Marilyn's Mystery Reads

California native, son of a Holocaust survivor, member of the Israeli armed forces, L.A. detective, surfer–that’s Asher Levine’s c.v.  In Miles Corwin’s debut novel, his protagonist is a man of many parts, tormented by most of them.

Ash was a highly respected member of the Los Angeles police department until a year before this book opens.  At that time he had promised protection to a very reluctant witness to a murder, but despite his best effort the woman was killed.  Torn by guilt and feeling unsupported by his superiors, Ash resigned from the force.

But as Kind of Blue opens, his former lieutenant Frank Duffy comes to Ash’s mother’s house where Ash is having shabbat dinner.  Duffy asks his former protegee to return to the force to investigate the murder of an ex-cop.

Ash is reluctant but he agrees, with the silent proviso that when he solves this case he’ll be able to return to the one where his witness was killed.  He had been hurt by the official reprimand Duffy had placed in his file after that murder, but he sees his reinstatement as a chance to go over once again all the parts of the crime that led to his resignation–the killing of a Korean shopkeeper and the subsequent elimination of the witness who saw the shooter.

By all reports Pete Relovich was a good detective who found too much solace in the bottle.   His marriage ended, and he was having trouble making child support payments for his beloved daughter, so he took a job as a driver for an escort service.  Did he see something/someone there that led to his murder?  Because there’s an unexpected treasure that Ash finds hidden under a tile in Relovich’s kitchen–two Japanese ivory carvings and $6,000 in cash.  Where did they come from?

And is a just a coincidence that when Ash is trying to locate Relovich’s former partner he discovers that he too is dead?  The official report says suicide, but Ash isn’t convinced.

Ash’s personal life is kind of a mess too.  Separated from his wife, he meets a beautiful art gallery owner who is an expert on Japanese art.  There’s romantic tension there, but will the fact that Nicole Haddad is of Lebanese descent be a stumbling block in their relationship?  Or is that a minor problem compared to the fact that Nicole already has a boyfriend and only wants Ash when her boyfriend isn’t around?

There are so many threads to follow in this novel that I almost needed paper and pencil to keep them straight.  There’s anti-Semitism in the detectives’ bureau, the various parts of the dead cop’s life, the demons that plague Ash’s sleep, and his determination to find the killer of his witness.

The picture Corwin paints of the Los Angeles police department isn’t a pretty one. There are inept detectives, crooked detectives, cover-ups at all levels.  No wonder Ash wants to go it alone; he doesn’t know whom he can trust.

Miles Corwin has written a taut, exciting first novel, and I’m sure there will be more to come in this series.

You can read more about Miles Corwin at his web site.

Dennis Lehane is one of the few contemporary mystery novelists whose books have been made into successful films.  Think Shutter Island, Mystic River, and the novel that precedes Moonlight Mile–Gone, Baby, Gone.

Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro were the investigators in Gone, Baby, Gone. They found four-year-old Amanda McCready, who had been taken from her neglectful mother and was living with a loving couple who desperately wanted to keep her.  The problem was, little Amanda had been abducted, not taken legally via the Massachusetts Department of Social Services, and at the end of G,B,G the investigators were faced with a heart-wrenching decision–to keep Amanda in her new, caring home or return her to her drug-addicted mother.

Kenzie’s decision to return the girl to her mother caused the breakup of his relationship with Gennaro.  As Moonlight Mile opens, it’s twelve years later and Kenzie and Gennaro have reconciled, married, and are the parents of their own four-year-old daughter, Gabriella. They are struggling financially, as Kenzie is now the sole breadwinner while Gennaro has returned to school and is almost finished with her master’s in social work.  Then they get a call from Amanda’s aunt–the girl is missing again and the police aren’t interested in doing anything about it.

Much against Kenzie’s better judgment, he and his wife are again pressed into looking for the missing girl.  Amanda has seemingly turned her life around and is an outstanding student at a prestigious private school, but she is an aloof, hard-shelled girl whom no one seems to know.  And her mother is involved with another criminal type and not very interested in finding out what has happened to her daughter.

The case gets more involved than simply finding Amanda, as Kenzie and Gennaro apparently aren’t the only ones looking for her. Amanda’s best/only friend, Sophie, is also missing, and neither Sophie’s self-righteous father nor Amanda’s social worker, Dre Stiles, seems to have a clue as to the whereabouts of the girls.  And then a group of Russian mobsters enters the picture, determined to find Amanda, Sophie, and an antique cross of great interest to the boss of the mob.

Kenzie is still dealing with the issues from the twelve-year-old kidnapping case.  He believes he did the right thing by returning the child to her mother, although Gennaro strongly disagrees with him.  Can one do what he thinks is morally right and still be haunted by that decision? Would Amanda have been better served by leaving her with the people who would have been “better” parents, or would she have grown up and always wondered where her “real” mother was?  That decision affected not only Amanda but also the man and woman who took her in and her own aunt and uncle who placed her with them.

In Moonlight Mile Lehane explores these ideas, plus the reality of living in today’s economy. The Kenzie/Gennaro family lives from paycheck to paycheck, and Kenzie must weigh the appeal of accepting a secure job that means working for people only concerned with the bottom line or continuing to worry daily about finances and his family’s financial well-being.

As always, Dennis Lehane has crafted a fast-paced, realistic story about modern life, crimes past and present, and how the decisions of years ago impact on life today.

You can read more about Dennis Lehane at his web site.

I just finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. I’ve read several of McCarthy’s other books–All the Pretty Horses and No Country for Old Men among them–so I knew I wasn’t going to be reading a children’s story.  Even if I hadn’t known the type of books McCarthy writes, the subtitle of this book would have given it away–The Evening Redness in the West.  And the redness referred to isn’t the sunset.

Now, I’m used to murder and mayhem; after all, I’m writing a blog about mysteries, right?  But the number of dead bodies in Blood Meridian is beyond counting. The story is based on the Glanton Gang, a historical group of scalp hunters in 1849-50, immediately following the Mexican-American War.  The gang, led by John Joel Glanton, was hired by the Mexican government to kill marauding Indians and bring their scalps to the authorities to receive payment.  But soon the gang was murdering peaceful Indians and Mexican civilians to increase their totals and, as it appears to me, just for the joy of killing.  Eventually the government of Chihuahua offered a reward for the capture of the gang, turning them from semi-legal mercenaries to outlaws.

With a background story like that, Blood Meridian could hardly be sweetness and light.  But there’s not one character in the novel to whom I was drawn.  The Kid, who opens the novel, might have been that character.   After all, he comes from an abusive home from which he runs away at the age of fourteen, unable to read or write and without any skills except shooting.  He has to make his way in the world, and he does so by joining this para-military group.  But The Kid’s participation in dozens of ruthless killings robs him of any connection with this reader.  It was impossible for me to feel anything but antipathy toward him, toward Glanton, or toward Judge Holden, the book’s portrait of pure evil.

Yet the reviews of Blood Meridian are superlative.  No less a literary authority than Professor Harold Bloom of Yale University has declared it “the major esthetic achievement of any living American writer.”

So this is my point, or rather my question.  Even if there is stirring, evocative language in such a book, some of it quite beautiful, is it possible for a reader to enjoy it, to recommend it, to feel that it has been a worthwhile reading experience, when that reader feels no empathy, no attachment, no sympathy for a single character in it? It reminds me of a time years ago when a friend had read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and said to me, “I feel as if I’ve just spent the afternoon with a murderer.”  Although Blood Meridian isn’t a mystery, enough blood flows through it for a dozen crime novels.

Frankly, at the end of  this book, when every character except one has been killed, I thought “serves them right.  Too bad the judge is still alive.”  And that’s not the way I want to feel at the end of a book.

So while I’m happy to air my opinion, I’d like to hear from you. Am I alone in feeling that there has to be some connection between a reader and at least one character in the book?  Or does no one else care about this?  Let me know.

Marilyn

I’ve been a fan of Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone series ever since I read Edwin of the Iron Shoes. That was back in 1982, and both Shar and I have aged (gracefully, I’d like to think) ever since.

In the latest series’ entry, Locked In, Shar is shot in her San Francisco office late one night. When she awakens several days later, she is told she’s a victim of locked-in syndrome, something that will be familiar to readers/viewers of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  The author of that novel, Jean-Dominique Bauby, wrote his memoir while virtually a total prisoner of his body–victims of locked-in syndrome can neither talk nor move, but they are able to hear, see, and understand everything that’s said to them.  In Bauby’s case, the locked-in syndrome was caused by a massive stroke; in Locked In, the bullet to Shar’s brain had the same devastating effect.

Hy Ripinsky, Shar’s husband, and all her colleagues at the McCone Agency, are working to find the person who shot her.  There’s her nephew Mick, the computer whiz; Rae Kelleher, married to Mick’s country singer father and a private investigator; Julia Raphael, former prostitute turned P.I.; and several others.  Their only hope is that one of the agency’s still-to-be-solved cases is behind the attack, and so they are determined to find the culprit.

In fact, there are several unsolved cases at the McCone Agency that may have a bearing on the murder attempt.  There’s corruption in San Francisco’s city hall, a young street walker who turns up dead and is not identified, a missing man.  Are they all separate, or is there something tying them together that can shed light on what happened to Sharon McCone?

One of the best things about this series is following Shar’s life. In my March 9th About Marilyn blog, I wrote how important it is to me to know the back story about the lead in a series.  I didn’t mention Marcia Muller in that post, and I should have.  Of all the mystery writers I can think of, Muller has done the best job of creating not only a back story but a continuing story for her heroine.   Each book reveals a bit more.

Shar is one of six siblings, and each one has his/her own distinct history.  In the more than two dozen novels in this series, Shar and family have been through a lot–marriages, divorces, remarriages, suicide, the truth about Shar’s birth, and more.  It makes Shar real, someone the reader can identify with, even if the reader cannot quite put herself or himself in Shar’s many life-altering or life-threatening adventures.

Marcia Muller has been quoted numerous times saying that she’s tired of being referred to as the “founding mother of the hardboiled contemporary female private investigator”; that by now, given the number of excellent female private eyes, she’s more like the grandmother.  It’s true that there are now dozens of women following in the footsteps of Muller/McCone, but few who do it so well.

I read this book last night in one sitting–I couldn’t put it down!

Innocent Monster is the sixth Moe Prager mystery.  As Lee Child says on the back cover, “The biggest mysteries in our genre are why Reed Coleman isn’t already huge, and why Moe Prager isn’t already an icon.” I couldn’t agree with Child more.

I had read two previous books in this series when I picked this one up at my local library.  Frankly, I didn’t realize it was the sixth book or that I had only read two others; when I got home and realized this, I decided to read it anyway.

Prager’s back story is sufficiently explained so that it’s not necessary to start from the beginning of the series to find out the story of his life.  Prager’s life has not been an easy one, and as this book opens he’s still recovering from the murder of his first wife, the divorce from his second, and the estrangement from his only child, Sarah, who blames him for her mother’s murder.

Their formerly close relationship has deteriorated into quick once-weekly phone calls, something which hurts Praeger greatly but which he is powerless to change as he too thinks himself guilty in his wife’s death.  But as this novel opens Sarah calls him with a request to meet.  When they do, she explains that the eleven-year-old daughter of her childhood friend has been abducted, and in the three weeks since that kidnapping the police have been unable to find the girl.

Prager, a former New York City policeman and later a private detective, objects strongly to taking this case, saying that he’s no longer working as a P.I. and that if the police haven’t found the girl, he won’t have any better luck. But, his daughter persists, you’ve always been lucky, at least in your work, and he has to agree.  She makes him understand that the resumption of their relationship depends on his looking for young Sashi Bluntstone.  The case is complicated by the fact that Sashi isn’t just any eleven year old but a nationally famous art prodigy whose abstract paintings have sold for amounts in the tens of thousands since she was four years old.  Her parents are distraught over her abduction, but are they telling the police and Prager everything?

And for a young girl, Sashi has a lot of enemies.  Art critics deride her paintings, semi-famous painters use the Internet to post hateful, obscene scribes about her, and museum directors voice their opinions that Sashi, in fact, is not the artist at all.

There is a lot of thinking and philosophy going on in Prager’s mind. His life has been so traumatic, so filled with betrayals by those he trusted and loved, that he has little confidence in himself and doesn’t think himself worth much.  This reader, at least, formed a very different opinion of him, but it’s easy to see why a man who has gone through as much as he has isn’t looking at the glass as half full any longer.

Reed Farrel Coleman has created a mensch in this middle-aged Jewish man from New York, even if the mensch himself isn’t sure about that.

You can read more about Reed Farrel Coleman at his web site.

Not a traditional mystery, not exactly a thriller, I’d Know You Anywhere is a fascinating psychological study of the aftermath of a crime.  Laura Lippman, master storyteller in both the Tess Monaghan series and stand-alone novels, examines life “before and after” the kidnapping of a fifteen-year-old girl more than twenty years before the novel opens.

Elizabeth Benedict is walking along a country road when she comes across Walter Bowman, just a few years older than herself.  Within a couple of minutes he manages to drag her into his truck and drive off with her.  Elizabeth will turn out to be the only girl who survives Walter’s abductions.

All Walter wants is a girlfriend. He’s good-looking, muscular, has green eyes, but yet he can’t seem to attract any girl at all.  But he keeps trying.  He picks up girls on lonely roads, has a few minutes of conversation with them, realizes they’re not interested and are afraid of him, sexually assaults them, and kills them.  It’s not really his fault, he assures himself; if only one had agreed to be his girlfriend, his search would be over and he wouldn’t be forced to keep looking for others.

The novel opens as Eliza (the name she took after her abduction) and family return from several years in London–her husband, Peter; their teenage daughter; and their younger son.  It’s a typical American family living in the suburban Washington area, made even more typical by their visit to a local pound to get a dog.  But only Peter knows Eliza’s history.

Shortly after Eliza’s return to the States, she receives a letter that Walter has written. It’s been forwarded to her by a friend of his, Barbara LaFortuny, who is a vehement opponent of the death penalty.  Walter has been on Virginia’s death row for twenty-two years, a record in that twice he made it as far as the death house, only to receive last-minute reprieves.  Now with Barbara’s aid he reconnects with Eliza, first by writing to her and then by getting her to agree to be on his phone call list.  Walter has a powerful motive–as his only surviving victim, her help will be invaluable in commuting his death sentence once again.  He’s due to be electrocuted the following month, and this time it looks as if the sentence will be carried out–unless he can persuade Eliza to do his bidding.

The novel switches voices many times. First it’s the grown woman Eliza, then the twenty-something Walter, then the teenage Elizabeth, then Barbara, then the inmate Walter.  Adult Eliza would like to put this all behind her, as she has been successful in doing up to this point; teenage Walter wants some girl, blond, slim, and beautiful, to be his girlfriend; teenage Elizabeth wants to placate Walter in order to stay alive; Barbara wants to force Eliza to help commute Walter’s death sentence to life imprisonment; inmate Walter wants to live.

As always, Laura Lippman has written an outstanding novel. Has Eliza’s attempt to keep her past private colored her entire adult life?   Should she agree to be in contact with her kidnapper?  Has Walter ever understood the damage he did to her, as well as to the girls he killed?  Has Barbara’s own experience in being the victim of a crime given her insight into the justice system or simply moved her rigidity from her private life into a more public forum?  The novel asks these questions but leaves it up to the reader to answer them.  Or not.

You can read more about Laura Lippman at her web site.

A man on the ground.  A policeman  stops to see if he needs help.  The man rises and two other men come out of the shadows.  One smashes the cop on the head, another grabs his wallet and his gun, and the third gets ready to give the order to shoot.  Then another man appears.  Seemingly without effort, he disarms the man with the gun and kills all three of the attackers.

Walking Homeless by Al Lamanda takes us on a trip through the Cardboard Box City of Lower Manhattan, the place where the homeless, alcoholic, and drug-addicted men and women went to live after they were removed from the newly upscale Times Square.  Among these is John Tibbets.  All he knows about himself is his name.  He’s been on the streets for about three years, brought by a doctor to a Catholic shelter where he sleeps, when he’s able to.  He spends his days stopping cars and washing their windshields for pocket money; he spends his nights having violent dreams that always end with people dying.  But why is John having these dreams?  He has no idea.

After saving the policeman’s life, John becomes a media sensation.  Newspapers, magazines, and national television stations all want a piece of him.  And so do several mysterious men.  They want him alive but will take him dead if that’s their only option.

The reader knows there’s something pretty scary about John.  The way he handles himself, his presence of mind under extreme pressure–this is not your average homeless man for sure.  Could he have been a military man before his amnesia set in?  A former policeman?  But his skills seem too extreme for that.  And what about his nightmares?  They are becoming more detailed, less fuzzy, although John is still a long way away from figuring out who he is and why men are after him now.  As we follow his dreams, we know that this is no innocent, that there are things in John’s background that are too painful to face.  But that still doesn’t explain why he’s being followed.

This is an intimate look into the dark side of Manhattan or, for that matter, any city that simply wants to forget its homeless, its mentally ill, its most vulnerable. Out of sight, out of mind seems to be the motto of those in charge.  This novel has a strong sociological bent, even with all its violence.  And there’s plenty of that.

Walking Homeless is a stunning book.  Besides being an excellent thriller, its underlying message makes you think about how we, as a society, view the neediest, least capable among us.  It’s not a pretty picture.

Apparently Al Lamanda doesn’t have a web page.  Aside from the fact that the back jacket says he comes from Maine, I couldn’t find out anything about him.  There’s virtually nothing on the Internet.   Could it be that that’s not his real name?  Another mystery to be solved.

There should be a course entitled “How to Get Rid of an Unwanted Love Interest” offered to mystery authors.

Apparently every male detective (barring Catholic clergy and overweight New York eccentrics) needs a girlfriend/wife/love interest to spice up the novel and prove the detective’s masculinity.  That’s all well and good.

But the problem is–how do you get rid of that pesky woman when the author no longer wants/needs her? What to do, what to do.  Well, here are the ways three authors handled it.

Jeremiah Healy took the Road of No Return. When the first John Francis Cuddy novel was published, Cuddy is a newly bereaved man, his young wife having died shortly before the story begins.  After a few books Cuddy becomes romantically involved with another woman, and they have a serious relationship over the next several books.  But then she is killed in a plane crash (never mind all the other people who had to die along with her), and Cuddy is alone again.

William G. Tapply chose to go with Who Can Understand A Woman Anyway? His Boston lawyer/detective is divorced when the series opens and stays unattached for a while.  Brady Coyne finally meets someone special, they are together for a number of books, even moving in together, but in the last novel she leaves him.  No explanation, at least none that made sense to me.

Stuart M. Kaminsky made the hero of the Lew Fonesca books A Man Who Will Hurt Forever. In the first book Lew has just relocated to Florida to escape the memories of his wife’s death by a hit-and-run driver.  Later on, when he does meet a woman, he’s obviously unable to commit to any type of meaningful relationship with her, and eventually she moves away.

I can’t think of similar situations involving female detectives. Sharon McCone starts out single in Marcia Muller’s series but meets and then marries her lover.  And Kinsey Millhone (Sue Grafton) and V. I. Warshawski (Sara Paretsky) have had a man or two in their lives, but they don’t become the problem for the women detectives that the women seem to be for the male detectives.

There are definitely exceptions to the male detective generalizations above.  Susan Silverman in the Spenser series, Kerry in the Nameless Detective series, and Zee in the J. W. Jackson series, to name just three.  But still, that being said, female romantic interests in the lives of male detectives don’t seem to hang around for very long.

Ladies, beware!

Marilyn

Whew–I feel as if I just got off a roller coaster going at top speed. That’s the effect that Bad Things Happen had on me.

Harry Dolan’s debut novel will make you hold your breath until the end.

David Loogan, now of Ann Arbor, Michigan, is a man without much of a past. Or at least a past he’s willing to share.  He reluctantly takes a job as an editor of a short story crime magazine, Grey Streets, at the urging of its editor, Tom Kristoll.   But shortly afterward, Loogan receives a call from Kristoll asking him to come to his house; when Loogan arrives, there’s a man’s dead body sitting in Kristoll’s study.  Kristoll tells Loogan that this man broke into his house and that he killed the man in self-defense.  Kristoll doesn’t want to go to the police, isn’t sure the police will believe him, and asks for Loogan’s help in disposing of the body.  Loogan reluctantly agrees, and they drive to a field and put the body in a shallow grave.

But then the story starts changing and things get complicated.  Each time Kristoll goes over the story, parts of it change.  Then Loogan begins an affair with Kristoll’s wife, Laura, and things get even more complicated.  And then there are two more deaths.

Elizabeth Waishkey is the detective in charge of the cases. She’s attracted to the mysterious Loogan but keeps trying to tell him that this isn’t a story in Grey Streets but an actual police investigation and that Loogan needs to keep out of it and tell her all he knows.  But Loogan doesn’t want to do that.  Is it because he’s guilty?  Is it because of experiences with the police elsewhere?  Is it because he doesn’t trust the Ann Arbor cops and thinks he is better able to solve the murders that are piling up?  We won’t know the answers to those questions until the end of the novel.

Harry Dolan has crafted an exciting, taut first novel. There are many twists and turns in the plot, what appears plausible in one chapter is explained away in another, and I was always trying to figure out whether this latest version of the story was the truth.  The story is skillfully told, and its characters are appealing.  There are inside jokes, such as the derivation of the hero’s last name, which will either make you feel like an insider or make you feel that you need to go to your local library or bookstore and re-read some of the classics.

I can’t decide if Dolan is planning to make David Loogan the hero of a series or if this is a one-shot deal.  In either case, he has written a first novel well worth reading.

You can read more about Harry Dolan at his web site.

The Great War has been over for fourteen years when this novel opens, but the body of one of its dead soldiers has just been recovered.

Maisie Dobbs, the heroine of The Mapping of Love and Death, was a nurse during the war. After her return to civilian life she became what the British called an “enquiry agent,” their term for a private investigator.  In the first book of the series, Maisie Dobbs, it’s 1929; in the seventh novel, it’s 1932, and Maisie has become a successful businesswoman and sometime consultant to Scotland Yard.

Maisie returns home from the war whole in body, but her emotions and her spirit are badly damaged by the sights she has seen and by the injuries to Simon Lynch, the man she loves, who returned home shellshocked and in a nursing home.

In The Mapping of Love and Death, Maisie receives a letter from an American friend, a physician whom she met during their service in the war, alerting her that an American couple will be contacting her regarding their search for the girlfriend of their late son.  The Cliftons are a very wealthy Boston family whose younger son, Michael, enlisted in the British army at the outset of the Great War, bringing his special talents as a cartographer to the Allies.

Although the parents were informed in 1916 that Michael had been killed, his body has just been discovered in France. Along with his body there were letters written to a woman he apparently was in love with, but there’s no name or address with these letters.  The parents want Maisie to find this woman and perhaps shed some light on the last two years of their son’s life.

Jacqueline Winspear has built a wonderful stage for the Maisie Dobbs’ novels.  The books give a picture of life in England after the war–the difficult economic times, the privations, the soldiers returning wounded in body and/or mind.

Since this is the seventh novel in the series, there’s a great deal of back story that goes with Maisie.  Born into a rural servant family, she is “taken up” by the wealthy Lord and Lady Compton who early on recognize her intelligence and abilities.  She’s had privileges far beyond others in her social class, including an education at Girton, the women’s college at Cambridge.  But given the strict British social class system, Maisie can never be part of the upper class and yet obviously isn’t typical of the working class either.  She’s neither fish nor fowl.

There are numerous recurring characters in the series, and although they are well described and their backgrounds given, I will repeat what I always say–try to read this series from the beginning. Every novel builds on the ones before, and the characters’ lives are so richly drawn that one should get to know them from the start.  There’s Daisy’s father, Frankie, who is in charge of the Comptons’ stables; Priscilla Partridge, a friend from the war, now a society matron with a wounded husband and three sons; Lord and Lady Compton, through whose largesse Maisie was able to further her education; Billy Beale, her office assistant; and most importantly, Dr. Maurice Blanche, who took Maisie under his wing and made her his assistant.  Each one plays an important part in Maisie’s life.

For an insightful look into the mores and times of post-World War I England and an introduction to a strong and interesting heroine, one cannot do better than the Maisie Dobbs series.

You can read more about Jacqueline Winspear at her web site.

Rushmore McKenzie has more lives than a cat. In the first chapter of The Taking of Libbie, SD McKenzie is kidnapped, Tasered, thrown in a trunk, and driven from his home in Minnesota to Libbie, South Dakota, a town whose motto is RULES, REGULATIONS, AND RESPECT.  You think?

Rushmore McKenzie (what were his parents thinking?) is a former policeman who was able to retire when he came into a great deal of money.  Now McKenzie spends his time doing favors for friends, as he puts it.  But was it doing a favor that landed him in Libbie, SD?

It turns out there is a relatively simple explanation for the two men who abducted him and brought him across the state border. Several weeks before, a man using McKenzie’s name had fleeced the small town out of a big chunk of its annual budget, just how much no one will say.  The impostor said his company wanted to build a shopping mall, and the town council and the mayor were only too happy to hand over money to get the ball rolling.  The only problem was that there were no plans to build the mall, and The impostor left town in the middle of the night and hasn’t been seen since.  Two thugs, hired by the town’s arrogant and wealthy mayor, were sent to pick McKenzie up and bring him back to Libbie for justice, but when he was deposited at the police station everyone recognized that he wasn’t the man they were looking for.

You’d think the real McKenzie would head home to the Twin Cities at this point, which he does, but only to say goodbye to his friends and then return to South Dakota.  He’s determined to find the man who used his name so convincingly.

For a small town, there’s a lot going on in Libbie, SD.  Besides the shopping mall fraud, there’s arson, adultery, and agoraphobia, and that’s only the a’s.  When two people are murdered shortly after McKenzie returns, he’s more determined than ever to find out what’s really happening in this town.

David Housewright knows a lot of interesting facts  about life in rural South Dakota.  Never having even passed through that part of the country, the remoteness of it is amazing to me–no clothing stores within five or six hours of this town; entire counties in the state without physicians; college graduates departing the Great Plains for the cities, leaving behind an elderly population having a hard time dealing with things economically and emotionally.  That partially explains the town’s eagerness to invest in the shopping mall scheme–it’s something to bring money and life back to a town with no future.  It’s a sad portrait of a dying part of America.

This ex-cop is a bit different from the usual detective hero, and I like him.  He has a lot of depth, thinks things through, and when he does something that he later feels isn’t right, he suffers for it.  This is the seventh book about Rushmore McKenzie, and I plan to go back to see how he got to be who he is now.

You can read more about David Housewright at his web site.

She’s an ex-West Point cadet and a current bike messenger doing a favor for an old friend that takes her across the border–Hailey Cain’s life is a complicated one. Jodi Compton has made an excellent start in what reads like a new mystery series.

Hailey Cain is a young woman with secrets and baggage.  One secret is why Hailey left West Point two months before she would have graduated; we don’t find that out until the last chapter of the novel.  One piece of baggage is that, through no fault of hers, a year earlier she ran over and killed the young son of a former gang leader; the young boy dropped his nanny’s hand and ran out into the street.  She tries to see the parents and extend her sympathies, but they won’t see her.  Her cousin CJ suggests that she may be the victim of the boy’s father’s revenge and that she should get out of town, so she moves to San Francisco and gets a job as a bike messenger.

Hailey’s tough, but she goes to the Golden Gate bridge at least a couple of times a week trying to persuade would-be jumpers to have breakfast with her and wait at least one more day before ending their lives.  So maybe she’s not so tough after all.

Hailey is approached by a high school friend, the leader of a girls’ gang, whom she hasn’t seen in years.  Serena asks her to drive a young friend to rural Mexico to be with her ill grandmother.  It’s a strange request, given that the girl has family members who could take her, but Hailey’s persuaded to take the job.  On the second day of the trip, Hailey and Nidia are carjacked; Hailey is beaten and left on the side of the road, and when she recovers consciousness Nidia is gone.

There’s a lot of interesting information about Latino gangs, both male and female, in California as Hailey is drawn into that life to find out more about Nidia’s disappearance.  It’s obvious that Hailey wasn’t told the truth about the reason for Nidia’s return to Mexico.  She blames herself for the girl’s disappearance, although there wasn’t anything she could have done to prevent it.  But that doesn’t stop her from digging more deeply into Nidia’s story.

There’s a Mafia component to the story too, which further complicates Hailey’s efforts to protect Nidia.  And there’s a betrayal at the end that shows Hailey that sometimes even the people who have no reason to be disloyal, can be.

Hailey’s War is a fine first novel, and I look forward to Jodi Compton’s second one.

You can read more about Jodi Compton at her web site.

I never knew there were so many colors in the rainbow until I started reading the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald.

Starting in 1964 and continuing until a year before his death in 1987, MacDonald wrote 78 books, 21 featuring that Florida knight-errant, Travis McGee.  How I miss him!

Dress Her in Indigo, A Tan and Sandy Silence, The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper, The Empty Copper Sea–those are wonderful titles.

The Travis McGee series was, to my knowledge, the first in what now has become a long line of detective fiction from The Sunshine State:  think Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, Randy Wayne White,  Stuart M. Kaminsky.  But McGee was not only the first to bring us to Fort Lauderdale, he made it his own.

He lived on The Busted Flush, a houseboat he moored at Slip F-18 in the marina, after he won it in a poker game.  That and Miss Agnes, his ancient Rolls Royce, seemed to be his only material possessions.  There was a perpetual party going on at the marina, with lots of sun bunnies, I think they were called, but McGee was never cavalier or uncaring in his sexual adventures.  They may seem a bit hedonistic now, but I don’t think they were.  It was a more innocent time, and McGee and his romantic adventures were part of it.

People in trouble came to McGee–people who had been scammed, abused, tricked out of what was rightfully theirs. McGee was a “court of last resort”; after all other avenues of justice had been tried and been proven inadequate, McGee rode to the rescue.  He asked a percentage of the “salvage,” what he recovered if it had a monetary value, but that’s not why he did what he did.  He was trying, and succeeding in his small way, to right the wrongs of the world.  He was for the underdog, first and foremost.

John D. MacDonald was years ahead of his time in talking about pollution, greed, and overbuilding in his beloved Florida–things we’re all too familiar with today.  But by making Travis McGee his voice, MacDonald made his points powerfully but without preaching.  McGee loved his state, rarely left it, and railed against the things that were changing it for the worse.  McGee did a lot of thinking about the state of the world, and most of it is as true today as it was when it was written.

I don’t know how easy it is to obtain the Travis McGee series, but you will be doing yourself a favor if you try to track down these books.  They take place in a time before computers, cell phones, and the Internet, but that doesn’t matter.  John D. MacDonald created a timeless series for us to enjoy.

You can read more about John D. MacDonald at this web site.

It’s very exciting when you come upon an enjoyable series strictly by accident. Now that I’ve read the first in Susan Hill’s Simon Serrailler mysteries, I plan to read the others as quickly as possible.*

Although this novel is billed as a Simon Serrailler mystery, the English Detective Chief Inspector plays a rather peripheral part.  The novel actually revolves around several other characters, all living in the small English cathedral town of Lafferton.  I do so love British expressions–when would you ever hear an American town or city referred to as a cathedral/temple/ church/mosque/synagogue town?

A number of chapters are written in the first person by the killer.  Other chapters are told from the third-person points of view of Detective Sergeant Freya Graffham, new to the Lafferton police force and coming off an unhappy marriage in London; Catherine Serrailler Deerbon, general practitioner and sister of the Detective Chief Inspector; three women who become victims of the serial killer; and various other members of the town.  As many characters as there are in The Various Haunts of Men, you never lose track of who is who; Susan Hill has an outstanding ability to bring each character to life.

Angela Randall is a middle-aged woman, never married, who works in a facility for elderly people with dementia.  She goes for a run early one morning after completing her tour of duty, and she never returns.  Victim number one.

Debbie Parker is a young woman, unemployed, overweight, and depressed.  She goes for a walk early one morning and never returns.  Victim number two.

And there are others.

The town of Lafferton is small and very close knit.  It’s a refuge for DS Graffham, who eagerly joins the local choir and begins to make friends.  She’s enjoying her new life, until she meets her supervisor who had been on vacation when she was posted there.  Simon Serrailler takes her breath away, and despite herself she falls instantly, and seemingly hopelessly, in love.  She’s warned by a fellow chorister as well as by Catherine, Simon’s sister, that he has left a trail of broken hearts behind him, but Freya is unable to control her thoughts about him.

The plot is a tense one, with things moving swiftly. The characters, as I’ve said, are sharply delineated.  The only false note, I thought, was the instant emotional reaction Freya had to Serrailler; I guess I’m not really a believer in love at first sight, particularly on the part of a professional woman fresh from a disastrous marriage.  But this is truly nit-picking, since Serrailler’s charm and personality are obviously meant to be irresistible.

In a way, he reminded me of a much more modern Sir Peter Whimsey, a man of distinguished background and many talents, who chooses to pursue a career that is slightly “off” what would be expected from one of his class.  In fact, one of the interesting side issues is the estrangement between the Detective Chief Inspector and his father, a man who can’t understand why his son chose to ignore the three generations of physicians in the family and became a policeman instead.

*And I did just that.  One of the things I liked best about this book is the backstory.  I wrote in my About Marilyn post of March 9 how much more enjoyable I find books/series when I know more about the character and how he/she developed.  I said in that post that it’s more important to me when it’s a female character, but now I don’t know if I can stand by that statement.   In the past month, since I wrote the post you’re now reading, I’ve read three more novels in this series.  Each one gave me a deeper insight into Simon Serrailler and his family, and I’ve enjoyed the series more because of it.

The Various Haunts of Men is a compelling mystery with a shocking ending.  Now that I’ve read the three novels that follow it, I can hardly wait to read the fifth book in the series.

You can read more about Susan Hill at her web site.

Hi.  True to my word in my September 6th post, I’m letting you know that there’s a new post in the About Marilyn section of this blog. If you click on About Marilyn under the graphic of me and my imaginary cat, you’ll be able to read my thoughts about starting but not finishing mystery novels.

Marilyn