Review: The Shotgun Approach

  (This post is available in audio format here on Youtube.)

You've got to keep an eye on William Martell. He's a master of misdirection. He lays out the evidence fairly but sneakily in each of his novelettes (novellas? long short stories?).

The Shotgun Approach concerns a formerly hit music duo with more than a passing resemblance to Hall and Oates, except the frontman has had his blonde head blown off with a shotgun and his partner is the prime suspect, along with the victim's ex-wife and his former producer, who all, by odd coincidence, are checked into the same VIP floor of the same luxury hotel on the night of the murder.

Hosting the proceedings are a burnt-out San Francisco police detective and her latest partner, who's been assigned the unenviable task of making sure she doesn't kill anyone. No one has had any luck in that department so far.

Review: The Versailles Formula

The Versailles Formula starts with an eerie, haunting image: a ghost patters down a long, dark hallway night after night, past a suit of armor, trying in vain to seize its prize, the portrait of an angel--but always vanishing before he wins his goal. Genevieve Sturbridge nee Planche is back. And solving this mystery will only lead to more mysteries, a trail of bodies, and desperate danger.

Genevieve, of course, is the Huguenot heroine with French heritage and British loyalties, with one foot in the art world and the other mired in espionage. In this third book in the series she's teamed with an army captain almost as stubborn and resourceful as she is. Sparks fly.

(An audio version od this post is available here on Youtube.)

Mr. Holmes's Neighborhood

 

Here it is, hot off the presses, my contributor's copy of Mr. Holmes's Neighborhood--34 new Sherlock Holmes stories by members of the Crew of the Barque Lone Star, a scion society of the famed Baker St. Irregulars founded some fifty-five years ago in Dallas, Texas.

I haven't read it yet, but it promises a peep inside the keyholes of the neighborhood surrounding 221B Baker Street, including my own prequel/sequel to Conan Doyle's seminal tale, The Empty Room, which is called--

The Sherlock Holmes Appreciation Society. The first Sherlock Holmes fan club turns out to have been the most dangerous.

I don't have an exact publication date yet, but Mr. Holmes's Neighborhood will soon be available at Barnes and Noble online and elsewhere. Keep a weather eye open, friends!

Review: The Sorrowful Girl

 There’s a tug of war I’m familiar with in writing historical fiction. The writer
wants to establish historical setting without overwhelming the reader with historical facts—the furniture without the bric-a-brac. And here’s where Keenan Powell excels with The Sorrowful Girl. From the very first page she makes us feel comfortable in small-town Massachusetts at the turn of the last century.

     It's a town mainly populated by poor, hard-working Irish immigrants, at a time when immigrants were hated or looked down on by many Americans. A time of labor unrest and repressive capitalism. Alright, a time perhaps little different from our own. Perhaps the secret to good historical fiction is finding the common denominators between the past and the present.

     Or perhaps it’s in fully realized, breathing characters. A girl has been murdered in the woods outside of town. A girl close to Liam Barret, the local policeman who’s put in charge of bringing her killer to justice. We get to know Liam’s history, his hopes and aspirations, and that of his town as the case places him squarely between the Molly Maguires and the political machinery and machinations controlled by the moneyed mill owner who also seems to own half the state. 

     He’ll have to rely on his wits and his integrity to see him through to the resolution. And even then he may find a compromise is the best he can hope for. 

     This is the first Keenan Powell I’ve read. It won’t be the last.

The Sorrowful Girl can be found here on Amazon.

Review: Battle Annie

 When Trish MacEnulty writes a historical novel, she’s apt to use a wide-angle lens. So it is with Battle Annie, loosely based on a true character, whose life is fleshed out with great imagination and brio. 

     From the tenements of Hell’s Kitchen to the upper crust of Baltimore and back again, we follow Annie Walsh, the self-styled queen of Hell’s Kitchen’s brawlers fleeing from a murder rap and everything she’s ever known. The writer builds up the slums of New York in 1895 brick by hurled brick, placing us in the middle of rail strikes and gang wars, contrasted with Gilded Age high society, where survival means learning how to use an oyster fork. 

     It’s grit, brains, and most importantly the friendships forged in the lower depths that keep Annie and her ward Cora one step ahead of the law. She provides a wider societal vista by the inclusion of socialist champion Eugene Debs, who sees beyond Annie’s rough façade to the leader she can be.

     This is a picaresque tale with a lot of heart, well worth the read. If you’re like me, you’ll fall in love with Annie and her company of rogues. And you’ll be left hungry for more.

Battle Annie can be found here on Amazon.

Review: The Law of Falling Bodies

 The Law of Falling Bodies is like cooking a souffle while doing a high wire act.
There’s no way it’s going to work. But what if it does? I’m almost tempted to leave my review it at that, but I’ll go further, at the risk of a few mini-spoilers. It does something I normally despise: it turns a murder story into an espionage story. With Nazis.

But: the author pulls it off, largely through the agency of his main character, a thoroughly grounded, down-to-earth, self-deprecating, modest graduate student in physics who is the only person who could ever solve the many mysteries presented to him, in part because he and his antagonist go together like yin and yang.

It’s a spy novel which may also qualify as a cozy mystery. It includes an alluring local cop and an asshole FBI agent who may be allies or enemies. Through it all, it’s strangely believable. This is an overlooked gem. Pick it up now.

The Law of Falling Bodies can be found here on Amazon.

Review: Go Find Daddy

Modern society is a minefield, and was even before Covid-19. But there was a lot of discussion at the height of the pandemic as to how writers should handle such an event. Ignore it?—or plunge into it? Steve Goble elects to skip it, but in doing so he (intentionally) shines a light on the aftermath, and what it means to us going forward. The waning of trust—in institutions, in each other seems to have accelerated to dangerous new levels. A lot of readers were waiting to see how writers would handle Covid and the post-Covid arena. If Go Find Daddy, Steve Goble’s third in his Ed Runyon series is any example, I would say—honestly, straightforwardly, levelly. Which happens to describe his hero, Ed.

Ed has left the force, gotten over (largely) his anger issues, and is trying to make it work as a private detective in small-town Ohio. He’s a no-nonsense kind of guy. As he says, “accountants get head-aches from staring at a screen store clerks get head-aches from dealing with assholes all day, I get shot at. No big deal.”

But he’s about to go down the rabbit hole. A cop’s been killed. The main suspect—the only suspect as far as the police are concerned—is a right-wing podcaster who’s made his hatred for cops his brand (thus helping to diminish further our faith in authority), and who’s vanished without leaving a clue, even to his wife and child.  Every cop in three states is out for his blood. And now a pro-cop entity online has offered a million dollars for him—dead. No one knows whether the offer is real, whether the organization is real, or a hoax—but it’s drawn every bounty-hunter to the chase.

All of which would have nothing to do with Ed—until he takes on a mission for the fugitive’s wife—to get a vital message to him. If you know Ed, you’ll know why it’s a job he can’t refuse (involving the fugitive’s little daughter) even though he’s going up against the fugitive’s friends and enemies both, all of whom are trigger-happy, none of whom trust each other or can be trusted. Yes. Ed Runyon gets shot at—a lot. 

But Ed is a person who can be trusted, a person who holds his integrity dear, a person who can be believed, a doggedly decent man—and that’s the key to the job he’s taken on, and it’s what makes him a hero for this post-Covid age. 

This is the third book in the Ed Runyon series. Jump on the bandwagon. Go Find Daddy can be found here on Amazon.

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Review: Secrets and Spies

 

The most entertaining part of the Delafield & Malloy historical mystery series is the sleight-of-hand the author uses to place her sleuths at the center of historical events. Some historical writers use a crowbar; Trish MacEnulty uses a scalpel.

The setting this time is 1915. America has not yet formally entered the war, but it’s hinted that American ships are secretly supplying the British, who are desperate for succor. New York City is full of clandestine agents for both sides, jockeying for position. Society writer Louisa Delafield is contemplating an offer of marriage. 

Her assistant Ellen Malloy is about to cross the sea to Ireland, where her father is on the edge of death. The ship she’s booked on is called the Lusitania. It’s the fate of that ship which will turn them both into double agents working for both the British and the Germans.

There’s no rah-rah cheering in this book. There are villains and victims on both sides (on all three sides, we’re privy through Ellen to the attempts of the Irish to get out from under the British yoke; they’re not afraid of skullduggery to achieve their aims.). It’s a layered, considered view that we’re presented with, which makes for a rich narrative, allowing MacEnulty to give voice to everyone from Jane Hull to Sir Roger Casement. And these momentous happenings will overturn Louisa and Ellen’s private lives profoundly. Some of the regular characters we’ve come to depend on may not survive; it’s war after all, even if it’s undeclared.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s excitement aplenty, treachery at every turn, and courage in great measure, as we’ve come to expect from Delafield and Malloy. I look forward eagerly to the next installment.

Secrets and Spies can be found here on Amazon.

Review: The Orchid Hour

 

The Orchid Hour reeks, but in the best possible way. It reeks with the smell oflasagna in Little Italy, the smell of cheap gin in a 1920s speakeasy, and most importantly and most delicately with the scent of orchids at midnight. It reeks of sleazy dodges, flimsy aliases, and multiple murders.

The Orchid Hour masquerades as a murder mystery, and it’s satisfying at that level, but underneath that layer, there’s another that’s a love story, and when all those layers are peeled away, it’s a coming-of-age story.

But our hero isn’t a child, not even a teen-ager. She's an Italian-American widow and mother who’s nearly thirty, in a time (not so long ago) when a woman was supposed to have no desires of her own, but only the family’s. When a girl had no girlhood, and a woman was defined only by her place in the family.

That’s where we find Zia de Luca at the opening of the novel, working at her day job at the library, her hair done up in a bun, wearing sensible shoes, going home to do the books for her father-in-law’s cheese shop and looking after her eight-year-old son.

But the first murder puts paid to that, and the second murder sets Zia on the path of vengeance, a path to New York’s nascent criminal under-world, and a path to self-discovery and self-transformation. To a time which will only last as long as the vagrant scent of the orchid, but a time which will change her life forever. 

Told not only through Zia’s eyes, but that of the NYPD officer who tries his best to help her and a gangster who sees murder as a simple career opportunity, this novel encompasses New York, 1923 in all its glory and grime, from City Hall to Little Italy, from Greenwich Village to the Great White Way. Thanks to Bilyeau’s masterful hand, we step out into the wilds of New York with Zia. Maybe we’ll find love. Maybe we’ll find ourselves, by being taken out of ourselves.

This is Nancy Bilyeau’s eighth book, her best by far, and she’d already set a high bar. What are you waiting for? Pick it up now.

The Orchid Hour can be found here at Amazon.

Review: The House of Silk

 

The House of Silk is a bright red herring. It’s misdirection. If you’ve read Anthony
Horowitz (and I’ve only dipped a toe in that deep lake), you know that misdirection is his specialty. What’s safe to tell you? It’s a Sherlock Holmes tale, pre-Reichenbach Falls, and it starts out with a simple little mystery that snowballs (thanks to a murder that wounds Holmes to the core) into a giant conspiracy which lands Holmes in the mulligatawny so badly that even God (for God, read: Mycroft Holmes) cannot help him. Watson and Lestrade can’t help him. It’s so bad that even his mortal enemy tries to help him. 

   He gets out of the frying pan (through a fine bit of misdirection—and goes right back into the fire. We rarely see Holmes take such foolhardy risks as he does in this tale, but we have seen it when his dander is truly up, and it often places him on the wrong side of the law. And we rarely see him place Watson in such peril, but Watson is always faithful, even in the teeth of a trap.

     It's not a perfect tale. Giant conspiracies have a way of living another day. And there’s a wholly unnecessary cameo by a favorite villain (I have a feeling it’s a setup for a sequel.) But when the giant herring is finally landed, there’s an extremely satisfying ending to the minnow mystery we began with. The hand is quicker than the eye. An indispensable addition to your Holmes collection. 

     (Did I give away a shred of the plot? No? Good.)

The House of Silk can be found here on Amazon.

Missed Opportunity?

 Let me get this out of the way: I hate to criticize, so let me just say after one episode that Netflix's The Irregulars is not my cup of tea. It's not your cup of tea. It's not a cup of tea at all. More like a cup of treacle, if I had ever tasted treacle, which I haven't, and I do not intend to test my simile.

But among its many apostasies from the Canon, one struck me. 

Girls. 

Girls in the Baker St. Irregulars.

And why not? Although Doyle only mentions boys, that doesn't actually preclude the possibility of girls in the group. He mainly refers to them as street arabs (a term which I suspect has fallen out of favor in our more enlightened times). And even if Holmes specifically required boys, who's to say that a young girl dressed as a boy wouldn't have escaped his notice? He wouldn't have strip-searched them. I think he left recruiting details up to Wiggins.

So why, pray tell, couldn't a motherless, nearly fatherless, ragamuffin girl of the streets been a member? 

A girl named Doolittle.

Eliza Doolittle.

Now, if this possibility had occurred to me when writing The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle, would I have incorporated it into the book? Very possibly. It would be hard to resist. How much or how little would it have changed the telling? I'd hate to speculate here, because even speculation would require innumerable spoilers. I'll let you rewrite in your minds, as you're reading or re-reading the novel. And let you mull over the road not taken.

Review: Revenge of the Killer Flamingos

 What is the dys-brain? Well, it's a melange of dyscalculia, ADHD, and a few other
disorders. Maisie Jo, the hero of the tale, has it (and so does the author). And while I'm sure this makes life difficult for both character and creator, it makes M.J. one of the most delightful characters I've ever come across (and Pooks one of the most delightful authors). 

     Imagine a murder mystery. Our detective is trained like a laser on the clues to the killer, right? No, our temp who thinks she's in an episode from Murder She Wrote, is trained on bright shiny objects. And the arrangements for the murder victim's funeral. The victim is by the way, killed with a--well, I guess I shouldn't say, but the title might tip you off. M.J. is supported by a killer cast of characters, including a stuffy lawyer who hires her, a chihuahua and a killer cat. 

     What else do you need to know? She solves the case, just in time to become--wait. Just go buy the book. Get in on the first adventure in a series.

Revenge of the Killer Flamingos can be found here on Amazon.

Review: Bombay Monsoon

 The ugly American is always an innocent. It’s innocence that makes him ugly.
Danny Jacobs is not only an innocent, he’s polite. He doesn’t ask personal questions. He takes everyone at their word, at the surface. It’s not that he has no experience; he’s a foreign correspondent for a young and rising news service. He’s been dangerous places. He even has a shrapnel scar on his butt from Vietnam. What he lacks is suspicion, and it’s a nearly fatal flaw in Bombay in 1975. 

     (The action takes place during the Emergency which Indira Ghandi imposed to keep power, a time when democracy and truth were suspended, a time in which a young new correspondent was discouraged from asking personal questions.)

     But his neighbors are friendly. Everyone he meets is friendly, including a wealthy upstairs neighbor who’s in “import-export” and his stunningly beautiful girlfriend whom Danny falls hard for--even some people he’d rather not be friends with, including even an uglier American than himself who keeps turning up in his path. But all these people DO ask personal questions. They all know everything there is to know about Danny, including some dangerous secrets he’s certain ARE secret.

   Bombay Monsoon is like skating on thin ice. No one is who they present themselves as. Even as the truth is slowly peeled away, the reader has to ask: have we finally reached the truth? It’s a tale of constant betrayal with more twists and turns than the hair-raising mountain roads Danny must navigate. And he’s never in the driver’s seat. 

    To tell you more would spoil the surprises. Head out to the bookstore now.

Bombay Monsoon can be found here on Amazon.

Review: The Fugitive Colors

 

Nancy Bilyeau used to live in Tudor England. Now she lives in Georgian England (with side trips to Gilded Age New York). I say this because her books are so meticulously researched that the reader feels he is reading an actual narrative from the past, and that’s a very good feeling indeed. We’re transported to 1760s London, the silk-design shop of Genevieve Sturbridge, the heroine of The Blue, a fearless, determined woman whose aspirations to be an artist got her entangled once in a world of spying and intrigue, shifting allegiances and yes, murder and will do so again in short order in The Fugitive Colors.

The difference is that this time Genevieve has a business and a family to protect, so that her room to maneuver against the various forces trying to entrap her in their webs is even more circumscribed, the stakes that much higher. And the cast of villains and artists which Bilyeau blends so well is that much richer. What are the fugitive colors? Let’s just say that the outisize ambitions of the premiere English artist of hos day, Sir Joshua Reynolds come into play, as well as a host of artists jostling for his spot. And did I mention the king of France? And the Bow Street Runners? And Casanova? It’s a heady brew that Bilyeau mixes up, served up in the finest of crystalline prose.

The Fugitive Colors can be found here on Amazon.

Where to start with Agatha?

 If you've always wanted to read the Queen of Crime, but didn't know where to start? Here's an excerpt from an excellent primer:

The shocker

If you’re looking for an ending that shook contemporary readers and is still capable of jolting the unsuspecting reader today, then settle down with The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The eponymous victim is a neighbour of Poirot’s and his sudden, violent demise brings the detective out of retirement.

                                               --Janice Hallett

For the entire article, check out The Guardian.

Review: Stone Cold Dead

 

Let's just say it right off: a pretty teen-age girl is a target. It's true today in the era of #metoo, and it was true in the early sixties, when the Ellie Stone mystery series is set. Maybe even truer when the girl has a bit of mischief in her. And nobody knows that better than Ellie herself, who, as she learns more and more about the missing girl, Darlene Hicks, sees herself in the child, realizing that there but for the grace of God she might have gone.

   But where has the girl gone? Has she run off with a boyfriend? Or has she come to some harm? Is she alive or dead? 

There are certainly enough suspects, from a lecherous teacher to an insanely jealous boyfriend, to her own stepfather. Elle, an investigative reporter has promised Darlene's mother to find out the truth, is plunged into danger from all sides, not to mention sabotage from her own co-workers.

     It's hard to believe that a series set in the sixties is a period piece, but Ziskin brings that era alive, with a heroine who's always a fish out of water as a "girl reporter". I can't remember how many books there are in this award-winning series (this is the 3rd) but I look forward to reading them all.

Stone Cold Dead can be found here on Amazon.

Review: The Last Tea Bowl Thief

 Here's a find. A twisty mystery set in Japan that moves back and forth among three time periods, all to answer one important question--whole stole a precious antique tea bowl? Who does it belong to? How and why has it changed hands over the years? 

Sound dull? It's anything but. The characters, from a love-sick blind potter, to a teen-age girl trying to survive in the wreckage of post-world war Tokyo, to a modern-day girl trying to save the life of her grandmother, are so fully realized, and the Japan of three different times is so surely captured, and the twist and turns so expertly hidden and sprung, that by the end, you'll be hooked on Jonelle Patrick. I know I am.

The Last Tea Bowl Thief can be found here on Amazon.

12 Masterworks

Remember these twelve paintings, all by French masters, all from a certain period. Most were hanging in the Louvre in 1890. Remember what happened to the Mona Lisa in the Louvre in 1911?

Stolen.

 

--The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter

Sherlock Holmes's task: to find the twelve priceless paintings, smash the forgery ring, and bring the criminals to justice. Oh--and find out who murdered an obscure painter by the name of van Gogh. 

The Blue

 

By the way, if you liked the post on the Indigo Revolt, you might be interested in finding out more about the history of  the color blue--which is a fascinating history, believe it or not. And a seminal part of that history is chronicled in my friend Nancy Bilyeau's brilliant novel 

                                               

The Blue, a tale of 18th century industrial espionage.

"With the heart and spirit of her Huguenot ancestors, Genevieve faces her challenges head on, but how much is she willing to suffer in pursuit and protection of the color blue?"

Sly Homage

 By the way, there are two vehicles which figure prominently in The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle: Morello's Moreau-Lepton, and the Widgeon Seven which Holmes commandeers late in the action. If you are a stickler for historical detail, you might try to get a peek at one of these autos online. Alas, you will find no pictures of either. They never existed. Well, they did exist. But only in literature.

"Ah! I must confess that in rolling over the boulevards that surrounded the old Norman city, in my swift thirty-five horse-power Moreau-Lepton, I experienced a deep feeling of pride, and the motor responded, sympathetically to my desires."

"Well, you may say that sacking, considered in the light of a bed, isn't everybody's money, and in saying so you would be perfectly correct. But after half an hour in the seat of a Widgeon Seven, even sacking begins to look pretty good to you."

Y'see, the Moreau Lepton was the car of famed burglar Arsene Lupin, while the Widgeon Seven was the two-seater so beloved of famed fat-head Bertie Wooster. The two cars existed only in the imaginations of authors Maurice LeBlanc and P.G. Wodehouse, whom I wanted to give a nod to, and so continue the proud tradition of fictional automobiles.