Genre: thriller

Review: Secrets in the Dark by Heather Graham

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Secrets in the Dark by Heather GrahamSecrets in the Dark: A Novel (The Blackbird Trilogy, 2) by Heather Graham
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, romantic suspense, thriller
Series: Blackbird Trilogy #2
Pages: 336
Published by Mira on July 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Over a century after Jack, a new Ripper is on the loose.
Following in the footsteps of notorious serial murderer Jack the Ripper, a killer is stalking the streets of London. The self-dubbed Ripper King strikes at night, leaving a trail of eviscerated bodies in his wake. Fresh off a case with potential ties to the recent rash of killings, FBI agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter are all too familiar with a slayer set to rule with a lethal fist. And they’ll stop at nothing to end his reign.
The killer’s MO may be nothing new, but his desire to be infamous makes him dangerous. Della and Mason know it’s only a matter of time before their investigation emboldens this new Ripper, forcing the agents to work quickly before another woman winds up dead. But now that the heat is on, their game of cat and mouse takes an unexpected turn, leading Della and Mason into a deadly trap they never saw coming…

My Review:

There are characters that never die. Some are fictional, as yesterday’s review of a brand new Sherlock Holmes pastiche proves. Some, however, are completely factual – or at least as much facts as are known – and they seem to have a life of their own.

Especially those who were into the business of killing in a really splashy way. Like Jack the Ripper. Who would have been a contemporary of, and might even have been identified by, the above mentioned Sherlock Holmes. If both of them had been factual, that is.

(If that idea appeals, take a look at either Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye or Sherlock Holmes & the Ripper of Whitechapel. I digress.)

Secrets in the Dark, however, presents a modern-day Ripper going head to head (or heads) with a much different breed of detective – the new international branch of the Krewe of Hunters, codenamed Blackbird.

Blackbird, in the persons of FBI agents Mason Carter and Della Hamilton, forms the heart of an investigative team that includes agents seconded from Britain, France, Norway with connections to and sanctions from Interpol, to hunt down and apprehend serial killers crossing international borders to carry out their grisly ‘work’.

In the first riveting book in the Blackbird trilogy, Whispers at Dusk in addition to ‘getting the band together’ and Mason and Della getting romantically together, Blackbird brought the notorious ‘Vampire Killer’ to justice in the U.S.

Or so they believed.

But Stephan Dante, AKA the ‘Vampire Killer’, wasn’t just a serial killer – as frightening as that thought is. He was every bit as expert in finding others just as disaffected, disillusioned and downright psychotic as himself, and training them in his methods. Not just his methods of killing, but in his all-too-successful methods of denying the police even a scintilla of trace evidence for forensics to sink their investigative teeth into.

Now that the Vampire Killer is behind bars, one of his best (worst, most-adept, all-of-the-above dammit) apprentices has decided it’s his time to shine. Jack the Ripper is back, leaving a trail of bloody corpses in the back alleys of modern-day Whitechapel, taunting the police and the public by way of both old-fashioned letters and new-fangled social media. Promising a spree that will put his old mentor in the shade and make the original Jack’s gruesome trail seem downright tame in comparison.

Blackbird has the new Jack in their sights, just as they did his old teacher. They’re getting closer than he believes – in spite of his ability to hide in plain sight and follow their every move.

Escape Rating B+: This was a bit of the right book at the right time. I did fall straight into the story because I already knew the characters and the premise after the first book, Whispers at Dusk, and I did find it a compelling read, but I did have a couple of niggles along the way, which I’ll get to in a minute.

First, and not a niggle at all, you do not need to have read the entire Krewe of Hunters series from which this is a spinoff to get into Blackbird. I’m certain of this because I haven’t. By the nature of the team and the way they work with local police liaisons, there’s always a natural opportunity to give any newbies, whether in story or reading the story, to get caught up enough to make it work.

I think one probably does need to read the first Blackbird book, Whispers at Dusk, because the events and circumstances follow directly on from Whispers, and Whispers has done the heavy-lifting of getting the team together and putting Mason and Della into both their working AND their romantic partnership.

The idea of someone attempting to recreate the historical Ripper killings, whether by location or method or both, is neither new nor even completely fictional. The Yorkshire Ripper, AKA Peter Sutcliffe, was clearly a more northerly copycat who operated between 1975 and 1980. Not long ago at all.

But the Ripper King of the Blackbird Trilogy is thankfully fictional – and also totally out of his gourd. The reader does get to take a few trips into his head – and I’d rather have skipped those bits. I read this kind of suspense to see the competent team catch the killer so that part wasn’t my cuppa. It wasn’t too much or too far over the top, but I’d have enjoyed the book more without.

I also wish the killer hadn’t focused on Della exactly the way that his mentor did. I also wish the team had at least one more female agent on it. I can’t put my finger on why, but it bothers me that there don’t seem to be any other female agents except for background characters.

(I recognize that’s a me thing and may not be a you thing.)

So I liked this as much as I did the first book in the Blackbird Trilogy, Whispers at Dusk, and I certainly got into it every bit as fast and stayed stuck in it just as hard to the very end. More than enough that I’m looking forward to see this case get wrapped up in Cursed at Dawn later this month!

Review: The Horoscope Writer by Ash Bishop

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Horoscope Writer by Ash BishopThe Horoscope Writer by Ash Bishop
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: horror, mystery, thriller
Pages: 320
Published by CamCat Books on July 18, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Leo: You’ll step out the door, prepared for a normal day. But you’ll never reach your workplace. You will vanish, without a trace.
Who is The Horoscope Writer? It’s not Bobby Frindley. He’s an ex-Olympic athlete who has fast-talked his way into an entry-level position at a dying newspaper. He’s supposed to be writing horoscopes, but someone has been doing his job for him . . .
On his first night on the job, Bobby receives an email with twelve gruesome, highly-detailed horoscopes, along with a chilling ultimatum: print them and one will come true, or ignore them and all of them will.
Working with a skeptical co-worker, Bobby investigates the horoscope writer’s true identity, but the closer he gets to the truth, the more the predictions begin to be about him. Has he attracted the attention of a cruel puppeteer? Or is it possible that, like any good horoscope, it’s all in his mind?

My Review:

Human beings do their damndest to find patterns in things that don’t have them. The whole idea behind that concept, patternicity, is a huge part of what drives the plot and the people in the book Rabbits by Terry Miles, and its upcoming sequel, The Quiet Room.

We want the world to make sense, so we try to force that sense into the world whether it’s there or not.

Which may be part of why people faithfully read their horoscopes and believe the rather vague hints and warnings therein. Because it’s easy to make the predictions and warnings cover the events of the day after the fact, especially if one is looking for such coverage.

But in this story, the new ‘horoscope writer’ for a struggling regional newspaper in San Diego receives a full set of horoscopes from an anonymous ‘benefactor’ with an attached threat – or warning – or a bit of both.

If the horoscopes are published in full, only one will come true. But if they’re not, all of them will. While some are trivial, a few on the list are downright dire – but also very much against the odds. Former Olympian and hopeful journalist Bobby Frindley believes it’s all a hoax.

At least until the rare tiger leaps out of his zoo enclosure and kills a tourist – just as his horoscope predicted.

From that point forward, the story is off to the races as the horoscope writer turned fledgeling reporter becomes caught up in the global phenomenon of figuring out which of the day’s predictions are going to come true – and wondering who is trying to force the pattern and to what grisly end.

And whether that end will be Bobby’s, his friends’, his city’s, or just his soul.

Escape Rating B-: I picked up The Horoscope Writer because I reviewed the author’s debut novel, Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc. for Library Journal and had a blast, so I was hoping for more of the same.

I certainly got caught up in Bobby Frindley’s ride to fame and maybe fortune as he tries to cobble out a career as an investigative journalist in the waning days of newspaper journalism. But there were a couple of things that I kept tripping over as I followed Bobby’s trek out of the frying pan and into the fire as he latched onto one flawed potential father-figure after another.

The Horoscope Writer reads like the ‘evil twin’ of the late 1990s TV series Early Edition, where a kind of average guy receives a daily delivery of the Chicago Sun-Times (how the mighty have fallen) that is one day ahead. The protagonist has one day to right whatever wrong he reads in the prognosticating paper before it’s too late to fix.

But that early newspaper delivery turned out to be on the side of the angels, while the horoscopes that Bobby starts receiving are a lot more like horrorscopes, and that’s before the general public starts trying to make them come true – or at least the potentially ‘good’ ones, often with considerably less than good results.

Humans being human, because they are.

As much as Bobby as a character read like more than a bit of a ‘failure to launch’, he also read like at least one answer to a question that I’ve always wondered about, the fate of people like Olympic athletes in sports that don’t have long-term career prospects. He’s achieved a kind of fame and success that people dream of, but at a time when nearly all of his life is still ahead of him.

Bobby’s flailing around for a second act, and the one that lands in his lap turns out to be a doozy – or will be if it doesn’t get him killed.

Howsomever, while I found the story compelling to read in the earlier stages, particularly when it really seemed possible that the story was heading into true psychic or fantasy territory in some way, when Bobby started zeroing in on a more mundane agent – at least for criminally sociopathic definitions of mundane – it lost a bit of its fascination for this reader as it shifted fully into ‘bwahaha’ territory.

All things considered, The Horoscope Writer started out strong, and had some compelling dramatic possibilities along the way, but in the end wasn’t nearly as good as Intergalactic Exterminators, Inc. But I still have high hopes for the author’s next – especially if he leans back into SFnal territory.

Review: The Last Drop of Hemlock by Katharine Schellman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Last Drop of Hemlock by Katharine SchellmanThe Last Drop of Hemlock (Nightingale Mysteries, #2) by Katharine Schellman
Narrator: Sara Young
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, mystery, thriller
Series: Nightingale Mysteries #2
Pages: 336
Length: 10 hours and 12 minutes
Published by Dreamscape Media, Minotaur Books on June 6, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In The Last Drop of Hemlock, the dazzling follow up to Last Call at the Nightingale, even a dance can come with a price...The rumor went through the Nightingale like a flood, quietly rising, whispers hovering on lips in pockets of silence.
New York, 1924. Vivian Kelly has gotten a job at the Nightingale, a speakeasy known to the young and fun as a place where the rules of society can be tossed aside for a dance and a drink, and things are finally looking up for her and her sister Florence. They might not be living like queens—still living in a dingy, two-room tenement, still scrimping and saving—but they're confident in keeping a roof over their heads and, every once in a while, there is fried ham for breakfast.
Of course, things were even better before Bea's Uncle Pearlie, the doorman for the Nightingale, was poisoned. Bea has been Vivian's best friend since before she can remember, and though Pearlie's death is ruled a suicide, Bea's sure her uncle wouldn't have killed himself. After all, he had the family to care for . . . and there have been rumors of a mysterious letter writer, blackmailing Vivian's poorest neighbors for their most valuable possessions, threatening poison if they don't comply.
With the Nightingale's dangerously lovely owner, Honor, worried for her employees' safety and Bea determined to prove her Uncle was murdered, Vivian once again finds herself digging through a dead man's past in hopes of stopping a killer.

My Review:

Although it’s not the way the phrase is usually meant, Bea Henry’s wish, actually a downright need, to know what really happened to her suddenly late uncle Pearlie, is a case where she got what she asked for – and wished she’d never opened the can of worms wriggling behind his death.

Not to mention under it, over it, and all around it. Until all that’s left is a dangerous question that her best friend Vivian Kelly truly does not want to know the answer to.

Pearlie was dead, to begin with. With a belly full of arsenic and labeled a suicide by an overworked coroner. But Pearlie was barely middle aged, had just reconnected with his family, had been claiming he was coming into a lot of money and seemed to have everything to live for.

Bea was having a hard enough time believing that her beloved uncle was dead, but suicide was simply out of the question. No matter how things looked, it made no sense. Leading her best friend to want to help her solve a puzzle that no one should have looked twice at.

After all, they were warned.

But Vivian can’t resist either helping a friend or solving a mystery, so she’s off on a seemingly mad quest to discover what really happened, only to uncover a much bigger cockroach skittering around in the dark than she ever imagined.

Escape Rating B: As I was listening to The Last Drop of Hemlock, I remembered what I wrote about the first book in this series, Last Call at the Nightingale. Specifically, that I liked the book but did not love it – and that is just as true for this second book in the series.

The historical details of the setting feel absolutely pitch perfect, and utterly true about life in the poverty-stricken areas of Jazz Age New York City where Bea Henry’s black family and the orphaned Irish Kelly sisters live on neighboring blocks but aren’t supposed to acknowledge each other as neighbors, let alone best friends.

While at The Nightingale, the jazz club and speakeasy where Bea ‘Bluebird’ croons to a packed audience and Vivian waits tables and dances whenever she can, they have a place where they can be who they are, owned and operated by a woman who loves other women, seconded by a Chinese bartender who has to be careful every minute he’s outside the club and sometimes even within it.

I had the mixed sensation with this book, as I did with the first, that I was fascinated by the story but frustrated by the characters, and now that I’m two stories in I think that’s down to Vivian herself. The story follows in Vivian’s wake, through a limited perspective where the reader only knows what Vivian knows and only sees what Vivian sees, and we’re not able to see what’s happening when Vivian is not present.

But we do see inside Vivian’s head – albeit not in her “I” voice. So we know what Vivian thinks and feels. And it still feels like Vivian is too naive to be even half as successful as she’s been. She keeps thinking that everything is going to be alright – which it’s not. It’s not that she’s optimistic – it’s that she’s blind and clueless in a life that should have disabused her of that notion long ago.

The Nightingale’s bartender Danny Chin is an optimist – but he’s still realistic about his situation. He’s just decided to look on the bright side wherever he can without losing sight of the dark side that is always there. Vivian does a lot of pretending that dark side isn’t there until it slaps her in the face – particularly when it comes to poking her nose in murder.

So I’m back at liking this but not loving it. Fascinated in many ways but not as engaged as I wanted to be. Certainly the mystery pulled me along quite handily, particularly in the way that I thought I knew ‘whodunnit’ at the halfway point, only to discover at the end that while I kind of did, I also kind of didn’t. And that even at that end, neither I nor Vivian quite knew all of the answers.

I did like this more than enough that I’ll be reading – or more likely listening to – the next in the Nightingale Mysteries whenever the club next opens it doors.

Review: The Housekeepers by Alex Hay

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: The Housekeepers by Alex HayThe Housekeepers by Alex Hay
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, large print, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, thriller
Pages: 368
Published by Graydon House on July 4, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The night of London's grandest ball, a bold group of women downstairs launch a daring revenge heist against Mayfair society in this dazzling historical novel about power, gender, and class.
Mrs. King is no ordinary housekeeper. Born into a world of con artists and thieves, she’s made herself respectable, running the grandest home in Mayfair. The place is packed with treasures, a glittering symbol of wealth and power, but dark secrets lurk in the shadows.
When Mrs. King is suddenly dismissed from her position, she recruits an eclectic group of women to join her in revenge: A black market queen out to settle her scores. An actress desperate for a magnificent part. A seamstress dreaming of a better life. And Mrs. King’s predecessor, with her own desire for vengeance.
Their plan? On the night of the house’s highly anticipated costume ball—set to be the most illustrious of the year—they will rob it of its every possession, right under the noses of the distinguished guests and their elusive heiress host. But there’s one thing Mrs. King wants even more than money: the truth. And she’ll run any risk to get it…
After all, one should never underestimate the women downstairs.

My Review:

It’s 1905, the somber colors and repressive sensibilities of the Victorian era are gone along with the 19th century, and the glittering Edwardian era is in its full if brief splendor of wretched excess in the pursuit of pleasure while so-called ‘Radicals’ agitated towards reform and the world lurched towards the Great War that upended society, killed a generation of young men and hastened the British Empire towards its sunset.

This is a heist story, and like all the best heist stories, it starts kind of in the middle. In this particular story it starts with a beginning AND an ending, although neither is either the beginning or the ending of the story.

First, there’s an invitation. The oh-so-correctly worded and printed invitation to an opulent masquerade ball at the recently inherited and ridiculously opulent Park Lane mansion of the wealthy Miss de Vries. A young woman who should still be in full mourning for her recently deceased, utterly unlamented and very obviously nouveau riche father. A man who may have been buried as Wilhelm de Vries but was born plain old Danny O’Flynn but made his fortune and his name – literally in both cases – in the diamond mines of South Africa.

Second, there’s a dismissal. Mrs. King, housekeeper to the late Mr. de Vries was caught entering the male servants’ quarters the night before. Everyone believes it was for an assignation, and she’s dismissed without a character or a reference from her respected, respectable and well-earned job. It’s just the first of many such dismissals, as Miss de Vries is determined to set her own course with her own people around her, so ALL of her father’s ‘loyal’ servants will have to go.

But Mrs. King had her own reasons for entering service in this particular household and rising through its ranks. Her dismissal, as much as it most definitely rankles, frees her up to begin step one of a fiendishly clever plan.

Her plan to strip the entire mansion down to its foundations, to take back her own from the man who, by turns, sired her, protected her, abandoned her, and hid her from the world he created for himself. Mrs. King, born Dinah O’Flynn, plans to get the biggest piece of her own she can grab.

While the biggest ball of the season is in progress under the very same roof at the very same time.

Escape Rating B: The Housekeepers is all about the heist. Which means that the characters take a back seat to the caper on this thrill ride, and the story is more about putting the operation together and taking the target apart than it is about the gang who are pulling it off.

At the beginning we don’t know much about any of the principals. We know a bit more by the end, but this isn’t the kind of story where character development takes center stage. After all, we don’t need to know a whole lot about either Danny or Debbie Ocean’s backstory or motivations to get caught up in the capers that they pull off. (And yes, The Housekeepers does ring a lot of the same bells as Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s 8.)

The focus of the first two-thirds of The Housekeepers is pulling together the operation to strip Stanhope House bare to the walls (Stanhope House really did exist although the O’Flynn/de Vries family did not). The final third of the story is, naturally, the edge of the seat thrill nail-biter of pulling off the meticulously planned caper.

But the two principals of the story, Mrs. King and Miss de Vries, are both women who keep their cards close to the vest and their emotions even closer. They release bits of their motivations and their backstories, but reluctantly, as if each bit of history was a diamond to be guarded zealously under all conditions. We see them but we don’t know them, and we don’t care about them nearly as much as I hoped.

But it’s a caper story, which means we don’t need to know their motivations, only whether they can make good on their ambitions. Which Mrs. King manages to do in spite of the odds against her and her gang as well as all the things that can go wrong and inevitably do.

This story, with its blend of Ocean’s 8, Comeuppance Served Cold, The Sting, Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey, keeps the reader compulsively turning pages to see if Mrs. King and her gang can manage to pull off the heist of their newly born century. The inner reticence of the story’s principals, Mrs. King and Miss de Vries does leave the story a bit cold at its heart, much like The Forty Elephants, which is based on a true story about an female-led gang operating in New York City during the same time period as The Housekeepers.

Howsomever, like so many of the stories which The Housekeepers reminds readers of, this will make a terrific movie someday, blending the pace of Ocean’s 8 with the costumes of Downton Abbey. I hope it happens!

Review: The Third to Die by Allison Brennan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Third to Die by Allison BrennanThe Third to Die (Quinn & Costa #1) by Allison Brennan
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Quinn & Costa #1
Pages: 550
Published by Mira on February 4, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

An edgy female police detective... An ambitious FBI special agent. Together they are at the heart of the ticking-clock investigation for a psychopathic serial killer. The bond they forge in this crucible sets the stage for high-stakes suspense.
Detective Kara Quinn, on leave from the LAPD, is on an early morning jog in her hometown of Liberty Lake when she comes upon the body of a young nurse. The manner of death shows a pattern of highly controlled rage. Meanwhile in DC, FBI special agent Mathias Costa is staffing his newly minted Mobile Response Team. Word reaches Matt that the Liberty Lake murder fits the profile of the compulsive Triple Killer. It will be the first case for the MRT. This time they have a chance to stop this zealous if elusive killer before he strikes again. But only if they can figure out who he is and where he is hiding before he disappears for another three years. The stakes are higher than ever before, because if they fail, one of their own will be next...

My Review:

I fell hard for this compelling mystery/suspense/thriller series a couple of years ago when I got utterly absorbed in the second book in the series, Tell No Lies, without ever having read the first. My absorption and compulsion has not wavered a bit after reading the third book in the series, The Wrong Victim, and even the recent fourth book, Seven Girls Gone, still without having gone back to this first book in the Quinn & Costa series.

My recent vacation presented a golden opportunity to rectify that omission, to go back and read where it all began. And what a beginning it was!

LAPD Detective Kara Quinn is on a forced vacation back in her tiny home town of Liberty Lake, Washington. At least Kara believes it is merely a mandatory vacation, and it’s not like she doesn’t have plenty of leave to burn and an equal amount of job and life related PTSD that she’s totally unwilling to acknowledge – let alone deal with.

That there is crap going on back in LA that will be resolved ‘better’ in her absence – for select and bureaucratic definitions of ‘better’ and questionably ‘better’ for whom – is something that her boss is keeping from her. And he’s probably right to do so.

Which doesn’t make actually taking a vacation any easier for Kara, who would much rather be working than thinking of all the crap that went wrong in her most recent case. No matter how happy she is to spend time with her grandmother who lives outside the tiny town.

Kara doesn’t exactly WANT to discover a dead body on the shores of Liberty Lake. But that doesn’t stop her from seizing the opportunity to assist the FBI’s understaffed and still not fully together Mobile Response Team when it rolls up to investigate the murder.

Because the body that Kara found has all the hallmarks of being the first in the latest round of murders committed by the infamous Triple Killer. An organized serial killer who seems to have made no mistakes so far, to have left no clues and no trace evidence behind, as he carries out his mission. Even though, at least so far – the FBI’s best profiler can’t determine what that mission is.

All that is known is that once every three years, beginning on March 3, the Triple Killer murders three seemingly random victims, three days apart. Then goes dormant for three years, only to start again in a different city, in a different state, leaving the same calling card – three bodies, killed by the single stroke of a double-sided blade from left shoulder to right hip, crossed by three post-mortem cuts across the abdomen, with the body displayed in a ceremonial fashion in a place where it will be discovered eventually but not immediately.

It’s a race against time as FBI Special Agent in Charge Matt Costa and his barely together Mobile Response Team invade tiny Liberty Lake in the desperate hope of finding the Triple Killer before he completes his mission and retreats into the shadows for another three years.

Costa needs all the help he can get. Kara needs a case to keep her mind occupied while she waits to discover what is happening with the case back in LA. And the killer is compelled to complete his self-appointed mission at all costs.

There aren’t going to be any winners in this one, as there have already been too many deaths. Keeping the body count from getting any higher, is going to have to be win enough for Quinn & Costa.

If they can.

Escape Rating A: I’m not at all sure that the blurb for this one even begins to do it justice, but the book was everything I hoped it would be. And I came into it with some damn high hopes!

The Third to Die had every single thing that I loved in the later books in this series, with the added element of putting the team together that can be so much fun when it’s done right – as it is in this first book in the Quinn & Costa series.

(Sometimes the heavy lifting of getting the team in place can really bog down a first series book, but that absolutely was NOT the case here. My perspective may be a bit skewed because I’ve already read the later book so I’ve seen this team together, which leads me to the conclusion that you really can start this series anywhere and buckle up for a seriously compelling ride no matter where you begin.)

One of the things I love about this series is the stellar ‘competence porn’. Costa, his hand-picked team, and ‘volunteer’ Quinn are all top-notch in their fields of expertise, and it shows in the way the case goes from a thin file on an elusive killer to a full profile over the course of a few, short, intense days.

And while that profile is built by the team’s crack profiler still back home in DC, the way the case gets broken so that profile can be built comes primarily from Quinn’s uncanny ability to think very far outside the box. Her investigative instincts combined with her outsider perspective means that she asks questions that no one has ever asked before – because she doesn’t know which questions have and have not been asked and doesn’t really care whose toes she steps on along the way.

Which leads back to that last case in LA, but not yet. (The case comes up in the next three books in the series, and it looks like the issues – or at least some of them – are going to be investigated more thoroughly – if not resolved – in the fifth book in the series, The Missing Witness, which, dammit, I’m going to have to wait until January for.)

What keeps The Third to Die moving at its breakneck pace – in spite of its length – is the ticking clock the team is driven by every single minute. The Triple Killer kills on March 3, March 6, and March 9. Kara Quinn discovers the body on the morning of March 3. The team has to get from Washington DC to Washington state and hit the ground running, with less than 72 hours until the next body drops. They have no leads, no motives, no suspects. And not just one but two local jurisdictions who are less than thrilled with the FBI operating on their turf without so much as a ‘by your leave’.

So it’s political, and it’s desperate, and it’s a race against time every step of the way. And it’s impossible for the reader – or at least this reader – to stop turning pages until it’s done.

Review: Whispers at Dusk by Heather Graham

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews
Review: Whispers at Dusk by Heather GrahamWhispers at Dusk: A Novel (The Blackbird Trilogy, 1) by Heather Graham
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: paranormal, romantic suspense, thriller
Series: Blackbird Trilogy #1
Pages: 320
Published by Mira on June 27, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

When darkness falls, there’s nowhere to hide.
Four bodies have been discovered along Europe’s riverbanks, placed with care—and completely drained of blood. Pinpricks on their throats indicate a slender murder weapon, but DNA found in the wounds suggests something far more sinister. Tasked with investigating, the FBI recruits Agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter to Blackbird, an international offshoot of the Krewe of Hunters. If you want to catch a vampire killer, you need agents who can speak with the dead.
The pair travel to Norway, where the shadowy forests of Lillehammer reveal a gruesome scene. The killer is thirsty for more victims, and the bloodless trail soon leads Della and Mason to a group that believes drinking blood is the key to immortality. To catch the culprit of such an intimate crime, the agents will have to get close. Mason’s already lost one partner; he’s not ready to risk Della as bait. But sometimes justice requires a sacrifice…

My Review:

Bram Stoker used every myth and legend of blood-drinking ghouls – and there were plenty of them – and added just a pinch of history (and a tiny pinch at that) to create his legendary blood-sucking monster, Count Dracula.

The vampire killer that the latest members of the Krewe of Hunters are chasing, on the other hand, just cribbed off of Hollywood to create his own version of that legendary villain. Which does not make him any less frightening or any less of a monster.

Perhaps even a bit more so, as he seems to have all the mesmerizing charm of those movie villains, as well as an uncanny ability to choose “apprentices” who can be persuaded to carry on his work with just the right promises of infamy and immortality couched in cult-like justification.

But this serial killer is absolutely not a “real” vampire – even if he is a blood-sucking fiend. He’s still only human – and crazy like a fox.

The Krewe of Hunters is a very special unit of the FBI, as established in the first book in the long-running series, Phantom Evil. As part of the FBI, the Krewe operates in the United States, based out of New Orleans. But this wannabe vampire killer is operating in Europe. Mostly. So far. But not for long.

With murders attributed to this madman scattered from London to Paris to Lillehammer in Norway – when this story begins – Interpol and the various local police agencies are in the hunt up to their necks – so to speak – when the FBI assigns two new members of the Krewe to the international team hunting the killer.

Or killers.

Although the Krewe often deals with supernatural crimes, there isn’t anything woo-woo about the vampire killer – no matter his method of draining the blood of his victims. But that doesn’t mean that the special abilities that the Krewe’s members have won’t come to excellent use in this hunt.

Agents Della Hamilton and Mason Carter, both new to the Krewe, are able to see – and speak to – ghosts. A talent that is going to help them catch this killer before any more of his victims join the dead.

Escape Rating B+: I picked this up because I was looking for something with more of a romantic suspense vibe, I had vague memories of having read at least a few of the early books in the Krewe of Hunters series, and this looked like a good place to jump back in.

And so it proved.

The Krewe of Hunters series is 38 books and counting, and I’ll admit I didn’t feel like starting back near the beginning. At least not right now, although I certainly liked this more than enough for the series to go into my comfort reads rotation. But I don’t remember any more of the setup than is provided in this first book in the new Blackbird subseries, so you don’t need to be familiar with the Krewe to start here.

Whispers at Dusk struck me as a combination of Jayne Ann Krentz’ contemporary entries in her Arcane Society/Harmony series, as the team has a mix of psychic or other special talents which are useful to solving the case without necessarily being integral to it. The quick flash and hot burn of the romance between Della and Mason also has a similar vibe to the romances in that series. At the same time it blends the putting the band together and police procedural aspects of Andrea Kane’s Forensic Instincts series (another series I need to get a round tuit to get back to!)

The case in this one is taut and chilling. While no one – at least on the police side – is fool enough to believe there’s a real vampire, the idea that a serial killer has chosen to strike fear by mimicking one is bad enough. That the killer is training others in his methods and leaving a cult of killers in his wake is enough to give anyone the heebie-jeebies, vampire or no.

What keeps the reader on the edge of their seat is the relentless pace of the story, as the killer leads the newly-formed team on a not-merry-at-all chase from one remote and historically significant location to another, from Lillehammer to the Orkneys to the swamps around Lake Pontchartrain, leaving clues and victims in their wake while dropping hints of their next kill and their intent to make Della their crowning achievement – either by turning her to their ‘dark side’ or leaving her drained corpse as a final monument to their twisted genius.

This one is a creeping, blood-sucking thrill ride from beginning to end. I will absolutely be back for the second installment in this suspenseful chase for next in this series of serial killers with in twist in Secrets in the Dark, coming next month!

Review: Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Red Team Blues by Cory DoctorowRed Team Blues (Martin Hench) by Cory Doctorow
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback ebook, audiobook
Genres: computer history, technothriller, thriller
Series: Martin Hench #1
Pages: 213
Published by Tor Books on April 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

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

My Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review: Seven Girls Gone by Allison Brennan

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Seven Girls Gone by Allison BrennanSeven Girls Gone (Quinn & Costa, #4) by Allison Brennan
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, suspense, thriller
Series: Quinn & Costa #4
Pages: 443
Published by Mira on April 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

For three years, women have been disappearing—and eventually turning up dead in the small bayou town of St. Augustine, Louisiana. Police detective Beau Hebert is the only one who seems to care, but with every witness quickly silenced and a corrupt police department set on keeping the cases unsolved, Beau’s investigation stalls at every turn.
With nobody else to trust, Beau calls in a favor from his friend on the FBI’s Mobile Response Team. While LAPD detective Kara Quinn works undercover to dig into the women’s murders and team leader Matt Costa officially investigates the in-custody death of a witness, Beau might finally have a chance at solving the case.
But in a town where everyone knows everyone, talking gets you killed and secrets stay buried, it’s going to take the entire team working around the clock to unravel the truth. Especially when they discover that the deep-seated corruption and the deadly drug-trafficking ring at the center of it all extends far beyond the small-town borders.

My Review:

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

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

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

Because it all disappears somewhere along the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review: The Way of the Bear by Anne Hillerman

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Way of the Bear by Anne HillermanThe Way of the Bear (Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito #8) 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 & Manuelito #26
Pages: 288
Published by Harper on April 25, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Fossil harvesting, ancient lore, greed, rejected love and murder combine in this gripping new installment of New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman's Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series.
An unexpected death on a lonely road outside of Utah's Bears Ears National Park raises questions for Navajo Tribal Police officers Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito. Why would a seasoned outdoorsman and well-known paleontologist freeze to death within walking distance of his car? A second death brings more turmoil. Who is the unidentified man killed during a home invasion where nothing seems to have been taken? Why was he murdered?
The Bears Ears area, at the edge of the Navajo Nation, is celebrated for its abundance of early human habitation sites and the discovery of unique fossils which revolutionized the scientific view of how early animals dealt with their changing world. For Chee and Bernie, the area glows with geological interest and spiritual insight. But their visit to this achingly beautiful place is disrupted by a current of unprecedented violence that sweeps them both into danger.
An illicit business, a fossilized jaw bone, hints of witchcraft, and a mysterious disappearance during a blizzard and to the peril. It will take all of Manuelito's and Chee's experience, skill, and intuition to navigate the threats that arise beneath the twin buttes that give Bears Ears its name and to see justice served.

My Review:

In its initial incarnation, the Leaphorn & Chee series was a creation of the late Tony Hillerman, who took the tried-and-true concept of a series featuring mismatched investigative partners and set it in the place that he knew and loved, the Navajo Reservation at the four corners where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet. His often-at-loggerheads detectives were the young and idealistic Jim Chee and the older, more experienced and more cynical Joe Leaphorn.

The initial series ended when its author passed away, and was much missed.

Missed so much, in fact, that Tony Hillerman’s daughter Anne revived the series with Spider Woman’s Daughter in 2013, adding Navajo Nation Police officer Bernadette “Bernie” Manuelito to the series in order to give Jim Chee a new partner – and romantic interest – in the wake of ‘Legendary Lieutenant’ Joe Leaphorn’s retirement. When Leaphorn is shot and very nearly killed in the opening of Spider Woman’s Daughter, the torch of the series literally passes from his or Chee’s perspective to Bernie’s.

As the series has continued through the following seven more books, the investigations have continued but the investigative tensions between Chee and Manuelito have shifted in ways that give this entry in the series much of its heart even as the case they have wandered into the middle of threatens not just their lives but the lives of many in the harsh, beautiful, protected and sacred area named Shash Jaa’ by the Navajo and Bears’ Ears National Monument by (U.S.) presidential proclamation.

Escape Rating A-: In case it’s not clear, I’ve loved this entire series from my first read – actually a listen – thirty years ago with The Blessing Way. This latest entry in the series was absolutely no exception.

Part of what I enjoy about the series is the way that it explores – not just a compelling mystery set in a beautiful part of the country told from the perspective of someone who is familiar with it – but the way that it takes the usual trope of the push-pull between two investigators with two different approaches to the work and layers it not just with the tensions that occur in a romantic partnership in the same branch of the same work – because both of things have been done before and done well.

The aspect of the relationship that draws me into this series is the difference in Chee’s and Manuelito’s responses to the traditions of their people. Both of them believe strongly in those traditions – as Joe Leaphorn did not – which often put Leaphorn and Chee at odds. Jim Chee frequently, often and repeatedly considered leaving the police and training as a Hatááłii, a practitioner of traditional healing ceremonies. The trip that sends Chee and Manuelito to Bears’ Ears includes an opportunity for Chee to explore this possibility yet again.

But it is, and has always been, a choice for him. Bernie, as a daughter and a sister, is often caught between the demands that tradition places on her because of those roles, and her career as a police officer. For her, it is never a serious choice – she just has to deal with constantly being pulled in multiple directions as best she can.

Both Chee and Manuelito enter this book at a crossroads – a crossroads that affects their marriage and their pursuit of this case. Which turn out to be rather strangely parallel, as both situations are about looking inside oneself and determining the direction of one’s life, even though the case is, on the surface at least, about greed.

But the people who are caught up in it are motivated by something else altogether no matter how twisted their interpretation of it might be. And in seeing how twisted they have become in the course of the investigation, it helps Chee and Bernie figure out how to deal with the issues that have arisen between them.

As always, a satisfactory resolution to both the personal and the professional, although not a permanent one – as there never is. I expect something equally fascinating on both parts of that equation in the next book in the series, hopefully in time for my birthday next year!

Review: Midnight Water City by Chris McKinney

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews
Review: Midnight Water City by Chris McKinneyMidnight, Water City (Water City, #1) by Chris McKinney
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: mystery, noir, post apocalyptic, science fiction, thriller
Series: Water City #1
Pages: 305
Published by Soho Crime on July 13, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Hawai‘i author Chris McKinney’s first entry in a brilliant new sci-fi noir trilogy explores the sordid past of a murdered scientist, deified in death, through the eyes of a man who once committed unspeakable crimes for her.
Year 2142: Earth is forty years past a near-collision with the asteroid Sessho-seki. Akira Kimura, the scientist responsible for eliminating the threat, has reached heights of celebrity approaching deification. But now, Akira feels her safety is under threat, so after years without contact, she reaches out to her former head of security, who has since become a police detective.
When he arrives at her deep-sea home and finds Akira methodically dismembered, this detective will risk everything—his career, his family, even his own life—and delve back into his shared past with Akira to find her killer. With a rich, cinematic voice and burning cynicism, Midnight, Water City is both a thrilling neo-noir procedural and a stunning exploration of research, class, climate change, the cult of personality, and the dark sacrifices we are willing to make in the name of progress.

My Review:

When Chicken Little claimed that the sky was falling, that chicken faced a LOT of skeptics – and rightfully so. When the irascible, charismatic, genius Akira Kimura claimed pretty much the same things at the end of the 21st century, the science behind her claim was just a bit more complicated.

Not that there still weren’t PLENTY of skeptics. That’s human nature – especially in the face of a world-ending catastrophe that is still years away.

But Kimura had a stellar scientific reputation to bolster her claim. More importantly, even as she proclaimed that the world was about to end, she also claimed to have the solution. So governments and corporations threw money and power at her so that she could save the world from an onrushing meteor.

She did save the world. Forty years later, Earth is a much better place than it was before its near-collision with the asteroid Sessho-Seki. As much fun and excitement as stories about preventing disasters and saving the world can be, this is not that kind of story.

Midnight, Water City is a story about reckoning with that event, and with the downright iconography and deification that has grown up around the mysterious and reclusive Akira Kimura. It’s about the fixing of the blame for the collateral damage, and the settling of the grievances that resulted from that damage.

Someone has murdered the scientist who beat back the asteroid, the “Savior” of humanity. It’s up to her last, best friend to solve the crime, or die trying.

He’s not sure that he cares either way.

Escape Rating A: In the beginning, Midnight, Water City reminded me a whole helluva lot of Titanium Noir. Both stories have similar, post-apocalyptic settings, half-ruined ecologies, and are wrapped around the axle of a gritty murder with higher emotional stakes than their noir-ish detectives want to admit.

And I should have listened to my assumptions a bit more carefully, because Midnight, Water City takes all of that and then peels back the past of its world, its victim and especially its protagonist to reveal that a heaping helping of what we thought we knew at the beginning – and what that protagonist thought he knew at that same beginning – was a toxic stew of lies and manipulations, shaken AND stirred with implements of self-deception and a very selective memory.

We never learn the name of that gritty detective, and that’s appropriate. He never did think he really mattered. And it’s entirely possible that he still doesn’t. He’s always been a tool, putty in the hands of anyone who feeds his need to be appreciated and needed. Even to the point of letting himself be used.

His self-destructive, slapdash investigation of Akira Kimura’s grisly death forces him to look back at their joined past to figure out who might have had a reason to kill her in the here and now. Which leads him to an examination of all the things he did back in the there and then to keep her alive and support her work to save their world.

He’s been able to live with himself and his actions because he always believed that he was serving a ‘Greater Good’, that she was making the omelets and his job was to break the necessary eggs.

What made this story and setting so damn fascinating was that the detective’s walk through very dark places in his past and Kimura’s leads both the protagonist and the reader to questions about what he was truly serving and why he was chosen to serve it. Questions about the difference between something being right and something being true – and which is the one that lets you sleep at night.

A question that will hopefully be answered in the subsequent books of the Water City Trilogy. Eventide, Water City is coming in July. I’m looking forward to some answers – along with even more fascinating questions!