finally Athens.

Readers visit early Olympic Games sites in Olympia. It's interesting to see which sports in modern Olympics have roots in the early games and how many of the rules and traditions remain. There is also a great deal of Greek mythology sprinkled throughout the book. As Falco and his family make their way to various temples and sacred places, it is a brief study of the gods that ruled Greece at that time.

Thisis a wonderful book for readers who like to learn a little something while reading.  See Delphi and Die is the seventeenth book in the series.

White Tiger
by Michael Allen Dymmoch
St. Martin's Minotaur
Hardcover, 320 pages, $24.95
ISBN: 0312323026
Reviewed by Angela McQuay

Detective John Thinnes (in his fifth book by author Michael Allen Dymmoch) thought he had left his time spent in Vietnam years earlier behind him.  However, when he is assigned the brutal murder of a Vietnamese woman, the past comes rushing back.  The woman, Hue Lee, is someone Thinnes knows—he attended her wedding to one of his army buddies. 

Thinnes is taken off the case because of his personal connection, but he keeps up with the developments through his partner, Don Franchi, and gets to know Hue's son Tien.  Thinnes knows that Hue's husband was unable to have children, and rumors persist that he himself is the father, Tien being the product of a drunken one night stand on Hue's wedding night.

As Thinnes deals with the implications of his possible paternity and memories of Vietnam, he turns to Dr. Jack Caleb, a psychologist who specializes in helping veterans.  Through his work with Dr. Caleb, he begins suspecting the killer of Hue is the White Tiger, a notorious murderer who operated in Vietnam and who now may have changed his hunting ground to the United States. 

In White Tiger, Dymmoch does an excellent job of switching between the present day and wartime Vietnam—through both the eyes of Detective Thinnes, who saw little action, and Dr. Caleb, who was a medic and in the middle of much of the horror.  With good character development and fast-paced action, White Tiger will hook you from the first chapter.  Not only will you keep turning the pages to find out who the White Tiger is, but you'll also want to know more about the main characters' time in Vietnam and, the big question, whether or not Thinnes really is Tien Lee's father.  This is a strong novel that should appeal both to those who are interested in Vietnam-era stories as well as those who just love a good mystery.

The Shape of Sand
by Marjorie Eccles
Thomas Dunne Books
Hardcover, 288 pages, $23.95
ISBN: 0312352328
Reviewed by Janet Koch

England, exhausted after World War II, is slowing coming back to life. Emergency shelters littering the formerly great lawns of Charnley House are only now being pulled down, a year after the war's end. Summoned by the new owners to retrieve a box of papers, Harriet Jardine in some ways regrets the changes being made to her childhood home. In other ways, she's glad so many painful reminders of the past are gone.

As Harriet sifts through the contents of the box, an old family scandal hits her afresh, and though she wishes to find answers to her questions, she's tempted to put the box in a new and better hiding place. A horrific discovery at Charnley, however, makes that impossible. Harriet's questions will be answered after all—if not by her or her two sisters, then by the police.

The book's narrative shifts from 1946 to 1910 and back again via journal entries and reminiscences from multiple viewpoints. Secrets abound; some stunning, some not, some never completely explained. The characters' lives are drawn out in a gradual manner, and none of them are quite what they first appear to be.

Marjorie Eccles, a native of Yorkshire and author of the popular Gil Mayo series, creates this stand-alone with skills developed from decades of mystery writing. She has crafted an intricate story detailing a family's tragedy, with the effects of two world wars always in the background.

Not a thrill-a-minute mystery, The Shape of Sand is also not a book to rush through. This is a story in which to immerse yourself. Shut away the hurry-hurry-hurry of the 21st century and let yourself fade, for a few hours, into a time long past.

Baby Shark
By Robert Fate
Capital Crime Press
Paperback, 270 pages, $14.95
ISBN: 0977627691
Reviewed by Jack Quick

I understand a shark must constantly move to prevent its suffocation and that its attention span is so short that it can learn little from experience. 

Kristin, the Baby Shark of this book, moves a lot but she has also learned a lot and each experience leads her closer to the revenge she seeks.  In October 1952, at the tender age of 17, she watched four bikers kill her pool hustler father in a Texas pool hall fight that leaves two other men dead as well.  Sexually assaulted, beaten, and left for dead, she is rescued by the pool hall owner Henry Chin, a Chinese immigrant and father of one of the other murder victims.  Since the local police are no help, Chin hires a private investigator to start searching for the killers.  Then he hires two "tutors" for Kristin.  Both are World War II veterans and with their help she develops into one tough package. 

Her "uncle" Harlan, a cohort of her father's, makes sure she also shoots a mean game of stick.  At eighteen the Baby Shark is ready to hunt for the killers as she hustles pool in west Texas.  Her search for revenge begins on page 65 when the first of her attackers is located.  Then the pace picks up.  To quote Baby Shark, "Revenge, they say, is best served up cold." 

This is the first in a projected series of novels about a teenaged woman taking up the family business—pool hustling.  I wish Mr. Fate well with his plans, as I think this will become a very interesting series of reads.

Prisoner of Memory
by Denise Hamilton
Scribner
Hardcover, 384 pages, $24
ISBN: 0743261941
Reviewed by Wendy Lewis

L.A. journalist Eve Diamond has been moved to the downtown Metro beat and while on assignment regarding dangerous encounters with mountain lions, she stumbles across a body.  The victim is a young man, second-generation Russian and the police quickly determine that he's a victim of two-legged predators.  Eve's journalistic instincts are aquiver as she scents a better story and she rushes to find out more from the family, hoping that the murder will put her name on the front page, but realizing that her desire is inappropriate in the face of this tragedy.

A quick interview with the father leads her to suspect that someone is hiding important information and she becomes determined to ferret out the truth.  In the meantime, she is informed that a stranger with an accent has been trying to track her down at work, and she's highly surprised to discover a man on her doorstep claiming to be a long lost cousin from her mother's homeland.  All her native instincts tell her to be wary, but having been orphaned at a young age, she's very lonely for family and feeling vulnerable during the Christmas season. 

To make matters worse, she's forced to share her story with Josh Brandywine, another investigative journalist with killer instincts.  Trying to discover the truth about this cousin and keep Josh from derailing her career and her romance with her lover, Sylvio, Eve is almost too overwhelmed to continue.  The situation becomes even more complicated as her investigation starts to reveal some personal ties and brings up disturbing questions about her mother. 

I found this to be a really enjoyable book.  The plot was fascinating and the history of Eastern European immigration and Russian-American culture was an eye-opener.  Eve's not always sure who she can trust as it seems as if her cousin is either a con artist or in league with the Russian Mafia and her co-worker is either romantically interested or trying to steal her story—all of which adds to the charged atmosphere and keeps the reader turning pages.  Eve is also growing as a reporter and seems more self-assured then she's been in previous stories.  I think this is the best book yet in Hamilton's Eve Diamond series and I highly recommend it.

 

Sugar Skull
by Denise Hamilton
Pocket Books
Paperback, 372 pages, $6.99
ISBN: 0743482212
Reviewed by Kerry Hammond

Eve Diamond is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.  One weekend while covering the city desk she is approached by a man who says his daughter has disappeared.  Not sure about the man, but not wanting to give up a story, Eve follows him into a dirty, rundown, empty building used by street kids as a squat.  There, amid the stench and filth, they find his daughter's dead body rolled up in a futon mattress.

Eve begins to investigate the middle class girl's murder, trying to figure out why someone with a parent, a home and a successful high school life would choose to hang out at a squat with kids who have nothing. 

Her inquiries lead her into the lives of people with seemingly no connection to each other: a politician and his Roman goddess wife whose son went to the same high school as the dead girl; a Mexican-American music promoter and his family, who have built a life trying to bring the music from their homeland to the ears of many homesick people; the strange world that goes on at night among street kids with nowhere to turn and no one who understands their pain. 

Hamilton brings her characters alive and draws you in, making you care about what happens to them.  She weaves her story and intricate character connections with skill and talent.  Her fast-paced plot makes this book a page turner that this reader had a hard time putting down.  As involved as the story is, Hamilton is able to tie up all the loose ends in order to leave the reader satisfied at the last page.

Highly recommended.

A Shot to Die For
by Libby Fischer Hellmann
Poisoned Pen Press
Hardcover, 260 pages, $24.95
ISBN: 1590581857
Reviewed by Andrea Maloney

Ellie Foreman, a Chicago documentary filmmaker, is returning from the Lodge, a Lake Geneva resort where she has been filming. While at a rest stop she strikes up a conversation with a woman whose boyfriend abandoned her there.  Suddenly a pickup truck pulls up, the window opens and a shot is fired killing the abandoned woman.

Even though Ellie has looked into mysteries in the past, she doesn't want anything to do with this killing—which appears to be the work of the "rest stop serial killer."  But when the woman's family seeks out Ellie asking her for more information, any information, Ellie can't help but be curious.  And then when a second killing occurs Ellie finds herself delving into the history of the victims and uncovering secrets long buried.

She soon finds herself drawn into the history of the local townspeople, especially one wealthy family whose history is surrounded in lies and family secrets. As Ellie gets closer to the truth it becomes apparent that there is more to this than a serial killing. Soon Ellie realizes someone will go to any lengths to keep the secrets of the past buried and Ellie finds herself in the sights of a killer.

Hellmann has written a outstanding mystery novel with a likable protagonist, a brilliant plot and a keen eye for detail. The various characters are in realistic and believable, and Ellie herself is a character with depth and human weaknesses.  Ellie's relationships with her daughter and ex-husband add a vulnerability to her character and give the reader a true sense of Ellie.  The descriptive details offer a real sense of place. The plot, with its many twists and turns, will leave you guessing until the very end. At the end of the book the reader is left looking forward with anticipation the next book in the Ellie Foreman series.

 

Holmes on the Range
by Steve Hockensmith
St. Martin's Minotaur
Paperback, 304 pages, $22.95
ISBN: 0312347804
Reviewed by Heidi Vornbrock Roosa

Holmes on the Range is not just another Sherlock Holmes pastiche.  Granted, the main characters, Old Red Amlingmeyer (Gustav) and Big Red Amlingmeyer (Otto), inhabit a world where Sherlock Holmes is a living, breathing detective, but the Montana ranch where brother Big Red narrates Old Red's "Sherlocking" is a world away from Conan Doyle's London.

Signed on as ranch hands for a secretive spread with a bad reputation, the brothers soon encounter their first dead body. A stampede of cattle has flattened a man, and he's not to be the last victim.  Old Red begins his "detectiving" early and never lets up through the arrival of unexpected guests, the branding and banishment of another ranch hand, a cannibal on the loose, and a body in the outhouse.

Hockensmith creates a voice with Big Red that grabbed me from the first page.  A tinge of humor underlies every line, as does an honest sensitivity of the type that even a turn of the century ranch hand could appreciate.  Never too serious, but still respectful of the time period in both dialogue and detail, Hockensmith is a master at pulling a reader from chapter to chapter and he ties the loose ends up at the end of the tale in a knot worthy of the finest of lassoes.

I look forward to the next Old Red and Big Red mystery and I just may have to rustle me up some of them thar short stories published regularly at Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine to tide me over.

 

Still River
by Harry Hunsicker
Thomas Dunne
Hardcover, 288 pages, $23.95
ISBN: 0312337876
Reviewed by Victoria Kemp

When your name is Lee Henry Oswald and you live in Dallas, Texas, you need to be a tough guy. Lee Henry ("call me Hank") is as tough as they come on the outside, but nougat on the inside. He lives in a house he is restoring and works in old East Dallas, sharing an office with Ferguson Merriweather, a lawyer, and David March Howell, a real estate appraiser. He shares his house with an elderly chocolate lab named Glenda.

He is unable to resist Vera Drinkwater, the high school slut, who approaches him to find out where her little brother, Charlie Wesson, is. Charlie never showed up at her birthday party. Hank goes to visit his partner, dying of liver cancer at Baylor Hospital, to tell him about the new case. Ernie, his partner, asks Hank to protect his sister's daughter, Nolan, who has just moved to Dallas.

Hank visits Charlie Wesson's place of employment, Callahan Real Estate, and begins to smell a rat, especially when confronted in the parking lot by two hired thugs. The search is going to be hard. But Hank has friends he calls upon, including Delmar and Olson, who deal in weapons of every variety. Hank meets Nolan at a bar where she is serving a subpoena and takes her along to meet the rest of the crew. It all goes downhill from there. And, once Charlie's body turns up, Hank is determined to find out why.

This is Hunsicker's first novel, but it does not read like a debut novel. The plot is tightly wrapped and the characters are well drawn. Still River was nominated for a Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America for Best Debut Novel in 2005. It's a wild ride down the mean streets of Dallas, but worth the trip.

 

Street Legal
by Bill Kent
Thomas Dunne Books
Hardcover, 274 pages, $25.95
ISBN: 0312328850
Reviewed by Caryn St.Clair

The Delaware Valley Law Watch has compiled a list of "lawyers we could do without." The Watch has given the lawyers on the list nicknames to fit their offensive behaviors, such as "The Great Divide" for the divorce attorney lacking scruples and "Slip Disc" for the personal injury attorney. Each edition of its newsletter, The Bar Sinister, features an article on one of the lawyers from the list. While most people in Philadelphia have enjoyed a laugh over the articles, someone has taken things to a new level.

The attorneys on the list are being murdered in ways fitting with their offensive manners. It started with Charlie "Sandman" Muckler found in a car filled with wet sand.  Next, Mike "Marathon Liar" Mc Sloan is thrown over the side of his balcony while he was exercising on his treadmill.

Enter Philadelphia Press reporters Andrea "Andy" Cosicki and Shep Ladderback. Shep, the old time newspaperman who writes obituaries and his protégé, Andrea the author of the "Mr. Action" advice column are soon on the case. Shep urges Andy to investigate Schuyler Nordvahl, the founder of the Law Watch group as he suspects that Nordvahl may be doing more than just writing about the troublesome lawyers. 

There is not a regular person to be found on these pages. Ladderback is an agoraphobic curmudgeon, and Andy a six-foot-two-and-a-half-inch skinny female reporter—who just happens to be the person to find the first two dead bodies.  There is a landscape artist that predicts the weather by tasting the snow and apologizes to the earth when he helps tow a car out of a snow bank.  There is an autistic child who lacks communication skills, but is quite perceptive of what is going on around him. Each and every one of the lawyers could be a psychologist's case study.

The mystery in this book, someone is killing the bad lawyers,  is an interesting premise, and is enough to keep the reader going, but it is the collection of eccentric characters that really make this book.. Although the characters' odd personality quirks are a tad bit over the top, the total effect makes for an extremely funny read.

The Seventh Survivor
by Lori Lacefield
Capital Crime Press
Paperback, 286 pages, $14.95
ISBN 0977627683
Reviewed by Theodore Feit

Lori Lacefield has written a debut novel worthy of a much more experienced author.  She has created a highly readable book, with an unusual plot that flows meticulously to a satisfying conclusion.

The story begins with an invitation to Palmer Reed and her best friend to join a local  prestigious organization as directors.  The purported function of the Diamond Foundation is to make grants to victims of crimes like wife beating and fraud to help jump-start new lives.  Soon, however, it appears there is another, secret mission.

When Palmer was a child, she was kidnapped by the owners of a local chemical company in an effort to force her father, a union organizer, to abandon his efforts to unionize the company.  The company also is accused of pouring toxic waste into the Tennessee River, causing a high incidence of leukemia in southwest Knoxville.  A local reporter is seeking to expose the company, and the CEO and the general counsel are suspected of a variety of murders to prevent exposure or union organization.

Palmer finds herself in the middle of both plots and is accused of murdering her best friend.  She goes underground disguised as a man as a killer stalks her, in an effort to find justice.

Let's hope this isn't just a one-time effort and that the author is working on her second book.

 

Down by the Riverside:  A Shady Grove Mystery
by Jackie Lynn
St. Martin's Minotaur
Hardcover, 288 pages, $24.95
ISBN: 0312352301
Reviewed by Marlyn Beebe

When Rose Franklin's husband leaves her for another woman, all she wants in the divorce settlement is the travel trailer.  She quits her job, gets rid of all her extraneous possessions and hits the  road.  Her car breaks down in West Memphis, Arkansas, and she waits for it to be fixed at the Shady Grove campground. 

The owners of the campground are a biker couple who are ex-convicts.  Rose is at first wary of them, but soon learns that appearances can be very deceiving.  Staying at the campground are a family with a little girl who has leukemia, and another daughter who helps her to see angels.  She meets a man named Tom Sawyer, who turns out to be very important in her life. 

Upon her arrival at the camp,  she happens to see a body being pulled out of the river.  For some reason, she feels the need to find out what happened and in the process discovers love, family and, for the first time, a sense of belonging.

This is a wonderfully written book.  The prose can truthfully be called lyrical, and it was difficult to decide whether to read quickly to find out what happened, or slowly to savor the writing.

Field of Blood
by Denise Mina
Little, Brown
Paperback, 441 pages, $7.50
ISBN: 031615458X
Reviewed by Gloria Feit

Having recently read and loved Denise Mina's new book, The Dead Hour, the second book in an expected five-book series in which Paddy Meehan is the protagonist, I was anxious to read the first, Field of Blood, which came out in 2005 and has recently been published by Little, Brown in paperback.  This book is as masterful as its successor.

Field of Blood is set in 1981 Glasgow (with some flashbacks to 1963), where 18-year-old Paddy, overweight and self-conscious and filled with ambition, is a copyboy and general errand person at the fictional Scottish Daily News.  Unemployment is high and poverty abounds.  Irish Catholics, such as Paddy (though in her case religion is practiced more out of habit and to please her parents than anything else), are not held in high regard.  The book's sense of place is extraordinary. 

The descriptive passages are such that one can see the people and places clearly—of one heavyset Glaswegian woman: "The shoulders of her pale green raincoat were halfway down to the elbows to accommodate her shape"; of a wintry afternoon: "Smoke and icy breath rose like steam from cattle as the frosty black tarmac glittered silver around them."  For their part, a typical Meehan relative is described as being comprised of superstition, sanctimoniousness and a general distrust of Protestants.  A running backdrop is the tale is the story of the wrongful incarceration years before of Paddy's namesake, a man also a minor part of The Dead Hour but whose backstory is discussed in more detail in the earlier book.

When a three-year-old boy is found murdered, Paddy discovers that one of the two boys being held in the crime is a cousin of her fiancé.  Paddy believes evidence against them has been concocted, and investigates.  Truth and justice are the holy grail for this young woman, and despite her own vulnerability she perseveres in that quest. Denise Mina is a remarkably good writer. Her empathy for those about whom she writes is clearly displayed, and in the process she has created a wonderful story. The book is highly recommended.

Every Fear
by Rick Mofina
Pinnacle Books
Paperback, 384 pages, $6.99
ISBN: 0786017465
Reviewed by Gloria Feit

The suspense in this new novel by Rick Mofina begins in Chapter One and doesn't let up till the book's end.  The tale is of every parent's worst nightmare: Lee Colson's life is turned upside down when his adored 7-month-old son, Dylan, is stolen from his stroller in front of a local store in their "safe" northwest Seattle neighborhood.  Marie is critically injured by the van in which her baby has been spirited away.  Was it a random act, or was Dylan targeted?

Jason Wade, a local reporter, and Detective Grace Garner each separately vow to track down the kidnappers.  Jason and Grace "team up" at one point to share information to the benefit of each, and there are hints of a personal relationship to be explored in future novels in the series, to which I am eagerly looking forward.

The book makes the point that every body has a dark side, and everybody has secrets. Those with secrets in their own past extend to the protagonists as well, including not only Grace, with a life-altering incident in her past, but Jason's father, a former Seattle cop whose police career ended with an event only hinted at, to be revealed in some future book. Every Fear is the second in this series by Rick Mofina, who has written five other novels as well.

Fast reading, suspense filled and absolutely gripping, this book grabs hold of the reader and doesn't let go, and is recommended.

 

Bleeding Hearts
by Ian Rankin
Little, Brown & Company
Hardcover, 378 pages, $24.99
ISBN: 0316009121
Reviewed by Theodore Feit

It's taken 12 years for this novel to cross the Atlantic, and the wait certainly was well worth it

Bleeding Hearts is no children's tale.  It's about an assassin who shoots his victims through the heart on the theory that it's humane.  His latest assignment is a female journalist, whom he shoots as she is leaving a hotel with a lady politician.  It is complicated by the presence of an Eastern European diplomat, and the question arises who was the intended victim.  Was the hit a mistake?

The police arrive almost simultaneously and Michael Weston, the shooter, believes he was set up.  He escapes capture narrowly and decides to find out who hired him, something he usually never wants to know.  The journalist was investigating a cult, and it appears they might be responsible.

Michael chases all over England and the United States, where the main cult headquarters is located, before returning to England to discover the truth.  In his wake are a lot of bodies, and in the end the question of his distaste for continuing his profession is raised.

It may not be a Rebus Novel, but it certainly is a Rankin Book.  There hardly is any better praise.    

Indian Pipes
by Cynthia Riggs
Thomas Dunne Books
Hardcover, 245 pages, $22.95
ISBN: 0312354762
Reviewed by Caryn St.Clair

Jube Burkhardt is found dying near the bottom of a cliff and utters but one word, "Sybil" before he dies.  Initially his death is thought to be an accident, but 92 year old Victoria Trumbull is sure that is not the case. 

Although the sheriff does not believe that Jube was murdered, Victoria is quickly on the case. The list of suspects is long: Jube, an engineer, had angered members of the Wampanoag Indian tribe by threatening to hold up plans for a casino with his soil test results.  His niece Harley,  who was to be his heir, was angry that she had been cut out of her uncle Jube's will when he found out she was dating a biker.  Jube was involved in a homosexual relationship with a married man. Yes, Jube had made life uncomfortable for a number of people, but were any of them angry enough to kill him? And who is Sybil? Having been made an official deputy sheriff in her previous adventure, Victoria takes bold risks to find the answer to this latest mystery disturbing the peace on Martha's Vineyard.

This book, like all of the books in the series, is a wonderful cozy. Though the body count mounts throughout the book the violence is for the most part implied. Through her very "hip" protagonist, Riggs explores social issues. In this book, the rights of the sovereign Indian nations and the first victim's homosexuality are issues central to the plot. These subjects are addressed in such a way that they add to the storyline without causing offense or discomfort to even the most sensitive readers.

Indian Pipes is the sixth book in the Riggs' Martha's Vineyard Mystery series featuring Victoria Trumbull. Martha's Vineyard is a setting that Riggs is very familiar with being a thirteenth generation islander herself.  Her keen awareness of the island is evident in the rich descriptions of Martha's Vineyards natural beauty. She has named each of her mysteries for a wildflower native to the island. This one, Indian Pipes is named for a fascinating flower, also known as the ghost plant that requires no chlorophyll to grow and turns black when touched.

The Interpretation of Murder
by Jed Rubenfeld
Henry Holt and Co.
Hardcover, 384 pages, $26
ISBN: 0805080988
Reviewed by Theodore Feit  

The title, of course, is a play on Sigmund Freud's seminal work on dreams.  And Freud plays a central role in this well-done mystery.  The year is 1909, and the book begins with Freud's disembarkation in Hoboken, New Jersey along with his colleagues, Sandor Ferenczi and Carl Jung.  Freud has been invited to deliver a series of lectures at Clark University, in Worcester, Massachusetts, but first they are to spend a week in New York City.  It was Freud's only visit to the United States, and one which gave him a bad impression of the country and its inhabitants. All of the foregoing is known to have happened in "real life," but little else is known of Freud's one journey to America.

In this new novel by Jed Rubenfeld, no sooner do Freud and his associates establish themselves at the Hotel Manhattan, along with their American counterparts and hosts, than the murder of a young debutante is discovered, soon followed by an assault and attempted murder of another young debutante.   It is from this point that psychoanalysis and detective work intertwine to bring the mystery forward.  To further reveal the plot would be an injustice to the reader, who is encouraged to devour this excellent novel.

The author has painstakingly researched every aspect of the descriptions of 1909 New York City, and has incorporated many of the historical figures, including Harry Thaw (who murdered Stanford White atop of his Madison Square Garden), Mayor George B. McClellan, and others.  He has quite inventively used many of Freud's writings and statements as dialogue.  The blend is fascinating, and unusual in a debut novel.  The author has written other books on constitutional law (he is a Professor of Law at Yale University and an expert on the subject) but this work of penetrating crime fiction seems quite a departure from so staid a subject.  Let's hope it's not a one-time phenomenon and that there is more to come from this talented writer.

Perfection
by Walter Satterthwait
Thomas Dunne Books
Hardcover, 327 pages, $24.95
ISBN: 0312352441
Reviewed by Jayne Barnard

Newly promoted Detective Sophia Tregaskis is barely getting used to her partner, veteran detective Sergeant James Fallon, when they're called to a grisly crime scene.  The rented cottage that houses the victim tests both Sophia's observational skills and the strength of her stomach.  The ritualistic mutilation of the corpse shows a seriously sick murderer is on the loose in their small Florida community of St. Anselm. 

The killer has been ultra-careful to leave no physical evidence beyond a carefully placed red herring.  Will he strike again?  With his re-election on the line, the police chief insists on adding a psychologist and an FBI profiler to the team.  These two initially have trouble agreeing on anything to do with the case.  Even when they do agree, their expert assistance may not be enough to save the next victim.  

As the body parts pile up, a tropical storm looms offshore and Sophia's attraction to her new partner heats up.  But overlapping love triangles, past and present, complicate the investigation.  James has an eye on the slender, sexy psychologist and a handsome television reporter is wooing Sophia, while the murderer is obsessed with women long dead.

The grisly tale unfolds through the alternating voices of the murderer, Sophia, and James, cranking up suspense and revealing tantalizing hints of the dark secrets behind the killer's obsession.  The trail weaves through Florida coastal communities recently battered by hurricanes.   The storm becomes almost a character in its own right as key witnesses are evacuated or cut off by closed bridges and erratic telephone service.  Sophia and James are pulled from the murder case to take hurricane duty just as the pieces are falling into place, and the terrifying climax arrives before the eye of the storm. 

I usually avoid serial-killer novels, but I found this one very readable.  The gore was not gloated over.  The police chapters were solidly procedural, although with a token nod to the stereotype of the aging detective with a drinking problem.  Sophia's combination of innocence and bulldog determination makes her a strong, interesting detective; balancing the disapproval of her traditionalist parents, her attraction to her partner, and her passion for her job makes her human.  I would read about her again.

 

Murder by Committee

Read past installments and find out more about Murder By Committee

Chapter 28
by Robert Fate

A screenwriter and film special effects technician, Robert Fate has won an Academy Award, been a New York fashion model, an oil worker and a chef at an exclusive Los Angeles restaurant. He has studied at the Sorbonne in France and worked as a TV cameraman in Oklahoma.  His experience, in short, is extensive and varied.

Now, Fate has tackled a new challenge, and is the author of Baby Shark, the well-received first novel in a series featuring Kristin Van Dijk, a teenager who's taking up the family business—pool hustling.

Junior's life was finished, and Thomas knew it. And no amount of Father Joe's voodoo or carving with a fish knife would change that fact.

Thomas used all his strength and pulled away from the yakuza who had forced him to the floor. He got to his feet, shouldered past the silent and dangerous men in his way, and broke free of the hut.

"I'll do this alone," he choked out to the dark night, tears welling up.

Then... he was moving. The tension he felt was overpowering. He was running before he realized he was. He ran with urgency through the jungle. He ran full out for the airfield.

Junior hadn't been ready, but Thomas was, and he wouldn't need the "community," the world's organized criminals, who would only misuse the power of the chips. Thomas would do what was needed—alone. He would brush aside that fool Greer, wring the truth from the pilot woman Harper, and bring this saga of death and confusion to a proper end—or die trying.

* * *

Otto, my irascible chef, had needed the most time. But, with Guthrie's help, he had managed to load enough supplies to keep the four of us for at least two months. He was counting on fresh fish for most of our entrées, of course.

"You're certain we need so much wine, Otto?" I'd asked.

"Do I tell you your business, Greer?" he'd replied.

That summed up our discussion concerning Otto's galley.

Okay.

Every building, every vehicle—including the beloved Harpy— was rigged to self-destruct in thirty-six hours. Or sooner, if someone got nosy. When I'd concluded that my gorgeous Harper was going to fully recover, I'd told Otto to start getting provisions aboard the Bertha Mae. We shoved off just after dark that same day.

Harper and Guthrie had both suffered concussions from having been hit with the same spring-handled sap. Harper was going to need a day or so more of bed rest, whereas Guthrie, whose head was measurably harder, took aspirin and was back on his feet almost at once.

This was good, since Guthrie knew about sailing, and I needed a break after being on the bridge all night.

"But I've never sailed anything this big," he said. "Nothing with a diesel engine the size of a house and hydrofoils."

"Nothing to it," I told him. "I'm gonna show you a couple of tricks, and before you know it, I'll be back to relieve you."

I left Guthrie at the wheel—that is to say, watching the computer—with a fresh cup of Otto's coffee in his hand, and went below to look in on Harper. She was still sleeping, and I was exhausted. I quietly closed her door and went to my room.

I'd been awake and going strong for better than 30 hours. So, I stripped down to my boxers, had a shot of Bushmills, and rang Otto to wake me in four hours. I thought about Project Anselmo for thirty seconds or so, remembered that Guthrie was dosed and ready to go, closed my eyes, and seriously fell asleep on top of the covers.

* * *

When I awoke, I knew something was wrong.

What was it?

I was too rested. The clock said Otto had let me oversleep.

It was too quiet. The engine was stopped... we were adrift.

I armed the Glock I kept under my pillow, listened for a long moment, and opened the door. Before easing out of my room, I saw Guthrie at the end of the short passageway, slumped against the bulkhead at the foot of the ladder, a pool of blood around him. He was as dead as he was ever going to be.

Unless someone had boarded at sea, the killer was either Otto or Harper... or both. I didn't care for this turn of events... not at all.

I listened again. My ears searched for anything—something more than the creak of a sluggish boat adrift... the slosh of waves... wind... but I heard nothing else. No human sounds.

Carefully... quietly... I opened the louvered door to Harper's room and looked in.

Her bed was unmade, and she wasn't in it. No signs to tell me anything.

Across from her was Guthrie's room. I held my pistol at ready and opened his door.

Nobody. Well... I knew where he was.

I thought about searching more carefully. There were private heads in all the rooms, but there was something illogical about the killer lurking in the head, waiting for me to show up.

In fact... why was I still alive? What had happened to Guthrie? No matter how heavily I had slept; I would have heard a pistol shot.

I moved toward the ladder. Slowly... quietly.

I kept my guard up, but paused to note that Guthrie had been stabbed. The amount of blood said he had been killed right there—bled out there. The hand that was gently draped across his chest hid the handle of what appeared to be a large galley knife... Otto's galley knife.

Just how irascible was my chef?