Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Reviews

Back in Los Angeles after his tour in Afghanistan, Sam Easton is working at the Pearl Club bar, unable to utilize his engineering degree due to his emotional state.  He’s suffering from PTSD and is dependent on both his psychiatrist and his medications.  He doesn’t always listen to Dr. Frolich’s suggestions and is mixing the antipsychotic medication with way too much liquor.  But he’s doing his best.

Not helping Sam’s mental condition is the recent separation from his wife.  He’s not blaming Yuki, who had stood by him since he returned home, but she had finally reached the breaking point and suggested they put some distance between them.  He had to agree it was best for her, although he’s not sure it’s best for him.

Sam’s co-worker at the Club, Melody Traeger, is also having problems.  She’s been seeing Ryan, a music producer, whom she’s definitely attracted to in spite of his possessiveness and jealousy.  But the day he tells her he wants her to quit the Club because he doesn’t like the way men there hit on her, and she tells him she needs the job to pay her rent and college tuition fees, he punches her in the face and gives her a black eye.  Then she’s out of there, through with Ryan–but is he through with her? 

Melody has become aware of a black Jeep she thinks is following her.  She’s seen it several times, but she tries convincing herself there are hundreds of cars in L. A. that fit that description.  And then someone crawls through a bedroom window in her apartment while she’s away and leaves two dozen red roses in a vase on her dresser.  She texts Ryan about them, but he denies they’re from him.  Can she believe him?  Does she have a stalker?  Is the driver of the Jeep involved?

The following day, Ryan’s maid finds his body in his apartment, and Police Detective Margaret Nolan is put in charge of the case.  Nolan doesn’t suspect either Melody or Sam, but her partner Al Crawford isn’t so sure.  He sees Melody’s black eye as a triggering event for Sam due to his PTSD, and he thinks his colleague is overly forgiving of Sam’s emotional state because her brother died while serving overseas.

Then Sam and Melody become acquainted with a young man at the Club.  He’s Rolf Hesse, and he wants Sam and Melody to star in a film he’s writing.  At first they tell Rolf they’re not interested, but he’s so enthusiastic they finally agree to look at his script.  He’s calling it Deep into the Dark, and despite themselves they find themselves impressed.  It is dark, but so are the things in their own lives.

P. J. Tracy (Traci Lambrecht) is the daughter of the mother-daughter team who wrote the Monkeewrench series; she continued the series after her mother’s death in 2016.  In this, the first mystery featuring Margaret Nolan, she shows the skill in plotting and characterizations that were evident in her earlier books.  Deep into the Dark is an excellent introduction to what readers will hope is a long-running series.

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.

Sadly, I don’t own any antiques and have almost no knowledge of them.  But a quick Google search under the general topic brought up dozens, if not more, of antique stores and galleries near me, featuring everything from silver to furniture, paintings to vintage doors.  Who knew?

Josie Prescott is the owner of Prescott’s Antiques and Auctions.  After leaving New York City a number of years earlier to move to the small town of Rocky Point, New Hampshire, she now also has a television show featuring her discoveries that is starting its fifth season.

Josie and her husband have just purchased Gingerbread House from Maudie Wilson, a widow in her seventies.  Shortly after the purchase of their new home but before Josie and Ty move in, Maudie’s niece Celia comes to the gallery with a request.  She tells Josie that she and her sister Stacy, her aunt’s only relatives, had urged their aunt to move into an assisted living facility in town because they believe her memory is slipping.

As partial proof of this, Celia says that when her aunt arrived at her new apartment, she realized that an antique trunk belonging to her late husband’s family hadn’t arrived with the rest of her belongings.  Maudie can’t remember seeing it loaded onto the truck when the movers took everything out of the Gingerbread House or even the last time she saw it.

Celia and Josie search the Gingerbread House, but the trunk is not found.  The following day Stacy, Celia’s younger sister, approaches Josie with a similar concern, but a bit more forcefully, and she is equally distraught about the missing trunk and two objects it apparently contained, a box and a ceramic cat.

It seems to Josie that both women are more concerned about the missing items, which may have a substantial value, than the well-being of Maudie.   Both Celia and Stacy are in need of money, Celia because her husband has just lost his job and they are behind on their mortgage payments, and Stacy because she is creating a new line of high-quality furniture and needs funding.

Then Josie meets Maudie, and the two discuss having an appraisal of some of the valuable items she owns.  Maudie appears excited and grateful, but when Josie returns to the apartment to continue the conversation Maudie is not there.  She’s disappeared, and no one, not her nieces nor her friends, knows where she is.

Jane K. Cleland’s latest novel combines the happenings of Prescott’s Antiques and Auctions with a very clever plot including murder, assault, and theft.  The characters are realistic, and the excitement and love of antiques permeate the book and make for really enjoyable reading.

You can read more about Jane K. Cleland 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.

Sam Tabor, recently released from prison, has turned to his friend, private investigator Bill Smith, for help.  Sam was sentenced to fifteen years to life for killing Amy Evans, a young woman he met at a party.   There he unknowingly drank punch that had been laced with PCP, and after leaving the party with Amy, he killed her.  He was judged insane but able to participate in his own defense, which he did against the opinions of his brother, his attorney, and Smith.  Sam then proceeded to disregard their advice, pleaded guilty, and happily went to prison.

In prison he was permitted to paint and his art, which had always been Sam’s secret, was discovered by a therapist.  What followed was praise by New York art critics, and a Free Sam Tabor crusade was begun for his early release.  Now that he’s out, he’s overwhelmed by the media attention and is incredibly anxious about an exhibit of his paintings opening at the Whitney Museum in Manhattan.  So once again he wants Smith’s help, but for a very unusual reason.

Since Sam was released, there have been two murders in the city, and he thinks he may be the murderer.  He describes himself as a functioning alcoholic and tells Bill he can’t remember what he was doing on the nights the two young women were killed.  “I came here for help,” he tells Smith.  “Prove it’s me.”

Arrayed against Sam and his desire to return to prison are his brother Peter, Sam’s lawyer Susan Tulis, his artist friend Elissa Cromley, photographer Tony Oakhurst, and Sherron Konecki, the owner of the prestigious art gallery Lemuria.  They all have a vested interest in keeping Sam out of prison–either financial, professional, or personal.

Even Detective Angela Grimaldi of Manhattan’s 19th precinct doesn’t think Sam committed the latest murders.  When Sam went to the precinct to turn himself in, “She told me to get lost,” Sam recounts to Smith.  Grimaldi later tells Bill, “Your guy, Tabor, he doesn’t fit the profile.”  But Sam thinks, or perhaps hopes, that he did commit these two crimes, and it’s up to Bill and his partner Lydia Chin to find the truth.

The Art of Violence is the thirteenth novel in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series.  Ms. Rozan’s mode of operation is to alternate the protagonist in her novels.  Bill Smith is the lead in this one, but he cannot do it without the help of his partner Lydia.  And for readers of the previous books in this series, there’s an absolutely wonderful chapter toward the end of the novel in which Sam Tabor meets Mrs. Chin, Lydia’s intimidating mother.

It’s terrific to see Bill and Lydia in action again and at the top of their game.  S. J. Rozan is the recipient of many awards, including 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.

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.

Germania.  That was what Adolph Hitler was planning as the new name for Berlin after Nazi Germany won World War II.  Apparently he thought it sounded more grandiose, more befitting his image of the capital of his country .  In an 1848 painting credited to Phillip Veit, Gemania is portrayed as an imposing figure holding a tri-colored flag in her left hand, a sword in her right, wearing a red, blue, and gold robe with the design of an eagle between her breasts.

But, of course, the German victory never happened, although in Harald Gilbers’ debut novel, it is May of 1944 and the war is still ongoing, so the outcome is unknown.  Richard Oppenheimer is awakened in the middle of the night by a member of the Security Protection Service to view a corpse.

As a Jew, Oppenheimer had been removed from his post as a homicide detective and forbidden to take part in any investigations.  So he doesn’t understand why he is being asked to examine a woman’s body which has been terribly mutilated.  He’s given no explanation, just returned to the room he and his wife Lisa share in the Jewish House after he views the corpse.

The next morning Oppenheimer is taken to SS headquarters where he again meets Detective Vogler, the man who was standing over the body the night before.  Vogler tells Oppenheimer that because of his past experience he has been chosen to take part in the murder investigation; in reality, he has no choice but to accept the assignment.

Germania brings the reader into Berlin at the beginning of the end of the war.  Bombs are falling, food and coffee are are almost unobtainable except by the Nazi elite, and the realization is dawning on the populace that the Allies may be winning after all.  But, of course, no one will voice these thoughts on penalty of imprisonment or worse.

The more Oppenheimer looks into the case, the more he becomes convinced that a serial killer is at work.  And not simply a serial killer but one who is copying the crimes of Karl Großmann, a convicted rapist and killer who committed suicide in jail.  But this killer appears to be more careful, more fastidious, and harder to catch.  And then, as Oppenheimer thought would happen, the killer strikes again.

Harald Gilbers has written a spellbinding thriller, not only because of the frightening crimes that the killer commits but also because of his recreation of Berlin in 1944.  Oppenheimer’s fears of the whole investigation being a trap and of being captured by the SS, his love for his Christian wife, the almost daily bombings by the Allies–all of this brings the horrors of war and persecution home to the reader.  Oppenheimer, his wife Lisa, his friend Hilde, Vogler, all come alive as they each play their part as their world is torn apart.

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

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 Eighth Detective is definitely one of the most unusual mysteries I’ve read this year.  I can’t recall another book quite like it.

Grant McAllister is a reclusive man, formerly a professor of mathematics, and the author of seven perfectly constructed short story mysteries.  He has hidden himself away on an island in the Mediterranean, perfectly content to be out of touch with the world, living an almost hermit-like existence.

Into his life comes Julia Hart bearing a letter from Blood Type, an English publishing company that wishes to reissue his stories.  She persuades McAllister to allow her to read each story and then discuss it with him.  And as she talks to him about each one, she points out discrepancies in the stories and questions him about them.

As they discuss the first one in the collection, McAllister admits that he purposely added some incorrect details to see if the readers were alert or astute enough to catch them.  He explains how mathematics is related to his literary work.  His aim, he tells Julia, “was to give a mathematical definition of a murder mystery,” which he did in a research paper that was published in Mathematical Recreations.  And so he wrote these stories that each described a different permutation of the mystery genre.

As Julia and Grant review each story, she becomes dismayed at how many incorrect things there are in each and how he doesn’t seem to recall, or won’t tell her, whether he wrote them that way deliberately or accidentally.  He also refuses to answer her most innocent questions about himself, things that she tells him she would like to include in the published volume as background information.  He won’t discuss his reasons for moving to the island, his marriage, his war record, why he no longer writes, or anything else that is personal.

The tales get longer and more involved, and Julia gets more and more intrigued by Grant’s refusal to share anything about himself.  She decides to try one more bluff to force him to tell her what she wants to know.

The Eighth Detective is a very intriguing mystery.  There are really only two characters, Grant McAllister and Julia Hart, and they meet several times on the remote island where he lives.  No one intrudes on their conversations–all the other characters mentioned exist only in the stories they discuss.   I can’t decide what part of the genre it fits into–it’s not a police procedural, not hard-boiled, not a cozy–so perhaps the author has invented a new type of mystery, one for which I don’t have a name.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The two characters completely held my interest, as did the seven stories under discussion by Julia and Grant.  They are clever, intricate, and each one has a connection to a mathematical formula or way of thinking.  Not surprisingly, Alex Pavesi has a doctorate in mathematics and is into recreational lockpicking!

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

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.

Scarlett Clark, professor by day, killer by night.  And guess which job she enjoys more?

Scarlett has been at Gorman University for seven years, and each year she has killed a male member of the university.  Student, staff member, or professor–it doesn’t matter to her.  Her only goal is the permanent removal of a predator, a man who uses the power of his position to assault or rape.

They Never Learn is written in two voices in alternate chapters.  When we meet Scarlett in the first chapter she’s in Tyler Elkins’ garage, waiting for the university’s star quarterback to return from his morning run.  She knows very well what he’ll do when he returns; she’s been following him for weeks.

As always, he grabs a bottle of his energy drink from the garage’s mini fridge and begins to gulp it down.  This time, thanks to the special ingredient Scarlett has added, Tyler’s body begins to spasm and cramp.  While he’s writhing on the garage floor, Samantha stands over him, snaps a photo of him, adds an apologetic suicide note, and sends it to his Instagram account.

Last semester Tyler had stood watching while a number of his drunken frat brothers raped the girl they drugged; then, cold sober, he took his turn with her.  That’s what made him Scarlett’s latest victim.

Carly is beginning her freshman year at Gorman, free at last from her controlling and emotionally abusive father and her cowed and tyrannized mother.  But although she is ready for college academically, she’s not at all ready socially.

Her roommate is the beautiful and popular Allison, who for some reason is willing to take Carly under her wing and help her fit into the college girl mold.  But is that really a lucky break?

Scarlett’s revenge killings go even further back than the ones she’s committed since joining the Gorman faculty.  She’s been clever about all of them, using various methods and never choosing a man to whom she can be connected, but now she’s choosing victims closer to home.  Not surprisingly, it’s becoming more dangerous.

Halfway through the book there’s a surprise that literally made me gasp.  And They’ll Never Learn continues with one surprise after another.  The author’s ability to make the reader agree that the crimes the men have committed justify her actions is outstanding, even if this reader felt a bit guilty for that belief.

Underlying the plot is the disheartening message about how easy it is for the predators to continue their abuse, time after time, and how those in authority to whom the victims turn don’t intervene for various reasons.  Sadly, we know this is all too real, and the victims are left to feel even more betrayed by those they should be able to trust.

All the characters in the novel, both good and bad, are totally believable, and the plot pulls you along until the very end.  Layne Fargo has written an outstanding, and all too realistic, mystery.

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.

Picture opening your front door one day and being confronted by a stranger who tells you an incredible story.  She says her name is Jess, she’s arrived to talk to your father, not knowing that he has died, and that she’s his daughter, your sister.  Can you imagine your response?  That’s the premise of Sandi Jones’ mystery, The Half Sister.

Lauren and Kate are sisters, but they have grown apart over the years.  Lauren is married, with three children, and now she is home on maternity leave from her job as a nurse.  Kate, also married, is a journalist who has made her name interviewing celebrities around the world.

What neither woman will outwardly acknowledge is that she is jealous of the other–Lauren, for what she views as Kate’s glamorous lifestyle; Kate, for Lauren’s ability to become pregnant three times while Kate has been unsuccessfully trying for several years.

Even before Jess arrives on the scene, there is tension in the family.  Harry, the father, was the glue that held the family together, and since his death there is no one to smooth things over.  Kate, the younger daughter, feels it most keenly as she and her father had a special bond, and she is furious at the thought that Lauren believes that Jess is their half-sister.  But then Lauren tells Kate and their mother the whole story, that in an effort to bring the family closer together, she went on an ancestry website and submitted her DNA.  It turns out that Jess did the same, and their DNAs are a match.

Of course, having a half-sister is not the only secret that Jess’ arrival has uncovered.  We learn the reason why Lauren’s bond with their late father is not as strong as Kate’s and why she is much more willing to accept Jess as part of their family.  A life-changing event in Lauren’s past led to the rupture, but now when she views what happened to her as a teenager through an adult lens, she emerges with a different perspective.  And Rose, Kate and Lauren’s mother, is distraught that this unknown young woman has seen fit to come into their lives and destroy the memory of her late husband.

An interesting point about the book’s title is that the half part of it can also be seen as referring to the life of this family–that only half of their lives was true, the other half being a tangle of lies and misrepresentations.  Of course, as all mystery readers know, once a lie or secret starts to unravel there’s no stopping it.

Sandie Jones has written a mystery with truly believable characters and a plot that will have you breathless until, literally, the book’s last page.

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.

Every time I read another Walt Longmire mystery I feel as if I’m meeting an old friend.  There is something so real, so down-to-earth, about the Wyoming sheriff that I am always delighted to be in his company again.

In Next to Last Stand, Walt is still recovering from the injuries he received when he traveled south of the border in search of his abducted daughter more than a year ago.  He’s back in Absaroka County, but physically and emotionally he is still carrying the scars from his trip to the northern Mexican desert.

Years earlier, just back from Vietnam, Walt struck up a friendship with several men at the Veterans’ Home of Wyoming, in particular with Charlie Lee Stillwater, an Army vet who fought in the Korean War.  Now Walt gets a call from Carol Williams, the administrator of the Home, to tell him that his friend died during the night and that she would like him to stop by as soon as possible.  When Walt arrives and he and Carol  go to Charlie’s room, she shows him a shoe box she had found that morning, filled with hundred dollar bills adding up to one million dollars.

There’s also a fragment of a painting, an artist’s proof, slipped into the folds of the blanket on Charlie’s bed.  It’s old, still showing vibrant colors, and portrays an Indian and a cavalry officer locked in a struggle to the death.  Neither Carol nor Walt has any idea how the dead man came to have it in his possession, Walt decides to take it to a museum a few towns away to see if anyone there knows where it came from or how Charlie could possibly have gotten it.

One of America’s most famous battles was fought in what was then the Montana Territory.  It has various names–The Battle of Little Big Horn, Custer’s Last Stand, the Battle of the Greasy Grass (the latter the name given by the Indians who fought there),–and it took place in June, 1876.  It became immortalized in a painting by Cassilly Adams.  Walt is beginning to believe that somehow Charlie Lee had the original Adams painting and sold it, thus explaining the money found in his room.

There are two particularly wonderful scenes in Next to Last Stand that help explain my admiration for Walt Longmire and his creator.  In one, he’s placed a man accused of domestic abuse and kidnapping in a holding cell, and in defiance the prisoner has covered himself with Vaseline so the sheriff can’t grab him and take him out to the transport van that will take him to California to face charges there.  In the following scene, Walt discovers that the van’s drivers have been on the road for seventeen hours straight and not attending to the medical and physical needs of their passengers.  Walt’s handling of both these issues is so clever, so ingenious, that they alone make the novel worth reading.

But, of course, there’s much more–a closer look into Charlie Lee’s death, the possibility of uncovering the missing painting that for years has been presumed burned, the search for the veteran’s heirs, Walt’s unhappy mental state–all these things, plus Walt’s usual sidekicks–his deputy sheriff and romantic interest Victoria, his closest friend Henry Standing Bear, his long-suffering dispatcher Ruby–all combine to make Craig Johnson’s latest mystery one of the year’s best.

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.

The lure of drugs as well as what one will do to get them is at the heart of Anne Laughlin’s MONEY CREEK.  It’s painful reading, but unfortunately it’s a story that is all too familiar to many, either through personal experience or through general knowledge.  Either way, Clare Lehane’s story is one that will resonate with the readers of the author’s latest mystery.

The novel’s prologue sets the scene for what follows.  Clare is at a remote cabin in the woods, where she has gone with Henry, her new drug supplier.  He has insisted she accompany him there and meet the people in his circle.  Almost as soon as they arrive Henry leaves, and Clare is left with three people she doesn’t know.  Angry, yet needing to stay until she gets the drugs she came for, Clare leaves the living room to use the bathroom, and while she’s there gunshots erupt.

Walking back to the living room, she sees three bloody bodies lying on the floor.  After checking that the gunman is gone, she quickly leaves the cabin and calls the police from a pay phone.  Although the last thing she wants is to get involved and to have to explain what she was doing there, her guilt adds to her already distraught state of mind and increases her desire for drugs and, when they are not readily available, alcohol.

The backstory explains how Clare finds herself in this horrific place.  She is a young lawyer, working for a “white shoe” law firm in Chicago.  The term, according to Google, refers to the most prestigious employers in elite professions, and the Windy City law firm where she is a first-year associate is definitely that.  Clare is realizing that the only way she can keep up with the 70-80 hours of work demanded of her each week is to continue what she started while a law school student–taking Adderall to give her more energy and a longer attention span during the day, then taking Valium to relax her at night.  And she discovers she can’t function without either or both.

In a desperate effort to start a new life, she quits her job and moves to a small law firm in southern Illinois.  She actually goes so far as to flush her entire drug supply down the toilet after she arrives there, but she almost immediately realizes that this hasn’t solved her addiction problem.  In fact, she is so desperate that her only recourse is to go to the college in the small town of Money Creek in hopes of finding a student/dealer to resupply her.

It doesn’t take more than a few minutes before she meets Henry, a student who is the go-to man on campus when one is looking for drugs.  Despite her intention of quitting, after just one day she’s so desperate for speed that she agrees to have sex with him if he will provide her with what she needs.

Money Creek is a thought-provoking book with a flawed protagonist, one whom you want to succeed.  Reading Clare’s story evokes both despair and hope.  Despair because I felt she was losing her promising life and career to her addiction, hope because she so desperately wants to conquer her need for drugs that I was rooting for her to do so.

You can read more about Anne Laughlin 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.

Old sins cast long shadows is a proverb that’s never been truer than in Archer Mayor’s latest Joe Gunther novel.

The Orphan’s Guilt opens with the inebriated John Rust being pulled over by a Vermont state trooper.  John doesn’t fight going to the police barracks, even though he knows that because it’s his fourth DUI–Driving Under the Influence–an arrest and conviction will likely cost him his license and possibly a jail term.

The event that triggered John’s drinking was the death of his younger brother Peter earlier that day.  After he’s released from the barracks he contacts attorney Scott Jezek to discuss his legal options, and Scott hires Sally Kravitz, who works for him as an independent investigator, to determine if there are mitigating circumstances that might lead to a lesser sentence or even no penalty at all for his client.

It was always believed by John’s neighbors that Peter had a severe birth defect that resulted in his inability to speak, walk, or take care of himself in any way.  The few people who knew the brothers were uniformly impressed by John’s care of and devotion for Peter.  Their mother had died when John was twelve and Peter eight, and the day that John turned eighteen their father, Daryl Hicks, walked out of the house, leaving the older brother to care for the younger one.

In the aftermath of John’s arrest for drunk driving, things long hidden start coming to the surface.  Sally talks to Marcia Ethier, the midwife who delivered Peter, and is stunned to hear that, as opposed to everyone’s understanding of Peter’s condition, the boy was not born brain damaged.

“I know, by all that is holy, that Peter Rust was damaged by another,” Marcia tells Sally.  She has kept this knowledge to herself, feeling guilty for more than two decades, because she was frightened by the boys’ father.  “I felt like my life was in danger.”

This statement opens up an inquiry by the Vermont Bureau of Investigation, headed by Joe Gunther and his staff.  A very circuitous path, starting with the disappearance of Scott’s client John, takes them into an examination of the Russ/Hicks home life, the death by overdose of the boys’ mother, the criminal record of their father, and a long-forgotten financial crime.

It is always a delight to have an opportunity to spend time with Joe Gunther and his staff.  There’s smart and organized Sammie Martens, cranky but street-smart Willy Kunkle, and friendly and easy-going Lester Spinney.  Working together they solve a case that began with a boy’s birth and ended years later in multiple murders.

A man of many talents and interests, Archer Mayor works as a death investigator for the Vermont State Medical Examiner’s office, a deputy for the Windham County Sheriff’s Department, and a volunteer for his local fire department and EMT squad.  Archer Mayor is a master craftsman, and The Orphan’s Guilt shows him at the top of his game.

You can read more about him 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.

When clinical psychotherapist Theo Faber leaves his position at Broadmoor, a highly regarded psychiatric hospital in London, to accept a similar position at the Grove, a less prestigious and less respected institution, his colleagues are surprised.  His supervisor tells that him that he’s heard rumors that the Grove is in financial trouble and may be closed shortly.  “You could find yourself out of a job in six months,” he tells Theo.  But Theo won’t change his mind.

What Theo doesn’t say is that he has a very personal, somewhat unprofessional, reason for wanting to join the staff of the Grove.  The hospital’s most celebrated patient is Alicia Berenson, a well-known artist who killed her husband six years earlier by shooting him in the face five times.  Since that day her silence has been total; she has not spoken another word.

Theo himself has had years of psychotherapy, something he believes has saved his life.  His childhood was traumatic, with an emotionally and physically abusive father and a mother unable to intervene or help him.  Now, with his successful career of helping severely mentally disturbed patients and having obtained a better understanding of his own dysfunctional history, he believes he is uniquely able to help Alicia break through her silence, explain the murder, and re-enter the world.  Theo says to himself, “I wanted to fix her.”

However, that doesn’t prove easy.  Alicia is resistant to all the therapy the Grove has offered over the years, and Theo finds himself beginning to blur the boundaries between therapist and patient in an effort to get her to respond to him, to speak again.  He reads her file, but he really doesn’t have any interest in what any other therapist has said or done in working with Alicia.  He believes that his approach will prove to be the successful one.

He determines first to speak to her attorney, Max Berersen, who was the brother of Alicia’s ex-husband.  He feels certain that he would not receive approval for his unorthodox approach to Max, so “better not ask” his supervisor, he decides.  And this becomes the first step on the slippery slope of ignoring not only the hospital rules but those of good therapeutic practice.  But even at this early juncture, Theo realizes “it was too late to stop.  In many ways my fate was already decided….”

Theo’s marriage has been the one bright spot in his personal life.  Kathy is warm, spontaneous, outgoing, all the traits that he himself is missing, and he loves her for them.  Then one day he passes her open laptop and reads several emails that make it obvious that she is having an affair.  And now he must deal with his private problem as well as his professional one.

Alex Michaelides has written a spellbinding novel, one in which we see, or think we see, how one man’s overweening pride does not lead to the result he anticipated.  And you know what they say follows pride….

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

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.

In scenic Asheville, North Carolina, police detectives Dinah Rudisill and Ira Segal are called to the French Broad River, where a corpse has been found.  Expecting to see a drowning victim, they are instead confronted by a man whose body shows a large exit wound between his shoulder blades.

The man who discovered the victim tells them that his attention had been drawn to the water by the loud cawing of a group of crows.  “Calling to each other like they were upset or excited or something,” he tells the police.

The corpse’s body contains, among other things, a wallet with a business card showing that his name was Charles Atley and his job title was manager, Behavior Augmentation, at a local business called Creatures 2.0.  At the company headquarters, Dinah and Ira learn that the company is involved with the selection, breeding, and training of animals, with special emphasis on crows.  They learn there is a pecking order among the crows (pun intended), with the company’s special project, Richard, the most important and apparently the most intelligent bird.

Richard belongs to Creatures 2.0’s owner and president, Francis Elah.  Francis is currently out of town on a secret, perhaps government, job and has been out of touch for five weeks.  Neither his employees nor his wife knows where he is or how to reach him.

The detectives learn that the Office of Naval Intelligence, in the person of Jerome Guilford, will be joining the Asheville investigation.  “So now I guess what part of the government” is involved in the secret project, Ira tells another police officer.  Guilford wants to be kept abreast of all the information Ira and Dinah gather, but he isn’t willing to share what he knows.  “Reasons of national security” and “classified” are his favorite expressions.

The research that Francis Elah’s company is doing is what he calls “reordering.”  He has taught a monkey to do magic tricks, a mule deer recite the first three letters of the alphabet, and was working on having a raccoon assist in surgical procedures, taking advantage of the animal’s tiny fingers.  At first this all seems unbelievable to Ira, but after seeing videos of the animals in action he is beginning to change his mind.

Kenneth Butcher has created an intriguing plot and a strong detective team in this mystery.  The plot involves homicides, the disappearance of Francis Elah, and the mysterious intervention of the federal government, while the police twosome shows the personal sides of Ira, who carries paperback books as self-soothing devices to help him recover from PTSD brought on by a previous case, and Dinah, who is a roller derby star and local sports legend.  Together they make a perfect professional pair.

You can read more about Kenneth Butcher 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.

Click “collections” on your browser and see what comes up.  There are collections of military memorabilia, comic books, netsuke figurines, musical instruments, baseball cards–the list is apparently endless.  It’s a harmless hobby for some (full disclosure–I collect miniature houses) and an obsession for others.  It can even lead to death.

That is the case for Barnaby Mayne, a wealthy 18th-century English collector of nearly everything.  His beautiful London home is filled with items from around the world; in fact, his residence consists of two adjacent houses because one could not contain all the items he owns.  Lady Cecily Kay has asked to use his extensive library to help her identify some items in her much smaller collection of plants and he agrees, but the day she arrives Sir Barnaby is murdered.

There was a scheduled tour of the Mayne mansion that day, with friends and fellow enthusiasts invited.  Lady Cecily is joined by Humphrey Warbulton, a collector trying to reach the upper echelon of Sir Barnaby’s world; Otto Helm, a visitor from Sweden who is an expert on serpents; Walter Dinley, Sir Barnaby’s much-abused assistant and curator; Giles Inwood, Sir Barnaby’s physician and close friend; and Martin Carlyle, another enthusiast.  The tour begins, and in the middle of it the nobleman is called away to respond to a letter.  The tour continues without him; later, when the group goes to the dining room for dinner, their host is not there.

Lady Cecily, Dr. Inwood, and Martin Carlyle then go to the study where they assume he is.  When they open the door they see Walter Dinley holding a knife in his bloody hand and the body of Sir Barnaby Mayne on the room’s floor.  “I-I killed him!” the curator says in a trembling voice.  “I will no longer…be…so disrespected.”

The next day Sir Barnaby’s widow, Lady Mayne, arrives.  The couple had lived apart for nearly all their marriage, and she has no interest in any part of his hobby.  Her late husband had left his entire collection to Dr. Inwood with the stipulation that it be kept intact, and Lady Mayne’s only wish is to clear both of her late husband’s houses of everything as soon as possible.

Before that can be done, however, a complete inventory needs to be taken.  That is where Cecily Kay and her old friend, Meacan Barlow, who was illustrating some of Sir Barnaby’s purchases, join forces.  But various mysterious incidents, as well as the disappearance of the confessed murderer, is hindering that.

The two women find themselves in the collectors’ world of bribery, lies, and religious mania, where gaining a rare specimen is more important than a man’s, or a woman’s, life.

The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne is an insightful look into 18th-century London and the mania that collectors bring to their “hobbies.”  Lady Cecily Kay and Meacan Barlow are smart and talented women, making their way into a world that is not quite ready to recognize their achievements.  I hope to read more about them and their adventures in future novels.

Elsa Hart has traveled and lived in Rome, Moscow, and Prague, among other places.  Her earlier mysteries take place in 18th-century China, two of which are reviewed on this blog.  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.

Although she won’t admit it, Caitlin Bergman’s world is shaken when she gets a call from small-town sheriff Boswell Martin to identify a corpse.  She flies to Coquille, Oregon to view the body of the woman the sheriff believes is her mother, but Caitlin isn’t able to help him.  She hasn’t seen her mother, whom she derisively calls Mama Maya, in over thirty years.

As she has always explained to anyone who asks, both her parents are dead.  Caitlin’s mother had abandoned her and her father; except for sending Caitlin a book on her thirteenth birthday, the two have had no contact. 

During the autopsy, a key is discovered hidden in the woman’s body; it belongs to a safe deposit box in a local bank.  Caitlin is listed on the bank’s records, and that is how sheriff Martin located her.  Unable to prove the identity of the disfigured body, which has been rendered virtually unrecognizable by animals and by the killer who removed its fingerprints and teeth, officials cannot obtain a warrant to open the box.  But since Caitlin is named as the beneficiary, she has that power.

Still reluctant to become involved, Caitlin asks in whose name the account was opened, still hoping it hadn’t belonged to her mother and that it wasn’t her mother whose body was found.  However, when she hears “Sharon Sugar,” she’s convinced.  “That was her stage name,” she tells Martin.  When Maya abandoned the infant Caitlin, she became a star in the adult entertainment business, i.e., a porn star and stripper.

For a small city, there’s a lot going on both on the surface and beneath it in Coquille.  There’s overt anti-semitism; a splinter quasi-political group that wants to create a new state, the State of Jefferson, that would combine northern California and southern Oregon; and a religious cult, the Daughters of God, of which Maya was a member.

The anti-semitism shows up in the form of locals calling Caitlin a “Jew bitch”; the State of Jefferson is the brainchild of a group of white right-wingers; and the Daughters of God is a cult of women led by its charismatic leader Desmond.

The Daughters of God was founded years earlier in Los Angeles but has relocated to southern Oregon.  Its members make reference to God’s Hill, the Knowing, the Climb, the Morning Song, the Eternal Flame of Ceremony Peak, and other esoteric names, the meanings of which are known only to the women involved.

Inside the safe deposit box Caitlin finds a journal that her mother kept during her years in the cult.  Maya had became Magda, and Caitlin begins to understand her mother’s desire to gain forgiveness and understanding for the life she had led prior to joining the group and the almost hypnotic spell that the Daughters of God and Desmond had over her.

Sins of the Mother is a deep look into how cults work on those who are most vulnerable and their impact not only on its members but on those who remain on the outside, helpless to reach their loved ones and bring them back to their families.

August Norman has written a powerful, insightful mystery about love and redemption.  You can read more about him 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.

Auction Hunters and Storage Wars are two very popular shows that have been on television in recent years.  In such programs people bid, sight unseen, for the contents of storage lockers or units, hoping to find valuables that were left behind when the renters no longer paid the fee to keep their items safe and private.

James Murphy is a Georgia-based journalist and a bit of a gambler, so it’s quite logical that he puts in a bid on the show Shocker Locker, hoping to make his investment pay off.  However, what James finds when he opens the locker is definitely more of a shock than he expected.

Inside, along with a profusion of other items, is a magazine titled Spartacus, featuring disturbing photos of men and small boys in compromising sexual positions.  James calls his former lover, Melanie Wilkerson, a federal prosecutor with whom he worked on a previous case, and she agrees to contact the FBI, as the sexual exploitation of children is a federal crime.

James and Melanie contact Stanley Hopkins, a friend and college professor of sociology whose area of specialty is the sex industry, its victims, and its perpetrators.  Stanley lends his expertise to the search to find the former owner of the locker, but in the meantime he meets Amy, a teenage girl who has flown cross-country from North Carolina to California to rekindle a brief romance with a fellow student she met at a Duke University summer school class.

When she discovers that the interest was definitely more on her side than his, Amy knows no one else in California to turn to other than Stanley.  And through a series of complicated events, the two of them begin a trip from Stanley’s home to Georgia to work with James and Melanie on locating the man whose locker began the story.

The story has its roots in Georgia, moves to California, returns to Georgia, moves to England, and goes back to Georgia for its finale.  A high school principal, the preacher of a fundamentalist church, his son, and the man who had rented the storage locker all come under the scrutiny of James, Melanie, and Stanley, as they discover that the photos are but the tip of the iceberg in an even more disturbing story.

Paul J. Heald has written a terrific mystery, a strong story laced with humor and humanity.  Raggedyland is the third novel in the Clarkeston Chronicle series, and I have downloaded the first two–Courting Death and Cotton:  A Novel, and can’t wait to begin reading.

In addition to writing novels, Mr. Heald is a professor at the University of Illinois School of Law, specializing in copyright law and intellectual property.  You can read more about the author at various sites on the web.

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.