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Archive for the ‘Mystery’ Category

Reviewed by Teri Davis

What do you do when your job causes the death of your wife and child? How do you go on?

Tell Lyon left the Border Patrol to start over as head of the police in New Austin, Ohio. Hoping that the problems of the past never reappear, heading a small law enforcement force might just be what he needs.

One of his first duties is to meet with the sheriffs of the two neighboring areas, Sheriff Able Hawk from Horton County and Walt Pierce from Vale County. He quickly realizes that there will be territorial and overlapping boundaries between these close-in proximity areas. Also, he quickly concludes that both have a completely opposite approach to law enforcement.

The problem of immigration, both legal and illegal, is the focus point for each of these three law enforcement leaders. How the three of them approach this realistic problem is visibly apparent in El Gavilan.

El Gavilan, which means hawk in Spanish in the nickname given to the highly opinionated Sheriff Hawk. This man assists the legal immigrants in numerous ways within the community but has no patience for the illegals. With introducing Tell into the community, he discovers a kindred spirit which assists in developing their respect and mutual friendship. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Joanne Reynolds

Detective McLusky is a disgruntled DI in Bristol, England. He is single, doesn’t eat right, smokes, etc. The police station he works at is rather small and so is his office. He really is not the happiest of men.

There is a murder of an individual who is found in Leigh Woods. The victim is partly buried and stoned to death. The murder victim is a drug addict and so we are being lead to believe this is a deal gone bad.

Within days, there are many drug-related deaths that are not as easily explained. It seems as if the addicts died by ingesting heroin that has been laced with anthrax.

After this, the death toll keeps going up with victims being drugged to death and then others that are found in the woods having been brutally killed with stones. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

O’Connell has brought her star protagonist, Kathy Mallory back for her eleventh appearance in The Chalk Girl. While through the book readers will see some cracks in the icy cold persona of Mallory, the book in some ways is the most disturbing of the series-especially if the reader is squeamish about rats.

As The Chalk Girl opens, an effort to rid one area of Central Park of rats has backfired and the normally nocturnal, people-shy creatures are out in force in the daylight and amped up on chemicals that were meant to kill them. The chemicals have also made the rats both vicious and supercharged so that they are now actively attacking people and climbing trees. When a camp director from New Jersey suffers a heart attack at the sight of all the rats, her campers scatter. A cleaning lady making her way across the park has been watching the group as well as a small elflike redheaded child playing nearby. When the police are sent to round up the children, she insists they need to look for the little girl as well.

That little girl, who turns out to be somewhat of an expert on rats, is also found to be a kidnap victim from Chicago. It is through this small girl that readers see a side of Mallory not seen before. The child suffers from Williams Disease, a condition which leaves her vulnerable to all sorts of danger as she seeks affection for people. The person she has latched onto is Mallory. Mallory’s friend Charles Butler takes a special interest in the little girl and having known Mallory for years, is concerned about the child’s need for contact with Mallory. Because the child may have witnessed a horrible crime, Mallory is afraid that she is possibly in danger from the killer. Both Mallory and Charles set out to protect her at any cost but they each question the other’s reasons. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Paricia Reid

In vitro fertilization is a common occurrence now but in 1975, the subject was very controversial. Dr. Colin Sanford, an obstetrician in Emerald, Washington, is determined to be the first doctor to produce a baby by this method. He has recruited Dr. Giselle Hearn, a laboratory geneticist-embryologist to work with him. Because of Hearn’s department chair, their work must remain a secret. Joyce Kennett, a patient of Dr. Sanford, is determined to have a baby. With the help of Sanford and Hearn, Kennett gives birth to a healthy baby boy.

Dr. Sanford has assured Kennett that when he is in a position to make a public announcement about the baby’s birth, there will be no end to the publicity and Kennett will gain financially through the publicity.

However, before any announcement can be made, James Kennett, Joyce’s husband and the baby’s father, goes on a shooting spree, kills Dr. Hearn, and then kills himself. This is where Detective Ernie Baumgartner steps in and determines to discover what motivated James Kennett to murder a doctor and then commit suicide. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Douglas R. Cobb

Ella Clah mystery fans, rejoice! The 17th novel in writing duo Aimee and David Thurlo’s series featuring Tribal Police Investigator Ella Clah, Black Thunder, is now available in your local brick & mortar bookstores and through this web site. I loved reading the 16th book, Never-Ending-Snake, the first one I’d read in the series, and Black Thunder is also an excellent, page-turning and suspenseful read.

Life on the Rez (as the authors term the New Mexico Navajo Indian Reservation where the Ella Clah series is set) is different, with its own atmosphere and its own political and religious rules. There are the views of the Traditionalists, the New Traditionalists, and the Modernists, and the authors show great sensitivity and respect to each of these groups and their diverse beliefs in their novels. Their intimate knowledge of the ways of life, culture, and mores of the Navajos shows in their writing, and makes their mystery series a unique reading experience.

When a construction crew worker hits something solid with his shovel and digs a bit deeper, he is shocked to discover a human hand, connected to the body of a murdered man. The man has been shot twice in the back of his head, execution style. Ella Clah and her partner Justine Goodluck secure the crime scene and lead the investigation under the hot summer sun, discovering eventually the graves of two more men and one woman. As in some of the other Ella Clah novels, who has jurisdiction comes into play as a part of the plot, as one of the bodies is found just across the border of the Rez, making that homicide fall under the jurisdiction of the Sheriff’s Department of San Juan County.
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Reviewed by Julie Moderson

Faye Kellerman is one of my favorite authors and Gun Games is such an amazing book. It is definitely a must read book. Just a warning, you will stay up all night to finish it.

The story starts with 15-year-old Gabe Whitman sitting in a coffee shop minding his own business when a group of kids come into Starbucks looking for trouble. One of the boys tells Gabe that he is going to sit his seat and he better move now and then he shows Gabe the gun tucked in his waist band. Gabe handles it with such finesse and turns to try to be friendly with the thug. In doing so he disarms him mentally. Gabe is a very talented pianist and is home schooled so he doesn’t know whom these kids are. He is living with his father’s friend detective Peter Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus. Children in the school that these thugs attend are committing suicide and no one can understand why. It takes a while to connect the dots and figure out what is really happening. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

Cora and Sherry are back in $10,000 in Small, Unmarked Puzzles, the thirteenth book in the Puzzle Lady series, though in this installment of the popular series, readers don’t see much of Sherry since she spends most of the book in the hospital giving birth to her first child.

Cora however is called away from the hospital by Sherry and Cora’s attorney friend Becky Baldwin. It seems that one of Becky’s clients needs to have blackmail ransom delivered and it needs to be Cora who does the drop. Because this is Cora (and because it’s a murder mystery) it should come as no surprise to readers that when Cora shows up at the drop site, the only person there is a dead body-with a Sudoku puzzle on him. As faithful readers know, this is good news for Cora because, in spite of her puzzle column in the paper, she can’t solve crosswords but she is a whiz at Sudoku. Unfortunately for Cora, a crossword puzzle shows up shortly in connection with the case. With Sherry, the real crossword guru otherwise occupied in the hospital, Cora finds herself in a tight spot.

Cora has grown over the course of this series. In the early books she was portrayed as a drunk. Fortunately, author Hall has allowed Cora to get her drinking under control and although she still manages to get herself into a number of scrapes, at least she’s aware of her choices, poor as they may be. Sometimes her past still comes back to haunt her. In this book her no good, lowlife ex-husband Melvin appears on the scene. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Elizabeth Sheehan

Bailey Weggins is a true-crime journalist working for Buzz located in New York city. She is invited by a co-worker to a weekend house party about 2 hours from Manhattan and which they find very secluded. Their host is Scott Cohan a music mogul. An interesting array of guests attend; with the main one being Devon Barr a famous model. Along with being extremely flirtatious we find that Devon has an eating disorder. As luck would have it Devon is found dead by Bailey.To make matters worse a wicked snow and ice storm makes it impossible for any of the guests to leave and the police are unable to get there for a while. While in Devon’s room Bailey discovers a bottle of syrup of ipecac which causes vomiting. When the police do arrive they find that the bottle is missing and Bailey then begins to doubt that Devon’s death is accidental.

As she investigates she is shoved down a flight of stairs and when she returns to Buzz she is asked to leave her job. She is persistent and all ends well. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Teri Davis

Pants On Fire Detective Agency is owned by Cat DeLuca. This agency specializes in discovering cheating husbands. Cat learned the basics from growing up in a police family with her father and brothers being part of the Chicago Police and from her own cheating husband.

Cleo Jones definitely has a cheating husband. Unfortunately, Walter cheats on Cleo with her sister. Besides that, he takes her money and her dog. So Cleo feels justified when she shoots her husband full of buckshot so that he will not be sitting for quite a while. Cleo also tends to be overly dramatic and gives her neighbors opportunities to use their video cameras when she threatens Walter.

Cat decides that it is best if she accompany Cleo back to the house to take whatever she needs and the dog. She also is pressing Cleo to stop shooting at Walter. When they enter the house, all is quiet but the dog has been in something messy and sticky which turns out to be Walter’s blood. He’s dead. The two also find a bag full of cash which they take with them as they leave with the dog. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Cy Hilterman

Marvelous story that combines mystery in Brier Hospital, its patients, doctors, nurses, and other workers. There is murder in Brier Hospital, but who is doing the killing? How safe are patients in their room, some in a difficult medical state of health where they are not able to think straight, and some in a very delicate state near the end of their life? Dr. Jacob Weizman and his wife, Lola, were Holocaust survivors well up in years; Jacob was eighty-eight years of age and Lola eighty-five. Jacob was so very highly thought of in the medical world of Brier and beyond for many reasons. He told it like it was but always had compassion for his patients. That, along with his expertise towards almost any health problem, made him so very valuable nd trustworthy in the medical field. Lola was also still active in her practice as a psychotherapist despite her age. She and Jacob would be lost without their professions and each other.

There is usually a person on most any hospital staff who has their problems with others in that hospital and that was the case with Jacob with a few thinking he was too darn old to practice medicine, but these same people had to admit he was the best and wisest in the hospital despite his age. When a friend of Jacobs called him and told him of a young doctor, Zoe Spelling, who was looking for an office in which to practice, Jacob asked that she come and see him. Jacob did hire Dr. Zoe Spelling. He knew he was getting old and could use someone to help him. Dr. Spelling was a bright young woman who seemed very capable and Jacob, despite his complaints about some things she did or didn’t do, thought she was a good fit as his partner. Read the rest of this entry »