Tag: Alibi

Review: The Red Book of Primrose House by Marty Wingate + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
red book of primrose house by marty wingateFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: Cozy mystery
Series: Potting Shed Mystery, #2
Length: 274 pages
Publisher: Alibi
Date Released: November 4, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Pru Parke has her dream job: head gardener at an eighteenth-century manor house in Sussex. The landscape for Primrose House was laid out in 1806 by renowned designer Humphry Repton in one of his meticulously illustrated Red Books, and the new owners want Pru to restore the estate to its former glory—quickly, as they’re planning to showcase it in less than a year at a summer party.

But life gets in the way of the best laid plans: When not being happily distracted by the romantic attentions of the handsome Inspector Christopher Pearse, Pru is digging into the mystery of her own British roots. Still, she manages to make considerable progress on the vast grounds—until vandals wreak havoc on each of her projects. Then, to her horror, one of her workers is found murdered among the yews. The police have a suspect, but Pru is certain they’re wrong. Once again, Pru finds herself entangled in a thicket of evil intentions—and her, without a hatchet.

My Review:

garden plot by marty wingateIn this followup to the delightful The Garden Plot (reviewed here) American gardener Pru Parke is once again on the trail of a murderer while handling the restoration of a traditional English garden. While her garden labors end in success, just as in the first book, she also turns up a series of corpses, and sticks her amateur investigative nose into solving the crimes.

But this time, while she is still the bane of the local police department’s existence, her new lover is in the soup right along with her. In the first book, Pru falls in love with London CID Inspector Christopher Pearse. At Primrose House, out in the countryside, Christopher also finds himself on the outside of the case. As much as he wants to protect Pru, the local CID wants him to keep his nose out of their business. Especially since Inspector Tatt and Christopher have butted heads before.

Just as in The Garden Plot, this is really Pru’s case. The police, including Christopher, can either help or hinder her, but they can’t stop her from getting to the bottom of what becomes a series of crimes, including murder.

Portrait of Humphry Repton
Portrait of Humphry Repton

Interspersed with the increasing crime wave in the village is Pru’s restoration work on the garden at Primrose House. She’s following a plan laid down by master gardener Humphry Repton in the 18th century, when the house was new. (Repton really existed, and left his famous “Red Books” at the gardens he designed all over England)

Pru starts out her task believing that she’s found her dream job, only to have it turn into one nightmare after another. Her work is vandalized, one of her assistants is murdered, and two of the others are framed for his death. The local police are desperate to find the killer, and grasp at straws left by the unseen perpetrator to put others in the frame and waste their resources, while Pru tries to keep them on track, and Christopher tries to keep her from walking straight into danger.

But of course she does anyway, and only discovers “who done it” by nearly being done herself!.

Escape Rating B+: This story has three plot threads, and they all come together at the end for a very satisfying, if somewhat hair-raising, conclusion.

I say hair-raising because Pru does put herself in jeopardy on a fairly regular basis, and in the denouement of this story, her tendency to leap before she looks is nearly deadly. Again.

But about those three stories. One is the relatively straightforward tale of Pru’s task to restore or refurbish the Primrose House garden to a state that, while not following Repton’s Red Book religiously, will at least keep to the spirit of the famous gardener’s original plan. This effort is compromised both by the unfortunate tendency of Pru’s assistants to either get jailed or killed, as well as the vandal who continues to destroy her work in progress. Amid these serious difficulties, Pru is also bedeviled by her slightly flakey employer’s succesion of grandiose and absurd suggestions for the garden.

Pru is also in the middle of a crime wave (this seems normal for her).It’s not just that someone is vandalizing the garden (and it’s fairly obvious who) but one of her assistants is murdered, in the garden, and the local police are looking for a too easy solution. Pru’s search for the real killer turns up motives aplenty, as well as a nasty case of domestic violence that has been covered up. But of course Pru keeps digging.

The most interesting part of the story is Pru’s personal quest. She came to England to see if her late mother left any family behind. The all-too-real skeleton in her family closet turns around everything that Pru every believed about herself and her family. Coming to terms with her new reality is a major distraction.

And through it all, her relationship with Christopher keeps going two steps forward and one step back.The issues of a mature couple who already have established lives when they meet seriously complicates the future of their relationship. Navigating those occasionally muddy waters keeps this part of the story interesting.

I enjoyed The Red Book of Primrose House as much, or maybe more, for the way it developed and dealt with the relationships involved as for the murder mystery. I’m looking forward to seeing what trouble Pru gets into next.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

Marty is kindly giving away a $25 gift card to the ebook retailer of the winner’s choice plus a copy of The Garden Plot To enter, use the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Left Turn at Paradise by Thomas Shawver + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
left turn at paradise by thomas shawverFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: Mystery
Series: Antiquarian Book Mystery, #2
Length: 208 pages
Publisher: Alibi
Date Released: August 26, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble

Michael Bevan is barely scraping by with his used bookstore and rare book collection when he discovers a timeworn journal that may change everything. Dating back to 1768, the tattered diary appears to be a chronicle kept during the first of legendary seafarer Captain James Cook’s three epic voyages through the Pacific islands. If it’s as valuable as Mike thinks it is, its sale may just bring enough to keep his faltering used bookstore afloat for another year.

Then he meets a pair of London dealers with startling news: Adrian Hart and Penelope Wilkes claim to possess the journal of Cook’s second voyage. Is it possible a third diary exists? One which might detail Cook’s explosive final voyage—and his death at the hands of native Hawaiians? Together, all three would be the holy grail of Pacific exploration. But before Mike can act, the two journals are stolen.

Chasing them down will sweep Michael, Adrian, and Penelope across the globe—past a dead body or two—and into a very sinister slice of paradise. High in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, in a remote and secretive Maori compound, a secret rests in the hands in of a man daring enough to rewrite history . . . and desperate enough to kill.

My Review:

This was a really wild ride from antiquarian bookselling to a lost shangri-la in the wilds of New Zealand, by way of a very creative interpretation of Captain Cook’s diaries.

The action never lets up, but the roller-coaster takes some surprising twists and turns as it hunts down the lost diaries of one of Captain James Cook’s senior non-coms; journals that could shed a great deal of light on Cook as a person, and especially what went so very wrong on his last and fatal stop in Hawaii.

But the left turn that takes antiquarian bookseller Michael Bevan torwards this dubious paradise begins with a trip down memory lane.

dirty book murder by thomas shawverThis isn’t Bevan’s first adventure; The Dirty Book Murder (reviewed here) introduces Bevan and his book shop, Riverrun. He’s trying to make a living as a book dealer in Kansas, and it seems to be satisfying to the soul, but not necessarily filling to the pocketbook. It’s hard to make a living selling used books when people don’t visit bookstores the way they used to.

He’s going through boxes in the attic, looking for something to sell, when he runs across an unopened box of memories from his days in New England, before his wife Carol died and he destroyed his legal career.

In that box he finds the weatherbeaten journal of Samuel Gibson, one of the seamen on Captain James Cook’s first voyage. If it can be authenticated, it’s a treasure that will save his store. So off he goes to an antiquarian booksellers’ convention in San Francisco, where he finds that his journal is one of three, and then he loses it to a thief.

So much for saving his store.

It’s not until he’s gotten so desperate that he’s ready to pick his law career back up that the opportunity to retrieve his property, and maybe solve the mystery of Captain Cook’s fatal voyage, drops into his lap.

If he’s willing to drop everything and go to a remote and nearly inaccessible patch of the South Island of New Zealand, he might find everything he’s been searching for.

Or one of his untrustworthy partners might get him killed.

Escape Rating B-: The place that Bevan ends up reminds me of a cross between Lost Horizon and Lord of the Flies. The journals have come to a beautiful and remote place that has been taken over by the worst kind of thugs. The question he ends up having to solve is why. Not to mention how and most importantly, who benefits from all this mess?

The mystery is way more about Captain Cook than it is about the books. The journals serve as a catalyst for the action, but in the end it doesn’t matter who gets them; the real mystery is something else all together, and it’s much more deadly than any stain that might attach to Cook’s reputation if the contents are revealed.

Cook is long dead, but the man holding the last journal and the people who have been attracted to his vision of a return to the natural Maori lifestyle are alive, at least at the beginning.

The story seemed more like an adventure tale than a murder mystery, but there is plenty of action to keep the reader guessing about whodunnit. Also about who done what? There’s way more going on than meets the eye.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

Thomas is kindly giving away a $25 gift card to the ebook retailer of the winner’s choice! To enter, use the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Maxwell Street Blues by Marc Krulewitch + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
maxwell street blues by marc krulewitchFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: Mystery
Series: Jules Landau, #1
Length: 245 pages
Publisher: Alibi
Date Released: August 5, 2014
Purchasing Info: Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Chicago runs in Jules Landau’s veins. So does the blood of crooks. Now Jules is going legit as a private eye, stalking bail jumpers and cheating spouses—until he gets his first big case. Unfortunately, the client is his ex-con father, and the job is finding the killer of a man whom Jules loved like family. Why did someone put two bullets in the head of gentle bookkeeper Charles Snook? Jules is determined to find out, even if the search takes him to perilous places he never wanted to go.

Snooky, as he was affectionately known, had a knack for turning dirty dollars clean, with clients ranging from humble shop owners to sharp-dressed mobsters. As Jules retraces Snooky’s last days, he crosses paths with a way-too-eager detective, a gorgeous and perplexing tattoo artist, a silver-haired university administrator with a kinky side, and a crusading journalist. Exposing one dirty secret after another, the PI is on a dangerous learning curve. And, at the top of that curve, a killer readies to strike again.

My Review:

I lived in Chicago for quite a chunk of my adult life, so when I saw the description for Maxwell Street Blues, I just had to see if the town painted in the book matched my memories.

The Maxwell Street area, and all the streets and neighborhoods mentioned in the book really do exist. And while the names have been altered to protect the innocent, or possibly the guilty, there really is a university in and around what used to be the Maxwell Street Market area.

I’ve even been there. It’s the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and they even have a nearby residential development, just like in the book.

I’m sure it didn’t happen quite like the author describes. But then, we are talking about Chicago, so it may not surprise readers to learn that the true-life events bear a startling resemblance to the history outlined in the story.

Maxwell Street is where Chicago first sang the Blues. In this story, it’s also the location where “the city that works” is working out a construction deal mostly under the table between a large public university, a well-connected construction company and some more-or-less dirty cops.

Someone was bound to end up dead. After all, as Sean Connery’s character famously put it in the movie The Untouchables, “that’s the Chicago way.”

The body belongs to Charles Snook, a CPA with a lucrative sideline in laundering money for cops, aldermen, university chancellors and anyone else who had the right connections. Snooky was damn good at his job. Until his body was found, and then everyone assumed that he’d betrayed his clients’ trust or pissed off somebody important.

His childhood friend Jules Landau can’t let it alone. Jules is a private investigator barely getting by, but his family has generations-long connections in the underworld that seems to have been his friend’s downfall.

Jules can’t stop himself from searching for the truth about his friend’s death, in spite of having no experience whatsoever in investigating murders. Particularly a murder that everyone wants to bury–along with Snooky, and possibly Jules.

Everyone says that Snooky was a terrific accountant who kept his mouth shut and did a great job laundering everyone’s dirty money. The mobs didn’t want him dead, because dead accountants just aren’t any good.

Jules, like good detectives everywhere, follows the money. Money that leads from a crazy tattoo artist to the highest offices of a major university, scooping up dirty cops and aldermen along the way.

Nobody seems to have really wanted Snooky dead. But once he pokes his nose into the case, the line of people who want Jules dead grows by leaps and bounds.

Also by brass knuckles and baseball bats.

Escape Rating B: The story has a solid Chicago flavor, almost as tasty as a Chicago Hot Dog (and yes, that’s a thing, with celery salt). While I’m certain you don’t need to have lived in Chicago to enjoy this story, that I knew all the places gave it an extra layer of nostalgia for me. It feels right.

The mystery is one of dogged persistence. Although it starts out being about Snooky’s murder, it veers quickly into the murky waters of the deal to destroy the old Maxwell Street Market neighborhood. Every person with even the tiniest bit of decision-making power seems to have taken a slice of pork out of that barrel.

Even more damning, the cops investigating the murder have it in for each other, and both of them were on the take in multiple ways. No one involved with the Maxwell Street development/destruction seems to have been clean.

Jules is in way over his head. A head that keeps getting punched and beaten as he pursues the case. All of his involvements and attempts at a solution just get him another beating. Literally. And yet, he keeps on.

There’s a sense that he wants to right all the wrongs that he finds, until he is beaten down to the realization that one person can’t fix everything that’s wrong with the way business is done in Chicago.

The ending of the case is murkier than the Chicago River. But the conclusion of Jules’ story was surprisingly satisfying.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Forever Man by Pierre Ouellette + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blog tours> Book Giveaway> book reviews> Giveaways
forever man by pierre ouelletteFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: Science fiction; thriller
Length: 316 pages
Publisher: Alibi
Date Released: July 8, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Portland, Oregon, was once a beacon of promise and prosperity. Now it’s the epicenter of a world gone wrong, its streets overrun by victims and hustlers, drifters and gangsters. Lowly contract cop Lane Anslow struggles to keep afloat—and to watch out for his brilliant but bipolar brother, Johnny, a medical researcher. Lane soon discovers that Johnny is part of an experiment veiled in extraordinary secrecy. But he has no idea who’s behind it, how astronomical the stakes are, or how many lives might be destroyed to make it a reality.

Now Johnny’s gone missing. To find him, Lane follows a twisting trail into a billionaire’s hilltop urban fortress, a politician’s inner circle, a prison set in an aircraft graveyard, and a highly guarded community where people appear to be half their biological age. Hunted by dueling enemies, Lane meets a beautiful and enigmatic woman at the center of a vast web of political and criminal intrigue. And behind it all is a sinister, desperate race to claim the biggest scientific prize of all: eternal life.

My Review:

The Forever Man combines two well-used science fiction plots into a single story that never quite jelled for me. The individual parts were both potentially interesting, but the whole doesn’t do either one of them justice.

The story takes place in a near-future dystopia. A future so near that the protagonist still remembers the pre-rotten past, meaning now. It’s a future where the 1% has retreated into their gated communities as the rest of us barely get by. The social contract has completely broken down, everything is privatized, and both pensions and social security for the middle class are ideals that have long since died.

In the history of this future, a terrorist attack in the American Heartland killed off the last of the constitutional protections against very nearly everything. Think the Patriot Act on steroids and with clones, and you’ll get some idea of the background.

Part of this background is that police services have been privatized and have turned into contract services. Only the rich can afford to have crimes against them even investigated, and the cops who do the investigations are effectively mercenaries.

Our protagonist is a contract cop in a degraded version of Portland, Oregon who has just lost his contract because at 45, he’s just not as fast as he used to be. There are no jobs, and unemployment and homelessness are widespread.

Of course, as an ex-cop, Lane Anslow can contract himself out to one of the gangs that have taken over most of the city. And he might have to, just to keep himself off the streets.

But it all goes pear-shaped (even more than it is already) when his scientist brother disappears in the middle of a giant plot to allow one extremely old and incredibly rich man to live forever. At any cost.

Escape Rating C+: The near-future scenario is not merely frightening, but all too plausible. I would have loved to have seen a story that addressed the way that the country had gone to hell in a handcart, how it got there, and the way that one person (or a group) was trying to survive or make things better.

However, what we have is the conspiracy plot about a rich man who has bought a scientific method of immortality, and the ways he protects himself and pays off his enemies in order to achieve his goals. His ruthlessness and extreme inhumanity made Zed seem a bit of a caricature. The plots and cover-ups that he creates to maintain his secret could take place in our current world; the dystopia wasn’t needed.

Lane doesn’t start out looking for the immortality plot, he begins by hunting for his brilliant but feckless brother. He’s also a bit one-dimensional, the mostly straight cop who will do anything or investigate anywhere to save a doomed loved one. But I didn’t feel for him; he seemed like a device rather than a fully-fleshed out character.

The story explores lots of cool ideas, not just the dystopia, but also the way that society has and mostly hasn’t, coped with the problem. The political machinations were particularly fascinating. I just wish it had tied together a bit more.

~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

Pierre is giving away a copy of The Forever Man and a $25 giftcard to the ebook retailer of your choice. To enter, use the Rafflecopter below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Duke City Split by Max Austin + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
duke city split by steve brewerFormat read: ebook provided by NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: mystery, thriller, crime fiction
Length: 208 pages
Publisher: Alibi (Random House)
Date Released: April 8, 2014
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble

A cool, calm, and collected bank robber—with two kids at home—heads a fascinating cast of characters in Duke City Split, the first in a trilogy of white-knuckle thrillers from Max Austin.

Bud Knox isn’t your average bank robber. He’s happiest fixing a nice lunch for his wife on her lunch break or watching his two young daughters play soccer. He leaves the boldness and brawn to his partner, Mick Wyman. In the past fourteen years, they’ve hit nearly thirty banks all over the West—everywhere but “Duke City,” their hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

So when Mick calls him about the perfect job, Bud is less than convinced, because the target is on their own turf. But with the potential to haul in millions, Bud simply can’t say no. If they do this job right, Bud may never have to work again.

As it turns out, the heist is the easy part. Holding onto the money while evading everyone from the FBI to the Mafia to the low-life criminals who want a cut will be the hardest thing Bud Knox has ever done—and it might just cost him his life.

My Review:

One could quickly summarize Duke City Split as “Murphy was an optimist”. It’s not just that everything that can go wrong does go wrong in this caper thriller, but even everything that can’t go wrong or shouldn’t go wrong, absolutely does, and with deadly results.

Perhaps the moral of the story is that there is no such thing as “the perfect job”, of course, this is true in real life too, not just in fiction.

Duke City Split is about a pair of bank robbers. Mick and Bud try very hard not to be exciting bank robbers, for Bud especially, robbing banks is just his job. And they are very good at it; the pair have robbed 30 banks in 14 years.

It’s a good living, as long as you stay out of trouble. Or out of any more trouble than you’re already in. And that’s where they go wrong.

Mick and Bud have a system for robbing those banks. A system that starts with not robbing any bank in their home territory of Albuquerque. Then some kid comes to Mick with the idea to rob the bank where the armored car from the nearby Indian casino deposits its weekend take.

It’s supposed to be $3 Million worth of easy pickings. The bank is a little tiny suburban outpost in a strip mall, with only one usually sleepy guard. Bud ignores the little voice in his head that says if something is too good to be true, it usually is, and focuses on the big score. His share of that loot will finally allow him to retire from his life of crime; something he’s always promised his wife. They’ll be set for life, including college funds for both daughters.

Yes, we have a bank robber who is a devoted family guy. Bud’s the careful planner in the partnership. Mick is the badass. It works for them, up until now.

The kid with the idea wants in on the heist, and that’s where everything starts to go pear-shaped.

The FBI riles up the wrong pair of bank robbers, so suddenly there are two low-lifes cutting their way through the underside of Albuquerque to find the real thieves who have the real score stashed away. The bank guard decides he’d rather blackmail the kid instead of being a hero with the cops. And the casino’s silent partners decide to send someone from Chicago to make sure that no one ever thinks they can rip off the Mob, even in secret. Even if it is the bank’s fault.

Everyone is after Mick and Bud, wanting the money, a piece of their hides, or both.
All because they tried to go for one last big score. Now instead of counting money, they’re counting bodies–and theirs might be next.

Escape Rating B: Duke City Split reminds me a bit of Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder books. Although Mick and Bud have had a very good run, in Duke City Split things go nothing but wrong, and there’s frequently a sense of underlying gallows humor as the situation goes from bad, to worse, to cosmically worse every minute. If their luck had been half this bad earlier in their thieving careers, they’d be in the slammer for life.

Instead, everyone who might possibly lead to their shadowy real selves gets dead, and not necessarily by our two unlucky robbers. The coincidences that cause everyone to be after them, but not be aware of any of their fellow pursuers, make it seem like all their bad karma has come calling, all at the same time.

The two men make an interesting contrast, and not just because Mick is big and tall, and Bud is short and mousy. Mick is the adrenaline junkie who makes things happen, and Bud is the quiet family man who sits back and plans every detail. The irony is that Bud got into bank robbing so that he could be his own boss.

In the end, circumstances are the boss of both of them.

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

This tour includes a Rafflecopter giveaway for a Grand Prize of a $30 egiftcard to the ebook retailer of the winner’s choice, and a First Prize Mystery Prize Pack of mystery paperbacks from Random House: The Alpine Xanadu, Dying for Chocolate and A Bat in the Belfry!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.