Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Archive for 2022

Orphan X, aka Evan Smoak, aka The Nowhere Man.  So many names for one man.  But each name represents a different part of the person who grew up in foster homes, became an undercover government agent, and is now a vigilante who works to help those who have nowhere else to turn.

By any definition, Aragón Urrea is an evil man.  Murderer, drug dealer, enforcer, gang lord–he’s left a trail of broken men and bodies behind him.  But there is one good thing in his life, his eighteen-year-old daughter Anjelina.  There is nothing Aragón would not do for Anjelina, his sweet, beautiful daughter.

In the midst of her birthday party, after making a heartfelt toast to her, Urrea is called by one of his men to a nearby building to deal with a problem.  When he returns to the celebration, chaos greets him.  While he and his men were punishing the man who raped a teenager, armed men broke in to the room where the party was taking place and abducted Anjelina.

Urrea hears about Orphan X, and in desperation he calls him and tells him about the kidnapping.  He admits that he is a bad man, has done terrible things, but says his daughter “is untainted by who I am and what I have done.”  Although Evan has never worked for a client like Urrea before, he can hear the genuine pain in the man’s voice and decides to help.

Assisting Evan is Joey, a teenager who is as good with technology, both legal and illegal, as Evan is with his skills.  Like Evan, Joey is a former Orphan who was placed in the Program; unlike Evan, who left voluntarily, she “washed out.”  Now both are on the government’s hit list because they know too much about what the undercover agency did in the past and continues to do.

In addition to trying to find Angelina, Evan is dealing with some personal issues.   First is his relationship with Joey, and relationships are something that neither one is good with.  Sixteen-year-old Joey wants the freedom to take a road trip alone.  Evan is vehemently against it, citing her age, her inexperience being on her own; Joey, naturally taking the opposite point of view, cites her technological and martial arts skills.

Mia Hall, a neighbor of Evan, is presenting Evan with another relationship problem.  The two have an on-again, off-again romantic connection, and Evan is very fond of Peter, her young son.  But given that Mia is an assistant district attorney and Evan is The Nowhere Man, involved in all sorts of illegal operations that he can never discuss with her, their romance doesn’t appear to have a future.  Yet neither can seem to break away from the other.

Dark Horse is the seventh novel in this series.  Reading the books in the order they were published gives the reader a deep insight into Evan’s mind and his behavior.  He’s reached the point in his life where he tells himself he’s done being The Nowhere Man, but he cares deeply about justice and recognizes that he is the last resort for the people who contact him.

Gregg Hurwitz has written another intriguing book about a man torn between his demons and his conscience, his past and his present.  Dark Horse in an excellent addition to the story of Evan Smoak.  You can read more about the author 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.

Two young girls are killed nearly twenty years apart.  Although the police are certain who the killer is and arrest him each time, the evidence is circumstantial; there are no fingerprints and no witnesses to the crime.   The suspect, Kanichi Hasunuma, refuses to speak a word to the authorities.  Both times the prosecutors reluctantly let him go, and so he remains a free man.

The Namiki family owns the Namiki-ya restaurant in Tokyo.  They were a devoted family of four–the parents and their two daughters–until a night three years before the novel opens and teenager Saori Namiki disappears.

A gifted singer, Saori is discovered by Naoki Niikura and his wife Rumi.  The music impresarios are blown away by her talent, and with the agreement of her parents, Saori embarks on a singing career.  Then, one night after leaving the restaurant for a walk, the girl fails to return.  Despite an intensive search by her parents, friends, and the police, no trace of her is found, and she is never seen again.

Three years later, a fire the police believe is arson destroys an old house that was called a “trash house” because it was so filled with junk that the effects overflowed to the lawn and sidewalk.  The house belonged to an elderly woman, a hermit who lived there by herself, and when the authorities investigated the fire they discovered two bodies inside the house, neither recently deceased.  One is the remains of the owner, the other proves via DNA evidence to be that of Saori Namiki.

Detective Chief Inspector Kusanagi investigated the first disappearance years earlier and has been called in to investigate Saori’s murder.  In the first case, Hasunuma sued the police force for reparations and won; now that he’s been released for lack of evidence a second time, he goes to the Namiki-ya restaurant and informs the Namikis that he’ll be suing them for compensation for falsely saying that he murdered their daughter.

Then Detective Kusanagi meets up with his old friend Manubu Yukawa.  Yukawa has been nicknamed Detective Galileo for his deductive powers and insights into crimes; in fact, the cover of Silent Parade calls the mystery “A Detective Galileo Novel” although Yukawa is not a policeman.   He is a professor of physics, recently returned from a research trip to the United States, who has helped Kusanagi in previous cases.  And although he professes indifference to this crime, it in fact has piqued his interest, and he goes to the Namiki-ya for dinner to get a sense of the family.  Thus the investigation into Saori Namiki’s take a new turn.

Keigo Higashino is Japan’s best-selling novelist, with more than fifty television and film adaptations of his work and multiple awards.  You can read about him on many internet sites.

A remote desert retreat run by a “man of God,” an organization finding good homes for Russian orphans, a mother grieving the loss of her only son in Afghanistan, the death of a successful businessman at an elegant Beverly Hills hotel.   Four seemingly unrelated situations that coalescence into a single case bring Los Angeles police detective Margaret (Maggie) Nolan and former Army soldier Sam Easton together again.

Children of the Desert is at the center of Desolation Canyon.  It’s a spiritual retreat that’s “gained the attention of celebrities,” Maggie’s father tells her when he informs her that her mother is heading there for a two-day stay to get herself healed, but that doesn’t impress Maggie.  She’s been hurt and bewildered by her mother’s behavior ever since Maggie’s brother Max was killed, and now she’s wondering why her mother has to seek out strangers to help her deal with her loss, why her husband and daughter aren’t enough for her.

Maggie decides to put the concerns about her mother aside and calls Remy Beaudreau, a former police detective for whom she has some unresolved feelings.  They meet for a drink at the luxurious Hotel Bel-Air, and Maggie shares more than she means to about what is going on in her family.  When she mentions the name of the retreat that her mother is going to, it’s obvious that it has some meaning for Remy.  In an attempt to shift the conversation, he suggests they view the hotel’s famous Swan Lake, famous as a site for weddings.

But instead of the serene site they’d anticipated, the swans seem agitated and are batting their wings against the water.  And just moments later, Maggie and Remy see something in the water, and it turns out to be the body of a man.

The body is identified as Blake Lindgren, a lawyer who was general counsel for a Russia-baaed company.  When Maggie and her partner Al Crawford go to the home of Blake’s former wife, they find another corpse; now both Mr. and Mrs. Lindgren have died under suspicious circumstances.

Inside a California prison, Glenn Ramey is visited by “Snake” Jackson, a man he’d done time with years earlier.  Now calling himself Father Paul, Jackson tells Ramey he’s founded a spiritual retreat in the desert, a place where he’s “restoring wounded souls” and that he needs Ramey to be a key part of his security team at the Children of the Desert site.

Disbelieving, Ramey refers to Jackson as a former felon, and the latter’s countenance “transformed fully into a nightmare mask.”  Jackson tells Ramey, “Never mention it again…I’m here to save your life but it wouldn’t trouble me to end it.”

P. J. Tracy has done a masterful job putting together all the pieces of this intricate puzzle.  The plot of Desolation Canyon is suspenseful, and the many characters are believable and true to life.  You can read more about P. J. Tracy 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.

I wanted to open this About Marilyn column with a heartwarming quote about winter.  That’s difficult for me, as winter is my least favorite season, but I thought I’d try.  I’ve chosen two quotes that actually do resonate with me.

The first is from Murray Pura, a writer from Winnipeg, Manitoba.  That’s a province where the average January high is 14 degrees, the average low is 4, and as I write this column it’s -4!  Mr. Pura must have a warm heart because here is his quote:  “If winter helps you curl up and more, that makes it one of the best of the seasons.”  I am assuming he means curl up with a good book, a sentiment made clear by the English writer Ben Aaronvich:  “In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.”

And as I write this, Massachusetts is getting ready for a major snowstorm, with up to 24 inches of snow possible!

So whether you like the winter or are dreaming of spring, here is the list of the books I’ve chosen for my tenth WHODUNIT? course at BOLLI, the Brandeis University Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

The topic is “An Historical Mystery Tour,” and we’ll be starting in the fifth century B. C. E. and continuing to the 20th century.  An historical novel is one considered historical from the author’s point of view–in other words, before she/he was born, her/his personal pre-history.

As always, we’ll read eight books during the ten week course.  These are the novels in the order we’ll read them:  The Pericles Commission by Gary Corby (Greece in 480 B. C. E.), Roman Blood by Stephen Saylor (Rome in 80 B. C. E.), The Rose Rent by Ellis Peters (12th-century England), Jade Dragon Mountain by Elsa Hart (18th-century China/Tibet), A Simple Murder by Eleanor Kuhns (18th-century United States), The Inheritance by Charles Finch (19th-century England), March Violets by Philip Kerr (1930s Germany), and The Shadow District by Arnaldur Indriason (1940s/present Iceland).

In the class (via Zoom) we’ll be thinking about life as it was decades, even centuries, ago.  In this world-wide tour we’ll explore similarities and differences between the countries and time periods we are visiting and our own.  We’ll look at how people in a variety of historical periods have been influenced by their history, culture, political structure, technology, and social behaviors.  So I hope you’ll read along with us.

One more thing:  I’m about to start my twelfth year writing Marilyn’s Mystery Reads.  I love writing the reviews, and I hope you enjoy reading them.

Marilyn

William Kent Krueger is one of the most lyrical authors around, a fact that he proves once again in Lightning Strike, a look back to the childhood of Cork O’Connor, the protagonist of many of his novels.

It’s 1963 in the small town of Aurora, Minnesota.  Although there isn’t much in the way of major crime in the North Country, there are ethnic tensions that are either close to the surface or bubbling above it.  The area is home to its white, Christian population descended mainly from Irish and Scandinavian settlers and its Native Ojibwe people.

There is distrust in both cultures, and it all comes to a head when Cork O’Connor and his friend Jorge come upon the body of Big John hanging from a tree in the area called Lightning Strike on the shore of Iron Lake.

Because of Big John’s many battles with alcohol, the authorities aren’t too surprised that there are two empty bottles of Four Roses on the ground near his body, although “I thought he’d kick the booze for good,” Cork’s father, Sheriff Liam O’Connor, tells his two deputies and the mortician who come to Lightning Strike after Cork runs home with the news of his discovery.  It looks like an open-and-shut suicide, but Liam wants to be sure.  So he asks for a toxicology report, “just to be on the safe side.”

However, that’s not enough for the Iron Lake Band of Ojibwe, living on a reservation just outside of Aurora and under the jurisdiction of the Tamarack County Sheriff’s office.  Not surprisingly, members of the tribe have little confidence in any form of the official government, even when the forensics report confirms that Big John was intoxicated when he died.

To them the sheriff is just another chimook, a white man, without understanding or reverence for Ojibwe customs and beliefs, even though he is married to Colleen, the daughter of an Ojibwe mother and a white father.  They have lost belief, if they ever had it, in Liam’s trustworthiness and ability to conduct an impartial investigation.

One of the most vociferous voices raised against Natives in general and Big John in particular is Duncan MacDermid.  He has a virulent dislike of Indians and a violent temper, something his abused wife can attest to.  With MacDermid on one side and Liam’s mother-in-law on the other, every move the sheriff makes alienates one of the groups.

There are other threads in Lightning Strike in addition to Big John’s death, including a missing teenage Native girl and the feelings of Natives after they leave the reservation.  The author writes about the Relocation Act of 1956, an act of Congress that pays for relocation for Indians to encourage them to leave their reservations and move to locations where there are better schools and jobs.   On paper it sounded good, Cork’s grandmother Dilsey tells him, but the reality was different.  It was, she tells him, “another attempt to eradicate the Native cultures.  They tried blankets tainted with smallpox.  They tried guns.  They tried boarding schools.  Now they’re trying this.”

Lightning Strike is an outstanding mystery and a poignant novel.  As always the author’s characters are completely believable, and the story will tug at your heartstrings.

You can read more about William Kent Krueger at this website.

Beth Rivers is still living in Benedict, Alaska, the most remote place she can find.  After surviving a traumatic abduction seven months earlier and with her kidnapper remaining on the loose, Beth fled from her home in Missouri to this tiny town that is almost off the grid, hoping that Travis Walker will never find her.  So far he hasn’t, but her fear of him is never far from the surface of her mind.

She has a made a life for herself, or at least a sort of life, because Benedict is a place where she feels safe.  Only the police chief, Gril Samuels, knows Beth’s backstory, and it was his suggestion that she stay at Benedict House, a halfway house for women felons.  Although Beth hasn’t told Viola, the woman who runs the House, what brought her to the town, Viola takes no nonsense from anyone, and Beth knows she can count on Viola to have her back.

But even in a town as small as this one, there are secrets that its citizens don’t want uncovered.  That may explain the attitude of some residents toward the census taker.  Doug Vintner is asking questions that people feel are none of his business–like how old they are, what their occupation is, how many people live in their house.  Seemingly innocuous questions to most people, but not to everyone, Beth in particular.  “Dodge him…don’t give him answers if you can avoid it,” is the advice she’s given, and she plans to take it.

As Beth and some friends are sitting in the town’s only bar, the door bursts open and a distraught woman rushes in.  Claudia has been beaten, with one of her eyes swollen and her forehead bloody.  Not for the first time, she’s run away from her husband, and not for the first time she tells Beth and the others, “It’s not his fault.”  As Claudia attempts to excuse Ned, she says her husband was fine until the census taker came to their house and started asking too many questions.  The one that set Ned off was Vintner asking how many people were in the house.

It turns out that Ned’s sister Lucy, a fugitive, was hiding in the adjacent shed, a fact known only to Claudia and Ned.  She’s wanted by the Juneau police, but due to the inclement weather the police are unable to get her on the ferry to return to the city.  Because of the abusive relationship between Claudia and Ned, Lucy has been remanded to Viola’s custody until the ferry is running again.  So she’s staying at Benedict House when news comes that her brother Ned has been killed.

In the midst of all this, Beth’s mother arrives without warning.  The two have a difficult relationship, mostly because of her mother’s rather checkered past, but she and Beth are now doing their best to work together to make certain that Travis Walker doesn’t come to Benedict.  Mill is fearless and determined to protect her daughter, but her decisions are not always well-thought-out or well-received, both by Beth and the town’s police chief.

This is the third book in the Alaska Wild series, and Paige Shelton continues to give her readers an excellent plot and realistic characters.  She is the author of four other mystery series and several stand-alones.  You can read more about her at this website.

New York City’s Chinatown, comprised of twelve enclaves within the city, has the largest ethnic Chinese population outside of Asia.  Little wonder, therefore, that there’s enough crime to keep private investigator Lydia Chin and her partner Bill Smith very busy indeed.

When Big Brother Choi dies (a natural death), he leaves a vacuum not only in the Li Min Jin tong that he controlled but in Manhattan itself.  He owned a multi-story apartment building in the heart of Chinatown, and a development group wants to buy it, demolish it, and then rebuild it as part of a mixed luxury and middle-income condominium, Phoenix Towers.  The possible sale has produced a heated debate by those who say the destruction of the building would shatter the heart of the community versus those who say it would provide a much needed economic boost to the area.

The building has been left to Choi’s niece Wu Mao-Li, known as Mel.  She knows that her uncle Choi didn’t want to sell the building, but there are significant forces that are pressuring her to change her mind.  Following a call from Chang Yao-Zu, her uncle’s lieutenant, she hires Lydia and Bill to accompany her to her uncle’s apartment to find out if there’s anything he left her to further explain his position and shore up support for her refusal to sell.

Waiting for them in the building’s lobby is Tan Lu-Lien, the tong’s financial officer.  She leads the way to Choi’s apartment, where his lieutenant, Chang Yao-Zu, was expected to let them inside.  When he doesn’t appear, Mel uses the key her uncle had given her, opens the door, and the quartet see Chang’s bloody body lying across a tea table.

While the police investigate the murder, Mel asks Lydia and Bill to continue looking into her uncle’s affairs in the hope of strengthening her position vis-a-vis the building’s future.

The tension rises as the various players make their positions known re the disposition of Choi’s property.  In addition to Mel, there’s Ironman Ma, a tong member, who wants to search the property because he thinks Choi had hidden treasure somewhere on the site; Jackson Ting, an area developer who needs to demolish the building so he can build the development he’s counting on to make him a major player in the city; and Mel’s sister Natalie, who is being blackmailed to pressure Mel into selling the site.

Also involved is Lydia’s brother Tim, a lawyer in a white-shoe law firm who is having mixed emotions about the building.  As a member of Harriman McGill, he should favor the Phoenix Towers development because Jackson Ting is a client of the firm.  On the other hand, he’s a board member of the Chinatown Heritage Society, which opposes it.

As always, Ms. Rozan brings not only her protagonists but the entire New York Chinese community to life.  The descriptions of the people and places in Manhattan and the dialog between Lydia and Bill are wonderful.  Readers will feel as if they are walking the streets and eavesdropping on Lydia and Bill while the duo is eating ice cream at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory or enjoying tea at Miansai.

Ms. Rozan’s work has won the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity awards for Best Novel and the Edgar for Best Short Story.  You can read more about her at this website.