agora2

THRILLER MEASURES UP

2012-01-30T08:10:00.000-06:00

Under The Dog Star

by Sandra Parshall

ISBN: 978-1-59058-878-9

a 2011 Poisoned Pen release,

303 pages

The story is already in full-bore action when you open the book. “In the silver moonlight, the dogs appear as a dark mass moving down the hill and across the pasture.” Contrast of light and dark. Questions immediately arise. Are these dangerous dogs? Feral dogs? Where are we and who is observing this? Why should we care?

In the hands of this careful, experienced writer, you know you are in for a wild ride. Veterinarian, Rachel Goddard, runs an animal clinic in the mountains of Virginia, a place where people are used to taking care of their problems in direct fashion. Wild dogs threatening livestock? Never mind they are or were somebody’s pet, shoot ‘em. This is anathema to Rachel and she mounts a county-wide attempt to trap and rescue the dogs before they are shot. The county is thrown into an uproar and her competence is questioned when a prominent physician is discovered with his throat torn out and plenty of evidence that a dog was the culprit.

Rachel’s lover, Tom Bridger, a deputy sheriff in the county is worried about Rachel’s safety as he struggles to understand the crime. Both Rachel and Bridger come up against one of them most dysfunctional families I have ever read about. There are other complications and false trails that have to be dealt with. The author handles dog fighting and other crimes is a forthright yet sympathetic manner. Readers will get the vivid pictures the author draws, but won’t have to wallow in the degradation. Parshall makes her points cleanly and evocatively, just as she illuminate the settings, both by contrast and depiction.

There were times when I wanted to grab Rachel and inject a little backbone into her and Bridger is sometimes entirely too controlling. Nevertheless, this is a strong, well-written chiller with crackling dialogue, great characters and a powerful resolution.

Haftmann's Rules a dark, bumpy PI novel

2012-01-19T13:02:00.000-06:00

Haftmann’s Rules

by Robert White

ISBN: 9780982945971

a 2011 release from Grand

Mal Press, TP 236 pages

Thomas Haftmann is an ex homicide cop living in Ohio. Now he’s a private investigator pretty near the end of his profession. Clients are few and he’s struggling with some major physical and mental problems. Haftmann is not your typical upstanding white knight of a PI. He confronts his drinking problem by hanging out in sleazy bars, has sex with women he finds on the Internet, and abuses the good will of the few friends he still retains.

He’s bright and the novel is littered with his political and philosophical ruminations. His intimacy quotient is low, as his ex-wife would quickly testify. Somewhere in his core, however, is a moral kernel that leads him to put his sanity and his life on the line to try to tease out an unusual serial killer operating in the sleaziest sections of Boston. His entry into this dark and dangerous segment of society, in a town where he has no resources at all, is a search for his client’s missing daughter who may be stripping in one of Boston’s unsavory clubs.

The novel is well-written, coherent and fast-paced. Make no mistake it is very dark, violent and pretty explicit in several instances. It is a very modern story in that much of the motivations on the dark side are rooted in some of the nastier beliefs of today. The novel takes some effort to get into but somehow, for this reader at least, Thomas Haftmann, in spite of his bizarre rules, grabbed me by the collar and held my interest until the ride was finished.

AMAZING MUSICAL EXPERIENCE

2012-01-08T12:33:00.000-06:00

The Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, in its eleventh year, once again provided a marvelous forum for an unusual music experience. Six young composers presented recent works. Three received their world premieres, the others first performances by a major orchestra.

It was an amazing evening at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. Michael Holloway’s “Theta Beta Theta” evoked heart and brain rhythms, with oriental underpinings, particularly in the center section.

Andreia Pinto-Correia’s “Xantara” certainly evoked misty shores and images of mysterious Moorish castles floating above swirling fog banks. There was no evidence of her jazz background in the piece, but there was a sense of directional loss at times.

Hannah Lash offered up a piece in two parts, “God Music Bug Music,” a polyrhythmic brass-heavy clash of subtle tonal changes and an incessant driving pulse.

Shen Yiwen, from Shanghai provided the most American-sounding piece. His “First Orchestral Essay” provided immediate connections to Aaron Copeland and was the most melodic work of the evening.

Adrian Knight’s “Manchester,” brought to mind a series of musical interludes from the West Coast, called Music of the Spheres. Composer Brian Eno had a persistent presence in that series. This was a quiet, peaceful, contemplative work.

The evening ended with Brian Ciach’s strange and sometimes wonderful offering called “Collective Uncommon: Seven Orchestral Studies on Medical Oddities.” He had a very specific point in this piece. It was written for the Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities, located in Philadelphia. A number of non-traditional sound producers were utilized, including sundering heads of lettuce, and talking dolls.

Fred Child of NPR handled the host duties, introducing and interviewing each of the composers, Osmo Vanska led the brilliant orchestra. The Institute and this program of “Future Classics,” was under the able direction of Aaron Jay Kernis. The composers were warmly received. I think the audience recognized the enormous efforts these compositions represented, as well as considerable effort from the orchestra. Altogether, this was an enthralling, sometimes difficult but really interesting evening.

Interesting protagonist, exotic setting enhance fine crime novel

2011-12-31T12:01:00.000-06:00

Assignment:Nepal

By J.S. Squires

ASIN: B005VFMK6Q

2011 E-book release from

Echelon Press

Readers of this review should be aware that this press has published some of my crime fiction and I am acquainted with the publisher, though not with the two authors writing under a single pseudonym.

The protagonist is named Irene Adler. Not the woman who beat Sherlock Holmes at his own game, her modern namesake, a Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology at Boston University. Adler has a demi-cynical outlook on life and it turns out she supplements her income by playing poker; specifically Texas Holdem in the gambling parlors around the New England area. Irene Adler is a bright, smart, single woman, an endearing protagonist.

Her former advisor, a fellow faculty member, prevails on Ms. Adler to travel to Nepal to inquire into the life and times of a former fellow undergraduate student of Irene’s, a Margot Smith, who’s in Nepal doing research on one of that country’s goddesses, one Chwwaassa Dyo. The problem is that there appears to something awry with Margot and her physician husband and Adler is supposed to sort things out. What needs sorting turns out to be only part of the story. Irene agrees to go half-way around the world to see a woman she barely knows. From this most unlikely beginning, the plot drives poor Adler into one complexity after another.

Her assignment clearly has unstated dimensions about which neither we readers nor Irene Adler herself are clear. Now, Nepal is an exotic nation from which assaults on Mount Everest are mounted and the ubiquitous Sherpa play an important part, as do digital cameras, former Cold War adversaries, political unrest in the country, and a whole series of meddlesome individuals who seem to still show up on the fringes of the former English Empire.

The novel winds its way through a variety of conflicts among wanderers, a boorish American tourist couple, and murder and bomb blasts. At times the narrative suffers from a pedestrian pace and some lapses of editing discipline over the point of view. Still, the story is interesting, Irene is definitely a character to build a series around, the exotic setting in and around Katmandu is, well, exotic, and a satisfactory conclusion is fashioned.

2011-11-20T15:27:00.000-06:00

Author Dennis Palumbo has fashioned a dark, twisted tale of political chicanery of the finest order. Dan Rinaldi, a Pittsburgh-based psychologist, is on call to the city police department. He helps interact with citizens who have experienced severe trauma, but may have vital information that will help the police solve the latest affront to society. When the story opens, a bank robbery has gone terribly wrong. Death has occurred and one of the robbers has apparently escaped. The only eyewitness insight into the sequence of events and then the current situation when Rinaldi arrives at the bank, seems to be the witness of a traumatized woman named Treva Williams.

At the request of detective Eleanor Lowery, Rinaldi does a curb-side interview with Williams, sitting on the curb in Pittsburgh’s blazing summer heat. He then then joins the SWAT team inside the bank. By the time readers join the major characters in the bank, we are already tangled in a cleverly constructed plot with more than the usual twists and surprises. Each of the characters is nicely identified and each is maintained in a consistent manner, which adds immeasurably to the enjoyment of the novel.

There are more than a few twists and cliff hangers in this novel, as well as a couple of subplots that have little to do with the main thrust of the story, other than to fill out the characters of some of the characters. All in all, a nicely packaged story with enough bumps and twists to satisfy the most demanding reader. I expect to see more strong crime fiction from this author.

FINE, EMOTIONALLY CHALLENGING NOVEL

2011-11-06T10:30:00.000-06:00

The Lost Women of Lost Lake

by Ellen Hart

ISBN: 978-0-312-61477-5

2011 hardcover release from

Minotaur Books, 320 pgs.

It is interesting how these things come in multiples. Libby Hellmann recently released a novel with its genesis in the riotous summer and fall of 1968. The Minnesota History Center has just opened an elaborate exhibit focused on 1968, and the History Theater in Saint Paul has mounted an original play, “1968, The year That Rocked The World.” And now here we have a powerful, emotionally intense novel by that excellent Minneapolis writer, Ellen Hart. It is a story of two women who are unable to divorce themselves from that same year, 1968 and the decisions and actions they took then.

The story is another event in the evolving saga of Minneapolis restaurateur, Jane Lawless. This time she and bosom chum Cordelia take what they intend to be a short vacation trip into Minnesota’s benign northern wilderness to the Lawless family lodge on a lake north of the Twin Cities. It’s a common enough activity, and bucolic time on placid water amid peaceful forests is expected to provide calm and rejuvenation. Jane is trying to decide whether she can commit to working with a close friend toward becoming a professional private investigator.

The peaceful appearing forest, like so many lives, conceals dark doings and Jane is drawn into a maelstrom of murder, revenge, drugs and double dealing. The multiple threads of this complex story intersect, divide, and then reweave. At times the action is high with tension, the pace frantic. At other times, the story becomes thoughtful, calm, like the smooth waters of the lake itself, allowing readers moments to reflect, perhaps, on their own lives and paths not taken. The women of lost lake, must, in the end, decide for themselves, and take for themselves the heart-rending consequences of their lives.

PIKE: Outstanding noir novel

2011-10-17T10:48:00.001-05:00

by Benjamin Whitmer
ISBN: 978-1-60486-089-4 2010
2010 Trade Paper release
from PM Press.

This crime-ridden novel will not be to everyone’s taste. It is gritty, dirty, foul-mouthed and foul-intentioned on the part of the principal characters. It is a wonderfully written novel. If your tastes in crime fiction run to the dark side; if you yearn to explore the minds and the actions of those who inhabit the dangerous underside of urban life, you should read this novel.

Douglas Pike, rising out of a criminous youthful raging life has become an oddity. He’s reigned in some of his worst impulses and tries to live out his days scraping things together with a young friend who has aspirations to be a professional boxer. Pike has done many things in his life, including functioning as an adept private investigator. Now with nothing momentous on his horizon, he sifts through life. And into that life falls his granddaughter, Wendy. Wendy is the result of a twelve-years-ago liaison between Pike’s estranged daughter, Sarah, and some guy. Wendy has intelligence to spare, loads of attitude, and a vocabulary guaranteed to cause multiple double-takes.

Because Pike suddenly feels unfamiliar familial vibrations, however faint, he sets out to find out about his family and in the process create a welcoming environment for his grand-daughter. His odyssey takes him deep into the grimy streets, bordellos, crack-houses and assorted environs of the worst that Cincinnati has to offer.

This is one powerful, novel of soaring descriptive language, poetical vibrant driving action; a novel to shudder at, to wince over and to remember, long after its surprising and satisfying conclusion. It is well-plotted, finely paced and filled with descriptions of wonderful and awful things.

EXCELLENT COLD WAR NOVEL

2011-10-13T12:10:00.000-05:00

The Man From The Sea
by Michael Innes
ISBN: 0-06-080591-9
Publisher: Harper & Row
Copyright: 1982

This paperback is out of print, as is the original hardcover which was published by Dodd, Meade, an outstanding publisher lost in the mists of corporate amalgamations. The novel was originally copyrighted in 1955, which is instructive. Readers will need to recall the world of that time, in order to put this book in proper context.

The Man from the Sea recalls a time when the world was locked in what we called the cold war, a titanic struggle between something called the Soviet Union and the United States of America, the two great superpowers of the world. This thriller contains all the high adventure of a Dirk Pitt and the tension of a Tom Clancy, but without the complex technical equipment of either. Richard Cranston is a young lad intimately involved with the wife of a local Scottish peer.

During a late-night liaison on the beach, Cranston is astounded to see a man appear from the sea, a man who obviously has just left a freighter off the Scottish coast. The man tells Cranston an incredible story of espionage, treason and looming death. In the process he captures Cranston's interest and enlists his aid in making his way to London.

Innes' style is somewhat unusual and mannerly for our time, for all his literary polish, but astute readers will quickly find themselves enthralled with the brisk pace, urgency and excitement which pervades the pages of this novel. Ultimately, of course, there is resolution, but what a conclusion, as the story turns back on itself in a masterful tale, well-told by a fine writer.

Shenanigans in the world of FINANCE

2011-10-05T13:31:00.002-05:00

A Shark Out of Water
Author: Emma Lathen
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0-06-104460-1
pub. date: November, 1998
paperback, 328 pages

This one is doubtlessly hard to find, but considering the economic fix of the twenty-first century here, it's worth searching resellers.

Since her first in 1961, Emma Lathen, a pair of excellent writers, has written a number of novels that deal with the financial workings of Wall Street. The principal character in over 20 books is widower John Putnam Thatcher, now CEO of the Sloan Guarantee Trust, a staid, conservative commercial bank in New York. It may sound like a chancy idea, to base a series on the world of high finance without throwing in lots of sex and bizarre goings on. It is testament to the genius and the rectitude of the author that such easy solutions are nowhere present. Lathen has always made this sometimes arcane world mesmerizing and understandable.

All is consistent in this latest entry in the series. The characters are strong, fascinating, unusual, and the plot of this novel, is never out of sight. Set in the murky, shifting world of small emerging European nations after the fall of the Soviet Empire, we follow Thatcher into an interesting opportunity for investment by the Sloan in the seedy, dark, port of Gdansk, Poland. Pressure is building to enlarge an important German canal that connects the Baltic to the North Sea.

But all is not as it seems and Thatcher must weave his way through murder, political and commercial chicanery, and the evil that big business sometimes generates. Readers will be drawn inexorably into the sometimes dour, sometimes opulent machinations of the principal players. The story begins in deadly fog with a visceral, irresistible rush, and it doesn’t let go until the very end. A fine, fine novel.

THE ROCK HOLE: EXCELLENT DEBUT

2011-09-19T08:27:00.003-05:00

Rock Hole by Reavis Z. Wortham
ISBN: 978-1-59058-884-0
2011 release from Poisoned Pen
Press. HC, 284 pages

A sensitive, suspenseful debut crime novel. Full of twists, wry and earthy humor, it epitomizes the grit, the patience and the perseverance, of middle America. Folks who grew up in Texas, where the novel is set, or anywhere in the belt that runs from the northwest angle of Minnesota to the Padre Islands and from the middle of Pennsylvania to Cody, Wyoming, will recognize themselves in this novel. Their humor, their practicality, their keen natural observations, are all here to savor.

Welcome to 1964. In Center Springs, Texas, farmer and part-time constable Ned Parker is faced with a puzzling series of animal deaths. That they are brutal, atrocious unnecessary killings, only adds to the tension and suspense. Across the river, the black deputy, John Washington, is trying to find reasons for the same killings, while also dealing with the added difficulties of racism in the county. All these factors entwine to create a real and growing calamity for the small communities in the county surrounding Center Springs. As the killings continue, strange footprints are found near bedroom windows and citizens begin to carry weapons and look suspiciously at their neighbors.

Laced with forthright humor, the novel proceeds at a racing pace through event after event as suspicion grows and plot twist after twist keeps readers off-balance until the stunning climax is reached. Ned Parker is a real character who carries the story in an authentic and realistic manner.

The novel is not without its problems. Abrupt and annoying changes of points of view are occasionally confusing, but the writing, like the stories within the narrative is solid. This is an eminently satisfying novel. I look forward to the next.

AN IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORK

2011-09-07T14:12:00.001-05:00

A Train In Winter

By Caroline Moorehead

ISBN: 978-0-06-165070-3

2011 release by Harper Collins

384 pages, Hard Cover

This book falls under the heading of true crime. It deals with mass murder, attempted genocide and a side of France in the 1940’s that is generally not well-known. This is also one of the most difficult and amazing books I have ever had the priviledge of reading. This is, as the cover states, “an extraordinary story of women, friendship and resistance in occupied France.”

In mid-June, 1940, the German army occupied Paris and France fell. There was, for a while, a partition, Vichy France under the aging Marshall Petain. At first, relations between the occupiers and the subjugated French were almost cordial. During the next two years many of France’s second-class citizens, it’s women, took up the battle and became foundations and facilitators of the much celebrated French Resistance, all over the nation. It’s noteworthy that French women were denied the priviledge of voting until 1944. Ironically, dismissive attitudes toward women worked to their advantage as they became top organizers and couriers in the resistance.

Gradually, informers and collaborators working with the Gestapo amassed evidence of women’s activities, arresting and gathering women into prisons. In January, 1943, 230 women, the youngest 15, the oldest in her sixties, were loaded into cattle cars and shipped east, to Auschwitz. Only 49 survived to the end of the war. This is the well-documented story of those women.

The author has, through extensive archival research, personal interviews with survivors, and family members, and the development of original sources, pieced together the individual and collective stories of these ordinary yet incredible women. The stories are set against the political and the social turmoil of the times. The women, from all classes of society across the political and social spectrums, bonded together to support one another in fighting for their survival. They had no weapons save their wits, their intelligence and their essential humanity, against a huge and terrible effort to obliterate them. Only a few were Jews. That any survived is testament to their grit, their determination and their mutual support.

This work is meticulously documented with an extensive bibliography, source notes by chapter, and short biographies of the women who live again in these pages. Moorehead’s tone is straightforward; no hysteria, no loud condemnations, there are no exclamation points. But the book, in the weight of its facts here illuminated, is condemnatory. It condems Nazis, the Gestapo, and French collaborators as well as the post-war government of France which preferred to forget much of the pestilence that came with the occupying German army.

This is a book that should be read by anyone with the slightest interest in human rights and human history. It throws a bright light on an aspect of World War II in Europe little known or studied. And the book is a reminder that we who ignore the lessons of history will inevitably suffer repetition of those devastations.

Sad Harvey Mapes is a winner

2011-08-30T09:33:00.001-05:00

Watch Me Die

ny Lee Goldberg

an E-book reissue of

“The Man with the Iron-on Badge.”

also available as a paperback

This is the story of sad Harvey Mapes and how he tried to become Travis McGee, or the International Op, or even, Joe Mannix. If you want to know how well he succeeded, read the story. It’s a very funny novel. It’s a very good plot with some surprising twists I never saw coming. A couple of warnings may be in order. There is some really powerful and explicit brutality in this novel. There is some sex and some frank language. Finally, if you are a down and died-in-the-wool, living-it-to-the-end rabid crime fiction fan, you may want to skip this one, because Goldberg manages to diss just about every film and TV detective from “The Great Train Robbery, (1903) to Sherlock Holmes, to Ephram Zimbalist Jr. and just about every detective novelist from Collins to Connelly and Crais.

The author also manages to head-slap the film and TV industries and not a few publishing efforts. That it all works in service to the story and sad Harvey Mapes is testament to the skill and artistry of the creator of “Watch Me Die. Lee Goldberg certainly has the demonstrated chops to be able to produce this risible, amusing and very diverting story. Just glance at his bibliography for a taste.

Sad Harvey Mapes is a gate guard for a gated community in the Los Angeles area. He reads a lot of crime fiction and dreams of one day becoming a Travis McGee or a Tom Sellack. He’s single, lives in a depressing if exotically-named apartment and he spends a lot of time ogling women and dreaming about sex. Then he gets employed by a resident of the gated community to follow the man’s wife and find out what she may be up to. It appears to be a classic if run-of-the-mill detective novel set up doesn’t it? Guess again. Sad Harvey Mapes life is never again the same and readers may very well have to adjust their attitudes about the whole mystery and crime fiction millieu. Read the acknowledgements. I don’t get the title of the e-book, but everything else about this novel is just first rate.

REPRISAL

2011-08-11T09:42:00.001-05:00

By Colin T. Nelson

ISBN: 978-0-87839-385-4

Released by North Star Press,

Trade Paper, 218 pages, 2010

From the first page of the prologue, this is a scary novel. It is also provocative, intriguing and it raises questions that remain in the mind after the final chapter closes. The other stand-out aspect of REPRISAL is that it presents people as multi-dimensional. Not all heathens are enemies. The novel calls on readers to consider and reconsider one of the founding principles of the United States, that we judge people individually, not by dress, or skin color or religious affiliation, or by country of origin, but by demonstrated actions and words. Makes it difficult for Law Enforcement, doesn’t it?

That’s part of the premise of the novel. The author doesn’t preach, doesn’t pontificate, rather he reminds us of our heritage through the thoughts and deeds of an American-born Muslim woman, a public defendant attorney for Hennepin County in Minnesota. She’s tasked with defending a Muslim man, accused of murder, who rejects out of hand the idea of a woman attorney.

Throughout the sometimes overly-detailed work of preparing the case, Zehra Hassan must defend not only the murder charge, but the man’s anger and hatred toward her and what he views as a corruption of the teachings of the Qur’an. But as the case progresses, Zehra begins to discover the outlines of a far darker, far more dangerous terrorist plot.

The novel is generally well-written, although a more precise editorial eye would have fixed a few awkward phrases and improved clarity. The book evokes well the widely varying attitudes of people toward those with whom they have few contacts and little understanding. A fine cast of characters with differing attitudes and roles contribute to the pace and the rhythm. The plots are well-organized and satisfactorily concluded. An enjoyable thought-provoking novel of crime fiction I am pleased to recommend. I also note that the author and this writer are acquainted.

2011-07-08T13:40:00.000-05:00

The Anonymous Client
by JP Hailey (Parnell Hall)
ISBN: 978-1-936441-22-8,
e-book edition released 2011,
232 pages.

This is another fast-paced novel featuring criminal defense attorney, Steve Winslow. The protagonist is clever and so is the novel. It’s also slick, fast-paced, amusing and entertaining. The author has a good sense of his readers and their likely primary interests. He also has a good eye for detail and a finely-honed ability to use words to their maximum effect.

The novel begins and ends with personnel problems in Winslow’s office, a nice counterpoint to the main theme. The problem is a little fillip that adds some rhythm to the book. In the beginning, Winslow’s sole employee, Tracy Garvin, complains of being seriously underworked. That’s because her boss has a tendency to not appear in the office for weeks on end, and that’s because Winslow has few clients.

One day, as the novel opens, a letter arrives. It contains ten one thousand dollar bills. Thus is laid the basis for a very entertaining, very complicated murder and blackmail plot. As is the case with other novels in this series, the plot is a morass of mis-direction, tricky timing, private detectives, and a lot of both internal and external speculation and dialogue. The book is rife with minutia, details that enhance and color the reader’s perceptions of what has just happened, what it may mean and where the story is going next.

Set in New York City, Hall and his protagonist mine the rich variety of setting and character in mostly excellent ways. There is considerably less action in the novel than is often found in crime fiction except for the courtroom scenes which are among the most compelling I have ever read. Dialogue heavy, with sometimes arcane legal maneuvering; these scenes crackle with urgency and tension as we watch the nimble attorney skate along the edge of legal chasms while trying to save his client, sometimes without even knowing who his client is.

A DANGEROUS THING

2011-06-09T09:02:00.002-05:00

A DANGEROUS THING
Author: Bill Crider
ISBN: 0-373-26216-7
World Wide Library
Copyright: 1996 250 pages

Here we have a fine academic mystery that blends political correctness with private agendas in that often strange collection of individuals we know as private liberal arts colleges.

A new academic dean arrives on campus with a new curriculum which threatens to disrupt the college and Professor Carl Burns mostly peaceful life. The routine of the college has left Burns plenty of time to contemplate and woo the new love of his life, Elaine Tanner, college librarian. Never mind that his principal rival is the local Chief of Police.

Things are pretty calm and then a window above Professor Burns' head explodes and an unloved colleague crashes to the sidewalk two stories below, killing the man instantly. Was it murder? An accident? Burns is almost forced to participate in an investigation by the Chief of Police. He's reluctant because he knows that any serious poking under the tender surface of any collegiate community will likely release unwanted mercies not so tender.

Because of Crider's keen eye for the nuances of college life, and his understanding of the humor of it all, A Dangerous Thing is a delight. It abounds with gentle humor, made the more so because of its careful plotting, pacing and the talent of the writer. I recommend this mystery to fans of the cozy, of academic mysteries and to anyone who enjoys good writing.

You may have to search used book collections and a library or two to find this novel. It’s worth it.

CRACKERJACK COURTROOM NOVEL

2011-05-26T13:07:00.002-05:00

THE INNOCENT WOMAN
by Parnell Hall
a Kindle e-book
May, 2011

A Steve Winslow zinger.

Here's an author who can write! He has enough novels out you'd expect that, right? This was my first Steve Winslow mystery. It won't be my last. Fine, distinct interesting characters. Limited cast. A creative defense attorney hard at work for a surprisingly uncooperative client. First she's fired after accusations of theft from her employer, then one of the owners of the firm is shot to death and Winslow's client is arrested. Watching this lawyer both in and out of court is a real treat. The dialog crackles, the pace is next to pell mell and the explanations are precise. There is a good deal of detail, especially at the end. I would have preferred a more succinct closing to the novel with less sniping between attorneys, but it was a small price to pay for a fast, well done story.

2011-05-20T09:24:00.001-05:00

Dead Folks

Author: Jon Jackson

Publisher: Grove Press

ISBN: 0-8021-3602-8

264 pages, trade paper

1999 release

Fang Mulheisen rides again. He rides from Detroit to Montana to Salt Lake City and back again. Mulheisen rides trains, planes and cars. He rides with a ditch rider named Sally McIntyre. Jackson tells a really good story, but from some points of view, he’s telling us the oddessy of Fang Mulheisen, broken up into several parts, called novels.

However, unlike some series, you needn’t begin at the beginning in order to understand this one. Nor will you learn secrets that spoil earlier novels about this detective. Jackson’s protagonist is a detective sergeant with the Detroit police department. He’s been around a few years and he’s assigned to Homicide. One of his personal goals is to make some good busts on important members of the local mob. Now, this is difficult to do, but Mulheisen is patient and follows the trails wherethey lead.

A recent hit on a mob guy has led Mulheisen to Montana, where he again picks up the trail of the elusive and illusive Joe Service. Service is an outside mob contractor. He’s called in when the mob needs to investigate it’s own. He and Mulheisen have been dueling for decades. Dead Folks tells the tale of how Mulheisen persists in his pursuit of Service and the result. Along the way a number of people get explicitly wiped out, hence the title. Along the way some of the characters in this book affirm life’s essence in some explicit and sometimes amusing sexual acts, not all of which could be called ordinary, however that word may be defined.

You may have trouble finding copies of this novel. It’s worth the trouble.

Jackson has a sometimes quirky attitude toward life and we see it amply displayed in this delightful novel. Jon Jackson is one of those excellent authors who knows a good story when he tells it. Here is one such.

Prescient thriller novel

2011-04-07T13:06:00.001-05:00

Cloak of Darkness

Author: Helen MacInnes

Publisher: Fawcett Suspense

ISBN: 0-449-20115-5

pub. 1983 pb, 307 pages

Probably difficult to find, but well worth the search, this is Helen MacInnes at her very best.The story concerns the fictitious Interintell, an organization supported by, but not a part of, the governments of a few NATO countries. Interintell has tasked itself with the enormous job of tracking and developing countermeasures against growing threats of terrorism anywhere in the world.

Interintell is the brainchild of Bob Renwick, an American living and working in Europe. As a super-secret organization, Interintell goes to great efforts to keep its principal officers in obscurity. But Renwick, protagonist of this superb, thriller, is shocked to discover that his home, his special secure telephone number and other details of his personal life are included in a hit list developed by the ruthless executive of an international munitions firm. Worse, the firm which holds the list in an unknown player on the world scene.

Renwick jumps into action, fending off probing attempts to locate him and his wife, and moving his limited resources into action to find and neutralize the enemy. Almost from page one, MacInnes screws up the action to tighter and tighter levels of tension, with stories within the main theme adding to the attraction. This is one of only a few novels which can truly be called spellbinding. Renwick and his cohorts race across the world to ever-changing and ever-fascinating venues, sometimes thwarted, other times winning the small confrontations and battles which make up the fabric of this most excellent novel. Here as most of MacInnes’s work, the conclusion is eminently satisfactory, and yet, leaves available to the reader, the thinnest of threads, the faintest of suggestions of more to come.

Check out Carl brookins

2011-03-25T11:11:00.001-05:00

facebook

1 person likes this

Check out Carl brookins

Hi,

Carl brookins is inviting you to join Facebook.

Once you join, you'll be able to connect with the Carl brookins Page, along with people you care about and other things that interest you.

Thanks,
Carl brookins

To sign up for Facebook, follow the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=671651594&k=4XDZ36RRQT6G6BDBS1V6QSTQW6B1636B4QGV&r&oid=208561962504232

You are receiving this email from Carl brookins. Carl brookins has sent you this message through Facebook. If you no longer want to receive messages through Facebook, click here.
Facebook, Inc. P.O. Box 10005, Palo Alto, CA 94303

A story worth revisiting

2011-03-21T09:13:00.002-05:00

EVEN THE WICKED
by Lawrence Block
ISBN-0-380-72534-7
pb from Avon, 373 pgs, pub 2/98

The Grand Master does it again. Now a licensed private investigator, Matthew Scudder is faced with a most perplexing case. Even if, strictly speaking , he has no client. Of course, for those who follow the tracks of recovering alcoholic, ex-cop Scudder, know that the absence of a client, indeed, the absence of much of anything that might be called a case has never stopped him from pursuing whatever fragile thread captures his attention. Part of the time, he does have a client, other times, not, it's just one of the fascinating aspects of this book.

As always, Block's writing deftly brings the nature and the ambiance of the city right off the page and into your immediate presence. His principal secondary characters, as usual, play important roles in moving the story forward and adding fine texture to the mix. Block's writing remains as smooth as ever was.

With the publication of the first letter in a local newspaper, the city's attention focuses on someone who calls himself the Will of the people. He suggests that certain criminals whom the law of the land has thus far been unable to snare, ought to be disposed of, done away with, dispatched. Who would care? Who indeed. So the Will of the people announces his targets and begins his cleanup campaign. And even though Scudder has no client connected to the Will of the People, as his erstwhile partner, TJ points out, "Dude's the whole city's problem." But all too soon the Will of the People becomes Scudder's immediate problem, and a complex, cerebral as well as action-filled adventure begins as Scudder pursues a serial killer through the city. EVEN THE WICKED is a thoughtful examination of parts of our society which need more light. It invites reflection on certain aspects of our life and is a distinct pleasure to read.

Lambda Nominee is a worthy novel

2011-03-16T09:40:00.000-05:00

The Cruel Ever After
by Ellen Hart
A Minotar (St. Martin’s Press)
2010 release. Hard cover, 320 pgs.
ISBN: 9780312624768

This, Hart’s nineteenth Jane Lawless mystery, is probably the darkest and most shocking of the series. Difficult to read it is chock full of, painful, difficult relationships and actions. The extensive cast of characters, many of whom fans will have met before, are almost all revealed to have seriously dangerous dark sides. And even when those troublesome and even illegal dimensions of their characters are revealed and confronted by other individuals in the book, they persist in their ways, ways that sometimes tread close to the abyss.
The shocks begin very early when Lawless’s former husband, a man she hasn’t seen for twenty years, appears in Minneapolis. Not only are we more than a little surprised to discover that Jane was married many years ago, she is upset by his appearance, supposedly ‘simply for old times sake.’ It becomes quickly apparent that Chester Garrity, one of the most facile liars and con men you’ll ever meet, has a specific personal agenda. Garrity is a user of anybody and everybody within reach. That he is such, should, it seems to this reader, to be more apparent to Jane than appears to be the case.
That Garrity is also fairly incompetent also becomes obvious. Part of the tragedy is that his incompetence visits appalling harm on the people around him. Almost immediately plans go awry and spiral out of control. Murder results. Garrity demonstrates such a high level of impotence in the face of disaster that it is hard to believe he has managed to stay alive and out of prison for this long.
At roughly the same time that Garrity begins his ill-managed plan to sell antiquities of questionable provenance, a lethal cabal of shadowy vigilantes makes its presence known by murdering a popular gallery owner. Is there a link here? Of course there is, but readers will require almost infinite patience to figure out the links and resolve the tangle of threads and relationships. Patience is particularly important in the first half of the book. After that, with the background and setup in place, the action and the pace pick up. Logic takes firm hold and as the complications and resolutions of the many plot lines become clearer, the author’s grip on her story becomes firmer. The second half of the novel as revelation bangs in on top of revelation and explanation explodes, is all vintage Hart, an excellent writer who is almost always in full command of her work.
There were times however, when I wanted to scream at Jane Lawless, and wondered who was really managing that usually incisive and clever mind.

RED SKY NOW PUBLISHED

2011-02-22T10:28:00.002-06:00

Mary Whitney and Tanner embark on a romantic sailing vacation in the British Virgin Islands. During a quick swim, Tanner finds three hundred dollar bills floating beside their charter. Contact with the authorities leads to confusion and murder of a local Treasury agent. Believing Tanner has stolen millions of dollars from a smuggling cartel, Tanner is kidnapped by the cartel to force him to reveal the location of the missing money. Mary goes on a frantic quest to save both Tanner and herself. With help from a young secret Service agent, Hilda Martin, Mary offers herself as bait in an attempt to rescue her husband and trap the killers. In the violent final confrontation at sea, Mary pits her sailing skills against a powerful motor yacht and Hilda Martin is forced into a frightening gun battle with the enemy.

Buy RED SKY here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/43440

KIND OF BLUE, A POLICE PROCEDURAL WITH CLASS

2011-02-08T14:15:00.000-06:00

Kind of Blue
By Miles Corwin
ISBN: 978-1-60809-007-5
From Oceanview Publishing
323 pages, November, 2010

A few years ago, this author wrote a couple of serious non-fiction books about the Los Angeles Police Department. He spent a lot of time with cops in that city and wrote books that became best-sellers, “The Killing Season” and “And Still We Rise.”

Now he’s back with a powerful persistent novel that draws from the same source material. “Kind of Blue,” is not your ordinary police procedural. It constantly reminds readers that the cops involved are no super beings, rising above the worst humanity can offer to save their city; nor are they all thugs, wife beaters and abusers. They are ordinary citizens, sometimes corrupt, sometimes honorable and brilliant, often prejudiced, but too often willing to make the supreme sacrifice for the citizens they serve. And, occasionally they violate the rights of criminals.

Author Corwin bends a keen and discerning eye on this stew of varying humanity to fashion a fascinating novel of human relations. Asher Levine, a dedicated, mostly honest cop, is one of LA’s best homicide detectives. But as the book opens, Levine is a former cop, having abruptly resigned after he was unable to protect a vital witness from being murdered. The death of Latisha Patton, never solved, devastates the detective and causes him to question his abilities, even though it is clear that apart from his dedication, he is a brilliant detective. So he resigns.

A year passes and a decorated officer has died, murdered in his home and the special homicide squad needs Levine’s help solving the case. More to the point, certain key executives in the LAPD hierarchy need the case solved or at least put to rest. Levine has had that year to discover his resignation hurts him more than it does the LAPD. With clearance from the top cops, Levine is fast tracked back to the force and handed the case.

The problem, of course, is that Levine won’t just concentrate on the current case and thus all sorts of actions that need to be buried along with the ghost of Latisha Patton. Traces of other earlier activity begin to resurface as Ash Levine winds his way through labyrinthine police and social structures of the street until he comes to the shocking final solution.

The title is apt, a riff on a 50 year old Miles Davis studio piece, the cover fits the mood and the attitude of the novel. All the elements fit and it was a pleasure to read this excellent book.

PELL-MELL MEDICAL THRILLER

2011-01-27T14:09:00.001-06:00

Critical ConditiON
By C.J.Lyons
ISBN: 9780515148688
Mass Market, 300 page
2010 release from Jove

Fourth and last in the Angels of Mercy series. A hospital in Pittsburgh is under siege, both from within and without as a huge blizzard brings the city to a standstill. In the hospital, Dr. Gina Freeman is trying to cope with the problematical recovery of her fiancé, detective Jerry Boyle, suffering from bullet wounds. Elsewhere in the hospital, other capable if flawed women, Charge Nurse Nora Halloran, and student Amanda Mason, prepare to wait out the storm.

A vicious band of armed killers suddenly appears, looking for a doctor who happens to be out of the hospital. She, apparently, holds the key to the continued well-being of a powerful and wealthy political figure from the West Coast. The thugs demonstrate a frightening propensity for killing anyone who gets in the way and the bodies pile up.

Written in an almost breathless, pell-mell style, the novel never sags for more than a page or two. Crisis lands on crisis almost as fast as the bodies pile up. Tension grows to almost unbearable levels and relationships become more entangled, setting up conflicts among the protagonists. In the end, the resolution results in a few more bodies. An excellent novel of type. The characters are well-drawn and have sufficient differences to make them easy to keep track of, the ploys used to confound the gangsters are interesting and varied and appropriate to the venues. The dialogue is logical and understandable and it fits the scenery.

Unusual terrific novel of crime on Midwestern prairies

2011-01-14T13:05:00.001-06:00

Big Wheat
By Richard A. Thompson
Poisoned Pen Press 2011
ISBN: 978-1-59058-820-8

World War I is done and Charlie Krueger’s older brother is never coming home. Charlie, his sister and their mother must cope with an increasingly abusive drunken father and husband. The summer of 1919 wanes and vast acreages of the Middle West prairies are thick with ripening grain. Up the long reaches from the banks of the Platte and the Missouri come the contract threshing crews and their machines, most followed by raffish bindlestiffs to supplement a farmer’s friends and relatives. The crews are often peopled by men of questionable backgrounds and are occasionally eyed with suspicion by local sheriffs who rarely chase criminals beyond their county boundaries.

When Charlie Krueger has a final confrontation with his father, he leaves behind a sorrowful mother and sister and the local girl he thought he’d love forever. He becomes a bindlestiff, traveling from farm to farm, learning the threshing business and nurturing his love for machines.

The machines are new, complicated and prone to breakdowns. Charlie hooks up with a marvelously conceived traveling machine repair crew that becomes his new family. But lurking in the background is a killer, a killer who believes Charlie saw his latest brutal deed. He seeks to find and murder Charlie. Meanwhile, the sheriff of Charlie’s home county has developed leads which point him toward Charlie as a murderer.

This then is the roiling plot which moves the story forward. Carefully constructed and set against the vast reaches of the plains states, the novel evokes a time and place and the attitudes of the people and the land in a powerful and moving way. Readers will smell the dust, drip sweat and shrivel under the burning sun right along with the threshing crews. They’ll feel a clutch in the night as the sheriff and the murderer draw closer and they’ll empathize with the casual corruption and the surmounting goodness of the characters the author has created.

A fine, exciting and unusual well-written novel I am pleased to recommend to all readers of crime fiction.

A Dark Disturbing Novel: Absolution

2011-01-04T11:00:00.001-06:00

ABSOLUTION
By Susan Fleet
ISBN: 978-1-4357-0841-9
Pub. 2008, Lulu & Kindle

This brutal, dark and explicit novel has a compelling drive to the third-person narrative that makes it difficult to look away. In part, I suspect, readers may be drawn on by an almost irresistible desire to learn how much farther the author is willing to go.
Set in one of the most suggestive cities on the continent, New Orleans, the author has created a nasty killer of similar proportions. The Sinner stalks his victims with a relentless attention to detail until one begins to wonder if he’ll get away with his crimes. It reveals nothing to mention that he does meet an appropriate eventual end, because the mystery is in his identity, carefully concealed through most of the narrative.
As the title suggests the psycho-sexual aberration at the heart of this killer’s impetus is rooted in an intense religiosity and the issues that raises. The sweaty pre-Katrina summer season in New Orleans only enhances the often oppressive feelings of many of the scenes.
The novel combines a multiplicity of viewpoints with several elements of subgenres of this kind of commercial fiction, relentless if sometimes mis-directed police procedures, multiple murders, obscure and difficult motives and complicated relationships between members of a pretty large cast. The tension between the detectives and a local reporter, for example, is very well explored, as are certain racial elements.
If there are a few lapses in logic, an occasional unexplained coincidence, and some dialogue gaffes, overall, Absolution stands out as a highly credible effort.

Latest from Walker's Wild Onion series is a winner

2010-11-12T07:51:00.001-06:00

Too Many Clients
By David Walker
ISBN: 9780727869302
Published by Severn House,
2010, 214 pgs.

Another sparkling crime novel in the Wild Onion series. It’s always a pleasure to open a book knowing you are in the hands of an experienced storyteller. Author David Walker has been around the block a few times and he has the accolades to show for it. His latest does not disappoint. Here we have a pair of wise and witty practitioners who are married to each other. In less sure hands, the marriage of two characters often lets a lot of steam out of a relationship and sends readers searching for other divertissements.

Not this time. Private investigator Kirsten, married to uber-relaxed lawyer Dugan, takes on her husband as a client, after a bad cop is found murdered. Dugan, never a careful person, has blundered into the thing in such a way he becomes a suspect. And while Dugan can act odd at times, almost the antithesis of the hard-driving lawyer of many crime fiction novels, he is far from the only character. There’s Larry. Larry Candle is a partner in Dugan’s office. He just doesn’t come off as someone whom you’d want to represent you in court for anything more serious than a mistaken parking ticket. Yet Larry manages to get the job done all the while irritating nearly everyone around him.

As the days pass, Dugan and Kirsten continue to collect new clients who somehow all want them to locate the killer of this bad cop. To Kirsten and Dugan’s collective thinking these new clients don’t seem to be entirely above suspicion, either. Meanwhile the cops continue to zero in on Dugan. Gradually, as Kirsten digs deeper into the people who knew or knew about the dead cop, the story takes on wider and wider implications, tangling mob figures with international activities, a prominent churchman and….well, you get the idea.

Twists on top of fascinating complications.
The novel is well-paced, complicated, and a truly fun read. I look for more cheeky stories in Walker’s Wild Onion series.

Musings on errors

2010-11-05T11:36:00.002-05:00

The following is a piece by Bo Parker from a newsgroup post which I like
and use with permission.

Since typos have become one of the topics de jour, even
though such strikes me as somewhat off the track, I'm tossing in my
two cents of comment, which is probably what's it's worth in today's
world. When I first ventured out into the "publishing world" with my
first novel some two and a half years ago, I did so with the goal
suggested by friends--that the book be used as a fund raiser for
local charities and civic groups. I quickly learned that once the
"publishing pie" is sliced, there are very few monetary crumbs that
trickle back to the source for the author or anyone else. Along the
way, I discovered the actual cost of printing the book, which led me
to take a different route, knowing full well the brush with with
which I would be tarred as an author who had a book "published" by a
method not considered "traditional."

Along the way, I did know, as some have said, "at least enough to
have the manuscript professionally edited." That I did. Four times,
by four different "professional" editors. Included in this quartet
was one who had edited published books, another who was recommended
by a published author, and one who had been "certified" after taking
"an extensive test, based on the Chicago Manual of Style, the MLA
Handbook, The Gregg Reference Manual, and Merriam-Webster's
Collegiate Dictionary, 11th, edition." Guess what? My published
book has mistakes in it. Some of them are an embarrassment to me. And
they have become a reminder of a comment made to me by a published
author. "Mistakes are why you want to go with a traditional house.
Then they can be blamed on its editors, not the author."

Based on the the majority of opinions expressed so far that
mistakes in published books are a given for a multitude of reasons,
and in a void of suggestions as to how they can be eliminated, I am
left at a loss to understand the rational behind the comment that
mistakes can make a person think less of the author. However, I have
learned a lesson. The first book as a fundraiser has exceeded my
expectations, and publication of the second in the series will follow
the same path, with one addition. On the appropriate page, below
"published by...." will be the statement, "Edited by...." That leaves
me with only one question. Will there be an editor who is willing to
have his or her name published as part of the book?

Bronson L. Parker
THE PROVIDENCE OF DEATH

SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE: An Outstanding Thriller

2010-11-02T13:12:00.003-05:00

Set The Night On Fire
By Libby Fischer Hellmann
ISBN: 978-0-98406-5-7
Trade Paperback from
Allium Press, Chicago, 2010
346 pages.

Every so often a novel comes along that connects with the reader in such a visceral way that it is like a punch in the stomach. This is such a story. If you lived through the nineteen-sixties and your memory is reasonably intact, or you learned even a small amount about those turbulent times, you will connect with this story.

On one level this is the story of Lila Hilliard.

Forty-some years after a particular series of spectacular and dangerous events in Chicago that revolved around a nasty far-off war and a political convention, a mysterious fire has robbed her of the only family she has ever known. At about the same time, a man named Dar Gantner, just released from prison, returns to Chicago from prison to reconnect with a few of his former companions from the same era. One, a woman named Rain, tells Dar that another of their mutual friends has just met with an odd fatal accident. It is clear in their conversation that Rain doesn’t entirely believe that it was an accident.

From that moment on it becomes apparent that dark and unknown forces are at work. But why? Who are these people we meet at the beginning of the book, who targets them and why? Through a series of small and then progressively longer flashbacks we are transported to a time when young people believed the rhetoric, that they could indeed change the outcomes of momentous happenings, that they could affect the course of the most powerful nation in the world. Some of those players, whatever they believed, moved on to build calm and substantial lives of commerce, and politics, and contemplative existences. They don’t want to relive any part of that time.

Most readers alive today will have memories of the Chicago convention of 1968, or of the riots and will begin again to remember the emotions of the time. And even if not, the measured, artful, portioning out of connections, of information, will bring those emotions to the surface. On another level, this is the telling of the great events of the late sixties, the crimes and the abuses and the trails that descended from them, not from the newspaper headlines or the televised reports, but through the eyes and hearts of some of the young people at the center of the conflicts. But this is no polemic, nor is it an attempt to change the record.

What the author has done is produce a cracking good thriller that grips a reader by the throat and doesn’t let go until the final pages. One after another the revelations keep coming, and as the central characters struggle to stay alive long enough to solve their mysteries, the author maintains our interest in the love story, the history and the dynamics of the times. It doesn’t matter your political beliefs, then, or now; the characters and their trials will reach off the pages of this fine novel and touch you in ways that are basic to our existence as human beings. This is a fine, fine novel that well deserves the accolades it will surely receive.

TWO FOR READING PLEASURE: Cooper & Hachey

2010-10-21T14:55:00.004-05:00

A Crooked Little House
by Susan Rogers Cooper
Publisher: Avon
ISBN: 0-380-79469-1
pub.date: January, 1999
246 pages, PB

This novel is less a mystery than an in-depth examination of a few weeks in the life of an entertaining and intriguing family in suburban Texas. The mystery of who murdered a young homeless woman is really the framework from which to dangle a whole houseful of family members from bright children to irascible mother-in-law.

Eloise Pugh is a romance writer. She lives in Codderville, Texas, in a home undergoing construction of a major addition. In addition to the construction workers, assorted pets, and three children plus a husband are in residence. Written in the first person, readers are treated to EJ’s often delightful, practical and frequently artful coping techniques.

These are wonderful characters, created by a writer with great skill and a fine eye for detail. There just are no missteps, even among certain characters who I doubt very much are a routine part of the author’s environment.

EJ’s family is happily preparing for the imminent high school prom of one of her charges. Their mood is abruptly shattered when EJ’s errant sister-in-law is charged with the murder of that homeless woman. Never one to simply accept apparent reality, EJ determines to save her reluctant sister-in-law by finding the real murderer. EJ’s path of detection becomes a wandering, twisting road of deception, doubt and several surprises.

Perceptively written, well-paced, “A Crooked Little House” is a lot of fun and
informative as well.
_______________________________________________________________

A Matter of Motive
by Michael Hachey
Avalon Books,
December, 2004
Hard Cover, 282 pages, $26.95
ISBN: 9780803496880

A lot of books are published every year in this country, far more than all the Internet, magazine and newspaper reviewers can possibly read, digest and then comment on. Here is one such that should have received more attention than it did when first released. Dexter Loomis is the only cop in Higgins Point, a small town in rural Wisconsin. As the novel opens, the mayor drops by and tells Loomis he’s being appointed chief, since the former chief abruptly left town.

Dexter is okay with that, mainly because he is yet ignorant of the gathering storm of crime about to descend on his town. Two suspicious deaths occur within days of each other, deaths that may or may not be related. In addition, Loomis has to cope with a loud and aggressive county sheriff who means to keep tight control of everything in his baliwick.

Loomis is smart enough, even though woefully inexperienced, to know he’s over his head and liable to sink quickly. So he calls the Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigations for help. Enter an agent who has a direct connection to one of the murder victims. Since this is usually grounds for immediate recusal, the author has to work around this, which he does in a logical and clever way.

The writing is competent, smooth and the story develops logically as a reasonable pace. The book may be somewhat overly complicated, which leads to some unnecessary meandering, but the sense of the small community, its long time residents and the struggles of the principal characters provides a very nice if not exceptional novel of criminality and malfeasance in small-town America. Hachey’s tone and pace is just right for the setting, resulting in a very enjoyable reading experience.

BLOG POSTS & LANCELOT'S LADY

2010-10-08T00:01:00.001-05:00

Dos and Dont's for Organizing an Online Blog Tour

While organizing my own 15 day/108 stop online tour, I was contacted by a number of authors who wanted me to host them during their tours. I was very happy to do so, but in the process, I learned that not everyone is as organized as I like to be. This brings me to today's post where I'll share some tips―some dos and don'ts for organizing an online book tour.

1. Do be organized; don't be disorganized. Keep a calendar on your computer where you can post dates as your hosts book them. Note down the host's name and the blog they've said they'll host you on. Some people have more than one blog, so this is an important step.

2. Do pay attention to details; don't ignore what your host wants. Keep all emails from your hosts for references. Some will tell you specifically what they want; some have preferences on topics or themes and on word count. Give your hosts what they ask for. Be sure to add your website and buy links to each blog post, and any contest information you may have.

3. Do send info early; don't leave it to the night before. Email your hosts at least 3 days before and include the MS Word doc of your post, plus attach your book cover and author photo as jpgs. Don't zip the files or use uncommon programs. If you don't have MS Word, ask your host what he/she prefers.

4. Do send a reminder; don't expect everyone to remember. Email your host the day before as a reminder and ask them to schedule your post to go live early in the morning. I prefer to send my guest's posts out around 3 AM.

5. Do make everything EASY for your hosts; don't make them chase down info or photos on websites. Give them what they need.

6. Do check your host's post the morning of your stop on their blog; don't just forget about them. Leave a comment and thank them.

7. Do be active; don't be inactive. Check the blog post throughout the day. Answer comments or questions from visitors. Check it again over the next couple of days.

LANCELOT'S LADY

Lancelot's Lady ~ A Bahamas holiday from dying billionaire JT Lance, a man with a dark secret, leads palliative nurse Rhianna McLeod to Jonathan, a man with his own troubled past, and Rhianna finds herself drawn to the handsome recluse, while unbeknownst to her, someone with a horrific plan is hunting her down.

Lancelot's Lady is available in ebook edition at KoboBooks, Amazon's Kindle Store, Smashwords and other ebook retailers. Help me celebrate by picking up a copy today and "Cherish the romance..."

You can learn more about Lancelot's Lady and Cherish D'Angelo (aka Cheryl Kaye Tardif) here or over here. Follow Cherish from September 27 to October 10 on her Cherish the Romance Virtual Book Tour and win prizes.

Authors & Readers: What do you like best about online book/blog tours?

Leave a comment here, with email address, to be entered into the prize draws. You're guaranteed to receive at least 1 free ebook just for doing so. Plus you'll be entered to win a Kobo ereader. Winners will be announced after October 10th.

All the best,

Cherish/Cheryl

VERMILION DRIFT: OUTSTANDING NOVEL

2010-09-16T11:03:00.002-05:00

Vermilion Drift
By William Kent Krueger
ISBN: 9781439153840
Hard Cover from Atria,
2010, 305 pages

Authors of crime fiction, like authors working in any other genre, often use their talents to work through personal issues, sometimes intensely private issues. Although it is not entirely clear, the writer may be working through some family issues with this novel. Does that matter?

Perhaps. That depends on the result. In this case, the author, possessed of well-honed, significant writing talent, has produced a novel of finely wrought proportions, multi-layered with considerable depth. By that I mean that the characters demonstrate multiple levels of engagement, and the story itself works on more than one level. Almost every character who appears in the book is involved in the story in more than one way. Some of their levels are casual or socially related, such as what may be routinely expected of law officers in Tamarack County, the Northern Minnesota location of this novel. Other characters, Henry Meloux, for example and other Native Americans; Sam Wintermoon, appears, and of course, Cork’s mother and his father, Liam, all have, at different times, visceral involvement in the story.

The problem, if there is one, is that this story is much more a novel of family and community relationships than it is a novel of suspense, or crime, horrific and awful though the crimes were. Death is always the ultimate judge, from whom there is no appeal.

So, in my view, the problem is one of balance, or perhaps of categorization. The involvement of Cork O’Connor, now a private investigator, alone in Aurora, is mostly one of self-examination. The novel is one of Cork’s journey of discovery. What was the meaning of his occasional nightmares? What were the issues that consumed and separated the O’Connor family in those last fateful months of Liam O’Connor’s life?

The novel begins with Cork once again at odds with his Ojibwe heritage. His mother, remember, was a member of the tribe. He’s hired by the owners of the Vermilion One and Ladyslipper mines to deal with threats against the mine. But then he’s also tasked to try to locate a missing woman, sister of the mine owner. Lauren Cavanaugh has gone missing. Finding the missing woman opens a window on old unsolved crimes from a previous generation, from a time when Cork’s father was the sheriff of Tamarack County.

Sorting through old albums, records and memories, fresh and repressed, takes up the body of the novel As with all of this author’s previous novels, the explanation is logical, satisfying and meaningful. Krueger, as always, is skillful in evoking the landscape, not just its physical self, but its atmosphere, its mystical presence and its influences on the people who reside there.

In the end, this thoughtful exploration of law, truth and justice and their profound influences on all of us is a highly successful emotionally moving effort.

CRIME FICTION FOR EVERYONE

2010-09-05T13:05:00.003-05:00

In Dog We Trust
by Neil Plakcy
ISBN: 2940000889596
Ebook available from
Amazon, Smashwords,
B&N.

Steve Levitan is a convicted felon. Through a lapse in internal discipline, he did a little computer hacking and soon found himself in prison. Released on parole, he returns to his home, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, where he obtains a position as a part time faculty, teaching English at a local college.
His marriage fell apart, which is another factor setting up everything that follows, murder, car chases, odd and interesting characters, such as a sort of hard guy named Santiago, Steve’s parole officer, and a couple of cops, one of whom is a long-time school buddy of Steve.

Then there is the dog. Who names their dog Rochester? The dog belonged to a dead woman, and dog and Steve bond almost immediately, although both seem to have serious issues with authority.
Without revealing too much, this is a very “now” detective novel, delving into computer and other crime. How closely do you reads your credit card statements? The novel is well written, smooth and interesting. It’s always good when a crime novel teaches or reminds readers of information they should know. This story does that, without preaching or lapsing into lecturing. The classroom scenes and internal dialogues regarding student attitudes are authentic. For anyone who enjoys a jaundiced look at small college academic life, this novel is a pleasure to read on another level.
Everything about this novel smacks of a professional, polished approach. The writing is smooth, the characters well developed, and they stay in character. The plot has been carefully laid out and proceeds at a good pace. It’s conclusion is satisfying. Then there’s the dog, Rochester.
Dog lovers will be pleased to know that the author refrains from anthropomorphizing the dog. Undeniably talented, Rochester is helpful throughout the novel, but only in naturally occurring, that is, doggy ways. “In Dog We Trust” is a completely enjoyable way to spend a reading afternoon.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Wasteland of Strangers
Author: Bill Pronzini
Publisher: Walker & Company.
ISBN: 0-8027-7560-8
257 pages

This is another of Bill Pronzini’s intensive, commanding, explorations of current social ideas and concerns which move a national colloquy in many forums. But this is not a social treatis full of statistics. This is a moving, intense, crime novel, that will captivate and enthrall the reader. Take one large, dangerous looking, individual, John Faith, by name. He’s a traveler, a seeker, a man on the move. Insert this stranger into a small resort community during the off season. This community happens to be in northern California, but such are the author’s skills, it could be anywhere. It could be your hometown.

John Faith is the immediate object of suspicion, because he’s a stranger and he doesn’t look like he belongs. His presence gradually reveals and widens long-standing cracks in the comfortable, biased attitudes and ideas of almost everyone in town. Why has this man come to town? What are his motives? His answers are enigmatic, and even at the end we are left with questions. John Faith’s encounters with the police chief, the bigoted lake-side resort owner, some local Native Americans, and a bartender or two, are like pebbles dropped in a placid pool. The ripples expand and expand until they reach the edge of the pool and die. Except in this case, the ripples grow larger, intersect and become irresistible waves that begin to tear at the base fabric of the town.

This psychological thriller is tightly plotted, and intricately presented. It’s pace is irresistible. “A Wasteland of Strangers” is a thoughtful, satisfying crime novel. Artist Doug Henry has presented a handsome, evocative cover illustration. Highly recommended.

PORTRAIT OF A PROTEST SINGER

2010-08-27T09:40:00.002-05:00

The Protest Singer: Pete Seeger
By Alec Wilkinson
Pub by Vintage Books, 2010,
ISBN: 978-0-307-39098-1
Trade Paper, 152 pages, including
credits, acknowledgments and testimony.

The mystery is that Pete Seeger survives and endures. In his lifetime which spans much of the turmoil of the Twentieth Century, he has been beset by some of the most vicious and evil forces we have experienced in this country and in the world. Yet, here he is, still pluckin’ and singin’ and taking on injustice and good causes, like cleaning up the Hudson River.
I suppose I’m biased. I grew up in a time when folk singing in America was in the ascendency and I have a lot of old records and memories of these folks, including Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, several others, and had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Seeger through the good offices of my friend, another fine folk singer, Gene Bluestein. So it was great to read about all those folks, many of whom it’s easy to think of as friends, whether personal or only through their music, through the sensibilities of Seeger and Wilkinson.
It is wonderful, although disturbing, to read this elegantly written, honest look at a man, his friends and companions, his family, his trials and his triumphs, who sang his way into the hearts and memories of a lot of people. Seeger’s influence, not just in the music world; after all, the Weavers recording of “Goodnight Irene” in 1950 sold over a million copies, is and will be enduring.
This slender book, written in the kind of engaging style that is somehow the essence of Seeger’s approach to a principled life, is a moving tribute to him and to everything that’s right in these United States. Readers may disagree with his points of view, but you cannot disagree with the way Mr. Seeger fashioned his protest. Wilkinson has set down, in a most engaging manner,for readers everywhere, the values and the reality of a true American.

ANTEATER A WINNER FOR WEBB

2010-08-08T14:40:00.000-05:00

The Anteater of Death
By Betty Webb
Poisoned Pen Press,
December, 2008, Hard cover,
230 pages, $24.95,
ISBN: 9781590585603

This is the beginning of a new series for this veteran author. Just look again at the title. Somewhere in the back of my head there’s a Shakespeare quote. Ms. Webb is an accomplished writer with several excellent novels to her credit. This one is a distinct departure for her, and it seems she is almost unable to restrain herself. There are a great many asides and some tongue-in-cheek humor that sometimes distracts the reader from a rather thin plot, although the setting is intriguing and Webb uses it well.

Theodora Bentley, the central character in this drama, is a zoo-keeper in a private enterprise somewhere in Southern California in an old seaside town interestingly named Gunn Landing. This zoo is the private plaything of some very wealthy families who have deep roots in the community. The situation is made more complex because some of those family roots are deeply entangled in their own history. Thus there is a darkness to this novel which offers some opportunities for the author to move in directions which would have been unthinkable even a couple of years ago.

One of Teddy Bentley’s responsibilities is the giant ant eater of the title, in the wild, a fearsome creature indeed, equipped with razor claws designed to rip logs open in search of ants. The book opens in the mind of this anteater, improbably named Lucy, in a highly unusual approach which has the potential to cause a number of readers to immediately close the book. I suggest that such readers persevere. Pregnant Lucy is disturbed when a male human enters her enclosure and she goes to investigate. Her investigation leads to an accusation that the animal has killed the man, a director of the zoo.

This accusation against Lucy rouses anger and frustration among the zookeepers especially Teddy. Gradually Teddy becomes snarled in the murder investigation, complicated by her own roots in the community and her past relationships with the Sheriff and several others. Eventually the smoothly written and complicated plot gets sorted out and Teddy receives lots of help from a substantial range of off-beat and even strange characters, not all of whom are caged in the zoo. Funny, ironic and sometimes irreverent, the book will give readers an inside look at zoo keeping, animal protectionism and the often distorted lives of wealthy idlers.

THE WHITE GARDEN: AMAZING NOVEL

2010-07-29T08:40:00.001-05:00

I scarcely know how to begin, not something a reviewer should admit publically, I suppose. This wonderfully realized and written novel is a first class literary mystery. It deals with a three-week period in l941 that marks the end of a troubled life, the life of Virginia Woolf. It is serendipitous that this novel comes to my hand at a time that epitomizes a good deal of what she was all about. In a word, independence. Independence for women and independence for writers.

Virginia Woolf was an English writer, essayist and literary critic of the early Twentieth Century. Her parents did not send her to school. She was entirely self-taught and apparently randomly tutored by her literary critic father. She was a major influence on the kind of novels being written today, yet she was always, always, self-published. Hogarth Press, established by Woolf and her husband, Leonard, a political theorist of that era, in their kitchen, published Virginia’s writings along with those of E.M. Forester, and Sigmund Freud, among many others. Growing up she knew people like Henry James, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and George Eliot. Her father, Leslie Stephen's, first wife was the daughter of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray.

In addition to her literary credentials as an accomplished novelist, she was a prolific essayist who published over 500 essays. Virginia Wolf helped coalesce the famous (or infamous) Bloomsbury Group, a collection of social, political and economic theorists of varying stripes, including artists, critics, philosophers and writers who wrote, debated, loved, married and argued life throughout the first half of the Twentieth Century.

Woolf was sexually abused by a relative as a child, and clearly had mental problems during her lifetime. Her companions through life, including relatives, were mostly liberated intellectuals who ignored social constraints. On March 28, 1941, she disappeared from her home. Three weeks later, her body was discovered in the nearby river Ouse which had already been extensively searched. Her body was promptly cremated and there was no funeral ceremony, public or private.
Which brings us to this novel. Sixty years after Woolf’s death, master garden and landscape designer, Jo Bellamy arrives in England. She is doing research for a wealthy client who wants her to recreate a famous garden of white flowers and plants at his Long Island Estate. Jo is trying to recover from her grandfather’s sudden suicide. The celebrated White Garden of the title is located at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. It was created by Woolf’s friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West.

What Bellamy discovers at Sissinghurst has the potential to set decades of literary analysis and speculation on its collective ear. Whilst grubbing about in some boxes in one of the garden sheds, Jo comes upon a diary which appears to have been written by Virginia Woolf. Well and good, the problem is the first entry is dated the day after Virginia Woolf is supposed to have drowned herself. Moreover, there appears to be a connection between the castle, the garden, Woolf and Jo’s dead grandfather. Shocked and amid a growing desire to learn more about her grandfather’s youth in Kent, Jo Bellamy sets out on a cross-country odyssey to try to authenticate the diary and uncover her grandfather’s connection to one of the most famous feminists and literary icons of the past century.

The novel is wonderfully written and mostly moves at an ever-increasing pace as Bellamy encounters an array of character who are far more interested in their own aggrandizement than in helping Jo. The diary is stolen, Jo has help from several people with questionable motives and engages in some pretty far-fetched antics in order to follow some tantalizingly obscure clues.

Ultimately of course, some of the questions surrounding the diary and the last three weeks of Virginia Woolf’s life are resolved, but not all. The author, skillfully evoking a past era of English letters and philosophical thought, has provided a rich and thought-provoking experience.

The novel is written with grace and is rich in atmosphere and history. It is presented as a carefully wrought piece that could be true, and that climaxes in a stunning and most satisfying conclusion.

A STRANGE TALE OF DARK MADNESS

2010-07-23T11:22:00.003-05:00

The Deadly Percheron
By John Franklin Bardin
Millipede Press, 2006
Trade Paper, 207 pages
ISBN:1933618108

John Franklin Bardin was born in 1916 and during his lifetime he wrote ten dark or noir crime novels. He refused to recognize any difference between genres, once stating his belief there are only good and bad novels. According to Jonathan Lethem, who wrote a thoughtful and lengthy foreward to this edition, Bardin once said that Graham Green, Henry Green and Henry James were noticeable influences on his writing. This novel, Bardin’s first, was published in 1946 and it is a very interesting noir novel indeed.

Amnesia and paranoia are the subjects and the characters, all unusual and distinct, sustain a complicated and bizarre plot through an abrupt but eminently satisfying conclusion. This is by no means a perfect novel, and the sixty-year-old style is sometimes disturbingly devoid of emotion. Shocking action is abruptly presented and just as abruptly disposed of. There is a fairly lengthy center section in which the amnesiac who is the protagonist, is established in his new and very much lower class life on Coney Island. Dr. George Matthews, a prominent psychologist, with a practice in midtown, and a comfortable upper class living, is confronted by a new client who arrives with a fresh hibiscus in his hair. For today’s readers, especially those of us who lived through the seventies and eighties of the last century, that is nothing special about a man with a flower in his hair.

We sense something odd and a little off kilter about the good Dr. Matthews. He appears to have more than passing interest in burgeoning sexuality he observes around him and he seems to identify rather too strongly with his new patient, Jacob Blunt. Blunt reveals that while he is wealthy enough to afford the counseling service of Dr. Matthews, he is working for a couple of midtown leprechauns, not Irish, he assures the doctor, American leprechauns. What’s more, he is really anxious to be told that he must be hallucinating, is withdrawing from reality and the events he is witnessing and doing are not real. He is happily losing his mind, which is far better than being trapped in this strange alter world.

The reader is rather suddenly brought up short when the doctor almost eagerly agrees to enter Mr. Blunt’s world. From there we are drawn farther and farther with the doctor, into this weird world of murder, large horses, amnesia and paranoia.

Difficult to locate, perhaps, a novel that is well worth the effort. This edition, from Millipede Press of Colorado, carries a striking cover painting by Salvador Dali.

Connelly scores with tale of Defense Lawyer

2010-07-08T11:24:00.002-05:00

The Lincoln Lawyer
By Michael Connelly
ISBN: 0-446-61645-1
Pub, Warner Books, PB,
516 pages; released, 2006

Mickey Haller is a Los Angeles defense attorney. He’s been at the job long enough to qualify as a pro. Along the way he’s acquired two ex-wives, a daughter, a free-lance investigator, a host of clients and ex-clients, a driver, and three Lincoln Town cars. Hence the title of the novel.

Connelly is an experienced crime novelist with some serious recognition in hand. He’s a fine writer and that’s a good thing. If he was any less talented, this over-long novel would really weigh you down. Compelling is an overused term, but in an odd way it applies. The novel is a long and twisting trail to a stunning conclusion in a way that almost forces the reader to deal with many of Haller’s shibboleths. His slide into near depression as he dissects and excoriates himself over the growing venality of those who try to enforce the law and those who try to manipulate the machine to preserve the lives and rights of the citizens caught up in our adversarial legal system, provides us with a disturbing inside look at the workings of our justice system. The legal system is a machine and the people in it are gears and levers and wheels. About the only people in the machine he treats lightly are the judges. Everyone else come in for some well-aimed cudgels.

Haller is the son of a famous defense lawyer who echoes his father’s concern. He is afraid he won’t recognize true innocence when he hears and sees it. Indeed, it is Connolly’s contention, as expressed in this novel, that is exactly what happens all too often. One might wonder if defense lawyers around the world have this same concern.

Connelly can be counted on to deliver a well-thought-out, strong and realistic novel, which in the fantasy world of Crime Fiction is a real accomplishment.

AN IMAGE OF DEATH

2010-06-10T15:25:00.000-05:00

An Image of Death
By Libby Fischer Hellmann
ISBN: 1590581016
April, 2004
Hard cover from Poisoned Pen Press
285 pages, $24.95

Independent video producer Ellie Foreman is unwillingly trapped between murky political history and a murderous present.

When an unknown individual delivers a video to Ellie Foreman’s front door, she is swept into a complex and dangerous set of circumstances. The video depicts the apparent murder of a young woman. Although Ellie promptly delivers the video to the local police, the scene continues to haunt her.

The pressures of her current contract to produce an upbeat video about a foster children project in Chicago, brings her into contact with members of the cream of Chicago’s Gold Coast, a group Ellie is not entirely comfortable with. Then her relationship with David begins to come apart. Things do not bode well as these disparate elements swirl about Ellie’s existence and the normal life she is trying to maintain for her teen-aged daughter.

Fischer-Hellman has fashioned a story that intriguingly entwines two separate plots, one set in the dark days of the fall of the Soviet Union, and another in the go-go-atmosphere of upscale property development in Chicago. If there is an occasional coincidence and if some of Ellie’s activities with a friendly patrol woman stretch credibility just a bit, there is plenty of gritty dark reality to balance. That she is able to maintain a high level of interest in both, demonstrates her mastery of the genre and her skills as a writer.

RANDOM VICTIM A WINNER

2010-05-06T09:35:00.000-05:00

Random Victim
By Michael A. Black
ISBN: 978-0-8439-5986-4
Pub: Leisure Books, pb, 323 pages,
April, 2008

How did I miss this one when it first came out? I know the author, been following the man’s writing career. He gave me a copy of this book. Still, I only recently got around to reading it. And discovered to my chagrin what I’ve been missing. Delayed a really fine read. Here is Chicago, in all its grit and insouciance, its rhythm and its nasty side.

Chicago is part of Cook County, and they have a sheriff, a law enforcement presence, and all the problems an urban county can absorb. Comes now one Sergeant Francisco Leal, back after a drug bust gone bad, resulting in a grievous wound to his person. Leal, your basic resentful cynic, doesn’t enjoy busting bad guys to see them get off too lightly, and he isn’t always quiet about his feelings, even in front of the judge. Thus, “the Dark Gable Incident,” which gave Leal a certain cache, positive in some circles, but negative in many others.

We get a really good look at the simmering anger that lies under Leal’s professional demeanor and now he has a new assignment. Along with two young, inexperienced detectives and another sergeant, Leal is assigned to a politically sensitive case that is so cold, the detective’s fingers get numb just paging through the files.

Almost a year previously a major player, a judge Miriam Walker, went missing, was found dead some time later, and there were no arrests, no apparent motive, no leads.. A random victim, possibly of a carjacking? A very cold case. Now, elections are coming and the Sheriff is being beaten up over this still unsolved case. A team is assembled in an obvious political ploy, to re-examine the case and Leal is second in command, due primarily to his seniority. The team assembles with the initial understanding that there’s almost no upside to the situation.

The characters are precisely drawn, their actions methodical and deliberate and logical. The action and the tension are low-keyed for a long time, but the writing is so fine, I was drawn inexorably to page after page until the climax exploded off the page. This is one fine police procedural. Ultimately we learn that the assumption of randomness is not the truth.

MN BOOK AWARDS FOR 2010

2010-04-18T06:41:00.001-05:00

As usual, the Minnesota Book Awards night is one of the most impeccable, well organized and well-run events you’ll ever attend. Alayne Hopkins, who with her interepid helpers runs the thing has just done another outstanding job, with the able assistance of the Crowne Plaza Hotel.

Here are the 2010 winners of the Minnesota Book Awards for 2009 books and related publishing accomplishments. This was the 22nd annual awards event.

The Kay Sexton honoree for longstanding and outstanding dedication to the work of fostering writers, reading and other literary activity went to Carolyn Holbrook

The award for an outstanding Minnesota book artist was awarded to Wilber H. Chip Schilling, owner of Indulgence Press.

David Housewright won the Genre fiction award for Jelly’s Gold,” from St. Martin’s Press.

Joy K. Lintelman won the award for General Nonfiction, for her work titled, “I Go to America: Swedish American Women and the life of Mina Anderson,” published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press.

The award for Young People’s Literature went to Kate DiCamillo, for “The Magician’s Elephant,” from Candlewick Press.

Joyce Sidman won the award for Children’s Literature for “Red Sings from Treetops: A Year in Colors,” from Houghton Mifflin Books for Children.

Jude Nutter won for poetry with “I wish I had a Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman.,” University of Notre Dame Press.

A special award for a Minnesota Book went to Cary J. Griffith for a production from Borealis Books, Minnesota Historical Society Press.

In the Memoir and Creative Nonfiction category, Kent Nerburn won for “The Wolf at Twilight: An Indian Elder’s Journey through a land of Ghosts and Shadows,” published by New World Library.

The book voted an award called Peoples Choice went to Dave Kenny for “Honor Bright: A Century of Scouting in Northern Star Council.”

Marlon James offering, The Book of Night Women,” from Riverhead Books/Penguin Group, was the award winner in the Novel and Short Story category.

ARMS AND THE WOMEN, A DENSE THRILLER

2010-04-17T10:04:00.000-05:00

Author: Reginald Hill
Publisher: Delecourt Press
Copyright: 1999, HC, 408 pages
ISBN: 0-385-33279-3

Cover copy calls this a work of intricacy, precision and psychological complexity. I cannot agree more emphatically. Yes, it's another in what one hopes is an endless line of Dalziel and Pascoe mysteries. And yes, it contains powerful, evocative writing.

"Here four men labored with shovels, their faces wrapped with scarves, not for disguise but as barrier against the stench of the decaying bat droppings they disturbed, while high above them a sea of leathery bodies rippled and whispered uneasily as the sound of digging and the glow of bull-lamps drifted up to the natural vault."

Peter Pascoe's wife, Ellie, is hard at work on her book. Yes, she's hoping to be a published author one day. And then, abruptly, inexplicably, there is an abduction attempt on her. Though the attempt is thwarted by Ellie's nimble-mindedness, the act sets in motion a vast, complex investigation and a plot that ranges over wide spaces of the English coastal area and pits D&P against some very nasty characters. Adding to the complications are difficulties over jurisdictional questions affecting the National Interest.

This is a complex story with a large cast of interesting characters and a strong sub-plot. It is an excellent novel by an excellent writer. Hill handles his characters, his plot and his setting with consummate skill. .More than ten years old now, it’s well worth seeking out.