Arches Enemy
Betty Webb

The oil and gas industry is juxtaposed against the beauty of nature in Scott Graham’s Arches Enemy, set in Moab County in southern Utah. As a huge seismic truck thumps its way across the landscape, seeking oil and gas deposits, one of the area’s most exquisite stone arches collapses. A runner, illegally crossing the arch in search of a spiritual high, is crushed to death. The collapse is heard by archeologist Chuck Bender, who is working a cave near the Devil’s Garden trailhead. When he rushes to the site, he finds the runner—a young woman named Megan Johnson—beyond help. She has been crushed by several tons of falling rock. The first suspect is the seismic “thumper” truck, which some locals believe caused the collapse, but as Bender examines the debris more closely, he finds a drill hole in one rock. Surrounding the drill hole are the remains of an explosive compound. At that point, Megan’s death is suspected to be a homicide, not just a sad accident. Then others start dying, and by the last page, three more people are dead. Author Graham’s personal love of the magnificent Moab area is evident in his gorgeous descriptions. And most of his characters are likable, as nature lovers tend to be. But not all. The worst is Bender’s own mother, a manipulative monster with a talent for inserting herself into her son’s life at the worst possible moments. After a disreputable past, she now declares herself “spiritually enlightened,” and is ready to use her powers to help others achieve the same heady state. But for a price, of course. Arch Enemy is a fascinating book, especially when Graham discusses the conflict between beauty and greed. However, some readers may find the ending problematic given the seriousness of the book’s subject.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-14 16:14:39
Proof of Life
Betty Webb

Sheila Lowe’s Proof of Life starts off strongly as we learn that two-year-old Justin, protagonist Jessica Mack’s son, was killed when his drunken father was embroiled in a road-rage incident. Years later, the grieving mother is having a hard time ignoring the voices in her head. The voices appear to be from folks who have passed over. Jessica tries to push them out of her mind until her dead son begins talking to her from what appears to be Heaven. Justin wants her to comfort his new friend’s mother by telling her his friend Binky is with him in Heaven, too. Proof of Life gives us a protagonist who is more faith-driven than logical, which will turn off some readers while attracting others. Even more might be scared off by Jessica’s lack of common sense. She’d put up with her alcoholic, rage-aholic husband for years, until he killed their son. Now she’s fallen for a man who was once suspected of murdering his own mother. But since he makes her heart throb, she ignores all the warnings. This odd book doesn’t always go where you expect it to go. It’s a serious exploration of life after death, and how easy it can be to enlist dead people’s help in solving earthly crimes. Although the book does become a bit soap-opera-ish in some scenes, it never fails to entertain. Also interesting is the author’s note in the back, where Lowe shares salient biographical information (her daughter Jennifer was murdered) and shares resources for grieving parents. She also includes several URLs for organizations that explore the afterlife.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-14 16:18:52
Murder Lo Mein
Robin Agnew

Vivien Chien’s Murder Lo Mein is the third novel in her series set in Cleveland, which features restaurant manager Lana Lee and a wide array of characters. Coming in as a new reader, it took me a minute to orient myself, but once I was in, I was all in. Lana is an appealing young woman, hardworking and loyal to her family, even though they drive her crazy. As the story opens, the plaza where her family restaurant rents space is holding a much ballyhooed contest for Chinese restaurant chefs.

There are three rounds, with each round eliminating a restaurant, and first up is a noodle contest. Lana’s chef wins but the resulting celebration is spoiled when one of the judges is found dead. What I enjoyed most about this book was the setting and the depiction of Lana’s Chinese culture. While some things were familiar, others were not, and I enjoyed the immersion.

Lana’s boyfriend is a cop, and it’s slightly annoying that she doesn’t share the facts she discovers with him. However she, like many other amateur detectives, is able to talk to people more frankly than the authorities can, and eventually helps solve the case.

This book is delicious in every way, and if younger readers are going to be enticed into our wonderful genre, this is the kind of book that will serve as a savory appetizer. Lana is hardworking and responsible, yes, but she’s also cool in her own way, and—bonus—has a cute pug named Kikkoman.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-14 16:23:16
Toxic Toffee
Robin Agnew

The prolific Amanda Flower has written seven series with an eighth due in January 2020. Several of them, including her latest, Toxic Toffee, are Amish-centric, which seems appropriate for a traditional detective novel. Because of the lack of technology in that world, deductive reasoning comes more to the fore for the detective. Flower’s central character, Bailey King, is a non-Amish candymaker who lives in Holmes County, Ohio, a center of Amish culture, and runs a candy shop with her Amish grandmother and a couple of Amish assistants. When her cellphone is run over by a buggy, her separation from the modern world is complete.

Bailey has just returned to Ohio and her cop boyfriend after a six month stint in New York hosting a candymaking cooking show. The minute she steps back into town she’s asked to make a giant toffee rabbit for the town’s “Easter Days” celebration—and the the farmer in charge of the real rabbits drops dead at her feet.

Toxic Toffee agreeably mixes candymaking with murder investigation, and Bailey’s ease with the community enables her to extract critical information in a place where the locals tend to clam up around “English” police. I love reading about the Amish, and I gobbled up this fast-paced, well-written novel that even brought tears to my eyes at the end.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-14 16:27:34
Penne Dreadful
Robin Agnew

Penne Dreadful, by Catherine Bruns, is the first in her new Italian Chef series. The main character, Tessa Esposito, is a very recent widow, and her cop cousin Gino suggests she distract herself with a part-time job at a restaurant while at the same time doing a little surveillance for him.

Before long she’s the new chef at Slice, a pizza place in her neighborhood, where the employees seem oddly hostile to her and not very sympathetic at the loss of her husband, who did the restaurant’s taxes. When Tessa picks up her husband’s belongings from his workplace, she makes a troubling discovery about him.

After this discovery, Tessa is more committed than ever to finding out what’s rotten at Slice and how her husband was involved. She’s assisted in her efforts by her cousin Gabby, even though her other cousin Gino wants her to quit after a co-worker is killed while delivering a pizza.

This book is a delectable combination of character, setup, and plot. The puzzle ingredient is very well handled, and as Tessa navigates her way through grief as well as peril, she’s also simmering about the things she’s finding out about her late husband.

Some of the best mysteries are origin stories, as the protagonist comes to terms with their past and transitions to their future. That is accomplished neatly in this cozy, which still manages to fold in some cooking for those looking for a good pizza recipe. There’s a neat stepping-off point for the next book in the series at the end, and if it’s anything like this one, I’m certainly looking forward to devouring it.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-14 16:31:29
Tom Clancy’s The Division: Broken Dawn
Hank Wagner

Alex Irvine delivers an exciting follow-up to 2016’s New York Collapse in Tom Clancy’s The Division: Broken Dawn. Starting out in a near future, dystopian New York City and Washington, DC, it focuses on the survivors of a virulent pandemic, a mix of civilians and members of the military unit known as the Division, as they attempt to negotiate the strange and dangerous new world they now inhabit. The tale quickly morphs into a quest/road trip-type story, as one brave soul, April Kelleher, embarks on a perilous journey from Manhattan to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to discover the truth behind her husband’s murder.

An accomplished fantasist (2002’s A Scattering of Jades is a personal favorite), Irvine’s prose is certainly several levels above what one would expect from a standard action-adventure potboiler. He brings his expansive cast to vivid life, and his action scenes are both engaging and memorable. He leaves you yearning for more.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-14 16:36:28
The War Heist
Hank Wagner

In Ralph Dennis’ The War Heist, two WW II-era American soldiers conceive an audacious plan to rob a train that is carrying a substantial portion of Britain’s tangible wealth (specifically, gold bullion and securities) to Canada for safekeeping, circa June 1940. The crew they assemble to accomplish this Herculean task encounters many challenges, but none so steep as they face when they square off against the man assigned to protect the precious cargo, world-weary Scotsman Duncan MacTaggart.

Previously published in hardcover in 1979 as MacTaggart’s War, this book was edited and reworked by Brash Books publisher Lee Goldberg, after purchasing the rights to Dennis’ literary estate. By reducing the original’s heft, and stripping the book down to its essentials, he’s produced a new, faster-paced work, which, while preserving Dennis’ intriguing premise, also makes it more palatable to modern audiences. It’s good, not-so-clean, hard-hitting fun.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-14 16:42:41
Star Trek The Next Generation: Available Light
Hank Wagner

When it comes to speed, there’s nothing faster than warp, an essential component of life in the Star Trek universe. Star Trek The Next Generation: Available Light, by Dayton Ward, finds Captain Picard and his crew dealing with not one but two new alien races, one which lives aboard a giant, apparently derelict ship, and another, a piratical clan of scavengers, who view the hulking vessel as a salvageable wreck. Ward shows great confidence playing in this sandbox, producing an eminently readable thriller that touches on numerous science-fictional tropes. It’s also a bit of a political thriller, with a compelling subplot about the Federation’s espionage arm, Section 31, serving as a backdrop to the main action.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-14 16:47:39
White Knight and Other Pawns
Hank Wagner

Bracken MacLeod’s latest short-story collection is White Knight and Other Pawns. The title novella, a noirish tale that begins as a story about domestic violence, but proceeds to suggest that no good deed goes unpunished, justifies the purchase price. Evoking the likes of Cornell Woolrich, Jim Thompson, and Jack Ketchum, it provides a bleak picture of humanity that will figure in your thoughts for many days. It’s accompanied by nine other stories, most averaging about ten pages in length, each of which goes out of its way to be bleaker than its predecessors. MacLeod’s stories aren’t for the faint of heart, or for the squeamish, as they all pack memorable, often devastating punches.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-14 16:51:56
Neon Prey
Dick Lochte

Number 29 of the Prey series by Sandford (real name John Camp) shows a welcome shift in approach that resembles the one the prolific author uses in his yarns about Virgil Flowers, an agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. The Virgil series is flat-out funny, full of wild cases (Bengal tiger abductions, murder at the shrine of a crying Mother of God statue), odd characters, and wacky situations. But, because this is the kind of hell in which we now live, none of them seem silly or unbelievable. The Preys— featuring Lucas Davenport, who once worked at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and is now a deputy US marshal with the independence to pick his cases—are more hardboiled, suspenseful and, well, serious (notwithstanding a backstory that Davenport became fabulously wealthy by creating a computer program that assists lawmen). Neon Prey, however, is definitely verging into Virgil territory. For example, Lucas’ latest prey, Clayton Deese, is a redneck hitman from Louisiana who not only kills people, he eats them, preferably barbecued for five minutes over a very hot fire. Instead of going full bayou, reader Richard Ferrone gives him a McConaughey-lite accent, with an angry edge replacing the laid-back lyricism. Deese heads west to Southern California to take up with an equally malicious and eccentric group of felons gathered by his half-brother that includes a computer expert who reads David Foster Wallace and a homicidal party girl with the unlikely name of Genesis who has an unnatural affection for actress Meg Ryan’s changing hairstyles. Make no mistake, in embracing humor, Sandford does not dismiss violence and sudden death. There are, in addition to the aforementioned cannibalism, shootouts, multiple murders, rape, torment, and even a fatal snake bite. The book shifts from the chaotic plans of its fascinatingly horrific villains to the fast-paced progress of Davenport and a team that includes an FBI agent who’s physically a younger version of him and a pair of ever-bickering professional hunters named Bob and Rae. This audio gives the last two a touch of whimsy not available on the printed page. Each time Ferrone mentions them, it’s impossible not to think of the comedy greats Bob and Ray. Of more importance, his gruff delivery includes a having-seen-it-all attitude that enhances the novel’s objective observation of hunters and prey as they move to their inevitable, but this time darkly humorous, confrontation.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 14:15:11
Metropolis
Dick Lochte

For some reason I’d thought Metropolis, number 14 in Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series, to be the author’s penultimate chronicle of his sardonic antihero, that he’d completed another manuscript before his untimely passing last year at age 62. Alas, this seems not to be the case, though I’ve a pretty good guess what that book would have been, judging by the current one. Metropolis takes us back to Berlin in the summer of 1928, when young Bernie, a hero of the Great War, begins his detecting career as a freshly minted member of the city’s Murder Commission. Surely, that next, unwritten tome would have helped bridge the gap to March Violets, Kerr’s 1989 first novel that introduced Bernie in 1936 after he’d quit the Kripo Politzei and was operating as a private detective trying unsuccessfully to stay clear of Hitler’s pals. The Bernie who narrates March Violets is the one we’ve come to know, the coldly sardonic wiseguy speaking cynically to power. In Metropolis, he’s not merely younger, he’s hopeful and even a bit naïve and reader John Lee, who previously has given voice to the character using a casual, blasé approach, now employs almost a world-of-wonder attitude as Bernie rubs shoulders with Berlin’s crime-fighting elite on a search for two serial slayers—one murdering and scalping prostitutes, the other dispatching WWI amputee veterans who roll through the streets on wooden carts. Bernie, the new recruit, is told to watch and learn, but as we know from 13 previous novels, he’s a fast study and hard to control. So, before too long he has seen enough of the way things work in this most decadent of cities (see Netflix’s Babylon Berlin for visuals) to shed some of his youthful optimism and he’s rolling through Berlin on a cart, knees bent into painful legless pretense, daring the killer to approach. The book’s whodunit secret isn’t hard to guess, but Kerr provides more than enough compensation in vivid descriptions of the city’s smarmy locales and even smarmier politics as seen through Bernie’s opening eyes. For the people the detective meets, Lee employs a gallery of Germanic accents, from the bombastic to the slyly venal. He even manages the sound of a sneer. But it’s his interpretation of Bernie’s not-so-gradual awakening to the rise of Nazism that marks his contribution to this excellent ultimate addition to the series.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 14:21:43
Odd Partners
Dick Lochte

Since 1946, the year after its founding, the Mystery Writers of America organization has presented north of 60 anthologies of short stories penned by its members. Each has featured a theme. The newest, edited by Anne Perry, consists of tales where, in her words, “two beings had to cooperate with each other...to solve a crime.” I have to say that in some selections the coupling is subtle enough to have escaped my notice. Perry, who reads her own introduction, contributes “Reconciliation” (read by Simon Prebble), in which the partners are obvious—two youthful WWI soldiers, one British and one German, combine to try and stop an addled Englishman from poisoning the air. William Kent Krueger’s “The Nature of the Beast” (read by Ray Porter), cleanly casts an outdoorsman and a wolf against a loathsome land developer. Less obvious is Shelley Costa’s “Glock, Paper, Scissors” (read by Lorna Raver), a riveting revenge tale spanning decades that finds a chance meeting in New York with a despised killer from her past moving an octogenarian to murder. Regardless of protagonist(s), all of the 19 shorts are worth your while, but I was particularly happy to discover what Nick Travers, Ace Atkins’ New Orleans private eye, has been up to since he went MIA, print-wise, 17 years ago (the two relatively recent Travers graphic novels being adaptations of earlier works). The new wandering daughter caper, “From Four Till Late” is nicely narrated by MacLeod Andrews. Another pick of the pack, “Georgia in the Wind,” by William Frank (read by Ray Porter), has art thief Marty Corbin joining art PI Tom McNaul in a search for a missing painting by Georgia O’Keeffe. And it’s always a pleasure to be in the company of Joe Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard, especially when, as in “Sad Onions” (read by Christopher Grant), we find such hardboiled poetry as “Shots fluttered through the trees like rain.”

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 14:26:41
Frederic Dannay, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and the Art of the Detective Short Story
Jon L. Breen

As seen in his previous studies of H.C. Bailey and G.K. Chesterton, Blackwell has a special interest in detective short stories, considered the primary format by many purists. In the mid-20th century, no institution did more to keep the detective short thriving than Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, under the editorship of Frederic Dannay.

The book is in no sense a business history of the magazine, but rather an appreciation of Dannay’s discovery and rediscovery of stories and writers old and new. The period covered is limited to 1929 to 1980, “during which Ellery Queen was authoring novels and short stories and/or was editing anthologies and EQMM.” It includes reference to the high-class pulp Mystery League, which ran four issues in 1933-34 and was edited by both Queen collaborators. But Manfred Lee would have relatively little to do with EQMM, though it was stipulated he would take over the editorship if Dannay was drafted during World War II or was otherwise unable to continue.

Topical chapters discuss categories of contributors including Old Masters (e.g. Frederick Irving Anderson, R. Austin Freeman, Maurice Leblanc), New Masters (e.g. Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Philip MacDonald, Roy Vickers), Acclaimed and Awarded (winners of the magazine’s annual short story contests, Edgar nominees, winners of Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes, those listed in various polls of experts), “Tec Tyros” debuted and/or developed in EQMM (Avram Davidson, Lillian de la Torre, Stanley Ellin, Jack Finney, Thomas Flanagan, Joyce Harrington, Harry Kemelman, Josh Pachter, Henry Slesar, James Yaffe, among many others), Other Significant Debuts (e.g. of series like Isaac Asimov’s Black Widowers, Lawrence Block’s Ehrengraf, and several Edward D. Hoch characters; first short story appearances of characters like Manning Coles’ Tommy Hambledon, Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen, Clayton Rawson’s Merlini, and many others), and writers of parody and pastiche (e.g. Thomas Narcejac, Arthur Porges).

A dozen-page appendix lists by author titles of reprinted stories that were changed by Dannay, some clearly improvements but others puzzling. Many authors complained about this title-changing proclivity, which also applied to new stories submitted. (Personal footnote: I didn’t like all his changes to my story titles, but some were brilliant: “The Great Emerald City Heist” became “The Flying Thief of Oz” and whatever I called my first story about baseball umpire sleuth Ed Gorgon, it surely wasn’t as good as “Diamond Dick.”)

Blackwell is generally meticulous on facts and names, but there are a few lapses. A reference to Queen’s The Mystery of X presumably refers to The Tragedy of X. Thomas Walsh at one point is confused with John Walsh. Some authors with three-part bylines are deprived of their middle names (e.g. Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Viola Brothers Shore, Veronica Parker Johns), a fate others escape (Mary Roberts Rinehart, Manly Wade Wellman, Wilbur Daniel Steele). Most serious is the failure to differentiate between Edgar winners (one per year in the short-story category) and Edgar nominees (several per year).

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 14:35:59
Pulp According to David Goodis
Jon L. Breen

This immensely readable scholarly treatise celebrates one of the most influential writers of noir fiction. The author, a professor emeritus of English at Mansfield University, clearly elucidates noir in its pure form, not as broadly and vaguely as it is so often used today. He makes a distinction between noir and hardboiled, both of which Goodis represents in his depiction of the underside of postwar Philadelphia, with much discussion of civic corruption and references to the early 1950s Kefauver hearings. Goodis’ screenwriting career is of particular interest. His unfilmed treatment of “Up to Now,” visualized as a more downbeat and realistic equivalent of The Best Years of Our Lives, may have made a major screen epic if not for the looming menace of the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Hollywood anti-Communist blacklist.

Newsstand paperbacks like Of Tender Sin (1952), Street of the Lost (1952), The Burglar (1953), The Blonde on the Street Corner (1954), Down There (1956), and Goodis’ final book, Somebody’s Done For (1967), get the kind of close readings usually reserved for acknowledged literary classics, convincing the reader they deserve them. Goodis is compared at length, both biographically and artistically, to Franz Kafka.

The wide range of literary allusions includes mainstream greats (William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Thomas Wolfe), paperback masters (Harry Whittington, Peter Rabe, Jim Thompson, Charles Willeford), hardcover suspense specialists (Dorothy B. Hughes, Patricia Highsmith, Elizabeth Sanxay Holding), other crime writers familiar and less so (Mickey Spillane, Lawrence Lariar, Steve Fisher, Lawrence Block, Geoffrey Homes, Cornell Woolrich, James M. Cain), plus a celebrated playwright (Arthur Miller) and a variety of film directors (Fritz Lang, Tod Browning, Alfred Hitchcock, Jacques Tourneur).

This fine book should spur many who have known of but never read Goodis (and I confess I am one) to discover his novels.

(Reviewed from the ebook edition.)

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 14:43:20
The New Ray Bradbury Review, Number 6
Jon L. Breen

This irregular periodical celebrates a writer whose work spans multiple popular genres, primarily science fiction, fantasy, and horror, but also crime fiction. Bradbury contributed several stories to the mystery pulps in the 1940s, and in 1985 began a trilogy of detective novels narrated by an unnamed young writer struggling to succeed in 1950s Los Angeles who partners with a policeman friend. The first of these is the subject of Paul Donatich’s “The Horror of the Blank Page in Bradbury’s Death Is a Lonely Business.” The subsequent volumes were A Graveyard for Lunatics (1990) and Let’s All Kill Constance (2003). Donatich views the novel as fictionalized autobiography as well as detective fiction, noting Bradbury’s affinity with Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin tales and the impact of two events when he was 12 years old: the murder of his uncle and his encounter with a sideshow performer known as Mr. Electrico. The essay provides a fine introduction to one corner of Bradbury’s massive oeuvre.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 14:47:52
The Best of Manhunt: A Collection of the Best Stories From Manhunt Magazine
Jon L. Breen

Though this is primarily an anthology of stories (over a third replicating the contents of the 1958 paperback The Best from Manhunt, edited by Scott and Sidney Meredith, and of the 1959 British volume The Bloodhound Anthology), the editor’s introduction, together with the comments of insiders Block and Malzberg on how the magazine operated, has some reference value. When it first appeared in 1952, the plan was to call it Mickey Spillane’s Mystery Magazine, as a harder-boiled competitor to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, but that was nixed by Spillane’s contract with Dutton. The Meredith brothers were the real editors of the magazine, using a pseudonym for correspondence with authors, and the magazine was essentially an in-house product of the Scott Meredith Literary Agency. Lawrence Block recounts being offered $40 at two cents a word for his first story, then told that he could get $100 if he became a Meredith client—less, of course, the agent’s ten percent. Barry N. Malzberg describes the “modest, elegant corruption and self-service” of the Meredith agency. Per Vorzimmer’s introduction, contributing to the eventual downfall of the magazine was a prosecution of the publisher for using the US mail to transport “obscene, lewd, filthy or indecent” material. A single illustration, unpleasant but not objectionable at first glance, included one clearly unacceptable element that once seen could not be unseen.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 14:52:02
Milwaukee Noir
Ben Boulden

Milwaukee Noir, edited by Tim Hennessy, is a shining example of a themed crime anthology. Its 14 stories provide a glimpse into the city once known as “The Machine Shop of the World,” but which is now struggling with disappearing jobs, growing poverty, division, and racism. It’s a city Hennessy loves, for its “lack of pretension; its stubbornness and pride” but also fears that its “best and brightest will find somewhere else to shine” as Milwaukee struggles to find its path into the uncertain future of the 21st century.

Matthew J. Prigge’s melancholy and meaningful “3rd Street Waltz” is a tale about inner-city abandonment and neglect. The Princess, a once glamorous movie theater, is reduced to showing pornographic films, and as the story begins, the theater is set to close its doors forever. The ripe and moody atmosphere and the strong writing make for a compelling and relevant story. “Summerfest ’76” by Reed Farrel Coleman is a powerful tale of love, loss, and anti-Semitism. Jane Hamilton’s “Friendship” is a beautifully written story about friendship, betrayal, and justice (of a certain and very satisfying kind). “Mocking Season” by Christi Clancy charmingly, and with some surprise, plays on the psychology of the outsider with the added complexities of jealous neighbors and the use of chemical pesticides.

There are no duds in this anthology—every tale has something to say, and it’s said in an entertaining and surprising way. Milwaukee Noir is one of the better entries in Akashic Books’ Noir series.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 14:56:36
The Hurt Business
Ben Boulden

The Hurt Business, by Mike Miner, is a single author collection with 12 dark and painful stories about loss, betrayal, and failure. “Momma’s Boy,” the most heartwarming tale in the bunch, is about a recovering addict’s return to his dealer. His motives are purer than a simple high, and the climactic twist is heartbreaking. “Frog Hollow,” named for the worst of Hartford, Connecticut’s working-class neighborhoods, is about a local boy who made good, but failed to pass a most crucial test. “155 Rounds” describes the horror of a father who lost his young son in a school shooting, and the title story, “The Hurt Business,” is a hardboiled tale about the cycle of violence with a touch of redemption to it.

The stories in The Hurt Business are bleak, working-class, literate, and thought-provoking. Each has its own hurt—and that hurt is placed squarely on the reader’s shoulders—but their truth and power are undeniable.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 15:01:48
The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes
Ben Boulden

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Graeme Davis, compiles 17 detective stories published between 1837 and 1914. The first seven tales were published before Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes (who first reached print in 1887 with A Study in Scarlet), and include Edgar Allan Poe’s fine C. Auguste Dupin detective story “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt”—a writer and character Doyle acknowledged reading as a youth—Charles Dickens’ early procedural “The Detective Police” and Wilkie Collins’ memorable “Mr. Policeman and the Cook.” The remainder of the stories were written by Doyle’s contemporaries, writers who were likely influenced more by the Sherlock Holmes canon than Doyle was influenced by their work. The better stories include two A.J. Raffles tales—the gentleman thief—from Doyle’s brother-in-law, E. W. Hornung, “Gentlemen and Players” and “The Return Match,” and “The Ninescore Mystery” by Baroness Orczy. But the real revelation of the anthology, for me anyway, is that Arthur Conan Doyle had no contemporary rivals, which is the very reason his work is still alive and many of the others covered in this anthology have passed into oblivion.

The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes includes an excellent and informative foreword by Leslie S. Klinger.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 15:05:21
The Body Lies
Eileen Brady

A young pregnant woman is physically assaulted on the street coming home from work. She fights back. The aggressive man in the blue hooded jacket punches her in the jaw, then leaves. A random act of violence, possibly a purse-snatching gone wrong the police say. But for the victim it isn’t over, and the constant worry of something happening again wedges itself deep in her mind.

So begins author Jo Baker’s fine psychological mystery The Body Lies, set in London and the English countryside. Unable to find work for three years following the incident and the birth of her son Sammy, she is offered a lectureship, quite a ways from London. With her husband Mark unable and unwilling to relocate, they decide as a modern couple to make it work out. Daycare is available near her university and it’s only a few hours drive from London. However, the couple find that absence does not make the heart grow fonder, as her demanding teaching job and smart but erratic creative writing students take over more and more of her life—especially one handsome, brilliantly intense student, Nicholas Palmer.

Palmer’s focus makes her uncomfortable, and for the first time, she feels unsafe in her isolated farmhouse. Her rental home is not in a bucolic hollow, but up the road from a working farm, pungent and muddy with pigs and other farm animals.

In casual conversation, her neighbor, farmer John Metcalfe, reveals a sad story. Their daughter overdosed in the field near her house. Metcalfe’s pure, humble grief is an especially lovely piece of writing in this well-written book. But this story seems familiar, similar to a piece Nicholas Palmer wrote. Did he simply use a real-life incident to spin off his story? The plot speeds up after a university party where our heroine makes a mistake, by trying to give a troubled student a second chance. One bad choice is all it takes for our very likable, although nameless heroine to cascade deeper into trouble, sliding down a muddy slope with no end in sight.

Baker never gives her main character a name, in essence making her an everywoman of sorts, a professional, a mother, a wife, a mentor—someone we all know or can all identify with in some way—and whose literal body, as well as her mind, stand vulnerable to the threat of violence. And while Baker explores this danger as a work of fiction, the truth of misogyny is, unfortunately, something we read about in the real world every day.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 15:13:41
The Sentence Is Death
Ben Boulden

The Sentence Is Death is Anthony Horowitz’s second outing with the clever, wildly wacky, and somewhat-brilliant former Scotland Yard detective turned private investigator Daniel Hawthorne. Horowitz is both the novel’s real-life author and Hawthorne’s fictional chronicler; something like Sherlock Holmes’ Dr. Watson, but where Watson enjoyed his role, Horowitz would rather be writing a screenplay for his television series Foyle’s War or almost anything else other than following the abrasive Hawthorne around.

The celebrity divorce lawyer Richard Pryce is murdered in his home, a pricey bottle of Château Lafite the murder weapon, a cryptic “182” painted on the crime scene’s wall, and his last words heard over a telephone connection were “You shouldn’t be here. It’s too late….” Hawthorne is called in by Scotland Yard due to the crime’s peculiarity. The first suspect is the recent ex-wife of one of Pryce’s clients, the celebrated novelist Akira Anno, who days earlier threatened to hit Pryce with a bottle of wine in a restaurant, but she is far too obvious a suspect. Adding another layer, an old friend of Pryce’s, Gregory Taylor, is hit and killed by a train at King’s Cross Station. Years earlier, Pryce and Taylor were involved in a caving accident where a third man died.

The Sentence Is Death is as clever as a traditional puzzler can be. The mystery develops with a rush, but its complexity builds with a slow brilliance. Horowitz the character is an easy target for the snarky Hawthorne. If Horowitz dares speak to a witness (or anyone else) the detective smirks and glares. When Anno discovers he writes popular fiction, she rolls her eyes and makes a snide remark. But the true brilliance of The Sentence Is Death is how Horowitz spins mystery after mystery, and mysteries within mysteries. It is a true gem that will please the whodunit crowd and anyone else who enjoys a well-told tale.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 15:19:38
I’ll Never Tell
Sharon Magee

In 1998 the McAllister family’s Camp Macaw was shaken to its core when Amanda, one of the junior counselors, was discovered bludgeoned in a row boat. The case was never solved. Years later, the five McAllister siblings have gathered at the dilapidated camp to hear the reading of their parents’ will and decide what to do with the camp. Ryan, the only son, wants to sell; his business partner just absconded with their funds. His sisters, Margaux (the eldest, sometimes called Mother Margaux), Mary (a loner who loves the camp and her horses), and the twins, Liddie (whom everyone thinks is either trans or gay) and Katie (who is gay but has told no one), all have different thoughts about the future of the camp. Also in the mix is Macaw’s longtime caretaker, Sean Booth, who was promised by Mr. McAllister that he would have a home for life.

They’re all taken by surprise when the family attorney reads a letter from their father saying that they must first vote unanimously on who killed Amanda before the disposition of the camp can be decided. No one was ever charged with the crime, but the only people at Macaw at the time, other than the campers, were the McAllister siblings and Sean. Each of the suspects quickly turns against one another, coming together in uneasy alliances before splintering off in new directions. In alternating chapters from the viewpoints of each sibling, the story inches ever closer to revealing who committed the deed as secrets come to light.

Author Catherine McKenzie paints her characters so subtly that any one of the six could be the culprit. I’ll Never Tell is a psychological thriller that proves to be a real mind-bender until the very end.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 15:29:47
A Lady’s Guide to Gossip and Murder
Joseph Scarpato, Jr.

It’s Victorian London in 1899 and most of society is away for the summer when American-born Frances Wynn, now the widowed Countess of Harleigh, learns that one of her favorite cousins is suspected of murdering his former girlfriend, Mary Archer. Knowing her cousin to be a cheerful, carefree sort of man without a mean bone in his body, Frances decides to look further into the case.

With the help of her attractive next-door neighbor, attorney George Hazelton, Frances delves into the background of the victim, her friends, and family. Before long, it becomes apparent that the victim had somehow gathered potentially embarrassing information about a wide number of people in her social circles. Could blackmail have been the motive behind her murder? What follows is a sometimes amusing, sometimes dangerous amateur investigation that is sometimes in coordination with the police—thanks to George’s connections—and sometimes, foolishly, not.

Aiding Frances in her detecting endeavors, and adding humor and additional romantic intrigue, is her female protégé, Lottie, an attractive and intelligent young woman despite her incredible physical awkwardness, a slapstick trait which doesn’t seem to make her less attractive to cousin Charles.

While this historical romantic mystery itself is wide-ranging and absorbing and includes some clever surprises, one of the biggest mysteries and surprises to me is why it took so long for Frances to realize that she and George were more than just detecting partners.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 15:36:45
Killing With Confetti
Robert Allen Papinchak

Peter Lovesey’s previous Peter Diamond Investigation novel, Beau Death (2017), ended with wedding fireworks at Bath’s Royal Crescent, the English city’s iconic row of 30 terraced houses. There is another wedding in Killing With Confetti, but the fireworks are of a distinctly different kind.

Diamond is hired as security at the unlikely union between the daughter of hardened criminal Joe Irving and the son of Deputy Chief Constable George Brace. There is a certain irony in Diamond’s assignment to keep Irving from getting hit.

Diamond reluctantly makes his own preparations for the September nuptials, returning to the training range to brush up on his rusty marksmanship skills. (He has a lousy aim until he’s given a laser attachment, something that will come in handy later.) He’s also lousy with the sentimental demands of the day and hopes to stay in the background as much as he can. He makes every effort, as a good security guard should, to be discreet.

Those best-laid plans go awry when wandering juvenile attendants in pink dresses discover a corpse in a hypocaust—the space under the floor where hot air circulates to warm a room—at the Roman Baths where the reception is taking place. There are also bits of confetti on the ground. The potential list of killers is long, starting with rival gang members, future in-laws, aggressive photographers, and roving members of the wedding party.

Fans of the series may be impatient with the lengthy opening of the novel in which their favorite detective doesn’t appear for over 70 pages. The protracted beginning minutely details a well-planned riot and breakout from the prison from which Irving is supposed to be released in less than six months. It appears unlikely that Irving is involved in the escape or a related kidnapping scheme of the young, female governor of the privately run men’s institution. But Lovesey aficionados also know to trust their favorite mystery writer. All threads will be resolved.

By the time Diamond solves the case, a young officer is found battered, the prison governor vows vengeance for the embarrassing events incurred under her watch, and the married couple aspires to a happy union. Though Killing With Confetti is not as intriguing as earlier books in the series, it is not disappointing. The rewarding solution will leave readers anxiously waiting for the next installment in the long-running and enthralling series.

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 15:41:14
Charlie-316
Jay Roberts

Tyler Garrett seems to have it all going his way. A decorated cop, the ex-military man is one of the few African Americans on the Spokane Police Department. He’s a family man with the respect of his colleagues and the police brass love that he embraces his role reaching out to the black community.

All that quickly comes under fire when a routine traffic stop turns into an ambush. Garrett returns fire and the motorist ends up dead. The delicate balancing act between law enforcement and the communities they serve is quickly trashed. The motorist, who was a white man, was well known to the police so the shooting initially looks clean, but when the resulting investigation turns up inconsistencies in Garrett’s statement about the events, it unleashes a seething cauldron of recriminations around police shootings, racial tensions, and online mob justice.

From the start, Detective Wardell Clint knows that he was brought in to serve as the department’s liaison to the investigation based solely on the fact that he’s black. Nicknamed “Honey Badger,” Clint is a dedicated detective prone to conspiracy-theory-type paranoia who rubs everyone the wrong way. He’s hardly interested in protecting his fellow cop. He’s interested in the truth, regardless of how it plays out.

Meanwhile, Garrett and his family are being threatened and harassed. Garrett’s life is falling apart and no one besides Detective Clint seems to be interested in the truth anymore. When drugs are planted in Garrett’s home as a pretense to arrest him, it’s clear the department he once served faithfully is now out to get him. And as the case evolves, Clint begins to come over to Garrett’s side when he sees how both the police’s and City Hall’s need for political expediency leave Garrett twisting in the wind.

And that’s where Zafiro and Conway’s story really takes off. They pull the rug out from not only Garrett’s life, but the reader’s expectations as well. The build-up of the story takes readers in one direction, but we quickly learn that not all is as it seems. Everything we thought we knew comes under suspicion, as Detective Clint’s ruthless and relentless pursuit of the truth reveals the cold, calculating way people (and readers) can be played. And that play on reader’s sympathies works wonders.

As the ever-darkening tone of the book leaves no character unscathed, Charlie-316 is a roller-coaster ride of expectations and upsets. The story is confounding because it so adeptly plays on readers’ preconceived notions, particularly regarding our need for justice. Is it actual justice we are looking for or just the version that best fits our own viewpoint?

Teri Duerr
2019-06-17 15:50:14