Susan Hill: A Question of Identity Sunday, Nov 25 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 12:23 am

Can a person love two people at the same time?

Can a person BE two different people at the same time?

These are the main questions the wonderful Susan Hill addresses in the compelling new Simon Serailler mystery A Question of Identity.

Fans of the series will not be disappointed, as Hill explores Serailler’s relationship with the woman he loves, whose husband is dying.

She continues to weave in his sister, Cat, a young widow raising three children and working hospice, who faces more changes in her future just as she unearths a terrible family secret.

She also gives us an inside look for the first time into the mind of the killer Simon must unveil, by following snatches of his thoughts during the entire investigative process.

The cathedral town of Laffterton that Serailler inhabits hasn’t seen a crime as this: the brutal murder of an elderly woman, newly moved into a brand new housing scheme, posed in a way that marks the murderer’s signature. This is a careful killer, one who wears gloves, doesn’t leave a trace behind, and chooses his victims for their age and inability to react quickly to his appearance.

As the murders escalate, Serailler’s team keeps several bizarre aspects of the murder from the public. Then their investigation finds these signs to be the exact MO of a suspect previously charged with several murders who had been acquitted. But trying to find the murderer takes on an unreal aspect when Serailler learns the suspect has been given a new identity, and simply vanished. And the powers that be refuse to give him any details or acknowledge the man existed.

Hill ups the empathy with Serialler’s frustration by introducing the victims to the reader before the murders, weaving in his private life and snatched moments with his beloved Rachel at times, visits with his sister and her family at others. Realistic happenings in Cat’s life lend even more verisimilitude as she copes with teens, tweens, and the aftermath of a past case on a young doctor who has been living with her family. The first death doesn’t occur until page 137, plenty of time for Hill to ratchet up the suspense as readers come to realize who the victims will be.

This is a satisfying read in a continuing series that is what The Washington Post calls a “. . .  brooding series that rivets a reader’s attention.”

Ruth Rendell has this to say about Susan Hill: “Not all great novelists can write crime fiction, but when one like Susan Hill does the result is stunning.”

 

Lynda LaPlante: Blood Line Sunday, Nov 18 2012 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:29 am

Prime Suspect‘s Lynda LaPlante is back with a new Anna Travis novel.

Blood Line follows Anna’s new case as a DCI, heavily watched over with increasing annoyance to her by her mentor and former lover, Superintendent James Langton.

Her first case was a slam dunk that she made her way through numbly, dealing with the aftermath of the death of her fiance`. The pacing here is different from the usual murder novel, as the case starts out as something entirely different and meanders its way into a murder investigation, when a court clerk whose son has disappeared asks Anna to look into the case. Langton concurs, trying to give Anna time to grieve before getting her feet under her in a real murder case.

Alan Rawlins is a good-looking chap, engaged to be married to salon owner Tina Brooks. A shy gentleman, Alan’s sudden disappearance has his father and fiancee` stumped.

Anna’s initial interviews reveal nothing specific. At first glance, Alan is a paragon of virtue, with savings in the bank and a steady job. Tina arrived home from her salon one day after he’d come home early from work with a migraine to find Alan gone; it is his father who insisted a Missing Person’s report be filed when there’s no word from Alan after two weeks.

Meeting Tina for the first interview leaves Anna with a gut feeling something is wrong. The flat is too neat, compulsively so. And despite supposedly in the midst of shopping for a wedding dress and ordering invitations, Tina shows little emotion when discussing her missing partner, stating she feels he’s gone off with another woman. At first Anna feels it’s possible Alan has taken off to escape marriage to Tina and the pressures of his mother’s dementia, especially when a potential second source of income is identified.

Then a better search of the apartment Alan and Tina shared turns up evidence of a blood pool behind the head of the bed, and more Luminol work shows a massive cleanup in the bathtub as the full-scale murder investigation swings into action.

Despite the evidence, the question of the identity of the victim becomes an issue. Someone was murdered in that flat, but just who it was becomes more and more difficult to establish in a series of twists that have Anna, under pressure to solve the case, becoming almost obsessed with all the trails she finds. And over it all, Langton is watching her like a hawk.
The book follows the extensive details and delays of real police work, from waiting for forensic reports to traveling to interview witnesses, always with the budget in mind. Anna also deals with the personalities of her hastily-thrown together team.

LaPlante’s lack of contractions may take some readers aback as it gives her dialogue a more formal feel; but it also serves to keep the British tone in the reader’s ear. This edition comes through the new line of mysteries from HarperCollins, Bourbon Street books.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Susan Santangelo: Marriage Can Be Murder Sunday, Sep 23 2012 

Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:49 am

LOCATION!         LOCATION!       LOCATION!
            It’s a major selling point when home buyers are looking at properties to buy.
            And for me, location is just as important in fiction. As an avid mystery reader, I find myself more willing to take a chance on a new author I know nothing about if I’m attracted to the locale where the book is set.
            When I started writing the Baby Boomer mysteries, I created the Connecticut town of Fairport. It’s a thinly disguised version of Fairfield, where my family and I lived for many years. And, yes, we lived in an antique house, just like the principal characters in the series, Carol and Jim Andrews.  But because Fairport is a fictional place, I was free to populate it with restaurants, churches, stores, and street names to my heart’s content, as long as they all worked into the story line, without any current Fairfield resident (or, heaven forbid, an elected town official!) contacting me to say that I hadn’t gotten the description down correctly.
            Believe me, that can happen. Don’t ask me how I know, please. Just trust me. I know.
            But when I started to write Book 3 in the series, Marriage Can be Murder, I wanted to include a destination wedding, so I had to move the location out of Fairport. Where did I decide to have the wedding take place? Somewhere I’ve always loved — the island of Nantucket.
I discovered when I started doing some research about Nantucket that the entire island is designated as a National Historic Landmark.  I never knew that before. Nantucket is affectionately referred to as The Little Grey Lady of the Sea because of its many grey-shingled buildings and frequent fog. The island is 14 miles long by 3.5 miles wide, and is 27 miles out to sea. Nantucket is 30 miles south of Cape Cod, and has a year-round population of approximately 10,000. The population increases to about 50,000 during the summer months, which is Nantucket’s peak tourist season.  There are great shopping opportunities at this time of year. Don’t ask me how I know this, either. But, trust me, I know.
Nantucket was the whaling capital of the world from the mid-1700s to the late 1830s, and was made famous by Herman Melville in his classic novel, Moby Dick. Ok, I’ll confess I’ve never read that book. But I’m sure it’s on my to-be-read pile, somewhere in my office. And I did see the movie starring Gregory Peck, so that counts, right?
 
Some atlases describe Nantucket island as crescent-shaped. To really get the picture, take your right hand and fold in all your fingers but the thumb and index finger. Then rotate your hand to the left, palm down, and voila – your own Nantucket island. Madaket is where your thumb is — a tiny community with its own harbor, gorgeous houses and beautiful beaches. Follow your thumb to the right – that’s Madaket Road, which eventually leads you into the town of Nantucket, approximately where your thumb opens as it heads toward the index finger. Picture that opening as the town, and Straight Wharf, where the ferries to and from the mainland dock.
More than 800 houses on Nantucket were built before the American Civil War, and I decided the primary site for my mystery would be one of them. I named it the Grey Gull Inn. You won’t find this inn on Nantucket, because it’s the product of my over active imagination.  And then I really had fun —  I gave  it some history. Here’s what Carol Andrews, my protagonist, finds out about it from the Grey Gull Inn website: “The inn was built in 1825 by Nathaniel Grey, a whaling captain, as a gift to his new bride, Charity.
Tragically, soon after the couple moved into the house, Charity was found dead at the bottom of the house’s circular staircase. An inquest determined her death was a tragic accident. Captain Grey never recovered from the shock of his young wife’s death, and legend has it that he continues to live in the house, searching in vain for his bride. The building was converted in the 1980s to a 10-bedroom inn. The current owners are siblings JoAnn and Skip Wallace, who are direct descendants of Captain Nate, as he was known in the family. They completely refurbished the structure in 2006, adding a new wing to the inn with six more guest room suites.”
I placed the Grey Gull Inn right in the center of Nantucket town, close to historic Main Street, Nantucket’s primary shopping district.  I gave it a full-service gourmet restaurant and one of the most notable wine lists on the island. But I didn’t give an en suite bathroom to the older part of the inn, where the Andrews family is staying.
Why? Well, I won’t tell.
Here’s the back cover blurb for the book. See if you can figure out a clue:
Book Three of the Baby Boomer mystery series, Marriage Can Be Murder, brings the Andrews family to Nantucket. Carol is thrilled when daughter Jenny announces her engagement. She’s dreamed of planning her daughter’s wedding since the day Jenny was born. But with only two months to pull together a destination wedding on Nantucket, Jenny insists on hiring Cinderella Weddings to organize the event. Father-of-the-bride Jim objects to the cost, and Carol objects to having her opinion ignored. When Carol finds the wedding planner dead at the bottom of a spiral staircase at a Nantucket inn, and the husband of Carol’s BFF Nancy is accused of her death, Carol has more to worry about than getting to the church on time!
            If you can’t figure out the clue, you’ll just have to check out Marriage Can Be Murder for yourself. The Grey Gull Inn is open and ready to receive your reservation! But be sure to call ahead for the ferry, if you want to bring a car.
An early member of the Baby Boomer generation, Susan Santangelo has been a feature writer, drama critic and editor for daily and weekly newspapers in the New York metropolitan area, including a stint at Cosmopolitan magazine. A seasoned public relations and marketing professional, she has designed and managed not-for-profit events and programs for over 25 years, and was principal of her own public relations firm, Events Unlimited, in Princeton NJ for ten years. She also served as Director of Special Events and Volunteers for Carnegie Hall during the Hall’s 1990-1991 Centennial season.
 Susan divides her time between Cape Cod MA and the Connecticut shoreline. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and the Cape Cod Writers Center, and also reviews mysteries for Suspense magazine. She shares her life with her husband Joe and one very spoiled English cocker spaniel, Boomer, who is also the cover model for the mystery books.
          A portion of the sales from the Baby Boomer Mysteries is donated to the Breast Cancer Survival Center, a non-profit organization based in Connecticut which Susan founded in 1999 after being diagnosed with cancer herself. 

 

Kate George: Crazy Little Thing Called Dead Sunday, Sep 16 2012 

Continued series winner and great read and mystery to die for Auntie M Writes Crime 12:02 am

Please welcome Daphne Du-Maurier Award-winning author Kate George:

Death Can Be Funny                                                                             

There are people in the world who think my taste is questionable and my choice of mixing humor and murder is downright wrong. But here’s the thing, I like the contrast between a lighthearted tone and a serious subject. I enjoy making people laugh.

Here’s a little background: Like most people in the world I’ve had my ups and downs. Several years in particular, while I was dealing with a family member’s health issues, were more challenging than usual. I was pretty unhappy. But during that time I discovered an author that made me laugh. It was such a relief to laugh, I decided if I was ever going to write again the writing would be driven by my sense of humor.

I am writing again, and it is driven by my slightly wacked sense of humor, but that doesn’t make it easy. It’s challenging to get the ratio of humor to danger just right. Believe it or not there are people in the world that like their murder straight up, and others who prefer their laughs not be sullied by death. Not that I will ever please everybody. In the immortal words of Fitzwilliam Darcy, “That’s not possible for anyone.”

What I can do is strive to get the balance right. Keep the pace lively. Make my protagonist a little off center, quite irreverent but strong. Create a believable plotline and crimes that are sufficiently severe.  The villain? Self-centered and unconcerned with others. Totally without conscience – a sociopath. And in the end? Our protagonist must save herself. She can have a love interest, and he can help with the take down, but it has to be clear that if our love interest wasn’t there, she’d be capable of doing the job herself – and make you laugh at the same time.

The newest Bree MacGowan, Crazy Little Thing Called Dead, is a little more serious than the first two books in the series. Bree loses almost everything, and is pushed beyond her normal boundaries. But the humor remains. Hopefully it’s a book that will let you experience a range of emotions from dark to light.

Kate George is the author of the Bree MacGowan Mysteries:  Moonlighting in Vermont (2009), California Schemin’ (2011) and Crazy Little Thing Called Dead, which will be available September 30, 2012.

Ms. George lives in the wilds of Central Vermont, coming to terms with mud roads, ice storms and occasionally moose and black bears. Find free short stories at http://www.kategeorge.com.

 

Simon Toyne: The Key Sunday, Sep 2 2012 

Continued series winner and great read , , , , , , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:23 am

Simon Toyne, author of the first in the Ruin trilogy Sanctus, returns with book two in the series and The Key is every bit as compelling as the first.

A vertical mountain of carved rock, The Citadel of Ruin is the oldest continually inhabited edifice known to Man, and the seat of the Catholic Church.

After the events detailed in Sanctus, an explosion has left three people with intimate knowledge of the secret of the Sacrament, previously only known to a handful of elevated Santi monks.

One of those three is New Jersey journalist Liv Adamsen, who traveled to Ruin to find the truth surrounding the death of her Sancti brother. As The Key opens, Liv lies in a hospital bed, suffering the effects of post-traumatic amnesia. Four doors away, survivor number two, Kathryn Mann, nearly deaf from the explosion, ponders her fate and that of her only son, Gabriel, survivor number three.

In the Vatican City, The Group, composed of three world financial heads, hastily meet with their fourth member, Cardinal Secretary Clementi. Clementi holds his own key: to the Vatican’s Bank. He’s used the Church’s independence and secrecy for the past years to hide the practices of past centuries that have left the Church rich in priceless arts and property but virtually without cash.

For The Group, Liv and the others represent ticking time bombs, threatening to destroy their carefully crafted plan. While inside The Citadel, with the abbot and prelate both dead from the explosion, elections must take place to secure The Citadels’ hierarchy. But their centuries-old secrets are slowly unraveling, as disease spreads and with it, unrest inside the compound.

The Key sucks you in, with its detailed settings and complex sense of history and traditions. The Globe and Mail says:  This is a gripping read, as fast-paced as any action movie and covering Rome to Ruin, and New York to the Middle East deserts, as Toyne fits together his complicated plot until it all makes horrible and terrific sense.

 

 

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.

 

Two-fer Opposites: Andrew Kaplan and Linda Lovely Sunday, Aug 5 2012 

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

Auntie M has two books that are as far apart as you can get on the setting scale, but both satisfying reads of different kinds.

First up is Andrew Kaplan’s entry in his Scorpion series, Scorpion Winter, a thriller that  takes place largely in the Ukraine with stops in the Middle East and Europe, featuring a killer pacing that never lets up. Kirkus Reviews says: “Kaplan takes the thriller genre at its word, moving as fast as Ludlum but with ten times the eye for settings and crisp characterizations.”

Scorpion is a former CIA covert operative who operates on a freelance basis. This means he has friends–and enemies–in almost every country in the world.

His newest assignment is to prevent the assassination of a Ukraine politician on the eve of an election that has world-wide consequences and interests. Assisting him, despite his initial misgivings, is the very lovely Iryna Shevchenko, whose father founded the Independent movement in the country.

But everything goes horribly wrong, and Iryna and Scorpion soon find themselves on the run, hunted down as the assassins themselves as they become caught in the trap of an unknown enemy. With NATO, Russia and US forces ready to become involved in a war, they race against time to find the real murderers and clear their names. Along the way, there are plenty of deaths, sleight of hand maneuvers, impossible getaways, and enough violence told in a matter-of-fact disturbing way to keep you awake at night.

The pacing is relentless as the couple, whose attraction to each other becomes too strong to ignore, face the brutal realities of too many sub-culture political parties operating under the radar. Acronyms abound: The SVR, the SBU, the NSA and even Chinese mobsters are involved at different points.

Scorpion proves himself to be a master of deception, with false identities and useful fighting and burglary skills learned over the years that keep him just one small step ahead of his opponents–until a false step lands him in prison and in the hands of a sadistic madman. The torture he endures is horrific; with no salvation in sight, his death is imminent. How he gets himself out of that situation, and the eventual unraveling of this twisted plot, will leave readers stunned. When Scorpion says near the end: “Sometimes you need your enemies more than your friends,” you will understand the complicated life he’s chosen to lead.

Kaplan has done exhaustive research, and the cold winter of Siberia looms real enough to make your joints ache. The use of phrases in Russian and other languages are thoughtfully translated for the reader but add to the feel of being on the other side of the world. This is an action thriller that will leave you breathless at its end.

Doing a hard 180 degree turn, we travel to the Midwest and the Great Lakes area of Iowa. Linda Lovely first introduced retired military intelligence officer Marley Clark in the SC low country mystery Dear Killer, where Marley’s security job formed the basis for that mystery. In No Wake Zone, Marley travels to a family reunion for her feisty Aunt May’s birthday, expecting a totally different kind of vacation from the one she encounters.

Marley gets roped into helping her tourist-boat captain cousin aboard his boat on West Okoboji Lake for a wedding reception, but never dreams she’ll find herself diving into the cold depths of the lake in a vain attempt to save the life of a billionaire.

The founder of a biotech company is the unlucky groom, only he’s dead before he hits the water. When it turns out an old college friend is the bride, Marley finds herself deeply embroiled in the murder investigation.

Each member of the tycoon’s family try to top each other as Nastiest Relative of the Year in the greed department. Adding to the mix is the head of an international security company who has his own issues against Marley from their previous association.

Things heat up even more when Marley’s former Pentagon boss enlists her aid in the investigation and intrigue abounds.

Then a handsome attorney with his own secrets steps into the case and Marley finds herself attracted to him, despite her inner turmoil over trusting him, all under the inquisitive eye of Aunt May. When the deaths start to mount up, the killer soon targets Marley and her family and the suspense rises as the pace continues to pound along.

There’s plenty of action here and a gripping plot with as many turns as the amusement park rides that feature in an action-packed climax scene. The dialogue is snappy and you’ll be longing for another adventure with Marley Clark when you turn the last page.

The author spent summers in the Spirit Lake area with her family and her real-life captain cousin played a major role in the creation of the Maritime Museum, which also becomes a setting. Her familiarity with the area, including local landmarks and restaurants, brings it to life for those not familiar with this area of the Midwest.

It’s refreshing to have a well-written series with an engaging protagonist who is 52, smart and witty, and with a zest for life that is engaging.

 

Faye Kellerman: Gun Games Sunday, Jul 22 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 12:58 am

Fortunately for readers, Faye Kellerman’s Dentistry doctoral degree couldn’t keep her from writing the consistently winning  Peter Decker/Rina Lazurus series. Starting  in 1986 with the Anthony Award-nominated TheRitual Bath, that book won the Macavity for Best First Novel and launched the series Kellerman has kept writing, in addition to producing other novels and short stories, some with two of her four children.

From this auspicious start, which expertly detailed the rituals of Jewish Orthodoxy, Kellerman took the pair to LA where we’ve watched the Decker’s extended family grow and change. One of the delights of the series has been the way their family life and traditions have been incorporated into the stories. She’s managed to keep the series fresh by changing the focus of each story, even taking readers to Israel on one occasion.

In this 20th in the series, Gun Games, the Decker’s are grandparents via Decker’s daughter and empty-nesters with their youngest child together finally off to college. They should be starting to enjoy some well-deserved alone time, but on the heels of the prior novel, Hangman, they’ve become temporary guardians to the teenaged son of notorious psychopathic gangster Chris Donatti, welcoming Gabriel Whitman into their home and family. Gabe is a talented pianist interested in composing music, a quiet and often secretive youth who, despite his worldly attitude, isn’t immune to the high emotional turmoil and roiling hormones of his biological age.

Interspersed with Gabe’s life and his lovely, believable romance, the story follows Decker at work as lieutenant detective when he and his team become involved in investigating the apparent suicide of a boy Gabe’s age who attended a prestigious prep school.

Then the second suicide of another teen from the same school leads the detectives to discover a nasty clique of privileged, wealthy students who harbor a thirst for bullying, guns and violence.

Decker’s team of Marge Dunn and Scott Oliver help him as he unravels the reality behind the unbelievable actions of this group of spoiled teens whose dark side has triumphed over their better judgement.

Kellerman does a wonderful job of showing us Decker’s growing comprehension as he struggles to believe what is truly happening. This parent thought he had a handle on teens, including Gabe, but it soon becomes apparent that he is out of his realm of knowledge and experience. Kellerman also has a grand handle on the emotional roller coaster that all teenagers face and shows how differently they handle this challenge.

When the dark group overlaps Gabe’s path, the ramifications become terrifying and deadly. Don’t miss this compelling thriller from a writer who knows how to explore her character’s personalities and tell an all-too-realistic and frightening story at the same time.

 

 

 

 

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