Publisher: Pegasus Crime

#AudioBookReview: Glory Be by Danielle Arceneaux

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: Glory Be by Danielle ArceneauxGlory Be (Glory Broussard Mystery, #1) by Danielle Arceneaux
Narrator: Bahni Turpin
Format: audiobook
Source: supplied by the publisher via Spotify
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, mystery
Series: Glory Broussard Mystery #1
Pages: 272
Length: 8 hours and 47 minutes
Published by Pegasus Crime, Spotify on October 3, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The first in a vivid and charming crime series set in the Louisiana bayou, introducing the hilariously uncensored amateur sleuth Glory Broussard. Perfect for fans of Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club.
It’s a hot and sticky Sunday in Lafayette, Louisiana, and Glory has settled into her usual after-church routine, meeting gamblers at the local coffee shop, where she works as a small-time bookie. Sitting at her corner table, Glory hears that her best friend—a nun beloved by the community—has been found dead in her apartment.
When police declare the mysterious death a suicide, Glory is convinced that there must be more to the story. With her reluctant daughter—who has troubles of her own—in tow, Glory launches a shadow investigation into Lafayette’s oil tycoons, church gossips, a rumored voodoo priestess, nosey neighbors, and longtime ne'er-do wells.
As a Black woman of a certain age who grew up in a segregated Louisiana, Glory is used to being minimized and overlooked. But she’s determined to make her presence known as the case leads her deep into a web of intrigue she never realized Lafayette could harbor.
Danielle Arcenaux’s riveting debut brings forth an unforgettable character that will charm and delight crime fans everywhere and leave them hungry for her next adventure.

My Review:

Like most amateur detectives, Glory Broussard begins her first investigation because it’s personal. Her best friend is dead, and the police have ruled that death a suicide. A decision that Glory refuses to believe.

Glory had known Amity Gay since they were little girls in pinafores, and for all the 60-some-odd years of their lives that followed. Glory knew Amita Gay as well as she knew herself, and her friend was looking forward to life, not running away from it.

And through bitter experience, Glory is all too aware that the police, in Louisiana and elsewhere but perhaps especially in Louisiana, discount and disregard the deaths of black people in general and black women in particular.

Because that’s the way it always has been, and in spite of changes on the surface, that’s the way it still is.

So Glory, amateur detective, professional busybody and successful bookmaker (yes, I mean gambling and not bookkeeping) does a bit of surreptitious reconnaissance in her late friend’s apartment and discovers a whole lot of paperwork about a chemical plant that the big company in Lafayette wants to construct right next to a poor black town so they can make even more money and spread more cancer – not necessarily in that order to Glory’s cynical mind.

While the police might have left the paperwork behind because it wasn’t an actual part of the crime scene, Glory knows they didn’t search at all because she found a box of fentanyl-laced lollipops in the back of Amity Gay’s closet. Something that would definitely have been found and confiscated in even a cursory search.

Which means that obviously no search was done, that the police are rushing to judgment because its easier for them – and possibly for the big company with those chemical plant plans.

Glory will just have to nose her way around Amity Gay’s old friends, Glory’s own new enemies and figure out which of the possible parties and motives is responsible for the death of her best friend.

The last thing Glory needs to add to her already overwhelming to-do list is figuring out what her daughter, a successful New York City attorney, is doing back in Lafayette, minding Glory’s business and cleaning up her house. Or, for that matter, figuring out what has the city all fired-up to condemn her house.

Or even, heaven forbid, whether or not her dearest friend, a professed Catholic nun, had been doing something unholy. Again.

Escape Rating B: Glory Broussard does not hold back. Ever. Not within the confines of her own head as she tells this story, and not out loud, either. She’s certainly an acquired taste for her friends and neighbors, and quite possibly for the reader as well.

Glory does not suffer fools, neither does she let said fool out of her sight without telling them that she thinks they are one. Sometimes in great detail. In other words, Glory is a lot, and not exactly universally beloved – or even respected.

To the point where it’s easy to understand why her daughter, successful New York City attorney Delphine, wishes she could get her mother to just shut up now and again, especially when faced with city officials who want to condemn Glory’s house. Not that Glory doesn’t get the best of that situation – along with a whole lot else – in the end.

But part of Glory’s charm, and certainly part of the charm of the story as a whole, is Glory’s bone-deep authenticity. It’s certainly not Glory’s honesty, because she doesn’t seem to have an honest bone in her body – not even in reference to herself and the depression she has sunk into over the years.

What does ring true, particularly in audio, is the relationship between Glory and Delphine, that ‘roses and thorns’ kind of love that can exist between mothers and their adult daughters. Part of both the compulsion to finish this mystery and the difficulty of doing so for this reader is that I heard the echo of every single argument I had with my own mother in the exchanges between Glory and Delphine. That roses and thorns observation was heartbreaking because it felt so very true.

But the story, the mystery, and the eventual, hard-won mutual respect that arises between mother and daughter, follows Glory’s stubborn pig-headedness from something that everyone told her should be left well enough alone to a conclusion she almost wishes she’d never uncovered.

She’s left with the realization that too many of the people she believed in have feet of clay up to the knees. And to console herself, in the end, that justice has been done, along with the new lease on life that becoming an amateur detective has brought her.

Readers, on the other hand, can console themselves with the fact that Glory will be back on the case in another mystery this coming fall!

TLC

TLC tour schedule:

Thursday, February 15th: @booksandthemes

Friday, February 16th: @naesreadingnook

Friday, February 16th: @booksandcoffeemx

Saturday, February 17th: @bookitqueen

Sunday, February 18th: @laura_cover_stories

Monday, February 19th: @idreamofthelibrary

Tuesday, February 20th: @books_and_biewers

Wednesday, February 21st: @simplyreadwithv

Thursday, February 22nd: @booksnbikram

Friday, February 23rd: Reading Reality and @reading_reality

Saturday, February 24th: @spaceonthebookcase

Saturday, February 24th: @thereadingchemist

Sunday, February 25th: @kristis_literary_corner

Monday, February 26th: @karen_runwrightreads

Monday, February 26th: @sometimesrobinreads on TikTok

Tuesday, February 27th: @paperbacksandsketchbooks

Wednesday, February 28th: @readthisandsteep

Thursday, February 29th: @djreadsbooks

Review: A Fine Madness by Alan Judd

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews
Review: A Fine Madness by Alan JuddA Fine Madness by Alan Judd
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction
Pages: 256
Published by Pegasus Crime on February 1, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A captivating espionage novel that explores the life of theatrical genius—and spy—Christopher Marlowe, whose violent death remains one of the most fascinating mysteries of the Elizabethan Age.
In Elizabethan England, the queen’s chief spymaster, Francis Walsingham, and his team of agents must maintain the highest levels of vigilance to ward off Catholic plots and an ever-present threat of invasion from Spain.
One agent in particular—a young Cambridge undergraduate of humble origins, controversial beliefs, and literary genius who goes by the name of Kit Marlowe—is relentless in his pursuit of intelligence for the Crown. When he is killed outside an inn in Deptford, his mysterious death becomes the subject of rumor and suspicion that are never satisfactorily resolved.
Years later, when Thomas Phelippes, a former colleague of Marlowe’s, finds himself imprisoned in the Tower of London, there is one thing that might give him his freedom back. He must give the king every detail he is able to recall about his murdered friend’s life—and death. But why is King James so fascinated about Kit Marlowe—and does Phelippes know enough to secure his own redemption?

My Review:

To paraphrase Ben Kenobi, “this is not the book you are looking for”, at least not if you picked it up based on the blurb above. As I did.

The blurb isn’t even correct in its facts. Christopher Marlowe didn’t die “outside” an inn in Deptford. He died inside the inn. While that may be the end of Marlowe’s story, it’s only the beginning of just how different this book is from its blurb and my expectations.

I picked this up because it sounded like a different perspective on Christopher Marlowe’s meteoric rise, catastrophic fall – especially that fall – and just how he got from being a scholarship student at Cambridge to spying for England’s most famous historical spymaster, Sir Frances Walsingham.

In other words, I was hoping for something that would be a slightly different take on the marvelous version of Marlowe’s story told in last year’s terrific and utterly absorbing A Tip for the Hangman.

Color me extremely disappointed. If you’re looking for an excellent historical novel about Marlowe that deals with his spycraft and the possible reasons for his death, read A Tip for the Hangman by Allison Epstein. You will not be disappointed.

And in spite of Hangman being over 100 pages longer than this book, it’s a shorter and much more captivating read. (I’ve also heard that if you’re looking for a true crime exploration of Marlowe’s death, The Reckoning by Charles Nicholl is worth reading. I can’t confirm or deny as I have not read it – and reading mileage as listed in Goodreads reviews varies considerably.)

For a life that burned as bright as Marlowe’s did, this account of it is remarkably dry, dull, stiff and slow. It’s a slog to get through and it shouldn’t be considering its source material. This is probably related to its framing device, that of one of Marlowe’s former colleagues and sort-of friends, long after Marlowe’s death, is relating what he remembers about the man to a court official inquiring on behalf of the about-to-be-late king James I (of England) and VI (of Scotland).

Thomas Phelippes is a historical figure who did work as a cryptographer for Walsingham, did participate in some of the events that Marlowe did and did spend much of his life after Walsingham’s death in and out of jail for various offenses. Phelippes was much better at managing the kingdom’s business than he was his own.

But we are all the heroes of our own stories, and that’s as true with this fictional version of Phelippes as anyone else. The fictional version seems to have known Marlowe better than is supported in the historical record, but it is still a knowing at more than one remove. Marlowe drops in and out of the man’s life, often shocking him with his outrageous views of pretty much everything, but never revealing much of his own core.

Also the obsequiousness of Phelippes address and speech seriously grates on 21st century eyes and ears. He’s frequently dull, often boring, and always more verbose than required.

The upshot of which is that A Fine Madness is way more about the way that Marlowe made Phelippes question his own faith and beliefs than it is about Marlowe or what he believed – or did.

To make a long story short – but not as long a story as Thomas Phelippes’ story feels like it is, this is not the book you are looking for if you’re looking for a book that is anything like the blurb suggests this is. If you want THAT book, A Tip for the Hangman is a much, much better bet.

Escape Rating D+: Using the perspective of a character who neither went to playhouses nor read poetry to tell the story of someone who had a secret life as a spy but was known and celebrated for his plays and his poetry (and still is!) turns out to be a peculiar and ultimately unsuccessful choice of narrator for a story that should have – and has in other hands – sparkled and stung in equal measure.

Review: In League with Sherlock Holmes edited by Leslie S. Klinger and Laurie R. King

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
Review: In League with Sherlock Holmes edited by Leslie S. Klinger and Laurie R. KingIn League with Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Sherlock Holmes Canon by Laurie R. King, Leslie S. Klinger
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical mystery, mystery
Series: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon #5
Pages: 368
Published by Pegasus Crime on December 1, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The latest entry in Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger’s popular Sherlock Holmes-inspired mystery series, featuring fifteen talented authors and a multitude of new cases for Arthur Conan Doyle’s most acclaimed detective.
Sherlock Holmes has not only captivated readers for more than a century and a quarter, he has fascinated writers as well. Almost immediately, the detective’s genius, mastery, and heroism became the standard by which other creators measured their creations, and the friendship between Holmes and Dr. Watson served as a brilliant model for those who followed Doyle. Not only did the Holmes tales influence the mystery genre but also tales of science-fiction, adventure, and the supernatural. It is little wonder, then, that when the renowned Sherlockians Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger invited their writer-friends and colleagues to be inspired by the Holmes canon, a cornucopia of stories sprang forth, with more than sixty of the greatest modern writers participating in four acclaimed anthologies.
Now, King and Klinger have invited another fifteen masters to become In League with Sherlock Holmes. The contributors to the pair’s next volume, due out in December 2020, include award-winning authors of horror, thrillers, mysteries, westerns, and science-fiction, all bound together in admiration and affection for the original stories. Past tales have spanned the Victorian era, World War I, World War II, the post-war era, and contemporary America and England. They have featured familiar figures from literature and history, children, master sleuths, official police, unassuming amateurs, unlikely protagonists, even ghosts and robots. Some were new tales about Holmes and Watson; others were about people from Holmes’s world or admirers of Holmes and his methods. The resulting stories are funny, haunting, thrilling, and surprising. All are unforgettable. The new collection promises more of the same!

My Review:

Because I’m a sucker for a good Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and in the right mood even for a bad one, I’ve eagerly anticipated each of these collections as they’ve appeared and I’ve read every single one of them, beginning with the very first, A Study in Sherlock back in 2011. This first entry in the series includes what is still my favorite story across the entire five volumes, The Case of Death and Honey by Neil Gaiman

It’s hard to believe that this current volume is the fifth in the series, after A Study in Sherlock, In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, Echoes of Sherlock Holmes and For the Sake of the Game.

Like most such collections, this one is just a bit uneven. The stories that work, really, really work. The ones that don’t fall flatter than the proverbial pancake.

I think I’ve read every single one of these collections as they have come out, and my favorite is still the very first one, A Study in Sherlock, although I have certainly discovered favorite stories in many of the later volumes.

I have to say that this entry in the series did not live up to its predecessors. As the series has gone on, the stories have ranged further and further from their original inspiration, in ways that, at least in this particular volume, feel like they owe more to cleverness than detection.

To put it another way, I like my Sherlock to more or less be a kind of Sherlock. It’s not necessary that the stories feel like the original canon – unless that’s done well it can be terribly off-putting. But when I hear the name Sherlock Holmes I expect a detective story of some kind, and too many of the stories in this entry in the series seemed to be showing off how ‘twee’ they could be rather than how well they could solve a case.

But I still have two favorites even in this somewhat motley crew.

James W. Ziskin’s The Twenty-Five-Year Engagement is a classic pastiche, featuring the original Holmes and Watson solving a case that was so old and so cold no one even knew it was a case. It’s not the first time, that the unexpected return of a person long-though deceased has provided new clues to an old murder for the Great Detective, and this one shows the deft hand of both the investigator and the writer in constructing – and solving – such a conundrum.

The Strange Juju Affair at the Gacy Mansion by Kwei Quartey was a classic of a completely different kind. It is the kind of Holmesian homage where, rather than Holmes himself serving as the detective, the investigator is someone who uses Holmes’ methods and applies them with Holmes’ genius at a time and place that Holmes never visited, in this particular case Kasoa, Ghana at an unspecified time period that feels like it is much later in the 20th century – if not the 21st – than Holmes would have lived to see. The detective is a retired police superintendent who never visits the crime scene, but with a few questions to his younger – and rather desperate – colleague still manages to solve a classic locked-room mystery.

Escape Rating B-: Too much of this entry in this long-running series went too far afield for this reader. But those two stories were right on the mark as lovely but totally different Holmes pastiches. Your reading mileage will, of course, vary. That is the point of these collections, that there is something for every reader looking for a taste, in this case a taste of Sherlock Holmes.