Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Archive for November, 2015

Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? is a crime caper par excellence.  It involves quarreling police detectives, con artists, gangsters, beautiful women, and more name changes than one would have thought possible.  It’s a terrific read.

New London, Connecticut police detectives Manny Streeter and Benny Vikström are partners who can hardly bear to be in the same room or the same police car.  They’re called to an accident on the city’s Bank Street involving a dump truck and a motorcycle that ended with the cyclist’s death.  The truck backed up in an alley and rode over the Harley and its driver, separating the driver’s head from his body.

Benny and Manny investigate, but it seems to have been simply a tragic accident.  The truck driver, Leon Pappalardo, says it was his first time driving the truck and he mistakenly hit the gas instead of the brake, crashing into a nearby car and then driving over the motorcyclist.  Benny, the more dogged of the two detectives, feels there’s something strange about how the accident happened, but he can’t put his finger on it.  “I’m not saying the accident was premeditated…but neither am I saying it wasn’t premeditated.”  So Manny reluctantly agrees with his partner that they should look more closely into the accident.

Connor Raposo is an almost-witness to the crash.  He was inside a cobbler’s shop, picking up the Bruno Magli shoes his older brother passed down to him.  When he goes onto the street to see the crash’s aftermath, he makes the acquaintance of Sal Nicoletti, another almost-witness.  Sal’s car’s battery died during the wait for the accident scene to be cleared, so Connor offers him a ride home.  Connor is almost certain that he’s seen Sal before, but Sal denies knowing him.  Connor, who is almost never completely certain of anything, seems to acquiesce, but the thought keeps nagging at him.

Connor has recently moved from the west coast to New London to be a part of a family business.  Well, sort of a family business.  Now called Bounty, Inc., in its previous incarnations it was known as Step Up, Inc. and A Shot in the Arm, Inc.  Whatever it’s called, it’s phony, preying on credulous people to contribute to the most outrageous charities:  e.g., Childhood Victims of Hoof-and-Mouth Disease and Organ Grinder Monkey Retirement Ranch.  And no, I’m not making these names up; I don’t have the imagination.

Besides the terrific plot and interesting/bizarre characters, another delight of the novel is the narrator’s voice.  Every once in a while the narrator showed up with a pertinent comment, making me laugh out loud.  He’s kind of shadowing the action, urging it to move along when he feels it’s too slow or explaining something that’s not quite clear from the dialog.  It’s a truly clever device.

And if you’re wondering about Fat Bob and his possible death, like many other things in the novel it involves two names:  Fat Bob is the nickname of the man who owns the motorcycle that was involved in the accident, and it’s also the name of the cycle.

Stephen Dobyns is the author of many novels, works of non-fiction, and award-winning poetry.  You can read more about him at various sites on the web.

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

Department Q has another cold case.  That’s unfortunate from Detective Carl Mørck’s point of view; he’d much rather sit at his desk with his feet up, letting other sections of the Copenhagen police force deal with any problems that occur.  So when Carl gets a phone call from a colleague in Bornholm, Christian Habersaat, he tells Habersaat that the case the latter wants to refer isn’t appropriate for Department Q and hangs up.

But that’s not the end of the story.  A few minutes later Carl’s assistant Rose comes into his office with an e-mail message from the Bornholm officer:  Department Q was my final hope.  I can’t take any more.  C. Habersaat.  And Rose’s five attempts to reach Christian end in failure.

The following morning Rose greets Carl with the news that Christian Habersaat had committed suicide at his retirement party the previous night.  When Carl, Rose, and the third member of their team, Assad, arrive at the remote Danish island of Bornholm that afternoon, the situation is explained.  Habersaat was a regular police officer, not a detective, but he became so obsessed with a hit-and-run case almost twenty years earlier that it cost him his marriage, his son, and the respect of his fellow officers.

Nearly two decades ago, the body of a teenage girl, Alberte Goldschmid, was found early one morning.  Forensics showed that she had been hit by a car with such force that she was thrown onto a tree limb and bled to death over a period of hours.  A horrible death, to be sure, but the investigation concluded that there was no reason to suspect foul play, that it was simply a driver who panicked and fled the scene, not even bothering to call for medical help.  All the usual steps were taken to find the car but to no avail, and eventually the case was closed.

Except, that is, by Habersaat, who was convinced that it was murder, not a hit-and-run.  He began a long and ultimately fruitless search for the driver of the car, and when he finally concluded that he would never find him he tried without success to interest the Copenhagen cold cases office.  When that failed, he killed himself.

Carl Mørck may not be an especially admirable person, but he’s definitely a good detective.  Even on this case, which he took against his will and which he can’t wait to be rid of, he keeps investigating, digging further and further into the hundred of files that Habersaat left behind and discovering things that the small town policeman had been unable to find.  Rose and Assad are terrific characters, with their own foibles, and they are even more determined than Carl to find out the truth about Alberte Goldschmid’s death.

You can read more about Jussi Adler-Olsen at this web site.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her web site https://www.marilynsmysteryreads.com

I’ve come to the conclusion that when writing talent was handed out, Robert Galbraith/aka J. K. Rowling stood in line twice.  That’s the only explanation I can come up with to explain how the gifted author of the Harry Potter series can also be the gifted author of the Cormoran Strike series.

As Career of Evil begins, Strike and Robin are riding high professionally.  Their two previous cases have garnered them great publicity, especially since they captured the killers ahead of Scotland Yard.  Personally, too, things are going well for them.  Strike is dating now that his on-again, off-again romance with Charlotte is definitely off.  And Robin’s wedding is only a few months away.

All this success comes to a quick halt, however, when Robin opens a package addressed to her at work and finds a woman’s leg inside.  She and Strike are obviously horrified.  Strike immediately contacts Detective Wardle of the Yard to help them find the messenger who delivered the box to Robin.

The resultant publicity has the effect of clients terminating their contacts with Strike and Robin; who would want to work with a firm involved in such a distressing situation?  Besides, all the newspaper photos and television shots have made their undercover work impossible.

Strike mentions four people to Wardle as possibilities for wanting to hurt him by targeting Robin, but he tells Robin that in his mind he has already eliminated one of them, a gangster who was sent to jail on Strike’s testimony.  The remaining three, to his mind, are much more dangerous:  Donald Laing, a convicted sociopath; Noel Brockbank, a child abuser and rapist; and Jeff Whittaker, Strike’s mother’s second husband and thus Strike’s stepfather, an abusive drug user who preys on women.

Needing to investigate all three men, Strike reluctantly agrees to let Robin do surveillance on one of them.  Robin is eager to do more detective work than Strike has previously given her, and she’s ready to prove her worth.  But this assignment has to be kept from her fiancé Matt, who has been vehemently against her employment with Strike from the beginning.  Indeed, the tensions between Robin and Matt have been increasing steadily over the past few months as their wedding approaches.

Career of Evil delivers everything that makes an excellent novel:  a gripping plot, believable characters, and a pace that doesn’t stop.  In this mystery we learn more about Strike’s and Robin’s backgrounds, information that helps us understand what motivates them to do the things they do.  In addition to the two protagonists, the secondary characters are wonderfully drawn:  Matt, who loves Robin deeply but made a devastating mistake in his past that has come back to threaten their relationship; Robin’s mother, wanting her daughter’s happiness but fearful of the dangers she puts herself in; and the three men whom Strike and Robin are investigating.

Robert Galbraith has written the third in a series that grows better with each book, something that given the perfection of The Cuckoo’s Calling would seem impossible.  Robert Galbraith/J. K.Rowling has done it again.

You can read more about Robert Galbraith at this web site.

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

Charles Lenox is one of the most charming protagonists around.  The younger son of a baronet, Charles has recently returned to his first love, detecting, after spending several years in the House of Lords.  Although it’s considered not quite “the thing” for a member of the nobility to be “in trade,” Charles has decided that this is what he wants to do with his life and so is now the senior partner of Lenox, Strickland, and Dallington, private enquiry agents in London.

The novel opens with all of the city, and indeed the entire country, in upheaval following the disappearance of Muller, the renowned German pianist.  Muller got up from the piano bench at the end of a concert, walked into his dressing room, and hasn’t been seen since.  The entire concert hall was searched, as was his hotel room and all the various sites around London that the musician was known to frequent, but without result.  To coin a cliché, apparently the man disappeared into thin air.

Charles offers his services to Scotland Yard; instead, the firm of his former business partner Lemaire is chosen to find the missing man.  Naturally, this has made Charles and his partners, Polly Strickland and Lord John Dallington, even more determined to solve the case, score against Lemaire, and gain the publicity that would go with locating Muller.

At the same time, Charles is trying to help his older brother, Edmund, who is dealing with the unexpected death of his beloved wife.  Molly died suddenly after the onset of a fever, and Edmund is deep in mourning.  Making the situation even more unbearable is the fact that both their grown sons are away, one in Kenya and the other in the navy, so the ordeal of informing them of their mother’s death still hangs over Edmund.

Some of the most enjoyable aspects of Home By Nightfall are the clever asides that place the reader firmly in 19th-century England.  Did you know that at that time it was possible to rent, rather than subscribe to, the daily editions of The Times; a year’s subscription cost nine pounds, “not an inconsiderable sum.”  Instead, most readers rented the paper for a hour a day, which cost about a pound per year, while renting the previous day’s paper cost a quarter of a pound per year!  And at the time the novel takes place, there were six daily mail deliveries a day in London, four in the countryside.  No wonder no one thought to invent e-mail!

Home Before Nightfall is the ninth Charles Lenox adventure, so there’s a lot of catching up to do if this is your first look at the series.  Although this book can certainly be read on its own, it’s much more enjoyable when you know the backstory of Charles, his aristocratic wife Lady Jane, and his partners in the firm.  But if you’re too impatient to start at the beginning of the series with A Beautiful Blue Death, you can start with Home Before Nightfall.  It’s a terrific read, with believable characters and an engrossing plot.

You can read more about Charles Finch at various sites on the web.

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