Tag Archives: detective fiction

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.

Clete, by James Lee Burke*****

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Mortality is mortality. It comes to you when it’s ready. We don’t set the clock.

The Dave Robicheaux series by James Lee Burke is one of the finest ever written. As the faithful know, Clete Purcel is Dave’s partner in whatever he does. Once they were cops that called themselves “The Bobbsey Twins from Homicide.” (You probably need to be a boomer to get the reference.) Now they are on their own, but they are still like family to one another. This is the 24th in the series, and it’s the first to be told from Clete’s point of view. It’s a brilliant idea for two reasons: first, because Clete is a well written and wildly popular character, and also because it gives us a chance to see Dave through someone else’s eyes, someone that loves him, but isn’t him.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the invitation to read and review, along with my profound apology for being so very late. This book is for sale now.

In this installment, a new drug ring has come to Louisiana, and it’s creating still more violence, more death, and more crime in general. Clete, who is now a private detective, is hired by a woman named Clara Bow. (If the name rings bells, it’s because the real Clara Bow was a famous movie star from the silent film era.) The Clara that hires Clete wants him to look into the activities of her skeevy ex-husband. Once he begins, we hardly have enough time to breathe. Clete hits the ground running, and there are no slow passages till the book concludes.

My favorite passages are the ones in which a woman named Chen, whom Clete rescues, then falls for, tells him how he appears to her. Here’s one: “You always gentleman, Mr. Clete. Your cats sleep on your face and you no mind. The world kill men like you because you brave and you kind.”

Later, Chen promises him that she won’t go back to taking drugs. “That because I go to a meeting every day with the Work the Steps or Die Motherfucker group. The Motherfuckers are very nice.” He advises her not to use that term in public. Don’t you love it?

Like every book in the series, this one moves seamlessly from scenes with quirky characters and dark humor, to glorious literary passages that I have to read more than once just to admire the writing, to passages that are gritty and violent and occasionally terrifying. Let me put it this way: you will never be bored.

Can you dive in mid-series? I did; then I became so enamored that I went back and read all the rest of them.

Highly recommended.

Overkill, by J.A. Jance*****

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Overkill is the 18th book in the Ali Reynolds series. Ali and her husband, B. Simpson, run a cybersecurity firm. This mystery features two parallel problems. The first is when B’s first wife, Clarice, is accused of a murder that she didn’t commit. B. wants nothing to do with the problem—or Clarice—but Ali is convinced that she should look into it. The second problem is that Cami, the young woman that works for Ali and B., is being stalked while on a business trip. Both problems create a tremendous amount of suspense for the reader, and Jance is an expert at juggling many threads and details without dropping anything, while making the story clear enough that the reader can keep track. I enjoyed this book a great deal, and it’s for sale now.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Gallery Books for the review copy.

One of the things I love most about reading a J.A. Jance mystery is the feminist mojo she brings to every book. It’s subtle and built into the plot, rather than reading like a manifesto, but her sympathies toward working women, both professionals like Ali, and humble housekeepers such as the woman accused here, is manifest. It’s not an unusual mindset to encounter in a novel these days, but Jance has been doing it since long before it was common. In addition, her pacing never flags, and I don’t get confused by her plot lines, even when there are a good number of characters to track.

This is the first time I’ve used an audio version to read any of Jance’s books; I had fallen behind a bit, so I checked out the audio to keep me company on a road trip. Karen Ziemba does a fine job with the narration. I highly recommend this book to those that love the genre; you can read it as a stand alone if desired.

The Children of Eve, by John Connolly*****

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If Stephen King and James Lee Burke had a baby—an unnatural one, of course—it would probably look a lot like John Connolly. Connolly has a genius for creating tales that take place on Earth, and are in most regards realistic, while adding elements of the supernatural that go well beyond magical realism. There’s the mystery, and there’s the horror, and if we’re reading a Charlie Parker mystery, we cannot have one without the other, nor should we.

My tremendous thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the review copy of The Children of Eve, the 22nd Charlie Parker mystery. This book is for sale now.

The story commences when Charlie is contracted to find and protect a man named Wyatt Riggins, who has disappeared. Riggins has thrown in his lot with some baddies, and may have bitten off more than he can chew. As Charlie—and we—pursue Riggins, we learn of some seriously nasty skullduggery that’s afoot involving international art thieves. Added to the mix are four missing children, believed to have been kidnapped. There’s not a single slow moment as Charlie tracks Riggins, and we see, through the third person omnipotent, the manner in which these thieves have fallen out, and the trail of bodies that are left in their wake. This is grisly business, and not for the squeamish, although I will say that some horror and hardcore detective novels do go places that I can’t, but Parker novels always manage to stay just inside my own boundaries.

Recurring characters Angel and Louis, perennial favorites, return briefly. At one point, Parker has been roughed up and is in the hospital. Angel and Louis have been listed as his next of kin, and they seem unlikely nurturers. While guarding Parker’s room, for instance, Louis amuses himself by making those that pass by him nervous. And when he is discharged on the condition that he not be alone for the next 24 hours, Angel and Louis make the doctor uneasy as well. She asks Parker whether he has “any other friends? Any at all?” I would have loved to see more of these two, but perhaps Connolly is keeping them in the shadows, lest they grow stale. That’s hard to imagine, but no other reason makes sense. I also enjoyed the brief glimpse of the Fulci Brothers, hired (but not brilliant) muscle men that resemble “bears in green leisure suits.”

Perhaps the most disquieting aspect of this novel—scratch that, not “perhaps”—is the development of Connolly’s dead daughter, Jennifer, who has come to him periodically and watches over him. I won’t say anymore about that, but I finished this book 2 days ago, have been reading several other books, and yet I can’t get Jennifer out of my head. For those that love gritty detective novels, and for those that are drawn to things that go bump in the night, this book, and this series is strongly recommended.

Open Season, by Jonathan Kellerman***

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3.5 stars, rounded downward.

Open Season is the fortieth (!) in the Alex Delaware series, one that I have read since the very first book. Newbies can read it as a stand alone novel, however. My thanks go to NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine Books for the review copy. It will be available to the public February 4, 2025.

One of the joys of reading a long running series is its familiarity. If the writer is good—and nobody will say Kellerman isn’t—the characters begin to feel like old friends. In addition to our protagonist, kiddy shrink and cop consultant Alex Delaware, we have his wife, Robin, who is mostly a background character; Alex’s best friend, Detective Milo Sturgis; and some lesser recurring characters such as cops Sean and Petra. I could include Milo’s husband Rick, but Rick almost never puts in a personal appearance. In fact, we see a good deal more of Blanche, Alex and Robin’s French bulldog, who, like the other characters, never grows old. When Milo lumbers into the Delaware kitchen and raids practically everything in the fridge, I smile. Ah, there he is, the big guy.

When the series began, Alex, a child psychologist (like Kellerman himself,) worked with seriously troubled children and teens, but when the LAPD had a case involving a child, he would consult on it also. Now he works on the private cases of his choosing, primarily custody cases and the like, and is a de facto cop. This has developed in the context of Milo, a gay cop, being ostracized by the rest of the department, and so once a friendship and working relationship develops between Milo and Alex, Alex rides along and they say he’s a consultant, even when there are no funds in the budget and he is merely a volunteer.

All this may seem improbable today, but please remember that the series began in 1985, when gay men were treated brutally by most of American society, and that is exponential when it’s a cop being hazed by his own department. And even today, gay cops don’t always have an easy road.

Is this realistic, then? Let’s look at it this way. To be completely realistic, Alex would never get into that cop car, and he would work only from his office. To consult with the department, he would be sent information to analyze, and if appropriate, the child or children in question would meet with him in an office to be interviewed. Milo would either be on his own, or with whatever newbie was stuck being his partner for now.

And it would be dull as hell.

So, for me to enjoy this series, I just need the most improbable aspects to be scaled back, and I’m happy. Several books ago, Alex was donning a Kevlar vest and rocketing into action with Milo, and that was straight-up ridiculous. But Alex doesn’t do that anymore. The story is just believable enough for me to buy into it, and so I’m happy.

This particular episode involves a sniper, and although I enjoyed it and found little to object to, it didn’t have quite as much sparkle as most of his other books. On the other hand, it also didn’t have a theme involving kinky sex—ew!—as in multiple past novels, and it didn’t have any of my pet peeves that I dislike wherever they turn up. No kidnapping Alex or his loved ones; no struggle with alcohol. So I was happy for the most part and would have rounded the rating up to four stars, which is what I usually rate Delaware novels, but the multiple snarky remarks about abortion rocked me back. Not all women’s health facilities that feature abortion as an option are “abortion mills.” If a grandmother suggests that a pregnant granddaughter consider abortion, it doesn’t make her a bad grandmother. Am I rounding the score on a novel downward because I don’t like the author’s politics? Yes. Yes I am. But, can I do that? Sure I can. I just did.

I’ve loved this series for a long time, and I look forward to reading the forty-first. I do recommend this book to the series faithful, but if possible, get it at a discount or free, rather than paying full price, unless your pockets are deep ones. If you are new to the series, if possible, read either the most recent one before this—number thirty-nine was excellent—or read the very first, When the Bough Breaks, which ties the subject much more closely to Alex’s original profession.

Veronica Ruiz Breaks the Bank, by Elle Cosimano****

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Fans of Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan series will recognize her trusty sidekick and BFF, Vero. Over the course of the series, we’ve had many hints about Vero’s past, and Finlay sometimes wonders why Vero is so tightlipped about her personal history. This short story provides curious readers with some background, as well as some of the entertainment for which Cosimano is fast becoming legendary.

My thanks go to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

I generally avoid this sort of book, because often as not, the author returns to flesh it out into a full length novel, and as much as I enjoy reading it once, I don’t want to read it twice. But this was low hanging fruit, a shorty by an author I greatly enjoy, at a time when I couldn’t get up and move around much, and so I dove into it.

Vero is an honors student from a struggling family, and her academic career is short circuited when an envelope of money goes missing, and Vero is blamed by her sorority sisters. Vero makes a run for it; desperate for work, she takes a custodial job in a bank, and that’s where the fun begins.

This is an entertaining read, but it’s not up to the level of Cosimano’s novels. For a short story to work, a lot must be packed into it, with every single word pulling its own weight, and possibly that of its friends and family. Here, it feels like a chapter out of a book, one in which the author doesn’t want to give up any truly juicy information about the protagonist because she’s saving it for—you got it—a novel.

Of course, I cannot pretend to know what the author is thinking here; this is just an educated guess. But the product is the product, and whereas it was a fun read as a free galley, I might have felt a bit annoyed if I’d paid money for it.

Those looking for a quick, light read to take to the beach could do worse. Some people don’t have the time or stamina for a full length novel of any type; if that’s you, maybe this is your book. But as for me, I’ll hold out for the real deal in the future.

Trouble in Queenstown, by Delia Pitt***-****

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Delia Pitts has been writing mysteries for quite some time, but she is new to me. In Trouble in Queenstown, she introduces hardboiled sleuth Evander Myrick. Myrick’s friends call her Vandy, and that helps to distinguish her from her elderly father for whom she is named; he’s in a memory care unit.

My thanks go to NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and St. Martin’s Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

At first glance, I thought that this detective fiction was set in New Zealand. Queenstown, right? But in this case, the locale is Queenstown, New Jersey. The story opens with Vandy cleaning up a mess in her office just as Leo Hannah storms in and wants to see Evander Myrick. He assumes Myrick will be a Caucasian male, and that Myrick herself is a member of the cleaning staff.

Oops.

Hannah comes to hire Vandy in the wake of his wife’s murder. He knows exactly who did it, he tells her, and he wants her to prove it, starting with some surveillance. Vandy isn’t sure she should take this job, but she has to pay top dollar to keep her daddy in the best facility, so she reluctantly signs on. As the story progresses, there are numerous twists and turns, and the violence escalates. By the story’s end, three different people have tried to hire her for exactly the same case!

The thing I appreciate here is the way Pitts addresses cop racism. So many detective novels require the reader to suspend belief, to assume that every cop is fearlessly dedicated to finding out the unvarnished truth and arresting the perpetrator of the crime, regardless of race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. But as Vandy conducts her investigation, Pitts keeps it real. At one point the detective speaks with a salon stylist that worked on Ivy’s hair, and he tells her that Ivy was afraid of someone at home. Vandy asks if he contacted the police.

“’The police?’ He jerked his neck, pursing his lips as if I’d farted. ‘Girl, you think the cops came here?’ He sniffed. ‘You don’t look like a fool. Maybe I read you wrong.’”

Sadly, the second half of the book doesn’t impress me as much as the first half does. I have a short list of tropes that I never want to see again in a mystery novel, and she trips a few, including my most hated one. I won’t go into details because it’s too far into the story, and I don’t want to spoil anything, but when it appears, I sit back, disengage from the text, and roll my eyes. Ohhh buh-ruther. As I continue reading, I can see who the murderer is well in advance, and the climax itself is a bit over the top, though without the tropes, I mightn’t have noticed this last issue.

In addition to the digital review copy, I have the audio. The reader does a fine job.

The more mysteries a person reads, the staler tropes become. I am perhaps more sensitive than most readers, having logged over a thousand novels in this genre. Readers that have not read many mysteries are less likely to be aware of, and therefore bothered by overused elements, and so this book may please you much more than it did me. But for hardened, crochety old readers such as myself, I recommend getting this book free or cheap, if you choose to read it. Newer readers may enjoy it enough to justify the sticker price.

Instrument of Darkness, by Charlie Parker*****

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It’s a funny thing about long running series, how some of them become stale after a time while others just keep building. The Charlie Parker series by John Connolly is one of the latter, and with every addition to it I am more riveted, more amused, and more engaged than I was before. The Instruments of Darkness is the 21st in the series. My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria/Emily Bestler for the review copy; that said, this is one of the rare times that I would have laid out full jacket price if that was the only way I could obtain a copy.

This book is for sale now.

Charlie Parker is a former cop turned private detective with a terrible past. He stepped out to buy a newspaper one morning and returned to find his wife and small daughter savagely butchered; the guilt at not being home to defend them was overwhelming, if irrational. He dedicated himself to finding the person that had done it, and making certain they never did it again. Since then, he’s served as a professional snoop on behalf of other wronged persons. Because he often upsets people with money, power, and twisted morals, he often brings along his own muscle when he works, or in some cases, contracts with them to bodyguard his clients during the process. So it is this time.

The job has to do with a young mother whose baby has been kidnapped from its crib during the night. Colleen woke from the first sound sleep she’d had in forever only to find the nursery window open, and Henry gone from his bed. Later her husband Stephen finds a blanket in the trunk of her car, soaked in blood, which, when analyzed by law enforcement, turns out to be the boy’s blood. Stephen tells the police that he is sure she must have done it, and he leaves her.

But she didn’t. Of course not.

In his last few Charlie Parker novels, Connolly has added touches of horror and magical realism, and it’s only made his stories better. In particular, he is adept at sentient houses or other buildings. Sometimes it really is the structure; at other times there’s some sort of being that lives there, unseen. In this case it’s an old house built from a Sears Roebuck kit over a century ago, and so he names it “Kit No. 174,” and after it appears a time or two in the story, generally as the opening of a new chapter, I get the shivers just seeing the name. The narration tells us, “No one had ever spent long in it—or no one had ever lived in it for long, which is not the same thing. No, not the same thing at all.” There are some minor references to other houses that have appeared in the series, and these will delight the faithful readers that remember them; it did me. However, newbies that are just starting this series will be fine.

The recurring characters shine brightly here. The attorney that often hires Parker, Moxie Castin, opens the book, and we get a resonant character sketch:

“Moxie Castin was easy to underestimate, but only on first impression. He was overweight by the equivalent of a small child, didn’t use one word in public when five others were loitering nearby with nothing better to do, and had a taste for ties reminiscent of the markings of poisonous insects or the nightmares of LSD survivors…He lost cases, but not many, and his friends far outnumbered his enemies.”

Other recurring characters are the Fulci brothers, and when I see their names, I smile. They’re described as “two wrecking balls in human form.” Another is Sabine, a shy, tortured psychic that just wants the dead to go away and leave her alone, and best of all, Angel and Louis, a lawless couple of friends—the word “couple” applies in two different ways here—that Parker hires when things get spicy. If I smile when we are joined by the Fulcis, I beam when I see Angel and Louis. And in a nod to series regulars, there’s a point when Parker simply tells someone, “They’re coming,” and he doesn’t say who, but of course, we know exactly who. (Later he explains them for the uninitiated.) There’s a favorite passage of mine in which Parker is concluding an interview, done in a restaurant, and when he and the other person emerge, she sees them and asks,

“Are they with you?’

“They’re my associates.’

“They don’t look like private detectives. Don’t take this the wrong way, but they look like criminals. If they came into the store, I’d lie down on the floor with my hands behind my head.’

“Sometimes that’s precisely the effect we seek.’”

Oh, there’s so much more, but you need to find these things for yourself. The story is on the gritty side, but not nearly as much so as some of the others in the series. In fact, I generally have a policy of not reading this series at bedtime, lest it enter my dreams. I violated that policy once, and I did indeed have a dreadful night afterward. And so I behaved myself until I hit the last twenty percent, and at that point, I knew I would read it until it was done, regardless of the time or proximity to lights out, because I had to see the resolution. I had guessed, long before, whodunit, but that felt beside the point. So I stayed up and saw it through…and I’m not a bit sorry.

Highly recommended to those that love the genre, and especially to Charlie Parker buffs.

The Hunter, by Tana French*****

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In 2020, Tana French gave us The Searcher, the first in the Cal Hooper detective series. By that time I was already an established fan, but I loved that book particularly well, for reasons I’ll revisit in a moment. Now we have the second in the series, The Hunter, and if anything can reduce this crusty old English teacher to a blushing fan girl, this is it. Two books in, this is already on my short list of favorite series. My thanks go to NetGalley and the Penguin Group for the review copy. This book will be available to the public Tuesday, March 5, 2024.

The series debut introduced the characters, with the protagonist being a retired Chicago cop that found this tiny Irish village on vacation and, needing a new home far from his ex-wife, yet affordable, discovered a bargain fixer of a home and decided to stay. The story’s main problem revolved around a nearly feral tween that kept popping up at Cal’s place. The scrappy little stinker that was relieving Cal of food, occasionally, and doing other unsettling things turned out to be a girl; her name is Teresa, but she’s known as Trey. Her family was in dire straights following the departure of Trey’s father; her brother had left, intending to return, but never had. The mystery was where Trey’s brother had gone, what had become of him, and why. In the interim, she became greatly attached to Cal, who enjoyed her company and taught her some woodworking skills, but also kept a careful distance, lest rumors start and grow.

Now Trey is a bit older, and she is more civilized. She is close to both Cal and Lena, the local woman that Cal has been seeing. But as life settles into a civilized hum, one that would be comfortable had climate change not created a drought that has local farmers at the near end of their wits and their bank accounts, the unexpected happens once again: Johnny Reddy, Trey’s no-account father, has returned. Cal is prepared to step back, if need be, in case Trey wishes to bond with her actual dad rather than himself. Meanwhile, Johnny vows to visit Cal with some local moonshine, and “make a night of it.”

“Trey says nothing. If he does that, she’ll get Cal’s rifle and blow his fucking foot off, and see can he make his way down the mountain to Cal’s after that.”

Johnny never succeeds in bonding with Cal, who doesn’t like the look of him. “Johnny gives him the urge to pat him down and ask him where he’s headed. There are guys like that, who flunk the sniff test just going to the store; it’s a good cop’s job to work out whether they’re actually doing something hinky, or whether it’s just that they will be sooner or later, probably sooner.”

The village is a tiny one, and outsiders are few. Everyone in the vicinity knows that Johnny’s back; everyone wonders what he’s up to. They haven’t long to wait; he’s brought a man with him, one whose family once lived here, or so he says; and the man is interested in seeing if there’s gold on some of the local properties. “He has a rich man’s smile, easy and understated, the smile of a man who isn’t required to put in effort.”  Now the question is whether this “plastic Paddy” is a shyster trying to rip off the locals, or if he is someone that Johnny is seeking to fleece. Meanwhile, Trey has a different agenda, a private one.

The thing that makes this story so much better than your standard mystery is the characterization. If you are in search of a thriller that is all page-turning action, this isn’t your book. However, if you love a layered story with complex, convincing characters, this is for you. I said in my previous review of the first in the series that Trey is what makes an otherwise solid story a golden one, and that’s even truer here. One could even argue that it’s really her series, with Cal existing as scaffolding. Time will tell.

In particular, though, anyone that works with, or has worked with at risk youth cannot, must not miss this story. French has taken hold of my heartstrings hard, and I don’t want her to let go. Highly recommended.