Tag Archives: murder mysteries

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I have been a fan of Lori Robbins since Murder in the First Position, part of her ballet themed mysteries. (She has since been nominated for an Agatha Award for the fifth in this series, appropriately titled Murder in Fifth Position.)

In Lesson Plan for Murder, and its sequel Study Plan for Murder, she changes her setting to a High School. Her protagonist, an English teacher, investigates two murders connected to the school.

In Lesson Plan for Murder, a truly obnoxious fellow teacher is murdered. Theories run rampant, including suicide, but Liz Hopewell is convinced no English teacher would commit suicide without leaving a perfectly composed note. She then finds some mysteriously coded notes on classic books, which Liz is convinced hold the key to the solution. Despite warnings from her husband, and a handsome detective, Liz throws herself into investigating. When several more teachers are poisoned, Liz realizes the killer is someone in the school, and he won’t stop. Liz continues until she identifies the killer, and almost loses her life in the process.

Study Guide for Murder is a more personal mystery. Liz’s husband is eager for them to join an upscale golf club and he wants the sports-challenged Liz to learn golf. At her first lesson, a man is murdered with her golf club. Liz is on the case, assisted by her sister. Now Liz is the prime suspect.

At the same time, Liz and her sister are researching their past, the father who abandoned them for another family, and who owed money all over town. The investigation brings them to the rundown streets of Brooklyn, their childhood home, and a family mystery.

Highly Recommended. The characters feel very real, Liz is an engaging detective, and the setting is great. I can’t wait for the next book in this series.

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After a week spent in the Mediterranean (more on that later) and the weekend immediately after at Malice Domestic (one of the major writing conferences) I am finally back to my regular schedule.

The Burmese Kitten: An Emma Grant Mystery

When Emma Grant’s best friend decides to move out to live with her partner, Emma Grant advertises for a female roommate to share her apartment. Instead, two men show up. The handsome polished Bob Appleton and the slovenly and abrasive student Steve Gorey. Although she refuses them the room, both men begin cycling in and out of her life.

But Emma has other problems to worry about. Her partner, and uncle, wants to expand her business, the Empire Assurance Company. And more seriously, there is a fire at a house Emma’s company insures; a fire which is quickly determined as arson. Then two bodies are discovered in the ruins. By the time Emma works through the various threads and solves the murders, we have seen greed, antiquities smuggling, prostitution and more.

This is a fairly long book. I also found the murderer pretty easy to identify. But the characters are both believable and interesting and the scenes of Albany at this time are fascinating. Recommended.

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The Unquiet dead, by Stacie Murphy, is the second in the Amelia Matthews series. I loved the first one, Deadly Fortune, and this second Gilded Age New York mystery is just as good.

Amelia is a psychic, working in a gambling establishment that also fulfills other vices. She is still recovering after her stay in the notorious Blackwell prison, and trying to control her psychic gift – which more often seems like a curse. She has no interest in investigating yet another murder but when Miles, the fifteen year old son of a Black waiter who works with her and her brother Jonas is accused of the murder of a six year old girl, Amelia has to become involved. Especially when it is revealed Ginny Holloway was not the first child to go missing.

The investigation brings her to the Polish community of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in close contact with Peter Rhodes, a reporter, and back in touch with Andrew Cavanaugh.

The mystery is great. Murphy does a wonderful job with the setting. Like Anne Perry and Victoria Thompson, she perfectly delineates the entitlement and hypocrisy of the upper class. Both Amelia are believable people. The supernatural element is not as front and center as it was in the first book but is still an important element.

Highly Recommended.

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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.

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When a young girl goes missing in the Colorado mountains, Mattie Cobb and her K-9 partner, Robo, go on the hunt for her, unfortunately discovering the girl’s body in a shallow grave and her dog with a bullet wound of her own.

The wounded dog is brought to the local vet, a single dad whose daughter was a good friend of the murdered girl. Mattie suspects she knows more than she is telling.

When Belle, the dog evacuates envelopes filled with cocaine, the case takes on a whole new dimension. Mattie stays the course, putting herself in danger, to solve the murder and Save others from being mrdered.

Recommended. Mattie and Robo are a great team and the setting is well delineated. I will be reading others.

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When Annie Gore leaves the Army, in which she enlisted to escape her troubled childhood, she sets up as a private investigator. A young man approaches her to investigate a case ten years old. Three little girls disappeared and although one has been returned, the other two were never seen again. Annie does not want to take the case. It reminds her too much of her own background. But she is broke.

She goes to the holler and begins investigating, stirring up a lot of feelings in the town. She is asked to drop the case more than once. But she persists, although someone shoots at her. And then another little girl disappears.

Threaded through the mystery is a superstition about a witch and the two girls she takes as her own. The characters are clearly drawn and the mystery is so clever I never guessed who the kidnapper and murderer were.

Highly recommended.

Ancient Religious Mysteries

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In A Murder of Furies, Martis undergoes an initiation in order to embark upon several quests.

Although I imagined most of what Martis endures, I read widely about the ancient mysteries, particularly about Dionysus and Artemis. Both are very old Gods and it is believed both were present in the pantheon of Bronze Age Crete. Because these were mysteries, known only to the initiated, not much was known about either.

However, we can make some educated guesses.

Since Dionysus was the God of wine, ecstasy, and music, it is thought his rites involved all three. (Both wine and hallucinogenics, as well as sex , dancing and singing.) The following is a quote from The Bacchae by Euripides.

“Following the torches as they dipped and swayed in the darkness, they climbed mountain paths with head thrown back and eyes glazed, dancing to the beat of the drum which stirred their blood’ ‘In this state of ekstasis or enthusiasmos, they abandoned themselves, dancing wildly and shouting ‘Euoi!’ [the god’s name] and at that moment of intense rapture became identified with the god himself. They became filled with his spirit and acquired divine powers.

Dionysus predates the Olympian pantheon so this wild release is wholly different from the cool logic of an Athena or measured behavior of Apollo.

The other God, or Goddess in this case, that I researched was Artemis. Her great temple at Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Like Dionysus, she is thought to be of pre-Greek origin, a goddess in her own right, before the Classical Greeks tied her to Zeus and put her in with their Olympic Gods. In Minoan Crete, there was a link between a goddess Britomartis and Artemis. Both were hunters, nurturers of the young, and virgins. In both cases, the bear was sacred to them. (In Murder of Furies, I begin with a ceremony in which little girls dress as bears, a ceremony also described as occurring in Classical Athens.

In both cases, we know very little of the mysteries involving their rites. (No one talked, apparently.) My takeaway, though, was that the initiations involved a transformation into someone different and that is what I tried to convey with Martis (whose name I adapted from Britomartis. I will add that the initiation was as difficult as the final quest itself.

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The mystery really begins with a bang when a masked intruder bursts into Blubber B Gone ( a weight loss chain) and murders the owner.

Camerin Torres takes a new job with Trend magazine and although assigned to copyediting, begins to investigate the murder. She soon realizes that murders always follow visits by Terry Mangel, and his body positivity traveling group, and the murders are always of people associated with weight loss businesses. Since Camerin herself has unresolved issues surrounding weight and weight loss, she is drawn further and further in to the investigation, even traveling to Philadelphia to visit the most recent stop of Mangel’s show. Her impulsive action puts her in legal trouble and her life in danger.

An unexpected romance blossoms between Camarin and Trend’s owner, who has secrets of his own.The romance distracts a bit from the mystery, but the central theme of this society’s focus on weight was captivating. The list of research materials at the end was also very interesting. A mystery that makes one think.

Recommended

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Hooker Avenue, by Jode Millman, takes place in Poughkeepsie, New York. Since I live close by, have lived in the Hudson Valley most of my life, and attended college in Poughkeepsie, this is familiar territory.

The mystery follows several characters. Jessie Martin, Det Ebony Jones and Lissie Sexton. Jess, a disgraced lawyer, sees a shiny flash in her headlights one rainy night. Lissie is trapped in a storm drain and in danger of drowning. This event begins a chain that links the three women together in the hunt for a serial killer.

Lissie in particular is a captivating, although not particularly likable, character. Severely beaten, she narrowly escapes the killer. But, as a prostitute with a rap sheet, she is dismissed until Ebony ties the beating to a string of missing women.

Exciting and enjoyable. My only criticism is that the wrap up could have been tightened up.

Recommended.