Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Archive for April, 2017

A poet, a playwright, and now a novelist–Stephen Mack Jones is an amazing literary talent.   August Snow is an excellent debut.

Snow, the son of a Mexican-American mother and an African-American father, followed the latter as an officer in the Detroit police department.  Following August’s reluctant exposure of a scandal that reached into city and state governments, he was fired; in a trial that found his firing unjust, he received a twelve million dollar settlement.

Obviously that changed August’s life, but it didn’t help him deal with the deaths of his beloved parents and the murder of his fiancée and their unborn child.  He left the United States for a couple of years, did some heavy drinking while he was away, and has now returned to his familial home in Mexicantown, a rundown neighborhood in the Motor City.

Soon after August returns home he’s approached by Ray Danbury, a captain in the city’s police department and one of the very few friends the ex-cop still has in Detroit.  Ray gives him a piece of paper with the phone number of Eleanor Paget, a mover and shaker in all areas of the city thanks to the affluence of her ancestors, and tells him to call Eleanor at once.  August knows her and knows she’s a woman with a volatile temper and shaky self-control, but he reluctantly agrees to see her.

When he goes to Eleanor’s house, she informs him that there’s something “wrong” at her family’s bank.  Although August promises to look into the matter, he tells her he’s not optimistic about his ability to find out anything since he’s no longer on the force nor is he a private investigator.  Not surprisingly, given her temperament, Eleanor becomes enraged at this and tells him not to bother.

However, August feels some compassion for Eleanor, due to his involvement in a case involving her late husband.  He tries, without success, to do a little detective work for her despite her abrupt dismissal of him.  A few days later, Captain Danbury comes to August’s home with the news that Eleanor has been found dead, an apparent suicide.  It seems an open-and-shut case, but it’s being investigated because of Eleanor Paget’s place in the community and the fact that the gun found next to her body is the same one that her husband used to kill himself and his teenage mistress years earlier.

At the autopsy, August thinks to himself, “It was difficult looking at Eleanor lying on a metal slab….It was even harder to look at her and know that maybe I could have done something.”  So he begins investigating again.

Stephen Mack Jones has written an engrossing mystery featuring a compelling protagonist trying to make a difference in the tough city that he calls home.  All the characters, major and minor, are totally realistic; your attention will be captured from the first page.  August Snow is a book that’s outstanding from beginning to end.

You can read more about Stephen Mack Jones at several web sites.

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

It might seem that being a wedding planner is all fun and games, with nothing for the planner to do but eat and drink at the expense of hopeful vendors and travel to wonderful sites to choose the appropriate ones for weddings.  That might be true for most planners, but trouble seems to follow Kelsey McKenna wherever she goes.  The first book of this series took place in Mexico, and there it was the tyrannical mother of the bride who made Kelsey’s life difficult; even the murder of one of the bridesmaids at her daughter’s wedding didn’t slow down the mother’s sarcasm and manipulative behavior.

In Dying on the Vine, Kelsey is closer to home, in beautiful Napa Valley, California.  Helping her friend Brody Max with his photography booth at the Wine Valley Faire, she is approached by Haley Bennett and Christopher Riegert, desperately in need of someone to help with the final details of their wedding, only four weeks away.

The next day, meeting in Kelsey’s office, Haley and Chris confide that they had had a wedding planner, the famous Babs Norton.  Haley’s father, who is paying for the wedding, got into an argument with Babs over expenses and fired her, thus the couple’s entreaty to Kelsey for help.

Wanting to be professional, Kelsey calls Babs to explain the situation.  Babs is understanding and offers Kelsey the necessary files for the wedding, the ones that contain catering, florist, and DJ information.  They make an appointment for the following day, but when Kelsey goes to Babs’ office the woman’s corpse is lying on the floor.

Although the police investigating the murder apparently believe Kelsey’s account of her discovery of the body, Babs’ assistant, Stefan Pierce, doesn’t.  For some reason Kelsey doesn’t understand, Stefan has never liked her and takes the opportunity of Babs’ wake to do all but accuse her of the murder in front of the people there, including her colleagues.  Determined to regain her good name, Kelsey, her assistant Laurel, and her photographer friend Brody band together to find out who was responsible for Babs Norton’s murder.

There’s a great sense of place in Dying on the Vine, with insights into both wine and wedding cultures, and Kelsey is an engaging heroine.  She and her two friends are portrayed realistically, as are their responses to the events around them.  Marla Cooper has written an enjoyable second novel in the Kelsey McKenna series.  Perhaps it’s the author’s own varied background, which includes writing copy for advertisers and travel guidebooks, that makes her writing so entertaining to read.  In fact, it was Ms. Cooper’s ghost-writing a guidebook for wedding planners that sparked the idea for the Kelsey McKenna series.

You can read more about Marla Cooper at this web site.

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

And now for something completely different, as Monty Python would say.  In this book, the late Robert L. Fish created the most clever and enjoyable pastiche I’ve ever read.

The Incredible Schlock Homes deconstructs and “destroys” twelve of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved stories featuring Sherlock Homes.  In the process the reader, or at least this reader, is completely captivated by Fish’s word play, his twisted logic, and his obvious devotion to the most famous detective in fiction.

Do the stories’ titles–“The Adventure of the Adam Bomb,” “The Adventure of the Spectacled Band,” and the “The Adventure of the Artist’s Mottle”–give you a clue about Fish’s style?  In “The Adventure of the Adam Bomb,” Homes arranges a fake funeral for himself because his disappearance is essential to solve a crime.  When his colleague Watney questions the amazing disguise Homes needs to wear while presumably dead and yet be able to investigate, Homes explains.  The body in the casket?  “An excellent example of Madam Tussand’s art.”  The “corpse’s” extra weight?  “One of Mrs. Essex’s pillows.”  His present stature, at least a foot shorter than Homes’ actual height?  “Special shoes,” responds the detective.  Are you beginning to get the idea?

True to the style of Sir Arthur, Fish begins each story with the year it takes place and a brief history of other cases the celebrated detective solved.  In the intro to “The Adventure of the Spectacled Band,” Watney describes the mystery of a gang of Parisian cabbies as “The Adventure of the Taxi Drivers’ Métier.”  Honestly, I was laughing and rolling my eyes at the same time.

The two men live at 221-B Bagel Street (truly) on the second floor of Mrs. Essex’s boarding house.  While trying to get to the location of the house featured in “The Adventure of the Artist’s Mottle,” Homes and Watney need to decide what train to take.  “There is a train that runs on even days that fall on odd dates,” Watney complains.  “Besides, it has the notation M-W-F listed above, which I frankly do not understand.”  “Milk, Wine, Food,” replied Homes curtly.  “It has a combination restaurant car and bar, is all.”

“But that one is annotated T-T-S,” Watney continues.  “What can that mean, Homes?”  “Most probably, Tewksbury Temperance Society, indicating that on that train the bar is closed,” is Homes’ thoughtful explanation.  Who wouldn’t come to that same conclusion?

With the brilliant introduction by Anthony Boucher, for whom the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention is named, the reader is swept away into the nineteenth-century world of telegrams, hansom cabs, and veiled women.  Boucher is quick to point out Fish’s other, more serious achievements–winning the 1962 Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for the best first novel of the year (The Fugitive), penning police procedural short stories and novels, and his completion of Jack London’s unfinished The Assassination Bureau, Ltd., in which Boucher contends it’s impossible to detect any difference between the writings of London and Fish.

In his closing paragraph, Boucher writes, “Robert L. Fish, I am by now pretty thoroughly convinced, can do anything….but I shall never forgive him if his unpredictably assorted output does not continue to include, from time to time, a fresh triumph/fiasco of Schlock Homes.”

I will leave you with this from Robert L. Fish:  “Author’s note:  The characters in this book are all real, and any similarity to fictional characters is strictly coincidental.”  Want to have a feel-good hour or two?  Start reading The Adventures of Schlock Homes asap.

I really don’t know how Lisa Scottoline keeps writing one excellent mystery after another, but she does.  Her latest had me completely fooled until the author revealed the secret she’d kept for more than a third of the book.

One Perfect Lie opens with Chris Brennan interviewing for a position at the high school in Central Valley, Pennsylvania.  He’s made it his business to know exactly the type of substitute teacher the school administration wants, and he presents himself accordingly.  He’s observed the male high school staff and is dressed the way they are in what might be termed “school casual”; he’s even had his hair cut locally so that nothing about him will stand out or seem unusual.

His resumé is perfect, and the reasons he gives for the many moves he’s made in his life ring true.  It also helps that the school needs a substitute Government teacher at once, as the regular teacher left suddenly due to a family emergency.  Chris gives the principal, the only member of the school’s administration he hasn’t met previously, all the answers she wants and needs to hear, and so he gets the job.  Then he thinks to himself, “It was time to set (the) plan in motion, commencing with step one.”

Step one is finding out about renting a truck from a local man who’s not too fussy about legalities.  The man assumes the vehicle is needed for a move, but Chris knows that the available twelve footer is the perfect size for transporting an ANFO bomb, an explosive with ingredients that are easy and safe to assemble.

During his first class Chris sets out to win over all the students, especially the boys.  He’s already deciding who are the leaders and who are the followers, and he’s narrowed down the ones he’s interested in to just a handful.  He plans to cull the handful even more until he finds the perfect boy.  Between his teaching assignment and agreeing to be the assistant coach of the school’s baseball team, he expects to find just the right one; he’s in a hurry because the bombing is only six days away.

Lisa Scottoline is a master storyteller.  She brings to life the three teenagers in whom Chris shows the most interest.  There’s Evan Kostis, the handsome, smart student from a wealthy but unhappy family; there’s Raz Samatov, bereft over the recent death of his father; there’s Jordan Larkin, whose single mother is guilty over how much time she needs to work in order to provide for the two of them.  So what exactly does Chris want from the boy he decides to choose?

All of these characters, and many more equally well done and believable, inhabit the pages of One Perfect Lie.  Ms. Scottoline has written one more thriller that will keep you guessing until the end.

You can read more about her at this web site.

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

Abby Endicott is not your typical assistant district attorney, not by a long shot. Probably not too many ADAs carry Prada bags, receive a monthly $15,000 allowance from their family’s trust fund, wear floor-length Armani gowns, and walk around in Jimmy Choos.  But all that’s surface, because the protagonist of Pamela Wechsler’s debut novel, Mission Hill, is incredibly serious and professional about her job.

As Mission Hill opens, Abby is awakened by a phone call from her close friend, Boston police detective Kevin Farnsworth.  Abby knows that only a murder would cause Kevin to call her at 3:00 a.m., and within ten minutes she’s dressed and ready to walk out the door.  Quiet as she tries to be, her movements awaken Ty Clarke, her significant other.  Although the two don’t technically live together, Ty spends most of his time at Abby’s, whose two-thousand-square-foot apartment is a good deal nicer than his own.  Reluctant to make their relationship permanent or even talk about the reasons she feels this way, Abby is content to continue things as they are.

When Abby arrives at the crime scene in Mission Hill, she is horrified to discover that the victim is Tim Mooney, her colleague in the district attorney’s office and her former lover.  Their affair began while both were single but, in fact, continued for months after Tim’s marriage until he finally told Abby it was over.  Abby has never gotten past her love for Tim, which is one reason she cannot commit to Ty.  Another reason, although she’s reluctant to admit it even to herself, is her concern about how her family will view them as a couple; Tim is a black musician with hippie parents, one white and one black, while Abby’s parents are movers and shakers in Boston society.

Tim was about to begin the murder trial of Orlando Jones, a member of Boston’s notorious North Street Posse.  Abby has some history with Orlando, going back to her teenage years.  He tried to rob her best friend, Crystal, and to get away from him Crystal ran into the street and was run over.  Orlando contended that she tripped, but Abby remains convinced that he pushed her.  In any case, a case for murder or even manslaughter could not be proven against him; he went to juvenile detention and was released when he was eighteen.  In the following years, he’s committed multiple crimes, but due to his violent reputation the witnesses against him either changed their testimony or disappeared.

Now Abby wants to take over Tim’s case.  She persuades her boss, District Attorney Max Lombardo, to appoint her as the prosecutor, although he tells her it’s against his better judgment because she’s too personally involved; that was the reason she didn’t get the case originally.  But Abby is persistent, and finally it pays off.  However, Max warns her, “It’s a tough case.  If you lose, you’ll never forgive yourself.”  Abby’s response–“Then I won’t lose.”  Thus the murder trial begins.

Pamela Wechsler, a former Boston prosecutor herself, knows the ins-and-outs of the city as well as she knows the Massachusetts legal system.  Her novel is tough, realistic, and intense, and so too is her heroine.   I can’t wait for the next Abby Endicott novel.

You can read about Pamela Wechsler at this web site.

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