Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Archive for March, 2013

Living near Boston, over the years I’ve followed the news about the art thefts from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with great interest.  Earlier this month the FBI announced that it knows the perpetrators of this crime but is unable to locate the thirteen paintings that were stolen in the middle of the night in March, 1990, paintings that are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.  Strange, but that’s the official line as of now.

In B. A. Shapiro’s thriller, The Art Forger, disgraced artist Claire Roth is approached and asked to make a copy of Edgar Degas’s After the Bath, one of the stolen paintings.  The man who brings Claire the painting, Aidan Markel, is the owner of a prestigious art gallery in Boston.  His plan is to sell the copy that Claire makes to a foreign buyer who has already agreed to purchase it.  Of course, the foreign buyer thinks that what he’s getting is the original, not a twenty-first-century forgery.

Aidan won’t tell Claire how he’s come into possession of the masterpiece, saying only that it’s a win-win situation and that “there are many layers” between the art thieves and the person from whom he received After the Bath.  He tells her that the buyer will be happy, Claire will receive $50,000 for her work, he himself will get his share of the purchase price, and then he will give the original back to the museum.  He never makes clear exactly how this last part will work, but he reassures Claire that there’s no danger for either of them.  And, a huge bonus for Claire, Aidan promises her a one-woman show at his gallery, Markel G.

The reason that Claire is in disgrace in the art world goes back three years before the novel opens.  She was in the midst of a clandestine relationship with her art professor, a well-regarded artist who had been unable to complete a commissioned painting for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Desperate to help Isaac Cullion overcome his mental block, Claire paints a work in his style as he looks on and protests, but when she’s finished he signs his name to it.  And when the MOMA curator sees the work, she pronounces it his best ever and arranges for it to hang in the museum’s show.  But, as the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished, and Claire is still feeling the repercussions of her action three years later.

B. A. Shapiro has written a thriller that is true to the name of the genre.  Even as we know Claire is making bad choices, we understand her reasons for doing so.  Part professional pride–could she actually produce a painting that would fool the experts as well as the buyer?  Part economic necessity–living in her art studio, her bed a mattress on the floor, her meals consisting mainly of take-out Thai and cold cereal–she’s behind on her student loans, her rent, and payment for the art supplies she needs to complete her current project.  The temptation is too much to resist.

The Art Forger is a terrific, compelling read, and knowing that the heist is still unsolved after all these years adds to the tension of the novel.  The characters are true-to-life, and their morality, or the lack of it, comes straight from today’s headlines.

You can read more about B. A. Shapiro at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

It can’t be easy to make a hired killer, an assassin, a sympathetic character to the reader.  But Lawrence Block has been doing it for more than twenty years.

Hit Me is a collection of several short stories following Keller, now known as Nicholas Edwards.  He and his wife Julia have relocated from New York to New Orleans with their toddler daughter Jenny, and Keller thought he was out of the killing business permanently.

In the first story he gets a call from Dot, the woman who gives Keller his assignments, asking about his interest in going to Dallas to eliminate a man.  Dot, like Keller, thought she had retired from the business, but when she reentered it she phoned Keller to find out if he too has had a change of heart.  It seems he has, as his formerly flourishing rehab business in the Crescent City has slowed considerably due to the economic downturn.  In addition, Keller has been planning on traveling to Dallas to attend a stamp collecting auction.  When Dot hears this she calls the coincidence “the hand of Providence.”  Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.

Hit Me takes Keller all over, from New Orleans to Dallas to New York City to an ocean liner in the Caribbean to Denver to Cheyenne and finally Buffalo.  It seems that the business of killing people is as remunerative as always, especially for a man who knows his work.

Of course, Keller’s victims are always unpleasant people, although it may be a stretch to say that they all need to be killed.  But a man has to do what a man has to do, doesn’t he?

In the third story in the book, “Keller at Sea,” Keller’s wife Julia becomes an accomplice in her husband’s line of work.  She has obviously suspected something about what he does when he’s away from home, and now it has become clear to her.  But as she tells him, “I know what you do, and I don’t entirely know how I feel about it, but I don’t seem to mind.  I honestly don’t.”  Keller obviously picked the right woman to marry.  And help him she does.

Lawrence Block is an incredibly prolific author.  Although he has written only four previous novels featuring Keller, he is the author of eighteen Matt Scudder novels, ten Bernie Rhodenbarr mysteries, eight Evan Tanner books, four featuring Chip Harrison, plus stand-alone novels, short stories, books for writers, and a memoir.  And that’s not the complete list of his works.

I read in a recent article that Mr. Block is contemplating retiring from the writing profession.  Let’s hope he, like his protagonist Keller, has a change of heart.

Spending the day with a hit man may seem like a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure it is.  Lawrence Block’s writing grabs you and doesn’t let you go.  You certainly wouldn’t want to meet Keller on a professional basis, but in a book he’s fascinating.

You can find out more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

Linwood Barclay has done it again, creating a fascinating novel that’s nearly impossible to put down.  Actually, Trust Your Eyes is impossible to put down, as is every other Barclay book I’ve read.

Ray Kilbride has returned home to upper New York State after the death of his father, in part to determine what’s best for his younger brother.  Thomas is a high-functioning schizophrenic, obsessed with mapping all the streets in the world; he’s convinced that there will be a catastrophe in which all maps will be destroyed.

When, not if, he believes that will happen, Thomas will be the only one in the world who has the knowledge that the maps had held.  He’s been “in contact” with the CIA and former President Bill Clinton and has assured them of his abilities and cooperation in this matter.  In order to concentrate on this, Thomas has hardly left his house in several years.  He leaves his room only to have three quick meals a day and then returns to continue his memorization project.

One day, while on the web’s Whirl360 site, Thomas sees what looks like a person’s head wrapped in a plastic bag.  For as long as he looks at the window where the head is, it doesn’t move.  Could he possibly be seeing a murder taking place?

In Linwood Barclay’s adept hands, this is the main thread of the mystery but not the only one.  Allison Fitch, a young woman working as a waitress in lower Manhattan, is having money troubles.  Her salary isn’t big enough to cover her part of the rent for the apartment she shares or for all the clothes she buys, so she’s always doing a little creative financing.  At first it’s innocent enough, if not very nice, as she spins a story to her mother in order to get her mother to send her a thousand dollars.  But it turns dangerous when she decides to turn to blackmail to get sufficient funds to finally pay all her debts.

And then there are the political figures, killers-for-hire, and FBI agents coming to the Kilbrides’ house to talk to Thomas about his frequent e-mails to the CIA.  If you think this won’t all hang together to make a fantastic thriller, you obviously don’t know Linwood Barclay.

The characters in Trust Your Eyes are totally believable, as is the plot.  Sometimes the most seemingly innocent or innocuous decisions have grave consequences.  If Ray Kilbride hadn’t come home to straighten out his father’s affairs and decide about his brother’s future, he wouldn’t have seen the Whirl360 web site and gone to Manhattan to investigate what his brother thought was a murder.  If Allison Fitch hadn’t turned the television on at a particular moment, the blackmail plot would never have entered her mind.  And if Nicole had won the Olympic gold medal in gymnastics instead of the silver, she might not have become a professional assassin.

Linwood Barclay is a master of his craft.  You can read more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at her web site.

Jack Swyteck is the attorney for the trial of the twenty-first century in James Grippando’s latest thriller, Blood Money.  The story, which is similar to a spectacular trial that was recently in the headlines, has twists that will keep the reader turning the pages of the novel faster and faster until the ending is reached.

Sydney Bennett is on trial for her life for the murder of her daughter Emma, two years old at the time of her disappearance.  As the prosecution tells it, Sydney liked life in the fast lane, and her young daughter was cramping her style.  After her daughter disappeared from their home, Sydney was photographed drinking and bar-hopping and apparently showing no sorrow.  Then, three years later, Emma’s body was discovered in a shallow grave in the Everglades.

Although a time and even a cause of death were never discovered due to the length of time between the child’s disappearance and the discovery of her body, public opinion agrees that Sydney is guilty.  When the book opens, on the day the verdict is to be delivered, hundreds of protestors are outside the courthouse with signs demanding “Justice for Emma,” by which they mean the death penalty for Sydney.

But when the verdict is announced, virtually everyone is stunned–Not Guilty.  And then chaos ensues.

Leading the media frenzy surrounding the arrest and trial is Faith Corso, a former prosecutor and current personality on the BNN network.  Throughout the trial Faith has demonized Sydney, giving her the now-famous nickname of Shot Mom (for the whiskey shots she was photographed drinking after Emma’s disappearance).

It’s easy to hate Sydney, given the severity of the crime she’s accused of, her posturing in court, and her refusal to say anything more to her lawyer than that she’s innocent.  And when she realizes that she and Jack are not on the same page regarding her future–she sees herself giving interviews at one hundred thousand dollars per and perhaps being the subject of a television movie as well–they come to a parting of the ways.  His injunction that Sydney needs to keep a low profile seems to fall on deaf ears.

The picture gets even bleaker.  Jack has arranged for Sydney to leave the Miami-Dade Women’s Correction Center under cover of night, trying to avoid the large crowd that is camped in front of the prison.  Egged on by one of BNN’s reporters, the crowd is hostile and dangerous, waiting for Sydney’s release.  Shouting “no blood money” over and over, the people are whipping themselves into a fever when one of them believes she has spotted Sydney walking out the jail’s door.  The crowd surges over the woman and knocks her to the ground. But when the people are forcibly disbursed by the police, it’s discovered that the woman is not Sydney Bennett but a younger woman who looks much like her, and Sydney is nowhere to be seen.

Many of the novel’s most unpleasant characters, unfortunately, are totally believable.  Sydney, even years after her daughter’s death, expresses nothing that could charitably be called maternal instinct; her only thoughts are how best to promote herself and earn big money.  Her father is a bully who refuses to allow his wife to speak to Jack.  Faith Corso is a media star whose only interest appears to be the story, regardless of whether the story is factual or not.  And the head of the BNN network will literally stop at nothing to boost the ratings of his programs.

Blood Money is the tenth novel in James Grippando’s Jack Swyteck series.  You can read more about the author at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.

Hush Money/Hush Puppy–it’s the second word that makes all the difference.

Hush Puppy is the name of a champion horse belonging to Sydney Everett, a rich but crude widow who owns horses but doesn’t ride them. When Jack MacTaggart, a recent addition to the very white-shoe Los Angeles law firm of Henley & Hargrove, is asked to take over the insurance case involving the death of Mrs. Everett’s horse, Hush Puppy, he asks, “Why me?  I don’t know a fetlock from a half nelson.”  The reason is that the firm’s attorney who usually handles Mrs. Everett’s business is out of the country, so Jack has to hoof it over (forgive the pun) to the Fielding Riding Club to get the story.

Sydney Everett is the personification of the gauche, nouveau riche trophy wife/widow who is on the prowl for a replacement for her late husband.  Avoiding Sydney’s obvious interest in him, Jack learns from the riding club’s veterinarian, George Wells, that Hush Puppy died of cardiac failure of an unknown cause; it is later discovered that the cause of the heart failure is a virus that poisoned the animal.

Jack is working on another case as well.  His client, a low-income working man named Victor Tazerian, has leukemia that is currently in remission.   A proven treatment has been denied by Victor’s insurance carrier on the grounds that Victor is healthy at the moment. However, when (and it’s a when, not an if) his cancer returns, the treatment will not work.  Jack’s job is to convince the insurance company to pay for the treatment when Victor is healthy so it can be available when he gets ill again.  So far, the venerable Hartford Allied Insurance Company has not agreed to do this.  But Jack has always enjoyed a good fight.

The characters in Hush Money are terrific.  Jack is street-wise, not exactly a perfect fit for his law firm. The stable master he meets at the Fielding Riding Club, Tara Flynn, is an attractive, outgoing young woman; she’s not shy about telling Jack her opinion of everyone in the club, her bosses included.  Russ Dinsmoor, Jack’s mentor and a highly respected attorney in the California legal community, is uneasy about Jack’s deep research into Hush Puppy’s death.  Sydney Everett, Jack’s client, has a secret in her past that is impacting everything about the case.  And the senior partner in Jack’s firm, Morris Henley, and his son Jared are unlikeable in the extreme.  The former is an overbearing, arrogant man who thinks his every word must be obeyed, while the latter much prefers roaming the world to doing actual work at the law firm.

Chuck Greaves was an attorney in Los Angeles for twenty-five years, and the novel is filled with fascinating pieces of legal lore.  He obviously knows the ins-and-outs of the court system, and his writing makes it all accessible to his readers.  And his character Jack MacTaggart is, at times, laugh-out-loud funny.

You can read more about him at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Reads blog at this web site.