Category Archives: mysteries

The Red Queen, by Martha Grimes**

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What a shame. I was initially delighted to see a new installment of this long running series, but something has gone badly wrong here. Nevertheless, my thanks go to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The Richard Jury series was wildly successful for decades; I first began reading it in the 1990s. I was pleased to see the familiar characters, particularly Wiggins, the hypochondriacal assistant to our protagonist, as well as Jury’s friend Melrose Plant—with a brief showing of Plant’s domineering and pretentious Aunt Agatha—and Cyril the Cat, the feline that makes Jury’s boss apoplectic, yet is never truly banished. And that’s about all of the joy I found here at all.

Was there an editor involved at any point in this process? Because it sure doesn’t look like it. What a miserable jumble of elements. I couldn’t tell who was coming and who was going. At first I thought it might just be me, so I backtracked, but…nope.

I had access to an audio galley, and if there had been anything here to save, the reader probably could have done it, but the reader couldn’t rewrite the book.

Diehard fans, stay away from this thing. It will break your heart.

The Tree of Light and Flowers, by Thomas Perry****

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The Tree of Light and Shadows is the eleventh and final entry in the iconic Jane Whitefield series by Thomas Perry.  My thanks go to NetGalley and The Mysterious Press for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

For those unfamiliar, Jane Whitefield is a Seneca Indian woman with a past avocation of helping people that need to disappear. The person in question might be a woman running from an abusive relationship; an innocent person that’s inadvertently run afoul of the mafia or some other dangerous group or individual; or someone that has been wrongfully convicted of a crime. Jane combines her Native tracking skills with modern methods of blending in or hiding away. However, in recent years she’s given it up, eschewing the danger for a normal life with her husband, who is a physician, and their baby girl, May in Amherst, New York.

However, the universe has other plans for her right now. Clare, a young Indian girl who has stabbed her rapist, has learned that she is wanted for murder. The dead man was Caucasian, and he moved in powerful circles. Knowing she is unlikely to get a fair shake in an Oklahoma courtroom, she heads for New York to find the distant relative that she’s heard will help people like her.

At the same time, a Russian woman named Magda has been hired by someone with a vendetta to find and kill Jane.

The dual storylines are deftly handled, which doesn’t surprise me, since our author is Thomas Perry. But there is one misstep that happens early on that niggles at me for the rest of the book. When Clare finds Jane, Jane decides the girl is too young to be established on her own, so she tells her husband that she wants Clare to remain with them. Clare will go to school and help with the baby. And then—here it comes—she runs out to do errands and leaves the baby with Clare! Would someone as seasoned and astute as Jane leave her infant daughter in the care of someone that might be attacked by people from her past, and do so before the girl has been in her home for even 48 hours? I find this so jarring that I am unable to entirely forget about it for the duration of the novel.

Nevertheless, the book holds my interest, and I look forward to my session reading it each day. When the conclusion is near, I can’t walk away from it until I see how it ends. This doesn’t happen often. I am lucky enough to have been given access to both the audio and digital review copies. I haven’t been able to learn who the narrator is, but whoever he is, he’s good.

I just read of Perry’s sudden death while writing this review. He was such a force within the world of mystery writers that I can hardly believe it. While this book wasn’t the best thing he ever wrote, it is still quite good.

The Hadacol Boogie, by James Lee Burke*****

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The Hadacol Boogie is the 25th in the Dave Robicheaux series, and in some regards, it is the best. My great thanks go to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

All of the books in this series boast complex plots and resonant characters. Particularly rich is the relationship between Dave and his former cop partner, Clete Purcel, whom he has known since early childhood. In most stories, Clete is a loose cannon—the reason he is no longer a cop, but a private eye—and Dave is his moderating influence.  “For whatever reason, Clete could not resist swatting a hornet’s nest wherever he went.“  But this story presents a shift, in which Dave is not fully in control of his own behavior. I have never seen anyone else, whether writing fiction or nonfiction, refer to a “dry drunk,” which is when a recovering alcoholic, without having consumed alcohol, exhibits the behaviors of a drunk, with terrible impulse control and bouts of rage. Dave does some of that here, and Clete is the one to rein him in.

But that isn’t the greatest thing about this story, to be honest. I’m ready to be done with mysteries involving alcoholic protagonists, and so Burke’s excellent writing skills prevent me from throwing up my hands or rolling my eyes, but the “dry drunk” isn’t a compelling part of the narrative for me. No, apart from the fact that Burke is a compelling craftsman—the Denver Post once called him “America’s best writer”—this particular novel is interesting to me because Burke has, at last, developed a female character that doesn’t fit into the Madonna-whore dichotomy that marks most of his earlier work. (An earlier exception is Dave’s boss, Helen, but it feels as if Burke is cheating a little bit there. I enjoy reading about Helen, but it’s clear that the one and only reason she isn’t dying to hop in bed with Dave, like every other female character has, or has wanted to, is because she is a lesbian.) Valerie Benoit is Dave’s new partner. It doesn’t take long for us to be aware that Detective Benoit has a thing for Dave. She’s young, he’s 60, but damn, he’s such a hot guy. At this point I’m ready to toss my reader across the room. Please, no! No! But the story doesn’t follow the trajectory that other women tend to do in Robicheaux’s books. Benoit wants Dave badly, yes, and I wish he’d left that out of this, but he didn’t. The thing that makes this story different is that Benoit is developed as a character should be; her love for Robicheaux isn’t all that we learn about her, nor necessarily the most important. And she and Dave don’t land in bed.

How cool is it for a highly successful writer to show this kind of growth when he’s past 80? I am so damn impressed, and I hope that we continue to see Benoit, not as his wife or his lover, but as a separate character with an independent identity.

I confess that I have never understood the culture of the place where this story unfolds; there are social formalities and intricacies mentioned that simply don’t apply in 2026 Seattle. I suspect these niceties also apply to the author, so it’s just as well I haven’t met him; I have no doubt I’d stick my foot in it, probably sooner rather than later.

Like the other books in this series, this one will appeal most to readers that lean a bit to the left, and that enjoy a literary mystery. There’s plenty of action here, but those that don’t want descriptive settings and allegory should probably go find themselves something else to read.

This book can certainly be read as a standalone, but it will resonate even more to the faithful that have read some or all of the series, as it does build on earlier events. Highly recommended.

Nash Falls, by David Baldacci**

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David Baldacci is a veteran mystery writer, but the Walter Nash series is brand new. I was not one of his faithful readers, but I wasn’t sure why, exactly; perhaps in the past, I’d tried picking up one of his books, become distracted by something else, and not gone back to it. So when I was approached by NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing to read and review the first book in this series, I welcomed the opportunity. My thanks go to them even though I didn’t come away enthralled.

Our premise is this: Walter Nash is a high placed executive. He’s courteous and loving, and he works way too many hours at Sybaritic Investments. However, following his father’s funeral, Nash is approached by the FBI. Unbeknownst to him, Sybaritic serves as a money launderer. There’s a lot of money involved. Nash can work with the FBI to expose the two top criminals—his boss, Rhett, and his boss’s boss, Victoria Steers, who heads an international criminal syndicate. Or, he can go down with the ship after the Feds move in, and that will mean a great deal of jail time.

This story reads like the fever dream of a nerdy guy that wishes he were a mean, lean fighting machine. Good ole Walt would never commit an act of violence of any kind, but now, gosh, shucks, he just has to. He gets a new name, is sent out to train himself in martial arts and every other sort of physical badassery; his head is shaved, and it and nearly every other part of his physique is covered in tattoos. The new Walt is bad, bad, bad, and darn, isn’t this fun?

Meanwhile, let’s look at the female characters in this tale. His daughter, whom he loved but I did not—entitled, wealthy brat—dies. The bad guys get her, and that becomes his justification for everything that follows. (This happens early on.) His wife, it turns out, has been sleeping around and isn’t all that attached to him, despite the vast resources he has placed at her very fingertips. Victoria Steers, the boss lady, is a sociopath, ordering people tortured and/or killed without her pulse quickening. It’s just business. And then we have two side characters, Walt’s stepmother—also immoral, having slept with Walt while married to his dad—is one, and the other is Rhett’s little sister, who is intellectually disabled. In short, we have a number of women that have no redeeming qualities, and none that are both capable and decent.

So, what’s not to love here? (Eye roll.)

The end of the book isn’t an ending, and while I get it that Baldacci is starting a new series and wants to keep readers invested, I’m ready to climb off the bus. Now that I know this author’s general trajectory, I know enough.

So if you enjoy this sort of thing, don’t care even a little about plausible plots and scenarios, and have little enough regard for women that you don’t mind these Madonna/whore characters, then good for you. Pull out your plastic and dive into this series. As for me, I need a shower and some mouthwash.

Jigsaw, by Jonathan Kellerman****

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Can you think of a mystery series that is as long running and reliably entertaining as the Alex Delaware series, by Jonathan Kellerman? This is his 41st, and it’s going strong. My thanks go to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the review copy. This book will be available to the public February 3, 2026.

After so many installments, the regular characters in this series feel like old friends. When homicide detective Milo Sturgis careens into the kitchen of his longtime bestie, Dr. Alex Delaware and raids the fridge like a huge, gay version of Dagwood Bumstead, I can’t help smiling. Milo, Alex, it’s good seeing you again! Most episodes begin this way. Unlike many well-established series, however, we don’t take a great deal of time for character development, because there are three murders here and they cannot wait!

The first appears to be obvious; a young woman is found murdered in her home, and the cigarette butts nearby bear the DNA of her boyfriend. But it’s not as it seems. Next, an elderly woman—a former cop—is missing, and a welfare check finds her dead, dismembered, in her freezer. Yikes! The chief suspect, her developmentally disabled daughter, is later also found dead. And the woman in the freezer is a colleague, known to Milo.

The interesting part about this one is that the victim, the former cop, is a hoarder. Who knew? Nothing about her suggested that her home would be jammed full of trash, but here we are. Piles of newspaper, food wrappers, mouse droppings, paper sacks full of money, magazines…more bags full of money…

Huh?

Like all of the books in this series, this is a quick read. Partly that’s because it’s fast paced and interesting, and partly it’s because it’s chock full of snappy dialogue. Whereas I miss the humor that is frequently injected into these stories, I appreciate the trend away from the twisted sexual situations that appeared for a few years. All told, this is an excellent entry into a series that has never failed to engage me, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to you.

Wildwood, by Amy Pease*****

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“It was in the ratio of good to bad that monsters were distinguished from decent people.”

My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

This book is the second in a new series by Amy Pease; this is her sophomore debut. I didn’t read the first, so I can tell you with certainty that you don’t have to, either. There are frequent enough references to the backstory here that I could follow it just fine, yet I also wondered why I was invited to read this one without having read the first. I’m over it. This is a terrific series, and when the third installment is written and available, I’ll be ready for it.

The setting is an idyllic small town in Wisconsin. “There was something in the water in Shaky Lake that turned even the toughest people into extras in a Hallmark movie.” Yet things are not as tranquil as they appear. A woman is reported missing, and the authorities that enter find blood spattered all over the walls, pooled on the mattress. Why would anyone do this to a young woman that lived alone in a singlewide trailer? But soon we see that nothing is as it appears.

Our protagonist is Deputy Sheriff Eli North, a recently deployed vet recovering from PTSD and alcoholism. I cringe when I read the latter, burned out as I am on alcoholic crime busters, but happily, booze is not at the forefront of this mystery. The sheriff, Eli’s boss, is also his mother. And this is a breath of fresh air; for a while, it seemed as if every mother in every book was a terrible person.

This is Eli’s investigation, but before we know it, the Feds are involved, too. Turns out that the missing woman—she of the blood-covered trailer—was also a confidential informant of the FBI. From there, the story unfurls in a way I find captivating. The ratio of crime-solving to character development is perfect. Whereas one has to suspend disbelief a little bit, it’s not more so than in most mysteries, and I like the way the ending plays out.

Highly recommended to mystery lovers.

The Briars, by Sarah Crouch*****

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In 2024 author Sarah Crouch made her novelistic debut with Middletide, a hauntingly atmospheric mystery set in her native Pacific Northwest. This year she’s produced The Briars, which shows that where Crouch is concerned, there’s no such thing as a sophomore slump.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the review copy. This book will be available to the public January 13, 2026.

Annie is an Oregon game warden, but a ruined relationship sends her packing across the border of Washington State to the isolated hamlet of (fictional) Lake Lumin. There she finds friendship and a measure of solace, as well as an unexpected connection with the area’s mystery man. But all of it threatens to come crashing down when a teenage girl is brutally murdered and left in the woods near his property.

I enjoyed Crouch’s debut novel, but I love this one even more. Crouch depicts the wilderness of Washington State flawlessly, and I can practically smell the evergreen trees and damp, decaying bark as I read. But The Briars is even more about character, and I feel I know Annie, the mystery man known as Daniel, and local ranger Jake intimately. I am sure by about the halfway mark that I know exactly whodunit, but I tell myself that I don’t mind because the narrative is so compelling. In the end, the joke is on me; I don’t already know who killed that girl, and yet the solution makes sense.

I highly recommend this outstanding mystery to all that love the genre.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7803351642

The Note, by Alafair Burke**

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The Note by Alafair Burke is a thriller that sends three lifelong female friends on a gal pal vacation together; they have skeletons in their closets, scandals from their pasts, and that’s part of the bond. But try though I might, I couldn’t bond with any of them or care about their dilemmas.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Knopf Publishers for the review copy. This book is available now.

The internal narrative was so flaccid that I kept having to go back to reread parts of it, because I realized that I’d zoned out while reading and had no idea what had just happened. Once I had the plot straight, I struggled to recall the names of all three women. (Kelsey, May, and…?)  These characters struck me, when they struck me at all, as vapid and self-absorbed. The dialogue seemed banal.

When I saw in the promotional blurb that these three women would be vacationing together in The Hamptons, it gave me pause. I don’t like reading about rich people, and with a rare exception now and then, I don’t like rich people, period. But there have been a number of times that a terrific novelist has made me forget all about my no-no list, so I crossed my fingers. I’d read one other of Burke’s novels and it was pretty good, so I thought I’d give this one a go; it was a mistake.

I’m trying to think of a saving grace, some positive aspect that I can insert here in order to keep this review from being brutal, but honesty, I come up dry. I cannot recommend this book to you.  

The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2025, by John Grisham and Otto Penzler*****

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John Grisham and Otto Penzler have teamed up and compiled a delightful, high-quality collection of short mystery stories to entertain you. My thanks go to NetGalley, High Bridge Audio, and Penzler Publishers for the review copies. You can buy this book now.

All told, there are 20 stories that made the cut, plus a “bonus” story at the end. This mystifies me; why not just say there are 21 stories? Maybe there’s a tradition of only selecting 20. At any rate, I liked all of them except one, which I’ll explain in a moment. They are all well written, and they encompass a wide variety of subgenres. My favorites are “Home Game,” by Craig Faustus Buck; “Only a Story,” by Kai Lovelace; and “Effie’s Oasis,” by Casey Stegman. I had never even heard of any of these writers, so now I have three new authors to watch for. I was not as fond of “Dream Stuff,” by Lou Manfredo, but that’s because I dislike noir mysteries for the way that women are disrespected. Here’s an example: “Mary Lou, my previously noted overpaid secretary, poked her cute little head into my office…” and it goes on in that vein. I haven’t deducted anything from my rating, because I know that the aspects that I find problematic are part and parcel of noir mysteries, and so I can’t see penalizing this one author in the collection, or Grisham and Penzler, when I know that there are a considerable number of readers that love these stories, and not all of them are men.

One other minor irritation is that I was provided with both the digital and audio versions of the galley, but the stories aren’t in the same order in both books, which led to a fair amount of panicked flipping around my digital copy to try to match up with the story being read. If they’re going to edit the order in one format, I’d appreciate it if they would do it in both so that they match; hopefully this is straightened out in the finished copies.

 But while I’m talking about the audio version, I should also mention that the readers, Marnye Young and Jamie Renell, are top notch. There’s a great deal of dialogue in most of these stories, and they are both pitch perfect in reading the characters’ voices.

Whether you prefer a print or digital copy to read with your eyes, or an audio book that can follow you around while you do other things, you can’t go wrong with this collection. Highly recommended to all that enjoy the genre, and perfect for Halloween.

In the Time of Five Pumpkins, by Alexander McCall Smith*****

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In the Time of Five Pumpkins is the 26th installment of the #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency mysteries by Alexander McCall Smith. This is hands down my favorite cozy series, and it may very well be my favorite series, period. Precious Ramotswe is our chief protagonist and owner of the business, and her easy-going manner with others and her capacity to smooth over a difficult situation are a breath of fresh air. Of course, Precious is fictional, but she feels real to me. I feel as if I have known her for decades, which in the literary sense, I have. My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

As with all of my best loved, long-running mystery series, the joy of reading is only partly to do with the mystery. In fact, I almost think Smith could forget to include a mystery and I might take a good long while to notice; I enjoy greeting the continuing characters that I haven’t seen in some time. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, who is married to Precious and runs a garage in the same building where Precious has her office; Mma Potokwane, Precious’s “traditionally built” best friend, who runs an orphanage and always has fruitcake ready when Precious visits; Charlie, the formerly bumbling mechanic who is shaping up nicely as a part time detective trainee; and of course, Mma Makutsi:

Employees who leave it to their employers to promote them may have a long time to wait, but this was not the fate of Mma Makutsi. She had somehow managed to promote herself, first to the role of senior secretary, then without discussing the matter with Mma Ramotswe, to assistant detective, associate detective, associate director, co-director and so on, to the position she had most recently chosen for herself—executive president for development. This was a novel description and had rather puzzled Mma Ramotswe.

Passages such as this one leave me gasping! How many of us, in a similar situation, would allow someone that we had hired to give herself such exalted titles? It’s both bizarre and preposterous. But there’s never a question of salary; no matter what she calls herself, Mma Makutsi makes the same money as before, and no one here is making very much.

The stories usually have more than one thread, and so it is with this one. A woman arrives from the States to meet someone that turned up in her ancestry search, and the agency is hired to help her find them. At the same time, another case involving marital problems, though not the usual sort, is presented. And a third thread has to do with a shady character that has befriended Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Before all is said and done, Charlie has a “Clovis Anderson moment,” which has been a long time coming, and J.L.B. Matekoni saves his creepy new friend from a “government crocodile.”

This is a series that never gets old, and perhaps because the excitement is ramped up just a tick in this one—not too much, we do want to keep it cozy, after all—it may be my favorite so far. Highly recommended to all that love the genre.