This is the fifth in this wonderful series. A little girl, upon finding out that Nico is a retired homicide detective, asks him for help in proving her father’s innocence. At first, the case looks open and shut. Several people in Pitigliano heard the victim and his business partner fighting. But as Nico digs deeper, he finds that many people might have wanted Giancarlo Lenzi dead. He’d stolen from the business, yes, but he’d also seduced several wives in town, cheated a cousin out of his vineyard, and told his wife he was leaving.
Nico makes several trips to Pitigliano to investigate, resulting in a confession. But Nico isn’t satisfied.
I love this character driven series. The plotting is exceptional and the setting cannot be beat. Highly recommended.
Combustible, by David Wilson, is the first in his Sam Lawson detective series. I don’t usually read hard boiled mysteries but this one was a good one to start with.
Lawson is a burned out cop who drinks too much and annoys his fellow officers. But a case involving a burned victim in a house, and a new female pathologist that he is interested in, inspires him to actually investigate.
By all accounts, Joe Reddington, prison guard, was a mean and abusive man, loathed by everyone. (Someone, one might almost say, who deserves to die). So who actually did the deed? The angry son? The abused wife? Or one of the prisoners who Reddington abused?
But someone is actively trying to hit the investigation. One of Lawson’s witnesses is murdered and Lawson is told to drop the case. But he perserveres, discovering an almost forgotten pleasure in doing a good job.
Fast moving and plot driven. My only criticism? I wish the book were a little longer and the characters a little more fleshed out. Recommended.
Homicide on the Range by Rosalie Spielman is the sixth in her hometown mysteries series. In this offering, Tessa Treslow and her significant other Nick sign up for a romantic week away. Unfortunately, 79 year old Aunt Edna and the Prunn sisters Ginny and Olive decide to join.
From the beginning, the week does not go as planned. The cook, a veteran named Orinoco, is nasty to everyone. And several of the other vets have issues of their own relating to effects from their service. To make matters worse, wildfires are beginning to threaten the ranch. And then Orinioco’s body, a knife protruding from her chest, is found in the walk-in freezer.
Aunt Edna and the Prunn sisters throw themselves into the breach, cooking for all the ranch guests. And Tessa begins her hunt for the murderer.
This series is marketed as a cozy series and it is true the murders are not graphically portrayed. The Prunn sisters with their outlandish clothing (they love their fascinators and in this book, one of them sports Woody’s tiny cowboy hat from Toy Story) but the themes around the veterans add a depth and seriousness not usually found in cozies. Highly recommended.
Malice, by Keigo Higashino, was an Edgar award finalist. Written in Japan, and translated into English, it has much different pacing than a typical English language mystery.
A famous and wealthy writer is found murdered in his locked office, within a locked house, by his wife and best friend just days before he will relocate to Vancouver. Both wife and friend, Osamu Nonoguchi, have solid alibis. Nonoguchi is also a writer, although not as successful as his friend. The case is further complicated by detective Kaga’s prior connection with Nonoguchi; both were teachers many years ago.
Kara’s unraveling of the mystery is painstaking.
For me, the mystery was not much of a mystery. Also, the murderer is revealed very early in the book. From then on, the plot becomes one of discovering the motive and of uncovering the layers behind the murder.
Recommended although slow moving for an American reader.
Death of a Dream Catcher, by Linda Norlander. is the fifth in the Cabin by the lake series. I think it is the least successful.
Jamie Forrest is a transplanted New Yorker to an inherited cabin by a lake in Minnesota. In this outing, she is engaged to Jim Monroe. He reveals that his older brother Eli, a high school athlete. went swimming with a group of friends and drowned. Now, with a high school reunion, the ghosts of that twenty year old summer have risen up again. On a camping trip to Bear Island, Jim goes off alone and when he returns he is in a dark mood. Jamie is so distracted worrying about this that she trips over a tree root and falls, breaking her arm. But Jim refuses to tell her the whole story,’for her safety.’ The reunion, which both Jamie and Jim attend, only deepens the mystery. What happened to Lucy, the sister of the housekeeper for the elderly lawyer Jamie has befriended? More concerningly, what is going on with Jim? He is acting out of character and refuses to tell Jamie anything.
The setting is, as usual, well portrayed and the mystery is interesting. But the relationship between Jim and Jamie raised a whole forest of red flags for me. He takes all his phone calls outside and behaves very secretively. He keeps warning her to stay out of it, ‘for her safety’. And after she follows him, and saves not only Jim but other characters as well, he blows up at her. I began wondering why she even wanted to marry the man.
Dr. Jonathan Gray is a coroner/pathologist in New Orleans. He is elevated to the post unexpectedly when the supervisor, and his mentor, dies unexpectedly. Gray is quickly drawn into a several cases involving, first, the murder of two important New Orleans citizens. At the same time, the local priest asks him to talk to a couple who have retreated to the church for sanctuary. Gray, and the local NOPD Sprance, dive into the cases. A surprise confrontation with a journalist shocks Gray into digging deeper into his mentor. Gray, his wife, the journo, and others are soon in danger of their lives.
The beginning was a little slow moving as Gray treats the reader to a blow by blow description of an autopsy. Not needed. But once past the first few chapters, the action picks up and the book becomes unputdownable.
Recommended.
The Amberglow Candy store is a strange book.The first chapter concerns a high school student who worries her boyfriend does not love her as she loves him. A mysterious shrine leads to an equally mysterious path to a candy store. The proprietor is, as is soon obvious, a magical being. The sweets are also magical. Like many children’s stories, there is a moral at the end of each of the chapters, which are linked only by the candy store.. Recommended for the reader who wants the offbeat.
An electrical storm last Thursday took out my electricity, briefly, and my cable. Six days later, we finally got it back. I have been on the verge of canceling and go to another provider for some time. This almost pushed me off the edge. Nothing the ‘agents’ suggested worked. We finally had to have a technician, which Optimum fought every step of the way, to diagnose the problem.
The real lesson is how dependent on this we are. I did as much as I could on the phone but believe me, a phone is not a replacement for wifi.
Anyway, I read several books.
Dying Cry, by Mitzushima, is the tenth book in the series. In this one, Mattie, Robo, Cole and family are on a vacation in the snowy Colorado mountains. They are snowshoeing when they hear a terrified cry ahead and shortly after a boulder comes crashing down and buries the body. The victim turns out to be Cole’s assistant Tess’s husband.
Murder or accident? Another captivating mystery.
History Lessons by Zoe B. Wallbrook, was a freebee at one of the conferences I attended. Daphne is a history professor on the tenure track at a prestigious college. When she receives a weird text in terrible French, she deletes it. But when the sender of that text is discovered murdered, she is drawn into the mystery of his death. Who would want to murder Sam, the golden boy of the anthropology department? It turns out, there are many many people with a motive. Daphne is assaulted and abducted before she uses her scholarly skills to solves the case.
Sealed with a hiss is number 33 of the 34 Mrs. Murphy mysteries by Rita Mae Brown. In this outing, a car with the driver still in it is discovered on a stream near Crozet, Virginia. It is discovered by ‘Harry” and her band of animals, who are in the area to work on the restoration of an old segregated school. It was closed in 1959 when segregated schools ended. Harry, and the other regular characters, have been working to restore it as a sort of museum.
But the 15 acres behind the school is of great interest to a local realtor who presses the local history group to intercede with the mayor, who is opposed to developing the acreage, on his behalf.
The restoration work and the history, especially the racial history, of his area is fascinating. But the pacing for the mystery is off, with the solution at the end feeling rushed.
A disappointment.
This is number 9 of 11 of the Timber Creek K9 mysteries. This continues to be a wonderful series.
Just days from her wedding to Cole Walker, Mattie and her dog Robo are called to the Pacific Northwest to search for a missing 9 year old. Since his mother is a world famous actress, all hands are on deck to find the boy. But the dampness, constant rain, and thick undergrowth make for an even more difficult search than ever. But the information that there have been several missing children raises a red flag for Mattie.
Then one of the other search dogs becomes seriously ill, and Mattie is directed to an area with several dead wildlife animals and a possibly poisoned stream. And soon after, Robo finds the graves of two children.
As is the case with this series, what is supposed to be a simple search becomes something more serious and complicated. Highly Recommended.
Standing Dead, by Margaret Mizushima, is the eighth installment in the Timber Creek K9 series.
It begins with Mattie, and her newly found sister Julia, traveling to Mexico to meet with their mother Ramona, She is the only eyewitness to the long ago case involving Mattie’s biological father Daniel Wray, his murder, and the allegations that he was part of a gang running guns and drugs into the US and Canada. But when the two women arrive at Ramona’s house, she and her husband are gone.
When Mattie arrives home in Timber Creek, she finds a note pinned to her back door, saying that “he is tied to a tree in the standing dead” at a nearby campsite. The note is signed Mattie and the sheriff’s team race over, and find Ramona’s dead husband tied to a tree.
Another note warns Mattie more is coming.
As Mattie, Robo and Brody race to discover who is behind this, where they are hiding, more of Mattie’s loved ones are threatened and/or captured.
Clarissa Bell is an Oxford trained archaeologist in the 1920s so no one takes her seriously. But her father’s wealth enables her to join a dig in Egypt. And her speciality on pottery and various Egyptian pigments quickly embroils her in a mystery involving missing artifacts, forgeries, and murder. She meets a charming rogue, Benedict Quinn, who may or may not be trustworthy. Events take a serious turn when she realizes some of the forgeries are designed to suppress information – and several groups do not want this to get out. She is threatened, kidnapped and almost killed before the murderer is discovered.
But the man behind the larger crime remains unknown.
This mystery had more than a whiff of Crocodile on the Sandbank (the first Amelia Peabody mystery by Elizabeth Peters.) Clarissa is an annoying protagonist, especially in the beginning; arrogant, a know-it-all and reckless to the point of foolishness. I almost didn’t finish the book because of her character. However, her flaws smooth out a little, and some explanation is given for her academic arrogance. The mystery is interesting and the setting can’t be beat. All the information on pottery and pigments was very interesting.
