Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Reviews

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.

We are back in Bitterfrost, Michigan, where it is (almost) always winter.  Criminal attorney Devyn Payne has returned to her hometown after living and working in the Detroit suburb of Hamtramck.  Even she’s not certain why she left a lucrative law practice to “switch sides” and become a member of Genevieve Harris’ prosecution team, but something has called her back to Bitterfrost.

Shortly after she arrives, a tragic accident/homicide takes place.  An SUV is submerged in the Jako River, appearing to have left the icy road and gone into the water.  In the car were Catriona Dulancy, her husband Sammy Hardt, and their eight-month old twin sons.  Catriona and Sammy survive, their sons do not.

The only witness to the SUV going into the water is Bill Hooper, who rushes into the river to help the man bring the woman to shore.  Hooper is a former Michigan state trooper, semi-forced from his job after losing an eye in an explosion.  Devastated by the loss of his job, the death of his young daughter, and the end of his marriage, he has been wandering around the state, ending up in Bitterfrost by accident.  His plan is to leave the town as soon as possible, but that’s not the way events unfold.

The Paynes and Dulancys have a long, unhappy history in Bitterfrost.  The Paynes are the “aristocracy” of the town, while the Dulancys are the criminals.  Devyn coaches the girls’ hockey team, having been a star player herself when she was younger, at the rink that bears her family’s name.  This year one of her outstanding players is Kelly Dulancy, Catriona’s niece.

Genevieve Harris is convinced that Catriona deliberately drove into the Jako in an attempt to kill Liam and Logan.  Devyn is not so sure, although Catriona’s family history makes that a believable option.  Then the prosecution brings a well-regarded behavioral psychologist to interview Catriona, a man who specializes in homicide-related investigations.

Genevieve and Devyn are watching the interview, the latter thinking that Dr. Jarman is conducting an inquisition more than an interview.  Devyn believes that the psychologist made up his mind from the moment he walked into the room that Catriona is guilty of deliberately killing the infants and that all his questions and comments are designed to get her to confess.  That finally happens, seven hours into the questioning, when Catriona cries, “My God.  What have I done?”  But Devyn isn’t convinced of her guilt.

River Deep is a complex mystery featuring numerous characters with histories going back generations that intertwine with the other characters.  In a small town such as Bitterfrost, memories are long and grudges even longer.

Bryan Gruley has written an outstanding second novel in the Bitterfrost series.  His characters are believable, both the good and bad ones, and the plot will carry readers to the very 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.

As both author and narrator of this book, Teresa Dovalpage returns to Havana, the city of her birth, in The Novel Detective to try to unravel a mystery concerning two deaths at her former school.  Although decades have passed, Teresa has never forgotten the horror of the day when Yoyi, another girl at the school, and Felipe, the Spanish teacher, were found dead.  The authorities called both deaths suicides, but Teresa is not alone in wondering if that was the truth.

Teresa is a novelist in New Mexico, and her friend Estrella is a DJ at a Spanish-language radio station in Miami.  Unexpectedly Estrella calls Teresa, offering her the opportunity to return to Havana and look into the deaths that occurred when both girls were students at the José Antonio Echeverria Middle School–that of Yoyi, the most beautiful girl in their class, and Felipe, the teacher who was the object of students’ and other teachers’ crushes.  Estrella tells Teresa that the police version of the deaths is that Felipe threw himself out of a window when he learned that his affair with Yoyi was going public. If convicted, he would be facing jail for the crime of having sexual relations with a minor.  Then Yoyi took poison because she couldn’t live without him.  “So very Romeo and Juliet!” Teresa says. 

Estrella promises to pay for their airfare and expenses while in Cuba, and Teresa, who always has had questions about what actually happened, agrees to the trip.  And, she thinks, it may be helpful for the novel she’s always wanted to write about the two deaths.

Estrella says that she has been in touch with Rogelio, a policeman who may be able to assist them with their surreptitious investigation.  He is not the officer who originally investigated the deaths, as that officer left Cuba on the Mariel boatlift as Teresa did, so perhaps he is coming to the case with an open mind.  At least that is what Teresa is hoping.

The novel takes place both in 2020, just before Covid made travel difficult if not impossible, and 1980, just before Teresa and her mother leave Cuba.  She has never returned to the island, and she is naturally curious about the changes that have taken place since she left.

Some things in Havana have changed while some things  haven’t.  The two women are met at the airport by Osiris, the owner of the casa particular where the women are scheduled to stay, and are taken there by the driver of an almendrón, one of the American automobiles that have been in the country since the 1950s and are featured in many photos.

The Spanish words that appear in the novel are translated seamlessly by the author without interrupting the flow of the story.  In addition, her descriptions of the city, both the changes that have taken place since Teresa and her mother left and the things that have remained the same, make the city and its inhabitants come alive for the reader.

Teresa Dovalpage has written a fascinating and impressive mystery about a country that has played an important part in American history.  Her characters are vibrant and alive, and the determination of both Teresa and Estrella to solve the mystery surrounding the deaths of Yoyi and Felipe ring true.

You can read more about the author at this website.

Step back nearly 150 years to 19th-century London, a city of horse-drawn carriages, men with top hats and women with crinoline cages, and the largest population in the world.  Scotland Yard was 50 years old and not held in high esteem, and children as young as ten were put “in service” to wealthy households; a compulsory education law for children ages five to ten was not enacted until 1880, a year after An Artful Dodge takes place.

Kit Jimeson and her younger sister Sarah are all that remain of their nuclear family.  Their father left years earlier, and their mother died shortly afterward.  Sarah, now fourteen, is a scullery maid to a wealthy family while Kit, seven years older, works part time as a seamstress, or needlewoman, as it was called then, but her main job is that of a thief.

The group of women that Kit works with is called a ring, and it’s headed by Amelia Lyle.  The women are adept at stealing necklaces, earrings, rings, cuff links, and other pieces of jewelry from London’s wealthy women and men and concealing them in their voluminous clothing.  They work in pairs, distracting their victims and quickly changing their appearance after the theft has taken place by turning their cloaks inside out or carrying spectacles or paste-on moles to change their appearance.

Amelia is respected and admired by Kit and the other women in the group, and they are stunned when she announces that she’s retiring and giving the leadership to Maggie Wirth O’Connell, the daughter of the former head of the ring.  Maggie had been transported to a penal colony in Australia to serve a twenty-year sentence but was released early and now has returned to London to take “her birthright,” as Amelia explains to Kit.

There’s something about Maggie that sets off emotions that are negative and creates tensions among the women that weren’t there before she arrived.  That’s definitely something for Kit to worry about, and it’s not the only thing that’s preoccupying her.

Sarah has told her that a night earlier she saw several Castle men (members of a local gang from the Elephant and Castle pub) on the street, and although it was a dark night she’s worried that they might have seen her as well.  And there had been a robbery and a double murder in the area.  Could that be, Kit wonders, what is making her sister so nervous?

An Artful Dodge is a fascinating look into Victorian London.  In fact, there was an all-female gang of thieves operating at that time, specializing in shoplifting from high-end stores, and not shunning a bit of violence when they felt it was necessary.  Mary Carr was the leader of The Forty Elephants, a group of female thieves who operated in the area around the aforementioned pub for more than fifty years.

Karen Odden’s mystery is spellbinding.  Her characters, including Kit, Sarah, Maggie, and Kit’s love interest James, are wonderfully depicted, and there is no doubt that readers will be drawn into a world so different and yet so similar to our own.

You can read more about the author at this website.

May 1st is a day that strikes fear into residents of small Midwestern towns.  On that day a serial killer strikes, killing a girl and taking her body where it can’t be found.

The Anniversary opens in 1992, several years after the killings have begun.  To Jules Delaney and Quinn Riley it starts off as a typical day, although there’s a concert that night that Jules is looking forward to.  But after the concert, when she gets into her car, the killer is waiting for her.  This time he spares his victim, if raping her can be called sparing her, and leaves Jules alive.  She doesn’t tell her parents or the police, keeping her terrible secret inside.

After the concert, Quinn gets involved in a fight between boys from his high school and another school.  He punches a boy from the other school, and unfortunately the boy’s head hits the ground hard.  He survives, but Quinn spends the next two and a half years in jail, spared a much longer sentence because the victim lived.  His dream of college is destroyed, however, and so he takes the warden’s advice and joins the army after he’s released, planning to get his GED there and hopefully go on to junior college.

Jules, meanwhile, has become a highly successful model.  She’s living a glamorous life, traveling to exotic locales for photo shoots, and making a good deal of money.  But her past is always with her, and she continues to feel guilty that she didn’t notify the police of her attack.  Perhaps that would have helped them locate the May Day Killer.

While Quinn was incarcerated, his mother was brutally killed with repeated blows to her head with a hammer; no one has ever been arrested for the crime.  His developmentally challenged younger brother is still in a special facility, with no hope that he will ever be able to live on his own.  His uncle Pat, his mother’s brother, is Quinn’s only other relative; he’s a fun guy to spend time with but not much of a role model.

Upon his release from the army, Quinn visits Mrs. Glomm, a work colleague of his late mother’s.  She has the few items that were left behind in Quinn’s mother’s work locker after her death.

Mrs. Glomm tells him that she believes his mother had found irregularities in the books where both women worked, something she had told the police after Quinn’s mother’s murder, but she doesn’t know if the police ever investigated.  She also told Quinn that his mother said she kept the information in her Red File, in a safe place, and Quinn knows where that is.  He goes to their old home, now abandoned, and opens the hiding place everyone in his family knew about.  Inside is not a File but a hammer covered with hair and blood.

Alex Finlay has written another outstanding thriller.  His protagonists are totally credible, their actions convincing.  Even when they act in ways the reader wishes they wouldn’t, the reader will recognize that that is the way teenagers behave, even if it’s to their own detriment.  The Anniversary will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

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.

Dez Limerick is in Paris with his ally Rafik when he’s aware of something he thinks is strange.  He sees two individuals dressed as painters, but, as he tells his friend, “Both had clean shoes.”  This sets off alarms for the men and puts Dez on  high alert.  Two days later the two “painters” set their plan to kill Dez and Rafik, but Dez has a plan of his own.  After one of the assassins fires a shot at him, Dez runs into the scaffolding holding him, causing the temporary structure to fall and kill the shooter.  He lets the other shooter live, saying to Rafik that she’s no threat to them.

Two weeks later FBI Special Agent Tom Fairweather brings Dez to meet Trisha Jean Jackson, assistant secretary of state.  Authorities have discovered that there is a secret site in Eastern Canada that has gone into lockdown, and there is no way to reach the scientists there.  It’s believed that in this underground bunker there is a huge deposit of cerite, a mineral that is needed in computers, smart phones, televisions, and similar electronic devices.  Apparently there are several interested parties in obtaining this materials–the United States, Russia, China, and a huge private company.  Who is behind the lockdown?

Dez is hired due to his experience and knowledge as a “gatekeeper,” someone who can open any door, keep it open as long as necessary to do the job, and then close it.  Dez is interested in the problem, especially when Fairweather tells him that Petra Alexandris, his former lover, is one of the people who is now behind the locked doors of the underground site.

Two major blizzards are headed to Newfoundland, and Dez and the others in the group have to land in the brief period between storms.  When they arrive at the hotel where they’re staying, they are met by three others who have been sent to investigate the lockdown–Dyson Patterson, a physician; Frank Watts, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; and Elisabet LeCroix, a member of a Canadian research council.

Except that Elisabet is actually Ash, the assassin who was posing as a painter in Paris when Dez rammed into the scaffolding holding her and her partner.  Dez doesn’t recognize Ash, as she is known professionally, but she recognizes him.  When he doesn’t identify her because she has dyed her hair and was covered in white dust from the building she and her partner were allegedly painting, she is relieved.  She thinks that “there was no reason to kill this man.  Yet.”

As Dez has proven in each of the three previous novels in this series, he is a man of many talents.  He has an almost uncanny ability to get out of dangerous situations, not necessarily using force but instead using his quick intelligence and problem-solving skills.  As I wrote in my review of Deadlock, the reader will eagerly await each dangerous situation that Dez finds himself in simply to see how he manages to get out of it, not necessarily by brute force but rather by using his many talents and brain power.

James Byrne is the pseudonym of a man who has worked as a journalist and in politics for more than two decades.  You can read about him 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 English family is out for a hike in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, celebrating Elizabeth’s victory in a successful court case in Alaska.  All four members of the family are experienced hikers, even ten-year-old Nick and four-year-old Henry.

Then there’s a sudden downpour, and the two boys run ahead of their parents.  They reach the parking lot, and Henry says he needs to use the toilet.  Nick gives him his flashlight, and the younger boy rushes ahead.

When Elizabeth and her husband Paul come back to their Jeep, Nick is there but Henry isn’t.  Nick tells his parents where his brother went, but when their father looks for him, Henry isn’t there.  Did he get lost?  Was he kidnapped?  The family’s nightmare begins.

Although on the surface their life seems perfect, there is a good deal of stress between the parents.  Elizabeth has always been the breadwinner, making a very impressive salary, but numerous trials necessitate long absences from her husband and their sons.

Paul is embarking on a new career, beginning his master’s in poetry at the University of Houston; even when he completes the program, however, there is no way he can compete with his wife’s earnings.  Feelings that were long buried between the parents come out into the open under the incredible stress of searching for their missing child.

In addition, Elizabeth’s demanding job has exacerbated her dependence on alcohol, which began in college.  For years it has been under control, but the celebration after winning the trial in Alaska led her to indulge again, with painful and unforeseen consequences.

The novel is told in several voices–Elizabeth’s, the distraught mother; Paul’s, who learns what happened in Alaska; Nick’s, who blames himself for letting his younger brother out of his  sight; Hollis Monroe’s, a former sheriff and current park ranger; and Aunt Alex, Elizabeth’s closest friend and Henry’s godmother.

Elizabeth and Paul are now facing not only the terrifying possibility that their young son has been kidnapped and may be dead but also the different ways in which they are handing this crisis.  Nick provides the only clue to Henry’s disappearance when he remembers seeing a truck in the area, but he cannot offer any identifying features, so it’s not really much help.  Paul believes that the best thing for Nick is to return to their Houston home with him so that he can go to school, while Elizabeth is adamant about staying at the Park and waiting (and hoping) for Henry’s return while plastering Henry’s photo on every available tree and storefront.

The author does an outstanding job differentiating among these characters, giving the reader an insight into their feelings and thoughts about the missing youngster.  Their emotions are painful and believable.

Isabel Booth is the pen name of Karen Jewell, a former trial attorney turned author.  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.

Kendal Carter used to be a spy, but then she became a mother and left the espionage life behind.  Or so she thought until two armed and masked men invade her life in Switzerland, and she and her young daughter Rosie have to flee for their lives.

Kendal had grown up with a mother who was a spy.  They moved often, changing their names and personal histories, and Kendal had vowed, when her daughter was born, that she would give Rosie the stable upbringing that she herself had missed.  But now, four years later, she wonders if that was the right decision or if she’s able to protect her child.

She’s rescued by her friend Rico Ortez, another former spy who has now turned to guarding important clients in the corporate world with his company Bon Temps.  He has arranged for Kendal and Rosie to live in a beautiful London house, as impregnable as a house can be made, that comes complete with Joel, an aspiring espionage agent.  Joel, like Kendal, is working for Ortez’s firm.  He tells her that he’s working on an app called Cadu; it’s for school-age children.  Another employee at Cadu is Alex Shapiro, the father of a “mean girl” in Rosie’s kindergarten class, and Kendal tells Joel to keep an eye on him.

Over the Christmas vacation, Kendal, Rosie, and Joel rent a cottage in Suffolk.  Despite the inclement weather, the three visit a nearby park and are surprised to hear a tune coming from an ice cream truck.  When they walk over to the truck, Kendal is stunned to see the driver–Khalil Masoumi, her former lover and Rosie’s father.

On the book’s cover are the tantalizing words When Mother is the Best Cover.  The love of Kendal’s life is her almost-five-year-old daughter.  In their move from Switzerland to London, Kendal realizes the difficulties involved in being both a mother and an espionage agent; it’s a very difficult balance.  And she’s not the only mother in the book who is dealing with family issues that are hampering her work.

L. M. Kemp’s novel is an excellent read, and her descriptions of the many and varied characters are outstanding.  The twists and turns that occur in the book make this a terrifically suspenseful novel.

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.