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Archive for the ‘Mystery’ Category

Reviewed by Douglas R. Cobb

Mr. Fitzwilliam and Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy are presented with their most intriguing mystery ever in Carrie Bebris’s latest Jane Austen-inspired novel, The Deception at Lyme (Or, The Peril of Persuasion). This seventh novel in the Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery series is based on both two of Austen’s most popular characters, the Darcys, and on her last novel, Persuasion. In Persuasion, the seawall in Lyme known as the Cobb (my last name, coincidently) is where Miss Louisa Musgrove falls in a critical turning point of the novel. But, in Bebris’s novel, the Cobb proves to be lethal. It’s where the very pregnant Mrs. Clay suffers a fall at the base of the Cobb, manages to give birth to her baby, but dies from her injuries.

There are mysteries on top of mysteries in this excellent page-turning novel. Who is the father of the infant Mrs. Clay leaves behind? There are two likely choices, but which one would benefit the most at Mrs. Clay’s death? Was her fall an accident, or was she murdered–and, if she was murdered, why? These are just a few of the questions that the Darcys try to discover the answers to in The Deception at Lyme (Or, The Peril of Persuasion).

They have traveled to Lyme both to rest and vacation, and also to receive the personal effects of Mr. Darcy’s cousin, a naval lieutenant (Gerald Fitzwilliam) who died in action. The Darcys are there with Fitzwilliam’s sister, Georgiana, and their 18-month old daughter, Lily-Anne, who is fascinated with her first encounter of the sea. Fitzwilliam spots a ship at sea which seems to be struggling against the approach of an imminent storm. A lightning bolt crashes down, and sets a mast of the ship ablaze. Hurrying to attempt to rescue any survivors, Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth come upon the body of a woman they later find out is Mrs. Clay, who has apparently unsuccessfully tried to descend rough-hewn uneven steps called the Granny’s Teeth. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Patricia Reid

When Carmella Melendez, Moe Prager’s ex-wife and former PI partner, shows up at Moe’s daughter Sarah’s pre-wedding party he finds himself reliving the past while trying to keep the future at bay. Carmella needs a favor from Moe. Her sister has been murdered but the police don’t seem concerned about finding her killer. Unable to resist Carmella’s plea, Moe decides to try to find out who killed Alta. This decision does not sit well with Pam, a PI from Vermont and a woman that currently holds a special place in Moe’s life.

Carmella took her son Israel, a child close to Moe’s heart, and went to Canada to live leaving Moe behind. She had also cut her family out of her life with the exception of her grandmother so it was a puzzle to Moe why she was so concerned with her older sister’s murder. Alta and her partner Mayna Watson were EMTs who had refused to give assistance to a dying man at a downtown restaurant. The man’s family were furious and the public had no sympathy for Alta or her partner as evidenced by the ton of hate mail Mayna turned over to Moe to help his investigation.

Moe moves forward in his investigation taking him to places that have held a lot of meaning to him in the past. Moe also renews old acquaintances while making his inquiries. However, his thoughts are always touching on his own future or even if he will have a future. Moe has recently discovered that he is suffering from stomach cancer. This is a fact that he hasn’t shared with his family so he is carrying the burden alone. Carmella has left town and gone back to Canada without saying good-bye. Mayna, Alta’s partner, is uncooperative and only wants to be left alone. It seems no one really cares what actually happened but Moe is determined to find the answer. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Patricia Reid

A man walks into Rutledge’s office at Scotland Yard and identifies himself as Wyatt Russell. From Russell’s appearance, it is obvious that the man is very ill. Russell admits to Rutledge that he is suffering from cancer and does not have long to live. His purpose for visiting Scotland Yard is to confess that he killed a man in 1915 and was never apprehended. Russell states that confessing is the only way to clear his conscience. He names his victim as his cousin, Justin Fowler.

Rutledge is curious but confused. Although Russell admits to the murder, he is not willing to offer many details and eventually states that his confusion is due to the morphine that he is taking. Without enough evidence to open a murder inquiry Rutledge still cannot just let the matter go. His curiosity will not allow it. When a body is found floating in the Thames with a bullet in the back of the head, it turns out that the body is that of Rutledge’s confessor to murder of a few weeks ago. There is a gold locket around the man’s neck containing a picture of a young woman.

Rutledge takes the locket and travels to Essex and the village of Furnham, the home of Wyatt Russell. Although the community of Furnham does not welcome strangers, Rutledge is able to speak to the minister who informs Rutledge that the picture of the dead man is not that of Wyatt Russell. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Caryn St. Clair

With long running series, it’s sometimes hard to age the main characters and their families. Readers become attached, not only the main characters, but also the supporting cast around them. The same can be said about running themes in books. In most of Kellerman’s books featuring Decker and Lazarus, there has been a strong emphasis on their families and Rina’s strong Orthodox Jewish faith. Neither really plays a part in Gun Games. The assorted Decker and Lazarus children are grown and off doing other things, no extended family is involved and Rina’s faith does not come into play much at all. This will undoubtedly disappoint some readers. Both Peter Decker and his wife Rina Lazarus are back, as is their foster son Gabriel Whitman. This book is Gabriel’s-and possibly Kellerman’s effort to shift the series in a different direction.

Gabriel witnessed a fellow student commit suicide which given his rocky background is enough to concern the Decker household. But when the student’s mother approaches Peter saying she is sure her son’s death was not suicide and asks him to investigate, Peter agrees. It also causes Peter and Rina to wonder what Gabriel is not telling them. Things become even more intense when a second child, from the same elite school dies-also of an apparent suicide. Decker launches an all out full scale investigation. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Teri Davis

What will people do to be famous? ..to have their fifteen minutes of fame? You can probably guess what normal people will do, but what about those in the movie business? What lengths will these people go to get into a film, be featured on television, or just to get some form of publicity?

Everyone is shocked when watching the news on television and seeing an elderly actress talking to a newscaster while her house is burning in the background. Besides being reminded of this person’s existence, Max and Margot view this and decide to invite this actress to play a part in their next movie as the zombie grandmother. Could the fire have been a coincidence? Could this be a set up to get the actress publicity and to remind people of her existence?

Max and Margot have their own movie production company and currently are creating a new-type of zombie movie. They begin their filming in Florida with the zombies coming out of the ocean. Also coincidentally, the containers holding the actors and actresses are covering an alligator hole. This definitely makes for interesting filming. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviewed by Patricia Reid

This third addition to the Emily Stone series finds Emily and Rick Lopez on the beautiful island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. Rick has given up his position as a police officer to join Emily in her undercover operation tracking serial killers with the emphasis on child abductors. Emily was a former police officer.

Rick and Emily are able to rescue a child that was kidnapped by slave brokers. When the police arrive at the scene, the couple meets Sergeant Lani Candena of the local police department. 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 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 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 »