Review: What Darkness Brings by C.S. Harris

Review: What Darkness Brings by C.S. HarrisWhat Darkness Brings (Sebastian St. Cyr, #8) by C.S. Harris
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr #8
Pages: 349
Published by New American Library, Berkley on March 5, 2013
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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London, September 1812. After a long night spent dealing with the tragic death of a former military comrade, a heart-sick Sebastian learns of a new calamity: Russell Yates, the dashing, one-time privateer who married Sebastian’s former lover Kat Boleyn a year ago, has been found standing over the corpse of notorious London diamond merchant Benjamin Eisler. Yates insists he is innocent, but he will surely hang unless Sebastian can unmask the real killer. For the sake of Kat, the woman he once loved and lost, Sebastian plunges into a treacherous circle of intrigue. Although Eisler’s clients included the Prince Regent and the Emperor Napoleon, he was a despicable man with many enemies and a number of dangerous, well-kept secrets—including a passion for arcane texts and black magic. Central to the case is a magnificent blue diamond, believed to have once formed part of the French crown jewels, which disappeared on the night of Eisler’s death. As Sebastian traces the diamond’s ownership, he uncovers links that implicate an eccentric, powerful financier named Hope and stretch back into the darkest days of the French Revolution. When the killer grows ever more desperate and vicious, Sebastian finds his new marriage to Hero tested by the shadows of his first love, especially when he begins to suspect that Kat is keeping secrets of her own. And as matters rise to a crisis, Sebastian must face a bitter truth--that he has been less than open with the fearless woman who is now his wife.

My Review: 

The Hope Diamond in 1974

The Hope Diamond, the very real, very beautiful and very large Hope Diamond, is currently owned by the Smithsonian Museum and housed in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

Once upon a time, the Hope Diamond was just a bit bigger than the 45.52 carats it is today and was part of the Crown Jewels of France. Then there was that little historical incident known as the French Revolution, and the Crown Jewels were first put on display and then stolen in 1792.

At which point it disappeared from history, only to reappear in its current size and setting in 1839 as the Hope Diamond in a gem catalog from the banking family of that name.

So where did it go between 1792 and 1839? It’s not exactly the kind of thing that a person could hawk on a street corner – or even take to the usual dealers in stolen goods. Because of its unusual color, it was too easy to trace – even after cutting it down from its original OMG 115 carats to the (still OMG) 67.125 carat gem that was part of the French Crown Jewels.

When the noted art collector, diamond merchant, high-priced pawnbroker and all-around thoroughly disgusting example of humanity Daniel Eisler is killed in his own front parlor, it’s not a case that would normally involve Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin. But the man accused of the murder is dear to a woman Devlin once loved. She claims her husband is innocent – of that crime at least.

Devlin agrees to look into the killing, as it’s pretty obvious that whatever else is going on, there’s been somewhat of a rush to judgment, to the point where it looks like a fix is in. A fix that has tentacles that reach all the way up to the highest powers in that land – whether one defines those high and mighty powers as the Prince Regent or Devlin’s father-in-law, the power behind Prinny’s shaky throne.

At first, it doesn’t seem possible that the famous blue diamond could have anything to do with the death of a dealer whose hands it may have passed through, once upon a time. After all, Daniel Eisler – at least in his fictional incarnation – is such a thoroughgoing bastard that most who hear of his death consider it an improvement to humanity as a whole.

(Daniel Eisler was based on a real person, Daniel Eliason, who really does occupy a place in the history of the Hope Diamond at the time this story takes place. However, the real person does not seem to have been anything like as poor an excuse for a human being as his fictional counterpart.)

But the deeper Devlin digs, the more the diamond – and the agents of Napoleon still hunting it after twenty years – appears to be at the center of a case that otherwise gets darker and murkier as it goes.

Revealing secrets and lies that have lurked in the shadows of the seemingly war with France – and have the potential to rock Prinny’s unstable Regency to its foundations.

Escape Rating A: It’s not much of a surprise that after Tuesday’s book reminded me SO MUCH of St. Cyr that I would be hearing the siren song of the next book in my catch-up read of the series. I kind of wish I’d listened to that voice a bit more readily, as once I started What Darkness Brings I fell right into it with a grateful sigh.

One of the things that I’ve loved about this series is the way that it blends real historical events and figures with a story that often feels “ripped from the headlines” of its own era’s newspapers and gutter press.

Nearly all the history of the Hope Diamond and the French Blue diamond from which it was cut really happened – especially the truly wild bits about the original theft. The speculation about why that theft occurred and just how it got to England are not just plausible but have been looked into as possibilities over the centuries. One part of that speculation and conjecture in Devlin’s time, however, has been verified. In 2005, when scientific testing confirmed that the Hope Diamond was, in fact, cut from the gem in the French Crown Jewels.

At first, I didn’t think the plots in this entry in the series were going to reach nearly as high as they did, but once you read even a bit of the true history and the conjectures that surround it, it made sense that it turned out the way it did.

The way the murder, the theft plot and the real history branched and intertwined made this entry in the series one hell of a wild ride, while still tying up loose ends from previous entries and opening up entirely new fields of questions for future books in the series – some of which have admittedly been answered by the point where the series as a whole rests – hopefully temporarily – after Who Cries for the Lost closed its own set of doors and opened yet more to keep us all on pins and needles until the next entry in the series.

Next up in my catching up/filling in read of the St. Cyr series will be Why Kings Confess. And I confess that I’ll be picking that up the next time I’m looking for a comfort read, or guaranteed competence porn, or just have the urge to see what I missed with these marvelous characters!

Review: A Thousand Recipes for Revenge by Beth Cato

Review: A Thousand Recipes for Revenge by Beth CatoA Thousand Recipes for Revenge by Beth Cato
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: epic fantasy, fantasy, historical fantasy
Series: Chefs of the Five Gods #1
Pages: 411
Published by 47North on June 13, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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A world on the brink of war and a mother and daughter on the run, in a thrilling novel of swashbuckling adventure, culinary magic, and just desserts.
Adamantine “Ada” Garland has an empathic connection to food and wine, a magical perception of aromas, flavors, and ingredients. Invaluable property of the royal court, Ada was in service to the Five Gods and to the Gods-ordained rulers of Verdania—until she had enough of injustice and bloodshed and deserted, seeking to chart her own destiny. When mysterious assassins ferret her out after sixteen years in hiding, Ada, now a rogue Chef, and her beloved Grand-mère run for their lives, only to find themselves on a path toward an unexpected ally.
A foreign princess in a strange court, Solenn unknowingly shares more with Ada than an epicurean gift. They share blood. With her newfound magical perception, she becomes aware of a plot to kill her fiancé, the prince. It’s part of a ploy by adversarial forces in the rival country of Albion to sow conflict, and Solenn is set up to take the blame.
As Ada’s and Solenn’s paths converge, a mother and her long-lost daughter reunite toward a common goal, and against a shadowy enemy from Ada’s past who is out for revenge. But what sacrifices must be made? What hope is there when powerful Gods pick sides in a war simmering to eruption?

My Review:

There are a thousand quotes about revenge and most of them are not kind to the person seeking it. But it’s possible that the one in the world of these particular five gods is the most bitter, literally and figuratively. “There are a thousand recipes for revenge, and they all taste like scat.”

In other words, revenge tastes like shit. In a world where the ability to perceive and even enhance the qualities of every single thing a person might eat or drink is the highest form of magic, that has to be one of its world’s greatest curses.

And a warning that entirely too many people have refused to heed in this fantastic story that has only just begun.

At first, we’re following two women who don’t seem to have much to do with each other. And even though we don’t know it yet, someone’s revenge has reached out, seemingly from beyond the grave, to do its best to turn both their lives into shit.

Or perhaps something a bit worse but surprisingly edible – even if it really, really shouldn’t be. Which is where this world’s magic comes in.

Ada Garland is one of the chefs blessed by Gyst, the God of Mysteries and Unknowns. Her tongue is literally magic. She can tell whether something is clean or polluted, poisonous or just badly prepared, too salty, too sweet, or perfectly balanced. Her magic allows her to make the dish that a person wants and needs most in that moment – and do it perfectly every time.

And she has the power to turn certain special ingredients, called epicurea, into magical items that will pass their magic on to whoever eats them.

It’s a gift and a curse at the same time, as all blessed chefs in her country are automatically conscripted into the royal service the moment their talents manifest. It’s a service that led Ada to her husband and their child. And it’s a service that split them apart when the alliance between their countries dissolved.

Ada is on the run, and has been for over a decade, taking care of her increasingly unstable grandmother while avoiding the grasping, greedy mother who wants to use her and her talent for ends that are even more unsavory than Ada first believed.

The revenge that reaches out for Ada, her friends and her family threatens to expose all of her secrets – and theirs. If it doesn’t get them all killed first. Or worse. Much, much worse.

Escape Rating A+: I picked this up because I was looking for something else with magical cookery after The Nameless Restaurant. Both stories do feature cookery as Magic with a Capital “M”, but that is the only thing they have in common. I’m still grateful for the push from the one to the other, because A Thousand Recipes for Revenge is just plain awesome and I’m so glad I read it, even if it is making me give the side-eye to pretty much everything I eat.

The magic system here is both fascinating and unsettling at the same time, because it’s all wrapped around magical foods, the ability to create them and the ability to taste them. This is a world where many people can cook, and unsurprisingly so or everyone would starve, but where it takes a gift from the actual gods to be a chef. But the silver lining of that gift comes with plenty of cloud wrapped around it, as both Ada and Princess Solenn discover to their cost.

This is also definitely one of those stories about being better off – or at least sleeping better at night – if one did not know how the sausage was made. It’s a secret that has been brutally suppressed in this world for excellent if entirely terrible reasons.

At first, this seems like a rather typical military type, gaslamp set fantasy. Ada is AWOL from her military service, while our second perspective on this story, Princess Solenn, is in the midst of being married off for a political alliance.

But then Ada’s old comrades start getting killed, Ada’s hidden existence is suddenly under threat, and it seems like she’s on the run from awful but otherwise mundane forces. Until things go completely pear-shaped and the gods start getting involved. At which point it’s off to the races – against time, against death, against the forces of oppression and most especially against petulant beings who would rather play with their food than either nurture it, treat it as a pet or kill it as prey.

And then things get really complicated.

I thought I knew where this was going. And then I thought I knew where this was going. But it didn’t go any of the places I thought it would, but where it did end up was both head spinning and stomach churning as well as a tremendous tease because there had to be more and at first I didn’t realize there was, but there is and oh thank goodness!

Ada and Solenn give readers two heroines to route for, as this is both Ada’s story of picking up the pieces of the life she left behind and Solenn’s coming of age story and both are fantastic. The world’s setup at first seems fairly standard epic fantasy and then goes to places that are fresh (if occasionally rotting) and new and unexpected. There are bits of Bujold’s World of the Five Gods and Jenn Lyons’ A Chorus of Dragons in the way that the gods of this world operate, as well as Guy Gavriel Kay’s and Jacqueline Carey‘s use of real world geography and history as a way of creating a fantasy world’s map and political divisions, but the magic system is just completely off a new wall and it’s marvelous in the way it suffuses the story.

Which, as I squeed earlier, thankfully isn’t done yet. There’s a second book in the Chefs of the Five Gods series, A Feast for Starving Stone, coming in January. And I can’t wait!

Review: The Nameless Restaurant by Tao Wong

Review: The Nameless Restaurant by Tao WongThe Nameless Restaurant (Hidden Dishes: Book #1) by Tao Wong
Narrator: Emily Woo Zeller
Format: audiobook
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy fantasy, fantasy, urban fantasy
Series: Hidden Dishes #1
Pages: 168
Length: 3 hours and 10 minutes
Published by Dreamscape Media, Starlit Publishing on June 1, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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There is a restaurant in Toronto. Its entrance is announced only by a simple, unadorned wooden door, varnished to a beautiful shine but without paint, hidden beside dumpsters and a fire escape. There is no sign, no indication of what lies behind the door.
If you do manage to find the restaurant, the décor is dated and worn. Homey, if one were to be generous. The service is atrocious, the proprietor a grouch. The regulars are worse: silent, brooding, and unfriendly to newcomers. There is no set menu, alternating with the whim and whimsy of the owner. The selection of wine and beer is sparse or non-existent at times, and the prices for everything outrageous.There is a restaurant in Toronto that is magically hidden, whose service is horrible, and whose food is divine.This is the story of the Nameless Restaurant.

My Review:

“Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger,” or so the t-shirt goes. There’s a wizard’s corollary to this that goes, “Wizards should not meddle in the affairs of jinn, for they are not subtle at all and very capable of schooling foolish wizards who overstep while they are spooning up dessert along with the wizards’ deflated egos.”

But that dessert occurs at the end of this tasty meal of a book. There are plenty of delicious courses before you get there.

The story in The Nameless Restaurant is also the story of a day in the life of this nameless restaurant, a tiny, hole in the wall place hidden in downtown Toronto where the magic of delicious meals happens at the hands of the restaurant’s magically adept owner-chef.

That chef-owner’s day usually begins with prep for the evening meals for his usual, but mostly supernatural, customers. On this day, Mo Meng, has to alter his routine due to an interruption by a spoiled brat of a jinn demanding that he serve her and her wizard companion a meal, right that minute with whatever he might have on hand.

Mo Meng grumps about both the interruption to his routine and the overbearing willfulness of his “guest” but still complies with her request-couched-entirely-as-an-order. She doesn’t even bother to pay for her meal when she’s finished the best meal she’s ever had.

But the destruction she might leave in her wake if he calls her on it simply is not worth the trouble.

Not that trouble doesn’t follow her back to the restaurant that evening. And that’s where things get truly fascinating, as we hear not just the details of the mouth-watering dishes that Mo Meng prepares, but we also get a ringside seat for an epic confrontation between a jinn who has, in fact and really truly, seen it all and done it all for millenia, and a gaggle of human magic users who think they’re all that when they really, really aren’t. A fact which Lily is more than happy to school them ALL in while she savors her dessert.

Escape Rating A-: Anyone who loved Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes is going to eat The Nameless Restaurant up with the very same spoon. If you’re looking for something to tide you over until Bookshops & Bonedust comes out, The Nameless Restaurant is definitely it!

The format of this little chef’s kiss of a story is “a day in the life”, but what a day and what a life! At first, the fantasy aspects are pretty minimal. It’s clear from Mo Meng’s musings and grumblings that he is a magic-user of some kind, but the details are covered in the sauce of his meticulous descriptions of food preparation.

It’s only when the pot of the story is fully on the boil, when the irregular regular denizens of the restaurant gather for what sounds like a spectacular meal (as all meals in that restaurant seem to be) that the reader gets some real hints about the nature of both the place and community it serves and why Mo Meng serves it.

Which is where both the fun and the tension come in. While everyone in the place is magical in one way or another except for Kelly the waitress, the Nameless Restaurant is warded to be a place where most of that magic gets left outside – except for Mo Meng’s cooking skills, of course.

So the tension in the story ratchets up slowly as the reader gets hints – and picks sides! – in the upcoming conflict. Which, when it comes, is explosive – but not in the way that the urban fantasy setting might lead one to believe.

This is, after all, a cozy fantasy. So what is brewing in that little place isn’t a battle – but it most definitely is going to be a takedown. With dessert. And leaves the diners eagerly anticipating another night at the Nameless Restaurant, while the reader is left salivating for the next installment in this delicious series!

One final word of caution. You are probably familiar with the warning about not going to the grocery store hungry, out of the very reasonable fear that you will attempt to buy the entire store because in your hunger it ALL looks good? This book takes that one step further, as it should be issued with a caution not to drive to the grocery store while listening, as not only will you be tempted to eat the entire store, but you’ll end up disappointed because nothing you consume will measure up to the temptations described in the story.

Review: Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow

Review: Red Team Blues by Cory DoctorowRed Team Blues (Martin Hench) by Cory Doctorow
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback ebook, audiobook
Genres: computer history, technothriller, thriller
Series: Martin Hench #1
Pages: 213
Published by Tor Books on April 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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New York Times bestseller Cory Doctorow's Red Team Blues is a grabby next-Tuesday thriller about cryptocurrency shenanigans that will awaken you to how the world really works.
Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough.
Martin is a―contain your excitement―self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He’s as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he’s a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He’s not famous, except to the people who matter. He’s made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he’s been paid pretty well. It’s been a good life.
Now he’s been roped into a job that’s more dangerous than anything he’s ever agreed to before―and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.

My Review:

Martin Hench doesn’t really believe in that saying about the best defense being a good offense. Or rather, that it may work just fine in other fields, but it doesn’t work at all in his.

Martin would describe himself as a forensic accountant. And it’s true for certain definitions of all of the words. But what Martin really does is provide leverage – and yes, that’s “leverage” in the sense of the TV series. When someone has used dirty tricks – even if said tricks are technically legal – to hide someone else’s money, Martin has the skills with money, spreadsheets and investigative techniques to figure out where that money went and get it back for you.

For 25% of the value of what gets returned. Martin is very, very good at his freelance gig.

Which is why one of his oldest and dearest friends asks Martin to clean up a terrible costly mistake. Which leads Martin into the tangled, thorny weeds of cryptocurrencies, blockchains and governmental bureaucracies determined to look the other way as long as harm gets reduced to “acceptable” levels. Meaning that their allies, agents and patsies don’t get caught with their hands in the cybersecurity cookie jar.

Martin doesn’t believe in that old saw about defenses vs. offenses because people can’t switch their mindset between being the offense – red teamers like Martin – and being on the blue team defense. From Martin’s perspective, the blue team has to be perfect 24/7/365, while the red team just needs to find one, single mistake and exploit it for all it’s worth. Usually a lot with the kind of businesses that Martin generally deals with.

But helping his friend Danny, figuring out who stole the cryptokey generating laptop that Danny should never have put together in the first place, is exactly Martin’s kind of job. An investigation into the cracks to find something hidden. It should have been an easy $250 million – or thereabouts.

When his investigation leads to three dead 20somethings and a trail of double-crosses, it becomes the kind of trouble that has Martin on the run from both the feds who want to protect their assets and the very nasty people who want to blame Martin for the doublecross.

Forcing lifelong red teamer Martin straight onto the blue team, desperate for a way to save his own life, knowing that all it will take is one mistake for it all to be over just when it’s really getting to be interesting.

Escape Rating A+: I galloped through Red Team Blues in a single sitting. It wasn’t any of the things I was expecting it to be, but it was just so damn good – and utterly compelling from the first to the last.

To the point where I seriously hope this is the start of a series (I just found out that IT IS!), because I want more of both Martin Hench’s adventures and his wryly acerbic and somewhat self-deprecative point of view.

Red Team Blues has the feel of a caper thriller. Rather like Leverage, in fact, or any thriller where the hero is running as fast as they can to get away from people who are out to get them for something they aren’t even responsible for while desperately seeking a way out of a jam that they should not even be in.

Those kinds of stories are always fun when they are done right – and Red Team Blues is absolutely done right.

What this isn’t, and what one might expect considering the author’s body of work (and that it’s published by Tor Books) is science fiction. This isn’t set in even a relatively near future. It’s now. Crypto and blockchain may not currently be in exactly the same state that they are in this story, but otherwise, it’s just now.

Which makes the whole thing just that much more fascinating, as Martin’s techniques about investigating the case and finding where the money went by mining social media and poking into publicly available information are all entirely possible. So what makes this such a compelling read is how he goes about it.

Being set in the now provides opportunities for all kinds of social and political commentary, set in Martin’s sometimes sarcastic, often world-weary, voice. In the end, I followed him because I liked him and wanted to see where he went and how he got out of the pickle that is trying to swallow him – one way or another.

So Red Team Blues is a technothriller where you don’t have to understand all the ins and outs of the techno in order to get fully immersed in the thriller. I had a ball with this one, and I hope you will too.

Martin Hench will be back next February in The Bezzle. YAY!

Review: Watching the Clock by Christopher L. Bennett

Review: Watching the Clock by Christopher L. BennettWatching the Clock (Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations #1) by Christopher L. Bennett
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, space opera, Star Trek, time travel
Series: Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations #1
Pages: 496
Published by Pocket Books on May 1, 2011
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBetter World Books
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There’s likely no more of a thankless job in the Federation than temporal investigation. While starship explorers get to live the human adventure of traveling to other times and realities, it’s up to the dedicated agents of the Federation Department of Temporal Investigations to deal with the consequences to the timestream that the rest of the Galaxy has to live with day by day. But when history as we know it could be wiped out at any moment by time warriors from the future, misused relics of ancient races, or accident-prone starships, only the most disciplined, obsessive, and unimaginative government employees have what it takes to face the existential uncertainty of it all on a daily basis . . . and still stay sane enough to complete their assignments.
That’s where Agents Lucsly and Dulmur come in—stalwart and unflappable, these men are the Federation’s unsung anchors in a chaotic universe. Together with their colleagues in the DTI—and with the help and sometimes hindrance of Starfleet’s finest—they do what they can to keep the timestream, or at least the paperwork, as neat and orderly as they are. But when a series of escalating temporal incursions threatens to open a new front of the history-spanning Temporal Cold War in the twenty-fourth century, Agents Lucsly and Dulmur will need all their investigative skill and unbending determination to stop those who wish to rewrite the past for their own advantage, and to keep the present and the future from devolving into the kind of chaos they really, really hate.

My Review:

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective point of view, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.” At least according to Doctor Who.

Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I spotted their TARDIS, or at least a TARDIS, somewhere (or somewhen) in the mass of confiscated time travel detritus stored in the Department of Temporal Investigations’ Vault on Eris. But I could be wrong. Or it might not be there now. Or then.

The thing about time travel, is that it messes up any sense of past, present and future, in the grammatical sense as well as every other way, more than enough to give anyone trying to talk about it – or write about it – a terrible and unending headache.

Just as the folks at the Federation’s Department of Temporal Investigations, whose entire existence, across space and time, owes itself to Starfleet’s pressing need to clean up after Jim Kirk’s all too frequent messing about with time.

I really want to make a Law and Order reference to “these are their stories” because it does kind of work, even if DTI Agent Gariff Lucsly’s affect and mannerisms owe a lot more to Joe Friday in Dragnet.

The story in Watching the Clock combines two elements and both go back and forth in time more than a bit. Time which always seems to wibble just when it’s expected to wobble – and very much vice-versa. Seemingly ad infinitum and always ad nauseam.

The biggest variable often seems to wrap around who is getting the nauseam this time around.

As this is the first book in the Department of Temporal Investigations series, and that’s an agency that appears – often in rueful commentary – in several episodes across the Star Trek timeline without being the center of any incident – after all, DTI are more of a cleanup crew than an instigating force – a part of this book is to set up the agency, its primary officers, and its place within Starfleet.

Which results in more than a bit of that wibble and wobble, as the case that Agents Lucsly and Dulmur find themselves in the middle of is also in the middle of both the actual case (even if they’re not aware of it) and the Trek timeline, so the story needs to establish who they are, how they got to be where (and when) they are, and who they have to work with and against.

But the case they have before them – also behind them (time travel again) – is rooted in the Temporal Cold War, which seems to be heating up again. Assuming concepts like “again” have meaning in the context of time travel. Someone is operating from the shadows, manipulating the past in order to keep the Federation from defeating their aims in the future.

Which sounds a lot like what the Borg were attempting in First Contact. As it should. When it comes to time travel, this has all happened before, and it will all, most certainly, happen again. And again. And AGAIN.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up because last week ended with some really frustrating reads. I was looking for something that I was guaranteed to be swept away by – no matter what. (I started the next St. Cyr book, What Darkness Brings, but it was too soon after the previous. I love the series, but like most series reads, I need a bit of space between each book so that the tropes don’t become over-familiar.)

It’s been a while since I read one of the Star Trek books, but I have a lot of them on my Kindle because they are one of the things Galen picks up when he’s looking for a comfort read. So there they were, and I hadn’t read this series. Although now I will when I’m looking for a reading pick-me-up.

There’s always plenty of Trek nostalgia to go around, and I’m certainly there for that, especially in the mood I was in. Howsomever, as a series set in the ‘verse but not part of one of the TV series, this one needed a bit more to carry this reader through all 500ish pages. Because that’s a lot, even for me. Especially when I’m flailing around for a read.

Watching the Clock combined the kind of buddy cop/partnership story that works so well in mystery – and this is a mystery – with that lovely bit of Trek nostalgia with a whole lot of thoughtful exploration of just what kind of a mess time travel would cause if it really worked.

Because the idea that going back in time would “fix” history, for certain definitions of both “fix” and history, sounds fine and dandy in fantasy but in SF just makes a complete mess out of causality and pretty much everything else.

(If you’re curious about other visions of just how badly it can go, take a look at One Day All This Will Be Yours by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The Tchaikovsky story, published a decade AFTER Watching the Clock, looks back on their version of a time war from the perspective of a battle-scarred, PTSD-ridden survivor and it’s not a pretty sight. But it is a fascinating story – also a lot shorter exploration of the same concepts as Watching the Clock.)

So, if you’re looking to get immersed in a familiar world while reading a completely original story set in that world, Watching the Clock is a fun read and Lucsly and Dulmur and all the members of the Department of Temporal Investigations are interesting people to explore it with. I had a ball, and if you’re a Trek fan you probably will tool.

If the concepts interest you but Trek isn’t your jam, check out One Day All This Will Be Yours.

Review: The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Review: The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David GrannThe Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
Narrator: Dion Graham
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss, supplied by publisher via Libro.fm
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: history, nonfiction, true crime
Pages: 352
Length: 8 hours and 28 minutes
Published by Doubleday Books, Random House Audio on May 11, 2023
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From the international bestselling author of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE LOST CITY OF Z, a mesmerising story of shipwreck, mutiny and murder, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.   On 28th January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty’s ship The Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain. While chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon, The Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The crew, marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2,500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes.   Then, six months later, another, even more decrepit, craft landed on the coast of Chile. This boat contained just three castaways and they had a very different story to tell. The thirty sailors who landed in Brazil were not heroes – they were mutineers. The first group responded with counter-charges of their own, of a tyrannical and murderous captain and his henchmen. While stranded on the island the crew had fallen into anarchy, with warring factions fighting for dominion over the barren wilderness. As accusations of treachery and murder flew, the Admiralty convened a court martial to determine who was telling the truth. The stakes were life-and-death—for whomever the court found guilty could hang.  

My Review:

Fiction has to be plausible, while nonfiction just has to be true. The story of HMS Wager – or more properly the story of her doomed voyage, disastrous wreck and the against all odds recovery of even a fraction of her crew – is so far over the top that we might not accept it as fiction – except possibly as sheer horror. That this voyage, and all of the extremes the crew passed through and even survived in the tiniest part, really happened carries the reader forward with them even when the conditions are so harrowing that many will want to turn their eyes away.

But man’s inhumanity to man – even without the type of disastrous conditions the crew of the Wager endured – is an oft told tale and not just of the sea. What carries this over the top is its denouement. Not just that some survived to be rescued, but that of those survivors, only ten men out of the original company of nearly three hundred lived to tell the tale. And they all seemed to tell entirely different tales, each attempting to justify their actions after the ship wrecked off the coast of present-day Chile.

The Wreck of the Wager, the frontispiece from John Byron’s account

The crew of the Wager mutinied after the terrible wreck. The Captain wanted to go forward with their original mission, in spite of having lost, at that point, 2/3rds of his crew, his ship, and quite possibly both his authority and a piece of his mind. One natural leader, the gunner John Bulkley, had a plan for navigating the Straits of Magellan in one of the smaller boats remaining to the castaways. Bulkley had drive, the trust of more of the men, a plan and a clear direction for safety, while Captain Cheap only had waning authority and wrecked trust.

Bulkley and his contingent sailed east. Cheap and his loyalists sailed west. Both returned home, with vastly differing accounts of the terrible events that took place on what the castaways had dubbed ‘Wager Island’. The court martial should have been epic – and it should have decided the truth – or at least a truth – for posterity.

But the jury on precisely what happened on Wager Island, whether the mutiny was justified or was even, technically, a mutiny at all isn’t even out because it never went in. The Admiralty chose not to pursue any of the possible charges against anyone who returned, outside of assigning blame for the wrecking of the Wager herself. Not because there were no charges to answer, but because those answers would have shot cannonballs through the British Navy’s reputation and its justifications for its so-called ‘civilizing’ conquests that do not hold up to the light of day now.

And clearly didn’t then, either, even if the Admiralty refused to acknowledge it.

Reality Rating A: The Wager is a terrible story told terribly, terribly well, made even better by the excellence of the voice narration by Dion Graham. His voice carried me through a story that, while compelling, was so very dark – all the more so for being a true story – that I would have turned aside without him.

There are three parts to The Wager’s epic narrative. It begins with the runup to the expedition that HMS Wager was intended to be a small part of. It reads as doomed from the beginning, an endless delay of money and bureaucracy, intending to be a salvo in a made-up war (the War of Jenkins’ Ear). The mission as a whole ended in a kind of pyrrhic victory, but by then the Wager had long since wrecked.

The heart – and heartbreak – of the story is in the conditions on Wager Island. Conditions that quickly break down into a chaos of failed discipline and desperation that recalls The Lord of the Flies. Not that conditions aboard HMS Wager weren’t desperate before the wreck, but the privation they had already experienced made the starvation, madness and despair while castaways just that much more difficult to bear.

As I listened to Dion Graham’s marvelous voice, the story kept building and building its recital of how truly awful the situation was, to the point where it reminded me of the privations described in Emma Donoghue’s Haven – without nearly as much reference to religion or G-d. By the time they left the island, there was no G-d to be found – no matter how much Bulkley searched for one.

What fascinated me was the rescue – or rescues as it turned out – and just how much the story morphed and changed when exposed to the light of ‘grub street’ journalism. There is very little ‘truth’ to be found by the time the conflicting accounts of the survivors and the even more sensational exaggerations of the press came into play. This is a story that leaves more questions than answers. Humans do not make reliable eyewitnesses – particularly in cases where each has a stake in saving their own skins – or necks.

The Wager isn’t the kind of adventure on the high seas that many of her crew read before they undertook the voyage. It’s an ultimately riveting, desperately tragic, terribly contentious account of a walk – or rather a sail – through the darkest places of men’s hearts and souls. A tale from which it is impossible to turn one’s eyes away, no matter how much one might be tempted to step aside. Which is only fitting, as the crew of HMS Wager could not either.

Review: Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island by Susan M. Boyer

Review: Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island by Susan M. BoyerBig Trouble on Sullivan's Island (Carolina Tales Book 1) by Susan M. Boyer
Narrator: Courtney Patterson
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, mystery, relationship fiction, Southern fiction, women's fiction
Series: Carolina Tales #1
Pages: 312
Length: 9 hours and 55 minutes
on April 11, 2023
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From the Author of the Best-selling Liz Talbot Mystery Series comes a novel about family and secrets, and the lengths we’ll go to in order to protect both.
Can this charming do-gooder carry the day?
Charleston, SC. Hadley Cooper has a big heart. So when the easy-going private investigator gets a request from a new friend to stake out her husband’s extramarital activities, she immediately begins surveillance. And when her client is discovered dead on her kitchen floor, the Southern spitfire is certain the cheater is the culprit… even though he has the perfect alibi: Hadley herself.
Flustered since she observed the cad four hours away in Greenville at the time of the murder, the determined PI desperately searches for clues to tie him to the crime. But with her policeman ex-boyfriend arrests a handy suspect, Hadley fears a guilty man is about to walk free.
Can this Palmetto-State sleuth make an impossible connection to prevent a miscarriage of justice?
With dry wit and delightful dialogue, Susan M. Boyer delivers an eccentric, vegan gumshoe sure to appeal to any fan of Southern women’s fiction. With her merry band of sassy friends, Hadley Cooper is a Lowcountry detective you won’t soon forget.
Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island is the engaging first book in the Carolina Tales series. If you like strong heroines, quirky sisterhoods, and a plenty of Southern charm, then you’ll love Susan M. Boyer’s wonderful whodunit.
Read Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island and take a trip to the lush Lowcountry today!

My Review:

Everyone knows that something that is too good to be true generally is. Although they also say never to look a gift horse in the mouth – except that the Trojans really should have when that big, fancy wooden horse was wheeled up to their gates.

I do know that the cliche about the horse doesn’t actually refer to the infamous historical incident, but the combination of cliches absolutely does apply when Charleston private investigator Hadley Cooper is asked whether she is willing to house sit her dream house on the beach of Sullivan’s Island, just across the Ben Sawyer Bridge from Charleston.

As the story begins, before the titular ‘big trouble’ visits the island, Hadley Cooper is busily NOT celebrating her 40th birthday, as her birthday is also the anniversary of her mother’s death. She’s certainly not expecting to have either a beautiful friendship, a gorgeous house or a puzzling and heartbreaking case to drop into her lap, all on that day.

But that’s what happens.

First, there’s the house. She knows the offer is too good to be true – but she can’t resist. She’s been mooning over that house all through its construction, as she regularly includes Sullivan’s Island on her morning bike ride. She investigates the client as thoroughly as she can – which is very – but can’t find a catch in the offer. So she takes it and tries desperately not to fall in love with this temporary arrangement that seems to have been built just for her.

She also finds a circle of friends that draws her right in, led by the charismatic, dynamic Eugenia Ladson, a woman just tailor-made to step into the aching place in Hadley’s heart where her mother’s ghost still lingers. It seems like kismet.

At least it does until her new, dear friend is murdered, and Hadley realizes that she, herself, doing her job to investigate Eugenia’s estranged husband to find evidence of his infidelity, is the bastard’s alibi for the murder of his wife. A situation which can’t possibly be allowed to stand no matter how much the logic of the situation gets in Hadley’s way.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up because I love the author’s Liz Talbot mysteries (start with Lowcountry Boil) and I was hoping for more of the same. To the point where I kept looking for Liz to turn up in the background somewhere. Liz doesn’t, and shouldn’t, but the two series do have a similar tone and feel of small town, tight knit coziness, so if you like one you’ll like the other.

But Hadley’s doesn’t get any assistance from any family ghosts. Instead, as this is the first book in a series, we see her put together her own ‘Scooby gang’, which includes her mentors – a retired cop and a retired PI, her new friends on Sullivan’s Island, and quite possibly her ex-boyfriend (he’s ex at the moment, at least) who just so happens to be the lead investigator on Eugenia’s death for the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

This case is a too-many-cooks affair, with the police arresting the wrong – but easy – suspect, Eugenia’s friends taking the investigation into their own hands more than they should, and Hadley trying to herd a whole bunch of cats who really don’t want to be herded. The comedy of errors and misdirection make the story every bit as quirky as the Stephanie Plum series without going nearly so far over the top.

Hadley is a very competent investigator, and not nearly so much of a trouble magnet as Plum. That this is a case where someone has used Hadley’s competence against her and the investigation is part of what makes the whole thing so hard to solve.

But it’s still a whole lot of fun to watch as this band of friends, brothers and very quirky sisters comes together to bring justice for the woman who got them all together. And it’s just that little bit more delightful in the audiobook, as the reader gets the feeling of not just being inside Hadley’s head but following along as she investigates and bonds with a fantastic group of women who I hope will become permanent figures in the series.

As much fun as I had with the mystery, there was always that sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop in regards to that ‘gift horse’ of a house. The way that it both was, and wasn’t, too good to be true and the way that Hadley learned that terrible, wonderful truth, turned out to be the perfect ending for this excellent blend of cozy mystery, women’s fiction, and Southern charm. And also made it the perfect book to read, or listen to, this Mother’s Day weekend.

A surprise that I will leave for you to discover, in the hope that it will bring the same smile to your face as it did to mine.

Review: Tamam Shud by Kerry Greenwood

Review: Tamam Shud by Kerry GreenwoodTamam Shud: A Phryne Fisher Mystery by Kerry Greenwood
Narrator: Kirsty Gillmore
Format: audiobook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Phryne Fisher
Length: 59 minutes
Published by Audible Audio, Isis Publishing Ltd on February 12, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazon
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1948. After serving with the French Resistance during the Second World War, codenamed La Chatte Noire, Phryne Fisher escaped to Australia in search of sunshine, butter and peace. So she’s furious when tragedy intrudes upon her newfound tranquillity and she discovers a dead man on Somerton Beach - well-dressed, good-looking and with a secret smile on his lips. The police are baffled as to his identity and cause of death - not to mention the scrap of paper bearing the words TAMAM SHUD found upon him, and the coded message in the book from which it was torn. But WPC Hammond knows Phryne’s fame as a detective. And Phryne telephones her old friend Bernard Cooper, who spent the war at a place called Bletchley, doing something awfully top secret involving codes....

My Review:

The mystery at the heart of this Phryne Fisher story really happened. Somerton Man, as the unidentified corpse came to be known, really was discovered on the beach at Somerton Park, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia, on December 1, 1948. To this day, his identity is still uncertain, although a likely candidate was finally determined just last year. JUST last year.

The body was not discovered by Phryne Fisher, although, considering Phryne’s wartime service in both World Wars, and the conclusion that she and her friends both in and out of the Intelligence services eventually reached, if Phryne or someone like her had been involved, or if Somerton Man, whoever he was, had himself been in the spy game, it would have been a secret that a whole lot of people would have taken to their graves.

And perhaps did.

During the course of the Phryne Fisher series, at least so far, Phryne’s date of birth is left deliberately vague. She claims to be in her late 20s – or thereabouts – in the late 1920s setting of the series so far – even though her first-person voice and her vast experience do make one wonder more than occasionally.

In Tamam Shud we finally learn, definitively, that Phryne was ‘born with the century’. In this case the 20th century, making Phryne 48 in this story that takes place after her World War II service, just as the series as a whole takes place after her service as an ambulance driver during World War I and in the intelligence services post-war.

Which makes her a contemporary of Mary Russell, the partner and wife of Sherlock Holmes in Laurie R. King’s series. A reference that seems more apt than it otherwise might, as Tamam Shud has a bit of the feel of the final canonical Sherlock Holmes story, His Last Bow.

So Tamam Shud has the feeling of Phryne’s swan song, as it takes place much later in her life than the author had ever planned to portray, and the Phryne in this tale, as well as the world she inhabits, is in a much different place than during the more lighthearted ‘Roaring 20s’.

Phryne’s gang has broken up, or dispersed over the intervening years. She’s on her own in Adelaide, and rather than calling upon Detective Inspector Jack Robinson, the redoubtable Mr. Butler, or even Bert and Ces, once Phryne gets her teeth into this case she calls upon the resources she accumulated during her years in the French Resistance, including her handlers in British Intelligence.

Phryne, or Le Chat Noir as she was during the war, is not quite who she once was, which she recognizes with more than a touch of both rue and chagrin. But she is still a force to be reckoned with while hunting down a truth that some would prefer remain a mystery.

Police photo of Somerton Man, 1948

Escape Rating A-: To love this short, bittersweet story it is probably necessary to know Phryne Fisher as the books portray her. There’s not enough time to get into the depth necessary to introduce new readers to this beloved character. But for those who already love Phryne, it’s a special treat.

Rather than the ‘portrait of the detective as a young woman’ we have in the book series, this is the portrait of who that young woman has become after 20 years of hard choices and a second war on the heels of the first. So there’s an element here of Phryne proving to herself that she’s still got it when it comes to ferreting out the solution to the mystery.

There’s also a sense of her finally emerging from a post-war slough of despond and coming back to life and back to her truest self – even if that self is a little longer in the tooth than she ever imagined she’d be. Or at least than she ever imagined that she’d look.

The mystery in Tamam Shud ends up being more interesting than fun the way that many of the puzzles that Phryne solves in the books turn out to be. And that seems right, both out of a bit of respect for the very real unsolved mystery at its heart – and for the fact that Phryne is older, sadder and perhaps wiser. Or simply a bit more cognizant that the world isn’t what it was and neither is she.

Also, this is very, very short. Coming to it as someone familiar with the books, it seemed like the story barely sketched Phryne and focused on the unsolved mystery. Which wrapped up rather quickly. (As it would if the government were hushing up post-war spy games.) It does end in hope that Phryne has discovered a new lease on life.

It’s always a treat to spend time with this character, making this short, bittersweet audiobook into something a bit more special for this reader than either its length or its depth possibly warrant.

Reviewer’s note: This version of the story seems to only be available in audio. The paperback/ebook is an entirely different book about the same case, the author’s attempt to solve the mystery from her own first-person perspective rather than Phryne’s. Phryne’s version of the story came later, for inclusion in a collection of stories about fictional detectives solving real historical mysteries titled True Detective, which I have attempted to locate to no avail.

Review: When Maidens Mourn by C.S. Harris

Review: When Maidens Mourn by C.S. HarrisWhen Maidens Mourn (Sebastian St. Cyr, #7) by C.S. Harris
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Sebastian St. Cyr, #7, #7
Pages: 341
Published by Berkley, New American Library on March 6, 2012
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Regency England, August 1812. Sebastian's plans to escape the heat of London for a honeymoon are shattered when the murdered body of Hero's good friend, Gabrielle Tennyson, is discovered drifting in a battered boat at the site of a long-vanished castle known as Camlet Moat. A beautiful young antiquarian, Miss Tennyson had recently provoked an uproar with her controversial identification of the island as the location of Camelot. Missing and presumed also dead are Gabrielle's two young cousins, nine-year-old George and three-year-old Alfred.Still struggling to define the nature of their new marriage, Sebastian and Hero find themselves occasionally working at cross-purposes as their investigation leads from London's medieval Inns of Court to its seedy back alleys, and from grand country homes to rural enclaves where ancient Celtic beliefs still hold sway. As he probes deeper, Sebastian also discovers dark secrets at the heart of the Tennyson family, and an enigmatic young French lieutenant with a dangerous, mysterious secret of his own.Racing to unmask a ruthless killer and unravel the puzzle of the missing children, Sebastian and Hero soon find both their lives and their growing love for each other at risk as their investigation leads to Hero's father, who is also Sebastian's long-time nemesis... and to a tall, dark stranger who may hold the key to Sebastian's own parentage.

My Review:

The legend of King Arthur has always loomed large over Britain, but even more so at times when the current monarch is less than popular. Or, as in the case of the corpulent, aging, spendthrift Prinny, Prince Regent for his mentally incapacitated father George III, not just unpopular but downright detested for his endless need for more money and therefore higher taxes to maintain his profligate lifestyle AND continue to prosecute Britain’s seemingly endless war with Napoleon and France.

At times like these, King Arthur, the “once and future king” shifts from being a mere legend to a figure of hope. People are looking for a savior from the hated Hanoverian dynasty and praying for a fated king from the mists of time and myth skirts the edges of treason without quite toppling into that abyss.

Not that Prinny isn’t scared out of his mind over the broadsheets that appear everywhere, and especially not that the powerful Lord Jarvis, propping up Prinny’s throne, isn’t looking for a way to tamp down the enthusiasm. No matter how many lies he has to tell, how many experts he has to blackmail, and how many people he has to kill in the cause of keeping Britain safe and Prinny’s throne secure.

Even if he has to lie to his daughter and have one of her dearest friends murdered. As far as Jarvis is concerned he’ll do whatever is necessary in service of what he considers, not merely the “Greater Good”, but the highest cause of all.

But the murder of Gabrielle Tennyson, his daughter Hero’s dear friend, puts Jarvis in opposition – again, pretty much perpetually – to Hero’s new husband, Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin. As always, Devlin is determined to get to the bottom of this devilishly complicated case that has, so far, left one woman dead and put her two missing nephews in danger of following her into the grave – if they haven’t already.

While the conflict between Hero’s loyalties and Devlin’s secrets open a chasm in their barely-begun, frequently tense relationship and ink-barely-dry marriage. A chasm they may not be able to navigate across – not even for the sake of the child they married to protect.

Escape Rating A+: The Sebastian St. Cyr series, as a collective whole, comprises three elements that are endlessly fascinating. As historical mysteries, they generally begin with a dead body, in this particular case that of Gabrielle Tennyson. Thus there is always a case to be solved, with St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, as the principal investigator into whodunnit and often more importantly, why it was done and all too often, who ordered it done.

The who ordered it part leads directly to the second element. These stories take place during the Napoleonic Wars or in their immediate aftermath. Devlin served as a cavalry officer and suffers from PTSD as a result of that service. His penchant for investigating murders is one of the ways he copes with his condition.

But Devlin is a member of the aristocracy, the heir to an Earldom. When he pokes his nose into the doings of the ‘high and mighty’ he can’t be ignored or shoved aside – not that plenty haven’t tried. As a consequence, there is quite often a political element to his investigations, along with a deeper than usual dive into the frequently rancid sausage-making of government – with insights into history as they are happening.

When Maidens Mourn dives into that morass from a surprising direction, as the murder of Gabrielle Tennyson leads back to the government’s underhanded contrivance to put the legend of King Arthur to rest. Again. (“This has all happened before and it will all happen again.”)

Diving into the Arthurian legends in this particular instance proved to be doubly poignant, as it touches, indirectly and fictionally, on the very real Arthur, Lord Tennyson, who will grow up to write The Idylls of the King, a Victorian reimagining of, you guessed it, the legends of King Arthur.

Along with the investigation and the politics and history, there’s a third, personal element to each story, an element that at first seemed the most prominent in this case. Devlin and Hero have been married a scant four days when this story opens. Their marriage is one of necessity, as Devlin needs an heir, and Hero is carrying that heir after the events in Where Serpents Sleep, when they spent one night grasping for life while expecting to die.

Hero is the daughter of Devlin’s greatest enemy, and she is now trapped between two conflicting sets of secrets, a conflict that may cost her any possibility of happiness in her hasty but necessary marriage. Devlin has secrets of his own that he does not want to reveal to a woman he is not sure he can trust – and yet there can be no trust if one of them doesn’t give up something.

Part of what makes this series so interesting is that Hero is likely to prove the one with the stronger will and the better reason not to compromise, but as things stand at the end of this book, how they will go on together is yet uncertain.

At least, it’s uncertain at this particular point in the series. I began reading St. Cyr almost 20 years ago, at the beginning with What Angels Fear. At first, it read as a combination of historical mystery firmly grounded in its historical period with a touch of romance. What initially captivated me was that combination of history and mystery, and the way that the historical period has come to the fore – as well as the continuing development of this fascinating cast of characters – has made this one of my favorite comfort reads.

So I’ve read the early books and the later books and am hit or miss in the middle. I’m systematically changing those misses to hits as I wait for each new book in the series. Which means that next up will be What Darkness Brings, the next time I need a reading pick-me-up to whisk me away!

Review: Seven Girls Gone by Allison Brennan

Review: Seven Girls Gone by Allison BrennanSeven Girls Gone (Quinn & Costa, #4) by Allison Brennan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Quinn & Costa #4
Pages: 443
Published by Mira on April 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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For three years, women have been disappearing—and eventually turning up dead in the small bayou town of St. Augustine, Louisiana. Police detective Beau Hebert is the only one who seems to care, but with every witness quickly silenced and a corrupt police department set on keeping the cases unsolved, Beau’s investigation stalls at every turn.
With nobody else to trust, Beau calls in a favor from his friend on the FBI’s Mobile Response Team. While LAPD detective Kara Quinn works undercover to dig into the women’s murders and team leader Matt Costa officially investigates the in-custody death of a witness, Beau might finally have a chance at solving the case.
But in a town where everyone knows everyone, talking gets you killed and secrets stay buried, it’s going to take the entire team working around the clock to unravel the truth. Especially when they discover that the deep-seated corruption and the deadly drug-trafficking ring at the center of it all extends far beyond the small-town borders.

My Review:

To paraphrase Shakespeare, “Something is rotten in the parish of Broussard,” specifically in the town of St. Augustine, in the heart of the Louisiana bayou.

When we first meet St. Augustine detective Beau Hebert, there are already five women dead, one missing and presumed the same, and a man has just committed murder in front of an entire crowd of folks mostly waiting for their turn in a bar that EVERYONE in town knows is a front for the local brother and illegal drugs distributor.

There’s a lot going on, all of it bad, and looking like it’s going to get worse. Detective Hebert is pretty damn certain that his boss, the chief of police, is in on the whole mess past his wallet and up to his neck, and that there’s a fix in with the District Attorney. Between the two of them, nothing ever gets done and no one ever gets brought up on charges no matter how much evidence Hebert brings in.

Because it all disappears somewhere along the way.

At the end of his rope, feeling like his time is running out one way or another, with no one to turn to, Hebert phones a friend. An old friend from his days in the Navy, who just so happens to be a member of FBI Special Agent in Charge Mathias Costa’s Mobile Response Team.

Hebert thinks all he needs is someone to talk to – because he has too many hostages to fortune in the parish to rock the very rotten boat. But friends don’t leave friends out on a limb all alone, so Costa’s entire team makes their way to the heart of the bayou to dredge up all the muck that’s obscuring the bottom of the filthy water.

Along with all the alligators lurking among the corrupt powers that be in this tiny town. The thing about gators is that they bite. What those antediluvian descendants of dinosaurs don’t know – at least not yet – is that Costa and his team bite back.

Escape Rating A-: I picked this up for two reasons. First and foremost, because I fell straight into the plot and the team dynamics of this bunch when I read the second book in the Quinn & Costa series, Tell No Lies. I couldn’t put that one down, and the same was true of the third book in the series, The Wrong Victim. So I went into this one expecting a compelling thriller – and I mostly got that.

I also love this series for its ‘competence porn’ aspects. I was in the mood for something where the protagonists knew what the hell they were doing and weren’t worrying about the consequences of doing it. I was certain that was something I’d get in this series and I was pretty much all in.

The only thing keeping this from being an A+ like the previous two books is that the question about whether the relationship between Mathias Costa and Kara Quinn is merely friends-with-benefits, all hidden on the down-low because of their working relationship, or whether it’s going to be an actual ‘Relationship’ with a capital ‘R’ got a bit too angsty and had a bit too much of an impact on both of their behaviors during this case.

Which had all the angst it needed without throwing the emotional baggage they are both lugging around about romance into the mix.

The case itself had me on the edge of my seat because of the way the stakes start out high and just keep getting higher. And because even from the opening, it’s obvious to EVERYONE that someone – or several someones – have committed horrible crimes and that someone powerful is doing more terrible things to keep those crimes covered up.

The question that plagues Beau Hebert at the beginning, and Costa’s entire team once they get there, is exactly who to pin what on. Because someone keeps making the evidence disappear – right along with any potential witnesses. But there are so many motives and so many victims that the air is as thick with suspects as it is with humidity.

And there’s a traitor in their midst muddying the already murky waters, as well as a terrible question. As horrible as the situation is, and as frightened as every single person in town seems to be of pretty much everything – and rightfully so, if Costa and his team do manage to clean out the gators is anyone going to be left with the strength and the will and the sheer moxie to prevent the whole damn parish from sinking back down into the mire?

But that’s not Costa’s job. His job is to arrest the perpetrators with enough evidence to make the charges stick all the way to long jail terms – and to protect his team at all costs. Before all is said and done, and for once more is done than said and not the other way around, that cost almost becomes too high to pay.

While the team wraps up this case with a VERY satisfactory bow at the end, it does not read as if the Quinn & Costa series is anywhere near finished – which is an excellent thing! But there is not currently a next book in the series listed, I have hope there will be one. I am hooked on this author, so I’m very happy that the author has an upcoming standalone thriller, North of Nowhere (due out this August) to tide me over while I wait!