Mysteries Galore.com

Archive for December, 2011

Reviewed by Julie Moderson

Collision of Lies is a very fast paced incredible novel. The book starts out with the murder of a man at sea who turns out to be an undercover officer. Then an important political man has a car wreck and dies. Is it murder or an accident on a dark lonely road?

The characters in this book are so well developed and you feel part of the team in trying to solve the crime. You try to find out what the big secret is and how they are going to stop this crime from being committed. This is a tale of murder, intrigue, and political partnerships that is amazing. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Teri Davis

In the year of 1385, Crispin Guest has a new assignment in Canterbury, England protecting the bones of Thomas a Beckett from being stolen and destroyed. Unfortunately, one of the first people he meets there is his old former friend, Geoffrey Chaucer. Obviously, the two forfeited their former friendship and now Crispin visibly shows animosity around Chaucer.

Almost immediately, a prioress is murdered in the exact spot where Beckett was assassinated nearly two-hundred years earlier. Added to that, Beckett’s bones are missing and another unrelated murder occurs. Were Beckett’s bones missing before Crispin came to Canterbury?

With Crispin is Jack Tucker, his young companion and apprentice, who falls in love immediately with a young nun, the one who witnessed the prioress’s murder. Meanwhile, Chaucer is imprisoned by the archbishop who plans to execute him if is Crispin does not discover the real murderer. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Patricia Reid

Where is the best place to hold a film wrap party for producer Lucas Cruz? The film is a vampire parody and party planner Presley Parker manages to wheel, deal, and line up a cemetery for the party. Not everyone would be brave enough to throw a party in a cemetery but Presley thinks it is the ideal location.

The day before the party is to take place Presley runs into a group of young people practicing the art of Parkour. Parkour includes vaulting, running, jumping and climbing around obstacles and a cemetery offers plenty of obstacles.

Presley warns the group that they are trespassing but this does not seem to bother them at all. The next morning the body of one of the participants in Parkour is found in the cemetery. This does not bode well for Presley’s party. Presley begins her own investigation and soon has plenty of suspects but before she narrows the suspects down more violence occurs. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

Even though Nina Quinn’s landscape company specializes in one day garden makeovers and shies away from longer jobs, Nina agrees to help her friend Jenny Christmas when she asks Nina to do the landscaping indoors and out for Christmastowne her new business. While the job stretches Nina’s business model, it does allow Nina to keep her employees all working full time during a usually slow time of year. However, the project seems to be jinxed from the beginning. There are some not-so-funny things going on around the village. There is a rash of small fires in the gingerbread kitchen, plants poisoned and expensive items missing. But of course, given that this is a mystery after all, the biggest problem is the dead body under the tree. There are several people in the book who have secrets in their past. The question is, which secrets are tied to the problems in Christmastowne? Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

Authors frequently let their pet causes creep into their writing. How affective it is depends on how well the author’s crusade matches the readers’ interest in and feelings about the issue. For some, it’s a ploy that can certainly backfire. But assuming that most, if not all of the readers of the Joe Grey series by Shirley Rousseau Murphy are cat lovers, it stands to reason that those readers would be interested not only in a great story, but learning a bit about the plight of some abandoned cats and efforts being taken to help them. It is with such a cause that Cat Telling Tales, the eighteenth book in the series opens.

Molina Point, home to the extraordinary talking cats Joe Grey, Dulcie, Kit and most recently the big orange tom cat Misto, has developed a serious feral cat problem. As the economy worsens, people have been forced out of their homes and have left their cats behind to fend for themselves. While the characters in the book deal with the true feral cats and the former house pets that don’t know how to survive on their own, the author intersperses actual cat agencies and rescue groups into the mix giving readers an eye opening account of the depth of the problem in this country while highlighting the efforts being made to end it. She easily weaves into the story tales of strays being caught and released in warehouses and police stations to control the rodent problem. She describes the various groups who catch, spay and neuter the cats and then release them. And by having the characters in the book care for the abandoned and feral cat population by feeding them and leaving them fresh water each day, she is not only tipping her hat to the countless volunteers across the country doing the same, but also urging others to join in the cause. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Allen Holt

An earlier Connelly novel but still with all of his energy, tautness, great dialogue, and vivid description. All of his work is stay-up-and-read-one-more-chapter! Void Moon is no exception.

From the very first chapter where Cassie Black watches with regret while her lover (and soon to be father of her child) walked off to get on the elevator to the casino’s hotel rooms. She had wanted to do this job as it was to be their last and they were going to pack it up, leave the racket, and move to Tahiti while awaiting the birth of their child. Though she pleaded with him he would not have it any way so off he went.

Little did either of them know that this would be his last job? The plan seemed to be simple. He would go to the tower and rob the mark while he slept.

But sometime not long after leaving Cassie, Max came crashing through the skylight and dropped onto the dice tables. He was dead and she was devastated.

Her life then begins its descent. She is arrested for several crimes that she and Max had committed. While in prison she delivers Max’s daughter who is immediately put up for adoption.

After serving several years she is put on parole and is lucky enough to have it transferred back to California. She is also lucky enough to get a decent job selling high-priced autos at a fancy dealership. However Cassie longs for more. She wants to get enough money to move (hopefully with her daughter whom she has located) and live happily ever after. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Douglas R. Cobb

The combination of a great paranormal mystery novel with one that is also an urban fantasy is a hard one to beat. Bullets and Brimstone, the wondrous concoction of a novel that successfully combines these two genres, is the latest book in the Mystic Investigators series by the talented duo of Patrick Thomas & John L. French. Though it is a relatively short novel, at 115 pages, it is packed with enough page-turning suspense and LOL humorous writing to make it well worth buying and adding to your reading list.

What’s Bullets & Brimstone about, you may well ask; and, how did this highly creative dynamic pair get together to write it? Both Patrick Thomas and real-life crime scene supervisor John L. French have their own series. Thomas is the creator of the Mystic Investigators’ series featuring the diminutive but feisty Detective Bianca Jones of Baltimore, a.k.a. Charm City. She’s had several run-ins with the paranormal before, and has managed to cheat the Devil out of more than one soul. That’s why you’d think it an unlikely pairing for her to team up with John L. French’s character Negral, an all-but-forgotten Sumerian god and Hell’s Detective, who is employed by the Devil. But, it works very well, despite the animosity between Bianca and Negral’s boss.

Negral’s love of film noir flicks like Humphrey Bogart’s detective movies is demonstrated by the attire he wears: a dark suit, fedora, and light-colored trench coat. He also seems to dig old gangster movies, like Little Caesar, a fact that Bianca puts to good use at one point in the novel by sending him off to view a gangster movie marathon to get him out of the way and allow her to pursue a couple of leads in the case he brings her. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

When Charlotte “Charlie” Swift retired from the Air Force, she needed to find a new profession. Recognizing that she was a “loner” rather than a team player, she thought she’d found the perfect career when she founded Swift Investigations. Even though she had a silent partner, he was just that silent. She ran the office and did the investigations. Her partner was a partner in name and finances only. And then he ran off leaving his wife strapped for cash and suddenly Charlie had a not-so-silent partner, Gigi Goldman. Readers first met the pair in Swift Justice. The unlikely duo returns now for their second case in Swift Edge.

Dara Petersen is looking forward to qualifying for the U.S. Olympic team in pairs figure skating. The only problem is, her partner, Dmitri Fane is missing and the trials are just a couple of weeks away. Dara is sure with the trials coming up he would not leave on his own and hires Swift Investigations to find him. She fails to mention to Charlie that this is not the first time Dmitri has taken an unexpected hike, and even Dara doesn’t know many of the secrets in Dmitri’s life. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Allen Hott

The creator of The Camel Club and other great stories that were based in the Washington D.C. area or had characters that were involved in governmental investigation has come out with a new hero. Baldacci’s John Puller earned his stripes in many years of fighting for his country around the world and now works as a CID investigator.

Puller not only has his military background but his father is a retired general and his brother, an army major and nuclear scientist, had been found guilty of treason against his country. So now even though his brother was in prison for life and his father is suffering from the beginnings of Alzheimer’s, John Puller is an army brat that can never stop serving his country regardless of unforeseen circumstances.

His current case seems to be a bit odd as he is sent to Drake, West Virginia to investigate a recent murder of a career soldier who was with the Defense Intelligence Authority. Puller questions why the murder isn’t handled by the locals and also nearby Military Police investigators. He is told by the SAC, not his normal chain of command, that the case warrants an investigation by the CID and that he though working alone can catch on with any local police who seem to be interested in the case. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Patricia Reid

“Treva Williams, the only hostage to be released, sat on the curb beyond the cordoned-off area, wrapped in an EMT blanket.” This sentence is the opening line in Fever Dream and immediately captures the reader’s sympathy for Treva.

Meanwhile, Detective Eleanor Lowrey is on the phone to Daniel Rinaldi, psychologist. Rinaldi is also a trauma expert and consults with the Pittsburgh police. Detective Lowrey asks Rinaldi to come right away to the scene of a bank robbery that has gone bad. The criminals are still inside the bank but one hostage, Treva Williams, has been released. Treva is badly traumatized and Detective Lowrey is hoping that Rinaldi can perform some magic that will calm Treva and help the police in their handling of the standoff situation.

When Rinaldi arrives on the scene he is able to immediately connect with Treva and learn a little more about the situation inside the bank. Then suddenly everything explodes as shots ring out and police converge on the scene. Rinaldi promises Treva to ride to the hospital with her in the ambulance, though he is prevented from keeping that promise. Read the rest of this entry »