Grade A #BookReview: Dead in the Frame by Stephen Spotswood

Grade A #BookReview: Dead in the Frame by Stephen SpotswoodDead in the Frame: A Pentecost and Parker Mystery by Stephen Spotswood
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery
Series: Pentecost and Parker #5
Pages: 384
Published by Doubleday on February 4, 2025
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The most dramatic installment yet in the Nero Award-winning Pentecost and Parker series, as Will scrambles to solve a shocking murder before Lillian takes the fall for the crime.

NEW YORK CITY, 1947: Wealthy financier and ghoulish connoisseur of crime, Jessup Quincannon, is dead, and famed detective Lillian Pentecost is under arrest for his murder. Means, motive, and a mountain of evidence leave everyone believing she's guilty. Everyone, that is, except Willowjean “Will” Parker, who knows for a fact her boss is innocent. She just doesn’t know if she can prove it.

With Lillian locked away in the House of D–New York City’s infamous women’s prison–Will is left to root out the real killer. Was it a member of Quincannon’s murder-obsessed Black Museum Club? Maybe it was his jilted lover? Or his beautiful, certainly-sociopathic bodyguard? And what about the mob hit-man who just happened to disappear after the shots were fired?

With the city barreling toward the trial of the century, each day brings fresh headlines and hints of long-buried scandals from Lillian’s past. Will is desperate to get her boss out from behind bars before her reputation is destroyed. Because the House of D is no kind place, especially for a woman with multiple sclerosis. Or one with so many enemies. Her health failing and targeted by someone who wants her dead, Lillian needs to survive long enough to take the stand.

With time running out on both sides of the prison walls, Will and Lillian must wager everything to uncover who put their thumb on the scales and a bullet in Quincannon’s head. Before Lady Justice brings her sword down, ending Pentecost and Parker's adventures once and for all.

My Review:

The Women’s House of Detention at 6th Avenue near West 9th Street in 1939.

This fifth entry in the Pentecost and Parker series begins with celebrated, hated, envied, feared, private investigator Lillian Pentecost on her way to the Women’s House of Detention at 6th Avenue near West 9th Street in New York City, under arrest for a murder that she surely did not commit.

Not that either the NYPD or the criminal justice system can see their way to that conclusion – at least not yet. The frame around Pentecost fits much too well, and there are too many people in the NYPD who have been itching to see this successful, intelligent woman fall. Of course the press is having a literal field day because everyone loves a scandal, and people especially love seeing the high and mighty cut down to size.

Pentecost’s right-hand woman, Willowjean Parker, comes back from her first-ever vacation to find her boss in handcuffs, their property being ransacked, and cops and reporters besieging the place. It seems as if the entire city wants a piece of Lillian Pentecost – only because they do.

This is the job that Will Parker has been training for, to become the lead investigator of Pentecost and Parker Investigations. That has been inevitable from the very first, marvelous book in this series, Fortune Favors the Dead, when Pentecost took Parker on as her assistant. Not because she wanted an assistant, but because Lillian Pentecost had been recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and she knew that her time as the lead investigator of her own agency was inevitably running out.

Now that it has, possibly temporarily but certainly abruptly, while Pentecost is behind bars and bail has been denied, it’s up to Will to ask herself what Lillian Pentecost would do – and do it. No matter how high the deck is stacked against them both. Pentecost is depending on her, and Willowjean Parker will not be found wanting. Whatever it takes.

Escape Rating A: The entire Pentecost and Parker series has been an edge-of-the-seat thrill ride from the very beginning in Fortune Favors the Dead, through Murder Under Her Skin, Secrets Typed in Blood, Murder Crossed her Mind and now this latest page-turner, Dead in the Frame.

What initially drew me into this series was its homage to a classic mystery series that isn’t talked about much anymore, and that’s the Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout. A series which I fully admit probably doesn’t wear well in the 21st century for all sorts of reasons.

But the concept of the Wolfe series was a partnership between an older detective who mostly refuses to leave his New York City brownstone and his younger assistant who does all the legwork and brings the case back to his boss. In the case of Pentecost and Parker, as the series began Pentecost was aware that she SHOULD be sticking to her brownstone, but can’t make herself do it as much as her doctor would prefer.

On the one hand, Pentecost and Parker are very much in the style of the noir fiction of the 1930s and 1940s, and Parker’s first-person chronicles of the cases resembles Wolfe’s junior partner Archie Goodwin in style and often substance. Howsomever, the lens through which Parker sees the world is VERY different from Goodwin’s. Parker is both female and queer, and grew up in as far over the wrong side of the tracks as possible as she literally ran away and joined the circus.

(If you’ve enjoyed Pentecost and Parker and you’re curious about their antecedents, the first book in the Nero Wolfe series is Fer-de-Lance. If you’re looking for a readalike for Pentecost and Parker, take a look at Lavender House by Lev A.C. Rosen.)

This particular entry in the series does a fantastic job of straddling the line between Parker’s now and ours, speaking both to the case itself and the reasons for it while at the same time using that vehicle to highlight issues that are very much a part of our present. Including, but very much not limited to, the way that Pentecost is tried in the press LONG before her actual trial because there are just so many powers-that-be that can’t bear to see a woman be independent, successful and show them up when they deserve it.

After taking a couple of days to think about this one, I think that what’s at the heart of this entry in the story is the issue of inevitability and the human response to knowing that an ending is coming. In a way, it’s all about, to paraphrase the poet Dylan Thomas, not going gently into that good night, and the form that the rage against the dying of the light takes. It’s about the conflict between revenge being a dish best served as cold as, and from, the grave versus “I expect to pass through this world but once; any good thing therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow-creature, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

All of that may seem a bit on the philosophical side, but it’s in there. And so is an absolutely cracking good mystery that sends both of our detectives through walks in the valley of the shadow of death and brings the inevitable changes that Pentecost has been staving off for years much closer much faster than her early hopes would have had it.

I have to say that the parts of this story where Pentecost is in the Women’s House of Detention are harrowing and also feel much too real – as the House of D most certainly was. Her treatment while incarcerated was entirely too typical of the treatment of prisoners in that nightmare of a place, and we go through that nightmare with her and feel her get both scared and scarred by it.

I was utterly caught up in the mystery, as I have been with every single one of their cases so far. I knew Pentecost was innocent but couldn’t see how she was going to get out from under – and for the longest time neither did she or Parker and it ratcheted the tension up to 11 the entire way.

The one thing that kept niggling at me is probably a result of my 21st century perspective having a disconnect with her post WW2 circumstances. I certainly understand why she hated the victim, and vice versa. But the information he was holding over Pentecost wasn’t about her, it was about her parents. I understand why no one would want that history dug up, but not why it was such a potentially huge scandal for Pentecost herself. Whatever the truth of that old matter, she herself can’t possibly be guilty of any of it as she was a child at the time. I expect to see that mess resolved, or at least as resolved as the dead past can be, in the next book in this series. Because that’s the story that Lillian Pentecost herself promised to work on next!

Grade A #BookReview: Bonded in Death by J.D. Robb

Grade A #BookReview: Bonded in Death by J.D. RobbBonded in Death (In Death, #60) by J.D. Robb
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: futuristic, mystery, romantic suspense, suspense, thriller
Series: In Death #60
Pages: 364
Published by St. Martin's Press on February 4, 2025
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The #1 New York Times bestselling author spins an epic tale of loyalty, treachery, murder, and the long shadow of war…
His passport read Giovanni Rossi. But decades ago, during the Urban Wars, he was part of a small, secret organization called The Twelve. Responding to an urgent summons from an old compatriot, he landed in New York and eased into the waiting car. And died within minutes…
Lieutenant Eve Dallas finds the Rossi case frustrating. She’s got an elderly victim who’d just arrived from Rome; a widow who knows nothing about why he’d left; an as-yet unidentifiable weapon; and zero results on facial recognition. But when she finds a connection to the Urban Wars of the 2020s, she thinks Summerset―fiercely loyal, if somewhat grouchy, major-domo and the man who’d rescued her husband from the Dublin streets―may know something from his stint as a medic in Europe back then.
When Summerset learns of the crime, his shock and grief are clear―because, as he eventually reveals, he himself was one of The Twelve. It’s not a part of his past he likes to revisit. But now he must―not only to assist Eve’s investigation, but because a cryptic message from the killer has boasted that others of The Twelve have also died. Summerset is one of those who remain―and the murderous mission is yet to be fully accomplished…

My Review:

Dallas and Roarke and the ever-expanding found family that surrounds them are clearly bonded by, in and FOR life at this point in their long-running and hopefully continuing forever story. And that’s from a beginning in Naked in Death where both Dallas and Roarke were mostly loners who were wary of letting ANYONE inside their circle of trust.

Over the course of the series, through several stories that I refer to as ‘trips to the angst factory’, where their separate but similarly torturous childhoods have been laid bare and they’ve dealt with their own and each other’s emotional fallout and (undiagnosed but obvious) PTSD.

Throughout those trips down the terrifying back alleys of memory lane, and right up until their present, there has been one dour figure who shone the light of rescue in the darkest parts of Roarke’s childhood – and continues to keep the home fires burning even in Roarke’s lavish and secure ‘castle’ in New York City.

That person, who dresses like an undertaker and can’t resist a never-ending string of gibes at Dallas – even as she gives it right back – is Summerset, the man who helped make Roarke the man he is. And very much vice versa.

This 60th book in the In Death series isn’t so much Dallas and Roarke’s story as it is Summerset’s book. We’ve always known that Summerset had a much more interesting past than his present appearance would lead anyone to ever believe. And we’ve probably all wondered about it now and again. Well, I certainly have.

This is THAT story. Not as a trip down memory lane, but rather as a case of the long-buried past coming back to bite Summerset and his compatriots from the dark and desperate days of the Urban Wars. The days when every day they woke up above ground was an unexpected blessing, and when the only good day was a yesterday years in the past.

Someone is coming for all of the remaining members of ‘The Twelve’, the intelligence cell that finally broke the back of the Dominion and the other forces that had been tearing down people and governments for nearly a decade in a tide of rage and propaganda during the Urban Wars. The Twelve were betrayed back then by one of their own. He knows them – and they know him – all too well.

But he doesn’t know Eve Dallas, and he doesn’t know Roarke. He only thinks he does. And they only care about keeping Summerset and his brothers-and-sisters-in-arms alive. With their still very able assistance every step of the way.

Escape Rating A: I’ve been looking for comfort reads this week, and have had some hits (The Orb of Cairado) and some real misses (Beast of the North Woods) in my search. This OMG 60th book in the long-running In Death series absolutely hit the sweet spot I needed. I’ve been a fan of this series since the very beginning with Naked in Death, and I always love seeing how Dallas & Company are doing whether the case they have to solve is absorbing or merely an excuse to see my old friends – even Summerset’s old friends.

This entry in the series was WAY bigger and better than that. Along with being an excellent excuse to visit some truly dear friends. To the point where I had to wait a couple of days to write this review because I needed to tone down the SQUEE!

Which means that A rating is because I loved it and it absolutely was the right book at the right time. But it is also, absolutely, a book for the fans who know all the players without needing a scorecard AND who know enough about who’s who and what’s what to have always wondered what secrets have been hiding behind Summerset’s implacable but long-suffering demeanor.

What made this particular entry in the series so absorbing was the combination of the relentless pace of the current pursuit combined with just the right amount of information both about the past of this world and about the past of the individuals who were, and still are, The Twelve. Including Summerset.

We’ve not seen much detail about the Urban Wars, just that they happened (in our right now, which is frightening all by itself) and that they made a mess of their world that is still in recovery almost forty years later. Dallas and Roarke weren’t born until the end of the war, although many of the people they know lived through it – not just Summerset. One of the things done very well was the way that those who did serve all look back at those times with a combination of nostalgia, regret and resignation. It felt similar to the way that World War II veterans talked about their service and the times they lived through twenty plus years after THEIR service, which gave the whole thing a touch of the real.

Which is something that is always true of the whole series. This story is set in 2061, which is not as far from our now as we imagine it is – or was when the author began publishing this series in our 1995. But people who will be alive in 2061 have not merely already been born, but some of those people are already adults in the here and now.

All of which means that the world as we know it is still VERY recognizable in Dallas’ and Roarke’s 2061, which helps readers absorb the things that are different even as in some areas we’ve almost caught up. To take one example, the technological distance between our smartphones and their ‘links’ gets tinier every year.

I’ve written a lot and all around because I do love this series very much – even the entries that don’t quite live up to the peak that this one does. It answers SO MANY questions about Summerset’s past and puts so much more flesh on the bones of the Urban Wars that have always been lurking in the background. On top of that, it tells a fascinating story and does a great job of making the mystery compelling even though Eve figures out who the perpetrator is fairly early on. This one is all about the chase and it keeps the reader on the edge of their seat wanting to make sure that Eve puts the bastard in a cage before he puts any of her nearest and dearest in the ground.

There’s still more than enough stuff about the fam to let readers know how everyone is doing – especially my boy Galahad, the big cat who is truly the king of Roarke’s castle. The delicious icing on this particular story cake was the way that Dallas and Roarke included all the members of The Twelve, all those old soldiers, in the work of getting righteous payback on their traitor, and that they all got to bear witness. As they should and as they’d earned.

So that’s a wrap – with a delightfully ‘frosty’ bow on top – of Bonded in Death, the 60th book in the In Death series. I already have a copy of book 61, Framed in Death, and I can’t tell you how much I’m tempted to start it right now!

#BookReview: Beast of the North Woods by Annelise Ryan

#BookReview: Beast of the North Woods by Annelise RyanBeast of the North Woods (A Monster Hunter Mystery, #3) by Annelise Ryan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery
Series: Monster Hunter Mystery #3
Pages: 320
Published by Berkley on January 28, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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When a local fisherman is mauled to death, it seems like the only possible cause is a mythical creature in the latest puzzling entry in this USA Today bestselling series.
An ice fisherman is savagely mauled to death in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, and an eyewitness claims the man was attacked by a hodag. There's just one problem with it's well known that the creature is not real and was created by a local hoaxer. So how could an imaginary creature be chomping on local sportsmen? 
The suggestion that a hodag killed someone isn’t well received by the townsfolk because of its beloved ties to the town and the money it generates from tourist dollars. Due to this, people begin to suspect the witness is the real killer, especially when it’s discovered he has a tangled past with the victim. 
The witness to the attack happens to be the nephew of Morgan Carter’s bookstore employee, Rita Bosworth, who convinces the professional cryptozoologist to travel to Wisconsin to prove that a hodag not only exists but killed the victim. 
Clues may be hard to come by, but one thing's for something killed that man, and that something now has its eyes focused on Morgan.

My Review:

I picked this up because I liked the first book in the series, A Death in Door County, and I really enjoyed the second, Death in the Dark Woods. I started this third book hoping that the upward trend continued.

It didn’t. At least not for this reader. As always, your reading mileage may vary.

What mostly worked in the first book – and definitely worked in the second – was the way that bookstore owner, budding amateur detective and professional cryptozoologist Morgan Carter uses her actual professional credentials for hunting monsters to find actual monsters, even though – or especially because – the monster she starts out hunting is absolutely not the monster she finds.

In other words, she’s usually on the track of Bigfoot. Or something like Bigfoot. Or Nessie. Or in the case of the Beast of the North Woods, a Hodag. Now the Hodag is a proven hoax – because the person who supposedly captured one in 1893 eventually confessed to the deception.

Not that the town of Rhinelander, Wisconsin, which really does exist, hasn’t made plenty of hay (or at least tourist dollars) out of being the home of the Hodag. But no one expects to see a living, breathing beast in the area.

The Hodag in its ‘natural’ habitat.

Except that someone claims they have, and that the beast they saw mauled a man to death in the woods. The local police are sure the dude who reported the body is attempting, badly, to cover up a murder. One that he committed himself, of course.

Morgan is 99% convinced he didn’t see a Hodag. Which doesn’t mean the guy is guilty of the murder. Even if the dead man seems to have been his lifelong rival if not outright enemy.

In Morgan’s previous adventures, she hasn’t found Bigfoot, or Nessie, or any other cryptids. She certainly doesn’t expect to find a Hodag in this case. That she actually DOES find one this time around is more than a bit of a surprise. That there are human monsters hiding in the shadows behind the cryptid is no surprise at all.

That her EvilEx™ seems to be messing with her head from the very beginning very nearly has Morgan running through the woods in terror LONG before the Hodag EVER makes the already messed-up scene in a way that threw this reader all the way out of a story that I was really hoping to love.

Escape Rating C: For this reader, the second book in this series, Death in the Dark Woods, was the one that hit the sweet spot. The first book went into just a bit too much detail about the flora and fauna of Door County, although that served as great background for just how Morgan approached her cryptid hunting. That first story also introduced the best character in the whole series and a very good boi, Morgan’s dog Newt. If I continue to read this series – and at the moment that issue is seriously in doubt – it’ll be to see how Newt is doing because he’s just awesome.

Unfortunately, that first book also introduced us, at least in absentia, to Morgan’s EvilEx™, David Johnson. David murdered her parents, framed her for his crime, disappeared into the wind and has been stalking her ever since. I have to confess that the stalker ex is one of my least favorite plot devices, so having him lurk over this particular entry in the series from not very far away at all just took me right out of the story. (I know this is a ‘me’ thing and may not be a ‘you’ thing and your mileage may vary, etc., etc., etc.)

This series, by its nature of starting out hunting mythical monsters, is always just a hair away from ‘jumping the shark’ and for me the frequent references to David Johnson – or whoever he really is – sent the whole thing right over the top of the shark and its wake.

And Morgan spends entirely too much of this story not thinking clearly, mostly because of David but not completely, that she seems to miss all the clues until its too late and she’s briefly in the frame for yet another murder she didn’t commit. Poor Newt has his work cut out for him this time around.

(I LOVE Newt. He’s a very good boi and don’t worry, he’s just fine throughout this story. It’s his human who keeps ending up in serious trouble.)

So this is the point where I’m going to admit that I’m seriously thinking of bailing on this series. I was hoping for something like Death in the Dark Woods, a cozy monster hunting mystery – as much of a contradiction in terms that should be but wasn’t. I needed a comfort read and that’s not what I got at all, so this was the wrong book at the wrong time and relied heavily on a plot device that makes me cringe. Color this reader disappointed.

I know I keep saying this, but it bears repeating, YOUR READING MILEAGE MAY VARY.

#BookReview: A Bird in the Hand by Ann Cleeves

#BookReview: A Bird in the Hand by Ann CleevesA Bird in the Hand (George & Molly Palmer-Jones #1) by Ann Cleeves
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense
Series: George & Molly Palmer-Jones #1
Pages: 288
Published by Minotaur Books on January 28, 2025 (first published January 1, 1986)
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
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Before Shetland and Vera, Ann Cleeves wrote the George and Molly Palmer-Jones series following remarkable mysteries in a birdwatching community—now in print for the first time in the US.
In England’s birdwatching paradise, a new breed has been sighted—a murderer . . . Young Tom French is found dead, lying in a marsh on the Norfolk coast, with his head bashed in and his binoculars still around his neck. One of the best birders in England, Tom had put the village of Rushy on the birdwatching map. Everyone liked him. Or did they?
George Palmer-Jones, an elderly birdwatcher who decides quietly to look into the brutal crime, discovers mixed feelings aplenty. Still, he remains baffled by a deed that could have been motivated by thwarted love, pure envy, or something else altogether.
But as he and his fellow ‘twitchers’ flock from Norfolk to Scotland to the Scilly Isles in response to rumors of rare sightings, George—with help from his lovely wife, Molly—gradually discerns the true markings of a killer. All he has to do is prove it . . . before the murderer strikes again.

My Review:

Ann Cleeves is one of those mystery writers that seemingly everyone has heard about, read, and absolutely raves over. That her work is the foundation of not one but two hit TV series (Shetland and Vera), just adds to that acclaim.

I’ve read a lot of mystery over my reading life, but she’s an author who has been recommended to me often, and I’ve always meant to read but never got the ‘round tuit’ for. So, when I saw that her early work was being republished and that eARCs were available it seemed like a golden opportunity to get in on the ground floor and here we are.

A Bird in the Hand, the first book in the George & Molly Palmer-Jones series, was the author’s first published book. In 1986. The world was a bit different then, and in a way that contemporary readers will notice right off. There were no cell phones. They had existed since 1973, but in 1986 they were still the size – and seemingly the weight – of an actual brick. This story would have been a LOT different if all the players had cell phones (mobile phones in Britain) even if signal availability would likely have been a bit ‘iffy’ in some of the remote locations where this story wanders.

This is one of those stories that begins “Tom French was dead, to begin with,” with, also, all due apologies to Charles Dickens and Ebenezer Scrooge as this is absolutely not a holiday story. But the opening is still apropos, as A Bird in the Hand begins with the discovery of well-known ‘twitcher’ Tom French’s dead body being discovered outside the popular ‘twitching’ and more than occasionally twitchy (in multiple meanings) fictional village of Rushy on the Norfolk coast of Britain.

‘Twitcher’ in this instance is very much a term of art applied to a subset of birdwatchers who are, come to think of it, kind of like storm chasers, although usually not with the threat of imminent death or dismemberment if they actually find the object of their pursuit. Twitchers, the British version at least, are those who obsessively chase down rare birds to tick them off their various lists.

Birdwatching is often seen as a genteel hobby. Twitching is at the extreme end of that hobby, where it can tip over from fascination into preoccupation and even downright mania.

Tom French was a twitcher, and a well-known and well-respected one in the community of twitchers. Notice I didn’t say well-liked because opinion is certainly divided on that score. And it looks like as well as likely that someone killed him over it.

Which is precisely what retired Home Office bureaucrat and on-again, off-again twitcher George Palmer-Jones has been asked to discover. Whether or not it was something to do with twitching that got Tom French killed – and whether or not a particular twitcher was responsible.

Or whether the ‘hobby’ that one young man’s father disapproved of so obviously, frequently and often led him down a path away from respectability into some kind of mania that went beyond the obsessive pursuit of birds.

Escape Rating B: I ended up with a few mixed feelings about this one, because it feels very much like a ‘portrait of the master as a young writer’ kind of thing. The author fully admits that this was her debut novel, that she never expected it would ever get published, and that there are plenty of things she would do differently if she had it to do over again. Which makes A Bird in the Hand a sort of fledgeling book in more ways than one.

So I’m trying my damndest to evaluate the work in hand, a book that is nearly FORTY years old, and not conflate what I think of it with what I know is said of her work now. Which doesn’t erase the knowledge that without this start the rest wouldn’t exist.

The thing about THIS book is that it introduces both a pair of amateur detectives, George Palmer-Jones and his wife Molly, AND the quirky, closed and rather insular community of twitchers. So there’s a lot here to be introduced and explained.

On the one hand, the twitchers are, in their own way, an analog for any difficult to breach community of defensive and occasionally derided hobbyists. They have a fascination that is not shared and is often outright dismissed by those who are not also caught up in its spell. If you’ve ever nerded out about anything, while twitching may not be your jam, the twitchers aren’t all that different from whatever group you flocked with are or were, just that the jargon is different.

The story does a more than good enough job of getting the reader into that tiny community. (Also, it reminded me a bit of Marty Wingate’s Birds of a Feather series, which begins with The Rhyme of the Magpie, which I confess I liked quite a bit better, possibly because it’s a LOT cozier and that’s more of what I was in the mood for.)

On the other hand, the characters in this story, including George and Molly, collectively aren’t all that likeable. In the case of the amateur investigator protagonists, I think it’s that we don’t know enough about them, yet, and so don’t empathize as much as I’d hoped to. It doesn’t help that the perspective is all George’s and he both angsts a lot and gets caught up in his own head, he doesn’t read the room very well and relies on Molly to smooth over his bluntness. And because we see her from his perspective, and probably a bit because this was written in 1985 or thereabouts, she’s more of a social helpmeet than she would be written today or honestly than it feels like she actually is.

But it’s also the twitcher community. Nearly everyone seems to be shady, everyone is judgmental both inside and outside, and no one seems to be happy or liking where they are in the world. It’s a community that’s rife with strife, to the point where it isn’t a surprise that someone got killed – or even that Tom French turned out to be the victim. It’s more that the perpetrator and their motivations come a bit out of left field and the investigation is muddled every step of the way because of all the grudges and rivalries held by seemingly everyone involved.

In the end, I liked this but didn’t love it. I was more intrigued than captivated by this particular book. At the same time, I’m still interested in seeing where the author went with this series, as well as her later work. So I’ll probably be back to see how George and Molly are doing sometime when I’m looking for another interesting mystery.

#BookReview: See How They Hide by Allison Brennan

#BookReview: See How They Hide by Allison BrennanSee How They Hide (Quinn & Costa, #6) by Allison Brennan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Quinn & Costa #6
Pages: 400
Published by Mira on January 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

No matter how far you run, some pasts never let you go…
Two people were murdered—at the exact same time, in the same gruesome manner, bodies covered in the same red poppies…but on opposite sides of the country.
With Detective Kara Quinn investigating in Oregon and Special Agent Matt Costa in Virginia, the Mobile Response Team digs deep to uncover more about each victim. What is the link between the two, and why were they targeted?
Yet their search unearths more questions than answers—until they meet Riley Pierce, the only person still alive who might be able to help them find the killers.
Soon, it becomes clear this case is nothing like they’ve seen before as their investigation leads them to the hallowed grounds of Havenwood—an eerily beautiful place rooted in a terrifying past.
As more bodies turn up, all tied to the same community, Kara and Matt are desperate to piece the puzzle together before Havenwood’s leader sacrifices everything to keep her secrets buried.

My Review:

“No matter where you go, there you are,” at least according to Buckaroo Banzai. But seriously, as much fun as playing with that particular quote can be, it’s also profoundly and utterly true. The one person you can’t run and hide from is yourself.

Not that the string of victims in this serial murder case haven’t been seriously attempting to do so. For so long that most of them believed they had succeeded in escaping from the nightmare in all their collective pasts.

This cross-country case for LAPD Detective Kara Quinn, FBI Agent-in-Charge Matt Costa, and the entire FBI Mobile Response Team begin their part of this case with multiple murders in far-flung corners of the United States whose multiple perpetrators all left the same grisly calling card – a shower of red poppy petals over the bodies of their victims.

It’s obvious to all of the agents on the case that their victims MUST be linked. Somehow. But whatever those links might be, it’s clear from the outset that it’s not ANY of the usual possibilities. There MUST be a pattern but whatever that pattern might be it’s hidden in plain sight.

Which is the only link they have. That ALL of the victims have extremely good fake IDs made out of ‘real’ documents and that they all seem to have sprung, fully formed, into life and professions and even careers that require documentation, as adults. Where they sprang from, that’s the question.

One young woman, Riley Pierce, escaped herself less than four years prior, desperate and on the run, holds the key. They’re ALL, including her, escaping from a beautiful monster that is holding an entire town either enthralled, imprisoned or both.

A monster who wants revenge on every person who escaped her thrall. Especially her daughter, Riley.

Escape Rating B: This sixth entry in the Quinn & Costa series marks the beginning of a new story arc as the case that drove LAPD Detective Kara Quinn out of LA and straight into the arms of the FBI (in more ways than one!) was finally closed in last year’s The Missing Witness.

I got seriously caught up in the series’ combination of confounding cases, dogged investigation, dangerous adversaries and heavy personal baggage because the team that grew up around those cases and their mission was made up of a group of marvelous competent hot messes. Particularly Quinn and Costa and their very professional but also entirely unprofessional relationship.

While I still enjoyed the investigative aspects of this particular extremely daunting case, I didn’t enjoy the story as a whole nearly as much as I have the rest of the series. And I’ve been wracking my brain to figure out why.

As I said, I liked the investigative part. It’s what they were investigating that left me a bit cold, even as it reminded me of one of the books in J.D. Robb’s In Death series, Faithless in Death.

Both that book and this one are about cults, the psychology of those they attract, the way that they continue to mess with their followers’ heads even after said followers leave, the punishments inflicted on any variation from the founding principles, and the way that members become so ensnared they can’t leave.

However, unlike the cult in Faithless in Death, the cult in this story didn’t make the same kind of sense. Although I decried the motivations in Faithless, I understood them. The driving principles behind Havenwell seemed rather loosey-goosey, even as the way that the members behaved reminded me entirely too much of the way that people in Nazi Germany didn’t speak up for fear of reprisal – or something very close to it.

This is absolutely a situation where your reading mileage may vary, because this just didn’t grab me nearly as much as I expected it to and I only believe I’ve got half a handle on why that turned out to be the case.

Which leads me back to the reason I picked this up in the first place. I found the rest of the books in this series to be very compelling reads, so I’ll be back the next time that Quinn & Costa have another perplexing case to solve!

A+ #BookReview: Echo by Tracy Clark

A+ #BookReview: Echo by Tracy ClarkEcho (Detective Harriet Foster, #3) by Tracy Clark
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Detective Harriet Foster #3
Pages: 364
Published by Thomas & Mercer on December 3, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

From the award-winning author of Hide and Fall comes a taut tale of renegade justice and long-awaited resolution, bringing the thrilling Detective Harriet Foster series to a heart-stopping conclusion.
Hardwicke House, home to Belverton College’s exclusive Minotaur Society, is no stranger to tragedy. And when a body turns up in the field next to the mansion, the scene looks chillingly familiar.
Chicago PD sends hard-nosed Detective Harriet “Harri” Foster to investigate. The victim is Brice Collier, a wealthy Belverton student, whose billionaire father, Sebastian, owns Hardwicke and ranks as a major school benefactor. Sebastian also has ties to the mansion’s notorious past, when thirty years ago, hazing led to a student’s death in the very same field.
Could the deaths be connected? With no suspects or leads, Harri and her partner, Detective Vera Li, will have to dig deep to find answers. No charges were ever filed in the first case, and this time, Harri’s determined the killer must pay. But still grieving her former partner’s death, Harri must also contend with a shadowy figure called the voice—and their dangerous game of cat and mouse could threaten everything.

My Review:

You can feel the deep cold of a Chicago winter wafting from the pages to chill your fingers to the bone as you read Echo. February is the cruelest month in the city, as it’s so cold you can see your breath, the pigeons huddle under the heat lamps at the ‘L’ stations, sunrise doesn’t happen until you get to work and sunset comes LONG before it’s time to go home. It feels like it’s been cold forever and that it’s going to be cold every bit as long – which it might, as winter holds onto the city with an icy grip that shows no signs of breaking.

Detective Harriet Foster of the Chicago Police Department has been breaking since we met her in the first book in this series, Hide. But she’s not quite broken – at least not yet – in spite of not letting herself find solace or even closure for the two hits that have left her reeling in badly suppressed agony; the senseless death of her son as he was playing in the front yard, and the staged suicide of her police partner.

Her son’s killers have been held to as much account as they ever will be, but the death of her partner is still an open case – or so Harri believes when this story opens. That hope is dashed when Internal Affairs closes the case, taking the evidence at a face value that Harri has called into question. Whoever killed Glynnis made it look like G. was a dirty cop, and IA would rather bury the case and Harri’s partner than open a can of worms that no one on the force wants to open. Justice be damned.

That G.’s killer has been calling Harri from a succession of burner phones to taunt her about the case and promise her that she’ll fall to his dirty tricks just as Glynnis did is just more black slush on top of the grey snow piled all over the city.

Just as Harri decides to pursue this very personal case very much on her own time and off the books – and her new partner, Vera Li is just as determined to join her in spite of the risks to both of their lives and careers – they get caught up in a very much on-the-books case that seems as far from Harri’s barely hanging on, hard-working, city employee life as it possible for it to get.

A young man has been found dead in a snow covered field on Chicago’s North Side, a stone’s throw away from the big house his ultra-wealthy father owns as a private ‘Animal House’ for the scions of the family as they attend the expensive private college nearby. A college where the family name is on half the buildings, and where once the father and now the son are rich and privileged legacy students – with all the power and indulgence that wealth can provide.

The only thing that hard-working CPD Detective Harriet Foster would normally have in common with a hard-partying rich boy skating through life on his father’s well-earned reputation would be that she’s the cop investigating his murder.

But it’s not.

Because it’s beginning to look a lot like Brice Collier wasn’t murdered for anything HE did – and not that he didn’t do plenty of things that no one dared to accuse him of. Just as Harri figures out that her partner’s murder – and it definitely was murder – had nothing to do with anything that G. might have EVER done.

Instead, the two cases ‘echo’ each other, as the sins of the fathers are being visited upon their children by perpetrators for whom revenge is a dish best served as cold as February in Chicago.

Escape Rating A+: This series has been awesome from the very first page of the very first book, Hide. The second book, Fall, managed to be even better. The blurb claims that this book is the conclusion to the trilogy, and I was so utterly bummed about that until I noticed that in spite of the blurb the series continues this time next year with Edge.

This story does conclude the initial story from Hide. In that first book, Harri was dealing, badly, with the death of her son and dealing equally badly with the death of her police partner and friend. Over the course of the series she has managed to both solve some really thorny – and very typically Chicago – murders while at the same time being very human and broken and not dealing with her own personal shit well at all.

And yet still putting one foot in front of the other.

The case here feels ripped from the headlines. The young scion of a rich and influential family, someone whose way has been repeatedly smoothed over by family money and power, who expects to skate through life and never face the consequences of his frequently scummy actions – is murdered. He could have been killed for some of his own misdeeds, but it goes deeper and darker than that as it’s clear from early in the case that his own actions hadn’t yet caught up with him. And that his death hasn’t had the effect that his murderers hoped for.

Meanwhile, Harri’s personal case goes down a parallel path. Her partner’s death wasn’t about anything G. did. It’s not even about anything Harri ever did. It’s all to get back at someone in the past who is just as unreachable as the Collier paterfamilias. Even though that unreachability is a parallel that shouldn’t have been part of the parallel.

The Collier case is riveting in the way that great police procedurals are riveting, as Harri and her team work through the evidence in spite of pressure from both the senior Collier and City Hall. They manage to work their way to a sticky and convoluted end through layers of facts and lies and long-buried secrets.

Harri’s personal case is compelling in the way that the best thrillers are compelling. She’s being taunted and threatened by someone who knows everything about her while she knows nothing about them or their motives. That case slowly unravels, bit by bit and step by step, even as Harri does an often poor job at keeping herself from unravelling along with it.

In the end, she emerges victorious, stronger in her broken places, and with friends at her back she hadn’t been willing to let in. Justice prevails for her, as the reader hopes that it will, even if the closest that the Collier case can reach is closure. But that’s right too.

I’m glad to see the trauma of Harri’s personal case get solved and resolved, and I’m equally glad that this is not the end of her story. She’s a dynamic, flawed and fascinating character and I can’t wait to ride along with her again next December in Edge.

#BookReview: Bayou Book Thief by Ellen Byron

#BookReview: Bayou Book Thief by Ellen ByronBayou Book Thief (Vintage Cookbook Mystery, #1) by Ellen Byron
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: cozy mystery, culinary mystery, mystery
Series: Vintage Cookbook Mystery #1
Pages: 304
Published by Berkley on June 7, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A fantastic new cozy mystery series with a vintage flair from USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning author Ellen Byron.
Twenty-eight-year-old widow Ricki James leaves Los Angeles to start a new life in New Orleans after her showboating actor husband perishes doing a stupid internet stunt. The Big Easy is where she was born and adopted by the NICU nurse who cared for her after Ricki's teen mother disappeared from the hospital.
Ricki's dream comes true when she joins the quirky staff of Bon Vee Culinary House Museum, the spectacular former Garden District home of late bon vivant Genevieve "Vee" Charbonnet, the city's legendary restauranteur. Ricki is excited about turning her avocation - collecting vintage cookbooks - into a vocation by launching the museum's gift shop, Miss Vee's Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware. Then she discovers that a box of donated vintage cookbooks contains the body of a cantankerous Bon Vee employee who was fired after being exposed as a book thief.
The skills Ricky has developed ferreting out hidden vintage treasures come in handy for investigations. But both her business and Bon Vee could wind up as deadstock when Ricki's past as curator of a billionaire's first edition collection comes back to haunt her.
Will Miss Vee's Vintage Cookbooks and Kitchenware be a success ... or a recipe for disaster?

My Review:

There is just something about New Orleans, and there probably always has been. There certainly always has been for me, as I’ve been drawn to reading books set in that city ever since my very first visit decades ago. So, when a friend picked up this book and said it looked like fun, I was more than willing to come along for the virtual trip.

Ricki James isn’t so much visiting as returning home to New Orleans after a long absence when this story begins. Her move may be a return to her roots after years in Los Angeles, but it also represents a fresh start – or at least Ricki certainly hopes so. She has come home in an attempt to dodge not one but two scandals she hopes she left behind in LA.

Just as no good deed goes unpunished, no really big scandal ever truly gets left behind – particularly not when there’s still some juice left in it. A situation with which Ricki becomes all too aware when a new and equally juicy scandal arrives at her door.

Not, initially, her personal door, but definitely, more importantly and absolutely worse, the door of her new and just barely established antique cookery, bookstore and museum gift shop at the equally newly established Bon Vee Culinary House Museum in the Garden District home of the late and much lamented Genevieve “Vee” Charbonnet, one of the city’s legendary restaurateurs.

One of the museum’s docents, a man nearly everyone on the staff can barely stand – at best – is caught red-handed with a selection of her shop’s vintage cookbooks concealed under his coat. It’s theft, pure and simple – no matter how much he tries to pin the blame that is so obviously his on practically every other person on the scene. His attempt to shift the blame merely spreads the ill-will he has always engendered – and avails him absolutely not.

But it might be the cause of his murder that night. A murder that casts a shadow over the Museum AND Ricki’s shop, as the theft, the spurious accusations the man threw around, AND the general enmity that nearly everyone seems to have felt for him, points out a possible motive. A motive that, as thin as it might seem, seems to be the only one the police can find.

The question, a question that seems to generally hover around the NOPD according to these local residents, is whether the police are willing and/or able to look all that hard when there’s an easy solution clearly to hand.

And that’s what leads antique cookbook expert Ricki James onto the path that many a worried amateur sleuth has trod before her. She decides to investigate the murder herself. Just to see if she can find a clue – or ten – that the police might have missed. In the hopes of preserving a wonderful place full of terrific people who are doing good work and might just offer her a chance to make a new place for herself into the bargain.

Escape Rating B: Bayou Book Thief was simply a delicious starter for a cozy mystery series. There was plenty of atmosphere – well of course because New Orleans – along with tempting red herrings, a fascinating ‘home base’ filled with interesting and quirky characters AND a whole series of villains that were easy to hate.

Beginning with that first murder victim, as it seems like no one misses the man. He was a nuisance when he was alive – and an even bigger one now that he’s dead. Leaving behind oodles of potential suspects and plenty of motives.

What made the story extra, added fun and filled with even more surprises was that the motive was wrapped around a decades old secret in a way that added to all the charm – and warmed the cockles of this booklover’s heart.

Writing randy romances – actually soft core porn – in the 1950s (around the time that the infamous Peyton Place was first published) was just not the done thing for young blue-blooded women possessing New Orleans’ finest pedigrees. Over half a century later, the now 80something Madame Lucretia Noisette is delighted that her old pseudonym has been rediscovered and she’s more than willing to own it.

The world has changed in the intervening decades, and at her age she’s past caring about any possible remaining potential scandal – even if her son and her grandchildren are not.

Little do they know that it’s not grand-mère’s once upon a time scandal that will cause the most problems. It’s not even Ricki’s much more recent scandals – the ones that she hoped she had left behind in LA. (That she had one serious scandal in her past is not atypical for the amateur detective in a cozy series. Two, however, struck this reader as a bit over-the-top, as both scandals were extremely juicy to the point where having one person be involved in both felt a bit like ‘overegging the pudding’. I’m curious to see the effects they’ll have on Ricki in future books in the series.)

Where back in the day the investigative axiom “cherchez la femme” might have led to the real villain, in this later day “follow the money” is a much better bet. Even if Ricki doesn’t figure out the whole thing at the very last moment.

She’s still ahead of the NOPD, something that is likely to spur her to future investigations. As it already has, considering that there are at least two more books in this charming cozy mystery series, Wined and Died in New Orleans and French Quarter Fright Night. I’m certainly planning on a return visit the next time I feel like ‘laissez les bon temps rouler’ the way to murder.

#BookReview: Buried Memories by Simon R. Green

#BookReview: Buried Memories by Simon R. GreenBuried Memories (Ishmael Jones, #10) by Simon R. Green
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, mystery, paranormal, urban fantasy
Series: Ishmael Jones #10
Pages: 219
Published by Severn House on October 25, 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads


Returning to the small town where he crash-landed in 1963, Ishmael Jones is in search of answers. But his investigation is de-railed by a brutal murder.

"I think something very bad and very dangerous has come to your little town, Inspector . . ."
As long-buried memories from his hidden past begin to resurface, Ishmael Jones and his partner Penny feel compelled to return to the small country town where Ishmael crash-landed in 1963; the place where his memories began.
Norton Hedley is no ordinary town. Apparitions, sudden disappearances, sightings of unusual beasts: for centuries, the place has been plagued by a series of inexplicable events. Ishmael's first task is to track down local author Vincent Smith, the one man he believes may have some answers.
Ishmael and Penny aren't the only ones seeking the mysterious Mr Smith. When their search unearths a newly-dead body in the local mortuary - a body that's definitely not supposed to be there - Ishmael becomes the prime suspect in the ensuing murder investigation. His only hope of discovering the truth about his origins lies in exposing a ruthless killer.

My Review:

Ishmael Jones is as he has always been. The problem is that he’s been the same, absolutely unaging, for 60 years now. And he doesn’t remember who – or more likely what – he was before that. Before 1963, when his alien space ship was blown out of the sky over Earth and crashed in a field near the tiny village of Norton Hedley.

Which doesn’t seem to have changed much either in the intervening 60 years.

A situation that is quite a bit more worrying than Ishmael’s own unchanging face, because he at least knows why THAT’s happening. Or not, as the case may be.

But Norton Hedley, a place where people come and go and live in hope for a good tourist season every year, seems to be a haven for the uncanny. After all, that’s what has brought Ishmael and his partner Penny to the village.

Because Ishmael and his unchanging appearance began – at least as far as his memory goes – with the crash landing of his alien spacecraft in the woods surrounding Norton Hedley in 1963. He’s returned because his previous two cases, Night Train to Murder and The House on Widows Hill, have provided him with some scattered but ominous clues about who and what he used to be.

And he needs to know. Because he needs to know if he’s a danger to Penny. Or anyone else on Earth who doesn’t deserve it.

In his research about Norton Hedley, or the research the coyly named black ops group, the Organisation, has done on his behalf, he – and they – have learned that Norton Hedley has been weird central for years. Not just the years since his ship crashed in 1963, but for centuries. Millenia even.

Something in, on, or more likely under – like the thing that was under The House on Widows Hill – has been creeping its creepy way along into the lifeblood of the town for eons uncounting. It might have the answers he’s been searching for for decades.

And it might not want to let him know.

Escape Rating B: This series has been one of my Halloween reads since I first discovered it, so it seemed appropriate to finish it up this Halloween. As I’ve already read the final book in the series (so far), I’ll have to pick something else horror-adjacent next year.

The author is an acquired taste – one that I acquired decades ago. It’s the snark. It’s always been the snark no matter what the ostensible genre or subject of ANY of his many series might be. If you like his voice, then when you’re in that mood nothing else will do. But if you’re not, you bounce off, and bounce hard. Your reading mileage may vary.

The concept of this particular series throws a whole bunch of speculative fiction tropes into one hell of a blender. The series began, back in The Dark Side of the Road, as English country house mysteries where the supernatural agencies turn out to be merely human – but with a touch of the paranormal or extraterrestrial for spice and added bodies.

Over the course of the series it has turned into Ishmael’s quest to learn enough about who or what he used to be to figure out just how he can continue to stay one step ahead of all the various secret agencies that would like to use him up in one way or another. Even more important, he’s thoroughly invested in keeping Penny safe – if necessary from himself.

At first, what made this series work as well as it does – at least for this reader – was the revelation in each case that no matter how weird things got – often very – that the enemies were always human after all.

What has kept me going this far have been the questions about Ishmael’s past and Penny’s future. While Ishmael has been unchanging for 60 years, the series has been set in a sort of ‘perpetual now’. Days and weeks pass but seemingly not years. This entry in the series is one of the first that confronts head on the problem of Ishmael and Penny’s relationship.

Not that they have problems, but that together they have a problem. Penny is an ordinary human, she will age, and Ishmael will not. Short of a deus ex machina – and not that there haven’t been plenty of powerful machina around over the course of the series – this can’t end happily. Howsomever, I already know that it does not end in the next book, Haunted by the Past. And in spite of the ominousness of that title, it doesn’t dive nearly as deeply into Ishmael’s past as Night Train to Murder, The House on Widows Hill and Buried Memories have done.

So, I have begun to wonder if the author is planning to end this series at all. I wonder even more whether or not he should. I’d rather just think of Ishmael and Penny in that perpetual now, continuing on their quest to find evil humans at the heart of supernatural hoaxes, raging together against the dying of their light.

Grade A #BookReview: The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny

Grade A #BookReview: The Grey Wolf by Louise PennyThe Grey Wolf (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #19) by Louise Penny
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #19
Pages: 425
Published by Minotaur Books on October 29, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

The 19th mystery in the #1 New York Times-bestselling Armand Gamache series.
Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Québec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning.
That's only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin THE GREY WOLF, the nineteenth novel in Louise Penny's #1 New York Times-bestselling series. A missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading "this might interest you", a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list—and then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching.
Armand Gamache, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his son-in-law and second in command, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste can only trust each other, as old friends begin to act like enemies, and long-time enemies appear to be friends. Determined to track down the threat before it becomes a reality, their pursuit takes them across Québec and across borders. Their hunt grows increasingly desperate, even frantic, as the enormity of the creature they’re chasing becomes clear. If they fail the devastating consequences would reach into the largest of cities and the smallest of villages.
Including Three Pines.

My Review:

You’ve heard the parable – even if you don’t recognize it at first. It’s often attributed to the Cherokee, but occasionally to a different Native American tribe. It’s the story about the two ‘wolves’ that battle inside each soul. One wolf represents the darker parts of human nature; anger, envy, jealousy, greed, arrogance, etc. Because that wolf is the embodiment of the dark side, it is often pictured as a black wolf.

The other wolf represents the better angels of our nature; joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, empathy, truth, compassion, etc. That is the grey wolf.

As the parable goes, the wolf that wins the endless battle within each soul is the one that is fed by the thoughts and deeds of that person.

Having gotten to know Chief Inspector Armand Gamache over the course of this series, it’s all too easy to see Gamache as the embodiment of that grey wolf. At this point in his life and career, in more ways than one as he has literally become a grey wolf, older, sadder, wiser, but still fighting the good fight to do his best by his people and his province, in spite of the black wolves arrayed against him.

Including the one inside his own soul.

This particular case begins, as so many of Gamache’s cases begin, with a series of unrelated events that, on the surface have zero in common. Two murders, close together in time but remote and as far apart as they could be in the vast province of Québec, committed in precisely the same manner as a mafia hit. Even though neither victim appears to have any connections whatsoever with the ‘Sixth Family’ that controls organized crime in the province.

Someone breaks into Gamache family’s pied-à-terre in Montreal while he and his wife are at their home in Three Pines. But absolutely nothing appears to have been taken or damaged in the crime.

And last but absolutely not least, especially in Gamache’s mind and memory, a political operative that he crossed early in his career, who attempted to destroy him and his family and very nearly succeeded, calls in the middle of the night to say that she has information he should be interested in. Maybe he should be, but he’s absolutely not considering the source – with expletives.

At least, not until the unrelated incidents start coming together into a pattern that his instincts – if not the actual evidence before him –  tells him is the tip of a terrible iceberg. A pattern that tells him that there is something very, very rotten indeed in the Province de Québec, a pattern that will lead Gamache and his seconds-in-command, Isabelle Lacoste and his son-in-law Jean Guy Beauvoir, to the remotest corners of Québec, back to the scene of the lowest point and most desperate points in the relationships between Gamache and his son-by-birth Daniel as well as his son-by-adoption Beauvoir, and all the way to France, to a secure monastery keeping the secret of one of the world’s most famous recipes – and the potential application of one of the world’s deadliest poisons.

Gamache knows there is an enemy within – probably more than one. He has very few people he can trust absolutely, very little time and no authority with which to demand answers. And no faith that any of his desperate choices are the right ones. But he has to try, no matter the cost to his career or himself.

Because the nightmare he is desperate to prevent is only the beginning if he fails.

Escape Rating A: The Chief Inspector Gamache series, like many long-running series, tells each individual story on two levels. The particular work in hand, in this case, The Grey Wolf, focuses on the case that has been brought to Gamache’s attention at this moment in time, shows his team dealing with the clues and red herrings, figuring out which are which, and eventually solving the case or at least the immediate danger of it.

The other level is the one where things often get very deep, which in many ways goes all the way back to Gamache’s four things that lead to wisdom. As he explains to a group of young police officers in Still Life, “They are four sentences that we learn to say, and mean…I don’t know. I need help. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

And he lives by those principles – even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. And most especially when he discovers that he was wrong. Which he does, both in this story and in all the stories that have led him and his team to this point. Because the cop shop aspects of the usual mystery series have become a found family, AND Gamache has a tendency to tilt at big, important windmills that take that family into dangerous places and very fraught political circumstances.

This is one of those cases.

Which is where interesting and frustrating and really, truly frightening things happen in this story. As a criminal investigation, the reader is often caught up in Gamache’s own frustrations as the case is initially so elusive he’s not sure if there are one or several or precisely what it or they might be. Multiple people are playing multiple games, with both the best and worst of intentions, and it’s difficult for the reader to watch Gamache and his team flail around as much as this story forces them to.

It takes a lot of both investigation and speculation to pull this one together.

The frightening part, the part that makes this story a whole lot more fitting for Halloween week than I originally imagined, is the nature and scope of the vast criminal enterprise that Gamache has to stop. Because I don’t want to reveal the big secret, I’m going to do my damndest to talk around it.

The rot at the heart of this case, at first, read like some kind of supervillain shit. I mean that in all seriousness. It takes a situation that is already happening, that is already terrifying, that many people are trying to mitigate if not stop, something utterly real – and then posits that someone in a position of power is planning to deliberately cause an incident of deadly magnitude and then manipulate it to gain yet more power. Not in some wartorn country halfway around the globe, but in the heart of Canada.

And at first my mind went to Lex Luthor and some of his ilk and flew right out of my willing suspension of disbelief. But I kept thinking about it. And came to the unfortunately but truly frightening conclusion that it’s entirely too plausible. Then I started gibbering a bit because it so easily could. Not exactly this way, but threats of this magnitude are already on the horizon and people in power who would create and manipulate those threats are not merely waiting in the wings but believe they are in entirely too many ‘on-deck’ circles.

To make a very long story short, I picked this up because I simply love this series – especially its characters – very, very much indeed. Part of why I continue to read, book after book, is not just that those characters are fascinating, but that their relationships change shape over time. The way they work together is never static, and it often produces the kind of low-key bantering humor that arises in a group that knows each other well and loves each other much – and provides the light moments that this particular entry in the series definitely needed. And I love them all for it, even the crazy poet and her duck. If you’re looking for mysteries that are considerably more, and go infinitely deeper, than merely ‘whodunnit’, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is a treasure – especially when he takes us on a walk through dark places, as he does in The Grey Wolf.

A+ #AudioBookReview: Rough Pages by Lev A.C. Rosen

A+ #AudioBookReview: Rough Pages by Lev A.C. RosenRough Pages (Evander Mills, #3) by Lev A.C. Rosen
Narrator: Vikas Adam
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical mystery, mystery, noir
Series: Evander Mills #3
Pages: 272
Length: 9 hours and 15 minutes
Published by Forge Books, Macmillan Audio on October 1, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Private Detective Evander "Andy" Mills has been drawn back to the Lavender House estate for a missing person case. Pat, the family butler, has been volunteering for a book service, one that specializes in mailing queer books to a carefully guarded list of subscribers. With bookseller Howard Salzberger gone suspiciously missing along with his address book, everyone on that list, including some of Andy's closest friends, is now in danger.
A search of Howard's bookstore reveals that someone wanted to stop him and his co-owner, Dorothea Lamb, from sending out their next book. The evidence points not just to the Feds, but to the Mafia, who would be happy to use the subscriber list for blackmail.
Andy has to maneuver through both the government and the criminal world, all while dealing with a nosy reporter who remembers him from his days as a police detective and wants to know why he's no longer a cop. With his own secrets closing in on him, can Andy find the list before all the lives on it are at risk?
Set in atmospheric 1950s San Francisco, Rough Pages asks who is allowed to tell their own stories, and how far would you go to seek out the truth.

My Review:

The case that Andy has to solve in Rough Pages begins by circling back to the events of the first book in the series, Lavender House. In that first book, Andy Mills found a purpose, became part of a found family, and solved a murder, all while keeping the police – of which he used to be a part – from learning the truth about the residents of Lavender House.

That every single member of the family, and the staff, were queer. He managed to keep their secrets in spite of his own already being common knowledge – at least among his former ‘brothers in blue’ in the San Francisco Police Department.

So Rough Pages begins by taking Andy back to Lavender House, because they need his detective skills again – even if they don’t know it yet.

The Lamontaine family at Lavender House has adopted a baby. Or nearly so. The paperwork and the inspections and the questions have not quite run their course. It would still be much too easy for social services to take the baby back. If the family’s secret comes out – they certainly will.

At first, the case doesn’t seem like much. A friend of the family, the owner of a queer bookstore, is missing. Nearly all of the family have bought books from the shop. The butler/majordomo, Pat, volunteers there on his days off.

But it’s not just the owner that’s missing. Because he kept a list of all the subscribers to his book service, a kind of book club for queer books, mailed to subscribers all over the state of California – and even beyond. It’s not just that he’s missing – his list is missing too. A list that includes every single member of the Lamontaine family old enough to read.

Mailing ‘dirty’ books through the mail was illegal and ALL books with a hint of queer contents were considered ‘dirty’ automatically. If that list is in the wrong hands, they’re all in trouble and they’ll lose the baby.

So there’s the obvious possibility that Howard and his business partner DeeDee, who is also missing, might have been arrested by the feds, and that the feds have the list.

But it could be worse, because Howard may have gotten himself in trouble with the mob, either because his boyfriend is a mobster’s nephew or because he planned to publish the memoirs of a gay mobster – anonymously, of course. Either of those circumstances is more than enough to land him in big trouble with some very shady characters.

The feds will just ruin everyone’s lives and send as many as possible to jail. But the mob? Blackmail is the most likely outcome. Or, they might send somebody to ‘feed the fishes’. Unless they already have.

Escape Rating A+: I am absolutely hooked on this series, and Rough Pages was a totally worthy successor to the first two books, Lavender House and The Bell in the Fog. And it’s even better and more utterly absorbing in Vikas Adam’s narration, which I’ve had the pleasure of listening to for all three books so far. And OMG but I hope there are more.

I fell into this book so deeply that I had to let it process for a couple of days before I could write anything coherent. With a book this good it takes a while for the ‘SQUEE!” to settle down. I’m not exactly certain that it has even now, but I’ll certainly try.

This is a book that can be read – or listened to – from multiple perspectives with multiple hooks, all of which ‘hook’ the reader rather firmly.

Mystery readers, particularly readers who love noir detective fiction will feel right at home in the foggy streets of Andy’s San Francisco. Andy Mills is exactly the type of hardboiled detective featured in the work of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain – or he would be if Andy wasn’t queer.

At the same time, this series is historical fiction, set in the early 1950s, among San Francisco’s gay community. Also, it’s set at the point in U.S. postwar history where everyone was trying to repair and/or return to a ‘normalcy’ fractured by war. The tolerance of the war period was over and McCarthyism was on the rise, searching for liberals, queers and communists in every closet, under every bed, and any place where anyone who stood up or stood out might ask questions, persecuting and prosecuting them unmercifully in both the courts and the press, driving them out of jobs, homes and even the whole country.

The fear that Andy, his friends, his found family, and the community he serves, live under every day is as palpable as Andy’s personal fear that his former ‘buddies’ in the SFPD will find him and beat him again and again – and that they might not stop when he’s merely ‘near‘ death the next time.

And in this particular case, Andy’s job and his life intersect with an issue that, while it never goes away, has reared its ugly head as high in our present day as it did during the 1950s setting of the story. And that’s censorship and the repression of thought and speech that is always its ultimate goal.

The combination of themes gives this story a resonance from past to present while also telling a terrific story, putting the reader squarely at Andy’s side during a compelling investigation, and feeling right along with him as he does his best to protect the people he has come to hold dear – in a life that he never expected to have.

Some readers will be here for the mystery, some for the history, some for the portrait of gay life in a time and place where everything had to be hidden – and the cost of that attempt at hiding one’s truest self on every action and reaction. And anyone who believes in the power of words and thoughts and books and reading to change lives and form communities – and just how much some parts of society will attempt to suppress those same words and thoughts and even lives, will find Rough Pages to be a story that sticks long after the final page is turned.