River of Fallen Angels is the latest in Rowland’s Victorian mystery series. It starts with a bang when Sarah, Hugh and Mick find human remains on the bank of the Thames. Not the whole body, mind, but a few pieces. The so-called Torso Killer is back.
Sarah and her posse jump into the investigation. But Sarah and her husband are almost immediately at odds in whom they suspect.And Inspector Reid, who believes the Torso killer and the Ripper are one and the same, takes another tack entirely.
While Barrett investigates suspects from the Ripper murders, Sarah’s sister Sally has the brilliant idea to search the personals. Doing so leads them to a woman who was once missing but now is in an insane asylum. Sarah begins to focus on a strange religion, the Haven of Love, and the charismatic leader who follows it.
Meanwhile, the bitter rivalry between Reid and Sarah intensifies, but results in a totally unimagined twist at the end. Highly Recommended.
Chilled to the dog bone is S.A. Kazlo’s fifth book.As in the previous offerings, the action takes place in Wings Falls, New York. All the familiar characters are in place.
Decorated outhouses (yes, really) with a prize going to the best one are a popular town winter event. The Loopy Ladies have an entry. Gladys, one of the best and funniest characters, will ride the outhouse across the ice. But the morning of the competition, a disliked man is found frozen to death in the outhouse. And both Gladys’s and Sam’s( that’s Samantha) fingerprints are all over the water bottles outside.
But the victim was so unpopular there are many suspects.
Worse, from Sam’s point of view, a new woman is working at town hall, an attractive blonde named Sunny Foxx. And Sam catches Hank, her significant other, with his arms around Sunny in his office!
Light, frothy, laugh-out loud funny in places. My only criticism is that Kazlo uses the same descriptions repeatedly. Hank is always described with crystal-blue eyes, for example, and Candie, Sam’s cousin, has violet eyes.
Lies, lost and found was the third Boulden I’ve read and it is just as enjoyable as the others. This is the second in the Lake Amelia series.
While Rose is cleaning out the family home after her father’s death, she finds $10,000 and a note in an unfamiliar handwriting. Who left the money? Rose embarks on a search for the money’s owner and soon finds herself searching for the note’s writer as well. Her search involves her in a mystery surrounding immigrants and soon spirals into trafficking, murder and the involvement of people Rose knows and trusts.
This is a thriller rather than a mystery, but it is certainly engrossing. Recommended.
Operation Blackbird is the second in the Bronze Compass set. The compass is a very small part of the book, following The Bronze Compass. In this outing, the compass plays a very small part and, in my opinion, is unnecessary.
Miriam, code named Claudia Fischer among others, is sent to Germany on a mission to spirit out a Russian scientist who wants to defect. Berlin is divided into east and west and it will be tricky moving out not only the scientist but his family as well.
From the first, the mission goes south and Miriam is left with the scientist and his family. The only other operative she trusts is lost somewhere in Berlin. Using contacts she made during her time in intelligence during WWII, Miriam manages to move the family to safety in London. But Jake, her trusted companion, is still missing. Miriam persuades her boss to allow her to go back into Germany to look for Jake, and this time she has to avoid the KGB and the Stasi (the East German secret police.)
perationOperation Blackbird is an action filled espionage novel where very few can be trusted. Plotting is definitely Butler’s strength and I was struck over and over again at how comfortable she is writing about this era. The clothing, the mannerisms, the descriptions – all seem totally believable. Highly recommended.
I thought I’d read all of the Holmes/Russell mysteries, only to discover this one; A Letter of Mary.
Mary Russell and her husband, retired detective Sherlock Holmes, receive an old friend and archaeologist at their Sussex estate. Dorothy Ruskin presents them with an old manuscript that she excavated in Palestine. It appears to be from Mary Magdalene and suggests she is one of Jesus’s apostles. The letter appears genuine but surely it couldn’t be. Could it?
Both Russell and Holmes are bored with their current lives and agree to look into the letter further. Then Dorothy Ruskin is murdered. Now the case suddenly achieves significant more importance. The game is afoot!
Although it is a bit of a stretch to imagine Sherlock Holmes married, these books work. I particularly enjoy the antiquated style Laurie King employs; it is so appropriate to the era. Besides, I love the archeological mysteries; Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody mysteries are still among my favorites.
This also has a clever mystery. Highly Recommended.
Had a great time at Mocha Lisa’s on Saturday evening with my fellow Mavens: Amy Patrica Meade, Frankie Bailey, Liz Irish, Chris Keefer, Jacqueline Boulden, and Shelley Jones. Great coffee, great pastries (just ask my husband) and a wonderful and engaged crowd. I also picked up some new books. Expect reviews.
This week I read The Last Wizard’s Ball, by Charlaine Harris. It is number six, and listed as the final volume in the series. I hope not since it ended on several cliffhangers.
Lizbeth Rose accompanies her sister Felicia to the Wizard’s ball in the Holy Russian Empire. The ball is similar to the Regency London season, a chance to see and be seen. Since Felicia is a powerful death wizard, and beautiful as well, she is much in demand. But, on one of their outings, someone fires an arrow which strikes Felix, another death wizard and Felicia’s mentor. Another attack occurs at a ball, and then another. At the same time, Lizbeth Rose experiences several odd conversations. What is going on?
War is brewing in Europe. It seems far away to Lizbeth but the Germans and Japanese are represented at these events, and they are desperate to add Felicia to their stable of wizards. Lizbeth realizes her husband and her sister are keeping secrets from her, serious, earth changing secrets. Then Felicia, who is only sixteen, does something so reckless, so dangerous, and so earth shattering, it changes everything.
Murder in the Trembling Lands is the newest Benjamin January mystery by Barbara Hambly. It is Carnival time, and Ben is working asa musician at all the balls and fetes. He is therefore present when one man calls out another, accusing him of being an Octoroon instead of a white man. A duel ensues, and Ben is asked to attend as a physician.
One of the men, Corvallis, is shot. When Ben examines the body, he realizes the victim has been shot by a rifleman in the trees, not the other duelist. Moreover, the other man has recently had all his gambling debts paid off. So the murder of Corvallis was murder, and a carefully planned one as well.
Shortly thereafter, Ben is asked by his white stepbrother to search an old and abandoned plantation of something – papers or something else – by the daughter of a disgraced man who was accused of treason during the War of 1812. Ben, himself, fought in that war, primarily at the Chalmette Battlefield. In that battle, a large and professional army of British soldiers was defeated by Andrew Jackson’s hastily assembled army of volunteers, including the free blacks like Ben.
Now Ben has several tasks before the murder can be solved. He must discover what exactly happened during the War of 1812, and the battle at Chalmette. He has to help his step brother, and protect him from his foolishness. And, Ben has to accomplish all this while working, and trying to survive the men trying to kill him.
This is a rousing story with an intricate plot. But for me, the attraction is always the exotic culture of New Orleans during this time and the complication interpersonal relationships. The rules governing the whites, the free blacks, and the slaves are complicated to say the least. This is a society where the wealthy white planters choose placees, beautiful women of color, as their mistresses. Thus, it is common for the white children to have half-siblings from ‘the shady side of the street’. The white family demonstrate a variety of reactions to their darker family members, from complete acceptance to outright hatred. I certainly don’t blame the Americans, recent entries into this society, of being confused by the complex rules governing it.
I chose this mystery for the book discussion group at the library. We had a very lively discussion.
Olivia Watson moves into a house in Knightsbridge, New York. One night, she sees a man appear at her door and then disappear through a wall. After she sees him three more times, she speaks to him. He responds and they discover they are living in the same house, only, while Olivia is in 2014 Stephen Blackwell is in 1934. A detective on the police force, he is currently involved in investigating the murder of the bank manager and the theft of a significant amount of money.
His investigation proceeds as his relationship with Olivia progresses to a tentative friendship.
The settings, particularly the 1934 world, are wonderfully rendered. Some of the touches are really clever. They discover that they both know some of the same people. But Stephen knows Annabel, for example, as a fourteen-year-old, while Olive knows her as an old woman. Unsettling to say the least. Fun and thought provoking. Recommended.
I have been a fan of Barbara Hambly’s since she wrote fantasy and science fiction. (The series about the Dog Wizard is an especial favorite.) I love the Benjamin January books.
January is a free man of color in New Orleans. Although trained as a doctor, as a black man he is not allowed to practice so he supports his family as a musician.
In 1840, William Harry Harrison, an Indian fighter, was running for president. January pays only a little attention to politics but since the run up to a large rally in New Orleans is filled with balls and other events, he is busy playing. One day after a fist fight between two suitor for a beautiful flirt named Marie- Joyeuse Maginot, she is found murdered and the only black person there is promptly arrested. January immediately begins investigating to save his friend.
A story that begins with an attack on January by an escaped slave (for his clothes) ends with January racing across roofs to prevent an assassination.
As usual, Hambly’s mystery is excellent. But, also as usual, what strikes me most is the difficulty of living in a slave state as a free man. January always carries his papers, and even then risks being sold into slavery and possibly ending up in the cane fields. A smart man, he must hide his intelligence from the wealthy white men who hire him as a musician. This dynamic gives the Hambly mysteries an added dimension beyond the historical facts, great characters and wonderful puzzles.
After a week’s vacation in Maine, I am resuming my usual schedule. During this week, I read the latest by C. S. Harris.
Who will remember is Harris’ twentieth Sebastian St. Cyr mystery. I’ve read all of these books and enjoyed them all.
1816, the year without a summer. A young ragged boy appears at St. Cyr’s home and tells him there is a dead body hanging by one foot in a ruined chapel. St. Cyr investigates and discovers it is. What’s more, it is a Nobel, brother of one of the Regent’s boon companions. The victim, Farnsworth, is well-known as a crusader against crime, sin, immorality.
But as St. Cyr investigates, he discovers Farnsworth may not be the good and pure man many believe.
And what is the link with the Frenchman who may be an assassin sent by Marie-Therese, daughter of Louis and Marie-Antoinette, and the sole remaining member of her family?
The setting – Regency England with glaring economic inequality – and the poor who struggle to survive is beautifully rendered. Another winner! Highly recommended.
