AJ Finn: The Woman in the Window Tuesday, Jan 2 2018 

complex mystery and debut and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:39 am

AJ Finn has hit it out of the park with his debut psychological thriller The Woman in the Window, the first book of 2018 Auntie M is reviewing and giving her “Highly Recommended” status.

This one’s a winner, whether you’re a fan of Hitchcock movies or not. Finn is, and that influence is seen in the highly cinematic feel of the book, which has been optioned by Fox 2000 Studios.

Dr. Anna Fox is the narrator, a child psychologist who has been inside her home for the past eleven months suffering from severe agoraphobia and depression. Her reclusive life includes visits from a physical therapist, Bina, and her psychiatrist. She speaks to her husband, Ed, and daughter, Olivia, who are not living with her. She has her groceries delivered, doesn’t shower often enough, and has a basement tenant to do chores if she needs them. And she watches her neighbors.

She also plays online chess, but tries to feel useful by running a chat room for other agoraphobics, using her skills as a therapist to help them, even as she can’t help herself. It’s the one place she feels a modicum of positive output, even as her drinking gets out of control.

When a new family move in nearby, the Russells seem unremarkable; father, mother, awkward teenaged son who seems emotional. Then the mother, Jane, comes to visit Anna, and in their brief time together, they laugh and drink and play chess. Anna jokes about the actress, Jane Russell, and feels that she might just have a new friend.

It’s a hollow victory when she subsequently sees Jane stumbling through the house with a blade sticking out of her chest. But no one in the NYPD, her therapist, Bina, Ed–no one believes she saw what she knows she saw: Jane being murdered.

Or did she? Has her preoccupation with old movies, especially those of the Hitchcock thriller variety, combined with too much wine and the multiple psychotropic meds she’s on, caused Anna to hallucinate the events? What is real and what has she imagined?

There are references to classic movies, but Finn manages to make this story his own, with a riveting tale that crackles with tension as the story advances. The whoosh sound you’ll be hearing is you turning the pages as you devour this gripping, dark novel. As Auntie M started out, it’s highly recommended.

 

P.D. James: Sleep No More–Auntie M’s Christmas Present to Readers Sunday, Dec 24 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 11:30 am


It’s no secret P. D. James was a mentor and friend to Auntie M for 15 years until her death. In fact, her own Death Unscripted was written as a promise to the Baroness and is dedicated to James.

So it ‘s no surprise that the Christmas treat she has for you is Faber and Faber’s new collection of short stories to enjoy, Sleep No More.

The subtitle is: “Six Murderous Tales,” and its easy to see why the publisher’s chose that phrase to title the stories they’ve arranged that bring back the words of one of the greatest crime writers of the 20th century.

The collection ranges over decades in various English settings, some with strong remininces of the narrator, such as in “The Yo-Yo” where an old man facing death looks back onto a school age Christmas when he was a witness to a murder and chose to say nothing about it.

It’s a toss-up as to who’s the real victim in “The Victim” when a revenge killing has a twisted ending readers won’t see coming. Another chilling tale recounts the experience of a young woman, set free to return to the home she left as a child, as her memory clears and she remembers the real reason why she’s become “The Girl Who Loved Graveyards.”

The thread these stories have in common is the genuis of James, whose keen insight into human nature as illustrated in her crime novels is on display in these stories. It’s a varied methodology she uses for her killings, whether it’s a blue poison bottle, a knife for cutting linoleum, or a revolver.

Sleep No More, those same words that horrified Macbeth, is an apt title for stories that explore the unsettling remnants of murder that affect these characters, whether through remembrance or participation.

It’s a wonderful book, read with the eye of sadness as one remembers there will be no more great stories from this Queen of Crime. Savor every lush description, every telling detail, every moment of chilling horror.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

 

Sherri Hollister: Chrome Pink Wednesday, Dec 20 2017 

complex mystery and debut and great read Auntie M Writes Crime 12:08 am

Please welcome guest Sherri Hollister, to talk about her debut romantic suspense novel, Chrome Pink, the first of the Leeward Trilogy.

The evolution of Chrome Pink

The idea for Chrome Pink started with an online class I took a few years ago. The instructor told us to list ten things about a person or character. I used my husband. He is a tow truck driver, motorcycle rider, mechanic, he does woodworking and construction, he is kind to people and animals but if he doesn’t like you, you know it. He likes fast cars, bourbon and me.

After we sent in our lists, we were instructed to change the sex, ethnicity, religion or politics of the person. From that class came the idea of Rae Lynne Grimes, who I tell people is my husband in drag.
Rae is a tough girl with a bad attitude. She is an alcoholic, anti-social and hell-bent on her own destruction but she is also kind, generous and beautiful.

After I started working on the story, I met my son’s friend. She had taken him in and was letting him stay with her and her partner. She brought him to visit us and she was trying to help him get on his feet. She was a beautiful Hispanic girl, with dark hair and eyes, with tattoos and piercings and a streak of pink in her hair. My son told me she’d had a rough life but even through her own adversities, she’d offered kindness to my son.

Combining these two ideas created the frame work for my character. From there I started asking questions and Rae Lynne Grimes evolved into a person whose story I had to tell.

I was supposed to be a romance writer. At least that is what I believed when I first started writing. I thought I wanted to write historical romances as they were my first love. When I fell in love with contemporary romance it was after reading Jayne Ann Krentz who also writes historicals as Amanda Quick.

Contemporary romance, especially the subgenres of romantic mysteries, thrillers and suspense intrigued me. I started marketing Chrome Pink as a romantic suspense novel. It wasn’t until after several very kind rejections and a couple of years of working with an agent that I learned my story doesn’t fall into the typical romance framework. My couple doesn’t meet on the first page and fall in love by page fifty.

Chrome Pink is about Rae Lynne Grimes, a rape survivor, and her journey from self-destruction to finding her strength. It is a suspense thriller, with some women’s fiction and, oh yeah, a bit of romance.


Sherri Hollister is a member of the Pamlico Writers Group and former news reporter who had had stories published in several anthologies. Chrome Pink is her first novel.

Someone doesn’t want Rae to stay in Leeward. When warning her doesn’t work, they try to scare her away. Logan Birdsong has fallen for Rae Lynne, but she won’t be with him if he’s working for her nemesis. Afraid of losing the company his step-father has entrusted into his care, Logan is torn between his growing attraction to Rae and his need to succeed. When her dates start turning up dead, Rae and Logan both become suspects. They can’t prove their innocence while on the run but returning to Leeward could cost them everything.

 

Donna Malane: My Brother’s Keeper Tuesday, Dec 19 2017 

Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 10:32 am

An award-winning writer and producer for television, Donna Malane turned her hand to novels, winning the New Zealand Society of Authors-Pindar Publishing Prize with Surrender, which introduced lead character Diane Rowe.

She returns with the sequel, My Brother’s Keeper, another strong entry in the series captained by the wry voice of Diane and peopled with characters who are fully fashioned and realistic.

It’s an interesting premise: Diane, a missing-persons expert, is asked by an ex-con now out of prison to track down her daughter, Sunny. Karen Mackie fears the girl may be in danger.

Diane doesn’t have difficulty finding the girl, living with her father, stepmother and stepbrother in Auckland, an hour’s plane ride away. But Karen asks Diane to meet the girl first and pave the way for a possible reconcilation.

It’s a tough sell, and the family situation is more complicated than Diane would like. In fact, everything’s a bit complicated in Diane’s life right now, with her friendly ex-husband, Sean, needing their house sold; her current boyfriend, Robbie, becoming friendly with both her dog, Wolf, and her ex; and then there’s the good-looking stepson of Karen’s dead mother she meets in Auckland.

It’s enough to drive a gal to distraction. But fortunately, and despite at one point coming under the Auckland PD radar, Diane manages to put it all together, but with considerable danger to herself and before she can stop a murder.

This is a complex plot and the book, which starts out with a simple premise, rapidly becomes so much more, aided by snippets of memory in flashbacks from a young Sunny, explaining why Karen was in prison.

A chilling twist at the end provides an engrossing climax with a character who will have you hooked with her engaging voice and waiting to read more of Diane Rowe.

 

More Holiday Gifting Sunday, Dec 17 2017 

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

More great reads for holiday gifting~ there are goodies to be had for the reader on your list!

Con Lehane introduced NY City Public Library crime curator Ray Ambler in last year’s Murder at the 42nd Street Library. He brings Ray, his colleague Adele, grandson Johnny and detective friend Mike Cosgrove back in the equally engaging sequel, Murder in the Manscript Room.

In an interview Lehane once said someone told him the most interesting person at a library was its archivist, the keeper of everyone’s secrets, and that holds true here when Mike introduces him to Paul Higgins, a former NYPD intelligence detective who has written a few crime thrillers and wants to donate his police files to the library.

With the file boxes stowed in Ray’s office as he mounts a new exhibit, so a few days later is the body of a newly-hired library staffer. Ray has a personal interest in solving the crime, not the least that he’s a suspect, but there are complications in the form of a Syrian researcher who’s arrested and a tie-in to Ray’s son, John, serving time in prison.

The personal angle of little Johnny plus Ray’s relationship with Adele provide added interest as Ray tries to figure out how the secrets of the past and the murder of a union boss have contributed to this recent murder.

An intricate sequel sure to please book lovers and mystery afficionados, with well-drawn characters to boot.

<img src="https://auntiemwrites.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/shadowdistrict.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="760" class="size-full wp-image-3680"
Arnaldur Indridason's returns to Iceland with the start of a new series in The Shadow District.

It’s an interesting mix of present day, with retired detective Konrad is asked to help with the death of a 90-yr old man smothered in his bed and end up investigating the WWII murder of a young woman in the shadow district, the rough neighborhood near where he grew up bordered by the National Theatre.

Alternating between the original detective’s investigation into the girl’s murder and his own follow-up, he soon realizes he must solve the old murder to find the killer for the recent one. Who would bother to kill an old man on the verge of death and for what reason?

Intricate and skillfully woven.


And speaking of the Scandanavian Noir, Kjell Ericksson’s 7th Ann Lindell mystery, Stone Coffin, is now out in paperback if you missed it last year. This one surrounds the hit-and-run deaths of a young woman and her six-year old daughter and becomes a complex mystery.


Peter S. Rush’s debut introduced Steve Logan, Brown graduate whose been affected in 1970 by the Kent State killings to the point where he joins the police force.

But his idealism takes an immediate hit as the rookie gets used to what it means to police Providence. Local mafia, agressive colleagues who heat up situations instead of knowing how to defuse them, detectives who are sadistic–all add up to quickly disillusioning Steve’s idealism.

Mixed in with the mores of the time is his continuing and complicated relationship with pre-med student Roxy, his true love. Both young people have growing to do and learning about life through each other’s actions.

When Steve decides he’s had enough, that change has to come from within, he starts keeping notes about the way things really are going down and finds more than he’s bargained for as he looks into the corruption. But will he have the courage–and the time–do see real change happen before he loses his own life?

A complex and assured debut with a compelling storyline.

Killing Pace is Douglas Schofield’s newest thriller that packs a wallop with its premise.

After a horrific car accident months before, Lisa Green is being nursed back to health by her boyfriend. Roland. The only thing is that Lisa has amnesia and can’t remember the accident or what led to it.

Roland’s close watch on Lisa leads her to believe he’s not her boyfriend and is keeping her prisoner. When she escapes him she enlists a sheriffs deputy to help her find a missing person: herself.

It’s a creative way to tell capture readers as Lisa, who is really Laura Pace, figures out who she really is and why people want her to die. With international repercussions to her case, invovlement from the mafia and US Border Control, it’s no surprise when infant traffiking is at the core.

It’s a wild ride Schofield takes Laura on as she cuts a wide swath in her wake to find the truth. Believeable and all too timely.

Katherine Bolger Hyde’s second “Crime with the Classics Mystery,” Bloodstains with Bronte comes complete with chapter epigrams from Bronte novels, a nice conceit Auntie M enjoyed, as well as plenty of literary references.

Widowed literature prof Emily Cavanaugh has inherited her murdered aunt’s fortune and lovely Oregon home, and her guilt at both has prompted her to turn the large home into a writer’s retreat.

With her housekeeper Katie and her infant daughter, Lizzie, for company, Emily braces for renovations. What she’s not counted on was the two workers, Jake and Roman, openly attracted to Katie. Their boss, on the other hand, is his own kind of enigma.

When Katie and Emily host a murder mystery fundraiser for the local clinic at their house, fiction turns horribly wrong when the supposed victim is actually killed, and Katie is the prime suspect.

It will take all of Emily’s smarts to clear Katie, as she “helps” Windy Corner’s detective Luke Richards in his investigation, despite his misgivings. It doesn’t help that Emily and Luke are romantically involved. And then the deaths multiply and suddenly all bets are off.

A mystery for those who like their literature with a hint of romance.

 

Caz Frear: Sweet Little Lies Tuesday, Dec 12 2017 

complex mystery and debut and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:46 am

Caz Frears accomplished debut, Sweet Little Lies, brings readers into the world of DC Cat Kinsella. It’s easy to see why this won the Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller competition in the UK and readers will be looking for more of Cat. It’s not every gal who has to ask her father if he has an alibi for the night of a murder . . .

Cat has an unusual family and that background affects her every move. When a murdered woman is dumped not far from her shady father’s pub, she’s forced to consider he might be involved, especially as she’s always wondered if he had something to do with the disappearance of an Irish teen, Maryanne, when the family was on a trip to Ireland years ago.

The narration from Cat seesaws back and forth between that time years ago and the present, giving readers the history of what happened but only from the new detective’s point of view. It’s a complex story with twists in a compelling story.

As facts come to light and connections between the two women are made, Cat finds herself dug in deeper as she hasn’t mentioned her father to her bosses. It’s an impossible situation she’s put herself in, especially when it comes to light what really happened to Maryanne, and all of the truths Cat thought she knew become questioned.

With a host of flawed but believeable characters, this is a suspenseful police procedural, and with Cat’s wry humor added, it’s a sure winner. Don’t miss this one. Highly recommended.

 

Carol Western: Karma and the Singing Frogs AND Stranger and Angels Sunday, Dec 10 2017 

complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and historical saga and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed Auntie M Writes Crime 12:38 am


Publishing two new books in two months has been challenging to say the least. I had planned to bring out one book in August and the other in October, in an orderly and sensible fashion. Then my book designer and colleague suffered a bereavement and everything got pushed out of schedule. It may have been wiser to postpone publishing the second book, my first Victorian Murder Mystery, until next year but it is set in December and that would have meant putting it back eight months. Mentally and emotionally I was committed to publishing both of them this year, so I did. Sensible has never really been my major quality but determination – some call it stubborn – always has been.

Karma and the Singing Frogs is a contemporary crime novel featuring archaeologist turned CSI Mia Trent. Strangers and Angels is set in 1850 in the naval town of Gosport and features two determined young women, lady’s maid, Molly Bowman and her mistress, Lady Adelaide.

The two books have a lot in common. Both are set on the south coast of England in mid-December and both have female investigators as the viewpoint character. The major difference is the 157 years that separate them.

Mia is an independent career woman who lives alone. She has friends but also that touch of aloofness that is essential for people who have to separate their professional emotions from their personal life in order to deal with the death and suffering they witness every day.

Molly and Adelaide have no political or economic power and they and those around them would find it unthinkable that they should witness the sort of violence that Mia deals with every day.

I think the hardest task when writing Strangers and Angels was to get into the mind-set of strong, intelligent women who accepted that this limited subservience was their role in life. Adelaide, as the disgraced widow of a brutal man who lost everything through gambling and then committed suicide, is in a far worse position than Molly, the only child of a cooper (barrel-maker). Molly’s father wishes her to marry to ensure her safety if he dies but has promised not to force her into marriage. Adelaide accepts that her aristocratic father will arrange another marriage for her, whether she wishes it or not.

My contemporary crime novels are set in fictional settings, mainly because my son is a CSI and I didn’t wish to embarrass him, partly because cut-backs in UK policing mean that police stations and investigative facilities are disappearing quicker than I can write the books.

The Victorian novel is set in a real place and specific time, which involved a lot of research. The two training ships from the Ottoman Empire were really based in Gosport from late 1850 to early 1851 although there are few documents about this event and I have no evidence whether the majority of residents were hostile to the Turkish sailors or not. Some years after the action in this book, a Turkish graveyard was incorporated into the Clayhall graveyard, the only one in England. The memorial inscription reads, in Turkish and English: “They set sail for eternity met their creator and here they are laid to rest.”

In Karma and the Singing Frogs the victim is a young man who moved from Social Service Care to prostitution and the initial suspects are those who have also been in Care. In Strangers and Angels the immediate and convenient suspect is a young Turkish sailor, a stranger without friends in a foreign land.

For me, the main thing the two books have in common is the ageless theme of justice and how it is too often only for the powerful and privileged.

Carol Westron lives near the south coast of England and it is here that her fiction is set. She writes both contemporary and historical crime fiction, as well as non-fiction articles on the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. She also reviews books and interviews authors for Mystery People. A passionate believer in empowerment through creativity, she teaches creative writing to community classes and writes children’s picture books about a child who is different and ‘sees the secrets behind the darkness,’ which are illustrated by her severely autistic grandson.

 

Ragnar Jonasson: Nightblind Sunday, Dec 3 2017 

complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:39 am

Continuing with holiday gift ideas, this one is for those readers who enjoy a dose of noir, in this case, Icelandic noir.

Ragnar Jonasson introduced policeman Ari Thor Arason in last year’s Snowblind, quickly becoming a bestseller. He returns with the sequel Nightblind, which picks up five years after the events of the first book and continues Ari’s story in the small northern Iceland village.

With his mentor and boss, Tomas, given a promotion and living in Rekyakvik, Ari didn’t recieve the hoped-for promotion to Inspector to lead the team and has not gotten close to the man who landed it, Herjolfur. Recovering from the flu, he’s jolted out of bed by the man’s wife, who claims her husband never returned from a call out.

Ari finds his boss severly wounded in a remote location, and as the inspector is flown south for treatment, Tomas is seconded back to Siglufjordur to lead the investigation into who has taken a shotgun to a police officer.

It’s a tense time as the idea of a police officer being shot is unique in Iceland. All of the defenses of the people the two officers investigate come up and it’s difficult to make headway. Other secrets get in their way as the setting for the shooting was an abandoned house that is known as a spot for the local drug trade.

And at home, with a young son he adores, Ari is convinced his relationship with Kristin, his partner, is suffering. It will take him looking outside the box to piece together what really happened that fateful night as the deterioration of his relationship preys on his mind.

In true dark Icelandic noir fashion, the setting adds to the stark feel of the mystery as events from long-ago surface. Excerpts from an old diary add to the tension and heighten the story of domestic abuse in parellels.

 

Kate White: Even If It Kills Her Wednesday, Nov 29 2017 

complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:51 am


The return of Kate White to her Bailey Weggins series brings her seventh entry, Even If It Kills Her.

Bailey’s work as an investigative journalist that often puts her life in danger is having its effect on her personal relationship with the mysterious Beau.

Still, casting about for a subject for her next true crime book, it’s tough to turn down an old college friend from Brown when Jillian Lowe calls Bailey unexpectedly.

Years ago Jillians’ family were horrifically murdered during their second year of college, and Bailey has always felt regret that she wasn’t a better friend to Jillian at the time and allowed the young woman to slip from her life.

Now she has a chance to correct that when Jillian explains new DNA evidence most likely exonerates the man imprisoned for the murders, who unfortunately has died in prison. It’s too late for him, but not too late to find the real murderer.

It’s exactly the kind of case Bailey needs to soothe her guilt. The two women set off for the New England town of Jillian’s family home with Bailey set to investigate under the guist of helping Jillian write a memoir. Right from the outset it’s clear Bailey is being sent messages to leave things alone. It escalates when soon after being interviewed, an older woman from Jillian’s high school is killed, and as the suspects pile up, so do the attacks, culminating in a deliberate attack on Bailey.

It will take all of Bailey’s resources to stand firm and continue her investigation.

Written from Bailey’s perspective, which allows the reader to access her sometimes caustic humor, the story will draw them in as the suspense builds to a frightening climax.

 

Nicola Upson: Nine Lessons Saturday, Nov 25 2017 

amateur sleuth and Award winning novelist and complex mystery and Continued series winner and great read and historical saga and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:05 am


The seventh entry in Upson’s remarkable series featuring Josephing Tey as a character is Nine Lessons, and if you haven’t found this series yet, now’s the time to pick up this one and then find your way to the previous six. All are intricately plotted, have researched settings of the period between the World Wars that brings that era to life, and perhaps most importantly, honest depictions of the characters who live within the pages, with all the foibles of humanity we recognize.

The focus this time revovles around Tey’s goood friend, DCI Archie Penrose and a case that seems almost unsolvable. He’s called to a churchyard where the corpse of the organist is found in an opened cryp. The man has died a horrific death; a photo of a manor house and a brief note as found with his body.

At the same time, Josephine is in Cambridge, helping to sort out a new house, when a series of attacks against women set the ancient city on edge.

When Archie’s next body is found near King’s College Chapel, it brings him to Josephine to help with old research on this case, as he’s discovered a connection between the two murders that has its genesis in the storied town when both victims were students. What could have happened twenty-five years ago that is making a murderer take his revenge now?

As if solving a complicated murder and finding a serial rapist were not enough, Upson continues the thread of Archie’s personal life and its own secrets in such a way that the final horrific twist in that story will have ramifications for years to come.

This is a complex and compelling story, encompassing what historical crime fiction should, blending true history with the fictional lives of these stunning characters into a whole book that moves the reader as it solves the crimes. Highly recommended.

 

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