Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Archive for March, 2020

Old friends, new friend, old dogs, new dog.  That’s the cast of characters in David Rosenfelt’s first novel in a new series.  He is also the author of the series that features Andy Carpenter, a lawyer and amateur detective.

The setting of The K Team will be familiar to readers of the Carpenter novels.  It’s Paterson, New Jersey, across the river from Manhattan, and the “new friend” is recently retired Paterson police detective Corey Douglas, with his “new dog” Simon.  Simon isn’t new to Douglas, only to the reader, because he was the detective’s canine partner, and through Andy’s clever maneuvering, Douglas was allowed to take Simon with him when he left the force.

Now Douglas has been approached by Laurie Collins, Andy’s wife and a retired police lieutenant herself, to start a private investigations company to be called The K Team in Simon’s honor.  The team’s third human member is Marcus Clark, according to Douglas, “the toughest, scariest man on the planet.”  With everyone in place, the team is ready for its first client.

Via Pete Stanton, another character familiar to readers of the earlier series, the investigators have a case.  Judge Henry Henderson is a well-respected, if not well-liked, jurist, but he is the recipient of a troubling letter.  The letter tells him that he shortly will be called upon to do a service, for which he already has been paid, but Henderson tells the team that he has no idea who has sent this message or what the service is.

When Laurie asks him about having been paid, Douglas, who is the novel’s narrator, expects another negative answer.  Instead, the judge gives the investigators a statement from a bank in the Cayman Islands, showing an account in his name with deposits totaling over $390,000, going back over eighteen months.  Due to the Islands’ confidentiality laws concerning banking, there is no way to trace who deposited the money, even though it is Henderson’s name on the account.

There is a lot going on.  At the same time we read about the team’s investigation, we also read about a mysterious group of ultra-wealthy men who are engaged in an ultra-secret enterprise.  The judge is being followed, a murder is committed, and Henderson receives a photo that shows him opening the door of what is obviously his hotel room and kissing a young woman who, from her appearance, is a prostitute.

Since The K Team is narrated by Corey Douglas, we are privy to his thoughts and to the decisions he and Laurie make.  However, we do not know the identities of the mysterious men who are behind the scheme, what their purpose is, and how they intend to reach their goal.

David Rosenfelt has written an excellent first entry to his second series.  Although the novel features many familiar characters and settings, it’s told in a fresh voice by a sympathetic protagonist who will draw you into the book and keep you engrossed until the end.

You can read more about David Rosenfelt at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

The title immediately grabbed me in a personal way.  My late father was the police captain of that precinct decades after A Death In Harlem takes place, and many changes, both good and bad, had occurred in the intervening years.

Weldon Thomas is the first colored policeman in the department’s history.  Of course, he’s assigned to his neighborhood to keep an eye on his people, and not much is expected of him.  Racism, accidental or deliberate, is shown by his fellow officers, but Thomas has confidence in himself to do his job.

In Karla FC Holloway’s Author’s Note at the beginning of the mystery, she pays homage to Nella Larsen’s Passing, written in 1929. “Passing” means the ability of a person to be regarded as belonging to another class, racial, or ethnic group; in Ms. Larsen’s novel it was the story of a colored woman passing as white, even to the man she married, with tragic results.  In A Death in Harlem, passing is once again at the center of a book.

Ms. Holloway’s novel takes place in the upper social strata of Harlem society, where rules and behavior are as strict as those found anywhere.  Two woman, Vera Scott and Earlene Kinsdale, had been friends since their college days, but two things have happened to change that dynamic.  First is Earlene’s recent widowhood, second is the entrance into Harlem of a mysterious newcomer.  Olivia Frelon arrived from somewhere unknown, with money from a source unknown, with a background unknown.

All that is known is that Olivia is so light-skinned, so bright in the vernacular of the day, that she could pass for white without question.  But, like the equally fair Vera Scott, she has chosen to remain with her people, so it’s no wonder that she and Vera have become such good friends.  So good, in fact, that there seems to be room no longer in Vera’s life for her former friend Earlene.

Everything changes the night of the Ninth Annual Opportunity Awards Banquet, an event at which various prizes are given to outstanding authors in the community.  The first two awards go as expected, but when Olivia Frelon’s name is announced, she doesn’t come forward.  Her name is called again, and this time when the curtain opens a woman comes out screaming.  “She dead!  She dead!  She done fell out of the window.”

Was it an accident?  Was it murder?  Patrolman Weldon Thomas has his own ideas, but higher-ranking officers ignore his thoughts, both because he is a lowly black patrolman and because there are important members of white society who are also in the picture and who may need to be protected.

There are at least three major secrets in this novel, two of which absolutely stunned me.  I was congratulating myself on having solved one mystery when two others appeared.  The clues are present, but they are so cunningly disguised that I never even suspected that they were there to be discovered.

A Death in Harlem is an outstanding novel that penetrates black society, its aspirations, its gossip, its caring and its backstabbing.  The people are all too recognizable, regardless of one’s own ethnic background–their fears and triumphs, their pettiness and their compassion.  It’s a study of humanity in all its forms.

You can read more about Karla FC Holloway at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

Before Familiar Woods is Ian Pisarcik’s debut, and it’s an understatement to say that it is an absolutely outstanding one.

The setting could hardly been more dispiriting–a small, remote town in Vermont’s Green Mountain range, waiting for the worst that winter has in store.  After a very brief first chapter we’re introduced to Ruth Fenn, sitting on her front porch with her husband’s deer rifle across her knees.

Coming up her rutted gravel drive is Della Downing, formerly Ruth’s closest friend but now her bitterest enemy.  Della says she is looking for her husband Horace, and she thinks he’s with Ruth’s husband Elam.  Neither man came home last night, but Ruth isn’t as upset as Della; this isn’t the first time Elam went out and didn’t return for a day or two.  That has happened more than once since the tragedy.

Ruth and Della each had one son, Mathew and William respectively.  The boys were friends and were fifteen years old when their nude and bloodied bodies were found on a trail in the Green Mountain National Forest, surrounded by needles and beer cans.  The medical examiner couldn’t say whether they died from exposure, being attacked by animals, or from the fentanyl-laced heroin found in their bloodstreams.  But did it really matter?

Mathew had always been an outlier, and so it was easy for the citizens of North Falls to put the blame for the deaths on him.  At first people thought that the boys had gotten high, hallucinated, and attacked each other.  But then a statement from a Vermont state trooper painted a different, even more disturbing, picture.  He hypothesized that Mathew had lured his friend into the isolated area, attempted to have sex with him, and then, possibly being rebuffed, killed him.

That became the story that nearly everyone believed, and Ruth and Elam became pariahs.  Then Della made things worse with her statements about William befriending Mathew because the latter had no other friends and William felt sorry for him.  Naturally, that ended the friendship between the two grieving mothers until three years later when Della shows up in front of Ruth’s house and asks Ruth if she knows where their husbands have gone.

Milk Raymond is a veteran returning to North Falls from Iraq.  Milk’s former wife is a drug addict, and while he was in the army she abandoned their son Daniel to run off with another addict, leaving the child in the care of her mother.  Now that Milk is home, he needs to find a job to support himself and Daniel, a decent place to live, and the strength to deal with these problems, and he turns to Ruth for help..

Before Familiar Woods definitely is a mystery dealing with the deaths of the teenagers and the whereabouts of Ruth’s and Della’s husbands.  It is also a brilliant, disturbing novel that looks into rural poverty, homophobia, divisions between friends, and the difficult issues of parenting.  

You can read more about Ian Pisarcik at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

The famous dictum “write what you know” certainly works for Bruce Robert Coffin, former police detective turned mystery author.  Within Plain Sight is his fourth crime novel featuring John Byron who is, like his creator had been, a long-time member of the Portland, Maine force.

An Iraqui war veteran, rummaging through a dumpster in a deserted lot, makes a gruesome discovery.  Then a headless corpse is discovered in a separate location, and the reader is now ahead of the detective and his squad investigating the brutal murder.  But not for long.

The corpse is identified when the police get a phone call from a woman who says that her friend hadn’t met her for lunch earlier in the week as they had planned and that she has not responded to texts or phone calls.  Further investigation shows that the body and its separated head belong to Danica Faherty, the missing friend.

When the medical examiner conducts the autopsy, he says that the cause of the woman’s death was not decapitation–in other words, Danica was dead when her head was cut off.  “Something stopped this girl’s heart from beating….But I’ll be dammed if I know what it was,” he tells the detective.

In addition to the horror of the murder itself, Byron wonders if it is connected to two recent slayings in Boston.  There are similarities, he thinks, but there are also differences; he’s in no rush to judgment.

Byron is also contending with several issues outside of the murder.  The department has a new chief, the first female head of the Portland Police, and Byron isn’t certain how much credence he can give to her statements of support.

He has just received his black coin for six months of sobriety from his mentor at Alcoholic Anonymous, and he is trying his best to take it “one day at a time,” the self-help group’s motto.  Can he continue to be alcohol-free in spite of the stress of his job?

And who is responsible for the leaks that are appearing in the media?  It’s making Byron’s job more difficult, and the possibility that one of his own team may be responsible is definitely something he hopes isn’t true.

Byron is also re-starting his relationship with his colleague Diane Joyner, but he’s having some trouble with the idea that she will be leaving her current position as the face of the department’s public relations and rejoining his section of the force.  He should be happy for her, of course, since he knows that’s what she wants, but he worries that two stress-related jobs in the department may prove to be too much for their relationship.

The police investigation takes us through both deserted lots and elegant mansions.  As the experienced mystery reader knows, there are secrets in both places, secrets that the guilty will kill to protect.

Bruce Robert Coffin has written another excellent police procedural novel in this series.  I had the pleasure of meeting him last month and hearing him speak.  He gave his attentive audience a good look into contemporary policing, with several fascinating incidents that occurred during his years on the Portland force, all told in an engaging manner with a sly sense of humor.

You can read more about Mr. Coffin at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.