A- #BookReview: A Gentleman’s Murder by Christopher Huang

A- #BookReview: A Gentleman’s Murder by Christopher HuangA Gentleman's Murder (Eric Peterkin #1) by Christopher Huang
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Eric Peterkin #1
Pages: 352
Published by Inkshares on July 31, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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The year is 1924. The cobblestoned streets of St. James ring with jazz as Britain races forward into an age of peace and prosperity. London's back alleys, however, are filled with broken soldiers and still enshadowed by the lingering horrors of the Great War.
Only a few years removed from the trenches of Flanders himself, Lieutenant Eric Peterkin has just been granted membership in the most prestigious soldiers-only club in London: The Britannia. But when a gentleman's wager ends with a member stabbed to death, the victim's last words echo in the Lieutenant’s head: that he would "soon right a great wrong from the past."
Eric is certain that one of his fellow members is the murderer: but who? Captain Mortimer Wolfe, the soldier’s soldier thrice escaped from German custody? Second Lieutenant Oliver Saxon, the brilliant codebreaker? Or Captain Edward Aldershott, the steely club president whose Savile Row suits hide a frightening collision of mustard gas scars?
Eric's investigation will draw him far from the marbled halls of the Britannia, to the shadowy remains of a dilapidated war hospital and the heroin dens of Limehouse. And as the facade of gentlemenhood cracks, Eric faces a Matryoshka doll of murder, vice, and secrets pointing not only to the officers of his own club but the very investigator assigned by Scotland Yard.

My Review:

I picked this up because I got teased into it by a promo for the second book in the series (A Pretender’s Murder) that described it as “Agatha Christie and Anthony Horowitz Meet in 1925 London”. Something about that description started calling my name, because wouldn’t that be a marvelous thing? So I picked up this first book and got instantly hooked.

Detectives are always outsiders in one way or another, and Eric Peterkin is definitely a part of that tradition, amateur though he is. Peterkin is, on his father’s side, the latest in a long line of Peterkins who have served England in her military for generations. He’s a member of the Britannia Club, a club reserved for men who not only served their country but saw action in whichever of the Empire’s wars happened to occur during their lifetimes.

As this story takes place in 1924, it’s not a surprise that Peterkin, along with most of his contemporaries, served in “the war to end all wars” – and that they are scarred by that service in one way or another – or many.

But England isn’t Peterkin’s only country – even if he owes no allegiance to any other. His mother was Chinese, and Eric Peterkin and his sister Penny were raised in India, where his father served the Raj.

His membership in the Britannia Club was contentious from the beginning. While a Peterkin has been a member of the Britannia Club since its founding, and the Peterkins are the last founding family left on the membership rolls, all that most other members see is that Eric is not “one of them” no matter his name. All they see is the mixed heritage on his face – and most of them never let him forget it.

When a murder is committed, not just on the very grounds of the Britannia but inside its normally locked vault, Peterkin feels honor-bound to see justice done. Not just because of his ties to the club and to the Peterkins that came before him, but also to the dead man, a new member who had confided in him that he had come to the Britannia to right a wrong and see justice finally granted to an innocent man – and that the proof of that innocence was locked away in the club’s vault for safekeeping.

That Peterkin’s job is to vet mystery and thriller manuscripts for a small publisher, that he adores crime solving by proxy and sees fictional mysteries as a great game to be played and won by the reader, gives him, perhaps, a sense of competence in solving this very real murder that is not justified by his actual experience.

What he does have, however and very much, is both a keen mind and a fresh eye, a willingness to look at the evidence that is actually before him instead of the machinations and favoritism of the old boys’ network of which he is unlikely to ever be a part. Peterkin is willing to follow the clues to the truth – no matter which favors or whose protections he tears down along the way.

This case is going to be the making of him. If it doesn’t break him or kill him first.

Escape Rating A-: This was absolutely grand, and I had a grand time with it. This was exactly the kind of absorbing, convoluted mystery that I’ve been in the mood for and I’m ever so glad I picked it up and pretty much raced through it in just two big bites.

Eric Peterkin is a fascinating protagonist, as he’s very much of the “fools rush in” sort of character. He does have a tendency to leap before he looks – and that’s both exactly what this case needs and fits with where he’s coming from. This is definitely the “Roaring 20’s” and part of that roar is everyone doing their damndest to forget the horrors of the war just past and hope like hell that they won’t have to go through that again in their lifetimes.

So, to a certain extent, Eric gets into this investigation to solve the puzzle, because he’s good at solving puzzles and he sees literary mysteries as a bit of a game. Which they were. That this one is real just pulls him deeper in, as he sees that injustice is being done and he can’t resist tilting at that particular windmill no matter how many people attempt to steer him away.

But as much as Peterkin is playing a game, he’s also trying to shove down a reality that comes around to bite him and his contemporaries more often than any of them are willing to admit. Peterkin, and all of the members of the Britannia, have PTSD – even if it wasn’t called that then and even if there wasn’t much sympathy or empathy for it and even though just needing treatment for it made them all feel like failures.

The war is still very much with them, often at the times when they least expect it. (If this part of the story either feels familiar or you are interested in other characters dealing with this issue at this time because it is a truth that got buried for a long time, check out the Inspector Ian Rutledge series by Charles Todd and also the classic Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy L. Sayers as both acknowledged their PTSD and dealt with it both well and very, very badly indeed.)

The mystery in this story turned out to be twofold. Or on two tracks. Or a bit of both. On the one hand, there’s the whodunnit and who benefited from it – the usual central questions in a mystery. On the other, and the roadblock that Peterkin rams his head into repeatedly, is that this is also a mystery that is twisted and turned by a succession of people with the very best of intentions laying the paving stones on the road to hell, and then being surprised and even overcome when a villain takes advantage of that work to ease his own trip in that direction.

A Gentleman’s Murder turned out to be a fantastic way to spend a few glorious reading hours. I’m left with one question which I sincerely hope will be answered in the second book in the series – the one that got me into this in the first place – A Pretender’s Murder, coming to the US in July. I’m expecting GREAT things!

A- #AudioBookReview: Down in the Sea of Angels by Khan Wong

A- #AudioBookReview: Down in the Sea of Angels by Khan WongDown in the Sea of Angels by Khan Wong
Narrator: Eunice Wong
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: fantasy, post apocalyptic, time travel, hopepunk
Pages: 336
Length: 11 hours and 11 minutes
Published by Angry Robot, Dreamscape Lore on April 22, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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An intense and thoughtful time-travelling dystopian fantasy where three individuals, psychically linked through time, fight enslavement, exploitation, and environmental collapse. A great read for fans of Emily St. John Mandel.

In 2106, Maida Sun possesses the ability to see the entire history of any object she touches. When she starts a job with a cultural recovery project in San Francisco with other psions like her, she discovers a teacup that connects her with Li Nuan, a sex-traffificked girl in a 1906 Chinatown brothel, and with Nathan, a tech-designer and hedonist of 2006.

A chance encounter with a prominent political leader reveals to Maida his plan to contain everyone with psionic abilities, eliminate their personal autonomy, and use their skills for his own gain. Maida is left with no choice but to join a fight she doesn’t feel prepared for, with flashes of the past, glimpses of the future and a band of fellow psions as her only tools. She must find a way to stop this agenda before it takes hold and destroys life as she knows it. Can the past give Maida the key to saving her future?

My Review:

This is a hard book to characterize, and even more difficult to sum up in just a few – or even a few dozen – pithy phrases. But I’m certainly going to try.

A big part of that difficulty is that it isn’t just one story. It’s three stories that are loosely linked – even though that’s not obvious at the beginning – centered around three individuals who do not know what they have to do with each other any more than the reader does.

They’re also not experiencing the same thing – or even the same sort of thing, although the first and third are closer in that particular than either of them would ever imagine.

But there is one thing that they share from the beginning. All of their stories, all of their histories and hopes and dreams, take place in San Francisco, a place that has carried the hopes and dreams of so very many since long before the city boomed during the California Gold Rush.

In 1906, Li Nuan, 16 years old, sold by her parents into slavery, forced into sex work, whose very existence is proof that slavery was not eradicated by the Civil War, is ‘in service’ to one of the Tong bosses who ‘owned’ pre-Earthquake Chinatown. And the earthquake is coming, the end of the world as Li Nuan knows it. But she’s seeing visions of the quake, the fire that follows, and the death and destruction that results. And those visions have told her that she can seize the freedom she yearns for in the chaos – if she’s willing to do whatever it takes to claim it.

Nathan Zhao in 2006, an up-and-coming tech designer, is busy living his very good life without taking too much care for the consequences to the world he lives on. He’s a good man, a good person, he’s got a great job, is in a happy long-term relationship with his boyfriend, they’re free to be openly gay – which he knows is a privilege – and life is, well, good. The vision that he gets, both of Li Nuan’s past and of the environmental destruction to come in his near future, opens his eyes and sets his life on a different course than he’d originally planned.

The reason that both Li Nuan and Nathan are having these life-changing visions is Maida Sun. Maida is a historian and more importantly, is gifted with psychometry in a future where a significant minority of the population has been gifted with psionic powers of one stripe or another. Maida can see the past of any object she touches, and she’s working on a cultural reclamation project in the ruins of what her post-apocalyptic society calls ‘The Precursor Era’. In other words, us.

And that’s where all the links get filled in – and pushed out into the future. Nathan and his friends buried a time capsule in 2006, a capsule that is uncovered as part of the project Maida is working on. In that capsule, along with photos, memorabilia, a few personal items and a bit of outright junk, is a jade tea cup from the mid-19th century. A cup that passed through Li Nuan’s hands, down the generations to her great-grandson Nathan, and into that box only to emerge a century later under the hands – and into the powers – of Nathan’s great-great-niece, Maida.

At a point where Maida’s post-apocalyptic world is on the cusp of descending into the dystopia they initially avoided. But only will continue to do so at this terrible, hopeful juncture if Maida can seize her day and her freedom as decisively as her ancestor Li Nuan did hers.

Escape Rating A-: This is one of those stories that made me think pretty much all the thoughts and feel like it brought up all the readalikes. Which is only fair as it’s not one story but three stories and they aren’t as similar as one might expect in a single book.

At the same time, it did feel as if all the stories revolved around the idea of ‘carpe diem’, even though the days that each person in the change needed to seize were very different. Still, when they each grabbed hold of that day out of hope for the future, they each moved the story forward into the hope that they reached out for.

A virtuous circle rather than the vicious cycle that begins each of their stories.

Li Nuan’s story is the most harrowing – not surprising considering the conditions under which she was brought to California. Nathan is honestly having a lot of fun in his part of the story – at least until he sees that his world is not only due for a great big fall – but a fall that he’s likely to live to see and and can’t continue his own personal revel toward the cliff even if he can’t do much to fix the wider world.

But the story is centered in Maida Sun’s early 21st century post-apocalypse. Initially her world seems filled with hope of a brighter day for everyone – even if most people are still cursing the ‘Precursors’ (meaning US) for leaving such a big damn mess to clean up.

Still, the human side of Maida’s world is filled with hope. The ‘Collapse’ of the Precursor civilization in the 2050s, the climatic changes, the wars and death and destruction that followed, set humanity up for a more cooperative future – with the help of the great ‘Bloom’ of auroras that surrounded the planet and gave rise to psionic powers among a percentage of the population.

But by Maida’s 2106, the new normal has been normal long enough, and the devastation of the collapse is just far enough back in time and memory, that some people are starting to think that the ‘good old days’ were better than they were – at least for THEIR sort of people. Whatever that might mean. And, because humans are STILL gonna be human, there’s always someone just watching and waiting to take advantage of that impulse. By creating a new scapegoat, giving a new generation someone to hate and fear, and telling as many big lies as they can to weaponize society so that a new authoritarian regime can rise and start the whole terrible cycle all over again.

It’s hard to miss the historical parallels, because the playbook being used is old and familiar and all the more frightening for being followed right this very minute. What gives Down in the Sea of Angels its hopeful ending is that Maida Sun and the psions are finally living in a time when more people seem to want the world to get better for everyone – or alternatively that she and the psion community have the truth on their side and the opportunity to nip the forces of regression, repression and evil in the bud before the tide has turned completely in their favor.

More than a few of all of those thoughts I mentioned at the top before I close. One of the reasons this story worked as well as it did is that San Francisco is a bit of a liminal place and its history as well as its reputation for being a bit ‘out there’ for multiple definitions of that phrase fit the story. (For an entirely different fantasy featuring San Francisco’s liminality take a look at Passing Strange by Ellen Klages.)

Maida’s particular early 22nd century was fascinating because it didn’t follow the usual patterns for post-apocalyptic stories – or at least there was clearly a delay between the apocalypse and the dystopia – or we missed the first wave of dystopia and this is the attempt of a second dystopia to take hold. It’s a very different post-apocalyptic vision from either The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed or The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow and the contrasts are quite interesting.

As much as the rising tide of authoritarianism in Maida’s time resembles both the rise of Nazi Germany AND the present political situation in the United States, the way that the anti-psion sentiment is created and promoted by the powers-that-be owes more than a bit, in the fictional sense at least, to the anti-mutant sentiment in the X-Men movie series.

I’ll confess that I picked this up because I absolutely adored the author’s debut novel, The Circus Infinite – and I was hoping to get a similar feeling from this book. In the end I did enjoy Down in the Sea of Angels very much, but not quite as much as Circus, and I think that’s because of the split story lines and how long it took them to figure out that they were part of each other. Howsomever, I did absolutely love the audio narration by Eunice Wong, and it was lovely to hear her voice again, telling me a marvelous story.

A- #BookReview: Shadow of the Solstice by Anne Hillerman

A- #BookReview: Shadow of the Solstice by Anne HillermanShadow of the Solstice: A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel (A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel, 10) by Anne Hillerman
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, large print, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, thriller
Series: Leaphorn & Chee #28, Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito #10
Pages: 336
Published by Harper on April 22, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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In this gripping chapter in New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman’s Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series, the detectives must sort out a save-the-planet meditation group connected to a mysterious death and a nefarious scheme targeting vulnerable indigenous people living with addiction.

The Navajo Nation police are on high alert when a U.S. Cabinet Secretary schedules an unprecedented trip to the little Navajo town of Shiprock, New Mexico. The visit coincides with a plan to resume uranium mining along the Navajo Nation border. Tensions around the official’s arrival escalate when the body of a stranger is found in an area restricted for the disposal of radioactive uranium waste. Is it coincidence that a cult with a propensity for violence arrives at a private camp group outside Shiprock the same week to celebrate the summer solstice? When the outsiders’ erratic behavior makes their Navajo hosts uneasy, Officer Bernadette Manuelito is assigned to monitor the situation. She finds a young boy at grave risk, abused women, and other shocking discoveries that plunge her and Lt. Jim Chee into a volatile and deadly situation.

Meanwhile, Darleen Manuelito, Bernie’s high spirited younger sister, learns one of her home health clients is gone–and the woman’s daughter doesn’t seem to care. Darleen’s curiosity and sense of duty combine to lead her to discover that the client’s grandson is also missing and that the two have become ensnared in a wickedly complex scheme exploiting indigenous people. Darleen’s information meshes with a case Chee has begun to solve that deals with the evil underside of human nature.

My Review:

The advantage of a mystery series in which there are not just one but two highly qualified investigators is that it is possible to focus on two separate crimes and NOT have them merge into a single perpetrator or gang of perpetrators at the end.

Navajo Nation Police Lieutenant Jim Chee has been investigating a rise in disappearances across their jurisdiction. Not that adults don’t occasionally walk away from their lives no matter where they live, but this rise is considerably more than the usual, with more families than are usually left behind in such cases left bereft by the limbo of their probable loss.

At the same time, Navajo Nation Police Officer Bernadette Manuelito is investigating complaints about an unapproved and downright dangerous structure being built by a visiting “meditation” group on land that they have rented from a well-known local family.

This may not sound like all that big a deal, but a) they don’t own the land, b) the owner refused permission for them to build, c) they didn’t get their plans approved and d) the structure is a sweat lodge meant to be used for meditation and healing ceremonies and its construction is so dangerous as to be downright deadly in the wrong circumstances. Which is exactly what they’re planning to hold. That the whole setup not just looks and sounds and more importantly ACTS like a cult setting up for something either dangerous or suicidal or both makes the owners’ feel unsafe and makes Bernie’s hackles rise accordingly.

Into this already potentially explosive mix throw the possible arrival of the Secretary of Energy, probably to give a speech that will run directly contrary to Navajo Nation policy, with all the chaos that a visiting dignitary could bring – as well as the tensions arising from the lack of certainty about whether she will or she won’t.

Chee has been left in charge of whatever is going to happen, if it’s going to happen, because the station captain had a heart attack right after the potential visit was announced. He’s torn between duties, cases and family while his wife, Officer Bernie Manuelito, has turned over a really big rock and a much more dangerous snake than she expected has crawled out to strike at a bigger prize than anyone imagined.

Escape Rating A-: As much and as long as I have loved this series, it took me a bit to get into this particular entry in it for reasons that I think were a ‘me’ thing and may not be a ‘you’ thing. I was looking for more of an escape than I got this time around, as this story took me away in geography but not so much in other ways.

In other words, everything that happens in this story felt very close to ‘real’ life, and I wanted to be further away than that. Also, I was really, seriously worried for one of the characters and I needed to find out that she’d be okay before I could relax into the story. Once she managed to rescue herself, the rest of the story grabbed me and didn’t let go until the end – which was more than a bit of a nail-biter.

What made this one both so real and so fascinating was the way that even though the two cases don’t merge into one in any of the usual ways, they were both motivated by a lot of the same things – none of which were the ostensible causes of the crimes themselves.

Both crimes are about greed and manipulation, about taking advantage of people’s desire for a better life to line the pockets of the perpetrators at the expense of as many people as possible. That one is a Medicaid scam in Phoenix and the other is a cult subjugating its members even as it bilks them of their money is merely window dressing on the true motives of their perpetrators, which are to take advantage of people – and the government in the case of the Medicaid scam – and line their own pockets.

That one perpetrator is coldly, cruelly sane while the other believes he’s getting messages from a higher power – or at least pretends to – doesn’t mean that they’re not operating from surprisingly similar playbooks in the end.

And ending which administers just desserts to both, even though it’s not remotely possible to truly balance the scales in either case. Which comes back, again, to just how closely reality bites this fictional setting.

Over the more than OMG 30 years that I’ve been following this series (the series began in 1970 with The Blessing Way but I didn’t get hooked on it until the early 1990s) the more I’ve enjoyed getting to know these characters and have loved watching them grow and change over the years. When the series began, the ‘Legendary’ Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn was the protagonist and young Officer Jim Chee was his sometimes reluctant sidekick. Now Chee is the lead investigator, his wife and fellow officer Bernie is NOT his sidekick but an investigator in her own right. They face a whole new set of challenges, often separately on the job but together in their relationship, while behind them a new crop of officers is learning the ropes and their world is changing – as the world does. (And if any of this sounds familiar that might be because the original stories are the basis for the TV series Dark Winds.)

But humans are always gonna human, there will always be more problems for them to face and crimes for them to solve, and I’ll always be looking forward to the next book in the series whenever it appears. Hopefully, that will be this time next year.

A- #AudioBookReview: Trap Line by Timothy Zahn

A- #AudioBookReview: Trap Line by Timothy ZahnTrap Line by Timothy Zahn
Narrator: Greg D. Barnett
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, space opera
Pages: 49
Length: 1 hour and 21 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on March 25, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazon
Goodreads

An engineer’s groundbreaking solo mission is rudely interrupted when he stumbles into an interstellar trap. The New York Times bestselling author of the Thrawn trilogy is back with a wholly original short story of first contact.
En route to far-off stars, Toby’s consciousness has a crucial mission: inhabit his clone long enough to repair a spaceship, then zip back to Earth. He’s done it a million times, more or less. OK, twelve times. It should only take a few hours.
Until he wakes up in jail. And he’s not alone.
His fellow prisoners: a cadre of alien soldiers. His prison: an ethereal boundary that will imprison their spirits until their bodies die. His jailers can’t even see him. But their pet cat (er, iguana cat?) can—and it’s got a serious case of the zoomies.
With humanity’s place in the odd and ever-widening universe riding on Toby’s choices, it’s time to saddle up for a ghostly game of cat and mouse.

My Review:

What Toby Collier comes to appreciate when his ‘astral’ manifests in an alien trap instead of aboard the Terran FarJump ship Janus out in the far flung galaxy is something attributed to poet William Butler Yeats centuries before Toby was born, that “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.”

Certainly neither Toby, nor anyone from Earth, has ever met anyone similar to the vaguely avian-like Hyfisk, the soldiers with whom Toby is trapped in a small, family-operated space ship in the middle of the great, wide galaxy that all of them were traversing.

The family, Porpou, his wife, their daughter Ibbi and her ‘iguana cat’ Bisqitty, make their living by trapping astrals like Toby and the Hyfisks and reporting them to the ‘Overmasters’, whoever or whatever THEY are. For the family, it’s a living – if not necessarily a luxurious or even steady one.

But the trap is a roadblock for the astrals, an interruption that will lead to Toby’s death when he doesn’t complete his job out on the far reaches of human-discovered space and return in a reasonable time frame. Because his bosses will cut their losses along with the life-support of his physical body.

The Hyfisks’ situation is more dire – they are soldiers on the way to defend an important colony from an aggressive enemy. Not that they also won’t die when their life support is cut, but their duty is more important to them than their individual lives.

Except that they have been stuck in that trap long enough to give up. Toby, freshly trapped, hasn’t. And is determined not to. He’s also an engineer rather than a soldier, and he hasn’t yet met a puzzle that he’s not going to at least attempt to solve.

The Hyfisk can’t solve the problem with the knowledge they have. Toby, on the other hand, brings fresh – if non-corporeal – eyes and mind to the same problem and figures out that if they share their knowledge, they can escape. If they trust each other enough.

And if they can get the iguana cat to cooperate – which might be the most difficult part of the whole thing. Her name isn’t pronounced ‘BisKITTY’ for nothing.

Escape Rating A-: Trap Line turned out to be a whole lot of fun and I’m very glad I listened to/read it. Even though I initially picked it up because I was having a difficult time getting into anything. Monday’s book seriously did a number on my concentration, but this little story turned out to be the cure.

I picked this up through Kindle Unlimited – a subscription I get happier about all the time. It was fun, it was quick, the audio narrator did a great job portraying Toby AND the Hyfisks and it all just made for the reading pick-me-up I was desperate for.

For an SF story, Trap Line was surprisingly cozy. It’s a small cast in an even smaller setting, just ten Hyfisks, three insectoid aliens, an iguana cat, and Toby. It’s also small in length, but it sets itself well AND gives the reader just enough to get why and how Toby and Irion, the commander of the Hyfisks, manage to come to (mostly) trust each other in this “enemy of my enemy is my friend’ scenario. Particularly as Toby and the humans aren’t aware of the Overmasters enough to BE their enemy – at least not yet – AND Toby manages to convince Irion that the trap-keeping family are not really an enemy to either of them. They’re all just trying to get by – like everyone else.

That this is also a story about the cleverness of humans and the inventiveness of our species instead of any attempt to win by domination or violence – and not just because it wouldn’t work in this situation AT ALL – made this a whole lot of fun, with a comforting layer of competence over the whole thing.

It broke my reading slump – and I’m incredibly grateful for that!

Even though Toby, the Hyfisks, and Porpou have no ability to communicate all together (Toby and the Hyfisks can communicate because they’re all astrals), they still manage to concoct a mutually beneficial plan that has the wonderful added benefit of sticking it to the Overmasters for all of them without the Overmasters being aware that they’ve been shafted. Toby, the Hyfisks and Porpou have made friends, even if they haven’t managed to share a single word in ANY language – and their quiet rebellion makes for a glorious – and friendly – ending to this delightful short story.

A- #BookReview: One Level Down by Mary G. Thompson

A- #BookReview: One Level Down by Mary G. ThompsonOne Level Down by Mary G. Thompson
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction
Pages: 196
Published by Tachyon Publications on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Trapped in a child’s body, a resourceful woman risks death by deletion from a simulated world. With her debut novella for adults, Mary G. Thompson (Wuftoom) has crafted a taut, ultimately hopeful story that deftly explores identity and autonomy.
“Brilliant and beautiful! One Level Down is a perfectly executed gem of a book. Deeply satisfying and completely mesmerizing, it’s full of depth, heart, and thought. A remarkable achievement!”—Sarah Beth Durst, New York Times bestselling author of The Spellshop
Ella is the oldest five-year-old in the universe. For fifty-eight years, the founder of a simulated colony-planet has forced her to pretend to be his daughter. Her “Daddy” has absolute power over all elements of reality, which keeps the colonists in line even when their needs are not met. But his failing experiments and despotic need for absolute control are increasingly dangerous.
Ella’s very life depends on her performance as a child. She has watched Daddy delete her stepmother and the loved ones of anyone who helps her.
But every sixty years, a Technician comes from the world above. Ella has been watching and working and biding her time. Because if she cannot make the technician help her, the only solution is a desperate measure that could lead to consequences for the entire universe.

My Review:

For a rather short book, One Level Down tackles some really huge questions about the nature of reality.

The stage in which those questions play out is a tiny human colony in a not too distant future far from Earth. Or so it seems.

Because the colony of Bella Inizio both is and isn’t what it seems – and neither is founder Philip Harkin’s five year old daughter Ella. Come to think of it, Harkin isn’t exactly what he seems, either.

There’s a lot of that going around, like Russian nesting dolls, because that’s what Harkin’s Bella Inizio is, the smallest doll in a nest of simulated worlds built and maintained by Clawhammer Corporation and their rival, Pocket Parts.

As has been seen in plenty of SF stories, colonization is not easy. Golden worlds turn out to be tarnished, Class M planets turn out to have predatory inhabitants, worlds that looked perfect from light years away are discovered to contain deadly pathogens that can’t be seen from space.

That’s the case of the original Bella Inizio. The rich veins of precious minerals combined with a pristine ecology drew the colonists in – and the deadly gastrointestinal disease killed them off. Then Clawhammer swept in – as they did on so many other colony worlds – and made a deal with the remaining inhabitants. They bought the mineral rights to the planet, and in return set the colony up in a pocket universe, created to match the colonists’ requirements, safe from the disease that nearly wiped them out but locked away forever in a microcosm of the universe they once explored.

Except that Bella Inizio was owned in its entirely by one single homesteader – Philip Harkin. And his requirements for the pocket world were specially weighted in his favor and under his control – especially control of his daughter Ella, who had remained trapped, under his thumb, at the mercy of his fists, and perpetually five years old in body but not in mind – for the entire 58 years of the pocket world’s existence.

While she watched her father exert his life and death power over anyone who defied him in any way – but especially over anyone who questioned his treatment of Ella herself.

But Ella had plans and dreams of her own – plans that did not include staying trapped. And she had managed to gain just enough knowledge of the world outside to know that her opportunity was coming – if she could just figure out a way to seize it – and be free.

Escape Rating A-: There are not one but two really big questions that get tackled in this tiny novel. The larger – and more SFnal question – is the one about the nature of reality. The smaller but entirely too real question is about collaboration, and I don’t mean the good, cooperative kind. I mean the traitorous kind that leads to leaving one miserable and desperate little girl in the hands of a monster so that everyone else can have a happy life.

The universe of Harkin’s Bella Inizio is based on a conceptual framework that the universe is a seemingly vast simulation – a ginormous pocket world that is nested within an even bigger pocket world and could conceivably have an infinite number of small pocket worlds nested within it.

This idea gets played with from an entirely different angle in Brenda Peynado’s recent novella, Time’s Agent – but those pocket dimensions are discovered and not made-to-order. It could also be imagined as the kind of holodeck bubble that Moriarty is trapped in in the Star Trek Next Gen episode Ship in a Bottle. Or perhaps the computer simulation that is utilized in the Doctor Who episode Forest of the Dead.

In other words, this concept has been played with before, this time combined with more than a bit of corporate greed and an even more SFnal solution to the dangers of colonization than was faced in Mickey7.

What tips this particular story over the edge into both WOW and SCARY at the same time is the human dimension. Harkin is abusive to both his daughter and to the other colonists, who are, in their turn, abusing Ella as well so as not to upset their own personal applecarts. Or, to be more charitable – for certainly really awful definitions of charitable – are making the best of their own terrible situation by leaving her to suffer in worse. The way that the reader’s sympathy for them is stripped away at the end was rather breathtaking in its audacity.

As is Ella’s righteous takedown of the whole big ball of wrong in the surprising – but absolutely justified – conclusion.

A- #BookReview: The Three Locks by Bonnie MacBird + Giveaway!

A- #BookReview: The Three Locks by Bonnie MacBird + Giveaway!The Three Locks (Sherlock Holmes Adventure #4) by Bonnie MacBird
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Sherlock Holmes Adventure #4
Pages: 418
Published by Collins Crime Club, HarperCollins on April 13, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A heatwave melts London as Holmes and Watson are called to action in this new Sherlock Holmes adventure by Bonnie MacBird, author of "one of the best Sherlock Holmes novels of recent memory." In the West End, a renowned Italian escape artist dies spectacularly on stage during a performance – immolated in a gleaming copper cauldron of his wife's design. In Cambridge, the runaway daughter of a famous don is found drowned, her long blonde hair tangled in the Jesus Lock on the River Cam. And in Baker Street, a mysterious locksmith exacts an unusual price to open a small silver box sent to Watson. From the glow of London's theatre district to the buzzing Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge where physicists explore the edges of the new science of electricity, Holmes and Watson race between the two cities to solve the murders, encountering prevaricating prestidigitators, philandering physicists and murderous mentalists, all the while unlocking secrets which may be best left undisclosed. And one, in particular, is very close to home.

My Review:

I lost count of the total number of locks in this story early on, but I’m absolutely certain there were considerably more than three such items, particularly as more than one escape artist festooned himself with several at a time. Including Sherlock Holmes.

But the first lock in this story is certainly the most poignant, not because it’s a trick lock – although it absolutely is – but because the key to it is locked in Dr. John Watson’s mind or memory. The fancy, filigreed, metal box arrives as a very late delivery from Watson’s equally late mother. The woman is 20 years dead, the box was supposed to have been delivered 10 years earlier, and Watson isn’t certain how he feels about what might be inside other than frustrated as it was not accompanied by its key and more than one locksmith has already thrown up their hands at the thing.

As this story opens, Watson is likewise frustrated with, or certainly in even less charity than usual, with Holmes’ rather high-handed treatment of him as well as his incessant showing-off of his gifts of observation by both observing and remarking upon things that Watson would rather not hear about. Such as the fact that Watson is frequently short in the pocket because he gambles more than he can afford to lose. And that perhaps he’s picked up a pound or three of excess avoirdupois that he can’t afford to gain.

No one enjoys being reminded of their own shortcomings – particularly when that reminder comes from someone who can’t seem to resist crowing about it more than a bit even as they refuse to acknowledge their own.

The cases that find Holmes and Watson as they are somewhat on the outs with each other present the pair with plenty of opportunities to disagree while there are several rather puzzling games afoot.

They are called to Cambridge by a nervous young clergyman who fears for the life of one of his parishioners. That said parishioner is young, beautiful and wealthy, and that she is dangling her possible affections in the path of not one or two but THREE young men – including the clergyman – makes this seem like the sort of melodrama that Holmes usually steers far away from.

They are also visited by a dynamic and vibrant woman of the stage – not the theatre stage but the magical stage. Madame Ilaria Borelli sees herself as an angel who takes promising stage magicians on as projects, provides them with career-making trick devices and effects – and then leaves them behind when they start believing that their new-found success is all their own doing. Her motives for calling on Holmes are obscured – as if by the smoke and mirrors of her profession – but he can’t resist this mystery any more than he can the conundrum in Cambridge.

That these two parallel mysteries, both involving provocative women who seem to lie like they breathe, and both involving locks of vastly different types, coalesce into one deadly mess is just what we expect from this pair. Two of the three locks in this case turn out to be deadly. But one heals a bit of Watson’s long-held heartbreak and guilt. All of which seems fitting for Holmes and Watson, as they put the lock on two murders and solve one of the great locked puzzles of Watson’s life.

Escape Rating A-: When I began reading this series back in November, that first book, Art in the Blood, had been buried deeply in the virtually towering TBR pile for nearly a decade. I was looking for a comfort read. As I always find Sherlock Holmes stories comforting, and I’d just finished something Holmes-like and was in search of yet more comfort, I remembered this series and as the saying goes, “Bob’s your uncle”. That I have now finished this Sherlock Holmes Adventure series – at least until the next book appears – in just six months says something about how much I’ve enjoyed the whole thing. Which I absolutely have.

Part of the fun of this series is that the portrayals of these well-known characters owe every bit as much to the screen portrayals of Holmes and Watson over the past 40 or so years (since Jeremy Brett on Masterpiece Theatre) as they do to the original canon. Many readers have claimed that this particular version owes more to the Robert Downey Jr/Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies than it does any other. Certainly, Watson and Holmes’ byplay in this particular entry in this particular series feels like it’s more from those movies than some of the other variations as they are more impatient with each other than is usually seen.

But what makes this particular series different from the others is the way that this author dives a bit more into their respective pasts. While the lock that opens this story is a piece of Watson’s past that we haven’t seen before, the overall series shows us a Holmes who is and has always been aware that he is a bit different from the norms of his time – and not just because he’s a genius. And that awareness gives him a sympathy with others who are similarly affected that we definitely see in this story.

Both Ilaria Borelli and Odelia Wyndham are women who refuse to fit into the boxes that Victorian society would imprison them in – and that’s why Holmes takes up their cases. He is particularly sympathetic to Odelia Wyndham, a bird in a gilded cage trying to break free by whatever means are available to her – and he fears from the very beginning that her thrashing within that cage is going to get her killed. Which it does, ensnared in Jesus Lock on the River Cam.

These are both the types of cases that the canon Holmes wouldn’t have touched. That he does here gives the reader a glimpse into the mind of a man who refuses to admit that he’s being driven by his heart and it adds new dimensions to a character we thought we knew.

If you like twisty mysteries, if you enjoy Sherlock Holmes stories, or if you’re looking for a new take on something familiar, this Sherlock Holmes Adventure series is delightful. So delightful, in fact, that I’m a bit sad that I’m caught up because now I’ll have to wait and see whether or not it continues with my fingers crossed in hope.

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

I’ve read through the (so far) six books in the Sherlock Holmes Adventure series by Bonnie MacBird in just six months because they feature fresh interpretations of characters that I know and love, they are marvelous and absorbing historical mysteries, and they ably filled my need for comfort reads at a time when such have been needed more than ever. I’ve had a grand time slipping into this world with these characters, and I fully confess I’m more than a bit sad that I don’t have any left until the much hoped for next book in the series arrives.

So I’m sharing my love of this series with all of you, in the hopes that making more readers for it will bring the next book faster. At the very least, I promise a good reading time – especially for the winner of today’s giveaway. On this the FIFTH day of this year’s celebration, I’m giving away the winner’s choice of ANY book in the Sherlock Holmes Adventure series by Bonnie MacBird in any format, up to $25(US) which should be enough to get even the latest book, The Serpent Under, if you’re already caught up.

Good luck with today’s giveaway, don’t forget to check out the previous days’ giveaways and remember that there’s still more to come!

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A- #BookReview: Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler

A- #BookReview: Where the Axe is Buried by Ray NaylerWhere the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: artificial intelligence, dystopian, political thriller, science fiction, technothriller
Pages: 336
Published by MCD on April 1, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

All systems fail. All societies crumble. All worlds end.
In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favor of ostensibly more efficient, objective, and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an experimental artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world.
As the Federation and the West both start to crumble, Lilia, the brilliant scientist whose invention may be central to bringing down the seemingly immortal President, goes on the run, trying to break out from a near-impenetrable web of Federation surveillance. Her fate is bound up with a worldwide group of others fighting against the global status quo: Palmer, the man Lilia left behind in London, desperate to solve the mystery of her disappearance; Zoya, a veteran activist imprisoned in the taiga, whose book has inspired a revolutionary movement; Nikolai, the President’s personal physician, who has been forced into more and more harrowing decisions as he navigates the Federation’s palace politics; and Nurlan, the hapless parliamentary staffer whose attempt to save his Republic goes terribly awry. And then there is Krotov, head of the Federation’s security services, whose plots, agents, and assassins are everywhere.
Following the success of his debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler launches readers into a thrilling near-future world of geopolitical espionage. A cybernetic novel of political intrigue, Where the Axe is Buried combines the story of a near-impossible revolutionary operation with a blistering indictment of the many forms of authoritarianism that suffocate human freedom.

My Review:

I picked this up because I adored the author’s debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, very much liked his later novella, The Tusks of Extinction, and was hoping for more of the same. Which I sorta/kinda got, but not in ANY of the ways that I was expecting.

I’m every bit as wowed by Axe as I was the other two, but that’s a feeling that I came to in the end even as I muddled a bit through the middle. Which is also very much like both of those previous works. Which is where that ‘sorta/kinda’ qualifier comes in.

There are three distinct locuses (loci?, focal points?) for this story; deep in the Russian Federation, the fringes of the halls of academia in England, and the halls of Parliament in a former Soviet Republic on the fringe of both the European Union and the Federation but currently part of neither.

In a near-future more-or-less dystopian world that may, or may not be on the fringe of multiple states of collapse. Whether that state is the cause of, or caused by, an artificial intelligence takeover of the reins of power is subject to interpretation.

Lots of interpretation, pretty much everywhere.

In the Russian Federation, one man plans – and has so far succeeded – in ruling forever through a process of uploading his consciousness and downloading it into a new host as each of his bodies fail. Or when the apparatus of the state determines that it is a good time for a crisis and a cleansing.

In the West, human governments have come under the control of artificial intelligence created ‘Prime Ministers’, whose mandate is to govern in humanity’s long-term best interests, no matter the short term consequences. The idea was that an AI wouldn’t need to have its wheels or its palms greased, wouldn’t be hungry for power for its own sake, and wouldn’t have a personal agenda or a need to get itself re-elected once it’s been voted into power.

But this isn’t a story about process, although process laid the groundwork for it. It’s a story about people. And that’s where things get interesting even as they fragment across multiple fault lines.

Because, of course, neither system really works – if by work you mean actually function for the good of the greatest number of its citizens. Not that the system in the Federation EVER even gave lip service to that particular idea.

However, the one thing that both systems, the Federation’s quasi-immortal President and the AI PM so-called Rationalization policies do, in their varying ways, is cement a status quo in place. Which is not nearly as good for anyone as the respective powers-that-be would want people to believe.

That’s where our widely scattered group of protagonists – or at least points of view characters come in. An old resistance fighter imprisoned in the Russian taiga, a government functionary in that former Republic, the partner of a cutting edge AI scientist in Britain, and that AI scientist, locked in a prison of her own making back in the Federation, desperate to complete her magnum opus of quantum entanglement.

Each is both observer and observed, acting on their own little piece of a world-spanning puzzle, not even aware of the puppet master pulling all of their strings.

And the puppet master themselves, the spider in the center of the web, whose motivations are not certain, even at the end, whether their goal was to give humanity a chance to try again – or merely to burn it all down.

Escape Rating A-: I have to admit that, at first, I was wondering how this was all going to come together. Then again, I had the same reaction to The Mountain in the Sea so I should have expected it.

The different points of view are worlds apart – which I realized at the end was absolutely the point. Each of the characters represents one of those fabled blind men looking at the elephant in that they can only see a tiny piece of the whole picture.

One of the difficult bits to get over, or past, particular for those of us who live in the West, is that the situation under so-called “Rationalization” isn’t all that much better than the repressive regime in the Russian Federation. No one is actually free, it’s just that the cages in the West are a bit more comfortable and one is considerably less likely to get murdered by the state.

What seems to be driving the story – at least for most of its length – is the story of that genius AI scientist Lilia. She comes back to the Federation to see her father one last time, gets trapped and goes on the run. Much of the drive of the story is wrapped around her, the shadowy figures chasing her, the ones who pretend to be helping her, the ones who are chasing them, the endless cells within cells of resistance and/or state security whose goals are never clear even to themselves.

But she’s a stalking horse – as are all the other human agents on all the possible sides – as the story gets really big and then comes down to one human who has been pulling all the strings – including their own. And that’s the point where it all suddenly made sense as all the systems come crashing down and the metaphor of the title becomes clear.

Even as the ending, in the end, feels like it isn’t. The puppet master has given humanity another chance to get it right. Or at least better. But the closing scenes lead the reader to see that, while things may be better in the short run, over the long haul the humans are gonna human, that the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves, and that we have met the enemy and he is us.

A- #BookReview: The Library Game by Gigi Pandian

A- #BookReview: The Library Game by Gigi PandianThe Library Game (Secret Staircase Mysteries, #4) by Gigi Pandian
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, mystery, thriller
Series: Secret Staircase Mystery #4
Pages: 320
Published by Minotaur Books on March 18, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

In The Library Game, Tempest Raj and Secret Staircase Construction are renovating a classic detective fiction library that just got its first real-life mystery.
Tempest Raj couldn’t be happier that the family business, Secret Staircase Construction, is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Known for enchanting architectural features like sliding bookshelves and secret passageways, the company is now taking on a dream project: transforming a home into a public library that celebrates history's greatest fictional detectives.
Though the work is far from done, Gray House Library’s new owner is eager to host a murder mystery dinner and literary themed escape room. But when a rehearsal ends with an actor murdered and the body vanishes, Tempest is witness to a seemingly impossible crime. Fueled by her grandfather’s Scottish and Indian meals, Tempest and the rest of the crew must figure out who is making beloved classic mystery plots come to life in a deadly game.
Multiple award winning author Gigi Pandian masterfully weaves wit and warmth in the Secret Staircase Mysteries. Readers will delight in the surprises Secret Staircase Construction uncovers behind the next locked door.

My Review:

One of the things that I absolutely do love about Tempest’s hometown of Hidden Creek is that it boasts not just an excellent public library, but also a quirky, privately-funded but open-to-the-public specialty library featuring locked room mysteries, The Locked Room Library.

That private library has seemingly become so successful, and such an integral part of the little town, that another private collector in Hidden Creek decided to turn his own stellar collection of classic mysteries, along with his entire – and rather large – home, into a second such private library, complete with its own set of mystery library themed rooms and puzzles.

Harold Gray did not live to see his dream for the Gray House Library come fully “to life” but he made detailed plans and provisions to ensure that his totally non-mysterious death (he was 92 and had a heart condition) did not interfere with the completion of his dream AND legacy – according to his precise specifications. About EVERYTHING.

With all the secret rooms and hidden staircases that Harold Gray wanted in his dream library, of course Secret Staircase Construction was hired for the job. That the unveiling of the new library will occur during the town’s annual festival has put anticipation and tension at its height, and provided Tempest with the opportunity to show off both her family’s latest successful project AND her talents as a storyteller and stage director by hosting a murder mystery event at the new library of classic mysteries.

It’s supposed to be all fun and games. And the rehearsal at the Gray House Library mostly is – in spite of the tensions created by a neighbor who has started a petition against permitting a public venue in a residential neighborhood.

But the fun and games come to an end – or just begin – or a bit of both – when their “fake” murder is interrupted by an all too real murder victim, while Tempest and her “Scoobies” are left scrambling in the literal as well as the figurative dark trying to figure out “whodunnit” – before it gets done again.

Escape Rating A-: I’ve been a bit all over the map with this series. I loved the first book, Under Lock & Skeleton Key, thought the second book, The Raven Thief, was a hot mess – or rather that Tempest was a hot mess in it, then went back to liking the third book, A Midnight Puzzle more than well enough to have high hopes for this entry in the series.

Hopes that were definitely fulfilled. The Library Game, besides being wrapped around a subject that interests me greatly – books and libraries – was not only the right book at the right time but also represented a terrific step in a direction I really wanted things to go and generally just a return to the marvelous form of Under Lock & Skeleton Key.

By that I mean that Tempest, Secret Staircase Construction and her Scoobies were involved in the mystery and the solution, but it wasn’t so deeply personal. Even if one of her Scoobies, her magician friend Sanjay, was both a potential suspect and a potential victim for a while. He was such a drama king about the whole thing that it was hard to take him seriously after what Tempest and her family went through in the first three books – and I confess to a bit of surprise that someone didn’t have to slap him at least once to break him out of his frequent hysteria. But he’s one of Tempest’s best friends, and putting up with one’s friend’s justifiable but a bit over the top dramatics are what friends are for.

These aren’t fair play mysteries, unlike so many of the classic mysteries that populate the Gray House Library. Instead, the hidden nooks and crannies that are her family’s stock in trade lead to a LOT of fascinating misdirection in both the commission of the murder and in the gang’s attempts to solve it.

The red herrings in this one were every bit as delicious as Grandpa Ash’s cooking – which is lovingly described and guaranteed to make the reader’s mouth water even as they scratch their head in trying to work out a solution. And one of the many things I enjoy about this series is that this seems to be one of those rare cases where the protagonist’s family is both fun and more importantly functional. Not just that Tempest’s grandparents and her father provide real, practical help in pursuit of solutions to whatever mystery she’s involved in, but mostly that the family loves each other, works together and plays together well, and that one would honestly love to sit at Grandpa Ash’s table for the company as well as for the food.

What made this particular case so much fun to solve, and made the reveal so hard won, was that so much of what made this mystery so mysterious wasn’t deliberate. The murder itself was an accident, then two different people hid the corpse to protect two other different people, the deliberate misdirections were intended to cover up the accidental misdirections and the whole thing began on a gigantic miscommunication that kept getting worse as it got reinterpreted.

That the human factors were the things that tripped up everything felt like the best ending for the mystery, and this reader, at least, enjoyed herself tremendously all along the way. I even got a recipe out of it – and you might too if you love blackberries.

All in all, I had a grand time with The Library Game. It’s a cozy mystery with a fascinating amateur detective along with a really quirky bunch of Scoobies to help her solve the mystery. And hopefully, the next, and the next, and the next!

A- #AudioBookReview: Kills Well With Others by Deanna Raybourn

A- #AudioBookReview: Kills Well With Others by Deanna RaybournKills Well with Others (Killers of a Certain Age, #2) by Deanna Raybourn
Narrator: Jane Oppenheimer, Christina Delaine
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: purchased from Audible, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Killers of a Certain Age #2
Pages: 368
Length: 10 hours and 19 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on March 4, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

“Much like fine wine, battle-hardened assassins grow better with age.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner

Four women assassins, senior in status—and in age—sharpen their knives for another bloody good adventure in this riotous follow-up to the New York Times bestselling sensation Killers of a Certain Age.

After more than a year of laying low, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action. They have enjoyed their time off, but the lack of excitement is starting to chafe: a professional killer can only take so many watercolor classes and yoga sessions without itching to strangle someone...literally. When they receive a summons from the head of the elite assassin organization known as the Museum, they are ready tackle the greatest challenge of their careers.

Someone on the inside has compiled a list of important kills committed by Museum agents, connected to a single, shadowy figure, an Eastern European gangster with an iron fist, some serious criminal ambition, and a tendency to kill first and ask questions later. This new nemesis is murdering agents who got in the way of their power hungry plans and the aging quartet of killers is next.

Together the foursome embark on a wild ride across the globe on the double mission of rooting out the Museum’s mole and hunting down the gangster who seems to know their next move before they make it. Their enemy is unlike any they’ve faced before, and it will take all their killer experience to get out of this mission alive.

My Review:

The wifi wasn’t THAT bad. No, seriously, I took the same trip on the MS Queen Mary 2 last summer, the one that the team from Killers of a Certain Age takes from New York City to Southampton in the early stages of this caper – and the wifi honestly wasn’t that bad. The rest of the ship, at least the parts we saw of it, were very much as described.

No murder though. At least, not as far as we heard!

Then again, Billie and company are very, very good at their jobs, and the whole point of sending in an elite team of assassins is for them to make the murder look like it never happened. Not that Pasha Lazarov isn’t very, very dead when Billie’s done with him and his teddy bear, but that his death doesn’t look like a murder at all.

Don’t worry, the teddy bear is fine. Pasha, not so much, but then that was the point. Even if, as Billie suspects, he was the wrong point.

Still, contract complete, case closed. Right? Wrong, as the team discovers when they make their way to their safe house and discover that the house isn’t safe at all. In fact, it’s on FIRE.

And suddenly, so is this story. Because someone in their organization has sold them out, put a target on their backs while aiming them at the wrong villain for the wrong reasons even as the real monster plans to toy with them as they chase the true mastermind around Europe while that mastermind plots revenge, mayhem and a gigantic payday steeped in blood and decades in the making.

It’s all about the ‘one that got away’. For the traitor, it’s about a future they let slip out of their hands. For the villain, it’s payback for the murder of their father – who truly was an evil bastard – at the righteous hands of Billie and her team. For the team, it’s about a case they were never able to close and a luminous piece of looted Nazi art that they were never able to restore.

Until now. If they survive. If, instead of age and treachery beating youth and skill, age and skill can manage to beat youth and treachery one more time.

Escape Rating A-: The first book in this series, Killers of a Certain Age, was both an absolute surprise and an utter delight. Just as “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” – a catchphrase whose origins Billie and her team are just the right age to remember and appreciate – nobody expects a quartet of sixty-something women to be an elite team of assassins. Not unless they remember the movie Red with Helen Mirren playing a character who could easily have been one of Billie’s aliases, or who have fallen in love with The Thursday Murder Club series, whose main character is also quite a bit like Billie and is also played by the same actress in the upcoming TV series.

While that was not as big a digression as it could have been, that digression is a bit on point for this story.

The main story here, as it was in the first book, is told from Billie’s first-person perspective as she and her team are in the midst of the case at hand – even as that case goes utterly off-kilter and entirely out-of-whack. Not that even at the outset it was as ‘in whack’ as it should have been.

But the case does itself digress on occasion, to cases and contracts and errors and omissions in some of the team’s earlier contracts, told from an omniscient third-person perspective. At first, it seems as if those trips down memory lane are for context about their past and their skills, but as the net closes in so too do those memories as various nooses tighten and the past catches up to the present.

At the same time, the case in the present is a wild thrill ride, interwoven with a whole lot of tips and tricks about hiding in plain sight and escaping without a trace and the way that even their oldest tricks still work fantastically well because the weakest point in ANY security system, even the most technically advanced and supposedly unbreakable, is always the human factor. And those haven’t changed at all.

Initially, the story moves just a bit slowly, as, well, cruise ships are wont to do. But the reader catches Billie’s nagging suspicion that something isn’t right fairly early, and we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop right along with her.

When it does – or actually when it catches fire – the story is off, not just to the races but to a whirlwind tour of both sides of the Mediterranean in pursuit of a dead woman with a plan for revenge so cold that she’s willing to take out her own family to see it done.

And still, and yet, and at the heart of it all is the ride or die sisterhood of these four women who will and have, killed and nearly died for each other over the course of four decades – and their bickering willingness to argue and fight and still protect each other and the hostages to fortune they have all gathered along the way – sometimes in spite of themselves.

Just as I wasn’t expecting that first book, I wasn’t expecting this to turn into a series. Hoping, certainly, but not expecting. Which means I’ve been waiting for this with the proverbial bated breath, was absolutely thrilled to get it, and was utterly absorbed by it in both text and marvelous audio – switching back and forth so I could find out how they got out of this mess that much sooner.

All of which means I’m left in the exact same place I was at the end of Killers of a Certain Age. I had a ball with Billie and her found family, and I would love to ride with this crew again. But the story ends in a way that could BE the end. They all do sound like they’ve found the respective happy ever afters that none of them thought they would live to see. Or in Billie’s case, even want.

Howsomever, the first book started because there was something rotten at the heart of their organization that, let’s say, interfered with their pending retirements. They got dragged into THIS case because there was something that was rotten at the heart of their organization that interfered in an entirely different way with their retirements.

When this case gets wrapped up, they make a new and better deal for the retirements they all actually seemed to want this time around. Which doesn’t mean that they got all the rot out of the organization this time around. In fact, I’d kind of be surprised if they had. And very happy about it – possibly much happier than they’ll be if I’m right.

A- #BookReview: Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite

A- #BookReview: Murder by Memory by Olivia WaiteMurder by Memory (Dorothy Gentleman, #1) by Olivia Waite
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, science fiction, science fiction mystery
Series: Dorothy Gentleman #1
Pages: 112
Published by Tordotcom on March 18, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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A Memory Called Empire meets Miss Marple in this cozy, spaceborne mystery, helmed by a no-nonsense formidable auntie of a detective.
Welcome to the HMS Fairweather, Her Majesty’s most luxurious interstellar passenger liner! Room and board are included, new bodies are graciously provided upon request, and should you desire a rest between lifetimes, your mind shall be most carefully preserved in glass in the Library, shielded from every danger.
Near the topmost deck of an interstellar generation ship, Dorothy Gentleman wakes up in a body that isn’t hers—just as someone else is found murdered. As one of the ship’s detectives, Dorothy usually delights in unraveling the schemes on board the Fairweather, but when she finds that someone is not only killing bodies but purposefully deleting minds from the Library, she realizes something even more sinister is afoot.
Dorothy suspects her misfortune is partly the fault of her feckless nephew Ruthie who, despite his brilliance as a programmer, leaves chaos in his cheerful wake. Or perhaps the sultry yarn store proprietor—and ex-girlfriend of the body Dorothy is currently inhabiting—knows more than she’s letting on. Whatever it is, Dorothy intends to solve this case. Because someone has done the impossible and found a way to make murder on the Fairweather a very permanent state indeed. A mastermind may be at work—and if so, they’ve had three hundred years to perfect their schemes…

My Review:

Some versions of the opening line for the blurb are way, way off. A Memory Called Empire meets Miss Marple is so far off as to be misleading. (The Becky Chambers version of the blurb is somewhat better.) I’m going to do my damndest to correct that misdirection as Murder By Memory is just a terrific cozy mystery that just so happens to be set on a spaceship.

Although that’s misleading too. The HMS Fairweather is more like a space-liner. Or, really, like that cruise line that almost-but-didn’t-quite manage to launch, the one where people were intended to move in and live on the cruise ship as it traveled around the world.

The HMS Fairweather is a lot like that Life at Sea concept, except that it really did launch and its intended journey is for considerably longer than three years. It seems like it’s been traveling for more than three centuries when this story takes place – with no end in sight.

It isn’t a generation ship and it doesn’t seem to have a destination. It’s an endless journey – and an endless life. The passengers do age and eventually die – well, at least their bodies do. Their consciousness gets uploaded and downloaded from one body to another – and life goes on.

The ship is a world unto itself, a surprisingly large and fascinating one. But humans are gonna human, even in the vastness of space, and that’s where Detective Dorothy Gentleman comes in.

Literally, as her sleeping consciousness gets dropped into someone else’s body, in the middle of the ship’s night, while all the passengers and crew – except for Dorothy and this one intrepid and/or intriguing individual who is for some reason out and about while everyone else is tucked away safe and sound in their quarters.

Except, of course, for the other person who is not where they should be, the woman whose sudden death triggered Dorothy’s own return from the sleep between lifetimes. Leaving Dorothy with a job to do and a problem to solve while wondering exactly how unethical it is to borrow someone else’s body after they’ve just used it to commit murder.

Escape Rating A-: This is one of those stories where my one and only complaint is that I really, really, REALLY wish it had been longer. Because what we got was a whole lot of cozy, murderous fun and Dorothy Gentleman is a marvelous take on the lone detective chasing clues and unraveling puzzles in the middle of the long, dark night.

While I wouldn’t have gone within a parsec of the blurb’s description of Marple meets Teixcalaan, I absolutely would describe it as a combination of two books, the SF mystery plot of Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Spare Man combined with the secrets within secrets of life aboard a spacefaring cruise ship of Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis. Not that The Spare Man isn’t also set on a space cruise, but that ship doesn’t have the same vibe that living aboard the ship has in Floating Hotel and Murder by Memory.

So much of A Memory Called Empire is wrapped up in the high-stakes, deeply corruptive, politics of Teixcalaan and its imperial history and ambitions that it just doesn’t feel like any kind of match for Murder by Memory, which is, in spite of the murder, much lighter and frothier. (If the Chambers comparison is to her Wayfarers series and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, well, that’s somewhere in the virtually towering TBR pile and I haven’t gotten there yet.)

Dorothy Gentleman is good at her job – and it’s fun to watch her work. That she is working from within the body of her primary suspect adds just the right touch of grounding in the SFnal setting to make the whole thing just that much better AND more convoluted at the same time.

Because the solution to this mystery is a grand case of following the money. It’s just that the money that Dorothy is following has been both stolen and hidden in ways that are only possible in SF even though the motive is one of the oldest and most human – greed. While the final piece of evidence is found in the most science fictional way possible.

Dorothy herself starts out as just a touch noir – as she has been unlucky in love and seems determined to conduct her investigation the same way she intends to conduct her life – alone. That she is surprised by both the support of her new and remaining family AND that love might just have found her again made the story end on a high and hopeful note.

I’m looking forward to reading more of Dorothy’s adventures aboard the Fairweather. The setting is already delightful, and more time will just add more delicious layers. Dorothy herself is a fascinating character, someone who has lived a long life and turned her nosy nature to good use. That we’re inside her head for this story, hearing her true – and often wry and witty – thoughts as she works her way through the mystery made the whole thing just that much better and absolutely worth a read.