Category Archives: murder mysteries

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Burning Ridge is the fourth installment in this series by Mizushima. In this outing, a partially burned body is discovered on a high ridge in the Colorado Mountains. When Mattie Cobb and Robo are called in to investigate, the case spirals into something much more serious. Three more bodies are discovered and this time Mattie has a personal connection to the murders. But Mattie, Robo and Cole Walker persevere and not only identify the murderer but also a sprawling case involving drugs and human trafficking.

I love these books. The mysteries are great and the relationship between Mattie and Robo is wonderful. I also really like that Robo is a real dog, not an anthropomorphized animal as one sees so often in cozy mysteries.

Highly Recommended.

This is the second in the Tuscan mysteries.

A famous, but arrogant and unpleasant, wine critic drives off the road and is killed. But the tox screen reveals he has been poisoned by antifreeze. Nico is drawn into the investigation of the victim’s wife, and all the vintners who owed him money. All the regulars are here: Nico’s relatives who run the restaurant he works in, The Dante quoting Gogol, Perillo, and Daniele Donato.

The mysteries are great but even more appealing is the wonderful setting and the descriptions of the food. Read a chapter and you are hungry! My only criticism is I wish there was a glossary of the food names, most of which I had to look up.

Highly Recommended.

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Expired Listings by D.M. Barr follows Dana Black, a smart but emotionally damaged realtor. Someone is murdering realtors from Dana’s realty and all the clues point to her as the murderer. She is afraid to admit where she actually was, since she uses the empty listings for meetings with her kinky lover Dare.

Dana was abandoned by her mother to the care of her grandmother as a young child and has never recovered from the trauma. She is jealous of her older sister, Melanie, who was raised by their mother and is also the big seller at the realty office.

As the police begin to focus on Dana, she hires a private detective to help clear her name and find the true murderer. She and Melanie are put in serious danger before the murderer is unmasked and Dana seems finally able to move on and heal.

I do not typically read erotica but here it serves the purpose of illuminating Dana’s emotional damage and the scars left by a lifetime of abandonment. The characters are believable and I found myself thoroughly engaged in Dana’s life.

Highly Recommended.

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While I was at Malice Domestic, I picked up several books to read. I think I spent way more than I made by selling my books. Anyway, this was one.

I sat next to this author at the book signing and bought his book. Kuehn is a practicing archaeologist so he knows of what he speaks.

Jack Caine is conducting a field school, where students help excavate a site. In this case, a Native American village. A few years previously, another professor, Jacklyn Wardell, had died under mysterious circumstances. Problems at the dig arise; trespassers, a break-in at the lab, and more. When Jake finds Wardell’s Journal, he is drawn even deeper into the mystery of her death.

The local sheriff admits he was never satisfied by the accidental ruling. Then a local photographer who’d taken many photos of the previous dig is found murdered. It’s up to Jack to figure out the mystery and identify the murderer.

During the first half of the book, the murder mystery takes a back seat to the archaeological details. If the reader is interested in archaeology, which I am, this is fascinating. If not, I think the reader will find it slow-moving. The book picks up in the second half, when the mystery moves front and center and Jack begins to seriously investigate. Recommended, with that caveat.

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The Murder at World’s End has everything one wants in a mystery: great characters, an interesting setting and a twisty mystery with a surprise at the end.

Stephen Pike, recently of Borstal prison, is desperate for a job when a letter offering him one arrives out of the blue. He arrives at a house on an island in Cornwall that is regularly cut off by the tides. He quickly sees that something is not right. The master of the house is terrified that Halley’s Comet, will fill the air with poison gasses, make the seas rise, and destroy the earth. Everyone is the house is under orders to lock themselves in their rooms, board up the windows, and seal every crack around doors and windows with wadding.

The following morning, the master is found dead in his locked and sealed study.

But his aunt Decima, a batty elderly lady with a scientific mind, is on the case with Stephen as her sidekick.

Decimal is a wonderful character and some of the scenes in which she interacts with her family are laugh out loud funny. Highly recommended. This is a series I will definitely follow.

What on earth is a wanax

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In all three of my Bronze Age Crete mysteries, I describe Tinos, the consort of the High Priestess, as a wanax. In Mycenae Greece, a wanax was the high king or priest king, but the term is actually not only pre-Greek but of a non-Indo-European origin. It was found in a Linear B tablet which shows how long and important this position was.

Since current scholarship describes Crete as worshipping a Supreme Goddess and with women enjoying high status, I chose to make the High Priestess the central religious power. But any society needs to be administered and that was one of the functions of the wanax in the cultures around the Aegean.

Archaeologists theorize that the High Priestess had a consort. This supposition is borne out by the images on seals and other metal artifacts showing a large female figure with a smaller male beside them. Since fertility was so important then, Campbell interpreted many of the early rituals as promoting fertility, not just of the land and the livestock, but the people as well. So, I thought it made sense for the consort, whose central job was tied to the fertility of the county, to also serve as the chief administrator of the society.

Tinos, therefore, handles the military, economic functions of the government, as well as serving as the chief law enforcement officer.

Zeus and Dionysus in Crete

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The Cretan Zeus is not quite the same as the Classical Greek version of the God. For one thing, the Cretan Zeus is more of a harvest God who is born again each spring and dies in the Fall. Since Classical Greeks thought all Gods and Goddesses should be immortal, they changed the attribute of the God whose name they’d taken and declared all Cretans are liars. They kept, however, the story of his upbringing in a cave after his father, Cronus in Classical Greek mythology, swallowed all his children.  A prophesy declared one would be his killer. To prevent that, Cronus swallowed them. But Rhea, to protect her remaining child, dressed a stone in swaddling clothes so Cronus swallowed the rock instead.

In both versions, Zeus was nursed by a nanny goat – or one of several other animals such as a pig. Take your pick. I’ve now read several variations. Zeus’s crying was masked by the Kouretes, a group of armed men who clashed their weapons together to hide the cries.

So what does this have to do with Dionysus? Well, the Cretan Zeus is more like Dionysus. A mortal harvest God followed by ecstatic worshippers.

When I was in Greece at Delphi I asked our tour guide why Dionysus was so different from the Classical Greek Gods. They do not embody the Dionysian wildness and several represent rationality. She didn’t know but I have the answer now. Dionysus is a very old God. He is named in the linear B tablets. And in many, if not most, of the other Middle Eastern Bronze Age religions there are other Gods like him.

These early beliefs were concentrated on fertility – not just human fertility although in Bronze Age Crete the High Priestess, as an earthly representation of the Goddess, represented that fertility. Ritual intercourse was practiced not only in the Mediterranean but as far away as Norway. For these early farmers, fertility among the livestock and of course a good harvest meant the difference between life and death. According to Joseph Campbell, in very early times the king of the land, (or the consort to the Priestess) was sacrificed so that his blood would nourish the land and promote that fertility. This practice evolved to a ritual sacrifice, using animals or other rites that stood in for the death of the king.

That is why the High Priestess had such power. Although we are not entirely sure how much, I imagined her as THE power, with her consort controlling the administration of the state. Bulls and other animals were sacrificed, but other rituals were also employed. I suggest that the consort is required to reestablish his strength by facing a bull in the ring.

Of course, as the Priestess comes to the end of her fertile years, she would be replaced with a younger woman.

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The Red Queen is the 26th entry in the Richard Jury series. And what a disappointment.

Tom Treadnor is shot through the window in a local pub, The Queen. When Jury investigates, he sees someone has edited the pub’s name to The Red Queen. When he begins investigating, he discovers everyone has a different opinion of the victim. Jury sends his friends Melrose Plant and Gerrard Gerrard to the Treadnor estate to do some undercover investigating. I was never sure why this section was included since it offered nothing to the mystery.

About halfway through, Jury’s sergeant suddenly leaves Scotland Yard to look for a sister that disappeared five years ago and has suddenly reappeared. (In past novels, the sister is believed dead.)

I’ve read almost all of the Grimes’ mysteries and yet I felt as though I’d gone to a party where I knew no one, but they knew each other. There was almost no back story to help put the reader in the know. There was, however, an awful lot of empty banter. And the murder mystery was not very good. But at least there was an ending, albeit not a very plausible one. Wiggins’ story feels half-finished with several unanswered questions.

Don’t waste your time. Not recommended.

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This past week I read Dachshund Through the Snow by David Rosenfelt. I love these books. They are funny and with good mysteries as well.

In this one, Andy Carpenter is persuaded by his wife and by a Christmas wish from a young boy, to bring his father home. But he doesn’t want to be found. He knows he is suspected of a murder that happened long ago, a murder he assures Carpenter he didn’t commit.

As he investigates, Carpenter begins to believe the young man is telling the truth. Especially after several people assigned to watch Carpenter are murdered. Then another man who was asking questions.

Sure enough, the case is way more complicated than it first appears. But Andy pursues it to the end and justice is served.

Recommended.

The Bull in Ancient Crete

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Bulls in Ancient Crete were sacred. We know that from the murals and the statuary that show how valuable the bull was. Rhytons, drinking cups, were even made in the shape of a horned bulls head. I’ve certainly discussed at length the ritual of bull leaping. Teenagers, little more than kids actually, ran at a charging bull, grabbing the horns, and flipping over the beast.

These are not out modern bulls either. These were bulls that were especially fast. They are not extinct, a poacher killed the last one that was housed in a Polish zoo.

How do we know about this ritual? Well, anyone who knows the Theseus myth is familiar with the minotaur. Athens had to send 14 tributes to Knossos; 7 boys and 7 girls. In the myth, they face the minotaur in the labyrinth. Theseus, with the aid of a ball of string and a sword given him by the king’s daughter Ariadne, defeats the minotaur.Frescoes from Knossos show they teenagers leaping over a charging bull. Another member of the team caught the jumper. There seems to be no doubt this ritual occurred.

What is behind the veneration of the bull? I’ve read varying explanations. Is it because the Bull represented the male principle, even in a society with a Supreme Goddess? Is it because of the connection with Poseidon. also a God in this culture. (I have mentioned previously how much the Classical Greeks borrowed from the Minoans).

A stylized version of the bull’s horns, called the Horns of Consecration, were used everywhere. Examples have survived in Knossos.

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Our Lady of the Overlook, by R.L. Carpentier III is a police procedural.

Mike Ellis is a rookie cop, working under the shadow of his father. Charles Ellis had been the police chief in the little town for years.

Now it looks like history is repeating itself. Mike Ellis finds the body of a woman murdered, at the overlook, just like his father had forty years ago. Although Mike’s investigation takes a heavy toll on him, he pursues it to the end. Mike’s character evolves and changes as he faces truths that are, at best, uncomfortable.

The mystery takes a little while to get started but once it does, I couldn’t put the book down. I’m glad Carpentier has planned a trilogy as I have already ordered the second one in the series.

Recommended.