Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Archive for October, 2023

Every Walt Longmire novel is a joy to read, and Craig Johnson’s latest, the 19th in the series, is simply perfect.

The long-time sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming, is still continuing to think about retirement.  Readers don’t know how old Walt is, but since he served as a marine in the Vietnam conflict, he has to be seventy at the very least, doesn’t he?

In The Longmire Defense, it’s Walt’s incredible determination to find the truth about a long-ago event that brings him closer to death than ever before when he’s faced with the possibility that his deceased grandfather might have been a murderer.

The story begins three-quarters of a century ago when a group of Wyoming investors buy a bank after its failure.  The members of the bank’s board of directors, including Lloyd Longmire, are on a hunting trip when one of its members, Big Bill Sutherland, is accidentally shot to death.  Or so it’s believed at the time.

However, days later another member of the hunting party dies, and a year after that a third member disappears while on a fishing trip, never to be seen again.  Now Walt discovers that these three men plus his grandfather were involved in the handling of a Wyoming monetary fund that is the precursor of the Mineral Trust Fund; its value today is over eight billion dollars.

But it appears that various interested parties don’t want Walt’s inquiry to proceed, even so many decades later.  Lucian Connally, Absaroka County’s former sheriff, is hinting, not so subtly, to leave the case alone, and a man named Mike Regis has been sent from Cheyenne to help Walt “put the fire out,” as he refers to the sheriff’s investigation into the financial dealings of the state.

Then, while he’s out aiding a woman on a mountain road, Walt discovers an abandoned rifle, a .300 H & H Magnum, identical to the one that killed Sutherland years earlier.  It matches the gun in a photo that appears to have been taken the day Big Bill Sutherland was killed, and the weapon is being held by Luke Longmire.

Other things start happening.  A man Walt has asked to do some investigating about Sutherland is critically shot; a very high tech drone, military-style, is flying over the county; a man on a motorcycle is wandering around Walt’s daughter’s house in the middle of the night; and the rear window of Walt’s car is shot out.

Some personal things are going awry as well.  Walt is facing a possible challenge in the next election by one of his deputies, Santiago Saizarbitoria, a hero of the local Basque community.  And Victoria Morelli, another deputy and Walt’s long-time love interest, is missing.

As always, Craig Johnson has written a mystery that brings the reader directly into the heart of Absaroka County and the lives of those who live there.  Once again, meeting the members of the sheriff’s department as well as Walt’s daughter Cady is like catching up with people you’ve known for years, and the author’s gift for dialogue makes you feel that you are listening to actual conversations.

You can read more about Craig Johnson 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.

Newlyweds Mercy Carr and Troy Warner are looking for their first home together, one that is large enough to be comfortable for the two of them and the three others who make up their family–teenager Amy, her toddler daughter Helena, and Amy’s boyfriend Brodie.  Oh, and the couples’ two very large dogs–Elvis, Mercy’s Belgian Malenois, and Sugar Bear, Troy’s Newfoundland.

Mercy gets a call to view a home that has just come on the market.  Grackle Tree Farm had been owned by the famous Vermont poet Euphemia Whitley-Jones, and it consists of thirty acres and a magnificent, if very rundown, Victorian mansion.  Even knowing the enormous amount of work it will take to put the house in livable condition, Mercy and Troy immediately fall in love with it and its surrounding area.

However, a walk-thru with the realtor shows them something they weren’t expecting–a bedroom that was used as a beautiful library–with a dead body on the floor.

The following morning Mercy is awakened by a visit from her great-uncle Hugo Fleury and her sometime employer Daniel Feinberg.  Both men have interesting backgrounds–Hugo, a retired army colonel who now owns and runs a security agency, and Daniel, a billionaire who has hired Mercy to lead investigations on various occasions.

Fleury tells his great-niece that decades earlier he had been stationed in Europe and attended a party at the French estate of Whitley-Jones.  Fleury confirms what Mercy has heard, that everyone who knew the poet loved and admired her.  He tells her that he and Daniel have heard that a letter, a literary treasure in his words, is hidden somewhere inside the house or on the grounds of the Farm.

The two men believe the missive was a love letter, and Mercy tells them she has just learned of the rivalry between Euphemia and her sister Maude over an airman whose body was never recovered.  She has seen a memorial to Captain Michael Emil Robillard on the estate, and Hugo completes the story by telling Mercy that Robillard and Euphemia had been engaged when Robillard and Maude eloped, leaving Euphemia heartbroken.

To make the situation even more complicated, after her husband’s death Maude received his duffle bag with a letter Euphemia had written to him.  Thus the sister who had been the betrayer was now the betrayed.  The sisters never reconciled and left no immediate survivors.

Now that Euphemia and Maude have died, the sale is possible, and there are a number of prospective purchasers for the property, including developers and non-profit organizations as well as protestors who don’t want the property sold at all.  And where does the man who was killed in the house fit into all this?  And what about a possible heir in California, not a direct descent of either sister but a relation of Michael Emil Robillard?

Mercy and Troy are working together to solve the murder and thus purchase the Farm.  Given her military background and his current position as a detective in the Northshire police department, the two definitely have the skills to find the murderer and move into their dream home.  As in her previous books, Paula Munier has written a mystery with engaging characters, a fascinating plot, and a clever twist at the end of the novel.

Paula Munier, in addition to her writing, is a literary agent and a volunteer Natural Resources Steward in New Hampshire.  You can read more about her 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.

Rarely has a book’s title been more apt.  Everyone, or nearly everyone, on the Connaught cul-de-sac in the small community of Stanhope has a secret, and some secrets are more deadly than others.

When Nora Blanchard tells William Wooler that she’s breaking off their affair, he’s crushed.  He can’t talk her out of it, and he goes home devastated.  His anger erupts when he sees his nine-year-old daughter Avery in the kitchen, since he knows she’s supposed to be at choir practice.  She tells him she was sent home because of her behavior, which is no surprise to him–Avery’s behavior has always been a major problem at school as well as at home.

Still upset about the end of his relationship with Nora, and enraged at his daughter’s casual dismissal of her uncontrollable behavior, William moves quickly across the kitchen and slaps Avery with such force that she falls to the floor.  Horrified at what he has done, he picks her up, puts her on a chair, and leaves the house.

When Avery’s older brother Michael comes home from his basketball practice, he’s upset to realize that his sister isn’t home.  She’s supposed to wait for him at school so they can walk home together, but he was a few minutes late leaving practice, so when he learned from the choir director that Avery had been dismissed earlier than usual because of her “disruptive” behavior, he expects her to be at their house.  He searches every room, but she’s not there, and finally he calls his mother to tell her that Avery is missing.

That’s when we learn how many people on Connaught Street are lying.  Of course, at first there are William and Nora, neither one anxious to tell their spouses or the police, who arrive quickly at the Wooler home, about how they spent the afternoon.  When one of the detectives asks if anyone saw Avery after she left school, “William can’t find his voice; it’s as if he’s paralyzed.”  And many of the neighbors interviewed are keeping their own secrets for reasons that seem necessary to them.  But nothing is helping to find the missing child.

Then Detective Gully finds the first clue that there’s something strange about Avery’s disappearance.  Erin, Avery’s mother, tells the detective what her daughter was wearing when she left for school that morning, and it includes a dark blue jeans jacket.  But as Gully passes the hall near the front door, she sees a jean jacket hanging on a high hook, much higher than the nine-year-old could possibly have reached to put it there, and she questions the parents about that.  Now, William thinks, they’ll all realize that Avery must have been home after school today.  Still, he says nothing.

Shari Lapena has written a mystery that will strike fear into every parent’s heart.  The agony of Avery’s parents, the guilt that William is experiencing, and the fears of the neighbors, both for and about their own children, are vividly drawn.  The ending, a total surprise and yet perfectly realistic, is outstanding.

Shari Lapena, formerly a lawyer and an English teacher, is the Canadian author of more than twenty books.  You can read more about her 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.

It should have been a wonderful, relaxing trip for Captain Jim Agnihotri and his wife, Lady Diana Framji.  After all, they were traveling on HMS Etruria, a luxurious ship in the Cunard line.  Sadly, however, the former cavalry officer, while very much at home on horseback, is not dealing well with the movements of the liner, and he is so seasick on the first night out that he’s perilously close to fall over the railing into the Atlantic Ocean.

Then assistance appears in the person of an elderly man.  He leads Jim to a nearby deck chair, and the two men have a brief conversation.  Although Jim introduces himself, the other man doesn’t reciprocate.  Instead he asks Jim, “Do they return…here?”  Interestingly, Jim knows exactly what his rescuer means–“Do you see the soldiers you lost?”  Agnihotri admits that he does, adding that he also sees the others, men whom he killed in battle.  The unknown man says,”I did my duty.  It was my duty,” and then he walks away.

When Diana comes on deck a few minutes later, Jim relates the encounter, and she tells him she thinks the man must have been the Spanish grandee who came on board with his wife and secretary.  She reminds him of the strange occurrence that took place as the passengers were boarding earlier that day.  A woman was pushing a wheelchair up the gangplank when suddenly she stopped, frozen, while other passengers tried to maneuver around her.  She appeared to be looking at someone she recognized in the line ahead of her and her charge.  She stayed immobilized, until finally she continued on her way onto the liner.

Jim and Diana wonder whom the attendant was looking at.  Could it have been Jim’s mysterious benefactor?

The next afternoon a steward hands him a note, requesting his immediate attendance on Don Juan Nepomuceno, the Spanish grandee, at the nobleman’s cabin.  For some reason the request had not been passed to Jim immediately, so it isn’t until after lunch that he receives it.  As he heads to the promenade level and the Don’s stateroom, a crew member rushes past him, calling for the ship’s doctor.  Jim never gets as far as the stateroom, however, because as he and the physician pass the music room, they see a group of people, including the ship’s captain, in the doorway.  Don Juan Nepomuceno is slumped in a chair, obviously dead.

Captain Hawley is aware that Jim is a detective with the Dupree detective agency in Boston and asks for his assistance in finding the murderer.  He says that otherwise the Etruria will be held at Liverpool while an inquest is conducted, and with nearly a thousand people on board that would be a disaster for the steamship line publicity-wise as well as a major inconvenience for all the passengers and crew members.  So Jim reluctantly agrees to help.

The author’s notes at the end of the mystery fill readers in on the fascinating history behind The Spanish Diplomat’s Secret.  The novel’s characters and plot are extremely believable, and it’s a delight to meet Captain Jim and Lady Diana again.

You can read more about Nev March 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.