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Archive for the ‘Crime’ Category

Reviewed by Teri Davis

It is rare to read a series of three novellas within one cover, but that best describes The Bayou Trilogy. Each short novella features Rene Shade, a policeman from the swamp area of Louisiana known as St. Bruno. Rene’s family has an eclectic background as he has one brother who owns and runs a bar and the other brother is a successful attorney. The relationship between the three is as varied as their chosen occupations.

Rene Shade grew up becoming a boxer and finally becoming a policeman. Unfortunately, Rene dishes out his justice through using knowing of the people and families from his life in St. Bruno. Through
understanding the people, who or what is important to them, he solves the criminal investigations through his own version of justice frequently not having the approval of his superiors.

In Bright Lights which was first published in 1986, the investigation is about a black city councilman’s murder. Muscle for the Wing from 1988 is about a group of paroled convicts who are on a spree of robbing and killing anyone who gets in their way. In The One You Do from 1992, Rene’s father who has been absent for years, appears back in St. Bruno with his ten-year-old daughter from another woman. Being that his father was a former pool hall hustler, no one is surprised that someone wants the father dead. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Douglas R. Cobb

Royal Thai detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep is one of crime literature’s most exotic, strangest, and coolest protagonist, and he’s back in John Burdett’s latest suspenseful, page-turning, soul- searching, and humorous novel yet, The Godfather of Kathmandu. When he is confronted with the most shocking crime of his career, will his spiritual side win out, or his cop one? The murder case he works on, investigating the death of a rich American film director, could mean a promotion for him–but, how important is that, when compared to the state of one’s karma? Sonchai accepts his boss’s (Colonel Vikorn’s) offer to be his consigliere in a heroin smuggling operation, but how can he reconcile this with his striving to be a good Buddhist? The Godfather of Kathmandu is the fourth novel by John Burdett to feature the Royal Thai detective Jitpleecheep, and one of the best so far.

How gruesome is the murder of the obese American director, Frank Charles? The murderer is influenced by Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum,” and Thomas Harris’ novels The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, all of which are found at the murder scene on a bookshelf in a flophouse where Charles has taken a hooker. He’s been disemboweled “with a single careful incision from solar plexus to lower abdomen.” Also, the top of his head has been removed by a rotary saw and then replaced, but not until after a portion of his brain has been removed and eaten by the murderer. Not exactly the kinky evening of sex he’d been anticipating….. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Cy Hilterman

Pearl Sutton did not deserve to die such a tragic and early death. Pearl was found battered and partially buried in fallen leaves and branches just off a popular trail. Those that didn’t really know Pearl thought of her as the town tramp and whore. The men that knew Pearl couldn’t understand the way she lived her life with Gus Sutton, a man quite a bit older than Pearl and thought to be her husband. Why did Pearl seemingly want to meet other men that she loved to tease with her sexuality but then would leave without a commitment to them? She was friendly and loving in her own way.

The Sheriff’s Department was a small one as they usually are in smaller towns. Sheriff Tom Atherton and his deputies were not used to murders such as Pearl’s but rather small petty crimes, but the sheriff determined that his small force should be the ones to investigate this since Pearl was liked, and in some instances, loved by some of the men on the force. The county Medical Examiner, Jed, also not used to such autopsies, seemingly was overcome by Pearl’s death and his drinking continued leaving his work questionable to the sheriff. When another woman was found burned to a crisp in a small cabin and another woman brutally attacked leaving her in very delicate condition, Sheriff Atherton and his deputies were stretched even thinner. The sheriff and his deputies searched for several days the area that Pearl had last been seen. Since her Cadillac had been missing too they searched for it while walking the highway back and forth.

One of the deputies, Wallace, was found in his cabin incoherent and bruised while his wife Clara had disappeared. Wallace was admitted to the hospital and Clara also was when she was found beaten very badly and violently raped. The search for clues expanded and the Medical Examiner was pushed by the sheriff to get the results of tire treads, DNA, fingerprints, and all other evidence completed so these brutal assaults could be solved and the murderer or murderers could be found before more occurred. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Douglas R. Cobb

Reviewed by Douglas R. Cobb

Daredevil Dennis Lenahan witnesses the murder of a small-time hood from eighty feet up in the air as he’s preparing to dive into nine feet of water. Two members of the Dixie Mafia, or “Cornbread Cosa Nostra,” the ex-deputies Arlen Novis and Jim Rein, confront Floyd Showers and Rein shoots him five times in the back of his head, seemingly unperturbed about Dennis watching the whole thing as it went down. That’s because they don’t intend to let him live, and one even makes a bet with the other about whether or not he can hit the diver “on the fly.” That’s life and death in Tunica, Mississippi, and also, it’s Elmore Leonard, “the king of whack- job crime novelists,” at his coolest with his thirty-seventh novel, Tishomingo Blues.

Dennis is being given a two week tryout by the owner of the Tishomingo Lodge & Casino, Billy Darwin, that he hopes will extend to a job that will last throughout the rest of the summer. Work’s kind of dried up in sunny Florida, so Dennis resorts to grasping at straws and trying to get work elsewhere. Floyd Showers was a guy who’d served time in jail, and whom Charlie Hoke, who’d once been a decent pitcher in the Major Leagues with a ninety-nine mph fast ball but who now works for Darwin, recommended to help set up the equipment for Dennis’ act. Hoke is the announcer for Dennis’ act, giving a spiel that includes more about his renowned pitching escapades than it does about the dives Dennis performs. Dennis prefers to use beautiful, bikini-clad women to announce his dives, but until/if he can get one, Hoke takes over this duty. He saunters up to the two good ol’ boy assassins, and talks to them, saying that Dennis won’t say he saw anything, and they leave, but Dennis knows that won’t be the last time he sees them. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Jud Hanson

Book review for Comfort to the Enemy by Elmore Leonard

Comfort to the Enemy by Elmore Leonard features the return of hot-shot Deputy US Marshal Carlos “Carl” Webster. When a murder happens among the POW’s at an Oklahoma Prison Camp, Webster is assigned the job of catching the killer. It won’t be easy, since the all of the POWs are Nazi soldiers fiercely dedicated to their cause. There’s also the matter of the POWs “escaping” at will, returning later as if on a 3-day pass.

While I enjoyed this short novel overall, I found it to be a little choppy in places. I happen to enjoy Elmore Leonard’s writing but don’t feel he was on his game with this one. The novel seemed to just end without concluding. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Douglas R. Cobb

Reviwed by Douglas R. Cobb

Take it from me, if you ever have the misfortune of going up against a judge for sentencing, you don’t want to go up against one nicknamed “Maximum,” anything. Many defendants find that out in Elmore Leonard’s witty and terse crime novel, Maximum Bob, when they have to face Palm Beach County judge “Maximum Bob,” or “Big” Bob Isom Gibbs, much to their chagrin. He has a reputation for sending even petty offenders away to do hard time, sentencing them to the longest terms that can be applied to them for their crimes. You can well imagine that a man like Maximum Bob would gather enemies like flies to a cow patty, and you’d be definitely right in your surmise. Though Bob has been blissfully blind to the idea that one or more of his growing number of enemies might one day want to do him in as a form of payback, the only strange thing is that it took as long as it did before they finally decided to act on their impulses for revenge.

Maximum Bob also has a fondness for lechery, hitting on the women lawyers and probation officers who he sees on a daily basis, despite being married. His wife, Leanne, has grown steadily more odd-acting since the day he first met her when she was a mermaid at Weeki Wachee Spring, and almost drowned while trying to escape from an alligator she saw headed towards her. She believes she gets possessed at times by the spirit of a young African American girl (Wand Grace) who had been a slave and got killed by an alligator while attempting to save ehr dog, who got eaten by the same beast that killed her. Gibbs seems to really love Leanne in the beginning, but her fascination with crystals and other New Age stuff, and her speaking in the voice of Wanda Grace and warning him to change his ways eventually causes the judge to want to look elsewhere for companionship.

The judge’s wanting to drive his wife away is, ironically, what triggers other people’s desire to kill him. He asks a poacher who has been up before him in court before to bring an alligator to his house to scare Leanne, but the scheme gets botched when the ten-foot-long gator the man brings isn’t dead like it’s supposed to be, just unconscious. It reawakens, eats Leanne’s dog, and crashes through the glass sliding doors of the judge’s house. Gibbs shoots the alligator, but it doesn’t seem to hurt the animals, so he calls for help. The alligator is eventually dispatched, and Leanne does leave the judge, saying that Wanda Grace told her that Bob no longer wnanted her around, so that part works out for Bob; but, a suspicion arises that the judge is being targeted for assassination by one of the enemies he’s made. That gets into the newspapers, where his enemies see it, and decide that now’s the time to act on their own impulses for revenge, before someone else beats them to it. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Patricia Reid

A child dies and the marriage dissolves. Husband and wife go separate ways. This has happened to many couples. This should be the end of the story but it is only the beginning.

John Henderson, a successful lawyer, winds up working as a waiter in Oregon. He has moved beyond the life he had with his wife and children but the past will soon catch up with him. John receives a message that says only “I know what happened”. Although he tries to ignore the message, he soon feels pulled back to the area where his son died. He travels to Black Ridge, a small town near his former home.

Strange things are happening in Black Ridge. A woman seeks his help saying that someone is trying to kill her. Her story does not make a lot of sense but John soon realizes that nothing in Black Ridge makes a lot of sense. While John is in Black Ridge digging into the past and the secrets lurking in the shadows there, his former wife is also receiving strange messages and being pulled back into the past.
Becci, the daughter of his employer at the restaurant in Oregon, is having her own problems. Her boy friend has gotten himself in trouble with some bad people. John helped Becci once with the problem but now the boyfriend has gotten in deeper. Becci keeps calling John and he is trying to do what he can to help her while doing everything he can to stay alive in Black Ridge. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Julie Moderson

Joseph Wambaugh is a former LAPD detective. It shows in his writings that he has been in law enforcement.

I believe this is the fourth in a series of books but it didn’t seem
necessary to read the first three books in order to enjoy this book.

Hollywood Hills is home to the wealthiest and famous people. The people with the power live in Hollywood Hills and passing through someone could get just a little greedy. Nate Weiss is called Hollywood Nate because he has been in enough films to get an a Screen Actors Guild card. He thinks that he finally found his way into fame when he talks to Rudy Ressler, who is engaged to Leona Brueger. Nate agrees to keep an eye on her estate while they are on vacation. A series of events happen that involve an art dealer who is trying to cash in on the chance to borrow art and copy it, a ring of burglars that hit the wealthiest homes and a pair of drug addicts who stumble onto the art heist. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Teri Davis

There are numerous causes that many people find worthy today. However, some causes are unquestionably just the right thing to support. Homes for our Troops is definitely one of those that need present home cannot accommodate their needs, this agency allows them to have a new home that is specially adapted for their needs and at no cost to the veteran.

Wolfmont Press yearly donates an anthology to benefit a charity and this year they have chosen Homes for our Troops. The authors donate their stories and also promote the book while accepting no funds for compensation. Wolfmont also donates all their profits from the book to this charity.

MURDER TO MIL-SPEC is a collection of twelve short stories by Terrie Farley Moran, Dorothy B. Francis, Big Jim, Williams, Elizabeth Zelvin, Lina Zeldovich, Charles Schaeffer, Howard B. Carron, Brendan Dubois, Janis Patterson, Barb Goffman, S.M. Harding, and Diana Catt. These are all authors who are not well-known and are fairly new to publishing.
Each story is based on a military crime featuring various conflicts around the world from World War II to the present. Read the rest of this entry »