Val McDermid: The Vanishing Point Sunday, Nov 11 2012 

Award winning novelist and great read and mystery to die for , , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:07 am

Prolific Scots writer Val McDermid is back with a stand alone that will grab you from page one and keep you flipping until its surprising and eventful resolution. If you aren’t a McDermid fan by now, despite Auntie M expounding this gifts through reviews of her several series and excellent stand alones, now is the time to meet her acquaintance.

The Vanishing Point opens with UK ghost writer Stephanie Harker and her adoptive son trying to enter the US for a much-needed vacation.

The metal in Stephanie’s leg always sets off the security alarm, and she’s prepped young Jimmy to mind their luggage whilst she’s escorted to the clear cubicle to await her pat-down.

Then a kidnapper, disguised as a TSA agent, leads Jimmy away, and Stephanie’s attempts to rescue him are seen by the real TSA agents as an attempt to breach security. She’s detained over her protests and ultimately tasered, helpless to prevent Jimmy being kidnapped as they disappear into the crowded airport.

Once the situation is finally explained, valuable time has been lost, but FBI agent Vivian McKuras soon realizes this is a highly unusual situation, one heightened by the confusing first moments which have allowed a kidnapper to spirit Jimmy away. The boy’s birth mother was the reality star Scarlett, who gave Stephanie custody of her only child when she was dying of cancer, believing the writer would be the best person to provide Jimmy a stable life after her death.

Scotland Yard detective Nick Nikolaides, who knows Stephanie and her complicated background, investigates in England. Both Stephanie and Scarlett have had negative relationships with men in their pasts, and Nick and Stephanie are all too aware of the various ways Jimmy’s abduction could turn out very badly.

This compelling thriller touches every parent on a visceral level, while the possible causes for the kidnapping multiply as McDermid has Stephanie explain the back story to the FBI agent.

The reader follows the timeline of Stephanie’s relationship with Scarlett and their blossoming friendship that led to Stephanie being named as Jimmy’s legal guardian. There are enough players and possibilities for suspects to chose from as their story unfolds: the boy’s pampered, drug-addicted father’s family; a stranger after ransom from the wealthy Scarlett’s estate; or even a demented fan who might have wanted a piece of Scarlett.

When the truth of the situation is made evident, this well-plotted thriller will have you in awe of McDermid’s talents to keep readers on the edge of their seats. Her powerful and unexpected climax is nothing short of a writer’s dream, which is why McDermid recently received the Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing.

 

Ann Cleeves: Silent Voices Sunday, Nov 4 2012 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed Auntie M Writes Crime 12:57 am

Anne Cleeves marvelous four Shetland Island mysteries, previously reviewed by Auntie M, are joined by the fourth in her Vera Stanhope series. Silent Voices is Cleeves at her best, with the kind of involved plot that revolves around relationships we’ve come to expect  from this talented and prolific author, whose George and Molly books, Inspector Ramsey series, and several stand-alones rank high with the best of British crime writers.

Vera is an unlikely heroine, living with the ghost of her dead father in his house, overweight and lonely, but with an instinctive intuition that has made her a top detective.

This time she’s reluctantly following her doctor’s advice to lose weight, slogging away in the pool early mornings before work at the Willows, a former grand hotel showing its age, but still with pretensions. The Willows had been  taken over by a chain, who put the health club in its basement to increase its profits. Vera hits the steam room, sharing it with a slender, long-legged woman who looks utterly at ease, head thrown back in complete relaxation. Vera tries to copy the relaxed pose without success. Then as the steam clears a bit, she realizes the subject of her regard is dead, strangled in the steam room where she’d come for a bit of relaxation.

Vera swings into official mode, calling her sergeant, Joe Ashworth, to the scene, cordoning off the steam room. The woman is identified as Jenny Lister, aged forty-one, head social worker in the area for fostering and adoptions. She leaves behind a daughter, Hannah, eighteen, and host of unanswered questions.

With her team interviewing the Willows staff, Vera and Joe try to unearth a motive for the murder. They find a connection to a case Jenny had worked on that had led to the death of young child. Soon it emerges that the caseworker of that same boy has moved to the village.

Cleeves does a fine job of illustrating Joe’s struggle to keep his home life, with a wife and young children, on an even keel as the murder investigation heats up–and so does Vera’s joy at being involved in a murder. Death, and finding the killer, brings Vera a surge of renewed vigor that some might find distasteful but that bring Vera the feeling of worthiness she craves.

There are plenty of characters here to choose from, some with motives clear and others fuzzy, but things unfold in what seems a natural way as Vera pursues the killer. And then a young man is murdered just as a young mother and her child go missing, and suddenly the stakes are upped.

This series is being serialized on ITV3, and stars Brenda Blethyn and has twice been nominated for two Dagger awards.  Cleeves received the 2006 Duncan Lawrie Dagger for Best Crime Novel for Raven Black.

 

 

 

 

Laura Lippman: And When She Was Good Sunday, Oct 21 2012 

Award winning novelist and great read , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:50 am

In an author’s note, Laura Lippman explains the genesis of the protagonist of And When She Was Good, Heloise Lewis, a character she first created in 2001 and wrote about years later in two short stories.

Now Lippman has taken the time to explore Heloise and her beginnings and her today, alternating her back story for a good part of the novel, so readers can understand this woman who is meticulously organized, financially comfortable, and oh, yes, a prostitute who runs an exclusive agency.

But Heloise so much more: she’s a successful businesswoman who protects her workers; she’s a self-educated reader with a fondness for history; and she’s fiercely protective of her son, Scott, whose biological father languishes in prison and is unaware of his child.

Despite her insistence on strict compartmentalization in her life between work and home, which has left her without close friends, Heloise finds the lines starting to blur. Her vice squad protector and friend is retiring and will no longer have her back. Then an employee or two break her firm rules. When the wisp of possibility that her son’s father may be released from prison, the carefully wrought life she has constructed is in danger. Heloise is not a perfect person, but she is one with an intelligent, thinking mind and a finely-honed instinct for survival.

Val Deluca has only one way to deal with people who have lied or become a threat to him: he has them killed. And it’s  only a matter of time before the former pimp and casual murderer discovers he is in prison in the first place because Heloise betrayed him.

It is to Lippman’s credit that she is not only able to satisfactorily explain how Helen Lewis became Heloise Lewis, in a direct and unflinching way, but she manages to create a tough and resilient character you will find yourself rooting for as the pages turn.

The New York Times has compared Lippman to England’s Ruth Rendell: “Ms. Lippman writes like a warmer-blooded American Ruth Rendell, keenly observant and giving a faintly spooky charge to every stray detail.”

 

 

 

Tana French: Broken Harbor Sunday, Oct 14 2012 

Award winning novelist and great read and mystery to die for , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:47 am

Auntie M is huge fan of Tana French’s novels set in Ireland, starting with Into the Woods, followed by The Likeness and the stunning Faithful Place. Now she’s back with Broken Harbor, and her novels get stronger and more compelling with each offering. In a recent essay on craft, French described her husband not allowing her to use dream sequences in her novels too much. She doesn’t need dreams; the world she creates is startling enough.

Mick Kennedy is a a top Murder Squad detective who’s earned the nickname “Scorcher” for his devotion to the job and its victims. He lands a tragic but high profile murder case on the half-deserted development now called Brianstown, one of the many high-end neighborhoods that have fallen with the down-turned economy, leaving their few owners to cope with shoddy construction and broken promises.

Mick brings along his new partner, Richie, a rookie detective on his first case, thrilled to learn from the master. But before it was Brianstown, the area was known as Broken Harbor, and Mick has his own disturbing and poignant memories of the area that will haunt him almost as much as the scene they find.

Patrick Spain is dead; his wife, Jenny, lies in intensive care. Their blood splatters the downstairs kitchen area. Upstairs, the Spain’s young son and daughter are found dead in their beds. The scene is shocking and disturbing.

What appears to be an easy case to solve quickly proves to be one of the most tangled and difficult of Mick’s career. There are unexplained things in the house: smashed holes in walls, with baby monitor cameras pointing at them; files have been erased from the Spain’s computer. And then Jenny’s sister Fiona tells the detectives her sister has been afraid of an intruder who slipped past their locks and alarms and helped himself to food from their refrigerator.

As he juggles teaching Richie about true detecting and not jumping to conclusions, Mick’s life is complicated by his younger sister, Dina. Her mental illness escalates and barges into his life and his thoughts, bringing back the memories of his family’s last summer at Broken Harbor. Adding to the layers are Mick’s new relationship with Richie. Partnerships are built on trust. But he doesn’t know Richie well enough to trust him–yet.

French’s sense of setting is acute; she brings all the senses to her descriptions and adds nuances that fill the atmosphere of the book with power and emotion. This is as gripping a novel as Auntie M has read this year, a mix of French’s usual police procedural and psychological thriller, created with realistic characters and situations, plot lines that weave and warp, and with a sense of setting so powerful you will feel as if you’ve been to Broken Harbor.

 

 

Donis Casey: The Wrong Hill to Die On: An Alafair Tucker Mystery Sunday, Oct 7 2012 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:32 am

Please welcome Donis Casey, who will tell us about her newest  Alafair Tucker Mystery

The Wrong Hill to Die On: An Alafair Tucker Mystery. 

            Alafair Tucker is a woman in her early forties who lives with her husband, Shaw, and their ten lively children on a prosperous horse farm in eastern Oklahoma during the booming mid-1910s. How, you may ask, does a woman like Alafair go about solving mysteries?  After all, this is one busy woman, and the truth is that she is not at all interested in getting involved with local episodes of violence and mayhem. But when you have ten children ranging in age from early twenties to infancy, somebody is always getting himself or herself in trouble, and needs her mother to get her out of it.  Alafair may not always know exactly what to do, but you can bet she’ll do something. She’s not one to stand by and let anything threaten a child of hers.

When you begin writing the sixth crime novel featuring the same protagonist, you need to shake things up a bit if you want to keep the series fresh and interesting.   After all, how many people can you kill in one small town in Oklahoma before people start to wonder if the residents are crazy for living there at all?*

Nineteen-fifteen had been a tough year for the Tuckers, and 1916 hadn’t started out all that well, either. It had been a tough winter, and Alafair and her husband Shaw deserved a vacation. So I decided to send them on a trip to sunny Arizona to visit Alafair’s witty, brilliant, and beautiful sister, Elizabeth.

But once I started writing, it didn’t take me long to realize that this trip wasn’t going to work out as planned. In the first place, Alafair didn’t want to go.  A daughter was getting married soon, another having a birthday, a son going back to college. After the awful events the family endured in the previous novel, Crying Blood, Alafair simply wanted life to get back to normal.  How, then, was I going to persuade her to go to Arizona?

During my research I discovered that the end of 1915 and the beginning of 1916 had been the rainiest months in decades, accompanied by severe flooding all over the Western United States.  Therefore, a lot of flu and bronchitis was going around that winter.  Handily for my story line, at the turn of the Twentieth Century, Arizona was known as a place for people with lung problems to come and be cured by the desert air.

Alafair may not want to go to Arizona, but her daughter Blanche, only ten years old, cannot shake the bronchitis that has plagued the family all winter. Her best chance to get well is to spend some time in a dry climate. So Alafair and Shaw bundle their sick child onto the train and make a nightmare trip–a thousand miles of diversions and detours due to damaged and washed-out track–from Oklahoma to Arizona.

Yet as soon as they arrive on a bright, seventy-two degree March day, Blanche begins to improve.  Alafair is overjoyed to see her sister Elizabeth again, and for added excitement, a Hollywood motion picture company is shooting a movie right on the streets of Tempe!

But no matter how wonderful it seems at first, all is not well in sunny Arizona.  Elizabeth’s marriage is falling apart, tensions are high between the Anglo and Latino communities following Pancho Villa’s murderous raid on Columbus, New Mexico, and Alafair suspects her sister is involved in an illegal operation to smuggle refugees from the Mexican Revolution out of Sonora and into the U.S.

On top of it all, here lies Bernie Arruda, on his back in a ditch, eyes wide open, seeing nothing on this side of the veil. Just the night before, he had been singing Mexican love songs at the party in Elizabeth’s back yard, his black eyes flashing as he winked at the ladies. He had been such a charmer! Or had he?  He may have romanced half the married women in town.  Or he could have been a spy for Pancho Villa.  Or was he a defector from Villa’s army?  Was it he who hid the money that rained down on the spectators when the movie company blew an abandoned building sky high? As Alafair is about to discover, there are a lot of people who have reason to want Bernie dead.

Alafair’s trip to Arizona didn’t turn out to be the restful get-away I had envisioned for her.  But it was quite an adventure.

___________________

*The fact is, if your book is set in 1910s Oklahoma, you can realistically kill off as many people as you want.  Everybody was armed and dangerous.

Donis Casey is the author of six Alafair Tucker Mysteries: The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, Hornswoggled, The Drop Edge of Yonder, The Sky Took Him, Crying Blood, and The Wrong Hill to Die On (Oct 2012).  Donis has twice won the Arizona Book Award and has been a finalist for the Willa Award and the Oklahoma Book Award. Her first novel, The Old Buzzard Had It Coming, was named an Oklahoma Centennial Book. Donis is a former teacher, academic librarian, and entrepreneur. She lives in Tempe, AZ, with her husband, poet Donald Koozer. The Wrong Hill to Die On is available from Poisoned Pen Press in October, 2012. Readers can enjoy the first chapter of each book on her web site at www.doniscasey.com.

 

Judy Alter: Trouble in a Big Box Sunday, Sep 9 2012 

Award winning novelist and great read and Series not to be missed Auntie M Writes Crime 12:16 am

 

An award-winning novelist, Judy Alter has written fiction for adults and young adults, primarily about women in the nineteenth-century American West. Judy’s western fiction has been recognized with awards from the Western Writers of America, the Texas Institute of Letters, and the National Cowboy Museum and Hall of Fame. She has been honored with the Owen Wister Award for Lifetime Achievement by WWA and inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame at the Fort Worth Public Library.

Now she has turned her attention to contemporary cozy mysteries. Trouble in a Big Box, the third Kelly O’Connell mystery, follows Skeleton in a Dead Space and No Neighborhood for Old Women, which received good reviews and popular enthusiasm. Welcome, Judy!

 

 

In Trouble in a Big Box, Kelly O’Connell has her hands full: new husband Mike Shandy is badly injured in an automobile accident that kills a young girl, developer Tom Lattimore wants to build a big-box grocery store in Kelly’s beloved Fairmount neighborhood, and someone is stalking Kelly.

Tom Lattimore pressures her to support the big box, and when his pressure turns to threats, Kelly activates a neighborhood coalition to fight the project. She also tries to find out who is stalking her and why, and her sleuthing puts her in danger that terrifies Mike.

But he isboth powerless to stop her and physically unable to protect her and her young daughters from Lattimore’s threats or the stalker. After their house is smoke-bombed and Kelly survives an amateur attack on her life, she comes close to an unwanted trip to Mexico from which she might never return.

 

Kelly is fighting to save her neighborhood and its old-time small-town atmosphere and historic buildings, to keep from displacing a lot of mom-and-pop businesses. But she’s fighting a larger battle, though she doesn’t realize it. We’ve seen it played out across the country for years: Wal-Mart moves in and the small businesses in a town are forced to close; syndicates take over newspapers until there are only a few if any locally-owned papers in major cities; chains force independent bookstores to close. What do we value? Big business or the individual? Of course I didn’t realize all this when I wrote. I simply wanted to involve Kelly in a new adventure and tell a good story.

 

I’m reminded of Dorothy Johnson who wrote A Man Called Horse, The Hanging Tree, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, among many others (you have to be a bit old to remember). Dorothy once wrote me that she was astounded at all the symbolism critics—and teachers—found in her work, because she didn’t put it there. Maybe we’re all that way, even though our goal is simply to be good storytellers.

 

                                                                                                                                             

 

 


 

 

 

  Follow Judy on Facebook (at https://www.facebook.com/#!/judy.alter) or  http://www.judyalter.com or her two blogs at http://www.judys-stew.blogspot.com or http://potluckwithjudy.blogspot.com. Her mysteries are available in print or as e-books, and some of her western fiction is in e-book form.Judy lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with her two dogs and frequently sees her four children and seven grandchildren.

 

 

 

 

Wendy Corsi Staub: Nightwatcher Sunday, Aug 26 2012 

Award winning novelist and mystery to die for and new series , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:08 am

Today I received an incredibly haunting book trailer from New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub for her upcoming release of NIGHTWATCHER.  

NIGHTWATCHER Official Book Trailer

Staub is the New York Times bestselling author whose thrillers have a wide following. This is the first installment of a trilogy featuring Allison Taylor, a sympathetic heroine from the Midwest determined to overcome her start in life and conquer New York’s fashion world.

The book opens on September 10th, so the setup couldn’t be more powerful right in the opening pages. What happens after the shock of 9/11 spins a new angle on those horrendous days, when a murderer is cut loose on a town already trying to comprehend the enormous tragedy they are living through.

Allison has few friends but does talk to several renters in her apartment building: her upstairs neighbor, Kristina, and a young man, Mack MacKenna, whose insomnia finds them sharing the front stoop before the events that will change everyone’s lives so dramatically.

Mack’s wife perishes in the disaster, and as Allison reaches out to help him cope, Kristina is found savagely murdered.  Allison’s carefully wrought existence in her adopted city falls apart even more than the buildings that have crashed to the ground. As more women die at the hands of a mad serial killer, it becomes apparent that Allison is the only one who can identify the killer. With her life in danger, Allison tries to help catch this crazed madman, even as she realizes she could be his next victim.

Staub evokes the atmosphere of 9/11 in a vivid and powerful way and uses the events of that day as the catalyst of this new thriller.  She captures the shock, paranoia, and tension of New York City as she weaves this suspenseful thriller into the  enormous ongoingdisaster.  Suspense Magazine called it, “Suspenseful, powerful, tense and—as usual—wonderfully written with an ending that will leave you guessing.  A great read!”

Getting inside the minds of many of the key players broadens the action and put the reader right into the thick of  the tension and escalating terror. The action never lets up and the results are startling. There’s plenty here to keep you turning pages, and the ending will leave you waiting for the next installment, SLEEPWALKER, coming this fall.

 

John Harvey: Good Bait Sunday, Aug 19 2012 

Award winning novelist and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed , , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:44 am

Auntie M is a huge John Harvey fan, and he doesn’t disappoint in his newest Good Bait, teaming up characters from previous novels in a winning way with overlapping storylines.

DCI Karen Shields heads the Homicide & Serious Crime Team, always working a multitude of cases and hoping for a result. Shields is still grieving over the death of her father and realizing her work commitments have left her with only one good friend. When the body of a teenaged boy is discovered on Hampstead Heath, their investigation leads to a connection with the small Eastern European country of Moldova. At first drugs or illegal trading is suspected as the impetus for the boy’s death.

Miles away on the western coast in Cornwall, DI Trevor Cordon is nearing retirement, which can’t come quickly enough. Passed by for promotions by colleagues with more modern attitudes, he’s part of the old guard and set in his ways. Then the mother of an young woman he’d taken under his wing in the past appears on his doorstep, begging him to look into her daughter’s disappearance. Cordon had tried to put Letitia on a different path from her mother’s life of drug addiction and prostitution. Cordon is soon drawn to London after the mother’s unexpected death, where he enlists the aid of former colleague Jack Kiley, now a private detective.

The working methods, personalities and private lives of Shields and Cordon couldn’t be more different, but the one thing they have in common is that both feel like outsiders. We feel their loneliness in their private lives as we follow the complicated path of Shields’ many cases and the thread of Cordon’s hunt for Letitia.

International money laundering, drug operations, and people trafficking are all involved, along with a heavy dose of Cordon’s music. It is the contrast of Shield’s aggressive and exhausting police work against Cordon’s melancholy and slower investigation that will result in an overlapping link in both cases that will lead to the ultimate resolution.
Harvey manages to weave in socio-economic issues by illustrating how they impact on police work without hitting the reader over the head with these issues. One of Harvey’s greatest strengths is his ability to develop his characters on a rich but subtle level, and this in inherent in all of his works, including the Charlie Resnick and Frank Elder novels.

This is a skilled craftsman writing at the top of his game, and any reader who enjoys a well-crafted police procedural illustrating different detecting methods will enjoy Good Bait.

 

Mark Billingham: Good as Dead Sunday, Aug 12 2012 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed , , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:48 am

A word first on television made from novels:

Mark Billingham’s novels include a stand-alone, In the Dark, and the DI Tom Thorne series, a character Lee Child has compared to Morse and Rebus. Thorne is now a television series in the UK and Auntie M has seen each of the three-parters that illustrate Billingham’s first two in the series, Sleepyhead and Scaredy Cat. Actor David Morrissey, also executive producer, read a Thorne novel and enjoyed it; then was pleasantly surprised to read he was exactly the actor whom the author pictured playing his detective inspector one, who plays close to, and sometimes, over the line.

The teleplays follow the the original story-lines closely, with the exception of a few casting changes, as in making Thorne’s superior, Brigstocke, a woman. His best friend, pathologist Phil Hendricks is described in the books as a tall, bald, heavily pierced and tattooed Mancunian. In the series, he’s aptly played by shorter Irishman, Aidan Gillen, whose head full of bushy dark hair nonetheless conveys the spirit of the original character as drawn by Billingham. But these are small changes.

What’s in full force is the power of the stories Billingham originally told, and Morrissey’s ability to get Tom Thorne’s ambivalent character just right. Here’s Gillen on the left and Morrissey on the right.

More of the novels are planned for future filming by Sky1; check the local satellite listings in your area.

Now on to the newest Thorne novel, Good as Dead (The Demands in the US).

Change is on Tom Thorne’s mind after upheaval in his personal life. He’s sold his beloved but not fixable old BMW for an updated model he’s still getting used to; he’s put his flat on the market; and he’s even considering a job transfer.

Then he finds himself called for by name, requested by a shopkeeper who has barricaded himself and two hostages into his news shop.

Thorne remembers the man’s name from a prior case involving manslaughter and the man’s son, who received an unusually long sentence in prison for what seemed to be manslaughter in self-defense.

The hostages are a cowardly banker and a DI from the Child Protection Unit whom Thorne remembers from a former case.

Helen Weeks’ partner was killed when she was pregnant with her son, now eight months old. Both hostages are in Amin Akhtar’s shop when harassment by local thugs causes him to snap, a classic case of being in the wrong place at just the wrong time.

Yet Amin has a specific point to holding these two by gunpoint. They are the leverage he needs for Thorne to investigate the apparent suicide of the his son in prison.

Convinced the youth wouldn’t have taken his own life, Amin tasks Thorne with unraveling the secrets behind his son’s death.

The threads Thorne pulls will have unexpected and surprising twists, in the way that Billingham does so well, as Thorne puts his career on the line to find the truth. Time is against him as hours and then days pass as he tries to find the truth about what happened at the youth institution housing Amin’s son.

And in the end, not everyone will walk out of that shop alive.

Billingham’s novels are complex and compelling, filled with with the right amount of psychological insight into his very human character’s mental state. The tension is taut and Billingham manages to keep getting better with each novel. The can’t come fast enough.

 

Mary Daheim and James Runcie: Polar Opposites Sunday, Jul 29 2012 

Award winning novelist and great read and new series and Series not to be missed , , , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:49 am

This week Auntie M brings you a repeat performer AND she introduces a new series from across the pond.

Seattle native Mary Daheim’s newest in hardcover from William Morrow is The Wurst is Yet to Come. It continues her hallmark bed-and-breakfast mystery series filled with word play and humor.

This time Judith and her cousin Renie travel by train over the mountains to man a booth featuring B&B’s at Oktoberfest in Little Bavaria.

Every German association you can think of has been put into the town for the event, from lederhosen and oompah bands to sauerbraten and wursts. There’s even a life-szied dancing bear running around the streets.

Judith is stinging from criticism from the state B&B association, threatening to pull her license due to the number of bodies that have piled up at her B&B, Hillside Manor. When she enlists Renie and heads off to Little Bavaria, she’s hoping to avoid murder and mayhem and bring new business to her inn.

But things kick off decidedly differently from her plans. In the middle of the opening celebration, which includes a band of German dancers, the town’s beloved patron, Dietrick Wessler is murdered.

Despite her best efforts to avoid being involved, Judith finds her reputation has preceded her. When the local police chief, a man with a huge appetite and dubious investigating skills, begs her to help solve the murder, Judith knows she can’t refuse.

Then she finds herself also investigating a death from the previous summer, and amidst a bewildering number of locals thrown in with the various people showing up for Oktoberfest, she agrees to help out, but with one twist:  Renie will pose as the sleuth to keep her reputation from becoming even more tarnished.

She’ll meet more of Wessler’s extended family than she wants to, and come to know the menu of the local pancake house inside and out as she tries to juggle her hours at the association booth while using her investigative prowess without calling attention to herself.

Whether this works out or not is half the fun for fans of the series in this 27th offering, who will enjoy the goofy turns of events and pure brain candy as a murderer is unmasked.

Next we have The Grantchester Mysteries from the artistic director of the Bath Literature Festival, James Runcie, author of four other novels, and with a resume that includes stints as a theater director, award-winning filmmaker, and scripts for several BBC television films. Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death takes a leap to Cambridge and a trip back to 1953, where Runcie introduces his unlikely sleuth: the Canon Sidney Chambers, vicar of Grantchester, an unusual detective at first glance, whose guilty pleasure is an affection for jazz and warm beer.

The 32 year-old bachelor, an unconventional clergyman at best, also has an unconventional friend: Inspector Geordie Keating, whom he meets every Thursday night at the pub for an evening of mutual relaxation–until the night Keating convinces Sidney to help him investigate the suicide of  Cambridge solicitor Stephen Staunton.

Sidney can go where Keating cannot, and that includes talking at length with the dead man’s wife, partner and secretary. He also finds the company of the new widow, the German Hildegard Staunton, an accomplished pianist, to be surprisingly soothing. Sidney’s own gentle manner and unassuming ways soon lead him to unearth the truth behind Staunton’s tragic death, but this is only the first of a string of crimes where he will find his tact and position called into play to use in an investigation.

Sidney’s detecting skills will try the patience of his housekeeper and his own conscience, as he continues his church duties and takes tutorials at his old college, Corpus Christi, while defining what a vicar should be for himself and for his parish family.

A jewelry theft will occur right under his nose at a New Year’s Eve dinner party; the murder of the daughter of a former mob boss at a jazz club will find him closely involved; a death which may be a mercy killing will find him questioning ethics; a case of art forgery will bring involve him and bring danger to his friend, Amanda, whom Keating thinks Sidney should marry; and a murder in the middle of an amateur production of Julius Ceasar becomes a matter of reputation.

Runcie has done a lovely job with the period details, down to the music and behaviors that match the time. In Sidney Chambers, we have a vicar who quotes poetry and muses on the meaning of love: ” … It was the most unpredictable and chameleon of emotions, sometimes sudden and unstable, able to flare up and die down; at other times loyal and constant, the pilot flame of a life.”

These consecutive stories were a pleasure be immersed in, transported back to a time when the world was regaining its footing after World War II. It is to be hoped that Runcie will continue the Canon’s adventures for our reading pleasure, brain candy of a very different sort, but just as satisfying.

 

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Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff

Award-winning Mystery Author on books, reading and life: If proofreading is wrong, I don't wanna be right!

Lee Lofland

The Graveyard Shift

Being Author

Sherri Lupton Hollister, author

Romance, mystery, suspense, & small town humor...

Liz Loves Books

The Life of Guppy

the care and feeding of our little fish

middlesisterreviews.com/

My train of thoughts on...

Smile! Don't look back in anger.

Killer Women

K.R. Morrison, Author

My author site--news and other stuff about books and things

The Wickeds

Wicked Good Mysteries

John Bainbridge Writer

Indie Writer and Publisher

Chick Lit Book Café

CLBC Multi-Genre Book Reviews

Miss Demeanors

A Blog for Readers and Writers of Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Fiction

Mysteries To Die For

For Mystery Listeners and Readers

Amazing Family Books

Featuring The Very Best in Fiction & Nonfiction Books For Children, Parents & The Entire Family

Book Review Magazine

Incredible Books & Authors

Book Sparks News

Writing, Books & Authors News

Artisan Book Reviews

Bookish Trends

Subcribe for Free List of the Top Reads

Book Bug Out

KIDS CLUB

Writer Beware

Shining a small, bright light in a wilderness of writing scams

authorplatforms.wordpress.com/

Books, Reviews & Author Spotlights

DESTINATION PROPERTIES

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Auntiemwrites Crime-Mystery Author M K Graff

Award-winning Mystery Author on books, reading and life: If proofreading is wrong, I don't wanna be right!

Lee Lofland

The Graveyard Shift

Being Author

Sherri Lupton Hollister, author

Romance, mystery, suspense, & small town humor...

Liz Loves Books

The Life of Guppy

the care and feeding of our little fish

middlesisterreviews.com/

My train of thoughts on...

Smile! Don't look back in anger.