Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Reviews

I am always amazed and delighted by the things that I learn by reading books.  I don’t mean only scholarly books or textbooks but also novels/mysteries that tell me things I had never thought about but am now pleased that I know.  Away To Me is an excellent example of learning about a subject that gave me a glimpse into a very different world; it’s a truly fascinating book.

Maddie McGowan is an animal behaviorist, a scientist who works with animals who exhibit dangerous behaviors, including those caused by trauma.  She owns a farm in Wisconsin where she raises sheep and trains dogs, in particular her border collie Jack, to participate in sheepdog trials.  As the novel opens, the two are participating in a Championship Sheepdog Trial and waiting for their turn when the sound of a shotgun fills the air and George, Maddie’s close friend, lies dead in the field.

George was widely liked and admired, both for his expertise as a trainer of sheepdogs and as a mentor for those new to competitions.  The police can find no motive for the shooting, and the case remains open.

Maddie’s life continues as usual, at least on the surface.  She works with dogs who bite other dogs, who are traumatized by thunder, or who don’t obey their owner’s commands.  Her love and understanding of canines wins their trust, and each animal that is brought to her clinic learns appropriate behaviors and their place in a family.  George, however, is never far from her mind.

Then Maggie receives a call from the director of a local humane society.  A half-dead German shepherd had been found on the side of a road, and after he was released from intensive care at a local veterinary clinic no one could get near him.  Aware of the excellent work that the organization does, Maggie agrees to see the dog.  She names him Cisco and becomes impressed with him despite the issues he presents, and she agrees during her second visit at the society to foster him at her farm and work with him there.

A few days after Cisco’s arrival, Maggie returns home after her office hours to find one of her guard dogs in a drug-induced stupor and Cisco missing from his cage.  The local veterinarian tells Maggie that the guard dog looks like the victim of a fentanyl overdose, and just like a person she had to receive a dose of nalozone immediately to save her life.  A prolonged search of the area doesn’t find Cisco despite Maggie asking all her friends and neighbors for help.  It isn’t hard to believe that someone is trying to destroy Maggie’s life.

Patricia McConnell has written a wonderful novel.  She has a doctorate in Zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researching dog behavior and communication between professional trainers and working domestic animals.  She has appeared on CNN, written articles for numerous publications, has presented nationally and internationally, and now is the author of this outstanding mystery with its believable characters and exciting plot.

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 novel

When Mallory Mitchell, a police detective on the present day Edinburgh force, stepped through time a year earlier and landed in 1869 Edinburgh, she could hardly have been been prepared for what her destiny held.

She arrived in the home of Dr. Duncan Gray, where she began her Victorian life as a housemaid and then progressed to his assistant.  Now she has decided that this is her home and her future life.

Mallory and Duncan are called to the home of Lord and Lady Adler late one night to find a séance in progress.  Although neither Mallory nor Duncan is a believer in ghosts or spirits, the Adlers are friends of Duncan and his sister Isla and deserve to be heard.  When they arrive at the mansion, they are told that the spirit of a young housemaid, Nellie, spoke to a medium at the table a few minutes earlier.  “I have been murdered.  Tell Dr. Duncan Gray that he must find my killer.”

Mallory asks Lady Adler to relay what happened.  It appears that Nellie disappeared in the middle of the night three evenings previously, leaving nothing behind in the attic room she shared with the other housemaids.  There would be nothing suspicious about her disappearance except for the “fact” that her spirit appeared to Madame Paix, the medium, at the séance and said she had been murdered.

Despite Duncan’s obvious reluctance to pursue the case, Lady Adler is most insistent that he do so.  Mallory steps into the conversation and suggests that she begin gathering all relevant information, and Lady Adler agrees.  With that settled, Mallory and Duncan return to his home.

The Rip in Time series gives the reader a fascinating look into what life was like 150 years ago.  We are certainly familiar with the fashions of the time, its crinolines and bonnets for women and silk and wool top hats for men, but here we see the mores, the educational practices, and the society that allows children in the lower classes to be sent out to work as young as eight in such jobs as chimney sweeps, textile workers, or housemaids.

Mallory Mitchell is a delightful heroine–smart, personable, and adaptable to her life in Victorian Scotland.  She is surrounded by other equally interesting people–Duncan, his sister Isla, and Isla’s soon-to-be husband, Detective Hugh McCreadie.  Each contributes an important part to every novel.

Kelley Armstrong has written over 50 novels in various genres.  You can read more about her at this site.

Private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker is certain that he killed his arch-enemy Sebastian Nightwine years ago.  He “pierced him through with a sword,” according to Thomas Llewelyn, Barker’s assistant.  So how is it that Nightwine has been seen in London this very day?

The enmity between Barker and Nightwine goes back years.  At one point the two men had been friends in Canton, China, even serving together on the Osprey, a Chinese ship Barker had won in a game of chance.  But then Nightwine’s true nature began to surface, culminating in the duel that supposedly ended in his death.  But now, Barker and Llewelyn wonder, what really happened?

To secure their safety, the enquiry agents send Rebecca and Rachel, Thomas’ wife and young daughter respectively, and Lady Philippa Ashleigh, a close friend of Cyrus’ and the object of Nightwine’s perverted attentions, to Paris to keep them out of danger.

At the same time, Barker and Llewelyn become involved in another case that ultimately becomes entwined with the Nightwine one.  A young Chinese-born man who has spent nearly all his life in Hawaii is visiting London.  As he exits an omnibus, he is accosted by several Asian men and forcibly taken to the Chinese embassy and put in a cell.

Several days later, Barker and Llewelyn receive a new client, Dr. James Cantlie.  He tells the two men that a friend of  his, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, had been visiting him but hasn’t been seen for two days.  He approached Scotland Yard and the Pinkerton Agency for help but was turned down, so he has come to Barker’s Private Enquiry Agency for their help.

The doctor explains that Sun took part in the insurrection the previous year against the Manchu government in Canton.  After the government crushed the rebellion, Sun escaped and made his way to London to confer with Cantlie, who had been his mentor in China; Sun, like Cantlie, is a physician.

For Services Rendered switches between the agency’s search for Nightwine and the cell inside the Chinese embassy where Sun Yat-sen is being held.  For readers interested in history, Will Thomas’ novel is fascinating not only for its excellent look into Victorian England but for a sense of China’s history at the end of the 19th century.  In addition, there are glimpses into Scottish and Jewish traditions of the time.

As has been true for all the previous novels in this series, the author’s ability to create realistic and engaging characters is outstanding.  It’s always a pleasure to see Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn, and as always they are at the top of their form.

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

Summer Randall is the golden girl in the small town of Greenville, Maine.  Smart, beautiful, athletic, she appears to have it all.  So why is she running through the woods for her life in the middle of the night?

The following morning, that area is set off by yellow police crime tape.  Maine State homicide detectives Brock Justice and his partner Chloe Wright are called to the scene because what at first glance looked like a horrific car accident is clearly, on closer analysis, a brutal murder.  There’s a small cut on Summer’s side that was there before the accident, the on-scene medical examiner tells the detectives.

No sooner do Brock and Chloe arrive at the scene than Evan Mathers appears.  Several months earlier Brock had testified against Evan, then a Maine State Detective, in a wrongful shooting case.  Evan was cleared of the charge, and Brock was demoted and transferred to the northern part of the state. 

However, Brock is not able to leave the court case behind him.  He’s certain that Evan killed the victim deliberately, but he now discovers that Evan resigned from the State Police and is a member of the local force where Summer lived.

The case turns into a media circus when the victim is identified as the daughter of a U. S. Congresswoman, a woman who is always searching for problems with the police.  One of the suspects in the case is Ronnie Libby, Summer’s ex-boyfriend.  He was arrested the previous year for assaulting the young woman while on drugs.  Summer’s father Taylor threatened Ronnie and thus lost his job as a reserve officer on the town police force, and Ronnie went into a voluntary drug rehabilitation program.

Brittney LaRoux was Summer’s best friend, and she tells Brock that she is blaming herself for her friend’s death.  The two were supposed to go on a training run the previous afternoon, but Brittney had canceled at the last minute.  “And I think she might be dead because of me.”

Chloe attends Summer’s autopsy, and it’s discovered that the young woman was several weeks pregnant.  Did Summer and Ronnie get together again, and is Ronnie the baby’s father?  Or was she involved with someone else?

Brock tells Chloe that the pregnancy must remain a secret, including from Summer’s parents.  When Chloe objects, saying “That’s cold, even for you,” Brock reminds her that the fact that the victim died of a stab wound, not as originally thought by being hit by a car, became public knowledge even though it was supposed to be kept under wraps.  He doesn’t want the same thing to happen with the latest information, and his partner reluctantly agrees.

Bruce Robert Coffin has written another riveting police procedural.  His characters, with their strengths and foibles, make them true-to-life and relatable.  Plus, the twist at the end is totally satisfying.

You can read more about the author, a retired Portland, Maine police detective, 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’s quite a comedown from starring in films in Hollywood to making whiskey commercials in Mumbai, but the latter is where George Abercrombie is now.  Although he still has dreams of obtaining funding for his film Fragments of a Forgotten Soul, that doesn’t seem to be happening, so he is reduced to shilling for Glen Doone, an Indian whiskey that to George’s mind is virtually undrinkable.

Returning after an evening of too much to drink to the penthouse apartment where he and his wife Sweety live, George falls asleep on the living room couch.  Although his head still feels like it’s being hit by a hammer when he wakes the next morning, he goes in search of Sweety, India’s sweetheart of the cinema.  He moves from room to room, including a couple he’s never entered before, until he makes his way to their bedroom.  There is his wife, or rather her corpse.

George and Sweety’s lives should have been made easier by the servants they employ, but that is not the case as they have their own secrets.  Gemma is Sweety’s secretary, an American woman who is in India escaping from her unhappy past into a dangerous present.  She is having an affair with Ash, the Honourable Minister for Civic Affairs, who is married and a father.

Still unaware of Sweety’s death the morning after it occurs, Gemma receives a sexually explicit video on her phone of herself and Ash in a hotel room.  Immediately after viewing the clip she gets a phone call telling her to get Sweety’s laptop and password.  Ignoring her protests that she doesn’t have either, the caller informs her that unless she gets them within the next three hours and delivers them to the location she’s told, the video will be sent to Indian news channels and social media.

Amir, George’s personal assistant, is working hundreds of miles away from his family in order to earn a living and send money back to them.  He sells Fat Moeez, a powerful criminal, whiskey that he says is from George’s personal collection, but it isn’t.  The gangster, furious at discovering the deception, orders him to steal money and jewelry from Sweety, which he does, but escaping from the gangster’s clutches isn’t that easy.  Amir attempts to flee Mumbai, but is captured by Gullu, one of Moeez’s henchman. Gullu tells Amir, “Fat Moeez would like a word with you.”

The Pinnacle is a fascinating look into life in Mumbai, a city of nearly 28 million, in which the millionaires/billionaires live on Malabar Hill, where security guards stop cars at The Pinnacle’s entrance to make certain the occupants are expected by the tenants, and there are separate elevators for the residents and their employees.  The higher one’s floor, the more prestigious the location.  In this stratified building, George and Sweety live on the 68th floor of the 70 floor edifice.  Almost top tier but not quite.

Abir Mukherjee’s latest mystery delves deeply into the city’s life as seen through the eyes of both Americans and Indians.  The characters are constantly surprising you with both their thoughts and their actions, and The Pinnacle joins the list of outstanding novels by the author.

You can read more about Abir Mukherjee at this website.

London Falling is the first non-fiction book I’ve reviewed in my more than 15 years of blogging.  Patrick Radden Keefe’s book absolutely proves the familiar saying “truth is stranger than fiction.”

Rachelle and Matthew Brettler are the parents of two sons, Joe and Zac.  The family lives a comfortable upper-middle-class life in London, with Matthew working in the financial sector and Rachelle a free-lance writer for various publications.

All appears to be going well until Zac hit his teenage years.  A precocious child, he had a phenomenal memory that amazed his parents and extended family, knowing the cost of items ranging from autos to phones and delighting in rattling the prices off to anyone who would listen.  He also had an amazing ability to mimic foreign accents.

Issues began when Zac was rejected for admission into the elite private school where his older brother Joe was enrolled.  Although Rachelle tried to explain to the school authorities how disheartening it was for Zac not to be allowed to attend the school, the administrators would not be swayed, and Zac went to a different private school.

Mill Hill had become a favorite school for the children of the Russian oligarchs who had relocated to London, and “Zac was intrigued by these kids–not just by their riches but by their swagger.”  It seemed to him that they lived a much more exciting life than he did, with their money and the protected lives they enjoyed due to their fathers’ wealth.  Then, at age twelve, Zac became a boarder at the school, thus having the opportunity to become even more friendly with the Russian students than before.

He began staying out late at night, dressing more as an adult than a student, becoming surly and oppositional with his parents and his brother.  His ideas changed also, telling a friend that democracy was overrated, that all that mattered were money and power.  On the week that Zac turned eighteen and became a legal adult, he and a friend incorporated a company called Omega Stratton, the latter part of the name apparently in homage to a crooked brokerage house featured in the film The Wolf of Wall Street.

Zac told his father that he was doing very well financially, showing Matthew his account with a balance of 850,000 pounds.  He explained that he was in the oil and gas business and was also doing real estate deals and importing foreign cars.  Matthew and Rachelle found themselves with ever-more questions about their son and his life, and then he disappeared.

London Falling is a fascinating story about how a family’s life is upended.  Readers may wonder about the way the Brettlers handled everything–Zac’s new lifestyle, their decision not to go to the police immediately after he failed to return home one night, their deciding not to make his disappearance public.  Would a different choice have led to a different outcome?

Patrick Radden Keefe’s book is brilliant and impressive, due both to the amount of research that went into London Falling as well as making the Brettlers come alive through their conversations and decisions.

You can read more about the author at this website.

The protagonist of Killer Vibes is Peter Key, an almost-thirty-year-old bisexual, homeless, jobless man whose main occupation is selling/smoking weed.  He’s either a total waste of space or a fascinating character, depending on your point of view.

Here’s the novel’s opening sentence:  “Considering how badly I needed a place to stay, my uncle couldn’t have died at a better time.”  Peter is currently crashing at a friend’s brother’s house, living in the garage.  When the brother arrives home earlier than expected and sees his sister involved with Pete and another man in a threesome on his bed, he’s given less than nine hours to vacate the premises as well as having to turn over all the cash he’s earned by selling weed, his only source of income.  Otherwise,  Peter is told, “…they’ll find you in twenty pieces on I-35.”

Just an hour before his time in the garage is up, the doorbell rings.  Peter wants to ignore it, but the visitor goes to the garage door and sees Peter through a crack.  He introduces himself as Arthur Brennance, an attorney, and informs Peter that his Uncle Forrest had died several weeks earlier.  As Peter hadn’t seen his uncle in eleven years, it would be fair to say that he’s not devastated by this news, but he is totally surprised to discover that he’s the sole beneficiary of Forrest’s estate, his house in the Hyde Park section of Austin, Texas.

Brennance explains that a conservative estimate of the home’s worth is one-point-one million dollars.  The house is in very bad shape, he goes on to tell Peter, but the land is what makes the estate so valuable.  He has a Realtor ready to buy the house as is, but Peter wants to go to Austin to see the place for himself.  After all, he thinks, it’s got to be better than the garage.

However, the attorney continues, the estate comes with a five hundred thousand dollar line of credit that his uncle took out a week before he died.  When Peter asks if he can simply return the loan to the bank, Brennance tells him it’s more complicated than that, that Forrest immediately converted the loan into cash and no one knows where the cash is.

When Peter enters the house, he discovers it’s a hoarder’s paradise.  Clothing, playing cards, lamps, tables, toys, and bedding fill every room, but he’s so exhausted he goes to the bedroom and falls asleep instantly.  The next morning he meets his neighbor, Eric, a Realtor, and coincidentally (perhaps?) when the two men walk to a nearby coffee shop, the young woman behind the counter hands Peter a business card with the name and number of a property management company.  It appears to Peter that his new inheritance is of interest to a number of people.

Then something even stranger happens.  The following night a man appears on the house’s porch, and his opening comment to Peter is “You need to sell this house….You still have a chance to get out of this alive.”

Killer Vibes’ cover announces it as “The First Peter Key Mystery,” and that is definitely good news.  The book is a wonderful read, filled with fascinating characters both good and evil, a one-of-a-kind protagonist, and a plot with an excellent twist at the end.  To quote from Google Books, “JACK FRIDAY is the pen name of the author of several queer supernatural thrillers. He lives in Texas, where he does as little as possible.”

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.

Meet Roger Smith.  He’s a sixty-five-year-old widower who has spent his life working in the United States Printing Office, a man with a grown daughter and two grandchildren, who still lives in the house he and his late wife bought decades earlier.

Lying in bed in the middle of the night, he’s unable to sleep because of the red wine he drank at dinner even though he knew it would give him heartburn.  But something good comes from Roger’s insomnia.  If he had been sleeping, he never would have heard the very low beep-beep-beep of the home’s alarm system.

The system is a sophisticated one, with two motion detectors and video cameras at the front and back doors.  Although Roger doesn’t arm it when he’s home, the front and back door alarms are always working, and that’s what he’s hearing at 2 a.m.

Roger reaches under his bed for the aluminum bat that his late wife had insisted on buying and that he’s never used.  He moves behind his open bedroom door, preparing to call 911 until he realizes that his cell phone is in the living room.  Before he can think about his next step, the intruder walks into the bedroom and shoots where he thinks his victim will certainly be at this time of night, in bed.  But since Roger is actually behind the room’s door with a baseball bat in his hand, he has now become the dangerous opponent; he gives a mighty sweep of the bat and the man falls facedown on the floor.

As the lyrics to the song goes, “I’m an ordinary man.”  In fact, although Roger Smith is ordinary in many ways, he has an extraordinary ability, one that he started using decades ago when he was faced with insurmountable bills from his late wife’s illness.  He can create undetectable imitation passports, passports that are used by people wanted by the police and who need to leave the country in a hurry.

That’s where his relationship with John McKenna began and that’s whom he calls now.  He tells McKenna what transpired in the last ten minutes, and when McKenna asks him who the man is, Roger says he doesn’t know, has never seen him before.  He’s going to call the police as soon as he hangs up with John but asks John to get a lawyer over to his house immediately.  McKenna is the kind of man who always has a lawyer on standby.  Then Roger sits down to wait.

The surprises in this novel keep coming.  Just as the reader thinks he’s got the plot figured out, they discover another twist.  In addition, the characters are perfectly drawn.  There’s Roger, a seemingly meek man who discovers that he has, in fact, a spine of steel; he will not give in to the others who are sent to kill him but will turn the tables on them.  There’s McKenna, a wanna-be gangster who finds himself over his head with Roger’s problems.  Finally there’s Grace Lillinthal, a Washington, D. C. detective who is certain there’s more behind the home invasion than Roger is willing to admit.

Mike Lawson has written an outstanding mystery, with terrific characters and a storyline that provides one startling event after another.  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.