James Oswald: Written in Bones Sunday, May 28 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:48 am

James Oswald’s Inspector McLean series is one of Auntie M’s personal favorites. Written in Bones continues the compelling Edinburgh-based mystery series with its strong protagonist. And yes, the award-winning and nominated author really does raise pedigree Highland cattle and New Zealand Romney sheep on his North East Fife farm. You can see amazing photos of his livestock on his website and Facebook pages.

This case seems to be one without an answer. A young boy walking his dog early in the morning talks of a dragon flying overhead; then a body drops into a tree in the Meadows, Edinburgh’s scenic park. It’s not a crime scene of the faint of heart.

The victim is an ex-cop who had a criminal past, and after serving his time, had reinvented himself as a philanthropist for addicts and other causes. Was his death an accident? Or a message to those left behind?

It will take McLean back to digging out past cases and history, while he comes into contact with someone he thought he’d left behind, just as he’s trying to sort out his personal life.

One of the highlights of the series is the way Oswald brings Edinburgh, and his band of characters, to life. This is gritty stuff with an edge or realism that sharpness the focus. And as always, McLean needs to avoid exacerbating his already-ugly relationship with most of his superiors, as he doesn’t always play by the book–perhaps never.

Another outstanding entry in the series. Highly recommended.

 

Richard Montanari: The Killing Room Sunday, May 21 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:00 am

This was the first of the long-running Byrne and Balzao novel’s that Auntie M has had the pleasure to read, but it certainly won’t the last. She loves when she finds a new series to dig into, and she will now go back and read what leads up to the action in Richard Montanari’s newest, The Killing Room.

Set in Philadelphia neighborhoods, from its highest to its lowest, an abandoned church becomes the setting for the team’s latest murder. Despite its brutality, neither detective is prepared when a second body and then a third is found, also in deconsecrated churches, all in different methods of horrific brutality causing the death of the victim.

For the seasoned detectives, the crimes are more than disturbing and hit them on a personal level in different ways. It only adds to Byrne’s stress that he’s taken on trying to be a kind of mentor to troubled young teen.

With an obvious killer seemingly ahead of them at each step, the two homicide detectives will need all of their smarts to outwit the chilling killer. The ties to the Church and theology are fascinating and an important clue will come to them from an unlikely source.

The interplay between senior partner Kevin Byrne, living alone with his daughter at college, and the younger Jessica Balzano, married to a detective and with a young family at home, is a highlight of the series where two professionals who have each other’s back can exist in well-practiced teamwork that allows them to mine each other’s strengths.

Readers who haven’t discovered this series, like Auntie M, will find themselves hunting for the previous novels on the strength of this absorbing story.

 

Julia Dahl: Conviction Wednesday, May 17 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed Auntie M Writes Crime 12:43 am

Megan Abbott calls Julia Dahl’s third Rebekah Roberts novel “. . . a thrilling, utterly absorbing crime novel” with good reason.

The young intrepid journalist becomes intrigued when a prisoner in jail for over two decades sends a letter: “I didn’t do it.”

With her job at the tabloid newspaper frustrating her, especially after she’s been passed over for a well-deserved promotion, Rebekah starts to investigate DeShawn Perkins’ claim that he did not kill the foster parents who had taken him in, nor his little foster sister.

What she finds will stand his conviction on its ear as an eyewitness changes her testimony–but will the woman have the courage to admit this in court? Her digging also brings her into conflict with her newly discovered mother and the cop who has been on her side in previous investigations in the Hasidic community.

While part of the history leading up to the Crown Heights riots and this particular murder are told from the viewpoint back in the early 90’s, the chapters in current time as Rebekah investigates will bring her face to face with a difficult decision of her own: who does she owe allegiance to–the people she loves, or the truth?

With a fine eye for reality, Dahl brings another story with layers and layers of humanity in it to light. Highly recommended.

She

 

Lisa Scottoline: One Perfect Lie Sunday, May 14 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 2:37 pm

Lisa Scootline’s thrillers are classics of the genre, and she returns with One Perfect Lie, where things are not as they seem from the outset.

Chris Brennan is the perfect teacher to step into the role of teaching government in the high school, as well as coaching assistant for the small town of Central Valley, PA. It is to Scottoline’s credit that the real purpose of his application is hidden from readers at first, as everything he’s told his new principal is a lie.

And lying is what Chris is particularly good at.

Small town life springs alive as we meet three very different families and the secrets they hide. Chris has a hidden agenda, and his classes and his coaching are set up to allow him to find which young student he can bring on side–but to what purpose? What is the dark reason behind his actions that drives him, and how will that affect these three young men, and the entire town?

The baseball team is important to this community and to these three families in particular. There’s the surgeon’s wife whose spoiled son drives a BMW to school while she indulges in too many G&Ts; the new widow whose talented pitcher son needs the scholarship he’s after, just as he searches for a new father figure; and the single mom whose shy son, also talented, may allow him to be easily influenced by darker forces. Which one is most at risk? And from whom?

The pace keeps ratcheting up as the book progresses, until there’s an almost cinematic climax, worthy of the big screen and an action movie. But there’s also heart and emotion that allows readers inside the lives and minds of the characters, and that’s a winning combination, even as the anticipation escalates. A fast-paced, satisfying read.

 

Stephen Booth: Secrets of Death Sunday, Apr 23 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:26 am

It might be tough for some authors to keep coming up with an original story when they approach writing their 16th installment in a series. But Stephen Booth manages to keep reader’s attention with his creative plot in his newest Cooper and Fry mystery, Secrets of Death.

With Diane Fry in Nottingham, re-evaluating her relationship with her sister and working on a triple homicide, Ben Cooper as DI in Derbyshire’s E Division keeps trying to get back out on the streets he loves. In his new cottage, hoping to start afresh, he’s looking for a pattern in a spate of recent suicides in the Peak District, just in time for tourist season.

With no way to predict where the next body will be found, it’s an unlucky task before Ben and his team, who will find a surprising new member before the case is solved.

Then he finds a clue, a black business card from “Secrets of Death,” and realizes someone is encouraging depressed people to commit suicide right in his backyard. It gets personal when a body is found on his home farm, upping the urgency.

The landscape of the area is lovingly defined as the bodies continue to mount, and when it seems Fry’s case might be connected to Ben’s after all, and the two are forced to work together once again.

A highly satisfying entry in this series.

 

Sarah Hilary: Quieter Than Killing Sunday, Apr 16 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:46 am

Sarah Hilary’s fourth in her Marnie Rome series, Quieter than Killing, is one fellow author Jane Casey calls ” . . . a fine addition to a superb series.”

Severe winter cold is affecting everyone in London, making seemingly random attacks on victims unrelated, until a pattern starts to appear. Could they have a vigilante seeking justice on their hands?

With DS Noah Jake as her right-hand man, Marnie becomes intrinsically involved when the family home she’s rented is broken into and ransacked, her tenants beaten up, and the only thing taken was a childhood memory that Marnie had lost sight of.

Someone has decided to make this deeply personal, and for Marnie, that involves going to the prison the face the man who murdered her parents.

Who is pulling the strings here? What does Noah’s brother’s old gang have to do with it all? And when a child goes missing, why has no one reported his disappearance?

In a series of remarkable scenes, the compelling plot unfolds as Marne and Jake embark on their toughest investigation yet. Hilary’s characters are terribly human, and the story is filled with deep emotions on all sides of the equation.

An original story, with hard, gripping scenes, this one’s a real knockout. Highly recommended

 

Steve Berry: The Lost Order Friday, Apr 14 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read Auntie M Writes Crime 12:30 am

Steve Berry’s Cotton Malone series have a huge following for good reason: his complex and well-researched plots, mingled with real historic facts and woven into a fictional action adventure story that just doens’t quit.

This time in The Lost Order, Malone is hunting for a treasure trove of hidden gold, hidden by a secret organization that once counted Malone’s own great-great-grandfather among its members.

Despite Anngus Adams being a Confederate spy ring the Civil War, Malone soon discovers that his group, The Knights of the Golden Circle, are still operating today.

With several disparate people succumbing to the lure of the gold, its secret is something people will kill to protect. Filled with a race across the country, changing landscapes and bits of clues. Another stunner from a master of the action hero adventure that combines reality with fiction.

Readers should be interested to know that the author and his wife co-founded History Matters, a non-profit organization that to date has raised over $900,000 or the preservation and conservation of historic sites.

 

Lori Rader-Day: The Day I Died Tuesday, Apr 11 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:54 am

Anthony Award and Mary Higgins Clark Award winner Lori Rader-Day returns with her most captivating thriller yet in The Day I Died.

Anna Winger has developed a life for herself and her 13 yr-old son, analyzing handwriting for a variety of purposes, whether it’s for someone evaluating a romantic hopeful, or for a business looking for the best employee to hire.

She also has a habit of leaving towns quickly, and not forming attachments, leaving her past domestic abuse behind in order to save her son’s life.

In her newest town, she’s asked to analyze a note left at a murder scene that involves the kidnapping of a child. While the local sheriff barely tolerates her work, he soon admits she may hold the only chance he has to find the kidnapped child.

Anna will face the scrutiny of many in the town, as well as the mixed reaction she gets at the police department she’s trying to help. Who is her friend and who is her foe? And her bottom line always is: who can she really trust?

And then Anna’s own son goes missing, and suddenly all bets are off as she must explore every option and go anywhere she can to try to rescue her son and another small child.

A totally absorbing thriller, filled with realistic characters and a complex story.

 

Wilbur Smith: War Cry Sunday, Apr 9 2017 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner and historical saga Auntie M Writes Crime 12:18 am

Wilbur Smith’s Courtney family historical thrillers are so popular due to their complex plots and adventure focus. The newest is War Cry , set in the 1920s near the end of World War I onward.

The setting starts in Africa, Smith’s own homeland, but Leon Courtney’s daughter Saffron has left Kenya to study in Oxford, England. Another young man affected by history is Gerhard von Meerbach, the younger brother of the heir to an industrial fortune.

When the brothers find themselves on opposite sides of the Nazi question, it threatens everything Gerhard thought he knew about his family.

And into this is thrust Saffron and Leon and the spies and traitors who will cross their paths.

Filled with dramatic intrigue yet based on real events, this is a complex plot that feels made to be on the big screen, with its sweeping storylines and vistas.

 

Sally Andrews: The Satanic Mechanic: A Tannie Marie Mystery Tuesday, Mar 28 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:29 am

Sally Andrews created a most unusual protagonist in Tannie Maria in last year’s Recipes for Love and Murder. The sequel is just as captivating–perhaps even more so–with The Satanic Mechanic, filled with eccentric characters, a budding romance, and an interesting mystery. Set in South Africa’s Klein Karoo, the landscape becomes a character all its own. Here’s the author on a bench in the Karoo:

Photo by Andrea Nixon

Mixing Tannie Maria’s recipes with her love and advice column, the woman uses food as a means to help others solve their issues for the local Gazette. The South African Klein Karoo comes alive under Andrews talented writing, as Maria inexplicably finds herself investigating another murder, to the chagrin of Henk Kannemeyer, the detective with whom she is trying to build a relationship.

When Slimkat, a local Bushman activist, is poisoned in her presence, Tannie Maria feels a responsibility to become involved, despite Henk’s warning. She’s seen something in his eyes, something primal that speaks to her as much as it warns her. She feels compelled to find his killer.

At the same time, flashbacks of the abuse from her dead husband, and the secret she holds surrounding his demise, threaten any intimacy she tries to achieve with Henk. Maria soon becomes part of a counseling group for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder sufferers, run by a man known as the Satanic Mechanic.

How the counseling group, a second murder, and Slimkat’s murder are related, plus how the counseling helps Maria to heal, form the prongs of this most delightful murder mystery. Maria’s inclination is to deal with life’s highs and lows with food, and her descriptions of the meals and sweets she devises add a lovely visceral texture to the book. She’s also in touch with the animals that surround her, sometimes to interesting effect. This is a common occurrence when trying to navigate the roads of the Karoo and a herd of cows have their own idea:


Photo: Andrea Nixon

Andrews, who lives on a Klein Karoo nature preserve most of the year, also brings the landscape and its creatures to life, imbuing them both with a sense of wonder and connection to Maria. Here she is with a friendly leopard.

Photo: Bowen Boshier

Thankfully, Andrews also includes many recipes of the dishes Maria prepares, even describing how a hotbox works. Readers will end the book feeling they wish they knew Sally Andrews AND Tannie Maria.

Photo: Andrea Nixon

This inventive mystery series is one readers won’t want to miss. Highly recommended.

 

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