A Thousand Cuts (2011)
By Simon Lelic

***Nominated for the 2011 Macavity Award***

Starred Reviews by both Publisher's Weekly and Booklist

A stunning debut novel that unravels the hidden story behind a school shooting

It should be an open-and-shut case. Samuel Szajkowski, a recently hired history teacher, walked into a school assembly with a gun and murdered three students and a colleague before turning the weapon on himself. It was a tragedy that could not have been predicted. Szajkowski, it seems clear, was a psychopath beyond help. Yet as Detective Inspector Lucia May- the only woman in her high-testosterone office in the Criminal Investigations Department-begins to piece together the testimonies of the various witnesses, an uglier and more complex picture emerges, calling into question the innocence of others. But no one, including Lucia's boss, is interested.

As the pressure to close the case builds and her colleagues' sexism takes a sinister turn, Lucia begins to realize that she has more in common with the killer than she could have imagined, and she becomes deter mined to expose the truth. Brilliantly interweaving the witnesses' accounts with Lucia's own perspective, A Thousand Cuts is a narrative tour de force from a formidable new voice in fiction. (Description taken from Syndetic Solutions, Inc.)

Invisible Boy (2010)
By Cornelia Read

***Won Publishers Weekly Best Books of the Year in 2010***

Publisher's Weekly Starred Review

The smart-mouthed but sensitive runaway socialite Madeline Dare is shocked when she discovers the skeleton of a brutalized three-year-old boy in her own weed-ridden family cemetery outside Manhattan. Determined to see that justice is served, she finds herself examining her own troubled personal history, and the sometimes hidden, sometimes all-too-public class and racial warfare that penetrates every level of society in the savage streets of New York City during the early 1990s.

Madeline is aided in her efforts by a colorful assemblage of friends, relatives, and new acquaintances, each one representing a separate strand of the patchwork mosaic city politicians like to brag about. The result is an unforgettable narrative that relates the causes and consequences of a vicious crime to the wider relationships that connect and divide us all. (Book Description taken from Amazon)

The Scent of Rain and Lightning (2010)
By Nancy Pickard

***Nominated for the Agatha Award in 2010
Nominated for the Macavity Award in 2011***

Starred Reviews by both Publisher's Weekly and Booklist

A decades-old mystery is solved and a woman’s haunting questions put to rest in Pickard’s latest thriller. When she was just three years old, Jody Linder lost both parents in one night, when her father, Hugh Jay—eldest son of the wealthiest rancher in the small town of Rose, Kansas—was killed and her mother, Laurie, vanished. Raised by grandparents, Hugh Senior and Annabelle Linder, and with loving support from three uncles, Jody spends years collecting human detritus around the area’s towering Testament Rocks, where authorities once searched for clues to Laurie’s disappearance. Jody’s world is rocked 23 years later when Billy Crosby, the vicious drunk convicted of her father’s murder on circumstantial evidence, is released for a new trial; his return to town brings events to a head. Pickard shows her storytelling skills, weaving elements of deception, revenge, and romance into a novel with full-bodied characters who deal with tragedy as best they can; Annabelle Linder’s encounter with Crosby’s wife is particularly moving. From an award-winning author, this is engrossing fiction with an eminently satisfying denouement. (Description taken from Booklist)

Random Violence (2010)
By Jassy MacKenzie

Starred Reviews by both Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal

Set in contemporary South Africa, Mackenzie's triumphant debut introduces PI Jade de Jong. After roaming the world for a decade, Jade returns home to Johannesburg to take her revenge on the convicted murderer, about to be released from prison, who she believes killed her highly respected police commissioner father. Meanwhile, David Patel, her father's former assistant, asks Jade for help in investigating the murder of Annette Botha, gunned down one night after getting out of her car to unlock a malfunctioning automatic gate outside her home. David and Jade later learn that robbers killed Botha's brother a few years earlier, and that the dead woman recently retained a detective, who has since disappeared. The plot has more than its fair share of nice twists, and Mackenzie does a superb job of making the reader care for her gutsy lead while offering a glimpse at life in South Africa after apartheid. Readers will wish Jade a long fictional career. (Description taken from Publisher's Weekly)

Posted by Shiela

It's that time of year again and with all the holiday buzz, you may need a little murder and mayhem to get you through to the new year. Here is a list of cozies to curl up with after the turkey dinner...

Death at the Chateau Bremont (2011)
By M. L. Longworth

Set in charming and historic Aix-en-Provence, France, Death at the Château Bremont introduces readers to Antoine Verlaque, the handsome and seductive chief magistrate of Aix, and his on-again, off- again love interest, law professor Marine Bonnet. When local nobleman Etienne de Bremont falls to his death from the family château, the town is abuzz with rumors. Verlaque suspects foul play and must turn to Marine for help when he discovers that she had been a close friend of the Bremonts. This is a lively whodunit steeped in the rich, enticing, and romantic atmosphere of southern France. (Book Description taken from Amazon)

The Square Root of Murder (2011)
By Ada Madison

This is the first book in this brand new series

Dr. Sophie Knowles teaches math at Henley College in Massachusetts, but when a colleague turns up dead, it's up to her to find the killer before someone else gets subtracted.

Dr. Keith Appleton was the most disliked professor on campus, but it was Sophie's assistant, Rachel, who had a real problem with him--he refused to recommend her to a medical school. Sophie is confident that there's a calculating murderer among them, and equally confident it's not Rachel. The only possible answer is for Sophie to eliminate the lowest common denominator from campus herself. (Book Description taken from both Amazon and book jacket)

Look for the next book in the series coming in the new year:

The Probability of Murder (2012)

A Timely Vision (2010)
By Joyce and Jim Lavene

This is also the first book in a new cozy series

Meet Dae O'Donnell, a woman with a gift for finding lost things-and the stories behind lost lives...

Dae O'Donnell is the mayor of Duck, North Carolina-and the person everyone turns to when they've lost something. One touch and Dae can find it, and missing pieces seem to find their way to her, whether she wants them to or not.

When Miss Mildred asks Dae to find her missing watch, Dae finds herself looking for more than mislaid jewelry-she must prove the town matriarch isn't a cold-blooded killer. (Book Description taken from Amazon)

Look for the next two books in this series:

A Touch of Gold (2011)
A Spirited Gift (2011)

How to Host a Killer Party (2010)
By Penny Warner

Don't let murder crash your party.

Presley Parker was just happy to get her party planning business off the ground. Now she's gotten the gig of the year, planning Mayor Davin Green's sumptuous "surprise" wedding for his socialite fiancée, to be held on Alcatraz.

But when the bride is found floating in the bay and the original party planner is found murdered, Presley becomes the prime suspect. If the attractive crime scene cleaner, Brad Matthews, doesn't help her tidy her reputation, she'll be exchanging her formal wear for prison stripes... (Book Description taken from Amazon)

This is the second book in this series. The first book:

How to Crash a Killer Bash (2010)

Wined and Died (2011)
By Cricket McRae

Home Crafting Mysteries Book #5

First Book: Lye in Wait (2007)

Something is brewing in Cadyville, and it's not only dandelion wine. Sophie Mae is intrigued by a recently discovered cassette recording in which a therapist fearfully contemplates her client's murderous threats. When the same therapist ends up dead, Sophie Mae is lured—despite her husband Barr's warnings not to get involved—into an intoxicating investigation that explores the age-old art of mead and wine making. (Book Description taken from Amazon)

Posted By Shiela

CBC Radio's The Next Chapter - Peter Behrens aired on December 19, hosted by Shelagh Rogers.

The Mystery Book Panel segment of that episode recommended books that are sure to cut the holiday treacle.

Margaret Cannon's picks:

The Affair by Lee Child
Action/adventure/investigator

Book # 16 with Jack Reacher, ex-military policeman in the USA

Summary: Child’s compelling 16th thriller featuring incorruptible vigilante Jack Reacher rewinds the clock to 1997 when Reacher was still a military cop and working on the case that led to his eventual break with the Army. Reacher must figure out whether the shocking murder of 27-year-old Janice May Chapman in Carter Crossing, Miss., has any connection with nearby Fort Kelham, where Army Rangers are trained. . . . Publisher's Weekly

If you haven't started this series yet, read The Affair as a prequel to the first book, Killing Floor

First book: Killing Floor

## Related posts:
MBTB review of Bad Luck and Trouble # 11

MBTB review of 61 Hours # 14

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Feast Day of Fools by James Lee Burke

Book # 3 with Hack Holland, a hard-drinking lawyer, Korean War POW, progressive Democrat, now a sheriff, in Texas

Summary: Interviewing an alcoholic Native American who witnessed a murder along the Texas-Mexico border, Sheriff Hack Holland and his deputy, Sam Tibbs, recognize the work of serial killer Preacher Jack Collins in an investigation that is assisted by the enigmatic Anton Ling.

First book: Lay Down My Sword and Shield

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A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

Book # 7 with Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, in the village of Three Pines, in southern Quebec

Summary: Artist Clara Morrow is about to have a prestigious show of her paintings when her childhood friend is found murdered, and Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide at the Sûreté du Québec, is called to investigate.

First book: Still Life

## Related post: MBTB review of Still Life # 1

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JD Singh's picks:

I'll See You in My Dreams by William Deverell

Book # 5 with Arthur Beauchamp, a scholarly, self-doubting lawyer retired as a hobbyist farmer on Garibaldi Island, off the coast of British Columbia

Publisher's Weekly /* Starred Review */ Deverell's excellent fifth novel featuring lawyer Arthur Beauchamp finds him retired on Garibaldi Island near Vancouver — and still haunted by his first murder trial. In 1962, he defended Gabriel Swift, a Cheakamus native charged with killing Dermot Mulligan, who ironically was Beauchamp's mentor and classics tutor at university. Excerpts from A Thirst for Justice, a biography of Beauchamp by one Wentworth Chance, counterpoint the vivid picture of the disastrous trial, in which the naïve young Beauchamp had to contend with corrupt policemen, a skilled special prosecutor, and a problematic defendant. Fifty years later, the same case may provide the capstone to his long career. . . .

First book: Trial of Passion

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Twelve Drummers Drumming by C.C. Benison

Book # 1 with Father Tom Christmas, a widower with a 9-year-old daughter, and the new vicar in Thornford Regis, a picturesque village in England

Summary: Father Tom Christmas--recent widower and now single father--is the new vicar of the English village of Thornford Regis. He soon realizes that the idyllic village is not the refuge he'd hoped for when the nineteen-year-old daughter of the choir director is murdered and one of his parishioners appears to be the killer.

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The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz

Summary: With approval from the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a best-selling novelist and Sherlock Holmes expert brings the greatest detective in literary history back to life on Baker Street for the first time since 1930.
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The Bayou Trilogy: Under the bright lights, Muscle for the wing, and The ones you do by Daniel Woodrell

Publisher's Weekly: Collected in a single volume for the first time, Woodrell's three stellar novels featuring Detective Rene Shade, an ex-boxer turned cop, provide entree into the Louisiana swamp town of Saint Bruno, a place where "tempers went on the prowl and relief was driving a hard bargain." Woodrell injects Shade's life and various cases with both humor and brutal violence. . . . There's poetry in Woodrell's mayhem, each novel - and scene-full of gritty and memorable Cajun details.

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PK Rangachari's picks:

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows by Alan Bradley

Book # 4 with Flavia de Luce, an 11-year old sleuth and aspiring chemist in 1950, in the small village of Bishop’s Lacey, England

Summary: Colonel de Luce rents his beloved estate of Buckshaw to a film company. They will be shooting a movie over the Christmas holidays with a reclusive star. She is widely despised, so it is to no one's surprise when she turns up murdered, strangled by a length of film from one of her own movies! With a blizzard raging outside and Buckshaw locked in, the house is full of suspects. But Flavia de Luce is more than ready to put aside her investigations into the existence of Father Christmas to solve this yuletide country-house murder. NoveList

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

First book: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

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Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

Publisher's Weekly: Kelman's debut novel is a well-tuned if simplistic portrait of a kid's life in the housing projects of London. After 11-year-old Harri, whose family has immigrated from Ghana, sees a classmate lying dead on the sidewalk one night, Harri and his buddy, Dean Griffin, set out to solve the murder, looking for the murder weapon, interviewing suspects, and gathering evidence. But the strength of this novel is not its murder mystery; rather, it's in hearing all Harri's thoughts as he falls in love, talks to his baby sister, or expresses himself in his own idiosyncratic language. The street-talk slang that Harri uses-boring things take "donkey hours" and Nike Air trainers are "bo-styles"-is crisp and mirthful, the perfect match to his at once naive and revealing views on things like religion and race. The main flaw is also a feature: Harri's a very well-drawn 11-year-old, and no matter how cute he and his worldview are, it's sometimes tempting to want to pat him on the head and send him along his way.

* * *

Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante

Summary: A retired orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Jennifer White is in the early stages of dementia when she is accused of murdering her neighbour and life-long friend Amanda. Jennifer is the prime suspect, but she doesn't know if she committed the crime.

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(check here for podcast information for The Next Chapter - Peter Behrens aired on December 19)

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Tag Man
by Archer Mayor

American police procedural

Book # 22 with Joe Gunther, police detective in Brattleboro, Vermont

Booklist review says: At the close of Red Herring (2010), Joe Gunther walked away from his job as head of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. He was bereft because his lover had been killed by an assassin, and he wasn’t sure he could return to work. At the same time, his driven, misanthropic subordinate, Willy Kunkle, learned that he would soon be a father. As Tag Man begins, Joe is still sidelined, and some of Willy’s rougher edges have been smoothed by his infant daughter. Then both Joe and Willy’s attention is caught by an unusual man who breaks into Brattleboro’s most opulent homes, stealing nothing but always leaving a post-it note that says simply, “Tag.” But the Tag Man’s break-ins—in addition to renewing Joe’s commitment to his work—trigger a circuitous series of crimes and events that make for great reading. Richly drawn characters and a delightful sense of place are hallmarks of Mayor’s superb procedurals, and they are both in evidence in this fine addition to the series.

First book: Open Season

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of The Price of Malice # 20

The Mystery Memo is a log of all of my mystery reading, with brief comments and a star rating for each book read. It is published every 4 to 6 weeks. Some of these books have longer reviews or mini-reviews on this blog. In that case, a link will be supplied.

Click here for a printable text-only copy of Mystery Memo # 109 (in Microsoft Word). Here is your chance to download the full list.

This Mystery Memo has one book in the Perfect Read category, Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer

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Christobel Kent: The Drowning River (2009) ****

Italian private investigator.

Book # 1 with former police officer Sandro Cellini, in Florence, Italy.

MBTB mini-review of The Drowning River

Recommended for fans of Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti (e.g. Death at La Fenice).
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Next book: A Murder in Tuscany

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Deon Meyer: Thirteen Hours (2010) **** ½

Police procedural, South Africa.

Book # 2 with Cape Town police detective Benny Griessel.

MBTB full review of Thirteen Hours

The book covers one long 13 hour day as Benny, close to retirement, mentors a couple young detectives through their cases. One case: a murdered teenaged U.S. tourist found in a graveyard and police believe a second American girl, a friend, is on the run from the murderers; the second case: a murdered music producer, looks like the wife did it, but it’s obvious she was framed. High tension, fast-paced, but easy to understand.

Not necessary to read first book, but you will probably want to: Devil’s Peak

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David Pirie: The Patient’s Eyes: the Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes (2001) *** ½

Book # 1 with real life characters Arthur Conan Doyle and his mentor Dr. Bell, set in Scotland.

When Doyle begins his medical practice in Southsea, his former professor Dr. Bell comes to visit him. They both become interested in a strange case: a woman claims that when she is cycling through a road in the forest, someone mysterious cycles after her.

Next book: The Night Calls (2003)

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Bill Pronzini: Betrayers (2010) ***

Private investigator.

Book # 36 with the Nameless detective (Bill), San Francisco.

For the past few years, Bill runs his detective agency with two partners besides himself: Tamara, a young black woman and widower Jake. This book follows cases that each of them are working on – I found the book a little disjointed.
Jake stumbles across a murder plot where the so-called no-good brother is being framed for the murder of the “good” brother’s wife.
Tamara is looking into the background of a man she had brief relationship with.
Bill discovers his teenage daughter has cocaine in her room and is protecting someone.

Start with one of the many earlier books, e.g. The Snatch, The Vanished, Undercurrents, Blowback, Labyrinth, Hoodwink, Shattershot, Dragonfire, etc. . See the full series list here.

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Karin Slaughter: Faithless (2005) *** ½

Part American police procedural, part forensic.

Book # 5 with Dr. Sara Linton, pediatrician and coroner, and her ex-husband Jeffrey, the police chief of a small town in Georgia.

A teenage girl from a religious family is found dead, having been buried alive in a box. Lots of turmoil when police get a note that claims this wasn’t the only burial.
I like the fast pace and the personal relationships in this series.

First book: Blindsighted

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Sally Spencer: The Salton Killings (1998) ***

British police procedural.

Book # 1 with Charlie Woodend, detective chief inspector in a small city in England.

Scotland Yard detective Charlie Woodend is sent to deal with the murder of a teenage girl in a small northern town. The girl’s murder looks like it has elements in common with several previous murders in the community, but it’s hard for him to drag out information from the locals. It was interesting to read the first in the series after reading most of the others (Woodend ends up working as a police detective in a small English city).
The series reminds me of Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford series.

Next book: Murder at Swann’s Lake # 2

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Betty Webb:
The Koala of Death: a Zoo mystery (2010) *** ½

Book # 2 with Teddy Bentley, a young woman who works as a zoo keeper at a small private California zoo.

The koala keeper is found dead in the water near Teddy’s houseboat. Teddy can't help but look into the murder, especially since the suspects include many of her co-workers.
I like the "zoo details" in this series, and the main character is quite appealing as well, constantly at odds with her socialite mother.

Try this series if you like Ann Littlewood’s mysteries with zookeeper Iris Oakley.

First book: The Anteater of Death

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
The Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins

This is not a mystery. It could be called Science Fiction, set in a future North America. In the categories of Storyline, Pace and Tone, NoveList calls The Hunger Games Action-packed; Character-driven; Fast-paced; Bleak; Menacing; Suspenseful

Book # 1 of the Hunger Games trilogy

Summary: In a future North America, where the rulers of Panem maintain control through an annual televised survival competition pitting young people from each of the twelve districts against one another, sixteen-year-old Katniss's skills are put to the test when she voluntarily takes her younger sister's place.

Catching Fire # 2

Mockingjay # 3

Here's Mystery Fanfare's 2011 Christmas mystery list (up to the letter H, so far).

And here's a another extensive online list of Christmas mysteries:
Christmas Mystery Reading Ideas

These books aren't necessarily in the Saskatchewan Library system - type the title into the SILS catalogue to check.

One I read a couple years ago is on both of these lists:
The Fleet Street Murders by Charles Finch

Book # 3 with Charles Lenox, gentleman sleuth in 1860s London

Summary: Celebrating the 1866 holiday season at the side of his fiancé, amateur sleuth Charles Lenox is drawn into the double-homicide case of two reporters, an investigation that is complicated by a police ruling that the killings are unrelated. NoveList

First book: A Beautiful Blue Death

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
The Drop
by Michael Connelly

American police procedural

Book # 17 with Harry Bosch, a homicide detective in Los Angeles, California

Summary: LAPD detective Harry Bosch simultaneously investigates a killer who has been operating undetected for thirty years and a political conspiracy that has its origins in his police department.

First book: Black Echo

## Related post: MBTB review of Nine Dragons # 15

I had a good couple of days off. Finished my Christmas shopping and read three mysteries:

Carol K. Carr: India Black *** ½

Historical, set in 1876 London, England.

Book # 1 with India Black, a young madam running a brothel catering to gentlemen, in 1870s London, England

MBTB mini-review: Just what I was looking for on a cold winter day: a first-person narrative in a historical mystery, with lots of action. I like the character of India and how she throws herself into the impromptu spying job. The complex politics of the time is presented in an understandable way. It was a fun romp.

Here's what the Publisher's Weekly review had to say: Set in 1876, Carr's breezy, fast-paced debut introduces feisty India Black, who runs a London brothel catering to gentlemen, many of whom recognize the reference to the Tennyson poem in the brothel's name, Lotus House. When a patron turns up dead at Lotus House, India plots to dump the corpse elsewhere to preserve her business's reputation, but her efforts are interrupted by the shadowy Mr. French, who assumes responsibility for disposal of the body. In exchange, India agrees to go undercover at the behest of the prime minister himself, Benjamin Disraeli, to prevent highly sensitive documents that the victim was carrying from falling into the wrong hands. The dead man proves to have been Sir Archibald Latham, of the War Office, and the missing documents regard England's readiness to fight the Russians in the Balkans. Readers should be prepared for formulaic plot twists involving numerous escapes and gunfights.

Next book: India Black and the Widow of Windsor

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Barbara Cleverly:
Strange Images of Death ****

Historical, set in 1926 France/Police procedural

Book # 8 with Commander Joe Sandilands, a Scotland Yard detective, a World War I veteran

MBTB mini-review: This has all the elements I like in a historical mystery: interesting setting (a chateau in rural France transformed into an artists colony), great characters (Joe Sandilands, a top Scotland Yard detective with some horrific WWI experiences behind him; Joe's counterpart in France, the quirky Commissaire Jacquemin) and an intriguing mystery (a photographer's model murdered in the tiny chapel). To make it even better, it's a version of a locked room mystery - the chateau is so isolated, the murderer is very likely one of the residents.

I've liked this series from the first book (The Last Kashmiri Rose) and I love the first four especially, set in post-WWI India.

Here's what Publisher's Weekly review had to say:
/* Starred Review */ Set in 1926, Cleverly's excellent eighth mystery to feature British Cmdr. Joe Sandilands takes Sandilands to France, where Dorcas Joliffe, a precocious teenager who regards the Scotland Yarder as an honorary uncle, enlists his aid in finding her long-lost mother. Another inquiry, as the pair travel through Provence, soon takes precedence. When someone smashes a stone effigy to pieces in a medieval chapel, the steward in charge of the chapel ask Sandilands to help find the person responsible. This act of vandalism proves to be merely the prelude to the murder of Estelle Smeeth, an attractive young Englishwoman stabbed to death in the same chapel. Cleverly keeps the plot complex, but less convoluted than in Folly du Jour, returning to the form that made the first six in the series models of their kind. Golden age fans who appreciate deceptive storytelling enhanced by the kind of in-depth characterization lacking in Agatha Christie will be more than satisfied.

First book: The Last Kashmiri Rose

## Related post: MBTB review of Tug of War # 6

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William Kent Krueger:
Northwest Angle ****

Private investigator

Book # 11 with Cork O’Connor, a three-quarters Irish and one-quarter Ojibwe ex-sheriff in Aurora, Minnesota

MBTB mini-review: Good fast-paced stuff. Surviving a devasting storm in remote Lake of the Woods is just the beginning. Within hours, someone is shooting at Cork, his daughter Jenny and a small baby they found on the island they took shelter on.

Here's what the Booklist review had to say:
The eleventh novel starring ex-Chicago cop and longtime Minnesota private eye Cork O’Connor is part adventure, part mystery, and all knockout thriller. Krueger takes the catastrophic storm system known as a derecho, which swept hurricane-strength winds through northern Minnesota on July 3, 1999, as his catalyst. With O’Connor and his family still reeling from the disappearance and death of his wife two years before, he decides to make a stab at reuniting them and staunching some of the pain by orchestrating a houseboat vacation on a lake that borders Canada. The derecho hits, the family is scattered, and O’Connor and teen daughter Jenny find themselves on an uninhabited small island—uninhabited, that is, except for a lone infant. The infant’s mother is nearby, not killed by the storm but bound, tortured, and bludgeoned to death. O’Connor and Jenny soon learn that the killer is now stalking them. Catch-your-breath suspense throughout.

First book: Iron Lake

## Related post: MBTB review of Heaven's Keep # 9

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Dead Connection
by Alafair Burke

American police procedural

Book # 1 with Ellie Hatcher, a detective for the NYPD in New York City

Summary: When two young women are murdered on the streets of New York, exactly one year apart, Detective Ellie Hatcher is called up for a special assignment on the homicide task force. The killer has left behind a clue connecting the two cases to First Date, a popular online dating service, and Flann McIlroy, an eccentric, publicity-seeking homicide detective, is convinced that only Ellie can help him pursue his terrifying theory: someone is using the lure of the Internet and the promise of love to launch a killing spree against the women of New York City. To catch the killer, Ellie must enter a high-tech world of stolen identities where no one is who they appear to be. . . .

This is one of two series written by Burke, author of the popular 2011 stand-alone Long Gone

Time to re-read my favourite Sherlock Holmes Christmas story:
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (or read it online here)

and my one of my favourite Holmes spin-offs:

Mrs. Hudson and the Malabar Rose

Summary: When a priceless ruby known as the Malabar Rose vanishes while being guarded by Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, Dr. Watson, the formidable Mrs. Hudson sets out to give a lesson in criminal deduction for her most famous and logical of tenants, the master sleuth himself. NoveList

## Related post: MBTB review of Mrs. Hudson and the Malabar Rose

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2011 Christmas mysteries include:

Elizabeth Duncan: A Killer's Christmas in Wales

Book # 2 with Penny Brannigan, a manicurist and expatriate Canadian living in Llanelen, Wales

Summary: As the townsfolk of the Welsh valley town of Llanelen settle in for the snowiest winter in 25 years, an American stranger arrives. Harry Saunders charms the ladies and convinces Evelyn Lloyd, a wealthy widow, to invest money with him. When he goes missing with her money his body is soon discovered with a letter opener belonging to Mrs. Lloyd in his back. It's up to Penny Brannigan to prove her innocence.

Carol K. Carr: India Black and the Widow of Windsor

Book # 2 with India Black, a young madam running a brothel catering to gentlemen, in 1870s London, England

Summary: Spy for Queen Victoria, India Black, disguises herself as a servant to protect Her Highness from a possible assassination attempt by Scottish nationalists while spending the Christmas holidays in Balmoral. NoveList

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Alan Bradley: I Am Half Sick of Shadows

Book # 4 with Flavia de Luce, an 11-year old sleuth and aspiring chemist in 1950, in the small village of Bishop’s Lacey, England

Summary: Colonel de Luce rents his beloved estate of Buckshaw to a film company. They will be shooting a movie over the Christmas holidays with a reclusive star. She is widely despised, so it is to no one's surprise when she turns up murdered, strangled by a length of film from one of her own movies! With a blizzard raging outside and Buckshaw locked in, the house is full of suspects. But Flavia de Luce is more than ready to put aside her investigations into the existence of Father Christmas to solve this yuletide country-house murder. NoveList

## Related post: MBTB review of I Am Half Sick of Shadows

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Want more Christmas and Holiday mysteries?
Check out the book list Holiday Mysteries (Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's) (in the Reader's Cafe/Book & Author lists/Mysteries)

## Christmas mystery posts from previous years:

Holiday Mysteries Update 2010

Update for 2009: Holiday Mysteries (Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's) (contains plot descriptions)

Murder by the Book discussion group meeting: Chilly Bones: Winter and Winter Holiday Mysteries (contains star ratings and plot descriptions)

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Breaking Silence
by Linda Castillo

American police procedural, Rural

Book # 3 with Kate Burkholder, female chief of police in the Amish town of Painters Mill, Ohio

Summary: When Solly and Rachel Slabaugh, along with Solly's brother Abel, are found dead in a hog pit, Chief of Police Kate Burkholder investigates the gruesome scene. Once again teaming up with Agent John Tomasetti, Kate reveals that the death may not have been accidental, but one of the most horrific hate crimes ever to befall the Amish community of Painter's Creek. NoveList

First book: Sworn to Silence

More historical mysteries for you:

Troubled Bones (2011)
By Jeri Westerson

Historical Mystery featuring disgraced knight Crispin Guest

4th book in a series

Disgraced knight Crispin Guest gets himself into some serious trouble in London and as a result is forced to accept an assignment far out of town. The Archbishop of Canterbury has specifically requested Guest to investigate a threat against the bones of saint and martyr Thomas a Beckett, which are on display in the cathedral in Canterbury. The archbishop has received letters threatening the safety of the artifacts, and he wants Guest to protect them and uncover whoever is after them.

When he arrives at Canterbury, Guest is accosted by an old acquaintance from court – one Geoffrey Chaucer – and is surrounded by a group in town on a pilgrimage. Trapped amongst the pilgrims (who were, quite possibly, the model for Chaucer’s famous story cycle), looking for a murderer, a hidden heretic and a solution to the riddle that will allow him to go back home, Crispin Guest finds his considerable wit and intellect taxed to its very limit. (Book Description)

First book in the series: Veil of Lies (2008)

* * *
India Black and the Widow of Windsor (2011)
By Carol K. Carr

Historical Mystery featuring India Black, a saucy brothel owner who also spies for Queen Victoria

2nd in a series

Black is back-Her Majesty's favorite spy is off to Scotland in this new adventure to ensure the Queen doesn't end up getting killed.

When Queen Victoria attends a séance, the spirit of her departed husband, Prince Albert, insists she spend Christmas at their Scottish home in Balmoral. Prime Minister Disraeli suspects the Scottish nationalists plan to assassinate the Queen-and sends the ever resourceful India and the handsome British spy, French, to the Scottish highlands.

French will take the high road, looking for a traitor among the guests-and India will take the low road, disguised as a servant in case an assassin is hiding among the household staff. India is certain that someone at Balmoral is determined to make this Her Majesty's last Christmas... (Book Description)

First Book in the series: India Black (2011)

* * *
A Crimson Warning (2011)
By Tasha Alexander

Historical Mystery featuring Lady Emily and her dashing husband Colin

6th in a series

In early summer 1893, someone is splashing red paint on the doorsteps of prominent London citizens, a warning that their most scandalous secrets are about to be exposed. One of the first targets is Mr. Dillman, an industrialist promoting social justice. When he is killed in a warehouse fire, Colin Hargreaves, an agent of the Crown, is requested to investigate. Colin and his wife, Lady Emily, begin their work as a team to find the connection among the paint, the secrets, and the murder...(Modified review taken from Library Journal)

First Book in the series: And Only to Deceive (2005)

A Bitter Truth (2011)
By Charles Todd

Historical Mystery featuring WWI nurse Bess Crawford

4th book in a series

Trying to help a woman in distress, World War I nurse and accidental sleuth Bess Crawford learns that no good deed goes unpunished

When battlefield nurse Bess Crawford returns from France for a well-earned Christmas leave, she finds a bruised and shivering woman huddled in the doorway of her London residence. The woman has nowhere to turn, and propelled by a firm sense of duty, Bess takes her in.

Once inside Bess’s flat, the woman reveals that a quarrel with her husband erupted into violence, yet she wants to return home—if Bess will go with her to Sussex. Realizing that the woman is suffering from a concussion, Bess gives up a few precious days of leave to travel with her. But she soon discovers that this is a good deed with unforeseeable consequences.

What Bess finds at Vixen Hill is a house of mourning. The woman’s family has gathered for a memorial service for the elder son, who died of war wounds. Her husband, home on compassionate leave, is tense, tormented by jealousy and his own guilty conscience.

Then, when a troubled houseguest is found dead, Bess herself becomes a prime suspect in the case. This murder will lead her to a dangerous quest. (Book Description)

First book in the series: A Duty to the Dead (2009)

posted by Shiela

Those of you who have been entranced by the quirky series with precocious 11 year old Flavia de Luce will be interested to know that author Alan Bradley spent 25 years at the University of Saskatchewan. He was the director of television engineering at the U of S media centre.


Alan Bradley: I Am Half Sick of Shadows (2011) ****

British cozy (of a sort)
Amateur sleuth

Book # 4 with Flavia de Luce, an 11-year old sleuth and aspiring chemist in 1950, in the small village of Bishop’s Lacey, England

Summary: Colonel de Luce rents his beloved estate of Buckshaw to a film company. They will be shooting a movie over the Christmas holidays with a reclusive star. She is widely despised, so it is to no one's surprise when she turns up murdered, strangled by a length of film from one of her own movies! With a blizzard raging outside and Buckshaw locked in, the house is full of suspects. But Flavia de Luce is more than ready to put aside her investigations into the existence of Father Christmas to solve this yuletide country-house murder. NoveList

MBTB review: Every since I read the first book in this delightful series, I've looked forward to the next one - Flavia's point of view is priceless. The mystery was interesting enough, but for me the appeal is the characters and the setting.

First book: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

## Related post:
MBTB mini-review of The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag # 2

* * *

Here's what Publisher's Weekly had to say:

Christmas comes early for precocious Flavia de Luce with the arrival of a glamorous London film crew at Buckshaw, her family’s country house, in Agatha-winner Bradley’s fourth post-WWII mystery starring the endearing 11-year-old sleuth. Flavia, a chemistry prodigy, must push her previous project—concocting a super stickum to trap Santa—to the back burner after actress Phyllis Wyvern turns up dead in a wingback chair with “a length of ciné film, tied tightly, but neatly, in an elaborate black bow” around her throat. The murder investigation pits the cheeky schoolgirl’s considerable deductive prowess against the local constabulary—and puts her in grave danger. With its sharply drawn characters, including the hiss-worthy older de Luce sisters, and an agreeable puzzle playing out against the cozy backdrop of a British village at Christmas, this is a most welcome holiday gift for Flavia fans.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Before the Poison
by Peter Robinson

Amateur sleuth, non-series

Chris, a film composer and widower, returns to the Yorkshire Dales to grieve his wife and write his piano sonata. He soon finds himself distracted, though, when he discovers that a murder was committed in his rented house by a woman who was one of the last women hanged in England. NoveList

This is a stand-alone, not one of Robinson's acclaimed Inspector Banks series.

Here are a few new historical mysteries I have come across:

Last Nocturne (2010)
By Marjorie Eccles

What could make a successful, happily married man take a gun and shoot himself? What made a young artist on the brink of fame throw himself to his death?

These are the questions facing Chief Inspector Lamb and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Cogan. Neither victim left a note behind to explain what drove him to take his own life, and it appears that nothing untoward had occurred in the weeks preceding their deaths. Having briefly met both victims, Lamb struggles to connect the impression he gained of the men with their final actions, and his close attention pays off when a postmortem reveals some surprising results.

With one case now looking like a suspicious death, Lamb looks for links between the two men. All paths seem to lead to the enigmatic figure of Mrs. Isobel Amberley and a mysterious event that took place one winter’s night in Vienna.

Beautifully written and highly evocative of the bustling streets of London and Vienna in the early twentieth century, Last Nocturne is an intriguingly complex mystery of passion and the devastating repercussions of a single action. (Book Description)

Infamous (2010)
By Ace Atkins

With the 1933 kidnapping of Oklahoma oil baron Charles Urschel, small-time bank robber George Kelly became “Machine Gun” Kelly. Atkins’ latest historical novel based on a real crime (following Devil’s Garden, 2009, about the Fatty Arbuckle scandal) makes it clear that Kelly’s wife, Kathryn, was the driving force behind his ascendance. George is shown to be an affable mug, a feckless dandy more interested in two-toned shoes and 16-cylinder Cadillacs than crime and machine guns, a crook who was dismissed as a lightweight by other gangsters. Kathryn, however, is a force of nature, a preening, determined-not-to-be-poor-again shopaholic, a celebrity-obsessed Lady Macbeth. But it’s Atkins’ prodigious research that makes this novel a compelling road trip through Depression-era America. He vividly portrays the Dust Bowl, foreclosures, the grinding poverty, gnawing hunger, desperation, and the rage at bankers (most of which resonate in today’s America); and he captures the imminent end of the gangsters’ heyday. Like many fine historical crime novels, Infamous offers a window on society, then and now. (Summary taken from Booklist)

Deadly Inheritance (2009)
By Simon Beaufort

Sir Geoffrey Mappestone, home from the Crusades, is eager to return to Jerusalem to fight again. Unfortunately, he has fallen out with his patron, Prince Tancred, so a return to battle will be difficult. Besides, his sister, Joan, insists that Geoffrey should marry and produce an heir. But Geoffrey is focused instead on solving the mysterious death of his brother Henry six months earlier. Witnesses are reluctant to talk, and Geoffrey’s quest is frustrated at every turn. So when an old friend invites him to visit, Geoffrey welcomes the distraction. Then Geoffrey’s life is threatened and several other guests die, and he’s convinced that there’s a link to his investigation into his brother’s death. Or is there? Perhaps it’s something to do with his choice of a bride—the merging of the great estates through marriage can affect the politics of the region and even the country. When more deaths occur, Geoffrey knows he has stumbled into something dark and deadly. Meticulously researched, cleverly plotted, and rich in characterization and period ambience, this is another fine entry in Beaufort’s entertaining and enjoyable twelfth-century historical mystery series. (Summary taken from Booklist)

First title in this series:Murder in the Holy City (1998)

Vienna Secrets (2010)
By Frank Tallis

The fifth Max Liebermann mystery (following Fatal Lies, 2009) finds the psychiatrist once again wrapped up in a police investigation. This time headless bodies start appearing in front of statues all across Vienna. Tallis continues to evoke the sights, sounds, food, and culture of turn-of the-century Vienna; but this time anti-Semitism is a dark whisper in the background, and Liebermann, a non-observant Jew, finds himself worried for his career. The historical details of police work and forensic investigation again are a strong point, and with this book’s inclusion of a trip to Prague, readers are introduced to another fascinating city. Liebermann’s trip is inspired by a desire to understand more about his past and culture, and the resulting backstory will please series fans interested in knowing more about this appealing protagonist. A solid entry in an excellent historical mystery series.

The first title in this series:
A Death in Vienna (2007)

posted by Shiela

The Mystery Memo is a log of all of my mystery reading, with brief comments and a star rating for each book read. It is published every 4 to 6 weeks. Some of these books have longer reviews or mini-reviews on this blog. In that case, a link will be supplied.

Click here for a printable text-only copy of Mystery Memo # 109 (in Microsoft Word). Here is your chance to download the full list.

This Mystery Memo has one book in the Perfect Read category, Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer

* * *

Nevada Barr: Burn (2010) ****

Book # 16 with U.S. National Park ranger Anna Pigeon. This book is set in New Orleans.

MBTB mini-review: Anna is still on vacation/stress leave, staying with her friend, a blind singer named Geneva. Rather than the outdoor settings Barr’s books usually have, this book is set entirely in the city, the subject matter: child prostitution and sexual abuse. Anna believes one of Geneva’s neighbours is a pedophile.

This book might not be the best one to start the series with, but it’s a fine read.

First book: Track of the Cat (1993).

MBTB review of Winter Study # 14

MBTB review of Borderline # 15

* * *

Judith Cutler: Still Waters (2008) ****

British police procedural.

Book # 3 with senior police detective Fran Harman. Fran, in her 50s, is thinking about retirement.

MBTB mini-review: An old murder case is being appealed so Fran takes a look at it – the missing woman’s husband and his friend maintain they didn’t kill the woman and the body was never found.
I’m making my way through all of Judith Cutler’s series. This is one of my favourites.

First two with Fran Harman:
Life Sentence
Cold Pursuit

* * *

Paul Doiron: The Poacher’s Son (2010) *** ½

Book # 1 with Maine game warden Mike Bowditch.

MBTB mini-review of Poacher's Son

Non-stop action. Recommended for fans of Nevada Barr, series with Anna Pigeon, a park ranger at various national parks in the USA (e.g. Track of the Cat) or C. J. Box, series with Joe Pickett, a game warden in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming (e.g. Open Season).

The next book with Maine game warden Mike Bowditch: Trespasser

* * *

Kathleen George: Taken (2001) ****

Part American police procedural/part amateur detective

Book # 1 with Pittsburgh police detective Richard Christie.

MBTB mini-review: Actress Marina Benedict sees what she believes to be the kidnapping of a baby and becomes a major witness to the crime. Some of the book is from her point of view, some from that of police detective Christie. The writing just pulled me along.

Next book: Fallen (2004)

* * *

Jane Jakeman: Fool’s Gold (1998) ***

Historical, set in England in 1833. Amateur detective.

Book # 3 with Lord Ambrose Malfine, in love with Elizabeth, a former nanny.

MBTB mini-review: Thinking over Malfine’s proposal of marriage, Elizabeth takes a job as a paid companion to the young wife of a Lord. When Malfine gets a letter from Elizabeth describing the mysterious poisoning death of the live-in physician in the household, he rides over to find out what is going on.

First two books:
Let There Be Blood
The Egyptian Coffin

* * *

Craig Johnson: Junkyard Dogs (2010) ****

Book # 4 with sheriff Walt Longmire in the Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming.

MBTB mini-review: The local junkman comes to police attention after a severed thumb is discovered at the junkyard.
Recommended to fans of Donald Harstadt (e.g. Eleven Days), Steven Havill (e.g. Heartshot) and early Archer Mayor (Open Season).

First book: The Cold Dish (2004)

## Related post: MBTB review of Dark Horse # 5

* * *

Faye Kellerman: Hangman (2010) ****

American police procedural.

Book # 19 with Peter Decker, L.A.P.D. homicide lieutenant.

MBTB mini-review: Terry asks Peter Decker to protect her during a visit from her husband Chris, a professional hit man. Peter feels obligated to help her, being involved in this couple’s lives for many years, since Chris served time for a murder he didn’t do (in Justice, 1995).
I recommend starting with one of the earlier books or at the beginning.

First book: The Ritual Bath (1986)

* * *

Jonathon Kellerman: Deception (2010) ***

American police procedural/consulting psychologist

Book # 25 with psychologist Alex Delaware and his friend police detective Milo in LA.

MBTB mini-review: When a teacher at a very classy private high school is found mysteriously murdered and lying in a tub of dry ice, there is pressure on Milo to keep the questioning away from the school.
I loved the early books in this series and keep reading them just in case the magic returns.

First book: When the Bough Breaks (1985)

* * *

Watch for Mystery Memo # 109 part two, coming soon.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
The Informationist
by Taylor Stevens

Action/adventure/lone wolf investigator/thriller

Book # 1 with Vanessa Michael Munroe, the daughter of American missionaries in Africa, now working in Texas researching developing countries for corporations

Summary: Dealing information to wealthy clients throughout the world, Vanessa Munroe hopes to leave her unconventional past behind her until a mission to find the missing daughter of a Texas oil billionaire forces her to return to the central Africa region of her youth. NoveList

It's time for me to re-read the first book in one of my favourite series:

Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs *****

Book # 1 with Maisie Dobbs, a psychologist and investigator based in 1920s and 1930s London, England

Summary: Private detective Maisie Dobbs must investigate the reappearance of a dead man who turns up at a cooperative farm called the Retreat that caters to men who are recovering their health after World War I.

## Related post: MBTB full review of Maisie Dobbs # 1

* * * * *

Other mystery series that take place during or just after World War I or II:

Charles Todd's series with
Ian Rutledge, a shell-shocked World War I veteran returning to his job at Scotland Yard, in London, England.

First book:
A Test of Wills **** ½

Summary: Ian Rutledge returns to his career at Scotland Yard after fighting in the war, still suffering from shell shock. His next case, with a war-ravaged ex-soldier as the witness, could spell disaster for him. NoveList

* *

Charles Todd's new series with
Bess Crawford, a British army nurse in WWI

First book: A Duty to the Dead *** ½

Summary: Independent-minded Bess Crawford's upbringing is far different from that of the usual upper-middle-class British gentlewoman. At the outbreak of WWI, she volunteers for the nursing corps, serving from the battlefields of France to the doomed hospital ship Britannic. On one voyage, she promises to a deliver a message from a dying officer to his brother. Once she's able to do so, she's disturbed at the brother's indifferent reception of the message, and when an unexpected turn of events provides her with an opportunity to stay with the family for a short time, she takes it. NoveList

* *

Barbara Cleverly's series with
Commander Joe Sandilands, a World War I veteran and Scotland Yard detective assigned to post-WWI India

First book: The Last Kashmiri Rose (2001) *****

Summary: In March of each of the past five years the wife of a cavalry officer in the Bengal Greys has met with and violent and terrifying death. World War I hero and detective Joe Sandilands finds himself running a race against time. Publisher's description

* *

James Benn's series with Billy Boyle, a Boston cop from a family of Boston cops, on the staff of distant relative, General Eisenhower, during WWII

First book: Billy Boyle ****

Summary: Billy Boyle is a Boston cop, from a family of Boston cops, but he is a reluctant soldier who prefers walking the beat in Southie to fighting Nazis. Using her cousin by marriage, a certain General Eisenhower, Billys mother lands her son a seemingly soft job with Ikes staff in London. But Ike wants Billy to use his investigative know-how to sniff out a possible spy in the Allies inner circle. Young Billy, oversold by his mother as a crackerjack detective, is definitely in over his head, especially when it turns out that the apparent suicide of a Norwegian dignitary may have been the work of the spy. . . . Booklist

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of The First Wave # 2

* *
Want more titles?
Here is a list in the Regina Public Library catalogue generated by the key words "world war mystery fiction".

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
The Affair
by Lee Child

Action/adventure/lone wolf investigator

Book # 16 with Jack Reacher, ex-military policeman in the USA

Summary: Child’s compelling 16th thriller featuring incorruptible vigilante Jack Reacher rewinds the clock to 1997 when Reacher was still a military cop and working on the case that led to his eventual break with the Army. Reacher must figure out whether the shocking murder of 27-year-old Janice May Chapman in Carter Crossing, Miss., has any connection with nearby Fort Kelham, where Army Rangers are trained. . . . Publisher's Weekly

If you haven't started this series yet, read The Affair as a prequel to the first book, Killing Floor

## Related posts:
MBTB review of Bad Luck and Trouble # 11

MBTB review of 61 Hours # 14

Here are three new mysteries I've recently read and enjoyed. These were new authors to me.

* * *

Jane Casey: The Burning ****

British police procedural
Book # 1 with Maeve Kerrigan, an ambitious 28-year old detective constable, in London, England

MBTB mini-review: The first person narration by Maeve, a young police detective, kept my interest in this modern take on the British police procedural. Fast-paced, with an interesting switch of narrators once in a while.

Here's what Booklist has to say:
Billed as starring a serial killer, a sadist who lures young women to out-of-the-way spots and after murdering them sets fire to the remains, this London-based story opens with a tipsy girl leaving a pub alone after dark. She accepts a ride from a shadowy stranger. She notices he’s heading in the wrong direction, and you know what happens next, don’t you? No, you don’t. Red herrings are the genre’s staple, but Casey is especially good at misdirection. Her approach involves multiple points of view: chapters narrated by a could-be victim alternate with accounts of detective work by the policewoman assigned to the case. The book is too long, the descriptions of police procedure are ponderous, and the policewoman has an infuriating way of stepping on the tension to examine her psychological state. But toward the end it becomes clear that the author has been patiently, craftily assembling a portrait of deprivation and resentment that almost makes murder seem just and reasonable. The final pages bear terrific emotional weight.

* * *

Rosamund Lupton: Sister (2010) ****

Non-series. Amateur detective.

MBTB mini-review: Beatrice Hemming, a Londoner settled in the U.S., makes a frantic trip back to London after she finds out her pregnant sister is missing. When the sister's body is found, it looks like suicide, but Beatrice is convinced her sister wouldn’t kill herself.

An interesting narrative voice - the book is told in the first person, as Beatrice writes a long letter in her head to her dead sister.

A good book to curl up with on a chilly winter's day.

Here's what Booklist had to say:
/* Starred Review */ Murder mystery? Psychological thriller? Medical-ethical treatise? Yes to all, but so much more, too. Finally, the category doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that Lupton’s remarkable debut novel is a masterful, superlative-inspiring success that will hook readers (and keep them guessing) from page one.

Beatrice Hemmings has moved to the U.S. and made a shiny, successful life for herself. But when her younger sister, Tess, is found dead — apparently having killed herself — Beatrice is shocked, bewildered, and grief-stricken. How could her full-of-life sister commit suicide? When Beatrice arrives back in London, she learns that Tess had a reason to commit suicide — her longed-for baby had just been stillborn. Beatrice is stunned, but the more she considers what happened, the more she is sure Tess was murdered. Vowing to investigate, Beatrice writes a letter to Tess (it is this technique that shapes the book) to describe her efforts to find the truth. But as the letter goes on, it is clear that Beatrice is on what could be a fruitless quest, and readers will begin to wonder whether the things that don’t add up are real, or whether it’s Beatrice who’s losing her sanity? The powerful, heart-stopping ending lays bare the truth, and even readers who thought they’d guessed the outcome will be shocked.

A chilling, gripping, tragic, heartwarming, life-affirming enigma of a story.

* * *

John Verdon: Think of a Number (2010) ****
Investigator/police procedural/thriller

Investigator/American police procedural

Book # 1 with Dave Gurney, a recently retired 40-something NYPD homicide detective with a reputation for catching serial killers, in rural upstate New York

MBTB review: A college friend contacts Dave for help after receiving a mysterious letter that claimed to know what number he was thinking of. When the man is murdered, Dave is asked to join the task force, and discovers a link to several similar murders. Good, fast-paced, always from Dave’s point of view. I liked Dave, torn between getting back to the police work he loves and the wife he promised to share an early retirment with.

The next one: Shut Your Eyes Tight

Here's what Booklist had to say:
/*Starred Review*/ NYPD’s most celebrated detective, Dave Gurney, has retired to the rural Catskills with his wife, Madeleine. The country was Madeleine’s idea, but Dave is missing the animating feature of his adult life: the intellectual problem of understanding serial killers and apprehending them. Then, Mark Mellery, a man he knew in college, shows Dave some bizarre and obliquely threatening messages he has received. Mellery is soon brutally murdered, and Dave becomes a consultant in a case that grows into serial murders. Once again, Dave is driven, but the tectonic plates of his marriage threaten to shift. Verdon’s superb debut novel is a riveting thriller with a wonderfully baffling crime. Dave, Madeleine, their marriage, and Mellery are compellingly observed; lesser characters are vividly sketched. The sense of place, whether the Catskills at the onset of winter, or the shabby Bronx, is almost visceral. Police procedures and forensics—and the politics of a high-profile crime—seem knowing. Think of a Number is a 10, and crime fans of almost every persuasion will love it. An outstanding debut.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Trespasser by Paul Doiron

Book # 2 with Mike Bowditch, a game warden in the wilds of Maine

Stumbling on a case that suggests that a man convicted of murder seven years earlier may have been framed, game warden Mike Bowditch ignores warnings by local authorities and risks his relationship with his girlfriend to conduct a secret investigation. NoveList

First book: The Poacher's Son

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of The Poacher's Son

A quick browse in the mystery section of my local bookstore revealed a few titles I will be adding to my "to be read" list:
.

Peter Robinson: Before the Poison (2011)

Chris, a film composer and widower, returns to the Yorkshire Dales to grieve his wife and write his piano sonata. He soon finds himself distracted, though, when he discovers that a murder was committed in his rented house by a woman who was one of the last women hanged in England. NoveList

This is a stand-alone and not part of Robinson's famous Inspector Banks series.

* * *

Val McDermid: Trick of the Dark

When clinical psychiatrist Charlie Flint is sent a mysterious package of cuttings about a brutal murder that occurred in the grounds of her old Oxford college, she feels compelled to investigate. NoveList

Again, this is a stand-alone. I enjoy McDermid's series with forensic psychologist Dr. Tony Hill.

* * *

William Deverell: I'll See You in my Dreams

Book # 5 with Arthur Beauchamp, a scholarly, self-doubting lawyer retired as a hobbyist farmer on Garibaldi Island, off the coast of British Columbia

This fifth in the bestselling, award-winning Arthur Beauchamp series finds the outwardly crusty, poetry-loving, wily old lawyer compelled, by new developments, to look back at his first -- and most disastrous -- murder trial. While renewing his annual try for the Most Points in Vegetables and Fruits at the Garibaldi Island Fall Fair, Arthur Beauchamp is forced by new developments to revisit his first murder trial, which went horribly wrong. Now, nearly 50 years later, he is opening old wounds but also facing a chance for redemption and reconciliation. Publisher's description

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Bones Under the Beach Hut
by Simon Brett

Amateur sleuth/cozy

Book # 12 with Carole Seddon, a retiree in Fethering, England

Description: The affluent seaside resort of Smalting is unaccustomed to crime. So when human remains are found beneath the floorboards of one of its beach huts, the community is awash with suspicion and fear.
Amateur sleuths Carole Seddon and best friend Jude are drawn into the mystery, and their suspicion quickly falls on attractive Philly Rose, a young Londoner newly arrived in the area, whose boyfriend has recently vanished in mysterious circumstances. (publisher's description)

First book: The Body on the Beach

The Bone Yard
By Jefferson Bass

MBTB review: After Dr. Bill Brockton attempts to help a fellow forensic analyst prove that her sister's apparent suicide was actually a homicide, Brockton inadvertently finds himself in the middle of a case that is both horrifying and based in reality. When two adolescent skulls are uncovered showing signs of severe physical abuse near the burnt ruins of a Boy's Reformatory School, Bass and his team must delve into the past and piece together the last moments of these victims' tragic lives.

As per usual, these books are very graphic and disturbing and this one especially so. Regardless, the writing is excellent with just enough "lecture" type moments to get readers onboard and updated with recent forensic methods but not to lose them in the jargon. The Bone Yard is still, at its core, a solid, fast-paced forensic thriller/mystery with a dash of non-fiction--the interesting kind.

I have yet to be disappointed will be eagerly waiting for the next book in the series Mr. Bass.

In order to really enjoy this series, start at the beginning with...

Carved in Bone

To read more about Jefferson Bass' work as well as his novels, click here to read a previous MBTB post

Posted by Shiela

This is a re-post from October 2010. I haven't read a mystery on zombies lately.

The WHAT I'M READING NOW segment at the end of this post is new.

* * *

Last weekend, I found myself reading Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child and remembered that I find zombies very scary. . . . a good choice for these days leading up to Halloween.

Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child:
Cemetery Dance ****

Here's what the Booklist review had to say:
It takes a certain amount of guts to start a novel by killing off a popular recurring character, but no one has ever accused this writing team of lacking guts. The latest Pendergast thriller begins with a murder that is apparently committed by a man who, 10 days earlier, was pronounced dead and then buried. But the eyewitness is sure it’s the same man, and footage from a security camera appears to confirm it. How does a dead man commit murder? And why this particular victim? Pendergast, the FBI special agent who frequently takes on personal assignments on a freelance basis, teams up once again with New York police lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta to solve a crime that has ties to the supernatural. Individually, these two writers turn out books that are solid, competent, workmanlike. Together, they manage to kick it up several notches, producing novels that are elegantly written and feature unique characters and eerie, compelling stories. For fans of the Pendergast series, this is a must-read.

* * * * * * * * * *
Sharon says: Have a look at the full list of Preston and Child's series with Aloysius Pendergast, an FBI special agent. The books all have an element of the supernatural, and are written in a very compelling way. You don't have to read the series in order (although it likely would enhance your enjoyment), except for the Diogenes trilogy:

Relic (1995)
Reliquary (1997)
The Cabinet of Curiosities (2002)
Still Life with Crows (2003)
Brimstone(Diogenes trilogy 1) (2004)
Dance of Death (Diogenes trilogy 2) (2005)
The Book of the Dead (Diogenes trilogy 3) (2006)
The Wheel of Darkness (2007)
Cemetery Dance (2009)
Fever Dream (2010)

* * * * * * * * * *

Want more zombies?

If you want more zombies and various other supernatural things, try Michael Gruber's series with Jimmy Paz, a Cuban-American cop, in Miami:

Tropic of Night (2003) *****
Valley of Bones (2005)
Night of the Jaguar (2006)

## Related posts:
MBTB review of Tropic of Night # 1

Murder by the Book discussion group meeting:
Mystical Mysteries: "The Woo-Woo Factor" includes book reviews

Click here for the full reading list: Mystical Mysteries: "The Woo-Woo Factor"

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Long Gone by Alafair Burke

A stand-alone thriller.

When her dream job turns into a living nightmare, causing her to become the prime suspect in a murder investigation, art gallery manager Alice Humphrey must prove that she has been set up--a deadly mission that plunges her into a high-tech criminal conspiracy that is shockingly linked to her own family. NoveList

Burke also writes two series featuring detective Ellie Hatcher and prosecutor Samantha Kincaid

Kathryn Casey: Singularity (2008) *** ½

American police – Texas Rangers.

Book # 1 with Sarah Armstrong, a criminal profiler for the Texas Rangers.

MBTB mini-review: The murder of a prominent businessman and his lover, killed and posed to suggest a serial killer nevertheless has local police looking at the man’s wife as a suspect. But when Sarah and her FBI counterpart start looking for previous victims with a similar “signature”, they find them.
Fast-paced, with a high tension ending.

Next book: Blood Lines (2009)

This is a mini-review from Mystery Memo # 110

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Here's what the Publishers Weekly review had to say:

/* Starred Review */ Lt. Sarah Armstrong balances the challenges of being the Texas Rangers' lone criminal profiler and a single mom in the riveting fiction debut from true-crime journalist Casey (A Descent into Hell).
A recent widow with a young daughter, Sarah deals with her loss by vigorously investigating the ritualistic murder of a wealthy Houston businessman, Edward Travis Lucas III, and his mistress, lawyer Annmarie Knowles, at his Galveston beach house. Galveston PD, the rangers and FBI unite their efforts, but turf battles erupt as they differ on whodunit. Sarah and FBI profiler David Garrity don't believe the local police's prime suspect — Lucas's unhappy wife, Priscilla — was the culprit. A serial killer appears more likely, and they soon uncover similar Texas murders.
Casey's solid research, smooth plotting and sensitive depiction of Sarah's relationship with her grieving daughter lift what could've been standard serial-killer fare into poignant, exciting family drama.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

The Ring of Death
by Sally Spencer (2010)

British police procedural, set in 1970s

Book # 2 with Monika Paniatowski, detective chief inspector, Charlie Woodend’s protégé and successor in a village in England

Summary: DCI Monika Paniatowski finds herself handicapped by a colleague she doesn't trust and being watched by an old enemy as she tries to unravel a series of clues left by a deranged murderer. NoveList

First book: The Dead Hand of History

Note: this series carries on from Spencer's DCI Charlie Woodend series

Ariana Franklin, author of the acclaimed Mistress of the Art of Death mystery series, passed away in January of this year.

Here's the link to her website. Ariana Franklin was the pseudonym of Diana Norman. Follow the link on her website For more about Ms. Norman to read the BBC obituary article.

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The series with Adelia (Vesuvia Adelia Rachel Ortese Aguilar of Salerno), a “doctor for the dead” working for King Henry II in 12th century England:

Mistress of the Art of Death (2007) # 1

Sent to medieval Cambridge in order to exonerate Jewish prisoners with financial ties to King Henry II, University of Salerno medical examiner Adelia struggles to avoid being accused of witchcraft and discovers that the killer may be a former crusader. NoveList

The Serpent’s Tale (2008) # 2

Ordered by Henry II to establish the possible role of Eleanor of Aquitaine in the poisoning death of Henry's mistress, a reluctant Adelia Aguilar joins forces with her infant daughter's father, the Bishop of St. Albans, during the investigation. NoveList
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Grave Goods (2009) # 3

When the bodies of two people are discovered in the remains of an arson fire that destroyed Glastonbury Abbey, Adelia Aguilar, Mistress of the Art of Death, is ordered by Henry II to determine if one of the sets of bones belongs to the legendary Celtic savior Arthur. NoveList
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A Murderous Procession (2010) # 4

Adelia Aguilar is back in this thrilling fourth installment of the Mistress of the Art of Death series. In 1176, King Henry II chooses Adelia to help keep his daughter safe. But when people in her wedding procession are murdered, Adelia must discover the killer's identity. NoveList

## Related posts:
MBTB review of Mistress of the Art of Death # 1

MBTB review of Grave Goods # 3

MBTB mini-review of A Murderous Procession # 4

2011 Macavity Award winners
voted for by Mystery Readers International:

Best Mystery Novel

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

Book # 8 with Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, in the village of Three Pines, in southern Quebec

As Quebec City shivers in the grip of winter, its ancient stone walls cracking in the cold, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache plunges into the most unusual case of his celebrated career. A man has been brutally murdered in one of the city's oldest buildings - a library where the English citizens of Quebec safeguard their history. And the death opens a door into the past, exposing a mystery that has lain dormant for centuries... a mystery Gamache must solve if he's to apprehend a present-day killer.

First book: Still Life

## Related post: MBTB review of Still Life # 1

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Best First Mystery Novel

Rogue Island by Bruce DeSilva

Booklist mini-review: Journalist Liam Mulligan launches his own investigation into the arsons that are crippling the Mount Hope section of Providence. DeSilva’s debut has everything a crime fan could want: a stubborn, street-smart hero with a snarky sense of humor; a fast-paced plot; a realistic, postmillennium newspaper setting; mean, pot-holed streets; and, best of all, a knowing portrait of a small city and a tiny state famous for jiggery-pokery and corruption.

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Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery

City of Dragons by Kelli Stanley

Book # 1 with Miranda Corbie, private investigator, Spanish Civil War nurse, and ex-escort, in 1940s San Francisco, California

Summary: It is 1940 and private investigator Miranda Corbie is in San Francisco's Chinatown during a Chinese New Year celebration when she finds Eddie Takahashi, shot and dying, on the ground in front of her. The police want the killing hushed up, but Corbie is determined to find the truth.

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Related post:
Macavity Nominees for Best Mystery Novel

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

A Bitter Truth
by Charles Todd

Book # 3 with Bess Crawford, a British army nurse in WWI

Summary: A battlefield nurse during World War I, Bess Crawford, returning to London for a well-earned Christmas leave, finds her holiday fraught with mystery and murder when she agrees to help a bruised and battered woman return to her small village in Sussex. NoveList

First two:
A Duty to the Dead
An Impartial Witness

Booklist's Best First Crime Novels of 2011 are taken from all books reviewed in the review magazine Booklist between May 2010 and April 2011.
Follow this link and scroll down to Best Crime Novel Debuts - click on each book title to read the full Booklist review.

BOOKLIST'S Top 10 First Crime Novels:

The Black Minutes. By Martín Solares. 2010.

The sheer exuberant inventiveness of this remarkable Mexican debut may mystify some American crime-fiction fans, used to tamer fare. Set in the made-up port city of Paracuán, on the Gulf of Mexico, the story starts in present time, with policeman Ramón “El Macetón” Cabrera assigned to investigate a journalist’s murder. Soon, though, the story leaps back in time to another investigation in the 1970s. As the plot paths converge, we see how the tragic past becomes the tragic present, but it’s Solares’ prose—alternately playful, poetic, and plainspoken—that propels the pages.

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Crossing. By Andrew Xia Fukuda. 2010.

It’s freshman year for Kris Xu, but the usual indignities have followed him to high school: bullying, racism, and underestimation. Then two things happen: he stumbles into an audition for the school musical, and other students start turning up dead. In this carefully observed, remarkably deft debut, Fukuda wraps his thriller plot around Kris’ sense of racial and emotional identity. Sad, elegant, and creepy.

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The Detroit Electric Scheme. By D. E. Johnson. 2010.

In 1910 Detroit, Will Anderson’s father owns the electric-car factory where Will finds the body of a onetime friend and rival. As Will narrates the sordid details, the finger of blame points in all directions. The surprise ending leaves you gasping over Johnson’s masterful plotting and the menacing tension that forces otherwise good characters to behave despicably. A noir period piece every bit as powerful as Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley series, this gem of a debut showcases an author to watch very closely.

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The Ice Princess. By Camilla Lackberg. Tr. by Steven Murray. 2010.

Murray, who has translated the works of both Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson, adds another Scandinavian crime star to his résumé. While visiting her hometown on the Swedish coast, Erica finds one of her oldest friends dead and begins to poke around in his past. Set in winter in the largely empty vacation village, the novel uses the off-season quiet to create a chilling atmosphere in which silence drives suspense.

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Kind of Blue. By Miles Corwin. 2010.

Shortly after leaving the LAPD, Ash Levine is lured back to solve the murder of an ex-cop, but his real reason for returning is the opportunity to dig into another case, the one that led to his resignation. Corwin’s procedural details are spot-on, but he also knows how to generate adrenaline-producing action, and he gets into the very heart and soul of his multifaceted protagonist.

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Mr. Peanut. By Adam Ross. 2010.

Despite the fact that David declares that he has been in love with wife Alice ever since he first spotted her in a film class, he is continually imagining her death via everything from carjackings to “convenient acts of God.” Naturally, when she is found dead at the kitchen table, he is the leading suspect. Ross is interested in all the soul-killing ways men and women try and fail to achieve intimacy, and he explores his age-old theme (marriage as one “long double homicide”) in eloquent prose and with a beguiling noirish sensibility.

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Red on Red. By Edward Conlon. 2011.

Former NYPD cop Conlon wrote about his experiences in the memoir Blue Blood (2004), and now, like Joseph Wambaugh, he turns to fiction with equally strong results. This gritty, episodic chronicle follows Irishman Meehan and his partner Esposito as they work their beat in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood. Conlon captures the herky-jerky nature of a policeman’s daily routine as it swings between farce and tragedy, all the while detailing the way cops talk, joke, and stress.

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Rogue Island. By Bruce DeSilva. 2010.

Journalist Liam Mulligan launches his own investigation into the arsons that are crippling the Mount Hope section of Providence. DeSilva’s debut has everything a crime fan could want: a stubborn, street-smart hero with a snarky sense of humor; a fast-paced plot; a realistic, postmillennium newspaper setting; mean, pot-holed streets; and, best of all, a knowing portrait of a small city and a tiny state famous for jiggery-pokery and corruption.

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Spiral. By Paul McEuen. 2011.

First-novelist McEuen pulls off a rare Booklist double-double: listings on both our top 10 crime novels of the year and our top 10 debuts.

Cornell physicist McEuen, writing his first novel in his “spare time,” may have created the most engrossing thriller of the year. With the murder of an 85-year-old physicist, it’s left to one of his colleagues, the victim’s granddaughter, and her nine-year-old son to thwart a complex scheme to launch the “most devastating terrorist attack in human history.” McEuen offers lucid disquisitions on science; posits that “synthetic biology” will surpass silicon microelectronics as the next big technological wave; and, remarkably, he makes these ideas accessible to the average thriller fan.

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The Terror of Living. By Urban Waite. 2011.

Phil Hunt, a horse farmer in Washington State, supplements his income with a little low-impact drug smuggling. When a deputy marshal stumbles upon a drop-off, however, Hunt finds himself playing Richard Kimble to the marshal’s Lieutenant Gerard, with a psycho-killer hit man somewhere in the middle. In a blood-spattered chase that winds from the mountains to Seattle and back again, Waite never eases the throttle, but even at high speed, it’s the interplay between the characters that gives the novel its rare power.

## Related post: The Year's Best Crime Novels from Booklist

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Skin
by Mo Hayder

Book # 4 with Jack Caffery, a troubled police detective, and Flea Marley, the head of police underwater investigations, in the West Country, England.

Summary: Detective Jack Caffery and police driver Flea Marley follow a trail of apparent suicides to Elf's Grotto, a nearly bottomless network of flooded quarries, where someone--or something--lurks, ready to disappear into darkness or slip into houses unseen. NoveList

First book: Birdman

Martyr
By Rory Clements

Summary: In a burnt-out house, one of Queen Elizabeth’s aristocratic cousins is found murdered, her young flesh marked with profane symbols. At the same time, a plot to assassinate Sir Francis Drake, England’s most famous sea warrior, is discovered — a plot which, if successful, could leave the country utterly defenseless against a Spanish invasion. It’s 1587, the Queen’s reign is in jeopardy, and one man is charged with the desperate task of solving both cases: John Shakespeare. With the Spanish Armada poised to strike, Mary Queen of Scots awaiting execution, and the pikes above London Bridge decorated with the grim evidence of treachery, the country is in peril of being overwhelmed by fear and chaos. Following a trail of illicit passions and family secrets, Shakespeare travels through an underworld of spies, sorcerers, whores, and theater people, among whom is his own younger brother, the struggling playwright, Will. Shadowed by his rival, the Queen’s chief torturer, who employs his own methods of terror, Shakespeare begins to piece together a complex and breathtaking conspiracy whose implications are almost too horrific to contemplate.

MBTB review: What a refreshing start to a new mystery series set in Elizabethan times. With so many Tudor books on the market highlighting the finer dalliances of court life, Clements does a phenomenal job at depicting the life of a commoner in such uncertain times when professing “the wrong” religious and political views could result in arrest, torture and execution.

The main characters were fleshed out well with the antagonist being particularly dastardly and poor John Shakespeare (and company) finding himself in the middle of some very precarious situations. The plot moved at a steady pace and the reader gets a really good sense of the period. However, there were quite a few storylines happening and many, many characters (both real and fictional) which were sometimes very hard to keep track of. I found myself constantly racking my brain when some obscure servant popped up with some vital piece of information and I couldn’t quite place them — it was quite maddening! But other than that, an enjoyable read especially if you’re looking for a title that’s more than just a mystery.

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I am currently reading the next installment “Revenger” as we speak. Rumor has it, it’s suppose to be even better than the first…
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Posted by Shiela

Christobel Kent: The Drowning River (2009) ****

Italian private investigator.

Book # 1 with former police officer Sandro Cellini, in Florence, Italy.

MBTB mini-review: Cellini is trying out a new job as a private investigator after leaving the police department under a cloud. He gets two cases – an elderly woman is convinced her husband with Alzheimer’s wouldn’t have committed suicide; and a teenage English art student is missing.
Recommended for fans of Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti (e.g. Death at La Fenice).
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Next book: A Murder in Tuscany

This is a MBTB mini-review from Mystery Memo # 109

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Here's what the Library Journal review had to say:
On the day that disgraced ex-cop Sandro Cellini opens his office as a PI in Florence, a young art student goes missing, and a man drowns in the River Arno. Cellini, aided by his wife, finds that working in the private sector offers challenges and a reason to live.
VERDICT: Filling her mystery debut with plenty of action, fast-thinking people, and beautiful Florence, British novelist Kent (Late Season) keeps the reader guessing how it all fits together. Donna Leon readers will like.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Dead Man's Grip
by Peter James

British police procedural

Book # 7 with Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, in Brighton, England

Summary: Carly Chase is traumatised ten days after being in a fatal traffic accident which kills a teenage student from Brighton University. Then she receives news that turns her entire world into a living nightmare. The drivers of the other two vehicles involved have been found tortured and murdered. Now DS Roy Grace of the Sussex Police force issues a stark and urgent warning to Carly: She could be next. The student had deadly connections. Connections that stretch across the Atlantic. Someone has sworn revenge and won't rest until the final person involved in that fatal accident is dead.... (author Peter James website)

First book: Dead Simple

The Mystery Memo is a log of all of my mystery reading, with brief comments and a star rating for each book read. It is published every 4 to 6 weeks. Some of these books have longer reviews or mini-reviews on this blog. In that case, a link will be supplied.

Click here for a printable text-only copy of Mystery Memo # 108 (in Microsoft Word). Here is your chance to download the full list.

This Mystery Memo has one book in the Perfect Read category, False Mermaid by Erin Hart

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Chris Grabenstein: Rolling Thunder (2010) ****

American police procedural.
Book # 6 with young police officer Danny Boyle and his partner John Ceepak, a by-the-book ex-soldier, set in a seaside tourist town in New Jersey.

MBTB mini-review: When a woman dies on the inaugural run of a new roller coaster at the amusement park, Danny and Ceepak are on the case. Was it just a heart attack? The dysfunctional family gives them lots to think about.
Great atmosphere and characters.

First book: Tilt-a-Whirl (2005)

## Related posts: MBTB review of Whack-a-Mole Book # 3

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Kerry Greenwood:
Murder on the Ballarat Train (1991) *** ½

Historical, set in Australia in the 1920s.

Book # 3 with the the Honourable Phryne Fisher, who works as a consulting detective in Melbourne.

MBTB mini-review: Phryne is on a train journey when chloroform is used in their first class car. After she shoots out a window to quickly get some fresh air, she discovers an elderly woman is missing from the train. The woman’s daughter hires Phryne to out what happened.
Subplot: a teenaged girl is found on the train who can’t remember who she is.
Good characters and depiction of the time.

First book: Cocaine Blues (1989)

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Erin Hart: False Mermaid (2010) **** ½

Book # 3 in the series with Irish archaeologist Cormac Maguire and American pathologist Nora Gavin.

This book is set mostly in St. Paul, Minnesota.

MBTB full review of False Mermaid

So nicely written. This is a favourite series of mine.

The first two in the series:
Haunted Ground
Lake of Sorrows

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Peg Herring:
Her Highness’ First Murder (2010) ***

Historical, set in 1546 England.

Book # 1 with Princess Elizabeth and her friend Simon, the physician’s son, both about 13 years old.

MBTB mini-review: King Henry asks young Simon to snoop around Princess Elizabeth’s household for information about a murdered attendant. The dead woman was found wearing a nun’s habit and the body was missing the head. With the assistance of Hugh, captain of the King’s guards, Simon and the Princess try to find out who the murderer was.
Slightly plodding, but still interesting due to the youth of the characters. I’ll look for the next one: Poison, Your Grace, coming in November 2011.

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Graham Hurley: Beyond Reach (2010) ****

British police procedural.

Book # 10 with DI Joe Faraday, Portsmouth, England. Some of the book is from the point-of-view of newly retired police detective Paul Winter, now working for crime boss Bazza MacKenzie.

MBTB mini-review: Faraday's case: a hit-and-run death seems to be connected to a harassment case. The other storyline: Winter has to to find out if crime boss Bazza’s married daughter is having an affair.
Convoluted but good. Two investigations, sometimes overlapping.

First book: Turnstone (2000)

## Related post: MBTB full review of No Lovelier Death, Book # 9 with DI Joe Faraday

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Donna Leon: A Question of Belief (2010) ****

Italian police procedural

Book # 19 with Guido Brunetti, police commissario in Venice. This book takes place in an August heat wave.

MBTB full review of A Question of Belief

I love the description of Venice in the heat, Brunetti’s family, the food, the little coffee bars, etc.

First book: Death at La Fenice (1992)

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Stuart MacBride: Dark Blood (2010) ****

British police procedural

Book # 6 with DS Logan “Lazarus” McRaie, in Aberdeen, Scotland

MBTB full review of Dark Blood

A serial rapist has been released from jail and relocated in Aberdeen. Making sure the man isn’t killed by the local citizens is only one of McRaie’s assignments. The usual warning about violence.

First book: Cold Granite (2005)

## Related post: MBTB full review of Cold Granite # 1

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Thomas Perry: Strip (2010) ****

This is a stand-alone, more a caper than a mystery.

MBTB mini-review of Strip

Nicely written.

It reminded me of Donald Westlake’s books (e.g. the Dortmunder series.
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Sally Spencer: Stone Killer (2005) *** ½

British police procedural. Historical, set in the 1960s.

Book # 14 with DCI Charlie Woodend in the English village of Whitebridge.

MBTB mini-review: A hostage-taking at a local bank. The demand: that Woodend look at the case evidence of the hostage taker’s wife (now in prison for murder) and find her innocent.
I find this series is a good blend of the personal and the procedural, and the setting in the 1960s hits just the right tone.

First book: The Salton Killings (1998)

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P.J. Tracy: Shoot to Thrill (2010) *** ½

Part American police procedural, part thriller.

Book # 5 with Minneapolis police (Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth) and the Monkeewrench gang (software developers who often work with these two police officers).

MBTB mini-review: Several murders across the country don’t seem connected until the FBI notices that live videos of the murders are available on a certain website. The Monkeewrench gang and other computer experts across the country are contracted to try to find the murderers through the internet.

I found this book not quite so engrossing as some of the earlier books. It is assumed the reader already knows the quirky characters. I recommend reading at least the first book: Monkeewrench before starting this one.

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Nicola Upson: An Expert in Murder (2008) *** ½

Historical, set in 1934 London, England.

Part amateur detective/part police procedural

Book # 1 with Josephine Tey, the real life mystery and play author, and her friend, police officer Archie Penrose, London, England.

MBTB mini-review of An Expert in Murder

The action was a little slow, but it was an enjoyable read. It reminded me of old English mysteries, similar to what Tey herself would have written.

Next book: Angel with Two Faces (2009)

posted by Sharon

## Related post: Mystery Memo # 108 part one

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

The Anniversary Man
by R. J. Ellory

Non-series American police procedural with crime researcher John Costello and NYPD detective Ray Irving, New York.

Summary: Twenty years after surviving an attack by a serial killer who murdered his girlfriend, a physically and psychologically scarred John Costello works in seclusion as a crime researcher and discerns a pattern in a string of murders.NoveList

Paul Doiron: The Poacher’s Son (2010) *** ½

Book # 1 with Maine game warden Mike Bowditch.

MBTB mini-review: Mike’s father, a known poacher, becomes the main suspect in the shooting deaths of a police officer and an executive of a big lumber company. His father has escaped police custody and Mike isn’t allowed to officially help in the hunt. Mike has to choose between his job and doing something to assist his father.

Non-stop action. Recommended for fans of Nevada Barr, series with Anna Pigeon, a park ranger at various national parks in the USA (e.g. Track of the Cat) or C. J. Box, series with Joe Pickett, a game warden in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming (e.g. Open Season).

The next book with Maine game warden Mike Bowditch: Trespasser

This is a MBTB mini-review from Mystery Memo # 109

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Here's what the Booklist review had to say:
/*Starred Review*/ Doiron’s debut crime novel is set on the coast and in the North Woods of Maine, the home of rookie game warden Mike Bowditch. As tensions rise across the state with the impending sale of huge tracts of paper-company forest land to an out-of-state developer, Mike receives a strange message from his father, left on the same night the paper company rep and a state trooper are shot and killed after a heated town meeting.

Doirin, editor-in-chief of Down State magazine, is well acquainted with the current political and cultural tensions that crisscross Maine, and his local knowledge drives this fast-paced and twisty narrative. With realistically flawed characters and a strong sense of place—both on the coast and in the woods — the novel avoids tourist stereotyping, of Maine itself and its citizens. As a game warden, Mike is devoted to upholding the law, and as a conflict appears to develop between that responsibility and his love for his estranged father, he finds himself with both his job and life on the line.

One hopes this fine novel is the first in a series starring Warden Bowditch, who could quickly become the East Coast version of C. J. Box’s game-warden hero Joe Pickett, who patrols the range in Wyoming.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Betrayal of Trust
by J.A. Jance

Book # 20 with J.P. Beaumont, wealthy homicide detective in Seattle, Washington

Summary: When the governor of the state of Washington asks him to investigate a snuff film found on her grandson's phone, J.P. Beaumont, no stranger to human depravity, is shocked by this horrific crime and discovers that this murder has much wider implications.NoveList

First book: Until Proven Guilty

The Mystery Memo is a log of all of my mystery reading, with brief comments and a star rating for each book read. It is published every 4 to 6 weeks. Some of these books have longer reviews or mini-reviews on this blog. In that case, a link will be supplied.

Click here for a printable text-only copy of Mystery Memo # 108 (in Microsoft Word). Here is your chance to download the full list.

* * *

Stephen Booth: Lost River (2009) *** ½

British police procedural

Book # 11 with D.C. Ben Cooper and D.C. Diane Fry in the Peak district, Derbyshire

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of Lost River

This is a highly personal peek into the lives of Diane and Ben as they solve some very serious crimes.

First book: Black Dog (2000)

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Gail Bowen: The Nesting Dolls (2010) ****

Book # 12 with political science professor Joanne Kilbourn, Regina, Saskatchewan.

MBTB mini-review: There is a deliciousness in reading a mystery set in a Saskatchewan winter, complete with blizzards, frigid temperatures and power outages.
It doesn’t take long to find out the connection between a baby left with Joanne’s friend Delia and a young woman found dead in her car after a prairie blizzard. Joanne gets involved in the complex task of putting together what the woman was doing.
A good mix of the personal and the mystery, as usual. This series appeals to lovers of cozy mysteries as well as readers like me who like a harder-edged mystery.

First book: Deadly Appearances (1990)

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C.J. Box: Nowhere to Run (2010) ****

Book # 10 with Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.

Action/adventure type, more thriller than mystery.

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of Nowhere to Run

The plots in this series are wonderful, but it's the characters that keep me eagerly anticipating the next book.

First book: Open Season (2001)

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Beverly Connor: The Night Killer (2010) ****
Forensic science.
Book # 8 with Diane Fallon, a forensic anthropologist, who is the director of small museum in Georgia, and also is the head of a forensic crime lab.

MBTB mini-review: Diane’s trip up a mountain to receive a donation of arrowheads ends up as a night of terror when her car crashes into a tree and a skeleton falls out of it.
I like the combination of fast-paced action, interesting plots and forensic science.

First book: One Grave Too Many (2003)

## Related post: MBTB review of Beverly Connor's entire series with Diane Fallon
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Joanne Dobson: Death Without Tenure (2010) ****

Book # 6 with Karen Pelletier, an English professor at a small college in New England

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of Death Without Tenure

This is a consistently good series. There is a strong personal element, as there often is in the "amateur detective" subgenre.

First book: Quieter Than Sleep (1997)

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Ariana Franklin: A Murderous Procession (2010) ****

Historical, set about 1178. This book is mostly set in France.

Book # 4 with Adelia, who is an expert in anatomy and autopsy, a "doctor for the dead". She works for King Henry II of England.

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of A Murderous Procession

This series make the medieval period come alive for me. I especially like historicals that include travelling. In this book, Adelia encounters Cathars in France.

First book: Mistress of the Art of Death (2007)
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Jan Gleiter:
A House by the Side of the Road (1998) ****
This stand-alone mystery was recommended by a friend.

MBTB mini-review: Meg Kessinger inherits her aunt’s tiny house in rural Pennsylvania and decides to move there from New York City. Within days, she is sure someone is sneaking around in the house.
This was the perfect balance of personal detail and mystery as Meg gets to know her neighbours, but also tries to find out who is rummaging in her house and why.

Watch for upcoming post: Mystery Memo # 108 part two

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

A Butterfly in Flame: a Fred Taylor art mystery
by Nicholas Kilmer

Book # 7 with Fred Taylor, employee and investigator for a secretive art collector, Boston.

Summary: Fred Taylor is sent undercover as a member of the faculty at Stilton Academy of Art near Boston. An instructor has purportedly disappeared with a female first-year student, daughter of the Academy's only significant donor. There are other conflicts brewing-- are they misguided, or sinister?..NoveList

First book: Harmony in Flesh and Black

## Related post: MBTB review of Madonna of the Apes, Book # 6 in series, but a prequel to the series and could be read first.

Here are some new entries in a couple of my favourite series:

J.A. Jance: Betrayal of Trust (2011)

Book # 20 with J.P. Beaumont, homicide detective in Seattle, Washington

Summary: When the governor of the state of Washington asks him to investigate a snuff film found on her grandson's phone, J.P. Beaumont, no stranger to human depravity, is shocked by this horrific crime and discovers that this murder has much wider implications. NoveList

First book: Until Proven Guilty

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Lee Child: The Affair (2011)

Book # 16 with Jack Reacher, ex-military policeman in the USA

Summary: Traces the story of Jack Reacher's early life in the military before the events that rendered him a vigilante hero on the road. NoveList

First book: Killing Floor

posted by Sharon

Elegy for April (2010)
By Benjamin Black

**Publisher's Weekly Starred Review**

Black's engrossing third crime thriller set in 1950s Dublin (after The Silver Swan) finds pathologist Garret Quirke fresh from a stint in alcohol rehab. Quirke reluctantly agrees to help his daughter, Phoebe Griffin, with whom he has a tenuous relationship, find her missing best friend, April Latimer, a junior doctor at a local hospital. Quirke soon finds that members of the powerful Latimer family have all but disowned April, and yet he's sure they know more than they're letting on. Phoebe does her own sleuthing among the group of friends she shared with April, including a stage actress, a handsome Nigerian surgical student, and a reporter. Black (the pen name of Booker Prize–winner John Banville) is equally concerned with exploring the idea of family and loyalty as with spinning a suspenseful whodunit, and his depiction of a fragile father-daughter relationship is as powerful as the unsettling truth behind April's disappearance. (Description taken from Publisher's Weekly)

Follow Me Down (2010)
By Marc Strange

**Publisher's Weekly Starred Review**

**Canadian Police Procedural**

This excellent first in a new series from Edgar-finalist Strange (Body Blows) pits a formidable Canadian police chief, Orwell Brennan, against clever criminals and rival law enforcement agencies. While trying to justify the existence of an independent police force for rural Dockerty, Ont., Brennan becomes involved in the case of a man found pinned to a tree by two arrows through the belly. The Toronto police soon conclude their investigation, but Brennan—sharply observant despite his slovenly rube appearance—patiently persists in unpeeling the mystery. Flashbacks reveal how an armored car robbery and a series of murders led to this crime and are still causing violent deaths. There's a lot going on under the surface of the little town and its scheming residents. (Description taken from Publisher's Weekly)

Gunshot Road (2010)
By Adrian Hyland

**Publisher's Weekly and Booklist Starred Review**

Hyland’s second mystery featuring Emily Tempest (following Moonlight Downs, 2008) finds the half-white, half-Aboriginal young woman having agreed to take on the post of Aboriginal Community police officer. Working as a beat cop in the harsh land of northern Australia, Emily soon encounters her first corpse: an old prospector she knew as a child. Convinced he couldn’t possibly have died as a result of an argument gone bad, Emily uses her deep knowledge of the land and people to find the real killer. Except she’s not supposed to be investigating that crime: her boss wants her working the night shift in town. Hyland’s second novel is better than her debut, which won Australia’s Ned Kelly Award for best first novel. The story’s gritty nature echoes the tough life, harsh environment, and difficult living conditions of the setting, and each of the characters seems a perfect fit in the hot and dusty landscape, from Emily, who’s not afraid to get into a fight, to the rough-and-tumble prospectors. The suspenseful and well-paced story will appeal equally to readers already familiar with the series and those just getting to know the tough-as-nails Emily. (Description taken from Booklist)

The Bone Thief
By Jefferson Bass

This is the fifth installment of the Body Farm novels that the duo Dr. Bill Bass (a real life world renowned forensic anthropologist who founded the Body Farm in Tennessee) and Jon Jefferson (veteran writer) have published. The best way to describe the Body Farm novels is to compare them to my favorite crime/drama television shows: CSI meets Criminal Minds meets Bones all rolled into one satisfying and unpredictable read. The Bone Thief was no exception.

When Dr. Bill Brockton is called upon to take a DNA sample from an exhumed body to determine paternity, he discovers that fundamental body parts were cleanly removed after death. The puzzle becomes even more convoluted when Brockton discovers a very profitable and thriving black market selling human body parts from victims both dead and still living.

The one thing about this novel is that you absolutely have to read the book that comes just before it (Bones of Betrayal) to be able to follow all of the characters storylines.

What I love about these books are the pertinent forensic facts—some of which are pretty cutting edge and disturbingly detailed—that the reader learns as the investigation unfolds. It’s almost like reading a nonfiction book with the added benefit of a really good mystery along the way. I will definitely be looking out for the next title "The Bone Yard" in the series.

To read a review of the first four books in the series, click here

Posted by Shiela

Booklist's Best Crime Novels of 2011 are taken from all books reviewed in the review magazine Booklist between May 2010 and April 2011. Click on the link to read Bill Ott's essay about the best crime novels of the year.

Sorry I missing this list when it was published on May 1, but I find these lists such a good source of great reading, I thought it was worth blogging about.

Here's the first half - watch for the second half (Top 10 Best First Crime Novels, coming soon)

Top 10

The Anniversary Man. By R. J. Ellory (2010)

NYPD Detective Ray Irving—overworked, underpaid, and absolutely dedicated to his job—risks his sense of ethics and, ultimately, his life to track down a serial killer who is imitating the crimes of some of the worst monsters in history. Entirely free of formula, Ellory’s breakthrough procedural should give him the kind of acclaim in the U.S. that he enjoys in his native Britain.
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* * *

Bury Your Dead. By Louis Penny (2010)

Book # 6 with Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, in the village of Three Pines, in southern Quebec

Penny’s sixth Armande Gamache novel is her best yet, a true tour de force of storytelling. Juggling three freestanding but subtly intertwined stories, Penny moves seamlessly from present to past as Gamache, the chief inspector of the Sûreté du Quebec, investigates a murder in Quebec City, tries to determine if he jailed the wrong man in an earlier case, and struggles with his memories of a third case that went horribly wrong. Penny hits every note perfectly in what is one of the most elaborately constructed mysteries in years.

First book: Still Life

* * *


Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. By Tom Franklin (2010)

Silas and Larry, two poor kids in 1970s Mississippi, were close until they drifted apart after Larry’s date disappeared one night and never returned. Now, 20 years later, Silas is the new town constable, and another girl disappears in similar circumstances. Edgar winner Franklin delivers luminous prose and a cast of unforgettable characters in this moody, masterful mix of crime and literary fiction.
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* * *

Gone. By Mo Hayder (2011)

Book # 5 with Jack Caffery, a troubled police detective in London, England

In this fifth riveting entry in Hayder’s series starring haunted homicide detective Jack Caffery, the disappearance of an 11-year-old girl leaves police playing catch-up against an adversary who seems to anticipate all their moves. The meticulously crafted plot is heightened by Hayder’s skillful evocation of mood in this utterly gripping thriller.

First book: Birdman
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* * *

Painted Ladies. By Robert B. Parker (2010)

Book # 38 with Spenser, an ex-boxer, ex-state cop turned private eye, in Boston, Massachusetts

Are we honoring the late Parker’s career here or is this really one of his best books in its own right? Well, both. His penultimate Spenser novel captures all the charm of the landmark series. The iconic Boston PI can still nail a person’s foibles on first meeting, still whip up a gourmet meal in a few minutes, still dispatch the thugs who haunt his office and his home, and still do it all while maintaining a fierce love of Susan Silverman and English poetry. Parker was one of the first to show us that a hard-boiled hero doesn’t have to frown all the time, and we’ve been smiling along with Spenser ever since.

First book: The Godwulf Manuscript
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***

The Snowman. By Jo Nesbø. Tr. by Don Bartlett (2011)

Book # 4 with Harry Hole, a police detective in Oslo, Norway

Norway’s maverick detective Harry Hole is back in this fourth installment of Nesbo’s uniformly outstanding series. A new case puts Harry on the track of another serial killer, and once again his obsessive approach to crime-solving puts him at odds with his peers. Nesbo layers the suspense skillfully, deftly mixing scenes from the investigation with glimpses into Harry’s always compelling personal life. With the conclusion of Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series, the Harry Hole novels now assume the top spot in the Scandinavian crime-fiction universe.

First book: The Redbreast
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***

Spiral. By Paul McEuen (2011)

Cornell physicist McEuen, writing his first novel in his “spare time,” may have created the most engrossing thriller of the year. With the murder of an 85-year-old physicist, it’s left to one of his colleagues, the victim’s granddaughter, and her nine-year-old son to thwart a complex scheme to launch the “most devastating terrorist attack in human history.” McEuen offers lucid disquisitions on science; posits that “synthetic biology” will surpass silicon microelectronics as the next big technological wave; and, remarkably, he makes these ideas accessible to the average thriller fan.

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***

Started Early, Took My Dog. By Kate Atkinson (2011)

Book # 4 with Jackson Brodie, an ex-cop, ex-husband, and private investigator, in the UK

In the latest entry in Atkinson’s brilliant Jackson Brodie series, the semiretired detective is touring abbeys in northern England, but soon enough he becomes involved in several interrelated cases, one of which concerns a police detective who has rescued a child from a prostitute by paying cash for her. Her odyssey as a new parent, relayed with tenderness and wry wit, must be one of the grandest love affairs in crime fiction. For its singular melding of radiant humor and dark deeds, this is must-reading for fans of literary crime fiction.

First book: Case Histories
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***

The Terrorist. By Peter Steiner (2010)

Book # 3 with Louis Morgon, a Middle East policy expert dismissed from the CIA, taking refuge in France

American expat Louis Morgon’s retirement in a Loire Valley village is upset by cancer and by the life he left decades before. The former CIA agent has helped a young Algerian boy get a scholarship, but now the boy has been deposited in a secret prison. Weakened by cancer, Louis must uncover valuable information about al-Qaeda that he can trade for the boy’s release. The Terrorist is a deeply human story of a man in the last years of his life, who, unexpectedly, has again found love but who is sucked back into a cynical, dangerous milieu he abhors. An espionage gem with strong echoes of Greene and le Carré.

First book: A French Country Murder

***

The Troubled Man. By Henning Mankell. Tr. by Laurie Thompson (2011)

Book # 10 with Kurt Wallander, an inspector in Ystad, Sweden

The final volume in Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series represents a landmark moment in the genre. As Wallander strives to find his daughter-in-law’s disappeared father, he launches another, more poignant investigation into his own past. This is a deeply melancholy novel, but Mankell, sweeping gracefully between reflections on international politics and meditations on the inevitable arc of human life, never lets his story become engulfed by darkness. Always a reticent man, Wallander shows an intensity of emotion here, a last gasp of felt life, which is both moving and oddly inspiring.

First book: Faceless Killers

***
series descriptions from Stop, You're Killing Me!

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Hell is Empty
by Craig Johnson

Book # 7 with Walt Longmire, veteran sheriff in Absaroka County, Wyoming

Summary: Well-read and world-weary, Sheriff Walt Longmire has been maintaining order in Wyoming's Absaroka County for more than 30 years, but in this riveting seventh outing, he is pushed to his limits as he braves a frozen inferno to capture an escaped murderer.NoveList

First book: The Cold Dish

Now You See Me
By S. J. Bolton

One night after interviewing a reluctant witness at a London apartment complex, Lacey Flint, a young detective constable, stumbles onto a woman brutally stabbed just moments before in the building’s darkened parking lot. Within twenty-four hours a reporter receives an anonymous letter that points out alarming similarities between the murder and Jack the Ripper’s first murder—a letter that calls out Lacey by name. If it’s real, and they have a killer bent on re-creating London’s bloody past, history shows they have just five days until the next attempt.

No one believes the connections are anything more than a sadistic killer’s game, not even Lacey, whom the killer seems to be taunting specifically. However, as they investigate the details of the case start reminding her more and more of a part of her past she’d rather keep hidden. And the only way to do that is to catch the killer herself. (Book Description taken from Amazon)

MBTB review: It was the “big reveal” at the end of the book that just blew me away which resulted in this better than average police procedural to earn the extra star. The ending was so completely unpredictable (and kind of mind blowing) that it made the book for me. I read the entire thing being very unsure of what was going on and trying to piece together the portions that I've been fed, but the resolution came out of nowhere. Kudos to Bolton.

I love reading about the elusive Jack the Ripper and I found myself quite enjoying the lore, both fact and fiction which Bolton explored throughout the investigation (you can tell she did her research). I also loved how she gave her readers a brief synopsis of all of the Ripper theories out there at the end of the novel and explained what she perceived to be a flaw in each of the arguments. Her own hypothesis proved to be quite interesting…

Posted by Shiela

Sara J. Henry: Learning to Swim (2011) *****

Summary: Witnessing a small boy being thrown into the middle of Lake Champlain, Troy Chance rescues the child only to discover that he had been kidnapped and is at the center of a bizarre and violent plot.

MBTB review:
Just when I think I'm being too stingy with my star ratings, along comes a book that I have no hesitation about giving 5 stars to.

An enthralling writing style, an interesting narrative voice, and a good character in Troy Chance.

For fun, check out Sara J. Henry's web page with a link to her blog.

* * *

Here's what Library Journal had to say:

Freelance writer Troy Chance sees a child thrown from a ferry and jumps into the water to save him. Haunted by a past experience with an abandoned child, she decides to be sure that his parents weren't responsible before she notifies the police. She travels to Canada to meet with Paul's divorced father and realizes that she has become more attached to the child than she wanted to be. Accepting an invitation to stay with the family for a few days while Paul recovers from the trauma of his kidnapping, Troy finds herself falling for his father. At the same time, she is unable to leave the investigation in the hands of the police, still fearing that one of the parents could have been involved.
Verdict: Fans of both mystery and romantic suspense will welcome this promising new author; the unsettled ending hints at a follow-up mystery.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Jericho Cay
by Kathryn R. Wall

Book # 11 with Bay Tanner, a widowed financial consultant, in Hilton Head, South Carolina

Summary: While restoring her Hilton Head home after a brush with a hurricane, P.I. Bay Tanner must unravel a suspicious death and even more suspicious disappearances from a secluded private island. NoveList

First book: In for a Penny

series description from Stop, You're Killing Me!

Here's the link to the Murder by the Book reading list
Death Takes a Holiday: Beach Reads and More

I like Mystery Beach Reads that actually take place at the beach, like Douglas Corleone's new series with Kevin Corvelli, a Manhattan criminal defense lawyer who moves to Honolulu, Hawaii

One Man's Paradise # 1
Summary: After his reputation is destroyed by a botched murder case, cutthroat defense lawyer Kevin Corvelli flees to Hawaii, where he meets a law student who has been wrongly accused of killing his ex-girlfriend.
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Night on Fire # 2
Summary: Kevin Corvelli--a hot shot New York defense attorney who packed up his bags and hung his shingle in Hawaii to dodge the spotlight--is deep in his Mai Tais at a resort when an argument erupts down the bar. It's a pair of newlyweds, married that day. And since Corvelli doesn't do divorces, he all but dismisses the argument. That's at least until the fire breaks out later that night, and he barely escapes his hotel room. Most weren't so lucky, including the new husband. His wife Erin becomes not only the prime suspect but Corvelli's newest client, and she has a lot working against her, like motive and opportunity, not to mention a history of starting fires. (publisher's description)

* * * * *

I came across the following web page while browsing for Beach Reads:
Top Books to Read at the Beach
Check out their Mystery Recommendations

series description from Stop, You're Killing Me!

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Erasing Memory
by Scott Thornley

Book # 1 with senior police detective MacNeice, in the fictional Ontario city of Dundurn

Summary: MacNeice is returning from a pilgrimage to his wife's grave when he's called to a crime scene of singular and disturbing beauty. A young woman in evening dress lies gracefully posed on the floor of a pristine summer cottage so that the finger of one hand regularly interrupts the needle arm of a phonograph playing the Schubert Piano Trio. The only visible mark on her is the bruise under her chin, which MacNeice recognizes: it is the mark that distinguishes dedicated violinists, the same mark that once graced his wife. The murder is both ingenious and horrific, and soon entangles MacNeice and his team in Eastern Europe's ancient grievances . . . .
Fantastic Fiction

Before, during and after any trip I take, I try to read mysteries set in the destination. Here's what I've read so far about Greece - I was on vacation there from mid-May till mid-June.

These books run the gamut of contemporary, historical, police procedural (and at least one with a "woo woo" component).

Barbara Cleverly: Tomb of Zeus (2007) *** ½

Historical, set on the island of Crete in 1928.

Book # 1 with amateur archaeologist Laetitia Talbot

MBTB mini-review: After she is tossed out of Cambridge for bad behaviour, Laetitia goes to help with an archaeological dig in Greece. While there, she gets involved looking into the death of the head archaeologist’s wife. This was a re-read for me, and I liked it better now that I’ve been to Greece.
Book # 2 Bright Hair About the Bone is actually set earlier in time than this book, and could be read first.

* * *

Lindsay Davis: See Delphi and Die (2005)
** ½ for the mystery

*** for the description of traveling, the historical setting and the characters

Private investigator/Historical

Book # 17 with Marcus Didius Falco, an “informer” for Emperor Vespasian in 1st century Rome

Summary: Now married to his beloved Helena Justina, Marcus Didius Falco is hired to take on a murder investigation that will require him and Helena to travel to Olympia, Greece, to uncover the truth about a series of disappearances. NoveList

MBTB mini-review: The best parts, for me, were the descriptions of the ancient sites (Olympia, Athens and Delphi), ancient even then, and the tribulations of being a tourist. The characters were great, but the mystery didn't really catch my interest.

First book: Silver Pigs

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Paul Johnston: A Deeper Shade of Blue (2002) ****
Private investigator, Greece
Book # 1 with Alex Mavros, a half-Greek, half-Scottish private investigator in Greece

Summary: When Alex Mavros is asked to track down a missing woman, he jumps at the chance to leave the stifling heat of Athens. Travelling to the small island of Trigono, he soon realizes that there is more than one mystery to be solved. How did a young couple drown in the nets of a fishing boat? Why did a British journalist leave without telling her friends? Why is the millionaire Theocharis so nervous and whose bones does old Maro keep beneath her bed? The answers lie in events that took place during the Second World War, events that tie in with the island's most ancient history. In a race to prevent a terrible crime being repeated, Alex Mavros is pitted against a ruthless and depraved killer... Fantastic Fiction

MBTB mini-review: Lots of action and interesting descriptions of the Greek islands. I liked the character of Alex and I'm going to track down Book # 2.

Next book: The Last Red Death

* * *

Jeffrey Siger: Assassins of Athens (2010) ** ½

Book # 2 with Andreas Kaldis, a Chief Inspector in Athens, Greece

Summary: Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis investigates after the body of a boy from one of Greece's most prominent families turns up dead in a dumpster in Athens.

MBTB mini-review: a little over the top but good detail on Greece. Not bad, but I doubt if I would have read it if not for my upcoming trip.

First book: Murder on Mykonos

* * *

Mary Stewart: My Brother Michael (1959) ****
non-series, set in Greece
Romantic suspense

Summary: Camilla Haven and her mysterious companion, Simon, are plunged into a deadly adventure as they search Delphi for the truth implied in a letter Simon's brother, Michael, had written before his death.

MBTB mini-review: Nicely done romantic suspense, with a little more action and violence than I remembered, having read it for the first time several years ago.

* * *


Anne Zouroudi: The Messenger of Athens (2007) ***

Book # 1 with Hermes Diaktoros, the Fat Man, a mysterious investigator from Athens, Greece

Summary: Idyllic but remote, the Greek island of Thiminos seems untouched and untroubled by the modern world. When the battered body of a young woman is discovered at the foot of a cliff, the local police - governed more by archaic rules of honour than by the law - are quick to close the case, dismissing the death as an accident.

MBTB mini-review: Hermes Diaktoros is an otherworldly investigator, with mysterious powers connected to Greek mythology. He appears on a remote Greek island after the death of young woman is written off as suicide. About half the book takes place before the murder, setting the scene. I preferred the second half, reading about the unusual Hermes talking to people and solving the mystery. Nice descriptions, and the "woo woo" aspects were subtle and believable in context.

* * *

Try the Stop, You're Killing Me! location index - Greece for a few more suggestions.

I'm reviving the category Murder by the Book meeting lists for themed lists with star ratings. This category was used for several years to report the star ratings assigned by our mystery book group members after we discussed mysteries with a particular theme.
Check out the themed book lists Pat and I created, still available in the Readers' Cafe - Book and Author Lists - Mysteries

series descriptions from Stop, You're Killing Me!

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Disturbance
by Jan Burke

Book # 11 with Irene Kelly, a newspaper reporter in southern California

Summary: When the master criminal sons of serial killer Nick Parrish formulate a plan to spring their father from prison, investigative journalist Irene Kelly finds herself targeted by a deadly vengeance plot. NoveList

First book: Goodnight Irene

Check out the Stop, You're Killing Me! page for New Mystery Releases.

There are links on the left side of the page for:
New Hardcover Releases

New Paperback Releases

New Additions (including new series)

(each of these categories also has an Archives feature to look at previous months new releases)

* * *

Here are a few I'm looking forward to in the New Hardcover Releases July 2011:
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Deadly Cove by Brendan DuBois
Book # 7 with Lewis Cole, a former Department of Defense research analyst, retired in Tyler Beach, New Hampshire

Summary: Investigating the background of a murdered activist, Lewis Cole discovers ties to activities of anti-nuclear protesters who are gathering by the thousands on the New Hampshire seacoast, where they threaten violent action to promote their cause. NoveList

First book: Dead Sand

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The Taint of Midas by Anne Zouroudi
Book # 2 with Hermes Diaktoros, the Fat Man, a mysterious investigator from Athens, Greece

Summary: For over half a century the beautiful, ruined Temple of Apollo has been in the care of the old beekeeper Gabrilis. But when the value of the land soars, he is persuaded through unscrupulous means to sign away his interests - and hours later he meets a violent, lonely death. When Hermes Diaktoros finds his friend's battered body by a dusty roadside, the police quickly make him the prime suspect. But with rapacious developers threatening Arcadia's most ancient sites, there are many who stand to gain from Gabrilis' death. Hermes resolves to avenge his old friend and find the true culprit, but his methods are, as ever, unorthodox. . . . Fantastic Fiction

First book: The Messenger of Athens

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Now You See Me by S.J. Bolton
non-series

Summary: Stumbling onto a murder scene that a reporter likens to the crimes of Jack the Ripper, young detective constable Lacey Flint races against time to prevent additional deaths and realizes that the killer is taunting her with secrets from her past. NoveList
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and here's what I'm watching for in the New Hardcover Releases August 2011:



A Bitter Truth by Charles Todd

Book # 3 with Bess Crawford, a British army nurse in WWI

Summary: Bess reaches out to help an abused and frightened young woman, only to discover that no good deed ever goes unpunished when the good Samaritan nurse finds herself falsely accused of murder.

First book: A Duty to the Dead
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Louise’s War by Sarah R. Shaber

Book # 1 with Louise Pearlie, a young widow working as a clerk for the OSS, in 1942 Washington, DC

Summary: The first in a new series from the author of the ‘Simon Shaw’ books - set in 1942. Louise Pearlie, a young widow, has come to Washington DC to work as a clerk for the legendary OSS, the precursor to the CIA. When, while filing, she discovers a document concerning the husband of a college friend, Rachel Bloch, – a young French Jewish woman she is desperately worried about – Louise realizes she may be able to help get Rachel out of Vichy France. But then a colleague whose help Louise has enlisted is murdered, and she realizes she is on her own, unable to trust anyone . . fictiondb

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Cold Vengeance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Book # 11 with Aloysius Pendergast, an FBI special agent

Summary: A bonding trip for Pendergast and his brother-in-law, Judson Esterhazy, turns violent. Before abandoning a mortally-wounded Pendergast, Esterhazy announces his sister, Pendergast's long-dead wife Helen, is alive. publisher

First book: Relic

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The Most Dangerous Thing by Laura Lippman

non-series

Summary: Once the best of friends until a terrible secret tore them apart, a group of friends are suddenly brought back together under tragic circumstances and wonder if their long-ago lie is the reason for their troubles today and if someone is out to destroy them. NoveList

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Now that I'm aware of this feature, I will check out many others as well.

character descriptions from Stop, You're Killing Me!

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Think of a Number
by John Verdon

Book # 1 with Dave Gurney, a recently retired 40-something NYPD homicide detective with a reputation for catching serial killers, in rural upstate New York

Summary: Recently retired after a prestigious career with the NYPD, homicide detective Dave Gurney is pulled back into service when an old college friend receives threatening letters from a murderous sender who has an uncanny ability to read a person's thoughts.NoveList

Ariana Franklin: A Murderous Procession (2010) ****

Historical, set about 1178. This book takes place mostly in France.

Book # 4 with Adelia, who is an expert in anatomy and autopsy. She works for King Henry II of England.

MBTB mini-review: In this book, Adelia is required to accompany Henry II’s young daughter on a journey across Europe. They haven't gone very far before Adelia realizes that someone in the large royal retinue is determined to murder her.
I like historical mysteries, especially ones that include travel, and author Franklin handles historical detail very well. For maximum enjoyment, read at least the previous book Grave Goods.

First book: Mistress of the Art of Death (2007)

## Related posts:
MBTB review of Mistress of the Art of Death # 1

MBTB review of Grave Goods # 3

This is a mini-review from Mystery Memo # 108

* * *

Here's what the Booklist review had to say:
In the fourth Mistress of the Art of Death mystery, medieval forensic pathologist Adelia Aguilar has been an enjoying a quiet life in the countryside with her daughter and friends. Then Henry II demands that she accompany his daughter and her formal procession to Italy and offers to “keep” her daughter with Queen Eleanor until her safe return. But death stalks the procession, and Adelia and her loyal friends soon realize that the killer is someone from her past bent on revenge. As with previous books in the series, historical details are many and add an extra layer of atmosphere. Readers who doubt the likelihood of a female Jewish pathologist in twelfth-century Britain will be reassured by Franklin’s detailed historical notes at the end of the book. With some uneven pacing and a plot that relies heavily on previous series knowledge, this book isn’t the best place to start for readers new to the series, but it will be enjoyed by series fans.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

One Was a Soldier
by Julia Spencer-Fleming

Book # 7 with Clare Fergusson, a newly-ordained Episcopal priest, and Russ Van Alystyne, Chief of Police, in Millers Kill, New York

Summary: As five Iraq veterans struggle to adjust to life after brutal tours of service, an effort complicated by permanent injuries and PTSD, they investigate the murder of one of their own.NoveList

First book: In the Bleak Midwinter

Thomas Perry: Strip (2010) ****

This is a stand-alone, more a caper than a mystery.

MBTB review: When strip club owner Manco is robbed at the night deposit, he asks around and deduces that a new man in LA, Joe Carver, is likely the robber. Carver tries to tell Manco that he has the wrong man, but Manco won’t change his mind. In the meantime, the reader also sees the story from the point-of-view of the actual robber, a man who has no idea of the trouble he’s causing. Nicely written.

It reminded me of Donald Westlake’s books (e.g. the Dortmunder series - see Related Post below).

## Related post: Donald Westlake 1933 - 2008

This is a mini-review from Mystery Memo # 108

* * * * *

Here's what Library Journal had to say:
/* Starred Review */ Former bar owner Joe Carver has come to L.A. with a new identity and lots of cash only to find that thugs hired by low-level mobster Manco Kapak are out to get him. Carver has been mistakenly fingered as the person behind the armed robbery of Kapak's night deposit, a hefty sum used in part to launder drug profits, only the first of many hits the gangster will absorb from a masked gunman. Failing to clear his name, Carver counterattacks. Along the way, readers meet bigamist detective Nick Slosser, who is juggling the demands of two families and trying to capture the increasingly brazen robber while investigating Kapak for a drug lord's murder. As these and other colorful characters spiral around each other with gripping intensity and one startling twist after the other, the question is: Who's going down, and who's getting away?
VERDICT Featuring rich, complex characters, Perry's 18th novel (after Runner ) is pure, unadulterated fun, sure to please not only the many fans of this master craftsman but also lovers of imaginative, character-driven thrillers a la Elmore Leonard.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Devil's Peak
by Deon Meyer

Book # 1 with Benny Griessel, an aging, alcoholic police inspector in Capetown, South Africa

Summary: In the aftermath of a gruesome child abuse case that has caught the attention of the media, Inspector Benny Griessel struggles to maintain his sobriety in order to bring down a vigilante killer who has won the sympathy of the public. NoveList

Next book: Thirteen Hours

series information from Stop, You're Killing Me!

The Macavity Awards are nominated and voted on by members of Mystery Readers International.

Click here to see the nominees in all the Macavity Awards categories at Janet Rudolph's blog Mystery Fanfare

I usually read all the nominees, not just the winner, so I don't have to wait for the winner to be announced at Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention, in St. Louis in September.

Nominees for the
Best Mystery Novel:

The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke

Book # 18 with Dave Robicheaux, a deputy sheriff in New Iberia, Louisiana
Summary: Beloved Burke hero Detective Dave Robicheaux returns to New Iberia, Louisiana, to solve a series of grisly murders. Seven young women in neighboring Jefferson Davis Parish have been brutally murdered. While the crimes have all the telltale signs of a serial killer, one death doesn't fit. Adding to Robicheaux's troubles is the matter of his daughter, Alafair, on leave from Stanford Law to put the finishing touches on her novel. Her literary pursuit has led her into the arms of Kermit Abelard. But Robicheaux begins to fear that Alafair might be destroyed by the man she loves. NoveList

First book: The Neon Rain

* * *

Faithful Place by Tana French

Summary: Detective Frank Mackey finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind twenty-two years ago when the suitcase belonging to his first love, Rosie Daly, shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place. NoveList

Here's what the Booklist review had to say:
. . . French introduced Frank Mackey in her second highly praised novel, The Likeness (2008), as a shrewd, ever-calculating cop who puts a young, female undercover officer in grave danger. So, his unraveling in the face of family and neighborhood feuds and animosities is riveting and humanizing. She also revisits, evocatively and lyrically, themes she’s used before: love, loss, memory, murder, and life in modern Ireland. French’s writing remains brilliant, and her dialogue is sharp, often lacerating, and sometimes mordantly funny. Faithful Place is her best book yet.

## Related post: MBTB review of The Likeness by Tana French

.
.

* * *

The Queen of Patpong by Timothy Hallinan

Book # 4 with Poke Rafferty, a writer living with Miaow, a rescued street child, and Rose, a former go-go dancer, in Bangkok, Thailand

Summary: The quiet Bangkok family life of American travel-writer Poke Rafferty, wife Rose, and daughter Miaow is threatened when a man from Rose's past forces Poke to uncover the whole truth about his wife's former life in a red-light district.

First book: A Nail Through the Heart

.

* * *

Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer

Book # 2 with Cape Town police detective Benny Griessel.

Summary: After a teenage American tourist has her throat slit in Cape Town, detective Benny Griessel must find her friend, Rachel Anderson, before she meets the same fate; and when he's also put on the case of a murdered music executive, he realizes he must solve both crimes for Rachel to survive.

from the mini-review in the list Sharon's top mystery reads of 2010: . . . High tension, fast-paced, but easy to understand. Not necessary to read the first book: Devil’s Peak

## Related post: MBTB review of Thirteen Hours

* * *

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

Book # 8 with Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, in the village of Three Pines, in southern Quebec

As Quebec City shivers in the grip of winter, its ancient stone walls cracking in the cold, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache plunges into the most unusual case of his celebrated career. A man has been brutally murdered in one of the city's oldest buildings - a library where the English citizens of Quebec safeguard their history. And the death opens a door into the past, exposing a mystery that has lain dormant for centuries... a mystery Gamache must solve if he's to apprehend a present-day killer.

First book: Still Life

## Related post: MBTB review of Still Life # 1

* * *

The Scent of Rain and Lightning by Nancy Pickard

Summary: The man convicted of murdering Jody's father, Billy Crosby, is being released from prison and returning to the small town of Rose, Kansas. Crosby has been granted a new trial, thanks in large part to the efforts of his son, Collin, a lawyer who has spent most of his life trying to prove his father's innocence. As Jody revisits old wounds, startling revelations compel her to uncover the dangerous truth about her family's tragic past. NoveList

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Evil for Evil: a Billy Boyle World War II Mystery
by James R. Benn

Book # 4 with Billy Boyle, a Boston cop from a family of Boston cops, on the staff of distant relative, General Eisenhower, during WWII

Summary: Fifty Browning Automatic Rifles have been stolen from a US Army base in Northern Ireland. His "uncle" Ike Eisenhower sends Billy to recover the weapons, which might be used in a German-sponsored IRA uprising. Bodies begin to accumulate as Billy finds unexpected challenges to his Boston-Irish upbringing and IRA sympathies. There are rogues on both sides, he learns. Fantastic Fiction

First book: Billy Boyle

series descriptions from Stop, You're Killing Me!

Nicola Upson: An Expert in Murder (2008) *** ½

Historical, set in 1934 London, England.

Part amateur detective/part police procedural

Book # 1 with Josephine Tey, the real life mystery and play author, and her friend, police officer Archie Penrose, London, England.

MBTB review: This book takes place during the London run of one of Tey’s very successful plays “Richard of Bordeaux”. A young woman, a fan of the play, is murdered on the train into London. Josephine is somewhat involved in solving the murder, but we also see the crime from the point-of-view of policeman Archie.
The action was a little slow, but it was an enjoyable read. It reminded me of old English mysteries, similar to what Tey herself would have written.

Next book: Angel with Two Faces (2009)

Click here to see a selection of works by the real author Josephine Tey, including her famous Daughter of Time

This is a mini-review from Mystery Memo # 108

* * * * *

Here's what the Booklist review had to say:
Josephine Tey moves from classic real-life crime writer and playwright to unwilling fictional sleuth in this atmosphere-laden cozy. Tey is journeying from her home in Inverness to London in 1934, to see the final week of her hit play. She befriends a young woman who enters her carriage; of course, the woman is a completely agog fan. Tey disembarks in London; the woman reenters the carriage and is promptly murdered. A disturbing feature of the murder is its staging: the victim is propped up to look in admiration at two dolls who seem to be representing one of Tey's scenes. What may be disturbing to the reader is the forced link between Detective Inspector Archie Penrose, who finds the body, and Tey herself; they're longtime friends, inevitably drawing Tey into the inside of the investigation. Fun for historical details and backstage bits, though the machinery of the mystery is too obvious.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Head Games
by Eileen Dreyer

Book # 2 with death investigator and trauma nurse Molly Burke

Summary: Molly Burke is a death investigator and trauma nurse for the city of St. Louis who has seen every type of atrocity and more than her share of heartbreak. And she knows that no good deed goes unpunished. For years she tried to save the abused children who came through her ER. She's learned that she can save some kids, but others will be lost to their horrific families. Now a child she once tried to save is all grown up. His life has been unspeakable. His deeds are now unfathomable. And he wants Molly's attention. A killer has been created and he will stop at nothing to make sure Molly Burke won't ignore him now. To make matters even more complicated, Molly's brother asks her to watch his sixteen-year-old son, who seems to have left a string of "incidents" in his wake, forcing her to face the fact that no family is without its secrets. Fantastic Fiction

First book: Bad Medicine

Here are a few new police mysteries that caught my eye:

Breaking Silence by Linda Castillo

Book # 3 with Kate Burkholder, female chief of police in the Amish town of Painters Mill, Ohio

Summary: When the fatal accidents of three Amish farmers are proven to be murders, former Amish woman Kate investigates a possible link between the killings and recent hate crimes, a case that is complicated by a dark secret and her precarious relationship with agent John Tomasetti.

First book: Sworn to Silence

* * * * *

One Was A Soldier by Julia Spencer-Fleming

Book # 7 with Clare Fergusson, a newly-ordained Episcopal priest, and Russ Van Alystyne, Chief of Police, in Millers Kill, New York

Summary: As five Iraq veterans struggle to adjust to life after brutal tours of service, an effort complicated by permanent injuries and PTSD, they investigate the murder of one of their own.

First book: In the Bleak Midwinter

## Related posts:
MBTB review of To Darkness and To Death # 4
MBTB review of I Shall Not Want # 6

* * * * *

Cold Wind by C.J. Box

Book # 11 with Joe Pickett, a game warden in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming

Summary: When Earl Alden is found dead, dangling from a wind turbine, it's his wife, Missy, who is arrested. Unfortunately for Joe Pickett, Missy is his mother-in- law, a woman he dislikes heartily, and now he doesn't know what to do --especially when the early signs point to her being guilty as sin. But then things happen to make Joe wonder: Is Earl's death what it appears to be?.

First book: Open Season

## Related posts:
MBTB mini-review of Below Zero # 9
MBTB mini-review of Nowhere to Run # 10

series descriptions from Stop, You're Killing Me!

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

The Fifth Witness
by Michael Connelly

Book # 4 with Mickey Haller, a lawyer in Los Angeles

Summary: Mickey Haller has fallen on tough times. He expands his business into foreclosure defense, only to see one of his clients accused of killing the banker she blames for trying to take away her home. Mickey puts his team into high gear to exonerate Lisa Trammel, even though the evidence and his own suspicions tell him his client is guilty. Soon after he learns that the victim had black market dealings of his own, Haller is assaulted, too, and he's certain he's on the right trail. NoveList

First book: The Lincoln Lawyer

Click here to see the full list of New Book Releases - Mysteries at RPL

What I'll be checking out:

Fallen
by Karin Slaughter

Unable to retain her professional detachment when her mother is abducted while babysitting her four-month-old daughter, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Faith Mitchell teams up with Will Trent and Sara Linton in a case that reveals unsettling truths. NoveList

Book # 4 in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation series

First book: Triptych

* * *

Red on Red
by Edward Conlon

The author of the award-winning, New York Times-bestselling memoir Blue Blood delivers his first novel--the story of two NYPD detectives with radically different approaches to life and work.

* * *

A Drop of the Hard Stuff
by Lawrence Block

When a childhood friend is shot down while attempting to atone for past sins according to the dictates of Alcoholics Anonymous, Matthew Scudder is drawn into a murder investigation that threatens to derail his own sobriety. NoveList

Book # 17 with private investigator Matthew Scudder

First book: The Sins of the Fathers

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

A Drop of the Hard Stuff
by Lawrence Block

Book # 17 with Matthew Scudder, private investigator/ex-cop, New York City

For the full description, see the above list. This is a long-awaited addition to the Matthew Scudder series. Just a few weeks ago, I re-read In the Midst of Death - # 3 in the series - as a vacation read, so the character is fresh in my mind.

Stephen Booth: Lost River (2009) *** ½

British police procedural

Book # 11 with D.C. Ben Cooper and D.C. Diane Fry in the Peak district, Derbyshire

MBTB review: Diane is back in Birmingham because of new evidence in her rape case from several years ago. But when it looks like her case won’t go forward, she decides to do some detective work on the case herself.

Back in the Peak district, Ben has been traumatized by a child’s drowning in a local river – he thinks there is something wrong with the family’s responses and believes it was not an accident.

This is a highly personal peek into the lives of Diane and Ben as they solve some very serious crimes.

First book: Black Dog (2000)

This is a mini-review from Mystery Memo # 108

* * * * *

Here's what Globe & Mail reviewer Margaret Cannon has to say in the blog The Thursday File:
The British have dubbed Booth’s particular kind of story “rural noir.” His pretty Peak District villages may look idyllic, but Detective Constable Ben Cooper and Detective Sergeant Diane Fry know that beauty here is barely dirt deep. Lost River, which fills in Fry’s back story, is a great addition to this excellent series.

The plot begins in Dovedale on May Bank Holiday. Cooper is enjoying the pleasure of families frolicking at a local river when he suddenly spots a child in the water. Cooper moves as fast as he can, but as he pulls her out, he knows he’s too late. And there is something, just at the moment he finds the child, that he can’t put out of his mind. . . .
Click here to read Cannon's full review

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Started Early, Took My Dog
by Kate Atkinson

Private investigator

Book # 4 with Jackson Brodie, an ex-cop, ex-husband, and private investigator, in the UK

Summary: Tracy Waterhouse, a retired police detective leading a quiet life, makes a snap decision to relieve habitual offender Kelly Cross of a young child she's been dragging around town. Tracy soon learns her parental inexperience is actually the least of her problems, as much larger ones loom for her and her young charge. Meanwhile, detective Jackson Brodie embarks on a different sort of rescue--that of an abused dog.

First book: Case Histories

series description from Stop, You're Killing Me!

For most of the newer books in the library catalogue, a book review or two is included on the page.

A quick way to access this in the Classic Catalogue mode is to click on the Book Jacket (or scroll down the page).
Here's a good example:
Where Shadows Dance in the Classic Catalogue

or

Look up the same book in the Encore Catalogue mode:
Where Shadows Dance in the Encore Catalogue
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Review.

* * * * *

This book is on my "To Be Read" list:

Where Shadows Dance: a Sebastian St. Cyr mystery by C.S. Harris
Book # 6 with Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, an investigator in Regency England

Summary: Aristocratic soldier and Regency-era sleuth Sebastian St. Cyr investigates the murder of a foreign office diplomat and must find the killer before he makes victims of the diplomat's wife and unborn child.

First book: What Angels Fear

## Related post: MBTB review of What Angels Fear # 1

series description from Stop, You're Killing Me!

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Innocent Monster
by Reed Farrel Coleman

Private investigator

Book # 6 with Moe (Moses) Prager, an ex-cop private investigator in 1980s New York City

Summary: Moe Prager finds himself searching for suspects in the New York art scene when he begins an investigation into the disappearance of an eleven-year-old child prodigy.

First book: Walking the Perfect Square

series description from Stop, You're Killing Me!

Joanne Dobson: Death Without Tenure (2010) ****

Book # 6 with Karen Pelletier, an English professor at a small college in New England

Karen is competing for a tenure spot with a Native American professor who keeps a very low profile. After he is killed, police focus on Karen as the main suspect.
This is a consistently good series. There is a strong personal element, as there often is in the "amateur detective" subgenre.

First book: Quieter Than Sleep (1997)

This is a mini-review from Mystery Memo # 108

* * * * *

Here's what the Publisher's Weekly review had to say:

Agatha-finalist Dobson's sixth mystery to feature English professor Karen Pelletier (after 2003's The Maltese Manuscript ) earns a passing grade. Karen is up for the sole open tenure spot in her department at Massachusetts's Enfield College, but the department chairman is championing her underqualified Native American colleague, Joe Lone Wolf, which sends Karen into a dither. She also worries about her boyfriend's deployment to Iraq and her daughter's jaunt to Nepal. After someone slips Joe a fatal overdose of what may be peyote, she becomes the prime murder suspect. Plenty of other suspects emerge from the stereotypical cast of faculty and students, as Dobson trots out a plague of academic bugaboos, including drugs, false credentials, plagiarism, faculty in-fighting and hate crimes. When Karen stops dithering and starts playing detective, things heat up quickly.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Deadline in Athens
by Petros Markaris

Police procedural, Greece

Book # 1 with Costas Haritos, a former prison guard, now inspector in the CID in Athens, Greece

Summary: Athens homicide detective Inspector Costas Haritos is called in to investigate the slaying of a renowned TV journalist, killed in her broadcast studio just as she is to announce some sensational news, and becomes swept up in the cutthroat and nasty world of the Greek media.

series description from Stop, You're Killing Me!

Put your name on the hold list for
The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly

Book # 4 with Los Angeles lawyer Mickey Haller

Summary: Mickey Haller must defend a client who is accused of killing the banker involved with her foreclosure, a case that reveals strong suspicions, black-market dealings, and a threat to Mickey's own life.

First book: The Lincoln Lawyer

* * * * *

While you're waiting, have a look through some of these new legal procedurals or thrillers.

Trader of secrets: a Paul Madriani novel
by Steve Martini
Book # 12 with defense attorney Paul Madriani

Summary: While in Paris to find a former NASA employee whose name has been found on papers left in his nemesis's apartment, Paul Madriani stumbles upon a plot to harness the destructive forces of nature using stolen technology that foreign powers will stop at nothing to get their hands on.

First book: Compelling Evidence

* * * * *

Guilt by Association by Marcia Clarke

Summary: Los Angeles D.A. Rachel Knight is grief-stricken over the murder of her colleague, Jake, as she takes over his toughest case, and finds her reputation--and her life--at stake as she digs deeper into Jake's death.

Author Marcia Clark was the lead prosecutor in the O.J. Simpson trial.
Starred Reviews by Booklist, Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus

* * * * *

Save Me by Lisa Scottoline

Non-series

Summary: Volunteering at her daughter's school so that she can keep an eye on a bully, Susan faces a difficult choice when her daughter is tormented at the same time an explosion occurs in the cafeteria, a situation that causes Susan to be blamed for the bully's injuries.

*
Scottoline is also well-known for the series with
Rosato & Associates, an all-women law firm in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (first book: Everywhere That Mary Went)

* * * * *

Heaven is High by Kate Wilhelm

Book # 12 with Barbara Holloway, a defense attorney who works out of her home and a local restaurant in Oregon

Summary: Handling low-key cases after leaving her father's powerful legal firm, attorney Barbara Holloway is approached by a desperate pro football player and his mute illegal immigrant wife, the latter of whom is facing deportation and a death sentence.

First book: Death Qualified

posted by Sharon

C.J. Box: Nowhere to Run (2010) ****

Book # 10 with Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett.

Action/adventure type, more thriller than mystery.

MBTB review: In a remote area, Joe runs across twin brothers who look like they’ve been living illegally out in the park for a long time. After Joe asks a few questions, the brothers try to kill him, although he escapes and drags himself over the mountain to safety. When the police investigate the attack, they find no sign of the brothers. But there's more – a private investigator is on the hunt for the missing daughter of a wealthy developer, and a private mercenary team is also on the hunt for the brothers.
It all comes together in another breakneck-paced adventure. The plots in this series are wonderful, but it's the characters that keep me eagerly anticipating the next book.

First book: Open Season (2001)

This is a mini-review from Mystery Memo # 108

* * * * *

Here's what Booklist had to say:
/*Starred Review*/ Joe Pickett, exiled to the “warden’s graveyard” in a remote district of southern Wyoming, has one week left before regaining his old job in Twelve Sleep County, where his family still lives. On a final horseback patrol, however, a routine citation for unlicensed fishing turns into a deadly confrontation with twin brothers Caleb and Camish Grim, whose anger at the government is downright murderous. The first hundred pages are as good as anything Box has written, highlighting both the dangerous beauty of the West and the risks of a job where a lone civil servant interacts with a well-armed populace. As events escalate and a complex conspiracy comes to light, momentum is maintained by the dogged determination of Pickett, who could have walked away, and probably should have, but didn’t. At issue, ultimately, is the rule of government versus the rights of the people, and by the time Pickett goes back up the mountain for a final showdown with the Grim brothers, he sees the confrontation, as we do, in a whole new light—but that won’t, of course, stop him from doing his duty. (Series fans will appreciate the way circumstances test the tenacious loyalty of the lawman’s outlaw friend, Nate Romanowski.) As Box has become more prolific, his gold standard has become alloyed, but Nowhere to Run, the tenth in the series, ranks with his best books, such as Open Season (2001) and Out of Range (2005). Readers should take note of their surroundings before opening this book: once they start reading, they won’t know what hit them.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Sick Like That
by Norman Green

Private investigator

Book # 2 with Alessandra Martillo, working as an assistant to Marty Stiles, an ex-NYPD cop turned PI

First book: The Last Gig

series description from Stop, You're Killing Me!

The Mystery Memo is a log of all of my mystery reading, with brief comments and a star rating for each book read. It is published every 4 to 6 weeks. Some of these books have longer reviews or mini-reviews on this blog. In that case, a link will be supplied.

Click here for a printable text-only copy of Mystery Memo # 107 (in Microsoft Word).

* * *
Denise Mina: Still Midnight (2010) ****
British police procedural
Book # 1 with DI Alexandra (Alex) Morrow in Glasgow

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of Still Midnight

* * *

Karin Slaughter: Indelible (2004) *** ½
American police procedural/forensics
Book # 4 with Sara Linton, pediatrician and coroner, and her ex-husband Jeffrey, now police chief of small town Georgia.
- This book takes place in two time frames.
Back 15 years ago, when Sara started dating Jeffrey, they visit his hometown and end up looking into the death of a woman whose skeleton was recently found. It looks like she died back when Jeffrey and his friends were still in high school.
In the present day, there is a deadly hostage/murder situation at Jeffrey’s police station. The two hostage takers are looking for Jeffrey, and Sara, one of the hostages, leads them to believe they have already killed him. Gradually we find out who these young men are and what led up to the situation.

First book: Blindsighted (2001)

* * *

Dan Waddell: The Blood Detective (2007) ****
Partly British police procedural - the main character is a professional genealogist who is a police consultant.
Book # 1 with London DCI Grant Foster, colleague DS Heather Jenkins and family historian Nigel Barnes.

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of The Blood Detective

* * *

Kathryn R. Wall: Sanctuary Hill (2007) *** ½
Private investigator.
Book # 7 with South Carolina accountant Bay Tanner, who runs an investigation agency with her father, an ex-judge.
- Two cases: the body of a newborn baby has been found with a strange charm. Bay tries to identify parents through the charm. Bay’s company is also hired to find a missing woman who turns up dead in the trunk of her car.
I haven’t been reading these in order, but I like the series. Great characters and real life mystery solving.
First book: In For a Penny (2001)

## Related post: MBTB review of Covenant Hall # 9

* * *

Jacqueline Winspear:
The Mapping of Love and Death (2010) ****
Historical, set in London, England in 1932.
Book # 7 with Maisie Dobbs, who runs a private investigation firm in London. Maisie was a Red Cross nurse in Europe in WW1.
Start with the first book if possible:
Maisie Dobbs (2003)

## Related posts:
MBTB mini-review of The Mapping of Love and Death # 7
MBTB full review of Maisie Dobbs # 1

posted by Sharon

* * * * *
Mystery Memo # 107 part one

Mystery Memo # 107 part two

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Prey on Patmos
by Jeffrey Siger

Greece police procedural

Book # 3 with Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis of Greece's Special Crimes Division

First book: Murder on Mykonos

posted by Sharon

Vicki Delany: Among the Departed (2011)

Canadian police procedural

Book # 5 with Constable Molly Smith and Sergent John Winters in fictional Trafalgar, B.C.

MBTB review: When a body in the woods turns out to be that of Brian Nowak, a long-time missing husband and father, the case is re-opened. It had always been speculated that Nowak, who disappeared after leaving his house for cigarettes, had run away from his life. The discovery of his body seems to indicate he never left.

Molly Smith, a young constable who is valued for her insights into her home community and Sergeant John Winter, a former big city cop, put together what really happened that long-ago afternoon.

Delany has a good feel for the personal aspects of the characters. The realistic police work uncovering of Brian’s last days merge nicely with the tumult of Molly’s life.

Among the Departed, in the tradition of the “village mystery”, also reveals the repercussions of the man's disappearance on the family he left behind.

Try this series if you like police procedurals with a strong personal component.

First book: In the Shadow of the Glacier

## Related post: MBTB review of In the Shadow of the Glacier

* * * * *

Here's what the Library Journal had to say:
/* Starred Review */ The successful search for a missing boy in the woods near the British Columbia town of Trafalgar also uncovers a human bone that may belong to a man who disappeared years earlier. It's almost too much to handle as Constable Molly Smith, one of the last people ever to see the missing man, tries to come to terms with her own father's death and deal with her relationship with Adam Tocek of the Royal Canadian Mountain Police.
VERDICT By using western Canada as her setting, Delany gives us a breathtaking vista, in which she places her deceptively minimalist plots. Her exceptional ability to create characters, both realistic and sometimes creepy, makes this another terrific addition to her outstanding body of work.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

First Frost
by Jack Henry

British police procedural

Book # 1 in a prequel series, going back to the early policing years of R. D. Wingfield's misanthropic DS Frost

(Note: especially interesting for fans of R.D. Wingfield's series with DS Frost, starting with Frost at Christmas)

Eyes Wide Open
By Andrew Gross

A Thriller

Jay Erlich's nephew has been found at the bottom of a cliff at Morrow Bay. It's all just a tragic suicide, until secrets from the past begin to rear up again. Did a notorious killer, jailed for many decades, have his hand in this?

Years ago, Jay Erlich's older brother, Charlie, a wayward child of the sixties, set out for California, where he fell under the sway of a charismatic but deeply disturbed cultlike figure. Tragedy ensued and lives were destroyed, but as the decades passed, Charlie married and raised a family and lived a quiet, secluded life under the radar. Yet the demons that nearly destroyed him never completely disappeared.

When Jay heads out west to help his grieving brother, he is pulled back into Charlie's past—and begins to suspect that his nephew's suicide may not have been that at all. With eyes wide open, Jay puts his own life at risk to uncover the truth, a quest that goes beyond the edge of madness and a family haunted by a secret past . . . and into the depths of evil. (Modified Product Description)

Buried Secrets
By Joseph Finder

Private Investigator/Thriller

Nick has returned to his old home town of Boston to set up his own shop. There he’s urgently summoned by an old family friend. Hedge fund titan Marshall Marcus desperately needs Nick’s help. His teenaged daughter, Alexa, has just been kidnapped. Her abduction was clearly a sophisticated professional job, done with extraordinary precision. Alexa, whom Nick has known since she was young, is now buried alive, held prisoner in an underground crypt, a camera trained on her, her suffering streaming live over the internet. She’s been left with a limited supply of food and water and, if her father doesn’t meet the demands of her shadowy kidnappers, she’ll die. And as Nick begins to probe, he discovers that all is not quite right with Marshall Marcus’s business. He’s being investigated by the FBI, he has a lot of shady investors, his fund is in danger and now he has a lot of powerful enemies who may have the motivation to go after Marcus’s daughter. But to find out who’s holding Alexa Marcus hostage, Nick has to find out why. Once he does, he uncovers an astonishing conspiracy that reaches far beyond anything he could have imagined. And if he’s going to find Alexa in time, he will have to flush out and confront some of his deadliest opponents ever. (Product Description)

Gone with a Handsomer Man
By Michael Lee West

Toted as a Laugh-out-Loud Cozy

Take one out-of-work pastry chef . . .

Teeny Templeton believes that her life is finally on track. She’s getting married, she’s baking her own wedding cake, and she’s leaving her troubled past behind. And then? She finds her fiancé playing naked badminton with a couple of gorgeous, skanky chicks.

Add a whole lot of trouble . . .

Needless to say, the wedding is off. Adding insult to injury, her fiancé slaps a restraining order on her. When he’s found dead a few days later, all fingers point to Teeny.

And stir like crazy!

Her only hope is through an old boyfriend-turned-lawyer, the guy who broke her heart a decade ago. But dredging up the past brings more than skeletons out of the closet, and Teeny doesn’t know who she can trust. With evidence mounting and the heat turning up, Teeny must also figure out where to live, how to support herself, how to clear her name, and how to protect her heart. (Product Description)

Posted by Shiela

The Mystery Memo is a log of all of my mystery reading, with brief comments and a star rating for each book read. It is published every 4 to 6 weeks. Some of these books have longer reviews or mini-reviews on this blog. In that case, a link will be supplied.

Click here for a printable text-only copy of Mystery Memo # 107 (in Microsoft Word).

Ed Gorman: Ticket to Ride (2009) ***
Historical.
Book # 8 with lawyer Sam McCain, who works as an investigator for a female judge. Set in Iowa in October 1965.
- Sam is involved in organizing an anti-war rally. When one of the community elders who is vocal against the rally is murdered, the anti-war speaker is arrested. Sam tries to find out who really committed the murder. All the books in this series are song titles.

First book: The Day the Music Died (1999)

* * *

Cynthia Harrod-Eagles: Orchestrated Death (1991) ****
British police procedural.
Book # 1 with Bill Slider, a police inspector at Shepherd’s Bush CID, in London.
- The case: the murder of a young violinist in an empty apartment – police discover she had no friends and a lonely life. The death seems connected to a smuggling scheme. A good read, with an interesting character in Bill.

* * *

Kaye C. Hill: The Fall Girl (2009) *** ½
Book # 2 with Lexy Lomax, newly settled in a small town on the Suffolk coast.
- Lexy is still working as a private detective after accidentally falling into the job in the previous book. She is hired by a teenage girl to find out why a stranger left the girl a house in her will.
You’ll enjoy this more if you read the first book: Dead Woman’s Shoes (2008)

* * *

Stuart MacBride: Halfhead (2009) ****
A stand alone mystery thriller set in Glasgow in the near future. Some libraries are shelving this in the science fiction section.
Non-series.
- To police officer William Hunter, it looks like a notorious female serial killer is back on the streets murdering again. But he can't believe it. One of the many interesting things in this novel is MacBride’s vision of future punishment for severe crimes – convicted criminals are operated on to make their brains useless except for menial labour. Since the operation was performed on this female serial killer, someone else must be doing the murders.
Note: I am giving the usual warning that I give for MacBride mysteries (violence mostly - pretty gruesome). MacBride also writes one of my favourite “tartan noir” British police procedural series with DS Logan MacRae in Aberdeen (first book: Cold Granite)

Archer Mayor: The Price of Malice (2009) ****
American police procedural.
Book # 20 with Joe Gunther, head of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI).

First book: Open Season (1988)

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of The Price of Malice

posted by Sharon

## Related post: Mystery Memo # 107 part one

WHAT I'M READING NOW:

Among the Departed
by Vicki Delany

Book # 5 with Molly Smith, a rookie constable, and Sergeant John Winters, in the mountain town Trafalgar, British Columbia

First book: In the Shadow of the Glacier

series description from Stop, You're Killing Me!

I came across the following article a few days ago:

Mystery Reviews by Jo Ann Vicarel with the theme Family Feuds
in Library Journal, Feb. 1, 2011

Here's the introduction and some highlighted titles. For the full reviews and a bunch more titles, go to the link above. These are new books, in most cases on order for the collection.

"FAMILY FEUDS
Family troubles are no longer the mainstay of the cozy. Eccentric relatives like those of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum can also be found in Nancy Martin's Roxy Abruzzo books (Sticky Fingers) and Maggie Toussaint's Cleopatra Jones series (In for a Penny, On the Nickel). Peter May has his sleuth, Enzo Macleod (Blowback), sorting out his children's relationships and his own personal problems. Then there are the strong women who must copy with their childhood baggage. Chris Knopf really loads the deck against his protagonist, Jackie Swaitkowski, in Bad Bird when her current case leads to the one person she wants to forget. Probably the one with the most to overcome is Jade de Jong in Jassy Mackenzie's Stolen Lives - she is forced to deal with unpleasant truths about her parents." LJ Feb. 1, 2011

Stolen Lives by Jassy Mackenzie
Book # 2 with Jade de Jong, , a private investigator returning home 10 years after her police commissioner father was killed, and police superintendent David Patel, in Johannesburg, South Africa
Description: Jade de Jong gets sucked down into the dark world of human trafficking when she finds a connection between the attempted killings of a wealthy couple and the kidnapping of the son of her lover, police superintendent David Patel. NoveList
First book: Random Violence

* * *

Blowback: The Fifth of the Enzo Files by Peter May
Book # 5 with Enzo Macleod, a Scottish biologist teaching at Cahors in southwest France

Description: In tackling his fifth cold case, which involves the murder of France's top chef and plunges him into the cutthroat world of haute cuisine, Enzo Macleod investigates a series of relationships that strangely parallel his old life, and cause him to reflect on his painful past. NoveList

First book: Extraordinary People

* * *

The Brothers of Baker Street by Michael Robertson

Book # 2 with Reggie and Nigel Heath, solicitors with office space on Baker Street in London, England, who receive letters written to Sherlock Holmes

Description: Hoping to recoup his losses after answering a misdirected letter to Sherlock Holmes, barrister Reggie Heath represents a limousine driver who has been accused of murdering two tourists, a case that is complicated by a letter from a descendant of Professor Moriarty. NoveList

First book: The Baker Street Letters

some series description from Stop, You're Killing Me!

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
(it looks like I'm on a Sherlock Holmes kick)
The Sherlockian
by Graham Moore

Description: Literary researcher and Sherlock Holmes enthusiast Harold White is shocked when a scholar who discovered Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's missing diary is murdered, while in 1890s London, Conan Doyle hunts a serial killer to prove his superiority to his famous character.

The Mystery Memo is a log of all of my mystery reading, with brief comments and a star rating for each book read. It is published every 4 to 6 weeks. Some of these books have longer reviews or mini-reviews on this blog. In that case, a link will be supplied.

Click here for a printable text-only copy of Mystery Memo # 107 (in Microsoft Word). Here is your chance to download the full list.

* * *

Alan Bradley:
The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag (2010) ***
British cozy (of a sort).
Book # 2 with 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, who lives in genteel poverty with her widowed father and three sisters in 1950s England, Read the first book before this one:
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (2009)

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

* * *

Ann Cleeves: Telling Tales (2005) *** ½
British police procedural.
Book # 2 with Vera Stanhope, a detective inspector in East Yorkshire, England. Vera is a middle-aged single woman who drinks a bit. This book is from multiple points-of-view.
- Several members of a small community are still haunted by the murder of a teenaged girl 10 years before. The woman convicted of the crime just committed suicide in prison, days before someone belatedly came forward with an alibi for her. Vera has been assigned to look into the old case. The first 100 or so pages are a bit draggy and I came close to stopping, but once Vera hit the scene, I was glad I stuck with it.
First book: The Crow Trap (1998)

* * *

Beverly Connor: Questionable Remains(1997) *** ½
Forensic science.
Book # 2 with Lindsay Chamberlain, a forensic anthropologist who mainly works in archaeology.
- A family convinces Lindsay to look at the bones of the wife’s brother, supposedly killed while caving, his body discovered a couple years later. The bones reveal that the man was murdered, not killed in an accident. I can see the genesis of Connor’s Diane Fallon character (the series with forensic anthropologist/museum director Diane Fallon starts with One Grave Too Many).

First book: A Rumor of Bones (1996)

* * *

Robert Crais: The First Rule (2010) ****
Private investigator.
Book # 13 with Hollywood private investigators Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. This book is from Joe’s point of view and is more thriller than PI.
First book: The Monkey’s Raincoat (1987)

## Related post: MBTB review of The First Rule

* * *

Judith Cutler: Cold Pursuit (2007) ****
British police procedural.
Book # 2 with long-time senior police detective Fran Harman.
- On the verge of retirement, Fran is asked to help with a few last cases: – a wave of assaults with a sexual component, the stalking of a media personality, and a spate of teens beating up strangers and recording it on their phones. The police work is described in a realistic way and there is enough going on in Fran’s personal life to make her character come alive. I’m trying out all of Cutler’s series – this has become one of my favourites.

First book: Life Sentence (2006)

* * *

Garry Disher: Snapshot (2005) *** ½
Australian police procedural.
Book # 3 with Inspector Hal Challis and Sergeant Ellen Destry, in the urban area south-east of Melbourne, Australia
- The murder of the daughter-in-law of the chief of police looks like a paid hit. And to complicate the investigation, the police chief discourages the investigating officers from digging into the murdered woman’s personal life. Interesting setting. Realistic characters.
Kind of a British police procedural feel. Reminds me of Graham Hurley’s DI Joe Faraday series (e.g. Turnstone).

First two books with Challis and Destry:
The Dragon Man
Kittyhawk Down

## Related post: MBTB mini-review of Blood Moon # 5

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
World's Greatest Sleuth!
by Steve Hockensmith

Book # 5 with Cowboys Otto “Big Red” Amlingmeyer and his brother Gustav “Old Red” in 1890s Montana, who got interested in being detectives after reading a Sherlock Holmes story.
The Holmes on the Range series

Description: Attending the World's Columbian Exposition in 1896 Chicago to compete against famous detectives for the title of "World's Greatest Sleuth," the Amlingmeyers find the contest complicated by a reunion with the elusive Diana Corvus.

First book: Holmes on the Range

For the past few weeks, this blog has been attacked daily by spammers. I'm temporarily disabling the Comment feature of the blog and hopefully they will go away. I'll post another notice when I reactive the Comment feature.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Gone
by Mo Hayder

British police procedural

Book # 5 with Jack Caffery, a troubled police detective now working in the West Country, England.

Description: Investigating a serial carjacker whose actual targets are young children in back seats, Jack Caffery teams up once again with police diver Sergeant Flea Marley, whose life is endangered by a discovery in an abandoned, half-submerged tunnel.

First book: Birdman

Yes, spring has finally sprung (let's keep our fingers crossed) and what better way to celebrate than to announce some new spring and summer mysteries.

Just think, in a few short weeks, you'll be out on the patio, cold ice tea in hand nestled into the swing with one of these nestled into your lap...

Note: These titles were toted as "Mysteries to watch out for" by their publishers.

Never Knowing
By Chevy Stevens

Summary: All her life, Sara Gallagher has wondered about her birth parents. As an adopted child with two sisters who were born naturally to her parents, Sara did not have an ideal home life. The question of why she was given up for adoption has always haunted her. Finally, she is ready to take steps and to find closure. But some questions are better left unanswered. After months of research, Sara locates her birth mother---only to be met with horror and rejection. Then she discovers the devastating truth: Her mother was the only victim ever to escape a killer who has been hunting women every summer for decades. But Sara soon realizes the only thing worse than finding out about her father is him finding out about her. (Product Description taken from Amazon)

***I read Stevens' first book Still Missing (NOT part of a series) and absolutely LOVED it so I'm really looking forward to this one. If it's anything like her first book, I know I'll be in for a real treat!***

Click here to read a MBTB review of Still Missing

The Hypnotist
By Lars Kepler

Summary: Tumba, Sweden. A triple homicide, all the victims from the same family, captivates Detective Inspector Joona Linna, who demands to investigate the grisly murders—against the wishes of the national police. The killer is at large, and it appears that the elder sister of the family escaped the carnage; it seems only a matter of time until she, too, is murdered.

But where can Linna begin? The only surviving witness is an intended victim—the boy whose mother, father, and little sister were killed before his eyes. Whoever committed the crimes intended for this boy to die: he has suffered more than one hundred knife wounds and lapsed into a state of shock. He’s in no condition to be questioned.

Desperate for information, Linna sees one mode of recourse: hypnotism. He enlists Dr. Erik Maria Bark to mesmerize the boy, hoping to discover the killer through his eyes. It’s the sort of work that Bark had sworn he would never do again—ethically dubious and psychically scarring. When he breaks his promise and hypnotizes the victim, a long and terrifying chain of events begins to unfurl. (Product description)

***This is another title that I am personally looking forward to. Sounds creepily delicious!***

Now you See Me
By S. J. Bolton

Summary: One night after interviewing a reluctant witness at a London apartment complex, Lacey Flint, a young detective constable, stumbles onto a woman brutally stabbed just moments before in the building’s darkened parking lot. Within twenty-four hours a reporter receives an anonymous letter that points out alarming similarities between the murder and Jack the Ripper’s first murder—a letter that calls out Lacey by name. If it’s real, and they have a killer bent on re-creating London’s bloody past, history shows they have just five days until the next attempt.

No one believes the connections are anything more than a sadistic killer’s game, not even Lacey, whom the killer seems to be taunting specifically. However, as they investigate the details of the case start reminding her more and more of a part of her past she’d rather keep hidden. And the only way to do that is to catch the killer herself. (Product Description taken from Amazon)

Happy Reading my fellow sleuths!

Posted by Shiela

The Reference and User Services Association have announced the winners of the top genre titles of the year - here is the top title in the 2011 Mystery Reading List:

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
Description: Troubled by past mistakes, Chief Inspector Gamache, in his sixth outing, retreats to snowy and insular Quebec City where he becomes embroiled in intertwining investigations both old and new. Penny expertly delivers a layered story that is haunting, moody, and exquisitely drawn.
First book: Still Life

## Related post: MBTB review of Still Life # 1

* * * * *
Read-Alikes:

A Test of Wills by Charles Todd

Description: Ian Rutledge returns to his career at Scotland Yard after fighting in the war, still suffering from shell shock. His next case, with a war-ravaged ex-soldier as the witness, could spell disaster for him.
.
.
.

Haunted Ground by Erin Hart Book # 1 with Cormac Maguire, an Irish archaeologist, and Nora Gavin, an American pathologist, in Ireland

Description: The Irish landscape holds secrets past and present as archaeologist Cormac O'Callaghan and pathologist Nora Gavin encounter a mystery when a decapitated woman is found in the bogs who may be related to a recent mother/child disappearance.

## Related post: MBTB review of False Mermaid # 3
.
.
In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming Book # 1 with Clare Fergusson, a newly-ordained Episcopal priest, and Russ Van Alystyne, Chief of Police, in Millers Kill, New York

Description: Clare Fergusson, the first female priest of an Episcopal church in Millers Kill, New York, finds herself immersed in murder when a newbown baby is abandoned and a young mother is brutally slain, forcing her to dig deeply into the town's secrets.

## Related posts:
MBTB review of To Darkness and to Death # 4
MBTB review of I Shall Now Want # 6

* * * * *
Short List:

* Faithful Place by Tana French

Description: Detective Frank Mackey finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind twenty-two years ago when the suitcase belonging to his first love, Rosie Daly, shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place.

## Related post: MBTB review of The Likeness by Tana French

* The Taken by Inger Ash Wolfe Book # 2 with Hazel Micallef, a 60-something detective inspector in the small town of Port Dundas, Ontario

Description: Reluctantly accepting help from her ex-husband after major surgery, Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef consults on a case that eerily resembles a recently serialized publication and causes Hazel and her associates to draw links between the murder, the story, and a cold case.

First book: The Calling

* Think of a Number by John Verdon Book # 1 with Dave Gurney, a recently retired 40-something NYPD homicide detective with a reputation for catching serial killers, in rural upstate New York

Description: Recently retired after a prestigious career with the NYPD, homicide detective Dave Gurney is pulled back into service when an old college friend receives threatening letters from a murderous sender who has an uncanny ability to read a person's thoughts.

* Vermilion Drift by William Kent Krueger

Description: Assigned to protect security at a mine where protesters are trying to prevent the storage of nuclear waste, Cork O'Connor discovers the bodies of five long-missing people and a recently murdered sixth victim who was killed with Cork's own gun.

First book: Iron Lake

some series descriptions from Stop, You're Killing Me!

Dan Waddell: The Blood Detective (2007) ****

Partly British police procedural - the main character is a professional genealogist who is a police consultant.

Book # 1 with London DCI Grant Foster, colleague DS Heather Jenkins and family historian Nigel Barnes.

MBTB review: Police ask professional genealogist Nigel Barnes to help in a serial murder case that seems to link to a genealogy index in the city archives. Barnes quickly discovers the murderer is copying a serial murderer in 1879. I liked the genealogy research mixed with the police procedural aspects of the story. The story was fast-paced with an interesting character in Barnes.

Next book: Blood Atonement (2009)

* * * * *

Here's what Booklist had to say:
In a London cemetery, a man's body is found. During the autopsy, the police discover the body has been marked with a string of letters and numbers that appears to be the code for a particular file in the Family Records Centre. To locate the file and unearth its relevance to the murder, police engage the services of Nigel Barnes, a professional genealogist. So begins the first installment of what one hopes will be a series featuring Barnes, a wily and likable amateur sleuth. This is journalist Waddell's first novel, but it reads like it was written by a seasoned pro, sharply plotted and populated by three-dimensional people. The story is intricate, and readers will appreciate the care Waddell takes to incorporate Barnes' profession into the mystery. The genealogist-sleuth is a relatively unmined vein in mystery fiction, and Waddell's hero is a bit edgier than Rett McPherson's Torie O'Shea and Fiona Mountain's Natasha Blake, who appeal primarily to cozy fans. Let's hope Waddell can find many more genealogical excuses for Barnes to assist the police with their inquiries.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Dream Queen
by Betsy Thornton

Investigator

Book # 6 with Chloe Newcomb, a victims advocate in Cochise County, Arizona.
Note: this is a prequel, taking place before the first book in the series: The Cowboy Rides Away

Description: While visiting her brother Danny in Arizona, Chloe Newcombe is distressed when he disappears, and, while searching to find clues to the mystery she is forced to confront uncomfortable truths from her past.

I'm going through a phase right now, enjoying fast-paced, forensic-based mysteries, like the books by Beverly Connor.

Here's how I would look for more books like Beverly Connor's series with Diane Fallon, forensic anthropologist, museum director and reluctant detective
First book: One Grave Too Many
Description: Her new job as director of the RiverTrail Museum of Natural History in Georgia takes Diane Fallon out of the field of forensic anthropology - until a former love and a murdered family bring her back in.

## Related post: MBTB review of Beverly Connor's series with Diane Fallon

* * * * *
It's pretty easy to find more forensic-based mysteries. e.g. the Stop You're Killing Me website has a section (along the left side of the page) called the Job Index. Chose Forensics and you get a nice long list of series characters who work in forensics of all types. Here are some of my favourites, and some I'll be checking out:

Sarah Andrews' series with forensic geologist Em Hansen
First book: Tensleep

Description: Em Hansen, the only woman on an isolated oil rig and an outsider to little Meeteetse, Wyoming, attempts to discover the cause of two suspicious deaths, becoming a primary target for a ruthless killer.
.

Simon Beckett's series with Dr. David Hunter, a forensic anthropologist in England
First book: The Chemistry of Death

Description: Once a high-profile forensic anthropologist, Dr. David Hunter keeps his past a secret while hiding himself in an isolated English village, until he is asked by the police to use his arcane skills to help track down the killer of a young woman, whose murder becomes only the first in a series of twisted mutilation killings.

## Related post: MBTB review of The Chemistry of Death
.

Jeffrey Deaver's series with Lincoln Rhyme, a disabled ex-head of NYPD forensics, and Amelia Sachs, a rookie beat cop in New York City
First book: The Bone Collector

Description: Once the nation's foremost criminologist and the ex-head of NYPD forensics, quadriplegic Lincoln Rhyme abandons his forced retirement and joins forces with rookie cop Amelia Sachs to track down a vicious serial killer.

## Related post: MBTB review of The Broken Window # 8

.

Kathryn Fox's series with Dr. Anya Crichton, a forensic pathologist in Sydney, Australia
First book: Malicious Intent
Description: Pathologist and forensic physician Dr. Anya Crichton joins forces with her friend and colleague, Detective Sergeant Kate Farrer, to uncover the truth about the drug overdose death of a young Lebanese girl, but she soon discovers a strange resemblance between that death and a string of supposedly unrelated suicides.
.

Erin Hart's series with Cormac Maguire, an Irish archaeologist, and Nora Gavin, an American pathologist, in Ireland
First book: Haunted Ground
Description: The Irish landscape holds secrets past and present as archaeologist Cormac O'Callaghan and pathologist Nora Gavin encounter a mystery when a decapitated woman is found in the bogs who may be related to a recent mother/child disappearance.

## Related post: MBTB review of False Mermaid # 3

* * * * *
But what I am also looking for is a style of writing (fast-paced, lots of action), so I decided to see what NoveList and the Complete Connection could find for me. These are two databases available on the RPL webpage. See the bottom of this post for instructions on how to access them.

Using NoveList*:

Sometimes, the NoveList page for the book you are looking up has a list of Book Appeal Terms. For example
Genre: Suspense stories
Pace: Fast-paced
Tone: Disturbing; Violent
Writing Style: Compelling

But there isn't as much detail for Beverly Connor's Diane Fallon series on NoveList, so I pulled the words "forensic anthropologist thriller" from the book description and entered them in the main NoveList search box.
One of the books that turned up in the first page of hits was:

Other Eyes by Barbara D'Amato
Description: Investigating the use of hallucinogens in ancient religions, famous forensic archaeologist Blue Eriksen pursues a theory that a specific natural compound can cure drug addictions and has a price put on her head by a powerful international drug cartel.
.
.
.

Using the Complete Connection *:
The Complete Connection database actually has a Find Similar button beside every title you look up. One of the similar choices it gave me for the Beverly Connor Diane Fallon series was

One Last Breath by Laura Griffin
Description: In her sizzling and suspenseful debut, Griffin tells the story of a female journalist who begins investigating the shady dealings of her wealthy ex-husband, only to find herself in the dangerous path of a former cop out for revenge.

* * * * *

Another place to check, if you want to do your own search for authors similar to those you enjoy:
- some mystery authors are included in the "If You Liked" list in the Reader's Cafe (Book and Author Lists section)

* How to access NoveList and the Complete Connection.
On the main Regina Public Library webpage, select E-Library Services. Scroll down and choose Books and Literature. From the resulting list, choose either the Complete Connection or NoveList. You will need a valid Regina Public Library card and a PIN. Note: to enter the databases, you need to enter your library card and your last name.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
The Devil's Bones
by Jefferson Bass

Forensics

Book # 3 with Dr. Bill Brockton, a forensic anthropologist in Tennessee, in the Body Farm series

Description: Investigating a suspicious death in which the victim's remains were found in a burned car, forensic anthropologist Dr. Bill Brockton engages in an unorthodox experiment to better understand the case.

First book: Carved in Bone

Archer Mayor: The Price of Malice (2009) ****

American police procedural.

Book # 20 with Joe Gunther, head of the Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI).

Joe’s new love interest Lyn is trying to find out what really happened to her father and brother. Joe found their boat in the hands of a known drug smuggler, years after the family thought the boat and the men were lost at sea. His VBI team also is working on the mysterious murder of a known pedophile. Nicely complex.

First book: Open Season (1988)

This is a mini-review from Mystery Memo # 107

* * * * *

Here's what the Booklist review had to say:
The brutal murder of a suspected child predator in Brattleboro has Joe Gunther, the Vermont Bureau of Investigation’s top cop, and his team of detectives hopping, even though people who knew the victim think the town is better off without him. At the same time, Joe’s lady, Lyn Silva, is wrestling with the fact that her father and brother, Gloucester, Massachusetts, fishermen, may not have been lost to a storm at sea; they may have been involved in smuggling prescription drugs from Canada, and they may have been murdered (The Catch, 2008). Lyn dashes off to Maine and rattles the cages of some very dangerous men, and Joe finds himself torn between professional duty and Lyn’s safety. Joe’s longtime subordinates, detectives Sammie Martens and the abrasive Willy Kunkle, soldier on, but Joe’s absence takes a toll on them. As always, Mayor delivers rich characters, solid police procedural details, and a rich sense of place. A solid addition to a fine series.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Above Suspicion
by Lynda La Plante

British police procedural

Book # 1 with Anna Travis, a rookie homicide detective, in London, England

Description: Young detective Anna Travis has been assigned to her first murder case--and it couldn't be a more shocking, more horrific set of killings. Anna stumbles on a vital piece of information that links one man to the killings. A household name, a much-loved actor who is about to become an international movie star.

Roman Blood
By Steven Saylor

***This is the first book in Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa series.***

In the unseasonable heat of a spring morning in 80 B.C., Gordianus the Finder is summoned to the house of Cicero, a young advocate staking his reputation on a case involving the savage murder of the wealthy, sybaritic Sextus Roscius. Charged with the murder is Sextus's son, greed being the apparent motive. The punishment, rooted deep in Roman tradition, is horrific beyond imagining.

The case becomes a political nightmare when Gordianus's investigation takes him through the city's raucous, pungent streets and deep into rural Umbria. Now, one man's fate may threaten the very leaders of Rome itself. (Product Description)

The book started off with promise and there were certainly large portions that were greatly intriguing and entertaining, but after about halfway through, Saylor lost his steam and the story fell apart for me. There could have easily been at least 50-100 pages shaved off the end third of the novel (Sulla's history) which was completely unnecessary, irrelevant to the plot and quite frankly, a bore and waste of time to read. And then the "twist" at the end was resolved so fast that it left me very unsatisfied.

On the other hand, I did enjoy the portrait Saylor depicted of ancient Rome and there were many parts to the story that were fascinating. I was able to glean bits and pieces of Roman politics and justice which is always interesting. I think I will try another couple of books in the series and see how I like them before giving up entirely.

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Room
By Emma Donoghue

Description: Jack is five and excited about is birthday. He lives with his Ma in Room, which has a locked door and a skylight, and measures eleven feet by eleven feet. He loves watching TV, and the cartoon characters he calls friends, but he know that nothing he sees on screen is truly real--only him, Ma and the things in Room. Until the day Ma admits that there's a world outside... Told in Jack's voice, Room is the story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible. Unsentimental and sometimes funny, devastating yet uplifting, Room is a novel like not other. (Book Description)

Posted by Shiela

Check out the March New Book Releases: Mysteries.

Here's what I'll be tracking down:

Though Not Dead by Dana Stabenow

Book # 18 with Kate Shugak, a native Alaskan ex-DA investigator, who lives on a 160-acre homestead in a generic national Park in Alaska with her half-wolf, half-husky dog named Mutt

Description: Inheriting a homestead from her late uncle, a stunned Kate Shugak receives a cryptic letter from him imploring her to discover his father's fate, a mystery involving a priceless tribal artifact for which Kate is targeted by murderous attacks. NoveList

First book: A Cold Day for Murder

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Let the Dead Lie
by Malla Nunn

South Africa police procedural / Independent investigator

Book # 2 with Emmanuel Cooper, a detective sergeant in 1950s South Africa

Description: A stunning novel about murder, power, and a dangerous South African underworld. Cooper works undercover surveillance on the seedy Durban docks, but when a young boy is brutally murdered he must elude the police to conduct his own investigation. He discovers an international tussle for the political soul of South Africa. NoveList

First book: A Beautiful Place to Die

## MBTB review of A Beautiful Place to Die

Denise Mina: Still Midnight (2010) ****

British police procedural

Book # 1 with DI Alexandra (Alex) Morrow in Glasgow

The case: a botched home invasion ends up with a teenage girl being shot and her elderly father kidnapped. We see the case from the point-of-view of the inept criminals as well as from Alex’s, who has been shunted to the side of the investigation until it looks like it’s almost too late.

This is a mini-review from Mystery Memo # 107

* * * * *

Here's what the Library Journal review had to say:

When two Glasgow club bouncers set out to abduct a young man in order to make a quick buck, things go very wrong. The inexperienced criminals barge into the house of a Ugandan Muslim family, the Anwars. They accidentally shoot the beautiful teenage daughter in the hand and abduct her aging father, the owner of a small Glasgow grocery store. If DS Alex Morrow can figure out why the bungling thugs targeted this family, she may be able to save the old man's life. Meanwhile, she must find a way to get along with her new partner, the arrogant, credit-stealing DS Grant Bannerman while picking up the pieces of her marriage following the death of her young son.
VERDICT Mina (Slip of the Knife) is adept at capturing the rhythms of life in Glasgow among the down-and-out. She vividly portrays the squalor of the underworld while depicting even her bad guys in all of their human complexity, which gives her novels a rare grace. Recommended to fans of Ian Rankin and anyone who enjoys a good police procedural.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
From the Dead
by Mark Billingham

British police procedural

Book # 9 with DI Tom Thorne, London, England

Description: When Donna Langford receives a very recent photo of her ex-husband in the post, she gets the shock of her life. Because she's just spent ten years in prison for organising his murder. When her daughter goes missing, Donna believes there can only be one man responsible and hires Anna Carpenter, a determined young private investigator, to find him. DI Tom Thorne worked on the Alan Langford case, so when Carpenter brings the photo to him, he refuses to believe that the man whose body was found in a burned-out car ten years before can still be alive....Fantastic Fiction

First book: Sleepyhead

In honour of International Women's Day tomorrow March 8, here are some ideas for finding mysteries by and about women:

* One of my favourite mystery categories is the private investigator. Use the online catalogue keyword (women private investigators) or subject search:
For example,
Click here to see the results using the subject Women private investigators

Poking through this list, I came across the following book when I clicked on Women private investigators - British Columbia - Fiction:

Ragged Chain : a mystery by Vivian Meyer

Summary: When fledgling private investigator Abby Faria heads to Peregrine Island in BC's magnificent Desolation Sound for a well-deserved vacation break, she finds herself in the midst of another investigation when logging company magnate Jack Armstrong is found murdered. Abby's nosing around in the eco-politics of the island soon brings her into the midst of a whole cast of curious locals with both motive and opportunity to murder the unpopular Armstrong. Abby's penchant for mixing it up with questionable characters and ignoring legal niceties in the process soon gets her into more trouble than she bargained for . . .

First book: The Bottom Bracket

** More Female Private Investigators:
MBTB review of Hardball by Sara Paretsky (includes my list of favourite fictional female private investigators)

The Murder by the Book themed reading list Female Private Investigators, prepared in 2005. Click here for the link

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Fever Dream
by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Thriller

Book # 10 with Aloysius Pendergast, an FBI special agent

Description: Special Agent Pendergast faces his most personal case yet--the murder of his wife, Helen. NoveList

First book: Relic

Ian Hamilton: The Water Rat of Wanchai (2011) *** ½

Book # 1 with Ava Lee, a young Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant who specializes in recovering massive debts.
Ava is based in Toronto, but this investigation takes her to many world-wide locations, including Bangkok and Guyana.

MBTB review: Forensic accountant Ava Lee is on the trail of two partners in a seafood company that appear to have deliberately defrauded a young Hong Kong businessman. She travels the world to track down the two men – one in Bangkok and the more influential man in Guyana.

Author Ian Hamilton includes detailed descriptions of the places Ava travels to. There is enough information on Guyana to know I don’t want to visit there any time soon. The story has a good flow and Hamilton manages to make the financial aspects of Ava's job understandable even to me.

The first half is a little slow, but I'll put it down to character building. I like to travel, so the description of what Ava packed, and the various airports and hotels and restaurants she went to were interesting to me – literally setting the scene. Once Ava arrived in Guyana, I was pulled into the story. I enjoyed the action as Ava used both her brain and her martial arts skills to get out of several dangerous situations and yet not give up on her main goal - getting the money back for her client.

I'll be watching for the second book: The Disciple of Las Vegas, coming soon.

* * * * *

Here's what other reviewers had to say:
National Post review by Kevin Chong:
. . . . the second half of the book ramps up both the pacing and the kung-fu fighting. A couple of vicious altercations, a kidnapping and a corrupt Guyanese police chief give the story the spring it lacks early on. All of this bodes well for the next instalment of Ava Lee’s accounting adventures, due out this summer.
To read Kevin Chong's full review for the National Post, click here.

Globe & Mail review by Margaret Cannon:
. . . The Water Rat of Wanchai is the first book in what Anansi intends as a new mystery imprint called Spiderline. If the other novels are half as good as this debut by Ian Hamilton, then readers are going to celebrate. Hamilton, a nationally known journalist and non-fiction author, has created a marvellous character in Ava Lee, a Toronto forensic accountant.
To read Margaret Cannon's full review for the Globe & Mail, click here and go to the second review in the list.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Borrowed Light
by Graham Hurley

British police procedural

Book # 11 in the series with DI Joe Faraday and former police officer Paul Winter in Portsmouth, England

Description: . . . DI Joe Faraday, badly injured on holiday in the Middle East, is convalescing in the UK. Four deaths in a suspicious farmhouse fire drag him back to work before he's truly fit. His partner, meanwhile, wants to adopt a young Palestinian child who has been badly burned in the hellhole of Gaza. Both privately and professionally, Faraday is under threat.
Ex-cop Paul Winter is still Bazza Mackenzie's trusted lieutenant. But his growing doubts about his new life alongside Pompey's top criminal deepen further when Bazza orders him to retrieve some missing cocaine . . . whatever the cost. (from book jacket)

First book: Turnstone (2000)

## Related post: MBTB review of No Lovelier Death # 9
includes full series list

BoneMan’s Daughters
By Ted Dekker

A Texas serial killer called BoneMan is on the loose, choosing young girls as his prey, His signature: myriad broken bones that torture and kill - but never puncture. Military intelligence officer Ryan Evans is married to his work; so much so that his wife and daughter have written him out of their lives. Sent to Fallujah and captured by insurgents, he is asked to kill children not unlike his own. The method: a meticulous, excruciating death by broken bones that his captor has forced him to learn. Returning home after the ordeal, a new crisis awaits. A serial killer is on the loose, and his method of killing is the same. Ryan becomes a prime suspect, which isn't even the worst of his problems: Ryan's daughter is BoneMan's latest desire. (Product Description)

MBTB review: Very original, though highly unlikely serial killer/ thriller novel. There were aspects of this book that intrigued me, but my overall impression is still a little bit reserved. For a decorated and highly trained military officer, Evans’ actions were quite elementary and emotional. The issues with his family were not developed which made some of the characters hard to empathize with. But the aspect that bothered me the most was that the mind, history and motivations of the perpetrator was very underdeveloped which left the reader wondering what really happened in the killer’s past that made him to the things he did. Sure, there were subtle hints at his childhood but not enough to buy into the monster he eventually became.

That being said, I must admit the plot was very unpredictable and there was never a dull moment. Dekker attempted to send a political message with part of his novel which I thought was an interesting way to look at the cost of war and collateral damage (but this storyline abruptly ended as well). Despite its many shortcomings, it was an entertaining and suspenseful read. This was my first go at Ted Dekker and I think I will try more of his works.

Note: not for the faint of heart.

Posted by Shiela

I came across this blog post
Murder at the Academy Awards 2011 at
Mystery Fanfare (news, events, books, thoughts from Janet Rudolf)

The post features a list of mysteries that take place during the Academy Awards or the time period surrounding the Oscars.

For example:
Murder at the Academy Awards: a red carpet murder mystery
by Joan Rivers with Jerilyn Farmer

Description: While hosting Oscar night on the red carpet, Hollywood personality Maxine Taylor witnesses an actress's suspicious drug-overdose death, which she investigates as part of a plot to separate her daughter from an unworthy boyfriend. NoveList

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Broken
by Karen Slaughter

American police procedural/coroner

This book includes characters from both series written by Karin Slaughter:
the Atlanta series
with Will Trent, an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, usually based in Atlanta, Georgia
and the Grant County series with Dr. Sara Linton, a pediatrician and coroner

Description: When Special Agent Will Trent arrives in Grant County, Georgia, he finds a police department determined to protect its own and far too many unanswered questions about a prisoner's death and about a policewoman's role in the death of Grant County's popular police chief. Slaughter brings her Grant County and Atlanta characters together for a second time (after Undone), in this thriller. NoveList

I love historical mysteries.

Here's a quick way to find some of the latest historical mysteries in the library collection (Saskatchewan Information and Library Services Consortium or SILS):
In the Classic Catalogue mode of the SILS, type in key words "mystery fiction historical" (without the quotation marks). Sort by date. Your results will look something like this list.

Note: this search won't find all the new historical mysteries for some reason, but you get a nice sample to poke around it. I have made some nice discoveries this way.
_____

Drood by Dan Simmons

Description: On June 9, 1865, Charles Dickens is returning to London with his mistress when their train goes off the tracks. Haunted by images of the dead and dying from the accident, Dickens becomes obsessed with the macabre and spends the last five years of his life wandering the slums and catacombs of London, staging gruesome readings, and writing what would be his final work, The mystery of Edwin Drood.

_____

Caveat emptor : a novel of the Roman Empire by Ruth Downie

Book # 4 in the series with Gaius Petreius Ruso, a Roman army physician in second century Roman Britain, in the Roman Empire series

Description: newlywed physician Gaius Petreius Ruso has moved back to Roman-occupied Britannia, where he investigates the disappearance of a tax man and a considerable sum of money amid sinister warnings and a treacherous conspiracy. NoveList

First book: Medicus

## Related posts:
MBTB review of Medicus # 1

MBTB review of Terra Incognita # 2

MBTB review of Persona Non Grata # 3

_____

The Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld

Description: A tale inspired by the September 1920 bombing in New York's financial district finds a Harvard-trained physician and a New York Police Department captain teaming up after witnessing the explosion and encountering a beautiful French scientist with a troubled brother. NoveList
.
_____

A Lonely Death by Charles Todd

Book # 13 with Ian Rutledge, a shell-shocked World War I veteran returning to his job at Scotland Yard, in London, England

Description: Intrepid Scotland Yard detective Ian Rutledge investigates the Sussex village murders of three former soldiers, a case that puts Rutledge's career and life on the line. NoveList

First book: A Test of Wills
.

_____

The Scorpion's Bite : a Lily Sampson mystery by Aileen G. Baron

Book # 3 with Lily Sampson, a young American graduate student archeologist, in late 1930s and early 1940s Jerusalem and Morocco

Description: When archeologists Lily Sampson and Gideon Weil are sent to Trans-Jordan by the OSS in 1943, the pair find their mission to foil a Nazi plot to kill eight-year-old King Faisal of Iraq in jeopardy when their Bedouin guide is murdered and Gideon is suspected of the crime. NoveList

First book: A Fly has a Hundred Eyes
.
_____

A Good Knife's Work by Sheila York

Book # 2 with 1940s radio writer Lauren Atwill

Publisher's Weekly review: Set in New York City in 1946, York's snappy second Lauren Atwill puzzler will appeal to readers nostalgic for the golden age of radio. Lauren, a Hollywood screenwriter, and PI Peter Winslow, her gorgeous bodyguard and lover, flee California for New York, where they become involved in investigating the murder of Hazel Keane, the producer of Adam Drake, for Hire, a popular radio mystery series. . . . Filled with fascinating details about old-time radio production, this crime caper is as much fun as a good game of Clue.

First book: Star Struck Dead
.

_____

A Curtain Falls by Stefanie Pintoff

Book # 2 with Simon Ziele, a former New York City police detective starting in 1905 Dobson, Westchester County, New York

Description: Pursuing separate careers after a tragic ferry disaster New York, Detective Simon Ziele and Captain Declan Mulvaney are brought together again by a case involving the murders of three Broadway actresses. NoveList

First book: In the Shadow of Gotham
.

* * * * *

I have also used this method to find new mysteries set in particular countries (e.g. key words "mystery fiction spain"). Unfortunately, this method doesn't particularly work for Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.

posted by Sharon

series descriptions from Stop, You're Killing Me!

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
The Water Rat of Wanchai
by Ian Hamilton

Investigator

Book # 1 with Ava Lee, a young Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant who specializes in recovering massive debts.
Ava is based in Toronto, but this investigation takes her to many world-wide locations, including Bangkok and Guyana.

Description: Ava Lee is a young Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant who specializes in recovering massive debts. At 5'3" and 115 lbs., she hardly seems a threat. But her razor-sharp intelligence and unorthodox rules of engagement allow her to succeed where traditional methods have failed. But in Guyana she meets her match: Captain Robbins, a huge hulk of a man and godfather-like figure who controls the police, politicians, and criminals alike. In exchange for his help, he decides he wants a piece of Ava's $5 million action and will do whatever it takes to get his fair share . . . . (Publisher's website www.anansi.ca)

C.J. Sansom: Heartstone (2010) *****

Historical, set in 1545 England

Book # 5 with hardworking lawyer Matthew Shardlake

Description: Asked by an old servant of Queen Catherine Parr to investigate claims of wrongs committed against a young ward of the court, Matthew Shardlake embarks on the most politically dangerous case of his career against a backdrop of war between England and France. NoveList

MBTB review: I've liked every book in this series. Sansom has the knack of making the era come alive and makes even the most complex issues seem understandable - in this case, the wardship of orphans, and the war against France coming to a head in a naval battle near Portsmouth. This is where Matthew has traveled to settle a suspicious wardship issue - he isn't in the household long before there is a murder.
I also like the character of Matthew, who is coming to terms with his unmarried state, but is at heart a romantic.

The rest of the series:
Dissolution (2003)

Dark Fire (2004)

Sovereign (2006)

Revelation (2008)

## Related post: MBTB review of Sovereign # 3

* * * * *
Here's what the Booklist review had to say:
/* Starred Review */ In 1545, times are perilous for London counsel Matthew Shardlake and for his country. While the English, heavily taxed and with their coinage debased by Henry VIII, prepare for a naval attack from the French at Portsmouth, Shardlake takes on a case at the request of Catherine Parr on behalf of her former servant, whose son committed suicide after discovering “monstrous wrongs” against a teenage ward he once tutored. As the 43-year-old, hunchbacked Shardlake seeks to uncover secrets in the ward’s household, he also investigates the past of a presumably sane woman kept for years in Bedlam. Even with the queen’s patronage, the dogged Shardlake is threatened bodily while pursuing answers to both cases, which ultimately pit him against his old court nemesis, Sir Richard Rich. The heft of this fifth in the Shardlake series may be intimidating, but Sansom’s supple and action-packed prose should keep readers engaged. The novel vividly captures the Tudor scene, from its corrupt politics to the stench of its streets and the horror of battle. Historical mystery at its finest.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Dangerous to Know
by Tasha Alexander

Historical - this book is set in 1892 France

Book # 5 with amateur investigator Lady Emily Hargreaves, newly married to second husband, Colin.

Description: Recovering at her mother-in-law's estate in Normandy after a brush with death, Lady Emily Hargreaves discovers a murder victim whose death looks like the act of Jack the Ripper, a killing that compels her to follow clues to the medieval city of Rouen in search of a lost child. NoveList

First book: And Only to Deceive

Alan Bradley:
The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag (2010) ***

British cozy (of a sort).

Book # 2 with 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, who lives in genteel poverty with her widowed father and three sisters in 1950s England, in the small village of Bishop’s Lacey.

Flavia is a self-taught genius in chemistry with a specialty in poisons. When a traveling puppet show is stranded in town, Flavia is one of the first people to meet the puppeteers. She gets to know them both: the young female assistant who is pregnant, and the famous puppeteer, who has been on television. When the famous puppeteer is murdered during a performance (over 100 pages into the book!), Flavia pokes around “helping” the police. The appeal of this book is the voice of Flavia. It reminds me of the serial English mysteries with children protagonists I read as a child (e.g. Blyton’s Famous Five series), although this definitely is not a children’s book. This is a perfectly fine read, but read the first book before this one: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (2009)

This is a mini-review from Mystery Memo # 107
* * * * *

Here's what the Booklist review had to say:
Flavia, the precocious, imaginative, and adorable 11-year-old sleuth, returns for her second adventure. It’s a mystery in itself how a mature male author can pen the adventures of such a young female child and keep readers believing in the fantasy. Flavia’s world is 1950s England—specifically, a very old country house that just happens to have a long-abandoned chemistry laboratory. And Flavia just happens to be fascinated by chemistry—particularly poisons. This helps her solve mysteries because, as Flavia says, “There’s something about pottering with poisons that clarifies the mind.” This time she becomes involved with the members of a traveling puppet show that features the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk. When the puppetmaster is mysteriously electrocuted during the show, Flavia knows it can’t be an accident and eventually finds the murderer. The rest of Flavia’s family are also eccentric, to say the least, and add greatly to the overall fun. Thank goodness Bradley is not allowing Flavia to grow up too quickly; we need more sleuths whose primary mode of transportation is a bicycle.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Bones of Contention: a Dinah Pelerin mystery
by Jeanne Matthews

Book # 1 with Dinah Perlerin, a wannabe anthropologist with a passion for mythology (book cover)

Description: Dinah joins her extended family in a lodge in Queensland, Australia to witness her wealthy American uncle's rewrite of his will before his assisted suicide and is met with two murders and the discovery that everything she believed true about her family is false. NoveList

Welcome to part two of Sharon's Top Mystery Reads of 2010.
In this part of the list, all books were published before 2010.

To download Sharon's Top Mystery Reads of 2010, parts one and two as a Word document, click here.

.

Beverly Connor: Dead Secret (2005)

Forensic science.

Book # 3 with Diane Fallon, forensic anthropologist, museum director and reluctant detective

The case: a long-dead body of a man in a remote cave. This series has become a Guilty Pleasure of mine (see the Murder by the Book blog categories on the left)

First two books:
One Grave Too Many (2003)
Dead Guilty (2004)

## Related post: MBTB review of Beverly Connor's Diane Fallon series

* * * * *

Judith Cutler: Life Sentence (2005)

British police procedural.

Book # 1 with police officer Fran Harman, in her 50s and thinking about retirement. She spends every weekend 200 miles from home caring for her elderly parents.

Fran takes over a cold case: an unidentified woman in a coma and finds out more than the original team did. She also helps with a child abduction case.

* * * * *

Judith Cutler: Shadow of the Past (2008)

Historical, set in 1811 rural England.

Book # 2 with Tobias Campion, a new parson in a Warwickshire village.

A recent widow is installed in Moreton Hall, helpful to the villagers and a friend to Tobias. When unwanted relatives of her deceased husband move in with her, with their eyes on inheriting the estate, she asks Tobias for help finding her long-missing son. Perfect for a rainy afternoon.

First book: Keeper of Secrets (2007)

* * * * *

Garry Disher: Blood Moon (2009)

Australian police procedural

Book # 5 with Inspector Hal Challis and Sergeant Ellen Destry in an urban area near Melbourne

The serious beating of a school chaplain has police puzzled. A British police procedural feel.

First book: Dragon Man (1999)

* * * * *

Sue Grafton: U is for Undertow (2009)

Private investigator

Book # 21 with private investigator Kinsey Milhone, set in fictional Santa Teresa, California, set in 1988

Description: Hired by a preppy college dropout to discern the fate of a four-year-old girl who disappeared more than twenty years earlier, Kinsey Millhone investigates the young man's sketchy memories about a burial scene he believes he discovered at the age of six. NoveList
I like the immediacy of Grafton's writing, and the old-fashioned sleuthing.

First book: A is for Alibi (1982)

## Related posts:
MBTB review of U is for Undertow # 21

MBTB review of T is for Trespass # 20

* * * * *

C.S. Harris: What Remains of Heaven (2009)

Historical, set in 1812 England

Book # 5 with Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, recently back from the Napoleonic Wars in France

Two recent corpses are discovered in an ancient crypt. Author C.S. Harris handles the mystery well and I enjoy the tangled muddle of the characters’ personal lives.
First book: What Angels Fear (2005)

## Related post: MBTB review of What Angels Fear # 1

* * * * *

Craig Johnson: Dark Horse (2009)

American police procedural

Book # 5 with Sheriff Walt Longmire in the Bighorn mountains in Wyoming

Even after a woman confesses to shooting her husband, Walt doesn’t believe she’s guilty. To find out the truth, he goes undercover in the small ranching community where the couple lived.

First book: The Cold Dish (2004)

## Related post: MBTB review of Dark Horse

* * * * *

William Kent Krueger: Heaven’s Keep (2009)

Private investigator

Book # 9 with Cork O’Connor, part Ojibwe ex-sheriff in Aurora, Minnesota

The small plane O'Connor's wife was on disappeared in the Wyoming mountains during a snow storm. The first half of the book is the search. Cork goes to Wyoming to see the search area for himself and comes to the sad acceptance that his wife and the other passengers and pilot must be dead. The second half of the book opens with some startling information: all wasn't as it seemed about that fateful flight. This is where the mystery starts, as Cork actively investigates the backgrounds of the other passengers and pilot.

First book: Iron Lake (1998)

## Related post: MBTB review of Heaven's Keep

* * * * *


Val McDermid: Fever of the Bone (2009)

British police procedural/criminal profiler

Book # 6 with Dr. Tony Hill, a forensic psychologist and criminal profiler, and Carol Jordan, a Detective Chief Inspector, based in fictional Bradfield, in northern England

Carol's new police supervisor wants her to start using a cheaper police criminal profiler, so Tony is free to be hired by a nearby town's police force to look into the murder of a teenage girl. He is unaware that Carol’s team is working on two similar murders with boys as victims back in his hometown.

First book: The Mermaids Singing (1995)

## Related post: MBTB review of Val McDermid's A Darker Domain (a stand-alone police procedural)

* * * * *

Michael Robotham: The Night Ferry (2007)

British police procedural

This is the third in a series that is loosely connected by characters who know each other in and around London, England.
This book features Alisha Barba, a police officer recovering from a serious injury.

At her high school reunion, Alisha briefly connects with one of her friends just minutes before the friend and her husband are run down and killed in what looks like an accident. As Alisha looks into the accident, she realizes something is seriously wrong.

Robotham’s previous mysteries in this series: The Suspect (2004) and Lost (2005).

## Related post: MBTB review of Shatter # 4

* * * * *

S.J. Rozan: Shanghai Moon (2009)

Private investigator.

Book # 9 with investigators Lydia Chin and Bill Smith, New York City.

Description: Estranged for months from fellow P.I. Smith, Chinese-American private investigator Chin is brought in by former mentor Joel Pilarsky to help with a case that involves tracking down a valuable brooch, the Shanghai Moon, which disappeared during WWII. NoveList

First book: China Trade (1994)

* * * * *

Karin Slaughter: Beyond Reach (2007)

part forensic, part police procedural

Book # 6 with Sara Linton, pediatrition and coroner, and her husband Jeffrey, the police chief of a small town in Georgia. The Grant County series

Description: When the charred body of a woman is found, and Detective Lena Adams is charged with homicide, Grant County's medical examiner/pediatrician Sara Linton joins forces with her husband, police chief Jeffrey Tolliver, to uncover the truth about a case that is poisoning a small town with hatred. NoveList

First book: Blindsighted (2001)

* * * * *

Jeri Westerson: Serpent in the Thorns (2009)

Historical, set in London in 1384.

Book # 2 with former knight Crispin Guest. Guest has been stripped of his noble title because he was caught up in a plot against King Richard II. He now makes a little money by looking into things.

A simple-minded tavern scullion asks for Guest’s help when she finds a dead body in her room. The complex case leads to the highest levels of society.

First book: Veil of Lies (2008)

* * * * *

Laura Wilson: An Empty Death (2009)

Historical police procedural, set in London, England in 1945.

Book # 2 with Ted Stratton, a London police detective

Several murders at a hospital appear linked to a man pretending to be a doctor. A great feel for the times, the nightly bombing of London as part of the background.

First book: The Innocent Spy (2009) (alt. title Stratton’s War)

## Related post: MBTB review of An Innocent Spy # 1

* * * * * * * * * *

## Related posts:

Sharon's Top Mystery Reads of 2010, part one

Sharon's Top Mystery Reads of 2009, part one

Sharon's Top Mystery Reads of 2009, part two

Sharon's Top Mystery Reads of 2008

Sharon's Top Mystery Reads of 2007

posted by Sharon

These books appeared on the Publishers Weekly list Best Fiction of 2010, but I consider them mysteries:

Faithful Place by Tana French
Book # 3 about police detectives on the murder squad in Dublin, Ireland. This one features Frank Mackey

Suspense blends with family demons in French's meticulous crime novel about a cop's quest for the truth behind the disappearance of the young Dublin woman he was planning to elope with 22 years earlier.

First book: In The Woods

* * * * *

Tutankhamun by Nick Drake
Book # 2 with Rai Rahotep, a young chief detective in the Thebes Division, in ancient Egypt (14th century BCE)

Drake easily injects a serial killer plot into the middle book of his Ancient Egyptian trilogy while vividly evoking the reign of the boy king Tutankhamun.

First book: Nefertiti: The Book of the Dead
* * * * *

Our Kind of Traitor by John le Carré
Non-series spy thriller

Those who have found post-cold war le Carré too cerebral will welcome this Russian mafia spy thriller involving an English couple on holiday in the Caribbean.

* * * * *

Cornelia Read: Invisible Boy
Book # 3 with Madeline Dare, former dubutante in 1980s New York and Massachusetts

Acid-tongued ex-socialite Madeline Dare uncovers a child's skeleton in Queens' Prospect Cemetery in a crime novel that exposes undertones of racism and classism in New York City's justice system.

First book: A Field of Darkness
* * * * *

Innocent by Scott Turow

Twenty-two years after the events in Presumed Innocent, former lawyer Rusty Sabich once again faces a murder charge in a novel that rates as a worthy successor to that memorable debut.
,
,
,

- Book descriptions from Publishers Weekly

- Series descriptions (mostly) from Stop, You're Killing Me!

For the full online article Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2010, including all the lists (e.g. fiction, non-fiction, poetry, SF/Fantasy/Horror), click here.

## Related post: Publishers Weekly top mysteries of 2010 part one

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Blood Harvest
by S.J. Bolton

Publishers Weekly calls it "gothic, supernatural"

Description: Something isn't quite right in Heptonclough, including the mysterious accidental deaths of three toddlers over the last ten years. It is not until Tom Fletcher's siblings, two-year-old Milly and five-year-old Joe Fletcher, go missing in turn that the little village's evil secret turns his family's dreams of an English paradise into a nightmare. NoveList

Part one of my Top Mystery Reads of 2010 are books actually published in 2010:
.
.

Giles Blunt: Crime Machine (2010)

Canadian police procedural.
Book # 4 with John Cardinal, a police detective near Algonquin Bay, Ontario

The horrific murder of two visitors to town occurs in a house listed for sale. Cardinal finds an amazing link to a 30 year old cold case.
First book:
Forty Words for Sorrow (2001)

* * * * *

Emma Donoghue: Room (2010)

Non-series. “inside the crime” type.

NoveList Description: A 5-year-old narrates a riveting story about his life growing up in a single room where his mother aims to protect him from the man who has held her prisoner for seven years since she was a teenager.

## Related post: MBTB review Inside the crime: Room by Emma Donoghue & I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

* * * * *

Erin Hart: False Mermaid (2010)

Book # 3 in the series with Irish archaeologist Cormac Maguire and American pathologist Nora Gavin.
This book is set mostly in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Nora has returned from Ireland to resolve things with her sister’s murder that occurred several years before. Nora is sure her brother-in-law is the murderer, but he has an alibi. She reconnects with police officer Frank Cordova who also could never let the case go.

First two:
Haunted Ground (2003)
Lake of Sorrows (2004)

## Related post: MBTB review of False Mermaid

* * * * *

Deon Meyer: Thirteen Hours (2010)

Police procedural, South Africa.

Book # 2 with Cape Town police detective Benny Griessel.

The book covers one long 13 hour day as Benny, close to retirement, mentors a couple young detectives through their cases. One case: a murdered teenaged U.S. tourist found in a graveyard and police believe a second American girl, a friend, is on the run from the murderers; the second case: a murdered music producer, looks like the wife did it, but it’s obvious she was framed. High tension, fast-paced, but easy to understand. Not necessary to read first book: Devil’s Peak

* * * * *

Peter Robinson: Bad Boy (2010)

British police procedural.
Book # 19 with Alan Banks, Eastvale detective chief inspector, in Yorkshire, England

Summary: What starts out as a simple weapons possession case quickly spirals out of control when it becomes clear that Inspector Banks' own daughter is endangered by her bad-boy love interest. (book description from the Spoken Word version)

First book: Gallows View (1987)

Series descriptions from Stop, You're Killing Me!

posted by Sharon

Watch for Sharon's Top Mystery Reads of 2010 part two
coming soon

The Demon's Parchment
By Jeri Westerson

Book #3 in the series

Crispin Guest was a landowner and knight until a treason charge stripped him of everything. Now he ekes out a living as a sort of medieval private eye. Here, in his third outing, a physician at the king’s court asks Crispin to locate missing documents that could be connected with a rash of murders. There’s no shortage of mysteries set in the medieval period, but since the era lasted about a thousand years, there’s always room for more. Especially when they’re this good: a solid plot and cast of characters, a feel for the story’s place and time (fourteenth-century England), and an appealing noirish air. (Review taken from Booklist)

Book #1: Veil of Lies
Book #2: Serpent in the Thorns

Death Notice
By Todd Ritter

Unusually interesting people encounter unusually ghastly murders in New Jersey journalist Ritter's engaging debut. Single-mom police chief Kat Campbell of peaceful Perry Hollow, Pa., is shocked to find a local farmer's corpse left by the side of the road in a homemade coffin, his lips sewn together and his veins pumped full of formaldehyde. Meanwhile, Henry Goll, reclusive obituary writer for the Perry Hollow Gazette, is startled to realize that the man's death notice was faxed to him before the murder. Evidently, one of the townsfolk is a clever homicidal maniac who enjoys playing mind games. The murderer keeps nimbly ahead of his pursuers, even after Nick Donnelly, a state cop obsessed with serial killers, arrives on the scene. The action verges on pulp fiction melodrama, until a fiery conclusion that fully lives up--or down--to that standard. (Review taken from Publisher's Weekly)

The Shadow Woman
By Ake Edwardson

Book #5 in the series

In this fifth entry in his series featuring Chief Inspector Erik Winter, the policeman investigates the murder of Helene Anderson, whose body was found in a local park. Armed with few clues, Winter soon learns that the young woman left behind a child who may still be alive. Further probing leads him more than two decades back in time to a bank robbery in Denmark that a very young Helene likely witnessed. (The perpetrators remain at large, a source of great frustration for local law enforcement.) Winter travels to Denmark, and soon a cold case turns hot. Back on the home front, the inspector must contend with the annual Gothenburg Party, a hedonistic free-for-all that prompts riots among nativist gangs. (Review taken from Booklist)

Book #1: Sun and Shadow (2005)
Book #2: Never End (2006)
Book #3: Frozen Tracks (2007)
Book #4: Death Angels (2009)

posted by Shiela

For the full online article Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2010, including all the lists (e.g. fiction, non-fiction, poetry, SF/Fantasy/Horror), click here.

I've picked out the Publishers Weekly Best Mysteries of 2010 for this blog post:

(New! a link to Stop, You're Killing Me! from the series character name so you can easily see all the titles in a series in order.)

* * * * *

The Man with the Baltic Stare by James Church
Book # 4 with Inspector O in North Korea

Church audaciously sets his fourth Inspector O novel in 2016, when O must investigate a Macao prostitute's murder linked to the young man being groomed as the future leader of North Korea.

First book: A Corpse in the Koryo
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* * * * *

Love Songs from a Shallow Grave by Colin Cotterill
Book # 7 with Dr. Siri Paiboun, the 70-something national coroner, Nurse Dtui, and Geung, a developmentally challenged morgue assistant, in 1970s Laos

The murders of three women, each with a dueling sword, preoccupy 73-year-old Laotian coroner Siri Paiboun in a mystery that has it all-a heroic protagonist, a challenging puzzle, and an exotic setting.

First book: The Coroner's Lunch
* * * * *

Bleed a River Deep by Brian McGilloway
Book # 3 with Benedict Devlin, a Garda detective inspector, in the borderlands of Ireland

Despite being suspended from the Garda for failing to prevent what could have been the fatal shooting of a visiting former U.S. senator, Irish Inspector Devlin persists in looking into a bank heist and other crimes in a mystery that explores the underside of the "Celtic Tiger."

First book: Borderlands
* * * * *

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
Book # 6 with Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, in the village of Three Pines, in southern Quebec
Penny's gift for displaying heartbreak and hope in the same scene is just one of the many strengths of her sixth traditional mystery to feature French-Canadian Chief Insp. Armand Gamache.

First book: Still Life

## Related post: MBTB review of Still Life # 1

* * * * *

The Insane Train by Sheldon Russell
Book # 2 with Hook Runyon, a railroad security agent for the Santa Fe Railroad in the mid-1940s

Railroad security agent Hook Runyon must help transport a trainload of dangerous mental patients from California to Oklahoma in a rough-edged 1940s historical that evokes both Chandler and Hammett.

First book: The Yard Dog
* * * * *

The Red Door by Charles Todd
Book # 12 with Ian Rutledge, a shell-shocked World War I veteran returning to his job at Scotland Yard, in London, England

Scotland Yard inspector Ian Rutledge, a shell-shocked WWI veteran, looks into a missing missionary and a bludgeoning murder in a mystery that offers a tricky puzzle and incisive character portraits.

First book: A Test of Wills
* * * * *

- Book descriptions from Publishers Weekly
- Series descriptions (mostly) from Stop, You're Killing Me!

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
A Stranger in Mayfair
by Charles Finch
Book # 4 with Charles Lenox, a gentleman sleuth, in 1860s London, England

Description: Investigating the murder of a footman whose death is complicated by a false identity and unsettling facts about the victim's employers, Detective Lenox pursues a series of leads only to discover that an old friend may be involved. NoveList

First book: A Beautiful Blue Death

Jacqueline Winspear:
The Mapping of Love and Death (2010) ****

Historical, set in London, England in 1932.
Book # 7 with Maisie Dobbs, who runs a private investigation firm in London. Maisie was a Red Cross nurse in Europe in WW1.

MBTB review: Maisie is hired to find the mysterious lover of a young soldier, killed in WW1. The mystery unfolds as she digs into the records and memories of more than 15 years before, right in the midst of the Great War. And there is a feeling of urgency after the dead soldier's parents are attacked.
For me, part of the appeal of this series is catching up on Maisie's life - there are a lot of changes to her life in this book. An enjoyable read.
Start with the first book if possible:
Maisie Dobbs (2003)

## Related post: MBTB full review of Maisie Dobbs # 1

This is a mini-review from Mystery Memo # 107

* * * * *
Here's what the Booklist review had to say:
The sixth Maisie Dobbs mystery, set in England between the wars, is based on a true story about the discovery of a collapsed dugout from World War I containing the bodies of a cartography team and their equipment. The American parents of the dead cartographer hire Maisie to find “the English Nurse,” the young man’s mysterious lover—and possibly his killer, as the autopsy evidence points to his having been murdered shortly before the dugout collapsed. Only a few hours after having hired Maisie, the Americans are attacked and badly beaten, prompting Maisie to take it upon herself to discover their attacker. Maisie and her assistant, Billy, take on the case in their usual careful and contemplative style, even as difficulties in Maisie’s personal life challenge her concentration. Readers who preferred the earlier novels in the series will be pleased with this entry and those waiting for Maisie to finally find a love interest will have something to cheer about. A must read for series fans, especially because the ending hints that big changes are on the way for Maisie.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
The Good Son
by Michael Gruber
This is a non-series thriller.

Description: Somewhere in Pakistan, Sonia Laghari and eight fellow members of a symposium on peace are being held captive by armed terrorists. Sonia, a deeply religious woman as well as a Jungian psychologist, has become the de facto leader of the kidnapped group, while her son Theo, an ex-Delta soldier, uses his military connections to find and free the victims. NoveList

Just to keep the list going a little longer, here are a couple more new police procedurals I've come across:

Small Town Cops:

Death Notice by Todd Ritter
Book # 1 with Sheriff Kat Campbell in Perry Hollow, Pennsylvania.

Description: Tackling her first murder case in a small Pennsylvania community where the victim's death was gruesomely staged, Pennsylvania sheriff Kat Campbell is approached by an investigator who believes the murder is linked to a serial case. NoveList
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The Taken by Inger Ash Wolfe
Book # 2 with Hazel Micallef, a 60-something detective inspector in the small town of Port Dundas, Ontario (series description from Stop, You're Killing Me!)

Description: Reluctantly accepting help from her ex-husband after major surgery, Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef consults on a case that eerily resembles a recently serialized publication and causes Hazel and her associates to draw links between the murder, the story, and a cold case. NoveList

First book: The Calling

Note: neither of these books are for the squeamish.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Blood Born
by Kathryn Fox
Book # 3 with Dr. Anya Crichton, a forensic pathologist in Sydney, Australia

Description: After yet another victim is brutally murdered by the Harbourn brothers, who are part of a fanatically devoted family of criminals - and masters at eluding the law - forensic physician Dr. Anya Crichton fears for her own life as people involved with the investigation begin turning up dead. NoveList

First two books:
Malicious Intent
Without Consent

Big city cops:
Henry Chang's Red Jade
Book # 3 with Jack Yu, a police detective in Chinatown, New York City

Library Journal review: . . . An action-packed plot and a carefully detailed mystery make this a feast for readers who crave insight into the cultural melting pot that is the United States.

First two:
Chinatown Beat
Year of the Dog
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* * * * *

Western sheriffs:
Kathryn Casey's The Killing Storm
Book # 3 with Sarah Armstrong, a criminal profiler lieutenant in the Texas Rangers, and a recently widowed mother, based in Houston, Texas

Library Journal review: The kidnapping of a four-year-old boy from a Houston park brings local law enforcement and the FBI together in an intense search...
First two:
Singularity
Blood Lines
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Patrick F. McManus's The Huckleberry Murders
Book # 3 with Bo Tully, Sheriff of Blight County, Idaho

Library Journal review: . . . McManus's folksy narrative keeps the reader's interest with plenty of humor, aw-shucks moments, and action. C.J. Box fans will find less harsh reality here, but Bo Tully is a treat for readers who like some Western Flair and an old-fashioned approach to justice in their mysteries.

First two:
The Blight Way
Avalanche
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* * * * *
English police:
Alison Bruce's The Siren (also published as Kimberly's Song)
Book # 2 with Gary Goodhew, a detective constable at Parkside Station, in Cambridge, England

Library Journal review: . . . In this complex and convoluted tale of jealousy and violence, D.C. Gary Goodhew still goes his own way and slowly puts the pieces of the puzzle together, resulting in an unexpected conclusion. Fans of Mo Hayder and John Harvey will be pleased to discover a new author.
First book: Cambridge Blue (2008)

Peter James's Dead Like You
Book # 6 with Roy Grace, a Detective Superintendent of the CID, in Sussex, England

Library Journal review: . . . This intriguing series addition offers a tantalizing look at Grace's past and a mystery that will keep readers guessing until the end . . .

First book: Dead Simple (2005)
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* * * * *

Kenya police:
Nick Brownlee's Blood and Fire
Book # 2 with Mombasa Police Inspector Daniel Jouma and charter-boat skipper Jake Moore

Library Journal review: . . . Readers who enjoy Deon Meyer, Roger Smith, Michael Stanley, and other authors of fast-paced, hard-edged crime fiction set in Africa will want to discover Brownlee.

First book: Bait
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* * * * *

Canadian cops:
Barbara Fradkin's Beautiful Lie the Dead
Book # 8 with Michael Green, a police inspector in Ottawa, Ontario

Summary: Meredith, the fiancee of a wealthy social activist in Ottawa, has gone missing on a blustery winter night. The trail leads to Montreal--and to the frozen body of the woman Meredith apparently went to see. Is she a killer or another victim?

First book: Do or Die (2000)

This list is (mostly) from Library Journal, October 1, 2010 Vol. 135 # 16
Series descriptions are (mostly) from Stop, You're Killing Me!
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posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Body Work
by Sara Paretsky
Book # 15 with Chicago private investigator V.I. Warshawski

Booklist: . . . V. I. proves as persistent as ever in a case that ranges from the edgy urban nightclub scene to the corporate interests making a fortune from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And, as always, the city of Chicago, from its gentrified lofts to its working-class bars, is given a starring role.

First book: Indemnity Only

Room by Emma Donoghue *****

I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman ****

I might not have made a link between these two books if I hadn't read them one after the other. Neither of them are "genre mysteries" - that is, there is no crime-solving going on. The reader gets glimpses into the crime while it is happening, from mostly the victim's point of view. Much of the book is about the aftermath - the effect of the crime on the victims and the families. (Note: in Room, we get more than glimpses into the crime - about half the book takes place in the room where the kidnap victim and her child are being held)

Room by Emma Donoghue *****
Description: A 5-year-old narrates a riveting story about his life growing up in a single room where his mother aims to protect him from the man who has held her prisoner for seven years since she was a teenager. NoveList

MBTB review: For me the enthralling part of this book was the voice of Jack, the 5-year-old narrator, forcing me time and again to re-think how I see the world. Only a few times a year do I read an "un-put-downable" book - this was one of them.

Here's what the Publishers Weekly review had to say:
/* Starred Review */ At the start of Donoghue's powerful new novel, narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. Seen entirely through Jack's eyes and childlike perceptions, the developments in this novel--there are enough plot twists to provide a dramatic arc of breathtaking suspense--are astonishing. Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful, creating exercise games, makeshift toys, and reading and math lessons to fill their days. And while Donoghue brilliantly portrays the psyche of a child raised in captivity, the story's intensity cranks up dramatically when, halfway through the novel and after a nail-biting escape attempt, Jack is introduced to the outside world. While there have been several true-life stories of women and children held captive, little has been written about the pain of re-entry, and Donoghue's bravado in investigating that potentially terrifying transformation grants the novel a frightening resonance that will keep readers rapt.

* * * * *

I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman ****

Description: Eliza Benedict's peaceful suburban life is shattered after she is contacted by Walter Bowman, the man who kidnapped and held her hostage as a teen in 1985, and who now claims to want forgiveness while on death row. NoveList

MBTB review: I found this book compelling reading. Lippman drops in Eliza's memories of what happened in 1985 when she travelled for 6 weeks as a captive of a serial murderer. But most of the book is set in the present day as the grownup Eliza re-thinks what happened in those final few days of captivity and wonders why the kidnapper would want to talk to her in the few days left before he is executed.

Here's what the Publisher's Weekly review had to say:
/* Starred Review */ Near the start of this outstanding novel of psychological suspense from Edgar-winner Lippman, Eliza Benedict, a 38-year-old married mother of two living in suburban Maryland, receives a letter from Walter Bowman, the man who kidnapped her the summer she was 15 and is now on death row. The narrative shifts between the present and that long ago summer, when Eliza involuntarily became a part of Walter's endless road trip, including the fateful night when he picked up another teenage girl, Holly Tackett. Soon after Walter killed Holly, Eliza was rescued and taken home. Eliza must now balance a need for closure with a desire to protect herself emotionally. Walter wants something specific from her, but she has no idea what, and she's not sure that she wants to know. All the relationships, from the sometimes contentious one between Eliza and her sister, Vonnie, to the significantly stranger one between Walter and Barbara LaFortuny, an advocate for prisoners, provide depth and breadth to this absorbing story.

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Final Approach
by Rachel Brady
Book # 1 with Emily Locke

Summary: Sometimes clues just fall from the sky. Four years ago, Emily Locke's life was shattered when her infant daughter and husband were lost in an inexplicable accident. She has nearly rebuilt her fragile mental health when a disgraced former police detective, now working as a P.I., resurfaces to ask for help-reconnaissance at a Texas skydiving establishment over a thousand miles away. Emily knows better than to work with Richard Cole again, but can't refuse when she learns it's about a missing boy. (from book cover)

The Mystery Memo is a log of all of my mystery reading, with brief comments and a star rating for each book read. It is published every 4 to 6 weeks. Some of these books also have longer reviews on this blog. In that case, a link will be supplied.

Click here for a printable text-only copy of Mystery Memo # 106 (in Microsoft Word).

. . . I broke up this Mystery Memo into mini-reviews and have published some of them as individual posts. Here is your chance to download the full list.

There are two 4 ½ or 5 star reads on this list:

Judith Cutler: Life Sentence

Laura Wilson: An Empty Death

* * * * * * * * * *

Tasha Alexander: Fatal Waltz (2008) *** ½

Historical, set in Victorian England.

Book # 3 with Lady Emily Ashton, a young widow. Emily is now engaged to her late husband’s best friend Colin Hargreaves.

A powerful government man disliked by many is murdered at an exclusive weekend hunting party. Robert, the husband of Emily’s friend is the main suspect. Emily’s quest to find the real murderer takes her to Vienna, a hotbed of spying. There was a little too much of the politics, spying and double-agents for me, but an enjoyable read nevertheless.

* * * * * * * * * *

Tasha Alexander: Tears of Pearl (2009) *** ½

Book # 4 with Lady Emily Ashton has recently married her late husband’s best friend Colin Hargreaves. They are on honeymoon in Constantinople.

One of the Sultan’s concubines is murdered in the courtyard while Emily and Colin are at a party nearby. Sadly the Constantinople setting didn’t capture me like I had hoped but I still enjoyed the story.

First two books:
And Only to Deceive (2005)
A Poisoned Season (2007)
* * * * *

Joan Boswell: Cut to the Chase (2009) ****

Book # 3 with artist Hollis Grant, now living in Toronto.

Hollis’s friend Candace asks for help in finding her missing brother. The missing man has dedicated his life to hunting down criminals who return to Canada after being deported. At some point the police get involved, but Candace convinces Hollis to withhold some information so they can find the missing man themselves, especially since it looks like he is a suspect in the death of his roommate.
Nice readable style, although I found it irritating that Hollis and Candace hold back information from the police more than once.

First two books:
Cut Off His Tale (2005)
Cut to the Quick (2007)
* * * * *

Lee Child: 61 hours (2010) ****

Book # 14 with Jack Reacher, ex-military policeman, now wanders the U.S., picking up work where he can find it.

The story starts with a snow storm in South Dakota. Stranded in a small town by a bus crash and the storm, Reacher gets caught up in events, including helping police protect a vulnerable but stubborn witness. My favourite location for Reacher is in a small town. And I like that Reacher has flaws and enough tantalizing personal history to make him real. But Lee Child's real skill is making the other characters come alive - in this case, the police chief, the assistant chief, the stubborn witness, and even the Mexican drug lord.

First book: Killing Floor (1997)

## Related post: MBTB full review of 61 Hours

* * * * *

Beverly Connor: A Rumor of Bones (1996) *** ½

Book # 1 with forensic anthropologist Lindsay Chamberlain, who works as an archaeologist.

An archaeological dig site has been plagued with troubles, including finding a recent body of a young girl. Lots of archaeology. I can see the genesis of Connor’s Diane Fallon character (a forensic anthropologist, museum director and crime lab director, e.g. One Grave Too Many).

## Related post: MBTB full review of Beverly Connor's Diane Fallon series
* * * * *

John Connor: A Child’s Game (2006) *** ½

British police procedural.

Book # 3 with undercover officer Karen Sharpe, set in 1990s Yorkshire. She now has her 11-year-old daughter living with her.

Karen is again deep undercover, this time as a single mother who owns an art gallery. She has become the lover of a local real estate mogul in order to find out his connection with terrorists.
Very early on in the book, the man is murdered and Karen and her daughter are kidnapped.
Many different points-of-view and lots of maneuvering within the police department and the spy network.

I would recommend reading the first two before this one:
Phoenix (2003)
The Playroom (2004)
* * * * *

Judith Cutler: Life Sentence (2005) **** ½

British police procedural.

Book # 1 with police officer Fran Harman, in her 50s and thinking about retirement. She spends every weekend 200 miles from home caring for her elderly parents.

Fran takes over a cold case (an unidentified woman in a coma) and finds out more than the original team did. She also helps with a child abduction case. Nicely written.
You can tell I’m working my way through all of Cutler’s series, having loved her new series with country parson Tobias Campion (first book: The Keeper of Secrets, 2007).
* * * * *

Marshall Karp: Flipping Out (2009) *** ½

American police procedural.

Book # 3 with Los Angeles police officers Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs.

When one of a group of police buddies who play cards together (including Lomax and Biggs) discovers his wife has been shot, Lomax and Biggs get the case. It turns out she is just the first of three wives of these men to be murdered. I think Karp hits his stride with this one – I got a feel for the characters. And this one is more police procedural than action/adventure. Striving a little hard sometimes for some humour, but still a good read.

First books:
The Rabbit Factory (2006)
Bloodthirsty (2007)

## Related post: MBTB review of The Rabbit Factory # 1
* * * * *

Robert B. Parker: Split Image (2008) ***

American police procedural.

Book # 10 with Jesse Stone, ex-LAPD, now police chief in tiny Paradise, Massachusetts.

A body found in a car trunk is connected to one of the two local mob bosses who live side-by-side and have married twin sisters. Then one of the mob bosses is murdered. More interesting than it sounds. While Jesse is busy with this case, he also ends up working with private investigator Sunny Randall, who has been hired to find a missing 18 year old. Jesse and Sunny have some history together and both are working through some personal problems. A fast read.
(Sunny Randall stars in a series of her own - first book: Family Honor)

First book with Jesse Stone: Night Passage (1997)

See the full Jesse Stone series listed in order on Stop, You're Killing Me!

## Related post: Robert B. Parker 1932 - 2010
* * * * *

Michael Robotham: Bombproof (2008) ****

A thriller.

This is loosely part of the series with police officer Victor Ruiz and Joseph O’Loughlin, psychologist, in London, England. This one features Victor Ruiz, now retired from the London police, BUT most of the book is from the point-of-view of Sami, a young man just out of jail.

A crime boss forces Sami to break into the police evidence room, holding the man’s sister to guarantee compliance. Things go badly wrong after Sami sets off an explosion to get into evidence room. The explosion is so powerful, police believe it is terrorists. At some point they realize he is involved and he holes up with hostages. Ruiz has promised his ex-wife, a parole officer, that he would help Sami search for his sister so he gets involved in the case – convoluted, but not too bad. Not necessary to read the others, but the first book is The Suspect (2004)

## Related post: MBTB review of Shatter # 4

* * * * *

Karin Slaughter: A Faint Cold Fear (2003) *** ½

Part police procedural/part forensic.

Book # 3 with Sara Linton, pediatrician and coroner, and her ex-husband Jeffrey, police chief of a small town in Georgia.

When a college student is found dead under a bridge, it looks like suicide, but Sara and Jeffrey both feel it needs a closer look. Lots of personal detail and anguish going on with the main characters, but nicely readable.

First book: Blindsighted (2001)
* * * * *

Diane A.S. Stuckart: A Bolt from the Blue (2010) ****

Historical, set in Milan in 1483.

Book # 3 with Leonardo da Vinci and apprentice Dino, really a young woman artist disguised as a boy.

Dino’s father is invited to Milan to help Leonardo with his secret military project, a flying machine. When the machine is stolen and Dino’s father kidnapped, Dino follows the kidnappers to a neighbouring castle.
There are some wonderful “Leonardo bits” when the master artist gets involved in trying to save Dino’s father and the machine.
Lots of action.

First two books:
The Queen’s Gambit (2008)
Portrait of a Lady (2009)

## Related post: MBTB review of The Queen's Gambit # 1
* * * * *

William G. Tapply: Dark Tiger (2009) ****

Investigator.

Book # 3 with Stoney Calhoun, a Maine fishing guide who can’t remember his past, but has strange skills.

Stoney's suspicion that he used to be some kind of spy is confirmed when a mysterious man from his past asks him to investigate the death of a special government agent near a remote fishing lodge. Stoney is given an undercover position as a fishing guide. Within a day, one of the guides is murdered and another guide framed for it. Lots of good atmosphere around the northern lakes and the clients.
This is the last book in the series since Tapply died recently. Tapply also wrote the consistently good series with lawyer/investigator Brady Coyne (first book: Death at Charity's Point)

First two in the Stoney Calhoun series:
Bitch Creek (2004)
Gray Ghost (2007)

## Related posts:
MBTB review of Bitch Creek
MBTB review of Gray Ghost
William G. Tapply 1940-2009

* * * * *

Stella Whitelaw: Hide and Die (2007) ****

Private investigator.

Book # 4 with ex-cop private investigator Jordan Lacey in Latching, West Sussex.

Jordan is hired to follow a man because his wife suspects he is cross-dressing. Then the man is murdered.
The "voice" and the personal aspects of this series appeal to me. I'm slowly reading my way through this series, not necessarily in order, unfortunately.

First three books:
Pray and Die (2000)
Wave and Die (2001)
Spin and Die (2002)
* * * * *

Laura Wilson: An Empty Death (2009) **** ½

Historical police procedural, set in London, England in 1945.

Book # 2 with Ted Stratton, a London police detective.

Several murders at a hospital appear linked to a man pretending to be a doctor. A great feel for the times, the nightly bombing of London as part of the background.

First book: The Innocent Spy (2009) (alt. title Stratton’s War)

## Related post: MBTB review of The Innocent Spy # 1
* * * * *

Richard Yancey: The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs (2008) ****

Private investigator

Although it is Teddy Ruzak’s dream to run a detective agency, he just can’t pass the investigator’s exam. Despite this small problem, he gets caught up in a case after a homeless man dies in the alley outside his office window.

First book: The Highly Effective Detective (2006)
* * * * *

posted by Sharon

This list of Library Journal's Top Mysteries of 2010 is from their article:
Best Books 2010/Best Genre Fiction 2010/Mystery (Library Journal December 2010)
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Kathryn Casey: The Killing Storm
Book # 3
As Texas Ranger Sarah Armstrong investigates the ritualistic killings of prize cattle, a four-year-old boy is kidnapped, and a hurricane heads straight for Houston. Riveting suspense and nifty plot twists in an outstanding series.

First two in the series:
Singularity
Blood Lines

Gerald Elias: Danse Macabre
Book # 2
The execution of a man convicted of killing a famous concert violinist draws blind violin teacher Daniel Jacobus into an impromptu investigation. Musical know-how, an intricate plot, and fresh characters elevate Elias's second series title above standard fare.

First book: Devil's Thrill

Gardiner Harris: Hazard
A safety inspector probes a fatal mining disaster in Hazard, KY, that may not have been an accident. This outstanding debut boasts vivid details, insider knowledge of the mining industry, spot-on characterizations, and an engrossing mystery.
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K.J. Larsen: Liar, Liar: A Cat DeLuca Mystery
Book # 1
Cat DeLuca, owner of Chicago's Pants on Fire Detective Agency, is up to her eyebrows in trouble when she tries to prove a man's infidelity. Her family of police officers and busybody relatives add comic relief in this cozy debut.
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I.J. Parker:
The Masuda Affair: A Sugawara Akitada Novel
Sugawara attempts to help an abused boy, reconnect with his wife, come to terms with the death of a son, and solve a murder. Eleventh-century Japan is a perfect setting for this perceptive sleuth and complex crime novel.

* * * * *
Click here to see Library Journal's entire list of the Best Genre Fiction 2010, including Christian Fiction, SF & Fantasy, Street Lit, Thrillers

Michael Robotham: Bombproof (2008) ****

A thriller.

This is loosely the fifth book of Robotham's series with police officer Victor Ruiz and psychologist Joseph O’Loughlin, in London, England.
This one features Victor Ruiz, now retired from the London police,
BUT most of the book is from the point-of-view of Sami, a young man just out of jail. I'm not sure I would even consider it part of the series. It's more of a stand-alone thriller.

A crime boss forces Sami to break into the police evidence room, holding the Sami’s sister to guarantee compliance. Things go badly wrong after Sami sets off an explosion to get into evidence room. The explosion is so powerful, police believe it is terrorists. At some point they realize Sami is involved and he holes up with hostages. Ruiz has promised his ex-wife, a parole officer, that he would help Sami search for his sister so he gets involved in the case – convoluted, but not too bad. Not necessary to read the others, but the first book is The Suspect (2004)

## Related post: MBTB review of Shatter # 4

This is a mini-review from Mystery Memo # 106

posted by Sharon

WHAT I'M READING NOW:
Coming Back
by Marcia Muller
Book # 28 with Sharon McCone, a legal investigator and private eye, in San Francisco, California

Summary: As she tries to recover from a debilitating injury, Sharon McCone seeks the truth behind the disappearance of a friend she made at physical therapy, a missing-persons case that could have a powerful effect on national security. NoveList