Frankie Y. Bailey: What The Fly Saw Sunday, Apr 26 2015 

Uncategorized , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:55 am

Wht Fly Saw
Frankie Bailey introduced Albany detective Hannah McCabe in last year’s The Queen Dies, set in the near future. Bailey’s sequel,What The Fly Saw, proves to be another strong entry in what promises to be a series with just enough quirkiness to attract a huge readership. And well it should.

It’s 2020 in a very cold Albany that has almost been ground to a halt by a blizzard. That white snow blanketing everything covers more than McCabe might have thought when she’s handed her newest case: investigating the murder of a funeral home owner, found dead in home’s basement with an arrow protruding from his chest. Kevin Novak might have been depressed over the death only months before of his best friend, who succumbed to a sudden heart attack, but Novak surely didn’t shoot himself in the chest with his own compound bow.

Assisting McCabe is her partner, Mike Baxter, whom McCabe has yet to fully trust. On the surface, Novak was a family man with a loving wife and two decent kids, and also an active member of a local megachurch. The suspects are easy for the detectives to spot: the church’s minister; a psychiatrist who counsels church members; even a Southern medium who’s transplanted herself to New York.

What’s less easy to define is a motive for any of these people to want to kill Novak. Complicating things for McCabe are political machinations that involve her family, and the fallout two previous cases, one which seems to impinge on this murder–or does it?

The near-future aspect is compelling enough to be of interest but not a distraction from what is, at its heart, a good old-fashioned detective story. The kind of policing McCabe and Baxter carry out includes devices we can only imagine, but here, too, Bailey is astute and makes these implements an adjunct to policing in a totally believable manner. Bailey’s background includes teaching at the School of Criminal Justice in the U of Albany, where her interests explore the connections between crime, history and popular culture, and aspects of these are evident in the books and add a pleasing dimension, much as the futuristic aspects do.

The heart of the matter still revolves around very human relationships, from the victim and his family, to McCabe’s own, and form the strength of what is a compelling story and an addictive read.

 

Three to Die For: Hutton, Cha and Haines Sunday, Jun 16 2013 

Uncategorized , , , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:49 am

Ewart Hutton’s debut Good People features a most unusual detective: DS Glyn Capaldi, half-Welsh but also half-Italian, and it’s those dark good looks that set him as an outsider.

images_030A case with an less-than-happy ending has sent Capaldi on exile from Cardiff to the rolling Welsh countryside where he’s learning the back roads and mores of the locals.

A call for a minibus hijacking looks like a routine call, especially when the missing van is found the next morning, an apparent prank.

But all is not well: six young men and one young woman appear to be missing, and when not all of them are found, Capaldi smells a case with his detective’s instinct.

Despite the villager’s assurances of the men’s goodness, Capaldi investigates and runs into opposition from the townspeople, who staunchly defend the mens pranking. These rural landowners command a high influence in the area; their word is taken as gospel.

It will be left to Capaldi to unravel what really happened that night, with consequence reaching into the past he could never foresee. Betrayals leading to depravity only scratch the surface when the truth is known, and not before a suicide occurs–or is it murder?

Hutton brings the reader into Capaldi’s world of dark woodlands and small towns that survive by their own code of justice. This is a crime thriller with an edge, and readers will hope the cynical voice of Capaldi returns, and soon.

Steph Cha is a fresh new voice in the noir thriller Follow Her Home, one that will smack you over the head with its heroine, Juniper Song, a devotee of Philip Chandler and LA Noir. images_022

Juniper has a cadre of friends and a troubled past that her favorite noir fiction keeps at bay. Known as “Song” by her friends, she responds to her good friend Luke’s request to find out if the new paralegal at his father’s firm is also his newest mistress.

Song as no real idea how to proceed, but armed with her pack of Lucky Strikes, in best Chandler fashion she tails various suspects and the young woman herself–and finds herself up against more than she’d bargained for when she agreed to help Luke.

At one point she is knocked unconscious and wakes up as the body in the trunk of her own car. This is carrying things to far for Song, and she steels her determination to conquer her past and plunges into LA’s underground, determined to find out whose buttons her minor investigation have pushed.

Cha gives readers a fascinating and yet disturbing lesson as she examines young Asian woman as fetish objects, which will come as a surprise to many readers. This adds a depth to this already compelling story while keeping the twists and turns flwoing as the story plays out.

What starts out in an almost playful mood turns serious, yet Cha keeps Song’s voice smart and crisp in an almost heartbreaking worldy manner, in this striking debut with a modern twist on old town noir.

 

images_003Taking a leap across the nation and a huge change in tone, Carolyn Haines returns with the twelfth Sarah Booth Delany Mystery in Smarty Bones.

Enjoying time with her hunky fiance Graf before his next Hollywood shoot, Sarah Booth’s usual friends surround her: her partner in their PI firm, Tinkie; her long-time friend CeCe; and even Jitty, the Civil War ghost who inhabits Dahlia House and drives Sarah Booth to distraction when she appears in various guises.

This time around Jitty is hooked on cartoon characters, but her words of wisdom are destined to revive Sarah Booth’s spirits when she reluctantly agrees to look into the claims of a professor who has arrived in her hometown of Zinnia, Mississippi.

Prof. Olive Twist is indeed the product of Dickens scholar parents, but she resemble Olive Oyl more accurately, with her thin frame and huge feet. But those big feet hide an even bigger brain, and Twist has arrived to prove that the mysterious Lady in Red, found in an anonymous grave and lovingly preserved, was involved in the plot to kill Lincoln–and she plans to implicate the families of Sarah Booth’s best friends.

Then Twist’s  young assistant is murdered at a nearby Bed & Breakfast where they were staying and things take a dramatic turn despite the large amount of humor that fills the pages.

Complicating matters are the family secrets and devious plots of some of these very families, and Sarah Booth soon finds herself and Graf involved on a level that turns deadly and will have far-reaching consequences for several of those Sarah Booth has come to love.

 

 

Nicola Upson: Fear in the Sunlight Sunday, May 19 2013 

Uncategorized , , , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:03 am

Nicola Upson’s fourth mystery featuring real-life Golden Age mystery writer Josephine Tey proves once again that Upson is a master at plotting, and at figuring out the complexities of personality and psychology.

Fear-in-the-Sunlight-Nicola-Upson-Cover

An intriguing setting is provided by Portmeirion, Wales, the imaginative architectural transformation of Clough Williams-Ellis, who created an Italianate village out of a section of northwest Wales’ coastal wilderness.

Noel Coward wrote Blithe Spirit at the resort, and it was frequented by actors and writers, including Tey and her circle, as a place of undeniable beauty and peace, a refuge from the hectic reality of their celebrity lives. It is to Upson’s credit that Portmeirion springs to life in the reader’s mind.

Into this tranquil setting of medieval buildings and fragrant gardens, Josephine has arrived to celebrate her fortieth birthday with the circle of friends readers will recognize, including detective Archie Penrose. Also present are celebrated director Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville and a few of their company.

Hitchcock wants to convince Tey she should allow him to adapt her mystery, A Shilling for Candles, for the screen. (The film was made as Young and Innocent, released in 1937 and was Hitchcock’s favorite British film.) But Tey needs to meet the Hitchcock’s first before granting her approval.

It is the eve of World War II, and the Hitchcock’s are being wooed to come to America, a move that will certainly change their lives. This decision weighs heavily on the director’s mind, as he listens to the wise counsel of his wife, the woman who served as his editor, writer and confidante.

But Hitchcock was known for elaborate and sometimes perverse pranks, a master manipulator of people and their reactions, fodder for his superb psychological thrillers. As Josephine and Archie each struggle with their own private demons, the group at Portmeirion will fall prey to one of the filmmaker’s most unusual and absurd tricks.

Then a grande dame of cinema is found horrifically murdered in a nearby cemetery, and each person at Portmeirion will have their past explored.

The bodies continue to pile up until a resolution is reached that leaves more questions than answers.

For Archie, the case had a very unsatisfying conclusion. It is only in the opening and closing chapters, set in 1954, that readers will learn the truth behind the string of killings that had deep-seated roots.

For readers not familiar with the series, Upson does exhaustive research into the 1930’s in the entire series, so readers are transported to the spell of that era. She has immersed herself in the life of Elizabeth Mackintosh, the Scottish author who wrote her mysteries as Tey and historical plays under the name of Gordon Daviot.

In Fear in the Sunlight, the resort village will spring to life. Portmeirion in all its glory becomes a character in itself, in this compelling mystery that hints at the future of several of its major characters. Each character is finely drawn, visually imagined, with distinct voices and sometimes surprising viewpoints.

Don’t miss this newest blend of fact and fiction from an author whose stories leap off the page. Highly recommended.

 

Charles Todd: Proof of Guilt Sunday, Feb 10 2013 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner , , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:28 am

000290326In their fifteenth outing together, mother-and-son team Caroline and Charles Todd follow Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge into the countryside in search of a murderer in Proof of Guilt.

Those new to the series learn enough of his back-story and WWI experience to understand his personal demons and the reason for the ever-present Hamish, the voice who alternately guides and chides the detective, just over his shoulder and always out of sight.

Readers familiar with the series will enjoy Rutledge’s careful but frustrating investigation. His sister Frances, whom Rutledge has come to depend upon for companionship in his darker days, has her own surprising news.

This time Rutledge is dealing with getting to know his new Acting Chief Superintendent, a man who decides on a course based on reading reports and refuses to listen to Rutledge’s instinctual alternate theories. At times it seems the Super is deliberately thwarting Rutledge in his investigation.

When a car runs over the body of young man, the heirloom pocket watch found on him is the only clue to his identity. It soon becomes apparent the man did not die on the quiet but dignified street where he was found, but was dumped there.

Is this a clue to who he is, or a warning to someone living on that street?

The search for the man’s identity leads Rutledge to the co-owner of a Madeira wine company. Lewis French has gone missing, but it’s not his body on the slab in the morgue. Then how did the dead man end up with French’s watch?

And where is Lewis French?

Rutledge finds French’s sister to be an angry and jealous person who had quarreled with her brother just before his disappearance; his fiancee` seems less concerned than she might be. He also finds himself drawn to the man’s former jilted fiancee`. There seem to be plenty of people who might want French dead.

But if French is dead, where is his body? And how does a second disappearance of a war veteran tie in?

The time period necessitates a slower pace, as Rutledge must navigate by his own motor car to the various country villages outside London that eat into his precious time to follow the slender threads he uncovers.

This is not a fast-paced thriller but more the deliberate and tenacious unraveling of a plot with fingers lasting decades. Rutledge must find evidence to trap the killer before he becomes the latest victim.

 

 

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.

 

 

Mary Daheim: All the Pretty Hearses Sunday, Jun 24 2012 

Uncategorized , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:44 am

Seattle-native Mary Richardson Daheim writes the Alpine mystery series, but this new-to-paperback offering is in her Bed-And-Breakfast Mysteries, featuring Judith McGonigle Flynn.

Judith’s assorted friends and relatives feature in the series, and with the huge roster of players in this installment,newcomers to the series may feel overwhelmed and wish for a Cast of Characters to keep them straight. But long time readers of the series will figure out who’s who in this quick and snappy summer cozy.

January is a slow time for Judith at the B&B, so she’s grateful her former-detective-turned-PI husband, Joe, has a new assignment. Unfortunately, his surveillance job ends almost as quickly as it started, with the death of an insurance fraud suspect he was supposed to be shadowing. The negatives pile up when it turns out the victim has been shot with Joe’s gun–or has he?

With Joe sequestered away at the police station, Judith faces the prospect of a houseful of laborious guests, the winners of an overnight stay she donated to her parish school auction earlier in the year. It’s pay-up time, and while Judith copes with the Paine family’s various allergies and special diets, other guests come and go in seemingly unrelated one night stays.

Adding to the tension is Judith’s mother, Gertrude, a persnickety gal who lives behind the B&B in a converted tool shed and manages to show up in her motorized wheelchair just in time to stamp on Judith’s last nerve.

Judith’s cousin Renie is also on hand to be a hot-wire foil to Judith’s more laid back personality, and Renie’s calmer husband Bill manages to get involved as the plot thickens with overlapping and numerous threads. There are sick parish schoolkids, a horse lodging in her garage, and a missing house guest. In the middle of the chaos, Judith is conned into housing two villagers without heat in their own home who turn up to stay the night with their Irish Wolfhound in tow.

The plot is convoluted with tons of mayhem causing distractions that may or may not be involved with the main plot. It is to Daheim’s credit that she manages to pull these threads together and keep Judith whole, although she does allow her  protaginist the occasional sorely needed medicinal drink.

New this month in hardcover is the next in the series, The Wurst is Yet to Come; readers of the paperback of All the Pretty Hearses will be treated to an excerpt of the new hardcover at the books’ end.

 

 

Two New in Paperback Sunday, Apr 29 2012 

Award winning novelist and Continued series winner and mystery to die for and Series not to be missed , , , , , , , Auntie M Writes Crime 12:50 am

Avon is reprinting two great mysteries in paperback for readers to gobble up.

J. A. Jance’s twentieth novel featuring J.P. Beaumont is titled Betrayal of Trust, and after reading this Seattle-based detective novel, you’ll understand the title refers to the many layers of trust that have been violated.

Telling the story from Beaumont’s first person point of view allows for the narrator’s dry wit and digressions to provide relief from the grim crime scenes he will face. Beaumont and his wife, fellow detective Mel Soames, work for the Attorney General’s Special Homicide Investigation Team on Squad B. It’s a recurring point of humor that the acronym for their team gets bandied about, but there’s nothing humorous about the case they find themselves seconded to, in Olympia’s Squad A, at the direct request of the Attorney General.

They meet with the AG at the hotel they’ll be living out of for the duration of the case, and the snuff film he shows them on a cell phone will lead them to unravel a twisted tale that revolves around murder, bullying, and blended families, thrusting them at the door of the governor’s mansion.

The cell phone belongs to the governor’s step-grandson, a troubled boy who denies knowledge of the apparent juvenile prank gone wrong. At least that’s what Beaumont and Soams are led to believe–until there’s a second death, and as the bodies pile up, it’s obvious there are deeper implications and layers of corruption with multiple perpetrators, who just might be minors.

The horrific case changes from being a part of Beaumont’s job to a more personal quest when he identifies with one of the dead young men. An interesting subplot concerning Beaumont’s own family roots is handled well, never detracting from the forward thrust of the investigation.

Jance’s characters feel authentic and her plot twists will grab your attention as she illustrates how dogged police work puts the pieces of a puzzle together and lead to a satisfying conclusion. The next in this series is titled Judgement Call. Jance is also the author of the Joanna Brady series, the Ali Reynolds series, and four Walker family thrillers.

 

Next up is Katherine Hall Page’s Faith Fairchild mystery, The Body in the Gazebo, the Agatha Award winner’s nineteenth in the series. Having a caterer and ‘foodie’ as a protagonist leads to the hallmark of the series: the inclusion at the end of the book of many of the recipes caterer Faith Fairchild mentions or uses during the course of the story. She also has a gift for weaving in historical details of the northeast.

Faith’s best friend, Pix Miller, is out of town at pre-wedding festivities, meeting her son’s soon-to-be in-laws. When Faith agrees to keep an eye on Pix’s mother, Ursula Rowe, it’s a gesture of born of friendship and genuine liking for the older woman, home recovering from a bout of pneumonia.

But Ursula’s recuperation is hampered by a story she feels she must confide to Faith: a secret tale of long-ago intrigue and murder that dates back to the Great Depression. It will take her days to tell Faith the story due to her weakened condition and the emotions attached to it. Faith hadn’t known until this time that Ursula once had an older brother; a brother who was brutally murdered, with an innocent man accused of his death.

As Faith becomes embroiled in the story, told often with flashbacks to the period from Ursula’s memory, she’s also trying to keep her children cared for competently and her business going, even as she worries about her assistant, newly-pregnant Niki Theodopolous.

Then Faith’s husband, Reverend Thomas Fairchild, is accused of embezzling from his church’s discretionary fund, and Faith swings into action to unravel all the mysteries affecting those she loves, putting herself squarely in danger in the process.

Page writes a lively mystery with a fast pace. Her gift for story-telling leads her readers down many avenues as her novels combine a balance between lightness and the deeper personal dramas that envelop her characters. Love, faith and redemption reside alongside murder, theft and intrigue, all wrapped up tighter than a good egg roll.

The next in this series is The Body in the Boudoir.

 

Deborah Crombie: No Mark Upon Her Sunday, Apr 1 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 12:35 am

In the latest installment of her Duncan Kincaid/Gemma Jones series, Texas author Deborah Crombie’s  love and affinity for England once again shine through.

Detective Inspector Gemma Jones is finally very married to Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, and their blended family is adjusting to its newest member. Crombie skillfully weaves the tapestry of their lives into the investigation of their latest case.

Preparing to trade Gemma’s domestic leave to take his own turn, Duncan finds himself at the last minute involved in a murder investigation filled with far-reaching tendrils, as the victim was a detective with the Metropolitan Police and an Olympic-grade rower. A subplot includes a high-ranking predatory policeman which complicates his investigation at every turn.

Becca Meredith is a solitary and competitive rower, hoping to regain her footing in a controversial bid for a place on the Olympic team. Her dreams are ended when a training row ends with her being tipped from her scull and drowning in the Thames River near Henley. Her lover, Kieran Connolly, struggles with post-war injuries. Part of the volunteer K9 search and rescue team with his Labrador Retriever, Finn, he is among the first to find Becca’s body, caught near the downstream weir near Mill End.

When the mysterious drowning becomes Duncan’s case, his team investigates Becca’s past, including her rowing for Oxford Blue, and her ex-husband, a former rower. It quickly becomes obvious that Becca’s talented but difficult personality has led her to acquire many admirers and just as many enemies. Complicating matters is a politically fraught work situation that will spill over into a  separate investigation Gemma has gotten entangled with just as her family leave is ending, and this widens the list of suspects for both detectives.

Then Kieran is targeted in a horrid accident, it becomes obvious that there is a killer who needs to silence people and it’s up to Duncan to stop him before he can kill again.

Rooted in reality, Crombie’s endpapers on the hard-covered books contain a lovely hand-drawn map by Laura Maestro of the area, which goes a long way to helping readers unfamiliar with the area visualize the main places of the action. The descriptions and feel of The Leander Club, a revered Henley rowing club, as well as the grueling routine of an elite rower, add to the pleasure. One of the hallmarks of Crombie’s books is the way she brings to life pockets of the UK we readers vicariously come to know, and the clubby, status-conscious world of Oxford rowing blends well with the routines of the K9 rescue team and their dogs.

 

« Previous Page