Category Archives: Currently Reading

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Tragedy’s Twin is the second Carrie Lisbon mystery by Chris Keeper. (After No Comfort for the Undertaker.)

In this outing, Carrie and her Uncle have left Hope Bridge to visit a relative in Duncan, New York. Carrie has an ulterior motive; Sheriff Del Morgan is also in Duncan. Despite their vow to forget about their impulsive one night stand, Carrie can’t resist her attraction to the Sheriff.

Unexpectedly, Carrie is called to the local poorhouse to tend to one of the women there. She is supposed to have fallen from a window, but Carrie immediately notes the scratches on Abbie’s arms and hands. The fact that the poorhouse windows only open eight inches convince Carrie something about the death is wrong. Enter the Sheriff who agrees and the two are involved in another case, one in which Carrie is almost murdered.

This mystery has everything. Intriguing characters, a fascinating setting, a great story and excellent writing. The Carrie Lisbon series deserves a wide readership.

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This week I read two books.

This title, written by Jacqueline Boulden is the winner of several Indie awards.

At a corporate function, Emily Archer, tired of the sexist comments and harassment, slaps a man who gropes her. Since he is an important client of her company, she is immediately threatened with dismissal. Her boss manages to keep that from happening but she is suspended. Therapy reveals a long ago trauma.

Now sensitized, she is made uncomfortable by the behavior of a new hire. This evolves in the reveal of a sexual predator, and puts her life in danger.

Although not a whodunit, engrossing. Recommended.

I also read the new mystery of Donna Leon.

I’ve read all of Leon’s books and greatly enjoyed them but I found this one disappointing. The book starts with a bang. The members of two gangs are arrested and brought into the station. When the father of one of the boys, does not pick him up, Griffoni walks him home. At the same time, Brunetti is asked to vet that father, Dario Monteforte, for a job.

Monteforte, lauded as a hero twenty years previously, was never awarded a medal. Why the contradiction?

The case becomes even more serious when the forensic scientist, Enzo Bocchese, is attacked in his apartment.

I found this book confusing. The two halves don’t mesh well and it felt to me as though two different stories had been mashed together. Leon’s writing is, as usual, lovely and her characters are wonderful but I felt the story was disappointing.

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I read quite a few books while I was on vacation but I will discuss only one: The Yellow Wife by Sadequa Johnson.

Phelby is the daughter of the plantation’s master and thus grows up petted and treated differently than most enslaved people on the plantation. She has been promised her freedom at sixteen but instead, while the master is away, Phelby’s mother dies and the mistress (a jealous and vengeful woman) sells Phelby. She is supposed to be sold to a ‘fancy house’, a brothel but while the line of slaves is being held at an intermediate point, the jailor sees her and pulls her out to become his mistress. She bears him several children and after the Civil War, when intermarriage is allowed, he marries her.

I wanted to read this because, although it takes place later in the 1800s than my own book – Death in the Great Dismal – it does have some similarities.

First, both deal with slavery. Writing about this very thorny subject was difficult for me and it took me a long time to reach the point when I felt I could do it.

Both also feature a mixed race woman involved with a white man/master. Both include a white woman who was jealous of the mixed race woman.

Of course, there were some obvious differences. My protagonist, Will Rees, is a white man. He is also a northerner, outside of the Southern culture, and so always maintains a certain distance. Johnson wrote her book from the point of view of Phelby herself, the woman at the center of the action. My mixed race character, Sandy, fancies herself in love. Phelby’s reaction to the jailor who plucks her out of the coffle to become his mistress/wife is much more nuanced. She’s afraid of him but remains tied to him until his death. Although her children, all but one, escape to the north and pass for white, Phelby does not. My character Sandy does escape with Rees and Lydia after a severe beating by the mistress of the house. I wanted a happy ending.

Since I wrote my mystery as entertainment, the story is not as dark as The Yellow Wife. I suspect it is more accurate to the experiences of the times.

I will be at the Albany Book Fair on Saturday from 10 am to 4pm. The Festival is held in the upper campus; my table will be in the ballroom. Stop by for a chat if you’re in the area.

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Occasionally I read other genres than mystery. Science fiction and historical fiction are two of my other favorites. This week I read System Collapse by Martha Wells.

I have read quite a number of novels and stories by Wells but this was a new series for me. Told from the viewpoint of a Murderbot, an android if you will, it tells of a hunt for some rogue colonists and a skirmish with a corporation determined to enslave the colonists and take the planet for its resources. Put like that, it sounds average but the murderbot’s voice is so human in so many ways that the story works. The bot, like Data in The Next Generation is both human and not and struggles with the dichotomy. Fun.

I also read Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice. In this outing, Finlay and Vero head to Atlantic City to save Vero’s cousin from a mobster and rescue the Aston Martin given Finlay by a Russian gangster. Needless to say, it does not go smoothly. Finlay’s ex-husband and mother insist on accompanying her and then Finlay’s hot cop boyfriend turns up. Laugh out loud funny.

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The third of Amy Myer’s cozies, Marsh and Daughter’s murder mysteries, Murder in Hell’s Corner, finds Georgia and her father investigating the murder of Patrick Fairfax, a revered WWII pilot.

As Georgia and Peter investigate, especially looking into a close knit group of pilots who knew Fairfax, they realize that he was not as universally admired as his family believed.

Was the murderer one of his many women? Or one of the other pilots? Or his business partner? The solution, and the twist at the end, is surprising.

What I found captivating, though, was the descriptions of WWII. The relentless bombing by the Germans, the loss of friends and comrades that occurred almost hourly, the sheer scale of a war pounding at this small country. Like Foyle’s War, it is a reminder that England was almost destroyed and was metaphorically hanging by its fingernails.

Highly Recommended.

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On a Bookbub recommendation, I bought the set of Marsh and Daughter mysteries by Amy Marsh.

So far, I have read the first two and begun the third.

Georgia and her father, a retired police detective, research cold cases. Anything that piques their curiosity – a little bit of supernatural here – and then write books solving the mystery.

In the first one, The Wickenham Murders, a young gardener Davy Todd is accused of murdering Ada Proctor, the Doctor’s daughter. But so many parts of the story don’t make sense. The villagers don’t want the Marshs poking around but there is that strange music indicating someone doesn’t believe Davy was guilty. Then Georgia discovers Davy’s old sweetheart, still alive, and convinced of his innocence.

In the second book, Murder in Friday Street, a rock musician, Fanny Star, is murdered when she returns to the village to give a concert. Although her partner is accused of the crime, serves time and is murdered almost immediately upon his release, Georgia and her father don’t believe he was the guilty party. Suspects abound but the investigation into ‘the gang’, the friends of Fanny when they were kids, leads to the solution.

These are darker than Agatha Christie but, like her mysteries, show that murders happen even in cozy villages.

Terrific!

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I’ve been a big fan of Victoria Thompson for many years. Murder on Madison Avenue is book 25 in her popular Gaslight Mysteries.

Malloy is approached by a distraught Mrs. Bing who wants a divorce from her husband but won’t explain why. Mr. Bing is the owner of a automobile company, an EV too – a really interesting part of the book. Curious, Malloy and Sarah attend the car show to get a read on Mr. Bing.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Bing is found murdered, run over by on of his very own cars.

To complicate matters, Bing’s first wife, who he abandoned but never divorced, shows up. Her story is that when Bing abandoned her, he also took their daughter Pearl, and Nora Bing wants her back.

Now, hired by the second Mrs. Bing to discover the murderer, Malloy and Sarah investigate.

As always, the characters and the setting are fascinating. I knew what was going on, though, from very early in the book. I suspect most modern readers would. But I did not guess the identity of the murderer. B+. Recommended.

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Since I am watching the Summer Olympics, my usual reading has taken a hit. I am about half way through Finlay Donovan Knocks ‘Em Dead.

The previous book in the series ended with a cliffhanger: Finlay sees a proposed hit on her husband with a bounty of $100,000. She is pretty sure Theresa is not behind it since she is in jail for her connections with the Russian mob.

Since Finlay is nothing if not impulsive, she not only looks at the hit, she responds to it. The coded response comes to both Finlay and ‘EasyClean”, saying whoever murders Steve first will get paid – and she wants it done by Christmas.

Finlay and her nanny/friend begin investigating and are in Steven’s trailer at his business when someone firebombs it. The discovery of a body in a storage unit rented under Theresa’s name further complicates the case.

Like the first in the series, it is funny. But also full of contrivances. Finlay does a lot of foolish things, impulsively and without thought. I would give the series a B to a B+. It’s funny and the story keeps moving but I find Finlay’s thoughtlessness and impulsivity annoying.

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I wanted to read something very different and somewhat exotic. I picked up Auntie Lee’s Deadly Delights: a Singaporean mystery.

This was truly exotic, from the strange and unusual food to the Singapore setting. But, as I have said so often, people are always the same. (I frequently feel that the murder victims are so unpleasant it is no surprise when they’re murdered and, in fact, I wonder why it took so long.) If anyone deserved murdering, it is Mabel Sung and her son Leonard. There is no shortage of suspects but suspicion immediately falls on the caterer, Auntie Lee, who prepared traditional foods for the buffet, some of which require soaking to remove cyanide. (Really!)

Auntie Lee, who knows she is innocent, embarks on her own investigation. Fortunately, Inspector Salim has eaten at Auntie Lee’s cafe numerous times and he does not believe Auntie Lee is definitely guilty. The game is afoot!

This is a cozy police procedural with a lot of humor. The unusual setting is certainly a plus but the personality of Auntie Lee is the real charm here. Really fun.Recommended.

Currently Reading – a good beach read

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Murder in the Bistro; a Maggie Newberry mystery, by Susan Kieran-Lewis, is number 9 in the series. I bought it after seeing an ad on Bookbub.

There is a lot going on in this mystery. It really gives the reader of the stresses of a young mother with young children, married, and in the French countryside.

Maggie’s husband Laurent is busy with the grape harvest and is having trouble with some of the gypsy pickers. At the same time, her friend Grace, and Grace’s two children, are staying at the house. The youngest, Zouzou is fine but Taylor is a difficult thirteen. Grace is trying to get her business off the ground – but the photographer is more interested in shooting photos of Maggie’s youngest, Mila.

Then another American in the village, a chef trying to open a bistro, is murdered and Laurent’s partner is accused. The victim is so poisonous the reader is unsurprised when she is murdered, but there are other unpleasant characters in the village. The reactions of the locals to Maggie sure don’t encourage moving to a village in France.

But – I loved the book. I plan to go back to number one and read them in order. Recommended.