Category Archives: mystery

Finders Keepers, by Stephen King *****

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finderskeepers“For your family, you do all that you can.”

When I read that one, simple sentence, it occurred to me that this common thread runs through a lot of Stephen King’s work, and it’s one reason he has developed such an easy simpatico with much of his readership, despite the murky waters his books bob into. It’s about our family, and about our common humanity, and the bad guys are the ones that can’t be tapped into, that violate that sacred reality.

As the book opens, we have our killer—or one of them—from Mr. Mercedes. And at this point, I have to tell you that if you haven’t read Mr. Mercedes yet, do that before you do this. (Mr. Mercedes is reviewed by me here: https://seattlebookmamablog.org/2015/04/24/mr-mercedes-by-stephen-king/.) Seriously. I’ve seen clueless-seeming individuals out there on social media wondering if it makes a difference, and oh my stars. Why, why, why.

I suppose if you are just stone flat broke and have no access to a public library, and by some stroke of luck you have a free copy of this book but cannot get the first in the series, then yes, King gives you just enough of the back story here to enable you to start midstream. But if at all possible, you really ought to read the first book first. There were so many little poignant moments—for example when Hodges thinks about Janey—that just made my insides do a back flip, and if you plunge into this story first, you’re going to miss so much of that. And in the end, you’re going to want to hunt down Mr. Mercedes and read it anyway, so why not try to do it in order?

All righty. So as our story opens, Morris, one of the murdering thieves from Mr. Mercedes, is an old man now, and he’s just getting out of prison. He’s been waiting a long, long time for this, because he has buried a whole lot of money as well as the last, hand-scribed novels of John Rothstein, a now-dead author whose work he has loved his whole life. He isn’t sure what he wants more, the money—well yeah—or oh my god, those notebooks! To read them! He knows the sensible thing to do is try to sell them, because they’re doubtless worth a small fortune, but first, just to read them. And now he’s out.

What he doesn’t know is that all those buried goodies have been found by a kid who happens to live and play in the area where Morris buried all of that. Nature has changed the contours of the woods where the trunk was interred, and a corner was revealed, just enough to make a naturally bright, curious kid want to know what it was. So that money is gone. It’s gone. In fact, it’s all gone.

The tension in this story builds a lot more slowly than most of King’s work, and at first I thought it was a sign that our author was slowing down. Au contraire, Pierre. Because really, it’s more about the pacing of the genre. When King writes his supernatural baskets o’spiders, he puts that pedal down on the floor, sometimes on the very first page, and it’s like the world’s most terrifying roller coaster until after the climax. The reader’s heart won’t stop slamming till the problem is essentially solved, at least for the moment—I’m talking about his horror novels here, not his mysteries, including this one—until that brief period at the end in which the loose ends are tied up, and the protagonists can laugh about the whole thing over coffee, or whatever.

The tension in a mystery like this one, on the other hand, is a much more gradual climb. It’s supposed to be that way. We get the tingle of dread, the near-misses, but instead of going from zero to eighty in chapter one, it’s more of a traditional hill, building, building, building. It never gets dull, but the reader will actually be able to put the book down to go make dinner, to do homework, to answer the phone. And that doesn’t make it weaker writing; it’s just a different type of story.

Once King gets to the top of that hill somewhere close to the 80% mark, we really have to stay with the book and finish it. Just finish it.

I did not read this as a galley; it was a Mother’s Day gift from one of my sons. They never miss a year, my boys, and they almost always get me one of my most coveted titles. I don’t put a lot of books on my wish list these days because I can get so many outstanding books free, but I had to have this one, and am glad my eagle-eyed son ferreted it out of my list and ordered it for me. Thanks, Benj.

Is it worth your hard-earned dollars? If you like really good mysteries and thrillers, absolutely, positively yes. BUT. You have to read Mr. Mercedes first!

The Last Good Place, by Robin Burcell****

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thelastgoodplaceWhat a treat! They say all stories have already been told once, but I’m telling you, this one hasn’t. Oh, trust me! And my thanks go to Net Galley and Brash Books for a wonderful DRC. This one will be up for sale November 3.

Some may recall the TV series “The Streets of San Francisco”; the show was based on a set of police procedurals by Carolyn Weston. Characters Casey Kellog and Al Krug became TV characters Steve Keller and Mike Stone. In bringing the series back to us in the twenty-first century, new co-author Robin Burcell was asked to update it, since some of the over-the-top methods used originally could get a cop fired these days, and the old methods would not resonate with the public. Burcell has a lengthy background in law enforcement, and now I know that she is also a capable novelist. The pages flew by, and I enjoyed her improvement of the old series.

As the story commences, there have been a series of murders at famous landmarks in San Francisco, and it has been inferred by the media that tourists are at risk. While sometimes life may be cheap, the tourist industry is key to the local economy, and there’s heavy political pressure set to find someone and solve this crime, preferably accurately, but if not…just get someone, haul them in, and charge them.

So when Marcie’s neighbor and good friend Trudy turns up dead, there is speculation. Has she been a victim of this killer, or is it a copycat killing?

We find out right at the get go that Marcie knows a thing or two. For example, she knows that Trudy and her husband are getting a divorce; they are no longer in love. And Marcie also knows that her buddy has been spending some private time with Marcie’s husband. And so while Trudy and her soon-to-be-ex are going to sell their house as part of dividing the spoils of a marriage gone bad, Marcie won’t sell her house. Because it is her house, along with the eucalyptus grove out in the backyard. Her grandfather left her the house, and he left her the trees. He used to tell her that this humble, quiet spot out back was “the last good place”, and Marcie won’t part with it. Not ever. Not even to increase the property’s value—for herself and also for friend Trudy—by making their homes bay view property. Her grandfather preferred the trees to the water view, and so does Marcie.

It’s time to go jogging with Trudy, but Marcie hangs back and hides for a bit. We aren’t quite sure why, apart from the fact that she is suspicious that things are not what they seem to be. Trudy’s been a little strange toward her lately. And what do you know…Trudy dies on the morning jog before Marcie catches up to her.

This is a really accessible story, and I thought I ought to be able to solve the mystery. Goodness knows I read enough of them! And yet, I really didn’t get it. The author doesn’t pull the rug from beneath the reader by introducing a lot of new information at the end, or any of the other unfair devices writers occasionally use in order to make their story’s ending a certain surprise; I had a reasonable shot at it, but I didn’t get it. And I loved the ending!

The characters—the experienced, fatherly, crafty interrogator Al Krug, and his ambitious partner, Casey Kellog, are well developed and personable, but their personal lives don’t distract from the problems at hand. There are a couple of red herrings, but the plot is essentially linear and easy to follow.

All told, this one is a humdinger, and you should read it!

For the Dignified Dead, by Michael Genelin****

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forthedignifieddeadThere’s a murderer on the loose, one that has killed across international boundaries. The weapon of choice? An ice pick. Happily, the case is assigned to total bad-ass Commander Jana Matinova, the best new female detective I’ve seen in emerge in crime fiction in decades. Thank you to Net Galley and Brash Books for the DRC. This title will be available for purchase November 3.

Part of what initially attracted me to this novel was the setting. Though Matinova finds herself crossing into various parts of central Europe, she is based in Slovakia, a country not even on my personal radar. By way of apology, I will point out that for most of my life, a giant swath of Europe and Asia was designated as USSR, and the satellite states lined up like faithful guardians around its perimeter included Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, both of which have been carved into different nations since the Stalinist realm crumbled. So I thought I’d learn a little bit about the contemporary contours of central Europe in the most enjoyable way possible—through fiction.

Genelin doesn’t disappoint. Along with Matinova, we have a collection of other cops, some of whom garnered truly fetching descriptions, such as this one: “With his thinning hair and lopsided smile he looked like a harmless, slightly unkempt beagle without its long ears.”

In addition we have the sinister Koba, a master criminal that Matinova considers akin, perhaps, to Holmes’s Moriarty. Koba’s role in Genelin’s story is complex and fascinating.

But most of all, I appreciated the development of Jana Matinova, both for her silver-bullet speed and cleverness, and also for that which is not included. We never hear about her hair, makeup, or her figure; we don’t need to know anything about her love life, and if she experiences any ambivalence about her lack of a domestic life, we don’t hear about it. In fact, Genelin treats his protagonist just as he would a male protagonist.

Now isn’t that a breath of fresh air?

The fifth star, which I would have loved to be able to add to this engaging story, is denied because of problematic passages that popped up often enough to warrant ten different notations in my kindle: “Too wordy! Tighten it up!” It seemed either as if there were two writers, one more capable than the other, co-writing the novel, or as if someone whose mother tongue is not English was struggling to say what needed saying. I noticed this was most frequent during passages of narrative, and less likely to occur during dialogue. Whatever it is, it could benefit greatly from either some rewritten passages or strong editing. But every time I found my eyes jerking through one of these verbose areas in the text, sooner or later we would come out slick as a whistle, and everything would commence to flow again. I don’t think a published text has ever confused me so much in this regard.

That being said, I would cheerfully read other books in this series given the opportunity. Because when push comes to shove, Commander Jana Matinova is a champ!

Pop Goes the Weasel, by M.J. Arlidge***

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popgoestheweaselPop Goes the Weasel is the second in a detective series featuring Helen Grace. Thank you to Net Galley and Random House-Penguin for the DRC. The title goes up for sale October 6.

Arlidge is an experienced, confident writer. The opening of the book is among the best openers I have seen for quite awhile:

“The fog crept in from the sea, suffocating the city. It descended like an invading army, consuming landmarks, choking out the moonlight, rendering Southampton a strange and unnerving place.”

The tone is thus set for a grisly murder mystery, the perfect mood for an October read.

The premise here is that someone is murdering men that seek the services of prostitutes, and their slayer doesn’t merely kill the men, but eviscerates them without the courtesy of killing them first. Well, this may not be exactly evisceration: they aren’t removing their digestive tracts, but rather their hearts. And while I read that description before requesting this DRC, I should have dwelt on it a moment or two longer, because this particular story really passed my “ick” threshold, and it was my own fault for not being more careful in reading the promotional description.

That said, although it was a bit much for me, it probably won’t be for you, not if you watch a lot of cop shows on television or view a lot of adrenaline-pumping movies that feature violence. That said, I would also steer away anyone who has recently had a death in the family. The descriptions of the cadavers were so explicit that you may find your mind making leaps you didn’t count on.

Grace’s situation is linked to things that happened in Arlidge’s first in the series, and they are referred to often. You may be better off reading these in order. I didn’t read the first, and although I was able to keep up just fine in terms of following plot and character motivation, I felt a little as if I were a guest at someone else’s family dinner. There were so many little undercurrents that referred to Grace’s earlier experiences, as well as those of Charlie, another cop who’d been in the previous story as well, that I felt a bit left out. I also had difficulty, for the first half of the story, keeping Helen and Charlie distinct from one another, and this part I chalk up to the author’s failure to adequately describe each of them. Whether it is the first or tenth in a series, the author has an obligation to provide a clear picture of the protagonist as well as other important characters. That didn’t happen here. Eventually I understood the motivations of each, as well as a good deal of Helen Grace’s internal characteristics, but I never was able to form enough of a mental picture of their appearances to make a mental movie. At times, I felt as if the explicit gore and sex were substitutions for character development. The plot itself was a trifle formulaic.

For those that read the first in the series and enjoyed it, this second in the series is bound to please. It is to those readers that I recommend this mystery.

The Suicide Murders, by Howard Engel****

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thesuicidemurdersThe cops said Chester killed himself. The gun was there, and he had powder burns on his head, powder on his hand. Everything tested out right. But he’d ordered himself a brand new bicycle just two hours earlier. Does a suicide do that? And then there was the very lovely wife that had been to see Cooperman, our detective protagonist, just before the unfortunate event, concerned that her man had perhaps been unfaithful. She’s caught him lying to her, and that makes a lady suspicious.

These things leave a guy like Cooperman with questions. True, he’s not a cop: “Me? I’m just a peeper. Divorce is my meat and potatoes.” But when something stinks, it’s in Cooperman’s nature to go find the source of the smell and air it out. And when others die after Chester, it makes Cooperman, who’s nobody’s fool, ask even more questions.

I received the DRC for this vintage novel, now available digitally, from Net Galley and Open Road Integrated Media. It became available for sale August 24, so you can get it now.

Engel is an experienced writer, and as he plays the thread out, with murder upon murder integrated deftly into the everyday life of Benny Cooperman, he strikes an excellent balance, building suspense and driving the plot forward with the occasional humorous reflection to keep things from becoming too ugly to be fun for the reader. And his character descriptions are particularly memorable, as with this local politician:

“He was a big man by anybody’s scale. His face looked like a roast beef dinner with all the trimmings, with a huge portion of nose in the middle. “

There were a couple of moments when the predictable occurred, but it wasn’t so dead obvious—excuse the pun—as to be an eye-roller. Rather, I experienced the satisfaction of having seen it coming and been right. And to me, as long as there isn’t too much of it, and there wasn’t, that is a sign that the writer has been fair to his audience. There are no sudden introductions of new characters during the last ten percent of the novel that change the solution in a way impossible to predict, and a lot of us like working the puzzle as we read. There are a couple of sexist references—“the kind of girl”, “bimbo”—that were commonly used in 1980 when this was first published that I didn’t care for, but they were infrequent enough that I was able to make a note to myself, and then continue to read and enjoy the story. In the end, the wry humor and up-tempo plot line makes this one a winner.

Although there are vague sexual references and infidelity is part of the plot, there is no graphic sex that should prevent a parent of a precocious adolescent mystery maven from handing the book down once they have finished it themselves. It’s hard to call any story that contains multiple murders a cozy mystery, but this one is in or near that ballpark.

Altogether a satisfying read.

Storme Front: A Wyatt Storme Thriller, by WL Ripley*****

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storme frontStorme Front, the second mystery in the series featuring former NFL player Wyatt Storme and his buddy, Chick Easton, is smart and sassy. Ripley proves that an action-packed thriller with a he-man protagonist is stronger, not weaker when it treats women respectfully, as equals to men. Thank you twice, first to Net Galley, and second to Brash Books. I received this DRC from them in exchange for an honest review. This title was released August 4, so you can get it right away.

When someone offers one a thousand dollars to make a single, simple delivery, it’s natural to be suspicious. But when it appears to also involve pulling a good friend’s cojones out of the fire, an experienced badass will sometimes agree, however cautiously, to tag along. So it is here. Drugs, guns, and bodies pile up, and all through it runs some kick-ass banter that made me laugh out loud a number of times. The exchanges are typically between Wyatt and Chick, but there’s some pretty strong humor, at times, in the interactions between Wyatt and his fiancée, Sandra Collingsworth, as well. As well as respect. I like the respect even better.

“No one likes smart, self-assured women, you know.”
“Except you,” she said. “And I’m glad.”

Complicating the picture without making it into a soap opera is the involvement, however peripherally, of an old flame of Wyatt’s. They split up a long time ago, and she married the man whose afore-mentioned cojones Wyatt is trying to salvage.

“His wife?” said Billy, smiling. “Ain’t she a sweet piece of—“
“Her name’s Kelly,” I said, interrupting. “But you can call her Mrs. Jenkins.”

The action is linear in format, so the fairly sizeable number of characters doesn’t create confusion. Then too, Ripley’s memorable character sketches certainly help:

“Snakeskins came around the truck. He had a big face, crooked nose. About thirty. A little overweight. Too many Coors in cowboy bars. Blond mustache, untrimmed, and a diamond stud in one ear. His hands were immense.”

Oh, there are so many more memorable passages, and I highlighted 78 of them, just for giggles. But the fact is, I would just hate to ruin it all for you. All told, the flavor is a bit like Sue Grafton’s, but with male protagonists in Colorado.

The examples I’ve provided show up early on, but the pace never slows till the last page is turned. In the end, I just wanted to read the next book in the series. And so will you.

Highly recommended for mystery and thriller lovers, or for anyone that needs a snappy, amusing beach read.

Cold Quarry, by Andy Straka**

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coldquarry

This is 1.5 stars rounded up. No, no, and no.

I received this DRC free from Brash Books in exchange for an honest review.

I was attracted to this mystery, which is set in West Virginia, because it has the novel element of hunters that use falcons, in addition to white Supremacist bad guys known as the Stonewall Ranger Brigade. And it started out as a promising read, with detective Frank Pavlicek and his former Navy Seal partner, Jake Toronto, looking to find out who shot Chester Carew in the back, leaving him dead on his own land. The birds of prey stand as metaphors for Pavlicek and Toronto, who will now hunt the killers as “cold quarry” in order to exact justice.

Who was to expect, then, that the entire novel would be riddled with blantant sexism, with only one positive depiction of a female? It is this one redemptive moment that saved this mystery from a one star rating, a rating I save for the illiterate and the blatantly offensive.

Before I explain further about the stereotyping of women in this work, I should also mention that the N word is used twice–once by a bad guy, once by a more complex figure–and our hero is known to have shot and killed a young African-American man when he was a cop. We are told this was a righteous shooting that gives our hero terrible nightmares nevertheless.

What timing.

But back to the women. Because I wanted to enjoy this book–who picks up a murder mystery without wanting some escapist enjoyment?–I withheld judgment until the 75 percent mark, and even then I read the whole thing to see whether there would be some sly move in which the sexist behaviors of the main characters were called out, or in which the protagonist found himself reflecting that he’d misjudged some women and situations. But the entire narrative was loaded with it, not just the main character’s dialogue and behaviors, so I didn’t think it was likely, and in the end, there was only one good moment for a female character, and the rest were endless cliches.

We have Betty in her apron (“It’s all right, I’ll just be in the kitchen”); nutcase bar owner Roswell Parker; seductive reporter Kara Grayson, who goes to pieces during a violent scene in which she is not injured.

“You stay here with the woman…” Frank tells Jake.Kara tends to an injured animal, and when the dust has settled the two menfolk rush out to save the world while “A female sergeant had also arrived and seen to it that Kara Grayson and the German Shepherd were taken care of.”

We often hear of women that occupy professional positions; we just never see them do their jobs, or if they do, they mess it up. Federal agent Colleen Briggs is one such character, and everyone feels great when she is openly dissed by the deputy sheriff, since she is “a robotic clone of a federal agent”.

Pavlicek has a grown daughter who’s out of state doing some work for him online, but when he gets her on the phone she “pouts”, and he tells her, “You let me worry about that, honey.”

Chester Carew’s son Jason is just old enough to read The Cat in the Hat, but he is old enough to protect his mother, who is helpless, apparently.(Remember Betty? In the kitchen?) Pavlicek gets her permission to speak to her son alone, but he doesn’t tell her what the kid knows or what the kid has seen. And the kid doesn’t want her to know.

We meet Jake Toronto’s girlfriend, who is an attorney, but when we run into her at home, she is cradling a baby. Frank’s daughter Nicole, who has arrived in town, takes time for “the appropriate oohing and ahhing over the baby”, and then follows her father and Priscilla into…where else? The kitchen. At this point–and I don’t want to give a spoiler, so I’ll use broad strokes–Frank needs to take care of something for Jake that Jake isn’t available to do, and this includes getting confidential material out of the house. Priscilla is concerned because Jake keeps that door locked; of course she wouldn’t have a key, right? But Frank does. When his daughter asks what is in there, he says, “It’s just Jake’s little office.”

Priscilla does help, though, by getting “‘Just, um, some personal stuff I already knew about in the bedroom’…she looked at Nicole and the two of them giggled.”

Oh, but it isn’t over yet. Not by a far sight. “Priscilla’s hands were dwarfed” by Jake’s shotgun, so of course, Frank took it from her.

It occurs to me during all this that since Priscilla is–we are told–an attorney, perhaps Frank is protecting her professional credibility by having her not know some things, or else maybe Jake was, but the word “attorney” is mentioned just once and never comes into play again.

We have a number of promiscuous women, all of whom are morally compromised. We have lazy nurses. And in a confrontation with bad guys, the uglies hurl the ultimate insult and Frank and Jake by calling them “little girls”.

Excuse me now. I am going back to my DRC of Gloria Steinem’s memoir. I need something to read that will remind me that women are worthy of dignity and respect.

If your ideas about gender are lodged in the 1950’s, by all means, get this book, and have a real good time.

As for me: no more Andy Straka!

The Miser’s Dream, by John Gaspard*****

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themisersdreamThe Miser’s Dream is the third in a series featuring magician Eli Marks. Once I got into it, I did a forehead slap because I could also have read the first two in the series free and reviewed them, had I been paying attention. Thank you to Net Galley and Henery Press for hooking me up with this enormously entertaining novel. It’s billed as a cozy mystery, but were the humor placed around the killer rather than the sleuth, it could have been a comic caper. The title will be for sale October 27.

Marks runs a magic shop and works as a magician locally. He lives over the shop, and the quirky placement of its windows permits him to see into the projection booth of the adjoining theater. Imagine his surprise one fine day when he looks out his window to see a corpse—the projectionist—on the floor of the projection room. It is a locked room mystery, since the man could not have killed himself; the weapon is there in the room; and the door is locked from outside, showing no sign of forced entry.

Just like magic.

Gaspard occupies common country with Grand Master James Lee Burke in his cleverness at choosing engaging, oddball names for his characters. In addition to Detective Sutton-Hutton, we also have the sinister Mr. Lime and his assistant Harpo. The latter two seem to have some inside information. Whereas the character descriptions for these two were a trifle overdrawn, putting me in mind of a Tim Burton animation, the dialogue was sometimes quite splendid, and their role in the story is interesting and well played.

For the first half of the book, I didn’t care at all who the killer was. I was having such a good time with the double features, which I highlighted in my DRC and added to at length, but you’ll have to get the book because I’m not going to post a spoiler. There were other odd bits of hilarious detail in unexpected places, perhaps the best, in my view, being the scene with the flower pot. I had begun to wonder whether there was so much extraneous hilarity here that the murder was becoming obscured, but then it all came into focus just when it needed to, and I didn’t have to retrace the thread to figure things out. The plot is mostly linear and Gaspard has used just the right number of characters, not enough to confuse or clutter.

If you need a good laugh, get this book when it comes out. If you like a good cozy mystery, I likewise recommend it. And for those that have precocious pre-teens and adolescents that sometimes read adult-reading-level material, this one has no explicit sex and relatively clean language, and so it is safe to pass on to your budding bibliophile.

To sum up: this is hands-down the funniest thing I have read in a long time, expertly paced and hilariously detailed. Do it.

Blanche Passes Go: A Blanche White Mystery, by Barbara Neely*****

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blanchepassesgo“Blanche’s mind rang with remembered slights and taunts, and echoes of that awful, heartbreaking instant of fear that was a part of every trip into the white world—a fear of being refused or given poor service because she was black, stopped by a cop because she was black.”

I finished reading Blanche Passes Go on the second anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, who was shot dead by a cop for jaywalking. Bernie Sanders, the candidate who fancies himself the liberal savior for all progressive-minded Americans, spoke here in Seattle that day. The purpose of his talk, apart from campaigning and fundraising, was to celebrate the birthday of Social Security. The speech was disrupted by a pair of African-American women who took exception to his myopia.

So I guess you could say that everyone, even those that don’t generally enjoy mysteries, ought to be reading this book right about now. In particular, if the reader is still trying to figure out why so many people, particularly people of color, get upset with the clueless slogan “All lives matter”, this book is here, just for you. Neely approaches issues of race, class, and gender in a way that is clear but not unkind. It’s her best work to date, and could not have been published by Brash Books at a more appropriate time. My great thanks go to them and the people at Net Galley for providing me with a DRC, and to Neely for laying it all out so that anybody who has a willing heart can get the picture.

In this fourth Blanche White mystery, Blanche has gone home to Farleigh, North Carolina for a vacation, and to try partnering a catering business with her best friend, Ardell. But Farleigh is a small place, and she can’t avoid running up against David Palmer, a Caucasian man that raped her. She never reported it, of course; were they really going to haul the well-heeled, powerful white man for a sperm sample, given the long history of Caucasian men raping Black women with impunity? Not likely! So when her long-simmering rage is ignited by the sight of him, she vows to not only get mad, but to get even as well.

Blanche White novels always have multiple threads that weave in and out of the plot line, but this is the most complex and impressive yet. Not only does Blanche have to grapple with Farleigh and Palmer, she is back in her home town, and her mama is still here. Like many women, Blanche has hit middle age and menopause with a renewed, powerful yearning to know more about her mama, who never stops talking but never gives away the personal information Blanche is almost begging for, and about her father, about whom virtually nothing has been told her. Blanche decides that once a person has children, their privacy is no longer as sacred as it was before, and a lot of personal information becomes family property. I loved that.

Well into the book, Ardell accuses Blanche of sounding exactly like her mother, and Blanche is dumbfounded to realize it’s true. I threw back my head and laughed out loud. It’s the rare woman that doesn’t hear her own mother coming out of her mouth sooner or later, and the moment was built so deftly and executed so well that it landed hard on my funny-bone.

Other Blanche novels have accentuated the protagonist’s tightly held independence. Here, she meets a fine man named Thelvin on the Amtrak coming into Farleigh, and at some point, she has to decide just how flexible (or inflexible) she is going to be.

Another component is Mumsfield, an acquaintance that has Down’s Syndrome and is about to be married to someone who may be after his money. This aspect of the story, like the others, is skillfully crafted. Mumsfield is not completely helpless, and the fact that he has Down’s does not make him Blanche’s friend, as he claims to be. There is still that division of white privilege. It’s not that Blanche could not have a white friend, but it would have to be someone with ownership of what that means.

Because all of these components are told in the third person omniscient, and because the writer is a complete badass, we are privy to all the intricacies involved here. Add a problem with domestic abuse next door to the Miz Alice where Blanche is staying, and you have an interesting stew indeedy.

Highly recommended.

Gold Coast Blues: A Jules Landau Mystery, by Marc Krulewitch****

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goldcoastblues“Tanya Maggio’s a missing person, and I got a feeling she’s missing on purpose.” This third entry of the Jules Landau series finds Landau searching for Eddie’s missing girlfriend. There’s a faded noir feeling in its pages as Landau bounces between Chicago and New Jersey trying to trace back the thread. Though confusing at times, a trifle overburdened by excess characters, it’s a fun, original story. Thank you once and thank you twice to Net Galley and Random House Alibi for the DRC. This title is available for purchase September 22.

The search for Tanya leads Landau to the mean streets of Irvington, New Jersey, where a crooked cop named Cooper explains that in their town, they don’t try stamp out crime…they manage it. So anyone that is hooked up to the criminal world is fair game; the idea, at least ostensibly, is that bystanders should not be caught in the crossfire.

Right.

Turns out the New Jersey people are running a scam. Those among the one percent that have more time and money than good sense invest in fine wine, wine that is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for a case of a dozen bottles. Hey, its value appreciates, and some liken it to gold or silver. If a bottle gets busted, then that’s what insurance is for.

With a bizarre scenario such as this one, it’s only to be expected that someone would come up with the idea of counterfeiting labels and brewing up some fake stuff. After all, no one is going to drink it anyway, right? Who’s to know?

The plot twists, and it turns sometimes enough to confuse me. Hold up…are we in Illinois, or are we still in Jersey? But when push comes to shove, this romp is too enjoyable to walk away from. “That little shit Spike”, an heir to the Irvington mob, is one character that shines bright enough to keep those pages turning. Another, of course, is Landau’s ridiculous cat Punim, for whom he sits down to compose a legal trust fund when he is depressed and in danger. His own life may be on the line, but by god someone has to be paid to feed Punim his chicken hearts every day. And then there is Amy. Is she an enemy? A spy? She sure as hell isn’t really a psychic, but she knows enough that she has to be something. Maybe she has Tanya tied up in her closet. You never can tell.

The originality of the plot is assisted by Krulewitch’s affinity for figurative language. I loved his description of the “horror hotel” and the “stunningly verdant” house located on…wait for it…Bunnybrush Lane.

September is a good time to curl up under the quilts with a good book, or for those in warmer climes, it’s not too late to stretch out on the beach with one. Either way, if you need an escapist beach read, or a good noir mystery, this might be the book for you.