Review: Wings in the Dark by Michael Murphy

wings in the dark by michael murphyFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: historical mystery
Series: Jake & Laura #3
Length: 214 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: July 14, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Witty and stylish in the classic Dashiell Hammett tradition, Michael Murphy’s latest high-flying Jake & Laura mystery features a Hawaiian honeymoon that’s interrupted when their friend Amelia Earhart is accused of murder.

Hawaii, 1935. Mystery novelist Jake Donovan and actress Laura Wilson are in gorgeous sun-soaked Hawaii, but their best-laid plans for canoodling on the beach are interrupted by a summons from famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart. It seems a local businessman has been gunned down next to her plane. In just days, the famous pilot intends to fly from Honolulu to Los Angeles, making aviation history over the Pacific. But now, without Jake and Laura’s help, Earhart’s flight might never take off.

Trailing a killer, the newlyweds’ sleuthing leads to a jealous pilot, a cigar-chomping female officer of the “Royalist Militia,” and a notoriously disagreeable lieutenant colonel named Patton. With a sinister killer lurking in the shadows, it’s safe to say the honeymoon is over . . . and the danger has just begun.

My Review:

Jake Donovan always tries to convince himself that whatever case he has walked, or in this case been strong-armed, into, it’s always going to be his last. For the good version of last, that he will have given up being a private detective and is now a full-time, and quite successful, author of hard-boiled mysteries.

His new wife Laura Winston is rightfully afraid that one of these cases will be his last, for the bad definition of last, that he’ll get himself killed. At the same time, Laura can’t help but get herself involved as well, partly to protect Jake, and partly because she can’t let go of the adrenaline rush either.

And Laura has plenty of adrenaline in her life already. She is a Broadway actress and Hollywood star. In 1935, the combined incomes of a successful movie star and a best-selling novelist put Jake and Laura into a lifestyle that is both a million miles away from their hardscrabble childhood in Queens, and far from the difficulties of life for so many people during the Great Depression.

A Depression which in 1935 shows no sign of ending.

This time it’s Jake’s career that gets them into trouble, not that Laura’s connections don’t have a hand in it as well.

Amelia Earhart c. 1935
Amelia Earhart c. 1935

Jake and Laura are in Hawaii for their honeymoon. Amelia Earhart is in Honolulu in preparation for her ground-breaking solo flight from Honolulu to California. But all is not smooth flying for the aviatrix, and she calls on her friend Laura and Laura’s husband Jake to investigate a murder that threatens to set back her scheduled flight.

Someone murdered one of Amelia’s Hawaiian backers in her hanger while she was sleeping in her plane. The police can’t decide whether Amelia is the killer or the real target, so Amelia’s influential husband strong-arms Jake into helping with the investigation.

The strong-arming was heavy-handed but very successful. Earhart’s husband George Putnam really was one of the Putnam’s of the publishing house G.P. Putnam’s. He just called Jake’s publisher and threatened to kill the man’s career if he didn’t cooperate.

While Putnam’s methods were very heavy-handed, they were necessary, because the plot to stop Amelia Earhart’s flight reached into some surprising and deadly places – and also struck all too close to home.

It’s up to Jake and Laura to protect Amelia, investigate the murder and find out both what the killer’s real agenda is and stop them before it is too late.

It’s not just the life of Amelia Earhart that’s at stake. This flight, if it is successful, has the potential to continue America’s fascination with and expansion of air travel. If it fails, aviation will go into a depression even deeper than the U.S. economic situation.

If the flight succeeds, Hawaii will become a vacation destination for mainlanders, both assisting and transforming the Islands’ economy. And if the flight succeeds, the U.S. Armed Forces will expand into air power and patrol the Pacific Ocean.

In 1935, there is a lot of interest in the Pacific Rim in stopping that expansion. At any cost.

yankee club by michael murphyEscape Rating B+: If you like historical mysteries set in the 20th century, or noir (kind of noir-lite) or stories where real history and real people are wrapped around a fun mystery, this series is an absolute hoot. Start with The Yankee Club (reviewed here) and take a trip back to a different time, where so much is different, and so much is the same.

Like The Yankee Club, Wings in the Dark is wrapped around some true historical events. Amelia Earhart really was in Honolulu in January of 1935, and this flight, with all its attendant hoopla, did take place. The implications of the flight were as they are in the book. Success meant an expansion of aviation, failure meant that aviation would die a quick and painful death.

We’ve seen this in recent history as well. Every time the U.S. Space Program suffers a disaster, there is a retrenchment and reconsideration, even though all the participants signed on for the risk of being among the first people “out there”.

The times in which Amelia’s ground-breaking flight took place are also an important part of the picture. Hawaii was part of the U.S., but there were still plenty of people alive who remembered the “good old days” of the monarchy. There is still loads of resentment at the way the U.S. managed to take possession of the Islands.

Then there’s the war. The one that hasn’t happened yet, but is certainly looming on the horizon for those who have eyes to see. One of those people with eyes is then Lieutenant Colonel George S. Patton, who was stationed in Hawaii in 1935, mostly an exile in disgrace. Patton views the growing militarization of Japan with alarm, and fears that the Japanese military sees the potential rise of U.S. airpower as a threat to their hegemony.

The mystery in Wings in the Dark circles, and sometimes barrel-rolls, around the murder in Amelia’s hangar. At first, it seems like an inside job as well as a crime of passion. Amelia’s female mechanic (and aviation rival) was having an affair with the dead man. But not all of the pieces fit this scenario.

The dead man was an Islander who had thrown in his economic lot, very successfully, with the Americans. The Royalist fringe, including his own brother, were not happy with his plans for more American influence.

Jake is sure there’s more than meets the eye, and when Patton provides scanty but convincing details of a Japanese assassin operating in the Islands, Jake starts to believe that this case is much, much bigger than he thought.

Especially when his old friend, the American agent Landon Stoddard, shows up to stick the government’s oar in this particular choppy water. Whatever is going on, it is way bigger than a simple lover’s spat, no matter how deadly.

This is a case where the “who benefits?” question will have world-changing answers.

The fun part of these cases is always following Jake and Laura, and whomever they drag along in their wake. Any resemblance to Nick and Nora Charles from Dashiell Hammett’s Thin Man series is strictly intentional. And an absolute blast.

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***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Widow’s Son by Thomas Shawver

widows son by thomas shawverFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: mystery
Series: Rare Book Mystery #3
Length: 200 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: July 7, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

In 1844, Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, died at the hands of an angry mob who stormed his jail cell in Carthage, Illinois. Shortly after, a radical faction of Smith’s followers swore to avenge Smith’s death by killing not only the four men deemed most responsible, but to teach their heirs to eliminate future generations of the prophet’s murderers as well.

One hundred and seventy years later, rare book dealer Michael Bevan is offered a valuable first-edition Book of Mormon that bears a strange inscription hinting at blood atonement. Within days of handing the book over for authentication, the volume disappears and two people lie dead. Michael soon learns that his friend Natalie Phelan, whose only crime is her genealogy, is the likely next victim. One of her would-be murderers has fallen in love with her, another is physically incapable of carrying out the act, but other avenging angels remain on the loose.

When Natalie is kidnapped, Michael must venture into a clandestine camp of vengeful men hell-bent on ritual sacrifice. To save her life, the book dealer needs all his worldly courage, brawn, and wits. But to defeat fanatics driven by an unholy vision, a little divine intervention couldn’t hurt.

My Review:

There are two threads to this story. One is the continuing saga of bookseller Michael Bevan and the sometimes cutthroat nature of the antique book business. In this installment of Michael’s odyssey to get his Midwestern bookstore into the exalted ranks of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, Michael makes several wrong turns. Even more than he has already made.

Michael has a tendency to take short cuts – it’s how he got disbarred in the first place. But the prestigious ABAA doesn’t just want pristine provenance for their books, it wants the appearance of squeaky cleanliness for its booksellers as well.

left turn at paradise by thomas shawverAnd Michael is not squeaky clean. While the deal that brought him his prize collection was legal (see Left Turn at Paradise, reviewed here, for details) it occurred mostly under the table and involved more than a bit of blackmail on the part of all the participants – even some of the dead ones.

It’s a story that Michael can’t tell, not even to the grand doyenne of the ABAA. So he tries bribing her instead.

It’s not exactly a bribe. He lets her “help” him sell a rare and very pricey book – one of the original copies of Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon, a copy which includes a handwritten dedication by one of Smith’s disciples.

Michael takes one of his famous shortcuts – he neglects to get a receipt for the $250,000 book. So when the old lady collector dies in a very suspicious fire, Michael is in all kinds of trouble with his client – who turns out to be in all kinds of trouble himself.

This is where the story gets interesting, and more than a bit crazy. His client, Emery Stagg, is the descendant of one of Smith’s disciples. When he was a teenager, he was brainwashed into the lunatic fringe of his religion. As a descendant of one of the disciples, he and his two cousins were tasked with sacrificing the last descendants of one of the men who colluded in Joseph Smith’s murder.

Instead poor Emery Stagg has a change of heart. Instead of killing Natalie Phelan, he falls in love with her. It should all be over, and the threat to Natalie and her daughter Claire should be finished.

But Emery’s family hasn’t given up. And now Emery himself is considered a traitor, and must be eliminated so that the sacrifice can proceed as planned.

Unless Michael can stop it.

dirty book murder by thomas shawverEscape Rating B-: As the three books in this series prove (starting with The Dirty Book Murder, reviewed here) the antique and collectible book trade is a lot more dangerous than an outsider might believe. Mike Bevan is always in trouble. Sometimes its financial trouble, and sometimes its just plain deadly dangerous.

His friends, like Natalie Phelan, often find themselves in hot water over their heads for something Mike did, or didn’t do. Once the trouble appears, Mike is the best friend a person could have, but he often had something to do with things going from bad to worse in the first place, even if it’s by accident.

In this case, Mike’s attempt to sell the book for Emery is the catalyst that brings all the trouble down on everyone’s head. It’s not Mike’s fault. It’s also not NOT Mike’s fault. The story of his life.

The mystery in The Widow’s Son is incredibly convoluted, and involves a lot of beliefs that have been disavowed by the LDS Church multiple times. While I’m a bit uncomfortable using the backdrop of the history of an existing religious group as twisted fodder for a mystery, it did make for an extremely twisty tale.

I was able to figure ot some of what was going on in advance, but the twisted reverence for an insane reading of history, along with the inclusion of some less-than-sane people, cloaked the entire picture in the fog of war until it was too late for Bevan or the reader to prevent getting sucked all the way in.

Mike Bevan is a likable character, a hero who is so flawed and screws up so often he is almost an anti-hero, but not quite. In the end, Mike does the right thing, and he always protects his friends. He’s one of those guys who has a heart of gold, but never quite grows all the way up.

We have a little bit of that in all of us, which makes him interesting to watch.

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***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Duke City Desperado by Max Austin

duke city desperado by max austinFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: mystery/thriller
Series: Duke City #3
Length: 174 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: June 9, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Under a sky full of stars, Dylan James lies sleeping on the roof of a pueblo-style house. He’s a fugitive, and everyone in Albuquerque seems to be looking for him. A murderous Mafia prince wants to kill him. Two FBI agents want to cuff him. A Goth girl wants to make love to him. And a fierce, sexy Chicana just wants to clean up the mess Dylan made.

The trouble started with a drug-addled career criminal named Doc and a bank robbery staged with a garage door opener. Then it all goes off the rails after a little misunderstanding with Dylan’s ex-girlfriend and her jealous, gun-toting new beau.

When the sun comes up, this sleepy, scrawny desperado is going to show the world what he’s made of—all for a one-in-a-million shot at walking out of Duke City alive.

My Review:

I didn’t realize until this entry in the series that it’s the same hapless pair of FBI agents who get left holding the bag in every book in this series.

It’s not that Pam and Hector are involved with any of the crimes – it’s that they are the primary agents investigating each of the messes, and the bad guys keep getting the best of them, over and over. Their careers are never going to recover.

duke city hit by max austinThe story in Duke City Desperado, as in the previous entries, Duke City Split (reviewed here) and Duke City Hit (here) all comes from the criminal side of the equation. The poor FBI agents keep ending up as patsies.

And just like in the other stories, the criminals in Desperado are way more lucky than good. Doc and Dylan are pretty much small-time all the way around, until Doc, permanently hopped up on pharmaceutical grade speed, gets the wild idea to rob a bank through the drive up window. Pretending that a garage remote control is the detonator for a bomb.

The teller has to stop herself from laughing while she stalls Doc long enough for the police to get there. The police have a hard time too. No one has ever tried to rob a bank through the drive up because it is just so lame.

The bank captures the entire ridiculous scene on video. It’s an open and shut case.

Until it isn’t.

Poor Dylan is in the passenger seat of the van while Doc pulls his crazy stunt. When the cops enter the scene, Dylan exits, and a citywide manhunt ensues.

Doc ends up in Municipal Detention. Of course he does, he’s so high that he gives up Dylan’s name to the cops before he can manage to calm down and make a deal.

While Doc experiences the joys of the correctional system and waits for his trial, Dylan is on the run. Every place he goes, and every friend he looks up, just lands him and them in more and more trouble.

The only person who seems to be on Dylan’s side is a crazy Goth chick who gets turned on by all the violence that follows in Dylan’s hapless wake. As Dylan gets beaten and beaten up on all sides, together they cook up a foolish plan for her to honk off her hated stepfather by robbing the guy who pays her bills and helping Dylan spring Doc.

After all of Dylan’s incredibly hellacious bad luck, he finally gets just one thing right. It’s a hell of a ride.

duke city split by steve brewerEscape Rating B-: I didn’t like this one nearly as much as the first book in the series, Duke City Split. While Dylan just seems like someone who, if it wasn’t for bad luck, wouldn’t have any at all, the amount of chaos he manages to accidentally stir up strains the bounds of even fictional disbelief.

Neither Dylan nor Doc is evil, just hapless, hopeless and more than a bit lazy. Crime seems to be their easy way out, and they’re not particularly good at it. Right up until Doc turns spectacularly bad at it.

There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of motive or motivation for either of them, until Dylan finds himself on the run for something he not only didn’t do but actively argued against. He’s afraid to turn himself in because he’s sure, and undoubtedly correct, that the cops will find something to charge him with.

The wild and crazy stuff gets stirred up as Dylan starts looking for a friend to take him in and help him out. He manages to rile his ex-girlfriend’s insane new boyfriend, setting off multiple chases through the city, as the angry little man chases Dylan, the cops chase Dylan, and the ex-girlfriend gets her sister to chase the abusive new boyfriend. The Keystone Cops would feel right at home.

The Goth chick turns out to be the big surprise. At first she just seems part of the weird, but the more she talks about the hate-on she has for her stepfather, the more the reader starts to wonder. The surprise at the end of that particular plot string was a real shocker.

Duke City Desperado is a madcap cops and robbers chase across Albuquerque where you find yourself wanting the bad guys to ride off into the sunset – in their stolen Audi. You’re left wondering if the FBI has an even less prestigious post for those two agents, because if they do, they’re definitely going to be assigned there. Probably somewhere in Alaska. Like maybe Barrow.

Nobody should have luck that bad.

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***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Rhyme of the Magpie by Marty Wingate + Giveaway

rhyme of the magpie by marty wingateFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: cozy mystery
Series: Birds of a Feather #1
Length: 261 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: June 2, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

With her personal life in disarray, Julia Lanchester feels she has no option but to quit her job on her father’s hit BBC Two nature show, A Bird in the Hand. Accepting a tourist management position in Smeaton-under-Lyme, a quaint village in the English countryside, Julia throws herself into her new life, delighting sightseers (and a local member of the gentry) with tales of ancient Romans and pillaging Vikings.

But the past is front and center when her father, Rupert, tracks her down in a moment of desperation. Julia refuses to hear him out; his quick remarriage after her mother’s death was one of the reasons Julia flew the coop. But later she gets a distressed call from her new stepmum: Rupert has gone missing. Julia decides to investigate—she owes him that much, at least—and her father’s new assistant, the infuriatingly dapper Michael Sedgwick, offers to help. Little does the unlikely pair realize that awaiting them is a tightly woven nest of lies and murder.

My Review:

garden plot by marty wingateI have really enjoyed Marty Wingate’s Potting Shed series (The Garden Plot and The Red Book of Primrose House, reviewed here and here) so when I saw that she had started a new series, I was hoping for more chilling mysteries in a cozy setting with a likable main character, and I was definitely not disappointed.

The Rhyme of the Magpie is a real treat, and Julia Lanchester is a lovely, lively and intelligent heroine on the cusp of a lot of changes in her personal and professional life. The setting is charming, and the mystery is definitely chilling.

The story centers around the old, familiar bird-counting rhyme:

One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret,
Never to be told.
Eight for heaven,
Nine for hell
And ten for the devil’s own sell!

I repeat the rhyme here because Julia keeps referring to it in the book, and I ended up keeping a reference copy handy.

Eurasian Magpie
Eurasian Magpie

In England, the rhyme counts magpies, and is used for making near-term predictions. In America the birds counted are often crows – they are in the same family as magpies, but are more common here where magpies are not. (Robin D. Owens’ Ghost Seer series also uses this counting rhyme, but definitely with crows)

In Julia Lanchester’s life, her family has used the rhyme on multiple occasions to anticipate her sister Bianca’s pregnancies and predict the outcome. So far, completely accurately, but baby #4 is on the way, and the magpies predict a boy. If there are more in the series, and I hope there are, we’ll discover if the magpies are maintaining their streak.

Julia is counting birds because they keep predicting sorrow, and Julia is worried.

A few months before this story begins, Julia changed her entire life. Her mother was killed in a car accident, and her father remarried less than six months later. Julia, who can’t stop grieving, can’t understand how her father could move on so fast. She hasn’t forgiven him for letting go of her mother’s memory so easily, and she can’t forgive his new wife – especially since Beryl was her mother’s best friend and almost a second mother – certainly a favorite aunt – to Julia.

In her anger at her father, Julia has given up her job as his production assistant on her father’s popular BBC nature program, A Bird in the Hand, and has become the manager of a tourist initiative in the small town of Smeaton-under-Lyme.

It is as she is finally adjusting to her new life that her old one catches up to her. First her father drops by unexpectedly and unwelcome, and Julia gives him the bum’s rush. In turn, he steals her car and disappears – not out of spite, but because he wants to travel incognito for a while and no one will expect him in Julia’s little blue Fiat.

But with Rupert Lanchester in the wind, there is no way of knowing exactly who murdered the man found at her father’s cottage – and police are extremely interested in interviewing the elusive popular naturalist, as not only did the crime occur on his property, but the dead man was known to be an enemy of his.

Julia finds herself increasingly involved with her dad’s new assistant – her replacement – in order to discover where Rupert might have gone and what it is he has been hiding from everyone. Julia and her replacement Michael Sedgwick can’t help but involve themselves in the murder investigation as they track down Rupert – along with an increasing list of all the enemies who might have wanted Rupert out of the way – whether temporarily or permanently.

As the case unwinds, Julia’s memories of her childhood unravel. And her father’s enemies turn out to be much closer than she thought.

But she’ll never look at bacon the same way again.

Escape Rating B+: If you like cozy mysteries, both of Marty Wingate’s series are absolutely tons of fun.

There’s something about Smeaton-Under-Lyme that makes me wonder if it’s not all that far from St. Mary Mead, where Miss Jane Marple held sway for so many years. I can’t explain why I feel that way, but I do.

Back to Julia Lanchester. She feels like a well-rounded character, and a well-rounded person. By the end of the story, we know who she is and what she wants. Also what she doesn’t want. And in this story, we see her make one of the key but unfortunately revelations of adulthood – that her parents, and their marriage, were not and are not perfect. The world of her childhood reminiscences becomes much smaller than she remembered, and a lot of her rose-colored glass illusions are stripped away.

It’s easy to understand her anger at her father and his new wife – Julia is navigating those seven stages of grief much, much differently than her father, or, for that matter, her sister. But Rupert is still her father, and no matter how mad at him she might be, she wants him safe and well. Even as she wants to shake him for worrying everyone.

Her involvement with Michael Sedgwick is part of her reaction to the danger. She wants to find her father. She wants to keep an eye on her replacement – because she initially doesn’t trust him. She wants to make sure that her father doesn’t come back to a disaster because Michael just hasn’t had time to learn all the ropes.

And Michael is handsome, intelligent, interested and just a little too smooth for Julia’s own good. She falls for him, and into bed with him, knowing that he is keeping a big secret from her. Because she is also keeping secrets from him, she finds it difficult to judge him on that count. But she lets her heart (or other organs lower down) overrule her head, only to discover that it was both the right and the wrong thing to do.

The secret Michael is keeping is a major one, but it has nothing to do with her father’s disappearance. And while Julia’s discovery of that secret affects her relationship with Michael, it is something that Rupert has known all along. Only Julia is hurt. And Michael, when the truth about his background comes to light.

Rupert is a towering figure, and is extremely popular. All of the various reasons why he disappeared, and all the plots that center around him, make perfect sense in light of that popularity, and just how polarizing a figure he can sometimes be. Yet all the reasons why people would wish him ill also make sense. Or at least make sense if one keeps in mind the famous quote attributed to Henry Kissinger – “Academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small.”

While I did figure out Michael’s secret relatively early on, and had a good guess at who was writing the anonymous threatening letters, I did not figure out who the big villain was in this story until the very end. The clues were there, but I was looking in a different direction entirely.

Well done.

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***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Case of the Invisible Dog by Diane Stingley + Giveaway

case of the invisible dog by Diane stingleyFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: mystery
Series: Shirley Homes #1
Length: 328 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: May 19, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

After failing to launch her career as a Hollywood actress, Tammy Norman returns home to North Carolina, desperate for a regular paycheck and a new lease on life. So she accepts a position assisting Shirley Homes, an exceptionally odd personage who styles herself after her celebrated “ancestor”–right down to the ridiculous hat. Tammy isn’t sure how long she can go on indulging the delusional Shirley (who honestly believes Sherlock Holmes was a real person!), but with the prospect of unemployment looming, she decides to give it a shot.

Tammy’s impression of her eccentric boss does not improve when their first case involves midnight romps through strangers’ yards in pursuit of a phantom dog—that only their client can hear. But when the case takes a sudden and sinister turn, Tammy has to admit that Shirley Homes might actually be on to something. . . .

My Review:

Somewhere at the corner of quirky and delusional lives Shirley Homes and her questionable belief that she is the great-great-granddaughter of Sherlock Holmes – the fictionality of his existence notwithstanding. Of course, Shirley believes that he was real, because fictional characters don’t have children, let alone great-great-grandchildren.

Whether Shirley is eccentric or downright insane is up to the reader to judge. In her world, everyone seems to have decided that she is a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic. But is she?

The person most concerned about that question is Tamara Norman. Tammy has taken on the job of Shirley Homes’ assistant. While at first it seems as if the job consists of collecting a very nice paycheck for providing a presence that helps prop up Homes’ delusion, the situation changes when they get a real case.

Where Sherlock Holmes had “the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime” Shirley Homes has the case of the barking dog who isn’t there.

It’s pretty obvious that someone is gaslighting their client, Matt Peterman. As soon as he goes to sleep every night, he hears a dog barking outside. But when he gets up to look, the dog stops barking. And there is no dog.

What there is are some new and very smarmy neighbors, and a lot of vacant houses. It’s the depths of the Great Recession, in North Carolina and everywhere else, and Matt lives in a development that isn’t selling.

So why is this happening?

Tammy Norman thinks that Matt is just a lonely crank, until he turns up dead the day after he hires them. Whatever is going on with the ‘invisible dog’, someone wanted the man dead. But the reasons are obscure, and the local police are convinced that Shirley Homes is a complete nutter. Let’s just say the police interview didn’t go well, although by that point Tammy (and the readers) are all too aware that it went typically for any conversation with Shirley.

While Shirley is the catalyst for everything that happens, Tammy is the person who really sinks her teeth into the case, even though she doesn’t want to. She’s sure Shirley is harmlessly nuts, but starts feeling protective of her boss, even as she thinks that the woman needs a keeper and not an assistant.

Although the case reaches for more and deeper levels of ‘slightly out there’, at the same time there is still a case. Matt Peterman is still dead. His ex-wife is trying to grab whatever assets he might have had. Those smarmy neighbors watch every move that takes place in his house, and someone is cleaning up every scrap of evidence that Shirley and Tammy find as soon as they find it.

Tammy finds herself learning how to be a detective from possibly the worst teacher ever. But she can’t help getting involved and wanting to get to the bottom of the case.

As a former actress, Tammy finally hits paydirt when she follows the precepts of her favorite TV show – Law and Order. Tammy starts following the money. And digs up not just dirt, but also a powerful enemy who has been manipulating events in Shirley’s life from the very beginning.

Can there be a Holmes without a Moriarty?

Escape Rating B-: I’m pretty sure this is the quirkiest Sherlock Holmes spin-off I’ve ever read, and I’ve read some dillies. This one takes the prize.

You’re never sure whether Shirley Homes is delusional or telling the truth. It’s not just that her contention that she is a descendant of the original Holmes is impossible because he was fictional, but even he was real, her portrayal isn’t Holmes, it’s a caricature of Holmes.

Holmes used every scrap of technology available to him at the time. Not because he worshiped technology, but because it was efficient and effective. A modern-day version would have adapted, not attempted to slavishly adhere to 19th century practices as much as possible. For example, Holmes often found cases by combing through the personal ads and agony columns in the newspaper. Today, most of that information and angst is in social media.

However, the parallels are striking. The detective isn’t just “Shirley Homes”, but her sister Myra bears a striking resemblance to Mycroft. And there appears to be a Moriarty, the question is who?

There is someone who seems to have the agenda of spying on Homes at every turn, even pretending to be a psychiatrist in order to pump Tammy for information. And she’s not the only contender for the position of Moriarty. Or is she?

And there really is a case. While there is no invisible dog, someone was using Matt Peterman’s fear of dogs to gaslight him for some nefarious purpose.

At the same time, this case has the feel of the movies The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother and especially Without A Clue. In Without a Clue, Holmes the bumbling idiot is merely a front man for the real detective genius of Dr. John Watson. It also feels like a bit of They Might be Giants was added for spice.

While Tamara Norman is no detective genius, she is intelligent, sensible and grounded in the real world of the 21st century. It is her effort to keep Shirley Homes on track and out of too much trouble that eventually solves the mystery of the invisible dog, even as it pulls them all much deeper into the mystery of ‘Who is Shirley Homes?”

If you like your cozy mysteries with more than a touch of madcap, The Case of the Invisible Dog is a lark.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

This tour includes a Rafflecopter giveaway for a $25 eGift Card to the eBook Retailer of the winner’s choice plus an eBook copy of THE CASE OF THE INVISIBLE DOG.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Ryder: Bird of Prey by Nick Pengelley + Giveaway

ryder bird of prey by nick pengelleyFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: thriller
Series: Ayesha Ryder #3
Length: 238 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: May 5, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

The Maltese Falcon was no mere legend—this fabulously jewelled golden bird really existed. Still exists, according to the last words of a dying man. Ayesha Ryder is on its trail, but not just to find the Falcon itself. It is said to contain a clue to the lost burial place of King Harold of England, a potent symbol for ruthless politicians determined to break up the UK and create a new, independent English Kingdom. The Falcon may also contain a second clue, one that few would believe.

Labelled an assassin, hunted by Scotland Yard and Dame Imogen Worsely of MI5—as well as those who want the Falcon and its secrets for themselves—Ayesha joins forces with Joram Tate, the mysterious librarian known to her friend Lady Madrigal, a one-time lover of Lawrence of Arabia. As Ayesha’s attraction to Tate grows, they follow clues left by long-dead knights to the tomb of a Saxon king and to the ruined Battle Abbey. When the trail leads them to a stunning secret hidden for a thousand years beneath an English castle, Ayesha must battle modern killers with medieval weapons before confronting the evil that would destroy her nation.

My Review:

ryder by nick pengelleyRyder: Bird of Prey is the third book in the Ayesha Ryder series, after Ayesha’s awesome introduction in Ryder (reviewed here) and Ryder: American Treasure (reviewed here)

Ayesha Ryder still feels like the love child of Indiana Jones and Lara Croft, but her adventures have a “ripped from the headines” feel in spite of their setting in a slightly alternate 21st century from our own.

On the one hand, in Ryder, Ayesha’s adventures led to the foundation of a new combined Israeli/Palestinian country in the Middle East named “The Holy Land”. Her rescue of that peace process and its principal political figures brought her to the attention of world leaders as a Middle East expert and a woman who can and will get the job done and the treasure found, no matter how mythical that treasure might initially seem to be.

In Bird of Prey, Ayesha is hunting for the sword of Harold Godwinson, the last English king. For those not familiar with the history, Harold is the king who lost England in 1066 to William the Conqueror.

While Ayesha’s friend, the British Prime Minister Susannah Armstrong, is vehemently opposed, there is a bill in Parliament, brought forward by Susannah’s Deputy PM, to not only dissolve the United Kingdom but take the remaining country, England, out of the European Union, NATO and the World Trade Organization. This England for the English platform would give Scotland its independence and allow Ireland to reunite. Or not in the latter case, but the English would be officially out of it.

In last week’s newspaper I saw an article about the British Parliamentary elections then in progress which also posits some of the same ideas. That this was closer to real than I expected was a huge surprise.

Back to the story. As a symbol of this England for the English movement, the organizers want Harold’s sword, which was supposed to have been buried with him. As usual for one of Ayesha’s adventures, the question on the table concerns the real life location of that burial. Which is, of course, part of the mystery Ayesha has to solve.

The clues to where that burial might be are hidden in yet another legendary artifact. Not on is the Maltese Falcon real in Ayesha’s world, but it contains both the key to Harold’s burial site and clues to the location of the fabled lost Templar treasure.

Someone, or multiple someones, are willing, in fact downright eager, to kill in order to get the sword and the treasure. But the bad guys should know by now that attempting to pin your crimes on Ayesha Ryder is a ploy that is guaranteed to fail. With extreme prejudice.

Escape Rating B+: It’s the treasure hunts that keep drawing me in. History is fascinating in general, and the idea that so many of the things we thought were legendary might be real is always enthralling. While there seems to be more than a bit of luck involved, it is so easy to get swept up in the way that Ayesha spins from one clue to the next, and always just one step ahead of the villains.

Ayesha’s assistants in this particular treasure hunt are a librarian whose propensity for adventure belongs in the TV show The Librarians and a female archaeologist who is thrilled to be the gender bent Indiana Jones in this running chase and battle.

That the chase comes to its conclusion in a reconstructed castle complete with reconstructed weapons and reenactors, while the villains arrive by Zeppelin, made for an exciting and climactic conclusion that goes from tongue-in-cheek to serious and deadly in the blink of an eye.

That one of the villains is a ghost from Ayesha’s past added to the stakes for her, and the consequences for the next book.

Something about the political setup of this one didn’t quite gel for me. The idea of England for the English is closer to real-life truth than I expected, but the idea that the House of Commons would be moved to revolt by the finding of the sword, or that such an important concept could pass this easily, seemed a bit too far-fetched.

I will say that the idea that highly-placed villains continue to try to shift blame for their crimes at the initial stages of the story by framing Ayesha Ryder has probably run its course. The first time it happened it added to the suspense. In this story even the characters who are intended to investigate the accusation saw it as a red flag that whoever said it must be part of the plot. I hope not to see this idea again for a while.

I absolutely love the treasure hunt aspects of the Ryder series. Ayesha always finds herself on the trail of something incredible, and always finds it, even if she doesn’t always get to keep it. It’s the chase that keeps the reader on the edge of their seat, especially because there is always someone out to get Ayesha and that treasure right behind her.

I can’t wait to read more of Ayesha’s pulse-pounding adventures. There must be lots more legendary treasures just waiting to be rediscovered!

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

The tour includes a Rafflecopter giveaway for a $25. eGift card and a copy of the book!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Officer Elvis by Gary Gusick + Giveaway

officer elvis by gary m gusickFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: mystery
Series: Darla Cavannah #2
Length: 202 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: April 21, 2015
Purchasing Info: Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

After performing at a local old-folks home, off-duty police officer and part-time Elvis impersonator Tommy Reylander smoothes out his pompadour, climbs into his pink Caddy, and gets all shook up—fatally so, when a bomb explodes. Whether he was killed for his police work or bad singing is a mystery that detective Darla Cavannah is determined to solve.

Though it’s been several years since Darla (reluctantly) partnered up with Tommy, she convinces her boss to let her lead the murder investigation. As the new regional director of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, Shelby Mitchell can think of better uses for his star detective’s time, but not even the most hardened good ole boy can resist Darla’s smart, savvy persuasions. She soon embarks on a roller coaster ride through the world of Elvis tribute artists while tracking down one of the most bizarre serial killers in the history of the Magnolia State. Aiding her pursuit of the killer is recently reprimanded officer Rita Gibbons, fresh from the trailer park and described by Shelby as “half a licorice stick short in the manners department.” But Rita’s plenty smart, even when this case takes their suspicious minds in an entirely unexpected direction.

My Review:

This seems to be a week where everything I read turned out to be in the middle of a series – and I hadn’t figured that out beforehand.

last clinic by gary gusickSo like several of my early reviews this week, even though Officer Elvis is the second book of Darla Cavannah, I can attest that it is not only possible to read this without having read the first (The Last Clinic), it is a whole lot of fun to read this one, with or without having read the first one.

Officer Elvis is an absolute hoot from beginning to end. Not that there isn’t a very serious series of murders to investigate, but the surrounding events are just way too much fun.

There are at least 85,000 Elvis impersonators (really) in the world, and someone seems determined to cut that number down. In other words, there’s a serial killer targeting Elvis impersonators, and Lieutenant Darla Cavannah of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation has caught the case.

She doesn’t start out thinking this is a serial killer cases. She starts out investigating the death of one of her former police partners. Tommy Reylander may have been one of the worst Elvis impersonators ever in the history of Elvis impersonators, but he was also a cop. Not terrible good at that, either, but still a cop.

In Jackson Mississippi, just like everywhere else, cops take the death of other cops very seriously, no matter how strange or unusual the circumstances of that death might be. Tommy died when his pink Cadillac Elvismobile exploded.

Tommy even dressed his girlfriend like Priscilla Presley, and the lookalike “Cill” is one of the first suspects – except that Tommy had almost no assets. He wasn’t even a good enough cop to have pissed off very many criminals, although there are a few.

But when Darla discovers a string of Elvis impersonator murders, everyone in the office is forced to conclude that someone wants Elvis to permanently leave all the buildings.

Some of the murders are inherently tragic, especially the one that misses its intended victim. Almost all of the circumstances contain an element of Elvis trivia and a whole lot of gallows humor.

The string of crimes is pointing directly to the upcoming Ultimate Elvis competition in nearby Tupelo Mississippi, Elvis’ birthplace. As all the contestants (and potential victims) gather for the high point of their year, one man is determined to take back what he believes is rightfully his. He just has to get Elvis back to Graceland to carry out his plan.

It’s up to Darla and her new partner, disgraced detective and Elvis fan Rita Gibbons, to let just enough, and not too much, of this last tribute play itself out.

Be prepared to be all shook up by the ending.

Escape Rating B+: This was way too much fun. I laughed through all of the early set up of the story, and just couldn’t stop. There are too many joke possibilities in the idea that this many people are seriously, or not so seriously, pretending to be Elvis. Particularly all the variations. The yodeling Elvis was probably my favorite, although I’m very happy not to have to listen to him.

But underneath the humor there is a very serious investigation of a serial killer – and one who is both organized in the way that he is committing the crimes, and psychotic in his motivations.

At the same time we have a dive into this rather strange offshoot of the entertainment industry – the world of the Elvis Tribute Artists. Some people take it seriously, some people don’t, but it looks like the Dixie Mob has its dirty fingers in this particular pie – just as it does in other parts of the entertainment industry.

What Darla can’t figure out is why the Dixie Mob and two of her own local criminal kingpins cared two hoots about Tommy Reylander. He may have been a cop, but he was seriously bad at it. She can’t help worrying at the puzzle of why the local meth kingpin, the local sleazy club owner, and the head of the Elvis Tribute Artists association and his hired goons had any interest in Tommy in the first place. If he was killed as part of the string of Elvii murders, why do these villains care?

And if he wasn’t, what did these crime lords have in common with Tommy, who wasn’t even smart enough, or venal enough, to be on the take?

Darla is determined to find all the answers, and as a viewpoint character she is fascinating to follow. She’s a terrific cop, but it’s more than that. As a Yankee in the Deep South, she has an outsider’s perspective on all the players, but as someone who has lived in Mississippi for ten years, even though she is still not accepted in a lot of ways, she has figured out how things (and people) work. That she is not involved with any of the various families and factions makes her a good person to see through all the connections and assumptions.

She’s smart, and she’s tough when she needs to be, but she has developed her own set of friends and colleagues who help her navigate a place where she will always be on the periphery. And it works for her and the reader.

Darla’s first adventure is The Last Clinic, where she investigates and falls for her husband. I can’t wait to see how she got started.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

This tour includes a Rafflecopter giveaway for a $25 eGift card to the eBook Retailer of the winner’s choice + an eBook copy of OFFICER ELVIS.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Medium Dead by Paula Paul + Giveaway

medium dead by paula paulFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: historical mystery
Series: Dr. Alexandra Gladstone #4
Length: 188 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: April 14, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Under Victoria’s reign, women are barred from calling themselves physicians, but that hasn’t stopped Alexandra Gladstone. As the first female doctor in Newton-upon-Sea, she spends her days tending sick villagers in the practice she inherited from her father, with her loyal and sometimes overprotective dog, Zack, by her side.

After the corpse of village spiritualist Alvina Elwold is discovered aboveground at a church boneyard, wild rumors circulate through the charming seaside village, including one implicating a certain regal guest lodging nearby. Tales of the dead Alvina hobnobbing with spirits and hexing her enemies are even more outlandish—but as a woman of science and reason, Alexandra has no doubt that a murderer made of flesh and blood is on the loose.

Finding out the truth means sorting through a deluge of ghostly visitors, royal sightings, and shifty suspects. At least her attentive and handsome friend Nicholas Forsyth, Lord Dunsford, has come to her aid. Alexandra will need all the help she can get, because she’s stumbled upon dangerous secrets—while provoking a deadly adversary who wants to keep them buried.

My Review:

Medium Dead is the 4th book in Paula Paul’s Dr. Alexandra Gladstone series. I can say with absolutely assuredness that it is not necessary to read the other books in this series to enjoy Medium Dead, because I somehow totally missed that there were earlier books, but I very much enjoyed this one.

I could tell that all the characters had history together, but the author did a good job of giving readers enough background to ensure that this story was an interesting and enjoyable one.

Of course, as soon as I discovered the truth, I went and bought the first three books. I liked this one so much that I wanted to read more of Alexandra’s adventures.

Alexandra Gladstone is an unconventional heroine, but she is in a profession that seems to lend itself to investigating murders. Alexa is a doctor. Admittedly, in the Victorian era women were not supposed to be or allowed to be doctors, but Alexa, and the village of Newton-on-Sea that she serves, have decided not to care.

Alexa inherited her practice from her father. The late Dr. Gladstone also trained his daughter in medicine. She’s all the doctor that her remote village has – or needs. By this point in her history, everyone has come to accept her. She’s good at her job, and she’s the only doctor for a long ways around.

As is usual in small-town series, Alexa has gathered a little group of irregulars around her, people who help (and sometimes hinder) her unofficial investigations. Her nurse Nancy, the two boys who do chores around her house, Rob and Artie, and most especially Nicholas Forsyth, a London barrister who unexpectedly inherited the local title and is now the Earl of Dunsford, to both his delight and dismay.

This case involves Nicholas’ household more directly than is usual. His snobbish mother has come to the estate with a very special and very secretive guest. The intent is that Queen Victoria’s visit to the remote village should be a secret, but when the medium that the Queen consults turns up dead, it turns out that everyone in the village either already knows that Her Royal Highness is at Dunsford, or they find out pretty quickly.

There are secrets within secrets. Someone says they saw the Queen scrabbling around the cemetery where the late medium was found dead. The local Constable saw Nicholas mother searching that same ground for some equally unknown reason.

A village man confesses to the murder, but it is obvious that he didn’t commit it. Alexandra, who also unofficially serves as coroner, finds herself in the middle of a case that has two suspects who can’t be named, and one victim that all too many people believe consorted with evil spirits, or at least could raise the dead.

None of the possible clues make much sense. And nothing is as it seems.

Escape Rating A-: I had no idea whodunnit at the end, and I didn’t even care. I got completely wrapped up in Alexandra’s world and the people who inhabit it, so much so that I bought the other three books in the series so that I can go back and visit them again soon.

Alexa carries the story, and it was easy to like her and empathize with her. She is a career woman at a time when women were not supposed to have careers, and she values her independence and the respect she receives as a doctor. At the same time, she has become very good at maneuvering her way around people who simply cannot accept that she is a trained physician, and she gets her job done anyway, even treating the extremely reluctant.

She also has a great way of using her position to get her into places that she otherwise would not be able to go. Busybodies get shown the door, but doctors get in to treat their patients, even when the patients don’t want to be treated.

Because so much of this case involves secrets within Dunsford House very ineffectively kept by a titled Lady, Alexa needs to use her professional ability to treat the ill older woman as a way of getting into the house to discover where the secrets are being kept.

That Alexa is much better at managing Nicholas’ spoiled mother than Nicholas is does not bode well for the romance he wishes would blossom between them, but I suspect that is an entirely other story.

The kickoff to the mystery, Queen Victoria’s visit to the village to consult a medium, is based in history. Victoria never stopped mourning Prince Albert, and the rise of spiritualism in Britain and America can be traced to her desire to communicate to her late husband.

And, of course, a lot of the mediums were exposed as charlatans. While the truth of this dead medium’s talents are never ascertained, a part of this mystery does revolve around fraudulent seances.

Including the one conducted by Alexa’s nurse along with a couple of the more credulous women in the community. The scene of Alexa, along with Nicholas and the two boys, sneaking around her own house to spy on a seance that none of them believe in was hilarious. It also showed the depths of the relationships that Alexa has with all of her friends and coworkers.

And there are more than a few scenes where Alexa’s dog Zack steals the show.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

This tour includes a Rafflecopter giveaway for a $25 eGift card to the eBook Retailer of the winner’s choice + an eBook copy of MEDIUM DEAD.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: Ivory Ghosts by Caitlin O’Connell + Giveaway

ivory ghosts by caitlin o'connellFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: thriller, mystery
Series: Catherine Sohon #1
Length: 294 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: April 7, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

In a blockbuster debut thriller brimming with majestic wildlife, village politics, and international intrigue, a chilling quadruple homicide raises the stakes in the battle to save Africa’s elephants.

Still grieving over the tragic death of her fiancé, American wildlife biologist Catherine Sohon leaves South Africa and drives to a remote outpost in northeast Namibia, where she plans to face off against the shadowy forces of corruption and relentless human greed in the fight against elephant poaching. Undercover as a census pilot tracking the local elephant population, she’ll really be collecting evidence on the ruthless ivory traffickers.

But before she even reaches her destination, Catherine stumbles onto a scene of horrifying carnage: three people shot dead in their car, and a fourth nearby—with his brain removed. The slaughter appears to be the handiwork of a Zambian smuggler known as “the witchdoctor,” a figure reviled by activists and poachers alike. Forced to play nice with local officials, Catherine finds herself drawn to the prickly but charismatic Jon Baggs, head of the Ministry of Conservation, whose blustery exterior belies his deep investment in the poaching wars.

Torn between her developing feelings and her unofficial investigation, she takes to the air, only to be grounded by a vicious turf war between competing factions of a black-market operation that reaches far beyond the borders of Africa. With the mortality rate—both human and animal—skyrocketing, Catherine races to intercept a valuable shipment. Now she’s flying blind, and a cunning killer is on the move.

My Review:

This story is about charismatic megafauna, our use, misuse and abuse of and by them, and murder.

I’m in love with the phrase charismatic megafauna, because it so fits. The author is talking about elephants in this particular story, but I’ve also lived in proximity to a one of the other animals in this group. Bald eagles are everywhere in Alaska, including Anchorage, and in their native habitat they are a messy and opportunistic species. They do an excellent job of keeping the pigeon and Canada Goose population way down in Anchorage – and they also occasionally carry off a small poodle. So while I have no familiarity with elephants except in zoos, I have a tiny idea of the differences between the ways that people who have to live with one of these species and people who are merely enraptured by their press coverage diverge.

But no one hunts eagles for their tusks.

Elephants are beautiful and majestic. They can also be destructive. But the ivory in their tusks can be worth a fortune. And that’s where the story in Ivory Ghosts begins.

Kruger Elephant
Kruger Elephant

Catherine Sohon is a pilot. She is also utterly fascinated with elephants, both in spite of and because of her experiences as an elephant census pilot working in Kruger National Park in South Africa. After her fiancé’s tragic death at the paws of a water buffalo, Catherine can’t bring herself to leave Africa. But she desperately feels a need to leave Kruger, and she needs to do something, both with herself and for a living.

elephants in bwabwata
Elephants in Bwabwata National Park

She takes a job in the Bwabwata National Park in Namibia, working for a slightly mysterious wildlife protection agency. Her ostensible job is to fly an elephant census in the protected areas, but her real job is to find out who is poaching ivory in and smuggling ivory through the contested Caprivi region.

Catherine trips over a jeep full of dead humans and ivory tusks on her first night in the Park. It never gets any less bloody from there.

Catherine finds herself caught in a web of contradictions. She wants to protect the elephants from the humans, but sometimes finds herself in a position of protecting the humans from the elephants. She is told that she can trust the environmental officials on scene, but she is keeping a huge secret from them, and vice versa.

The man she thinks is the most hostile turns out to be the most trustworthy, in spite of his initial boorishness and her agency’s mistaken belief that he may be in on the smuggling. The person she most trusts turns out to be an irredeemable villain. Even worse, a villain who seems to have government officials in his pocket.

She’s told that the problem is local. She eventually discovers that the rot stretches all the way from the local government to organized crime triads in Hong Kong.

heart of darkness by joseph conradIn Ivory Ghosts, Catherine travels into her own personal Heart of Darkness. While her personal ghosts finally get expiated, she comes all too close to becoming a ghost herself.

Escape Rating B: While I enjoyed Ivory Ghosts, it had the feeling of a “dropped into the middle” kind of story.

Some of that is literal. Catherine is dealing with her own ghosts by trying to suppress them, so we know that she is running from something without having the details on exactly what she is running from. It takes a while for Catherine to reveal her feelings about what happened to her fiancé, and her own feelings of guilt as well as loss.

Finding the jeep full of bodies is also a literal “dropping in”. There’s bad stuff going on, it’s been going on, and she trips over it the first night.

Catherine has been living in Africa, and working in African game parks and preserves for a few years. She is familiar, at least from an outsider’s perspective, with some of the culture and the way that life works. Readers may not be, and a bit more exposition about the government culture, bureaucracy and corruption would have been helpful. Likewise, a bit more explanation of who the native leaders are and what their titles/positions represent would have made some things a bit less opaque. Your mileage may vary.

There’s a difference in narrative between a point-of-view character who is as lost as the reader and a POV character who knows it so well that he or she isn’t saying enough. I felt like Catherine was a bit of the latter.

I never did get a handle on Craig, Catherine’s boss at the mysterious WIA. Who are they and what do they do? What do they claim to do? I found myself wondering, fairly often, if Craig and the WIA were the good guys or the bad guys.

out of africa by isak dinesenIn the early stage of the book, and of Catherine’s relationship with the local agent Jon Baggs, Jon refers to Catherine’s Karen Blixen complex and wants her to get it out of her system and go back where she came from. Catherine is not reenacting Blixen/Dinesen’s Out of Africa experience, and doesn’t intend to, but there is certainly that feeling that Catherine, like Blixen, has fallen in love with Africa and is looking for any excuse to stay, whether she wants to save the place (an impossible but common notion) or not.

In the end, Catherine uncovers one deadly conspiracy, but it is clear that she has just touched the surface of the ivory trade. There are murky depths yet to be explored.

I’m glad that Catherine is planning to stick around and explore them. I hope we’ll see more of her story.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

This tour includes a Rafflecopter giveaway for a $25 eGift card to the eBook Retailer of the winner’s choice + an eBook copy of IVORY GHOSTS.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

TLC
This post is part of a TLC book tour. Click on the logo for more reviews.
***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.

Review: The Kill Shot by Nichole Christoff + Giveaway

kill shot by nicole christoffFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: ebook
Genre: thriller
Series: Jamie Sinclair #2
Length: 282 pages
Publisher: Random House Alibi
Date Released: March 17, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo

Jamie Sinclair’s father has never asked her for a favor in her life. The former two-star general turned senator is more in the habit of giving his only child orders. So when he requests Jamie’s expertise as a security specialist, she can’t refuse—even though it means slamming the brakes on her burgeoning relationship with military police officer Adam Barrett. Just like that, Jamie hops aboard a flight to London with a U.S. State Department courier carrying a diplomatic pouch in an iron grip.

Jamie doesn’t have to wait long to put her unique skills to good use. When she and the courier are jumped by goons outside the Heathrow terminal, Jamie fights them off—but the incident puts her on high alert. Someone’s willing to kill for the contents of the bag. Then a would-be assassin opens fire in crowded Covent Garden, and Jamie is stunned to spot a familiar face: Adam Barrett, who saves her life with a single shot and calmly slips away. Jamie’s head—and her heart—tell her that something is very wrong. But she’s come way too far to turn back now.

My Review:

kill list by nichole christoffI read this one a few days ago, but had to wait a bit to write my review. I needed to get over my mad, because there were things that happened in this book that absolutely infuriated me. It says something that I got so involved with the character of Jamie Sinclair in the first book (The Kill List, reviewed here) that I wanted to grab her and shake her over some of her behavior in this book.

The Kill Shot is certainly another wild ride for Jamie, and if you like thrillers with female protagonists the series is looking good.

But some of Jamie’s behavior in this book will make her friends want to sit her down for a good “talking to”.

The story is pretty straightforward. Jamie’s father, the retired general and current senator, asks for Jamie’s help. Because her dad never asks for help, Jamie is immediately onboard with the project.

Dear Old Dad needs Jamie, in her role as expert security consultant and protective detail, to travel to London with a diplomatic courier and help the courier bring a famous physicist and their companion back to the U.S. using the U.S. passports that the courier has in a locked diplomatic pouch.

Not only does this sound straightforward, but the courier is a friendly enough young woman that Jamie is more than willing to guard her. Nothing in this case is presented as remotely dangerous. And not a damn thing about it is even close to what it seems.

There is a metric butt-load of danger, and every single person in the case is hiding an equivalent load of secrets.

Oh, and Jamie’s best friend and almost boyfriend from college is the British Foreign Office operative assigned to this case. He got himself into this mess in order to make one last play for Jamie. Or so he says.

This operation is a complete clusterfuck, to put it lightly. Danger follows at every turn, and Jamie leaves a trail of bad guy dead bodies behind her. Some of those dead bodies are dead because Adam Barrett, the MP that Jamie got interested in while investigating in The Kill List, has followed her to London and is shooting some of the people who are after her. Dad may have said he needed her, but that doesn’t mean he trusts her to get the job done. But then, Dear Old Dad knows a whole lot more about the job than he would ever tell Jamie.

Of course, now some of the people after Jamie are after Adam. Even joining forces isn’t enough to stop the carnage.

Can they figure out who is behind it all before Jamie and everyone she is protecting gets killed? And even if they do, can Jamie ever figure out who she can trust when everyone (including  and especially Dear Old Dad) is playing her?

Escape Rating B-: Let me say this first; in The Kill List it seemed like every man Jamie met fell in love with her. Having one of her old besties start a hot and heavy pursuit did not help ameliorate this particular problem. That in this case the guy was at least half trying to distract Jamie from his downright skullduggery is only a slightly mitigating factor.

For Jamie to be believable, the men in her stories need to stop the romantic attempts. Except Barrett. (My 2 cents)

But speaking of believability, Jamie has a serious problem with her relationship with her father. It’s not just that when he says “jump”” she jumps first and asks “how high?” on the way up, it’s that she knows he doesn’t trust her, doesn’t believe her and will use any ends to justify any means. It’s that in this particular case she doesn’t demand any of the information that she needs to do her job. If he were any other client, she would have made certain to get all the particulars of her duties before taking the job, because knowing what and where the danger might be is what keeps her alive as a security consultant.

She also forgives him much too easily for leaving her out in the cold when the job turns ugly. His plausible deniability nearly gets her killed and nearly scuttles the mission she was sent on. If she was this sloppy all the time, she’d have been killed long ago.

Jamie needs some serious therapy to learn to deal with at least her reactions to her father if not with her father directly. He’s going to get her killed if he keeps this up, and she’s going to let him.

The major reason that this mission “goes South” repeatedly and often is that there is a traitor in their midst. Jamie is presented with clues multiple times that this is true and even the identity of the traitor, but she is too busy dealing with multiple firefights or their aftermath and many multiple instances of people lying to her and playing with her that she doesn’t figure out the real problem until nearly too late.

If this were a case she had acquired on her own, she would have done some due diligence which is totally lacking in this one.

Jamie’s actions in this case drove me crazy.

On that other hand, the amount of danger and the sheer number of deadly situations that arise during this mission will keep the reader flipping pages fast until the very end. And the twist at the end is a dilly.

~~~~~~TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

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