Richards, Emilie - Beware False Profits (2007)
Emilie Richards - Beware False Profits (2007)
Reviewed by Yvette Banek
A delightful entry in a “cozy” genre that has lately seemed to run amok with preciousness and more recipes, “how-to-fix-it” advice and country folklore than you’d find on any food or home and garden channel. When I think murder I don’t generally think hobbies.
But maybe that’s just me. I like my mysteries free from an overdose of cuteness.
Not humor, though. Humor I like.
Luckily so does Emilie Richards. A novelist who’s written more than fifty books and is well known for her romance titles as much as her mysteries. Although I admit I’ve only come lately to this series featuring Aggie Sloan-Wilcox and her minister husband Ed, lately of Ohio.
Aggie has a habit, it seems, of discovering bodies and running interference with the local constabulary when there’s a murder to be solved or criminal to be apprehended. Far-fetched, you might say, well, yes, but a willing suspension of disbelief will get you over the rough spots.
From the opening sentence: “For a minister’s wife I spend too much time in bars…” you know you’re in for a fun ride as Aggie and Ed, on leave in NYC for a little rest and recreation are called upon to find the whereabouts of a parishioner. Joe Wagner, director of the local Helping Hands food bank, seems to have disappeared while on his monthly business trip to the Big Apple. His wife, Maura, would rather a low-key look-see by Aggie and Ed instead of a full-blown police investigation. At least for the time being.
It is the eve of Mayday! Festivities and Joe is bound to turn up at some point since he takes his yearly fortune-telling activities at the fete very seriously.
Back in NY, Aggie and Ed follow Joe’s trail to the portals of the Pussycat Club in Greenwich Village, home of various and sundry female impersonators and well, the rest you can imagine. Aggie and Ed are in for a few surprises.
Soon, back in Mineral Springs minus Joe who is still among the missing, Aggie and Ed and the rest of the town-folk are faced with murder when the mayor’s wife is bumped off in the midst of Mayday! celebrations. What one thing has to do with another is part of the mystery as financial shenanigans at Helping Hands are discovered and the mayor and the missing Joe jump to the head of the suspects list.
What I found most entertaining about all this is the back-and-forth among the people involved and the easy way that author Richards has with dialogue while schmoozing the various relationships so you actually want to hang around and see what happens next.
Ed Wilcox makes for a very down-to-earth minister who’s no fool and knows what a treasure he has in Aggie. Richards also has given Aggie a free-wheeling, free-thinking mother, kids who are not intrusive and actually add to the texture of the story, and a best friend named Lucy Jacobs who is believable in the role.
The relationship between the two women is well developed and minus the usual phony dialogue found in many of these sorts of books in which smart talk is the only reason to include a best friend character. I liked both these women a lot and believed that in spite of the happenings, they could and would be friends. It’s a good thing to have at the heart of a story. It gives the proceedings an undercurrent of sensibility.
Truth to tell, nothing that happens in this story really strains the brain cells too much, but Beware False Profits is still a treat to read because of the way that author Richards goes about delineating her various characters and their charming quirks or lack thereof. Mineral Springs is definitely a town I will want to revisit.
Posted by Yvette Banek in Book Reviews | Permalink | Comments (4)
Hamilton, Steve - Night Work (2007)
Steve Hamilton - Night Work (2007)
Reviewed by Yvette Banek
In this departure from the Alex McKnight series set in Michigan’s cold Northern peninsula, author Steve Hamilton has come home to upstate New York with an intriguing new hero and the same enviable talent for creating a specifically unique sense of place in which to set his characters. He is an author who works from the inside out, though at first glance one might think otherwise. Within a slew of thriller writers trying to make themselves heard, Steve Hamilton’s voice continues to be one of kind.
In Night Work, we meet Joe Trumbull: a quiet, pragmatic man whose reach is as broad as the countryside he travels on behalf of his “clients.” He is also a guy struggling to recover from the trauma of an unspeakable crime. As we’ve come to expect from author Hamilton, his hero has much to brood about. But first, Hamilton does a masterful job of establishing Joe’s milieu and the appreciation and devotion he has for a difficult job.
When not at work, Joe can be found listening to soulful jazz or boxing in the gym downstairs from his lonely apartment. He has also, as we soon discover, never given up hoping for a resolution to the crime which has all but destroyed his life: the murder of his fiancée Laurel.
Now, two years later, he’s just beginning to date again when the murder of another woman thrusts Joe into a nightmarish world in which nothing makes any sense. On the point of regaining his bearings, he is sent reeling. The murder cannot be seen as anything other than personal as Joe appears, yet again, to be trapped at the center of a violent crime. Random can no longer be taken for granted – by anyone.
This time out, as the police wonder if they should have taken a colder, harder look at him for Laurel’s murder, Joe Trumbull is cast adrift. Not knowing friend from foe, it slowly dawns on him that he has a deadly enemy whose motives are unknown. With no one to turn to, and as the trail of violence increases, Joe can only work to save himself from an ever tightening snare by solving the crimes one step ahead of a pair of kibitzing cops intent on their own interpretation.
So he begins by going backwards. Maybe there among his probationary files, he can dig out the kernel of hatred motivating a heartless killer. Joe is in for discoveries of a different sort too as he queries likely suspects and finds that his work in the community has garnered some unexpected results.
Complete with the wallop of a harrowing ending, Night Work will keep you reading late into the night as you wonder just how Joe will survive the truth.
Though not as deeply, darkly gripping as the Alex McKnight books, this latest entry from the pen (or keyboard) of one of our most talented writers is quite good enough and better than most.
Posted by Yvette Banek in Book Reviews | Permalink | Comments (5)
Gaylin, Alison - Trashed (2007)
Alison Gaylin - Trashed (2007)
Reviewed by David J. Montgomery
Alison Gaylin makes her hardcover debut with Trashed, the story of Simone Glass, an ambitious young journalist trying to make it big in L.A. Unfortunately, the only job she can get is working at Asteroid, a bottom-feeding tabloid that makes the Enquirer look like the Economist.
Glass' first assignment is to root through the garbage of the hot TV celeb of the moment, a foul task that turns up an intriguing find: a shoe belonging to a recently murdered actress. After the TV star is murdered in turn, a possession of hers is found in the trash of the killer's next victim.
The murder mystery of Trashed is creepy and suspenseful, but the real pleasure of the book is the witty look at the inner workings of a gossip rag and the tart spoof of Hollywood celebrity and buffoonery. Trashed could have been trashy, but instead Gaylin makes it a fun and juicy read.
Posted by David J. Montgomery in Book Reviews | Permalink | Comments (2)
Flinn, Elaine - Deadly Vintage (2007)
Elaine Flinn - Deadly Vintage (2007)
Reviewed by David J. Montgomery
Elaine Flinn, queen of the cozy mystery, returns with the latest book in her award-winning series about Carmel, Calif., antiques dealer Molly Doyle. Deadly Vintage marks Doyle's fourth appearance, and her most enjoyable yet.
Doyle is hired to renovate the tasting room of a local winery, but the job has scarcely begun when the client's abusive husband is murdered only shortly after engaging in a heated, public argument with Molly. The police begin looking at her as a suspect, prompting her to do a little investigating of her own.
The charms of Deadly Vintage are many, including the picturesque setting of California's Central Coast, the realistic nature of the plot (a rarity in many mysteries of this type) and the author's simple, evocative prose. But it is the book's characters, and their warm, lushly rendered relationships, that make this work a standout. Among today's authors of traditional mysteries, Flinn ranks at the top.
Posted by David J. Montgomery in Book Reviews | Permalink | Comments (2)
White, Dave - When One Man Dies (2007)
Dave White - When One Man Dies (2007)
Reviewed by David J. Montgomery
Dave White has long been regarded in the mystery world as one of the finest young writers of short fiction. Now he has produced his first novel, When One Man Dies, and the results are just as pleasing.
Jackson Donne is an ambivalent New Jersey private eye who wants to quit the business and get an education. Before he can do that, however, he is compelled to investigate after his closest friend is murdered.
He still has to pay the bills, so he also takes a job tailing an adulterous spouse. Naturally, he finds that there is more going on than meets the eye. As Donne unravels the mystery, White reveals through a series of clever plot twists that the two cases are actually related.
White has written a PI novel that is both traditional and fresh, one of the few new talents to join this much-plowed field with something interesting and original to say. Fans of detective novels will, we hope, be enjoying his work for years to come.
Posted by David J. Montgomery in Book Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0)
Cohen, Jeffrey - Some Like It Hot Buttered (2007)
Jeffrey Cohen - Some Like It Hot Buttered (2007)
Reviewed by Yvette Banek
Jeff Cohen has begun a new series featuring another nice, schleppy hero with a heart of gold. This seems to be his specialty and I, for one, couldn’t be happier. Nice guys do finish first.
As in Cohen's previous series starring the one and only Aaron Tucker, journalist/crime-solver/father extraordinaire, this new book has, at its heart, an everyman who just happens to get involved in murderous doings, and we, thankfully, get to go along.
Taking the death of the guy in row S, seat 18 of his newly renovated small town movie theater as an affront, Elliot Freed decides to help out the police even if they don’t want or need it. I mean, wouldn’t you?
“Were you the one who found him?” I asked Anthony (not Tony, mind you), the ticket taker/usher/projectionist. Anthony, a Cinema Studies major at Rutgers University, was nineteen years old, and a film geek from head to toe (sorry Anthony, but it’s true). He was wearing black jeans, a t-shirt with a picture of Martin Scorsese on it, and a puzzled expression that meant he was wondering how to work this event into his next screenplay…
“Sophie found him,” he said, indicating our snack stand attendant/ticket seller/clean-up girl who was standing to one side…
Here is Elliot, barely making ends meet, operating a specialty theater in Midland Heights, New Jersey where multi-plexes are the norm when what should happen? A guy drops dead in the middle of Young Frankenstein night. Death by popcorn. Not only is it an insult to Elliot, but an insult to Mel Brooks as well. It is simply not to be borne.
Elliot’s theater is different in that it specializes in funny films. Funny as in funny-ha-ha, that is. Hence the name: Comedy Tonight, an old theater bought on a whim with part of the money garnered from the sale of one measly screenplay to Hollywood. Now all Elliot wants is to make a living from the fruits of his fascination with classic funny films. And, by the way, where else can you go to see two flicks for the price of one these days? One classic and one new. So what if the new is dreck. Better to make a comparison I say.
In truth, Elliot’s personal expenses aren’t dire since he doesn’t own a car. He’s also single and not too proud to take a bit of alimony from his ex-wife. A true eccentric in an auto-obsessed state, he rides a bike from his townhouse in the neighboring town of New Brunswick, back and forth to the theater. When he does need a car, he borrows one from his friend the auto mechanic who often, conveniently, has cars lying around his lot. This is Elliot’s way of contributing to the “greening” of his own little corner of the world.
Okay, so when the dead guy shows up, Elliot decides to look around. Especially after his projectionist, Anthony, disappears and a large stash of counterfeit movies is found in the theater’s basement.
Aided and abetted by a good looking blonde named Leslie Levant, who happens to be a cop, not to mention the well meaning interference of Elliot’s ex-wife Sharon, for whom he still carries a match-sized torch, and the ditzy Goth wannabe Sophie, she of the ticket booth and snack-stand concession (and one of the author’s more inspired creations), Elliot is soon making headway into murder. And alas, finding out that crime fighting can be very dangerous to your health and well being.
One of the things that makes Jeff Cohen’s books so special is the setting: the suburban towns of New Jersey, not an over-used mystery milieu. Avoiding the caricature of smoke-filled, chemically congested swampland or Sopranos wiseguy haven, Jeff makes New Jersey seem as “normal” as anywhere else – which, of course, it is. Well, normal with a few dead bodies scattered here and there.
I read Some Like It Hot Buttered in one fell swoop, a bag of popcorn (minus the poison) at my side. (Just to keep in the spirit of the thing.) Not only is the book funny, which you would expect from Jeff Cohen, but it is also well-plotted (also expected) and loaded with plenty of mis-direction. Plus you get to meet another terrific bunch of characters for whom the author obviously has great affection. Always a very good thing.
Posted by Yvette Banek in Book Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0)
Fossum, Karin - The Indian Bride (2007)
Karin Fossum - The Indian Bride (2007)
Reviewed by Fiona Walker
Gunder Jomann is a quiet, middle-aged man who lives a peaceful if unremarkable life in the quiet village of Elvestad, Norway. Many think him "simple," and possibly this is so, but he remains a intelligent, noble and gentle figure, and manages to surprise everyone when they hear he has returned home from India a married man. However, on the same evening his bride Poona is due to arrive at the airport Jomann's sister is the victim of an accident, and he has to send a local taxi-driver to collect her instead. But she is nowhere to be found, and he returns without her. The next day, the small town is rocked with the news of an Indian woman found bludgeoned to death in a nearby field.
Inspector Konrad Sejer is horrified by the brutality of the attack, and vows to find the person responsible among a town where no-one seems to be telling the complete truth, everyone seems to have secrets to keep, and everyone's behavior is distorted by the fact one of their own may be a guilty of this horrendous crime.
The Indian Bride is a novel with an immense emotional power. It would, I imagine, be almost impossible to read this without total emotional involvement in the characters and what's happening to them. The opening fifty pages, during conjure the details of their everyday lives into something special and which lonely Gunder travels to India and finds a wife, only to have her vibrant presence in his life snuffed out on the night she, a stranger in a strange land, arrives to be with him, are at first touching and then ultimately shattering. Fossum's ability to pin-point how completely barbaric the crime, how monstrous, desolate and even beyond words it is, is stunning. This is a hard novel to read for that, for the sense it carries of how horrifically man can act towards himself, but it's nonetheless a rewarding one, and one I would recommend without reservation.
Fossum's talent for creating such moving, psychologically accurate characters - part of the reason the book has such power; her characters are entirely real, entirely convincing - is at its clearest in this book. Too, her ability to significant, relevant to us all, is striking as well. She doesn't neglect the story, either, the result being that this book has almost everything you could want. The gradual progress of the investigation is fascinating, the characters' reactions to every revelation telling, and there's a slow accretion of detail that makes the final solution inevitable. Not that everything is wrapped up: the final pages introduce an uncomfortable ambiguity to everything that left the book moldering in my head for a long time.
The Indian Bride is a very special work of crime fiction indeed, and certainly Fossum's best so far, better even than last year's When the Devil Holds the Candle, which won this site's Gumshoe Award for best European Crime novel. She writes so naturally, with such sensitivity and compassion, and is eble to evoke the most painful empathy, that when at her best (as here) it can be astounding. Subtly and sensitively, she draws up an emotional storm that has the power to, finally, knock the reader over. I've not a read a crime novel that's made me cry in a very long time. As I turned to the final page, this one did.
Posted by Fiona Walker in Book Reviews | Permalink | Comments (3)
Hicks, Randall - Baby Crimes (2007)
Randall Hicks - Baby Crimes (2007)
Reviewed by Yvette Banek
California: land of ripe avocados and overripe passions. Into the fray, suntanned and swinging a mean tennis racket, comes Randall Hick’s likeable hero, ready and eager to right the wrongs of the rich.
Baby Crimes is the very natural and sympathetic sequel to The Baby Game, Hick’s award winning debut featuring adoption lawyer/tennis pro, Toby Dillon. Now this might seem an odd combination of professions but fear not, it is all perfectly natural. At least in the way that Toby explains it.
I wear two hats. By day I’m an attorney, specializing in adoptions, at least as much as one can specialize when you’ve been an attorney for all of eighteen months. By, well, the rest of the day, I’m a tennis pro. Assistant tennis pro, actually.
…While most people paid big bucks for country club living, I got to stay at Coral Canyon twenty four hours a day, gratis. When I’d got back from a three year Peace Corps stint in Nepal, I had no money, no job…I’d been a court rat throughout high school and college, and helped the club pro, Lars, with his clinics from time to time. So he created a part time job for me: Assistant Tennis Pro. That was seven years ago. There was no salary, but in exchange I got a small apartment right next to the courts…When I passed the bar exam last year, Lars feared I’d turn the grunt work back over to him and trade my racquet for a tie, so he convinced the Pro Shop to give up their storage room to keep me on the premises. My potential clients had to wend their way past a cardboard cutout of Tiger Woods, and displays of overpriced putters, but this seemed a small price to pay.
Some lawyers may have looked at wiping pigeon poop off the tennis courts as beneath them, but I considered myself the lucky one in the deal.
Told you it would seem natural. I mean, what else is an aspiring lawyer to do when faced with country club temptation? Not that Toby is your typical country club type. Not at all. He’s just a nice guy who’s no fool and isn’t one to waste an opportunity. Plus he loves to play tennis and golf.
Anyway, Toby is the inspired creation of Randall Hicks, an awfully nice guy himself as well as a California based, real-life adoption attorney/avocado farmer/sheep rancher and published mystery author. Obviously no slouch in the odd combo category himself.
In Baby Crimes, Toby’s heretofore nonexistent love-life is definitely improving – down-to-earth movie star Rita MacGilroy is back - and he’s got a couple of adoption puzzles that need his unique brand of lawyering smarts.
This time around his clients are wealthy, supercilious couple Nevin and Catherine Handley who want Toby to straighten out a messy adoption problem from the past. Bad publicity is to be avoided at all costs and besides, their sixteen year old daughter Lynn (coincidentally, Toby’s favorite tennis pupil), would be the one hurt most if the awkward truth were revealed.
If not for the fact that Toby admires Lynn for the feisty, good-hearted teenager she is, he wouldn’t touch this case with a ten foot pole. In actuality, the self-important Handleys appear more concerned about negative publicity than their daughter. It seems the couple is being blackmailed when they can least afford the notoriety: Nevin Handley has just been elected County Supervisor. Enough said.
Toby’s other case is that of Amanda, a young woman who is giving up her baby for adoption. It is his job to facilitate the transaction, a sensitive situation which calls for all of Toby’s skill and judgment.
…..when a birth mother comes to see me, I explain how adoption works, then show her couples I’m working with who are hoping to adopt…..Amanda had chosen Aaron and Charlotte Colburn. They owned my favorite restaurant, a little Italian mom and pop place in town called Costa Brava….After just one meeting with Aaron and Charlotte, Amanda was sure they were the perfect parents for her baby. It was a good match…. Everything was looking good in the adoption until I’d hit a snag with the birth father…
When one of his clients is murdered, it is up to Toby to find not only the blackmailer, but a murderer as well. In the grim course of events, the truth becomes expendable as Toby comes up against an odious crime kingpin and faces down (more or less), some very dangerous street gang members with their own unique code of ethics.
None of this is easy when you’re the on-call tennis assistant pro and dead bodies keep turning up while you’re trying to prove to the woman of your dreams that your life is not as turbulent as it appears. In Baby Crimes, Toby will learn once again that secrets, besides being deadly, are often “closer than they appear in the mirror.”
Filled with the author’s wry sense of humor and the rather old fashioned notion that character counts more than money, Baby Crimes is sure to intrigue the most jaded mystery lover looking for something a little bit different.
A surprising triple twist ending that will definitely catch you off-guard is included at no extra charge as Randall Hicks delivers the goods in his terrific second book. This is a sparkling new series written by a very witty guy who really knows what he’s talking about and doesn’t mind sharing a laugh or two while he’s about it.
Posted by Yvette Banek in Book Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ignatius, David - Body of Lies (2007)
David Ignatius - Body of Lies (2007)
Reviewed by David J. Montgomery
David Ignatius, a columnist for the Washington Post, returns to fiction for the first time in over a decade with one of the season's best thrillers. Body of Lies is a wonderfully detailed and nuanced spy novel in the tradition of Frederic Forsythe and Graham Greene.
Roger Ferris is a rising star in the CIA, a promising young agent with an intimate knowledge of the Arab world. He's heading up the agency's operations in Jordan when he and his supervisor hatch an intricate plot to bring down an al Qaeda ringleader named Suleiman.
Ignatius clearly has intimate knowledge of the Middle East, which enables him to tell a rich and convincing story. His portrayal of the Arab people is uncommonly sympathetic, at times perhaps too much so. Every good thriller needs a good villain, and Ignatius seems almost reluctant to show the terrorists in a negative light. Fortunately, Body of Lies is strong enough to overcome that limitation.
Posted by David J. Montgomery in Book Reviews | Permalink | Comments (0)
Coben, Harlan - The Woods (2007)
Harlan Coben - The Woods (2007)
Reviewed by David J. Montgomery
Over the past few years, Harlan Coben has carved out a niche for himself in the publishing world with several bestselling novels that you might call "domestic thrillers." The hero of these books is usually a father or husband who gets caught up in some kind of dangerous situation that puts both his life and his family's safety in jeopardy.
They've all been very successful and generally quite entertaining as well. The latest of these is The Woods, and aside from the excellent Myron Bolitar series, it might just be the best thing Coben has written.
Paul Copeland is a County Prosecutor in New Jersey, with a high-profile case on his desk. He's prosecuting two frat boys for raping a stripper, and one of the defendant's fathers is a wealthy and powerful man. He's willing to do whatever is necessary to convince Copeland to give up the case, and is trying to dig up whatever dirt on the prosecutor he can.
Copeland has more than a few skeletons in his closet, dating back decades to the summer he was a camp counselor and two campers were murdered and his sister went missing. He's never told what really happened that night, but against all logic, it appears that someone else knows, and the truth is finally going to come out.
The Woods is filled with dark secrets and gripping suspense. Copeland is a fine character, one of Coben's best, and his plight can't help but move readers.
Posted by David J. Montgomery in Book Reviews | Permalink | Comments (2)
