FMAM MOSTLY MYSTERY REVIEWS
 |
THE FMAM MOSTLY MYSTERY REVIEW is the place to come
to find out what to read next. Want to know what readers are saying
(as opposed to critics) about the books you see around you? You’ve
come to the right place! And, if you appreciate a critical review
we’ll have those, too. Come in, sit down and see what’s
write with the world! (Or, right in the world of write!) New reviews this month from: . Dr. Cynthia Clark . Harriet Klausner . Bob Boan . Ginger Hanson . Margot Lasher . |
 |
|
|
||
May 2011
Top Suspense: 13 Classic Stories by 12 Masters of the Genre
Edited by Dave Zeltserman, Lee Goldberg, Max Allan Collins and Naomi Hirahara
CreateSpace (March 25, 2011)
ISBN-13: 978-1461032366
This is a delightful jaunt through crime, mystery, and suspense. I am a fan of O Henry and say that because many of the stories are O Henry(ish). Wonderful! Delightful. As a collection of short stories you can read the entire book in one sitting or if time is short a story at a time.
TOP SUSPENSE is created by great authors - Vicki Hendricks, Harry Shannon, Lee Goldberg, Paul Levine, Max Allan Collins, Bill Crider, Stephen Gallagher, Ed Gorman, Libby Fischer Hellmann, Naomi Hirahara, and Dave Zeltserman. The stories pan the gambit from double dealing to clever schemes.
In Max Allan Collins story “Unreasonable Doubt”, we have a 1946 Detective. A wonderful noir story.
Staying in the noir theme is THE BIG O by Vicki Hendricks. Candy is running and seeks refuge at a dilapidated trailer park. Is Candy a victim? Read this page turn to find out.
Another noir story is Bill Crider’s DEATH’S BROTHER where his lead character Cline is; well let’s just say reality is perception. Highly enjoyable.
Continuing in the noir tradition is Naomi Hirahara’s THE CHIRASHI COVENANT. Helen went through life well but slightly out of place. She really wanted to live by the shore. But “family” had other ideas. Then one day she met a real estate agent…..
POINSONED by Stephen Gallagher pens a charming story that has you questioning what you think is going on. Fun!
Lee Goldberg’s REMAINERED is just fun. A mystery writer, a book signing, a fan and murder. It all seems perfect but then what is? Like all of the authors featured in this anthology, Mr. Goldberg is a master.
FIRE IN THE SKY by Joel Goldman is a twisty turny tale of lust and betrayal. Delightful!
Ed Gorman’s THE BABY STORE has Kevin and his wife depressed over the death of their four year old. Kevin Jr. had been a designer baby. Fearful yet curious Kevin visits the BABY STORE again. But nothing goes as planned. And then…..
THE JADE ELEPHANT by Libby Fischer Hellman has a couple of thieves. One, Gus, discovers that one of their previous marks needs a kidney. He feels empathy and wants to return the Jade Elephant they stole for so she can pay for the kidney. But nothing is what it seems….
Paul Levine’s EL VALIENTER EN EL INFIERNO (THE BRAVE ONE IN HELL) is reminiscent of his novel ILLEGAL. Although they are two separate entities, both are excellent. In his short story, Victor, a boy of 13 attempts to flee Mexico with a pregnant lady. They are confronted by board patrol types and scamper. But who is hunted and who is the Good Samaritan?
A HANDFUL OF DUST by Harry Shannon has the reader questioning who is the hit man? Not who, but which one of the characters. Wonderful twist.
David Zeltserman’s THE CANARY involves a canary, an auction, a thief and jumping to conclusions. Delightful!
THE CHASE was written by the TOP SUSPENSE group. Lauren and her companion are being tailed. But is her companion going to kill her or protect her?
The anthology is a must read for crime/noir/mystery buffs. All of the stories are well crafted and just plain enjoyable to read. A master is a master and this anthology is full of masters! Great book!
On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 5!
Reviewed by Dr. Cynthia Lea Clark, Psy.D.
Watch Your Back
James Scott Bell
Publisher: Compendium Press
2011 E Book
WATCH YOUR BACK includes 3 short stories and a novella. In WATCH YOUR BACK (the novella) Cam seems to have everything – his job is going well, he is highly intelligent, and he is engaged to be married. But one day a new employee (Laine) walks into the office. Cam is smitten and at first just looks, after all he isn’t dead just engaged. But before long they begin to talk and before Cam realizes it she moves into his apartment building. Ann, his fiancée is everything a man would want. But her family, now that’s a different story as they pressure him to be more like them, church going, etc. the more he finds himself interested in Laine. Dinners, wine, etc. turns into talking about embezzling funds.
As Cam falls in love with Laine he hatches a plot. But nothing is as it seems. Love is blind and sometimes stupid too.
WATCH YOU BACK is a cleverly written novella that twists and turns as betrayal seems to be at every turn. Can you trust anyone? Is anyone who they say?
WATCH YOUR BACK is a highly enjoyable, suspense that engages one from the beginning. Want to escape your world for a brief period? Read WATCH YOUR BACK, you won’t be disappointed.
On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 5.
Reviewed by Dr. Cynthia Lea Clark, Psy.D.
The Cougar’s Tale
P.I. Barrington
Published in SUSPENSE MAGAZINE, April 2011, Vol. 021.
THE COUGAR’S TALE is written in the first person. The storyteller is staying at her sisters in a beautiful Oceanside town. One day after a walk she goes to a store to look at flowers. They bring her such joy. Someone interrupts her thoughts, a male much younger than she. And before long they forge a relationship. Both have had issues requiring counseling. The storyteller has been in an institution. The new beau has had some serious depression. It seems that their meeting is fate. But what is reality? Who can be trusted?
THE COUGAR’S TALE is a romp with a cougar and her prey. But who is the prey? COUGAR’S TALE is a well written tale that takes us with the author on her journey. We can see the beauty of the daffodils; feel the air in the town as P.I. Barrington paints pictures with her words. Superb.
On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 5!
Reviewed by Dr. Cynthia Lea Clark, Psy.D.
Becoming NADIA: Book One in The NADIA Project
Cyrus Keith
April 2011, 299 pages, $5.95 E-Book
MuseitUp Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-926931-54-8
Nadia Velasquez awakens from a lengthy coma without a clue as to who she is. While rehabbing she is informed that she was the only survivor of a deadly blast – one that killed many people including the President of Nigeria. Nadia has no memory of any of it. But she is haunted by a dream that she can’t quite grasp – one with a recurring name – Philip. There is no Philip in Nadia’s present or her past. So, who is this Philip and why in times of stress and pain does she call out his name?
Nadia, in her pre-coma life had been a TV reporter, and now her station wants her back. Insecure, Nadia returns to the world of news. But again she is haunted by odd images – a particular type of coffee that is bought a coffee shop in New York City. When the news room sends her and her camera out of the country on a story she ditches the camera man before boarding so she can check out that coffee shop where she bumps into a man. Without thinking, she says, “Sorry Jake.” Only two people every called Jon Daniels Jake, and they are gone. Who is this beauty who seems confused. Before than can stroll down a mutual lane, people try to kill Nadia – people she knows from the station – news people! Why would news people want her dead? Jon works for the FBI . He knows something is off but not what as they join forces to escape death.
Friends aren’t friends. Who can Nadia trust? What are these fleeting moments that keep flashing in her memory? Why does someone want Nadia dead?
THE NADIA REPORT is an exciting world that mixes technology with murder. There are twists and turns and bumps that make the story thrilling and exhilarating. I could feel the danger as Nadia fights for her life or when she fought to understand who she is. Wonderful! A fun, easy read. Cyrus Keith keeps you on your toes as your explore the world of what might be possible one day.
On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 5.
Reviewed by Dr. Cynthia Lea Clark, Psy.D.
New York Dead
Stuart Woods
Harper, 400 pages
ISBN-13: 9780061711862
Review by Bob Boan
It's almost three o'clock in the morning and NYPD detective Stone Barrington is walking home from Elaine's, a favorite restaurant and hangout. As he walks in an effort to prepare his wounded knee for an upcoming physical, he witnesses a life-altering event—the apparent death of a celebrity. Then she disappears while being transported by ambulance to a hospital. He soon finds himself in charge of the investigation into that baffling event. Stone is confronted by two daunting questions. Dead or alive? If dead, was it murder or suicide? If alive, was there a kidnapping? Stone, faced with an ethical dilemma, balks at the direction the department wishes to take the investigation. He is forced into medical retirement from NYPD. He falls back onto his law degree and passes the bar exam. While he is busy trying to stay away from the case as NYPD had instructed, the case is busy pulling him back to it. The woman he thinks of in terms of his future wife abruptly and mysteriously marries a famous TV personality. He ultimately solves the puzzle surrounding the vanishing celebrity. He is able to discover the final missing piece only because his former partner, Dino Bacchetti, rescues him from certain death and subsequent embalming.
In New York Dead, Stuart Woods masterfully weaves his story which is laden with twists and turns that successfully conceal the identity of the perpetrators until the last moment. Woods maintains a lively pace by avoiding dead spots in the tale. He uses an array of characters, most of who fall outside the mainstream, to entertain the reader. This book is lighthearted enough to be enjoyed by all readers who are tolerant of sexual content. It is especially recommended to those who like a good mystery. EXCELLENT—that’s the appropriate description of Stuart Woods’ New York Dead.
Live to Tell
Wendy Corsi Staub
Avon Books, 400 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-189506-7
Wendy Corsi Staub has over seventy novels under her belt in a wide variety of genres. Although I’ve read books reviews of her work, Live to Tell is the first Staub book I’ve read. It’s also the first book of a trilogy with Scared to Death, published in December 2010, and Hell to Pay coming in the fall of 2011.
Primarily set in a suburban town north of New York City, the suspense novel centers around a stuffed toy left at the Grand Central Lost and Found whose retrieval leads to death and mayhem.
Lauren Walsh, one of the main characters, is reeling from her husband’s decision to dump her for another woman. Newly single, Lauren spends most of the book trying to cope with the divorce and protect her three children from the messy fallout. In New York City, Congressman Garvey Quinn has become quite popular and hopes to make a bid for the White House. His goal is hampered by a dark secret that would ruin all his plans if it surfaced. A third family forms the last leg of the story’s triangle. Elsa and Brett Cavalon’s son was kidnapped from their backyard fourteen years ago.
The book opens with a prologue that involves someone being chased, but the character isn’t identified. The unknown character steals a kid’s stuffed dog, shoves a memory stick in the dog and turns the toy into the Grand Central Lost and Found in hopes of keeping it safe until it can be retrieved.
When Lauren’s daughter loses her pink rabbit during a trip to New York City, possibly at Grand Central, Lauren shames her ex into retrieving the beloved stuffed toy. Problems arise when the ex picks out the wrong stuffed animal and brings it home. It’s the stuffed dog from the chase. Since a finder is required to fill out forms that include photo identification, the villain obtains this info and uses it to track the toy to the ex-husband and then Lauren and the children.
By now the reader knows the memory stick contains incriminating evidence against Congressman Quinn and he will have others go to any lengths to retrieve it. Murder abounds as Quinn’s minions try to retrieve the stuffed animal.
Staub has an engaging writing style that I enjoyed reading, but I had a problem with the prologue because it’s difficult for a reader to become emotional invested with an unidentified character. The pros and cons of prologues have often been discussed in writers’ workshops with some purists believing prologues mean the writer didn’t start the story in the correct place. I believe prologues have their place in storytelling, but the prologue in Live to Tell lacked the drama inherent in a scene when the reader has an emotional investment in the character. While the memory stick and stuffed animal play a crucial role in the story, there are other ways to reveal this information.
The switch from desperate race to dull suburbia in the opening chapters slowed the pace. The reader now contends with Lauren who is dealing with divorce. She tends to mope because her husband’s defection has thrown her world out of kilter, but moping is an accepted reaction. It’s easy to identify with Lauren as she tries to deal with the roller coaster emotions of a jilted mom left to cope with three kids.
Although I liked how Lauren and her children proved to be quick-witted in a frightening situation at the end of the book, the ending wasn’t quite as satisfying as it could have been. It’s easy to accept Congressman Garvey will do anything to protect his family and career, but I didn’t find the motivation of the villain who committed the heinous crimes as compelling.
As I said, Staub has an engaging writing style with some well drawn characters. If you enjoy a well-plotted suspense about families in jeopardy, then you’ll enjoy Live to Tell.
Worst Fears Realized
Stuart Woods
Harper, 432 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-171190-9
It’s been years since I read a Stuart Woods novel, but I’ve always liked his popular character Stone Barrington which made Worst Fears Realized an easy choice to review. In this book,retired Manhattan cop-turned-investigator/lawyer Stone Barrington and his ex-partner, Dino Bacchetti are swept into a killer’s murder spree. As the brutal (slashed throats) murders pile up, the victims share one thing in common-they’re all connected to Barrington and Dino. The title says it all. One of a cop’s worst fears has been realized: there’s a con loose with a grudge who is bent on vengeance.
To keep Barrington on his toes, there’s a district attorney with his own agenda who thinks Barrington looks good for the first murder. While untangling the mystery of which con from his past wants revenge. the handsome Barrington uses his looks to inveigle information from various women, buy himself a country home and have a brief reunion with an old love.
I really liked the plot of Worst Fears Realized. The person Barrington and Bacchetti suspect is still in prison and figuring out how he could have orchestrated the murders propels the story forward at a fast pace. It isn’t until the plot smacks into the ending that it fizzles. Although the suspect has a solid motivation to seek revenge, his instrument of revenge doesn’t. And the capture scene is a letdown after all the drama of the events leading up to it.
Perhaps, Woods is bowing to Barrington’s age because this ending was easy for an old guy to handle. Yep, Barrington is aging. This became apparent when he went into a spiel about his background that reveals his parents were young adults during the Great Depression. Anyway you figure it, someone who was an adult during the 1930s has got to be about 100 years old which means his or her children are getting on in years.
Barrington isn’t the first series writer to face this problem. Robert Parker ran into it with Spenser, who fought in the Korean War. I’m sure Parker had no idea when he wrote those early books that they would span half a century and his hero would end up being about 70 years old and still fighting the bad guys. But he did stop alluding to Spenser’s Korean War background. Woods might want to do the same.
SinceWoods writes male fantasy I figure his heros aren’t allowed to show emotion because Barrinigton didn’t seem overly affected by the brutal murders. I realize cops can become hardened by the reality of their jobs, but one of the victims was his secretary. Her throat was cut because he knew her. Other than being inconvenienced by her death, he didn’t seem to be deeply bothered. A smidgen of grief would have given Barrington a little depth character wise.
Those thoughts aside, if you’re looking for a good story in the action mystery genre, you can alway count on Stuart Woods. His books offer fast-paced entertainment lightened with humor and clever dialog and seasoned with a mystery to be unraveled.
People of Darkness
Tony Hillerman
Harper, 336 pages
ISBN-13: 9780061808395
People of Darkness is one of Tony Hillerman’s best novels, in a collection of mysteries that is outstanding. Hillerman’s works are set in the southwestern desert, where Navaho Tribal Police intersect with the FBI and other police departments, and jurisdictional complications abound. Hillerman’s landscape, seen through the eyes of Navaho Tribal Policeman Jim Chee, is so beautiful and powerful, that the boundaries set by man seem petty and absurd.
Jim Chee is summoned to the house of a powerful white couple to find a box that has been stolen. The box supposedly contains only mementos of no value, but there is so much mystery surrounding its disappearance that Chee knows it is connected to some secret crime. The name ‘People of Darkness’ refers to a religion that uses peyote as part of their ritual, and many years ago the chief of that religion had a vision that there would be trouble at an oil well. He warned his crew not to go to work that day, and there was an explosion killing all of the men who were at the well, including the brother of a sheriff who suspects that it was not an accident, but murder. And People of Darkness members are dying, supposedly of cancer, but helped along by an outside hit man. Chee has seen the face of the hit man, and is himself a target.
Woven into the plot are Hillerman’s observations, through Chee’s eyes, of the complex relations between Navaho and White, between the rich and their Indian servants, between man and woman. In this novel, Chee meets a white school teacher, Mary, and they begin a long relationship. Chee has been accepted by the FBI, and has to choose between entering the white world as an agent, or staying with the Navaho people as a policeman and also as a shaman, a singer of healing rituals. He is torn between worlds.
As Chee talks to all the people involved, ranging from white men of great power to old Navaho women who live in the traditional way of their people, we see the extremes of these two worlds. And Chee is always there, interpreting for us the underlying meanings, sifting the truth from the lies, or the meaning of the silences. This is a wonderful crime novel.
The Bricklayer
Noah Boyd
Harper, 416 pages
ISBN-13: 9780061827020
The title of this first crime novel by Noah Boyd tells a great deal, and it’s all good. The novel centers around the character of Steve Vail, a former FBI agent who allows himself to be fired in order to ensure that a cop killer does not go unpunished. When another FBI agent, Kate Bannon, comes to ask his help with a series of killings involving the FBI, Vail is laying bricks on a roof in Chicago. Vail is the kind of hero loved by readers, including me: strongly independent, hating incompetent authority, extremely skilled and down-to-earth. His thoughts and actions carry the novel.
Noah Boyd is a former FBI agent himself, and, like a good police procedural, the details about the way the FBI works are interesting and have the sense of authenticity. The FBI is itself under siege. In addition to three civilians dead, an FBI agent has been murdered and another is missing. The mastermind behind the attacks keeps changing the situation, and nothing is as it seems to be. All of the twists of plot have to be figured out by Vail, showing his skill, courage, and a nice sense of humor.
Three Seconds
Anders Roslund & Borge Hellstrom
Silver Oak, 489 pages
ISBN-13: 9781402785924
This Swedish crime novel reads like a film, with extremely fast cuts building tension and creating a sense of disorientation in the viewer. The tension builds and builds; there is no let-down until the last section of the novel, when a sudden shift in plot creates a slightly slower pace.
A former criminal, now an undercover agent who has infiltrated an international drug cartel, is going to purposely get himself arrested and sent to jail in order to prevent the cartel from taking over the drug distribution within the prison system. The agent, Piet Hoffman, code name Paula, is married with two young children whom he genuinely loves. This is an example of the kind of tension in this novel: Piet/Paula has only 38 hours to prepare the drugs he is going to smuggle into the prison and to set up his own complicated survival mechanisms in case he is betrayed by one of the very high ranking government officials who of course will deny any knowledge of his existence. His wife is at work and he is supposed to be taking care of his children who have been sent home from day care because they have a fever – they are sick. Remember, he loves these children; he is not an irresponsible or indifferent father. Yet he brings them first to his office where he is packing drugs into unopened tulips, and later to a meeting with his handler, because he just doesn’t have enough time.
The details of drug smuggling and distribution within the prisons are startlingly authentic. Like their hero, one of the authors, Borge Hellstrom, is a former criminal. The other author, Anders Roslund, is a journalist, and the writing is excellent. The novel will inevitably be compared to Stieg Larsson’s Trilogy, and it is better. There was one detail of the plot that bothered me: when he really needs him, Piet/Paula cannot reach his handler, who is in the United States for anti-terrorist training, but that does not ring true: the handler had a cell phone and voice mail.
Everything in this novel is connected to time: life and death measured in seconds, the constant shifting of focus, so that we have to pay attention every moment, and we’re thrown off balance when we don’t. There is none of the relaxed banter between the good guys and the bad guys that you find in many of the best American crime novels. Even toward the end of Three Seconds, when the focus shifts to an aging policeman who stubbornly keeps digging until he finds out what really happened, the tension remains. Three Seconds is an outstanding crime novel which I’m sure will be a film very soon.
All rights reserved.
Contact Lida: publisher@fmam.biz
Website contact: webmaster @ fmam.biz