Tag: mystery

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand? Christmas 2011

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | Virtual Nightstand

It’s Christmas. We just demolished a turkey boob. There’s just the two of us humans plus the cats, so we only get a turkey breast. A whole turkey would be too much. Somewhere along the way, I started calling it a turkey boob, and the name stuck. The poor turkey is way past being offended.

The cats definitely wanted in on the act. The gravy packet we took out of the turkey? We had to hide it in the microwave until it was time to cook it. Erasmus wanted that gravy packet so bad…

But we’re here to talk about books, not turkeys. Well, so far I haven’t reviewed any turkeys. There’s always next year.

I’m stalling. I just realized that. I looked at last week’s list and next week’s list and the boxes in my office and tried not to scream. We moved last weekend. So I’m a little behind. Just an itty-bitty bit. Moving right along. (Sounds like the Muppets, doesn’t it?)

Next week’s list is as big as this week’s list. I knew I was slightly over-committed.

Midnight Reckoning by Kendra Leigh Castle is the second book in her Dark Dynasties series. I reviewed the first book, Dark Awakening, back in August, and I enjoyed it much more than enough to make me snap this up from NetGalley when I saw it.

The First Rule of Ten by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay is billed as the first book in the Tenzing Norbu mystery series. Tenzing Norbu is an ex-monk from a Tibetan Monastery who joined the LAPD. At the beginning of the book, he hangs out his shingle as a private detective. Whether this concept works or not, remains to be seen. It definitely sounds interesting.

The Price of Temptation by Lecia Cornwall was described as the story of a tortured Regency Robin Hood meeting his not so proper Marian. It was a description I couldn’t resist. We’ll see if the book lives up to the description.

A Demon Does it Better by Linda Wisdom is the story of a witch with a job at a paranormal hospital where patients have been disappearing. She encounters a sexy demon on a mission who gets her into a world of trouble.

Stellarnet Rebel by J.L. Hilton is my hit of science fiction romance for the week. A deep-space colony, obsessive online gamers, aliens, terrorists and reporters. There’s even a blogger involved. I hope they’re the hero and not the villain…

Cinder by Marissa Meyer is Cinderella’s story if Cinderella were a cyborg. And I think if she rescues herself, but I’ll have to read it and see. This is one YA book that there is a lot of buzz about, and I know I’m going to be sure to read this one. It’s the first in a series, The Lunar Chronicles, which makes it even more tempting.

About last week’s recap…well, I’m in chaos. I really am. I’m reading Cast in Chaos, by Michelle Sagara. One of the books in my backlog is Cast in Ruin, and I needed to read all the Elantra books to catch up. Chaos is the last book before Ruin. It seems completely apropos at the moment.

Two more books from the long backlog are also gone. Tricks of the Trade by Laura Anne Gilman and Honor Among Thieves by David Chandler both went to a highly recommended “bye-bye”. Terrific books in their genres.

I also finished the mind candy of the week, so Lady Seductress’s Ball and One Perfect Night are done as well. Rachael Johns’ One Perfect Night turned out to have more story to it than just mind candy and was very nicely done.

I read a couple of things just for fun. Beauty Dates the Beast by Jessica Sims and No Proper Lady by Isabel Cooper had been recommended to me oodles of times. No Proper Lady was on a ton of “best of 2011” lists. And now I can add my voice to the throng. They are both terrific books. Totally different from each other, but terrific. Complete reviews are, of course, forthcoming.

And I didn’t get anywhere with the rest of the books I was supposed to read. Which is a serious problem. My egalley of The Demi-Monde: Winter is supposed to time-bomb off my iPad on 12/27. I have a print galley in a box. I think it’s in one of the 19 book boxes in my office. If not, there are about as many book boxes in my husband’s office next door. Then there are the boxes in the hall…It must be here someplace. Mustn’t it?

Don’t forget, tomorrow is still Monday, even if it is a holiday weekend. And that means it’s time for another edition of Ebook Review Central. This Monday it’s time to take a look Dreamspinner Press’ November titles.

And we’ll be back next Sunday for another look at the perils of Marlene’s iPad. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!

Selecting the best romance ebooks of 2011

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | best book lists

Last week I volunteered to select the best romance ebooks of 2011 for Library Journal. The article that resulted from the endeavor was posted at LJ this morning under the title: Librarian’s Best Books of 2011: Ebook Romance, with my picture and everything. Yes, I’m rather chuffed about the whole thing, as the Brits would say.

How did this come about? I review ebook romances for Library Journal. I am a librarian, and I asked to be a reviewer when they started their ebook romance review program this summer. LJ has, like every book review source, been posting their “best of 2011” lists this month. They’ve also been posting “Librarian’s best” guest posts. Since they have only been reviewing ebooks since August, they didn’t have a full year of ebook romance reviewing to work with. When I volunteered to write one for them, they were happy.

But about the books, and the selecting of them. They had to be ebooks, they had to be romances, and I could only pick five. And they had to be 2011 books. I stretched a couple of those definitions just a tad. There was no requirement that they be books reviewed in LJ. Actually, that was the point. LJ wanted me to go through my archives and find stuff I knew about that they didn’t, because I cover more of the ebook “waterfront” with Ebook Review Central, and I’ve been reviewing ebooks longer.

I chose the books in order by time, earliest to latest, plus the one I snuck in and hoped it would stick, which it did. It’s not generally thought of as a romance, but well, some of us think it is.

1. Goddess with a Blade by Lauren Dane, published by Carina Press. Reviewed on June 20, 2011. Urban Fantasy. Escape Rating A.

Goddess was one of the first books I reviewed for NetGalley. And I remembered it in detail six months later.  Every time my editor at LJ asked me if there would ever be a starred review of an ebook (before Serenity Woods’ White-Hot Christmas finally got one) Goddess with a Blade was always my example. Absolutely terrific kick-ass heroine, and great urban fantasy world-building. I hope there are more.

2. Turn it Up by Inez Kelley, also published by Carina Press. Reviewed on August 10, 2011. Contemporary Romance. Escape Rating A.

I reviewed a similar book for LJ, but Turn it Up was just so much better that I cited Turn it Up in my review as the one people should read instead! This was a marvelous “friends-into-lovers” story. And very, very funny.

3. Queenie’s Brigade by Heather Massey, published by Red Sage Publishing. Reviewed on October 10, 2011. Science Fiction Romance. Escape Rating A.

Queenie’s Brigade is terrific science fiction romance. When I wrote my review, I got sucked into reading it a second time, and I’d just finished it! The last rebel spaceship escapes to the last prison planet to try to turn convicts into soldiers. Sort of like the Dirty Dozen in space. Except nowhere near that easy. If you like science fiction romance, get this book.

4. Divide & Conquer (Cut & Run book 4) by Abigail Roux and Madeleine Urban, published by Dreamspinner Press. M/M Romance, Mystery/Suspense. Featured on Ebook Review Central, Dreamspinner October Books, November 28, 2011. Ratings from 4/5 to 5/5 at 8 reviewers.

I crowdsourced this selection to Ebook Review Central. The reviews weren’t just positive, they were glowing. And not just for this book, but for the whole series. It made me put the first book in the series, Cut & Run, on my TBR list. There are paperbacks available for this series, so I was stretching the ebook-only definition just a bit, but no one minded.

5. Beekeeping for Beginners by Laurie R. King, published by Bantam. Mystery. Discussed in the post The Beekeeper and his Apprentice on July 6, 2011.

This was the one that was the sneak. Technically, this isn’t a romance. But the Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell concept definitely is. And anyone who can read what he did for her and say he hadn’t already started to love her, even if he didn’t know it himself, doesn’t have a romantic bone in their body.

I loved creating this list for LJ, but because they had to be all ebooks, there were lots of things that I read and loved this year that were ineligible. Why?  Because they were really “p as in print” books. Or they were older books I finally got around to this year (hello, Elantra!) So later this month I’ll do a personal “best of 2011” list.

Three-Day Town

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Three-Day Town is a reference to New York City: James Cameron once referred to it as “the finest three-day town on earth”. In Margaret Maron’s very fine new entry into her Judge Deborah Knott series, Deborah and her husband travel to New York for a belated honeymoon. Their stay is longer than three days, because they become involved, as usual, in both family business and murder.

In 1942, a naive college freshman pilfers a risque and disgusting piece of object d’art from a college professor that she is certain is a complete poseur. In her 18-year-old certainty, she is absolutely sure she knows everything. She’s right about one thing, the piece is so vulgar, there are so many possible suspects, and the college is still so mired in puritanical values, that the theft will not be reported. It takes her almost 60 years to try to give it back, and when she does, it becomes evidence in a murder. But it’s still vulgar.

Judge Deborah Knott and her husband, Major Dwight Bryant, escape Colleton County North Carolina for week’s vacation in New York City. They’ve been married for a year, but this is the first chance they’ve had to take a honeymoon, between her sitting on the bench as a county judge and his duties with the sheriff’s department. It’s certainly a long-awaited vacation.

They’re borrowing Dwight’s sister-in-law’s apartment for a week.  It’s a co-op in a secure building close enough to the Theater District to see the lights. And they have a family errand to run–Deborah has a package to deliver from a distant cousin to that cousin’s daughter. It should be simple, and they should have a relaxing and enjoyable trip.

But things start going wrong the first evening.

The superintendant of the building is murdered in their apartment. And that package? It turns out to be the original disgusting sculpture from 1942-but no one knows the history yet, just that it’s vulgar and artistic. And then there’s the cousin. Cousin Anne is in New Zealand, but her daughter is the one who comes to pick up the package, and ends up investigating the murder. Anne’s daughter is Lt. Sigrid Harald of the NYPD Homicide Division, and she is on the scene visiting with Deborah and Dwight when the body is discovered.

Deborah and Dwight become involved in the investigation in New York, as well as familial crime-solving long distance–there’s a problem back in North Carolina that requires Deborah’s skills. This vacation turns out to be more of a Busman’s Honeymoon, but this couple is always happiest when they are crime-solving, until Deborah’s nosiness puts her in the killer’s sights.

Escape Rating A+: Three-Day Town was a treat! The story takes Deborah and Dwight away from their home ground but still shows them doing what they do best, solving a murder by poking their very intelligent noses into everyone else’s business. At the same time, the strong family ties that make me follow this series are very much in evidence. Deborah solves a problem for her cousins back home, and, best of all, Sigrid Harald is back!

Sigrid Harald is a police lieutenant in the NYPD, a tall, slim, angular woman who solves homicides and doesn’t have much of a personal life. Except that one very interesting man saw something beautiful in her that no one else saw, and because of him, her life and world opened up. If that description sounds familiar, it’s intended to. I think Sigrid Harald may be one of Eve Dallas’ literary fore-mothers. Except that Sigrid had a better childhood and a less happy ending than Eve, at least so far. It was good to see Sigrid again. I’ve missed her.

If you enjoy police procedural-type mysteries with strong female detectives, I highly recommend both the Judge Deborah Knott series and the Sigrid Harald series. Three-Day Town was a fantastic visit with both of these fine investigators, but if you have never met these women before, I would start with the first book in each series, Bootlegger’s Daughter for Deborah and One Coffee With for Sigrid.

The next Deborah Knott book will be The Buzzard Table, sometime next year. Another year, another dead body. Or two.  With buzzards in the title, it sounds like she’ll be back in North Carolina. I can hardly wait.

The Hollow House

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

The Hollow House by Janis Patterson is a terrific murder mystery of the old school, meaning that it takes place in a house where everyone has lots of secrets, and solving the mystery depends on peeling back the layers on all of those deep, dark secrets and rattling all the skeletons in everyone’s closets. It’s almost Gothic in its sense of impending doom, but there are no horror elements except those of the purely human variety.

In 1919 Geraldine Brunton takes a job as a companion to a rich, eccentric and elderly woman. Except that Geraldine Brunton is not the woman’s real name. She is working under an alias in order to keep her identity a secret. “Geraldine” has never worked as a companion before, or as anything else. She has no references, no experience, and no training for any kind of work. But she is educated and cultured, and she needs to find a job before her money runs out. She also needs a place to hide, and hopes that Denver is far enough away from the scandal she is trying to outrun.

Emmaline Stubbs doesn’t need a companion half as much as she needs an ally. Emmaline Stubbs is definitely old, and it is difficult for her to get from her second floor room to the first floor dining room and parlor of her Denver mansion. But it is still her mansion, and not her daughter and son-in-law’s. Emmaline and her late husband Jamie earned the money that paid for that mansion prospecting for gold until they struck it rich at the Lodestar mine.

Since her husband’s death two years before, Mrs. Stubbs has been biding her time, waiting for the right circumstances. Her family has given out the impression that she is prostrate with grief, and has become an invalid. She has let everyone believe it. Now that “Mrs. Brunton” has become her companion, she becomes more active in family affairs again, much to her family’s dismay.

Mrs. Stubb’s sudden return to a more active life brings long-simmering secrets to the boil. When the housemaid Annie is murdered, and an attempt in made on Mrs. Stubb’s life, the police are called in.

Murder is not a respecter of anyone’s secrets, and the skeletons in every closet march into the light, including the scandal that brought “Mrs. Brunton” to Denver in the first place. The story keeps twisting and turning until the final page.

Escape Rating A- : This was very well done. I didn’t completely figure out who it was until the very end, partly because I couldn’t believe the murderer was who it turned out to be. And the ending is too deliciously awful for me to spoil by giving it away. You’ll have to read the book to find out “whodunit”. And you should.

What’s on my (mostly virtual) nightstand? 11-13-11

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | ebooks> Virtual Nightstand

The exercise of looking at what I’m planning to read in the upcoming week is fascinating, sort of like watching a train wreck. You know there’s a crash coming, but you just can’t make yourself turn your eyes away!

Thanksgiving is 11 days away. Yikes! We’re driving to Cincinnati to see my mom for the holiday weekend. I will either get a LOT of reading done, or not much at all.

I finished White Hot Christmas for Library Journal Xpress Reviews. It will be the first starred review for their ebook review program. This is a pretty big deal. I know what I wrote in the review, but I wonder what they’ll say about it being the first actual starred review?

Next week’s contenders come from three completely different sources. I received When a Man Loves a Woman from the author Alina Adams in return for an honest review. What’s unusual about this book is that it’s an enhanced ebook, with music included in order to add to the reading experience. I’ve never read an enhanced ebook, so this should be interesting. I’m looking forward to the experience.

Edge of Survival was also an author request, but it was one that came about because the Toni Anderson had seen Ebook Review Central and asked if I would review her November title through NetGalley. This is a romantic suspense title, and I’d looked at it longingly a couple of times anyway, so I requested it through NetGalley. Reading Reality is already listed as a Reviewing Organization with NetGalley.

Last, but most definitely and absolutely not least for this week, Three-Day Town by Margaret Maron, also something I requested from NetGalley.  This is the latest book in her continuing Judge Deborah Knott series. I love the series, and have read all the books from the very first, Bootlegger’s Daughter. I’ve been looking forward to this book because she ties this series in with her earlier, Lt. Sigrid Harald series.  It’s been a long time since she’s written anything in that particular series, and I’ve missed it.

Recapping from last week I finished SEAL of my Dreams (B+) in time for Veterans Day. And I’ve got Knight of Runes read, I just need to write it up.

I’m unfortunately in the middle of Dark Vow, and I haven’t started Hollow House. Hence my reference to the train wreck at the beginning. I finished Snuff (my husband wanted to borrow my iPad this week).

I started Fallen Embers. The author, Lauri J. Owen, says that I can get the review up when it’s ready. I appreciate her understanding.

And I have three books with due dates. Blood Rock and Frost Moon will still timebomb on my iPad, and Wings of Fire by Charles Todd is due back at the library, all on 11/26/11.

I don’t think I can let myself add anything new to the pile until I get something on the pile off the pile. What’s that game where you pull the blocks out of the tower? Jenga? I think this is book jenga. Only with ebooks.

A Study in Sherlock

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

A Study in Sherlock is a new collection of stories inspired by the Holmes canon. I purchased a copy because it was edited by Laurie R. King (and Leslie S. Klinger). So far, I have not been disappointed by any work touched by Ms. King, and A Study in Sherlock did not break that tradition.

The authors who contributed to this collection are all well-respected mystery writers. I’m familiar with many of them. A few (Margaret Maron, Dana Stabenow and Charles Todd) are favorites. I even met Dana Stabenow when I lived in Anchorage. Alaska is the biggest small town in the world.

As part of their contribution to the anthology, each author told the story of when they were first introduced to Sherlock Holmes. Naturally, I tried to remember when I first met the world’s first “consulting detective”. When I was a child, my mom was a subscriber to Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. So, when I started reading, she got the Best Loved Books for Young Readers set for me. “Great Cases of Sherlock Holmes” is in book 4. That’s one mystery solved!

But the stories in this particular volume, like the proverbial mileage, vary. Some are actual Holmes pastiches. Some use the Canon as inspiration for detectival flights of fancy that barely relate to Holmes. And, some I liked, some, not so much.

My favorite Holmesian pastiche has to be S.J. Rozan’s The Men with the Twisted Lips. It is virtually a prequel to Dr. Watson’s own tale of The Man with the Twisted Lip, except this version of the story is told from the point of view of the opium dealers in the notorious Limehouse district, as they maneuver the observation of Mr. Neville St. Clair in his rented quarters over the Lascar’s opium den by Mrs. St. Clair, all so that Mrs. St. Clair will involve the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. This new point of view dovetails perfectly with the narrative we know. Excellently done!

The Adventure of the Concert Pianist by Margaret Maron is also very interesting. It’s a case that Dr. Watson and Mrs. Hudson solve on their own during the “Great Hiatus” between Reichenbach Falls and The Empty House. In fact, the adventure ends with Mrs. Hudson fainting at the sight of Holmes’ return from the “dead” in 1894.

Of the modern stories, the one that impressed me the most was The Shadow Not Cast by Lionel Chetwynd. Sergeant-Major Robert Jackson uses Holmes’ methods, along with the criteria used by an officer in the field observing an enemy position, in order to find the murderer of a rabbi and a financial reporter. The combination of Holmes’ analytical skills and a trained military observer make for one very astute detective. I’m very disappointed that there are no other stories featuring the Sergeant-Major.

There is a Neil Gaiman story in this collection, titled The Case of Death and Honey. All I can say is that I hope it is true. It would explain why Holmes’ obituary has never appeared in the London Times.

Escape Rating B+: The stories I liked, I really, really liked. The Startling Events in the Electrified City by Thomas Perry, and The Case that Holmes Lost by Charles Todd are two other excellent stories. On the other hand, there were a couple I liked but just couldn’t figure out why they were in this collection, and a few that just didn’t float my boat.

But that’s the lovely thing about collections–finish up a few pages, and there’s another story!

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

In anticipation of the new Sherlock Holmes movie (Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) being released on December 16, 2011, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes has been reprinted with a new cover that bears the stamp “Inspiration for the Major Motion Picture.”

I decided it would be a good excuse to re-read some of the Holmes Canon. I’ve read them all, some more than once, but not for quite a while. I looked over the new printing to see that it contained the same stories that have usually been included in the Memoirs, and then, I chose a different approach this time.

We have a copy of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, and, well, I’ve never indulged. So for this foray, I read the Annotated version.

First, I’d forgotten what a treat it is to read the original stories. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes contains a dozen short stories. They were all written at the height of Conan Doyle’s, or perhaps I should say Dr. Watson’s, literary powers. Each is a gem.

One story in this collection, The Greek Interpreter, is notable for being the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes’ brother, Mycroft — that mysterious accountant somewhere in Whitehall who occasionally was the British Government. The entire government. Mycroft’s tentacles still linger. It is speculated that the mysterious “M” who runs the agency that James Bond works for is a direct bureaucratic descendant, hence the name, “M”.

But it’s the last story in the book that caused it to be republished for the movie. The last story in Memoirs is the most famous,  The Final Problem. In that story, Holmes meets his nemesis Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls. At the end of the story, both Holmes and Moriarty are presumed dead.

When the story of Holmes’ death reached the public in 1893, very real people wore mourning for this supposedly fictional character. Subscription cancellations to the Strand Magazine, which published the Holmes stories, were reported to have reached 20,000. The campaign to resurrect Sherlock Holmes may have been the first successful fan campaign in entertainment history because, as we all know, Sherlock Holmes eventually returned from Reichenbach. Conan Doyle published The Hound of the Baskervilles (set before Holmes’ supposed death) in 1901, and the first stories from  The Return of Sherlock Holmes in 1903.

Escape rating A: The stories are just as good as I remember. It was a joy to read them again. Reading the annotations was interesting and strange. The ones that define terms we no longer use are fascinating. The minutiae of horse-drawn carriages, for example, or the difference between what we think of as a bus and what the Victorian era called an ‘omnibus’. The various printing histories of particular stories is less interesting. On the other hand, the illustrations are fabulous, since the Annotated version includes the original Paget drawings, the Harper’s Weekly drawings from the US, plus illustrations from advertisements of the time to explain things like what was an ‘antimacassar’ anyway?

If you think you remember these stories–indulge yourself–read them again. If you’ve never had the pleasure, then you are in for a treat. Holmes is timeless.

Inspector Gamache

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews

I drove to South Carolina last week in the urbane company of Chief Inspector Gamache of the  Sûreté du Québec. My trip to Collection Development Mini-Conference in Columbia was the perfect opportunity to listen to the latest unfortunate incident in Three Pines, Québec, where murder seems to be a cottage industry.

A Trick of the Light is the most recent book in Louise Penny’s series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. For some reason, an awful lot of murders seem to occur in the rather small village of Three Pines, in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. So many murders that Gamache and his team have become friends with some of the local residents–even the ones they’ve investigated as suspects.

The “trick of the light” referred to in the title refers to a painting. One of the Three Pines residents, Clara Morrow, is an artist. So is her husband Peter. But it is Clara who has been “discovered” after working in obscurity for almost 30 years. Her one-woman show at the famed Musée in Montreal is a rousing success. But the after-party at her home in Three Pines is ruined by a dead body in the garden. Even worse, the corpse belongs to an old friend turned enemy of Clara’s from childhood.

And the corpse was everyone’s enemy. The dead woman was an art critic. A particularly venomous one. And she was especially good at being venomous–a deadly combination for any budding artist’s career. There was no difficulty in figuring out who wanted to kill the woman. Everyone at the party had a motive. Including the caterers.

Escape Rating: A+ It was an 8 hour trip and an 11 hour book. I kept finding excuses to finish listening to the book. The central mystery is all about the art world, and I did get fooled, so points for that. And, and, and, there is a whole lot of neat, weird, sad and truly angst-ridden stuff going on with the continuing characters and I want to know where that is leading now. Now and not next year, dammit, or whenever the next book will be. I’m really worried about Jean-Guy. And if you’ve read the series, you know exactly what I mean.

In other news, Bury Your Dead, the previous book in the series, was recognized this past weekend with some more well-deserved awards. Mystery Readers International awarded Bury Your Dead their Macavity Award for Best Mystery Novel for 2010. And, at Bouchercon 2011, the World Mystery Convention in St. Louis on September 17, Bury Your Dead also won the Anthony Award for Best Novel. In 2010, the previous Inspector Gamache book, The Brutal Telling, won the award.

Also, again, thank you to the person on the Letters of Mary group (Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell) for recommending this series. Which only emphasizes the importance of recommending books to people. I’d never have found the Chief Inspector but for her.

New York to Dallas

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews

Just let me say this up front. I love Eve Dallas and Roarke. I’ve read every single book, and I think every short story.

I have 30 books I’m supposed to review between now and the end of January. I told myself I had plenty of other stuff I should be reading. And I couldn’t stop myself from buying J.D. Robb’s New York to Dallas last night. And finishing it. Last night. I’m amazed I waited two whole days to get the book.

The …In Death series are super books. Both in the sense of “you’ve got to read this book” and in the sense of “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman!”.

Why? Because all the books contain three genres successfully mashed into a single story. Every book, from Naked in Death to the very latest, is a police procedural, and a pretty cozy one at that. A crime is committed, usually a murder. Eve Dallas, a homicide cop, and her team eventually solve the crime. Eve uses the policies and procedures that cops use. She investigates the crime. She follows the law. She interviews witnesses. Forensic evidence is collected and examined. This should sound familiar, it is the staple of every crime show and every mystery novel from Sherlock Holmes to Agatha Christie to Law and Order.

Eve has a team. Every member of her team has a role to play. Feeney is her mentor. Peabody is her plucky young assistant. Mira is the motherly figure. Mavis is the best friend. As readers, we come to care about Eve’s team, her surrogate family. We read the books because we want to know what happens to them as they grow and change.

Then there’s Roarke. The ongoing romantic relationship between Eve and Roarke is an amazing literary accomplishment. Most romantic series “jump the shark” when the primary couple resolves the romantic tension. But not Eve and Roarke. New York to Dallas is the 33rd book in the series, and their relationship is just as hot as it was in Naked in Death, the first book. They know they are lucky, and as readers, we experience it with them. They fight like tigers, sometimes to the point of drawing blood, but it’s still exciting to watch.

And, lest we forget, this series is also futuristic. The year is 2060, not 2011. The world has changed, both for the better and for the worse. Mankind has colonized the Moon and Mars and created off-planet havens. Droids serve as personal servants. But there was a cost for all of this progress–the Urban Wars that occur sometime between our now and Eve’s. The Wars are by no means a distant memory, no more than the tensions of the Vietnam Era are to us.

In New York to Dallas, Eve’s career comes full circle, and that circle intersects with the shadows of her own past. When she was a rookie, she arrested a predatory pedophile named Isaac McQueen. She was observant, and she was lucky. And Eve knew what he was because she’d been the victim of someone just like him. She saved 22 girls from a monster. The monster got life in prison. And Eve was found by Feeney, who recognized that she was meant to be a cop. He transferred her to Homicide Division, and her life began.

Escape Rating A: If you’ve read the rest of the series, read this one now. If you haven’t, and you’ve always meant to, get Naked in Death, and start now.

The Return of Captain John Emmett

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews

The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller is a haunting story of lost men during a lost time–a story the lost generation of soldiers who only semi-returned from the trench warfare of World War I, and the between-the-wars limbo that was the 1920’s.

Today we call it “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” or PTSD, as if giving things a name makes them easier to live with. In the immediate aftermath of WWI, it was simply called “shell-shock”, as though the shorter name meant it could be dismissed that much more easily.

Captain John Emmett returned from his war, whole in body, but not in spirit. He coped badly with the war, and even worse with the peace. His family institutionalized him after he attacked another veteran. When he escaped from the sanitarium, he committed suicide and left no note. His sister, thinking that he was improving, and certain that there must have been something more to her brother’s death, enlists one of his old school friends to investigate the circumstances of Emmett’s suicide.

Laurence Bartram came home from his war as shell-shocked as Emmett, but didn’t quite reach the institutional stage. He returned from his war a widower, his wife having died in childbirth on the day that his unit made it last assault. Wracked with guilt, he has been unable to restart a new life in peacetime. Mary Emmett’s request to investigate her brother’s death gives him a new purpose.

Bartram discoveries uncover mystery upon mystery. At first he believes he is looking into an unfortunate, but ultimately simple, suicide. It would not have been uncommon. But as he delves deeper, his investigations lead from peacetime back to the war he left behind. And from suicide to murder.

In peacetime it was called shell-shock. In wartime, it was called cowardice. On the front lines, an officer convicted of cowardice in the face of the enemy was court martialed and shot. In the British Army only three officers faced such firing squads during WWI. Emmett was the officer in charge of one, and he botched it. The war is over and all the men from that squad are being picked off, one by one. Those that survived the war, someone is making sure that they don’t survive the peace.

Escape Rating B+: After a slow start, this one grabbed me at the end and didn’t let go. Now I can’t stop thinking about it. The mixture of real history with fiction makes the story compelling. Also the touch of “real fiction”. One of the characters is reading Agatha Christie, and commenting on the similarities. But the pathos is in the characters of Emmett, Mary Emmett and Bartram. War is hell. Those young men had no idea what they were in for, and even less what to do when they got out. Combined with the incredible networking influence of the “Old School Ties”, both literal and figurative, and what happened to someone who didn’t have them. The historical notes at the end put the story in context. For fiction, this is too real. And war is still hell.