Mark Pryor: Two Hugo Marston Novels -- Paris and Crime!

Lucky, lucky me ... I picked up Mark Pryor's new book THE CRYPT THIEF, the second Hugo Marston detective novel -- and I hadn't known about the first one! So as soon as I finished one, I devoured the other, also. You know how a really good meal gives you a calm sense of goodwill? So does a pair of good books, one after the other. Ah .... I might just read poetry for the rest of the week (well, maybe not, but it feels that good).

Hugo Marston is a delightful investigator, intense, highly skilled, and very believable. A former FBI profiler, he's switched careers to provide security to the US Ambassador in Paris, a much less risky, less dark endeavor. Moreover, his Ambassador is smart, sane, supportive -- life could be simple and honorable and ... clean. Even if not always fortunate in terms of love.

But in The Bookseller, a shabby strreet-level bookseller who has shared many a good book (at good prices) with Hugo over the years gets kidnapped at gun point. And Hugo Marston may be the only witness, and one unable to do anything about it.

The Paris police won't buy into the case; somehow there are Nazi hunters involved; old books play a role; and so does Hugo's new relationship with a beautiful and savvy reporter. It's a classic detection novel, played out in France, and worth every turn of the page.

Then comes THE CRYPT THIEF, where Marston's profiling skills are called into play as someone incidentally kills two tourists in the famous Pere Lachaise cemetery -- while stealing bones. Marston's former FBI buddy Tom Green, an intense and somewhat damaged CIA operative and consultant but a good friend (who also appeared in The Bookseller), arrives for a long visit and assumes Hugo will put up with his drinking, his despair, and his bad decisions. As Marston's investigation picks up pace and focuses on a clever and powerful serial killer, will Tom's rash behavior capsize the operation? And what are the risks of allowing Claudia, the reporter who's backed away from Marston, back into the press of events?

Tightly written, quick-paced, and redolant of French life and Parisian complexity, this is a pair of books well worth reading. And it's clear there will be more Hugo Marston mysteries ahead. Oh, I am indeed a very lucky reader ...

By the way, here's author Mark Pryor's website. Have fun -- and if you've already enjoyed one or both of these, do add your thoughts on the series as a comment here, s'il vous plait.

The Law Versus Love, Life: Liz Rosenberg, THE LAWS OF GRAVITY

In a perfect world, the law of the land would echo what our hearts tell us: Love and peace, and friendship above all, would determine what's right to do and how to give.

But as Liz Rosenberg makes clear in THE LAWS OF GRAVITY, even the most caring and tender judge must wrestle with what's been written down. And for Nicole and her adored older cousin Ari Wiesenthal, the weight of the law may fracture the family bonds that have kept them close into adulthood, into the years when each is a parent.

Nicole, worrying about a lump in her neck as she talks with her best friend Mimi (very pregnant), is already having a tough time seeing her daughter Daisy enter kindergarten. She mentions to Mimi an overheard conversation about yet another woman who'd received a cancer diagnosis when her child entered school:

She knit faster, as if she could push the story away with the clicking speed of the needles. "That mother died before her daughter even reached third grade."

"There's nothing scarier than having kids," Mimi said, her dark eyes wide. "Halloween can't touch it."

"I know. But just think --," Nicole began.

"I can't," Mimi said. "I won't. And you shouldn't either. Everything to do with having children is terrifying. You can't afford to sweat the details."

But for Nicole, the details are suddenly front and center, as the lump turns out to be an aggressive cancer, and treatments don't work well. Luckily, her cousin Ari stored the cord blood -- that special blend of magically fertile stem cells that hesitates in the umbilical cord at birth -- of one of his children, deep frozen for emergencies, should that kind of crisis ever arrive. And the cord blood could help Mimi survive after all.

But Ari, at first glad to contribute, confronts an emergency for one of his own children and suddenly realizes he needs to keep that cord blood for them, just in case.

Mimi actually has a contract of sorts that Ari provided, saying he'd donate the blood. What will it cost her at the level of her soul, if she takes that document to court to sue for the cord blood?

Liz Rosenberg is known as a poet and a thoughtful reviewer of young-adult novels. Here she spins a lush novel of women's friendships that tackles the legal and medical issues usually found in the high-stakes thrillers written by, say, Jodi Picoult. But Rosenberg shifts the pace as well as the setting -- to Long Island, where she grew up, and to the cultural frame of modern Jewish life -- in order to deepen the issues and test their costs.

Readers with some experience in terms of Jewish thought will already have pricked up their ears at the surname Wiesenthal for Nicole's cousin Ari. Even more pressing is the name of the judge who accepts the case that Nicole brings: Judge Solomon Richter. "Richter" is German for judge, based on the word that means what is right; Solomon, of course, is often remembered for his wisdom in deciding which of two claimants was actually the mother of a baby being fought over. And Rosenberg is a poet -- not only the names, but each word in this powerful novel has been selected by eye and ear. To reach the eventual resolution, not only the characters but also the reader will test what justice means -- and also love.

RIPPED: Jack the Ripper Made New, by Shelly Dickson Carr

"Shelly Dickson Carr"

Although this book came out last December, there hasn't been a lot of talk about it, so I thought I'd mention it as a potential cross-genre mystery for the summer reading stack. "Shelly Dickson Carr" is the pen name of Michelle Karol, a Boston-area theatre lover, and this is her first book. But if you've been reading mysteries for a while, or tend to read mid 20th century authors, you're already wondering how this author came to claim her nom de plume -- because John Dickson Carr (1906-1977) was one of the fine and very productive mystery writers of the so-called Golden Age of the genre. And the answer is: Shelly Dickson Carr is his granddaughter.

RIPPED, her first book, involves time travel and Jack the Ripper's London. It's a thriller, with gory murders, risk, suspense, and a fifteen-year-old protagonist: Katie Lennox, whose parents are dead, whose sister is a rock performer and not around, and who's living in teen misery with her London grandmother. Things look up a bit when she meets "seriously hot" Toby, who teaches her Cockney rhyming slang while they wait to enter Madame Tussaud's wax museum to see the grotesque Chamber of Horrors -- a restaging of Jack the Ripper's murders of young women in the 19th century.

When a Katie finds herself tossed abruptly into the days of the Ripper, she's bold, committed, and smart. But can she handle time travel, a vastly different way of life, and psychopathic threats, all while working out her own life and trying to save (in a strange way) her sister??

Pull this one onto your list if you collect Jack the Ripper; if you adored John Dickson Carr and his mysteries; or if you're in a parent-daughter reading group. At a chunky 500 pages, there may be a few sections you speed-read to get to the next tangle -- and by the end, you'll know a lot of Cockney slang! (In fact, the author provides a primer on her website.) As Katie discover in the second chapter, it turns what you know inside out: "I'm no one's lamb to the slaughter, Katie thought, because my parents are brown bread ..." Need a hint? The last word in "lamb to the slaughter" rhymes with daughter -- now, do you know what rhymes with the latter word in brown bread?

Entertaining Mystery: LITTLE ELVISES by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime)

Making a list, or better yet, a stack, for summer reading? If you enjoy a mystery that's layered with complex clues and twists, and at the same time makes you chuckle out loud, I can recommend the three-book series by Timothy Hallinan (yes, the same Timothy Hallinan who writes the Poke Rafferty mysteries): the Junior Bender mysteries, Crashed, Little Elvises, and The Fame Thief.

We already reviewed Crashed here, with the recommendation that it was good enough to pre-order (yes!). So here's a bit about Little Elvises. Junior Bender, a clever career thief with a reputation to maintain,  often works for hire, so to speak -- someone wants a particular high-end item, like a fine painting, and Junior targets, removes, and markets the item in a smooth sequence. His tricks for entering unoccupied homes are diverse and well timed. He isn't wild about his career choice when it comes to trying to get back into his daughter's good graces, not to mention his ex-wife's ... but he takes pride in his skills.

So as this volume of his exploits opens in Southern California, Hollywood area, it's partcularly galliing to Bender that a police officer is creating a case against him for a theft he didn't do, and wouldn't have -- because there was a gun involved. Junior Bender doesn't use guns. Everyone knows.

What everyone doesn't know, though, its that DiGaudio, who is putting the screws onto Bender in a police station cell, has relatives who are ... shall we say, mobbed up? Well, DiGaudio won't say that. But Junior Bender is getting the message: DiGaudio wants Bender's skills for a job to salvage some reputations. Bender's even being pushed about his 13-year-old daughter and what she'll think of him if DiGaudio tags him with a much nastier crime than he'd ever actually commit.

Interestingly, Bender's daughter already knows something about what the complications are -- that is, what "little Elvises" are. She's written a paper for school on "the way American pop culture imitates itself, the way it stamps out little tin copies of anything original that makes money. The example she chose was all the little Elvises from Philly who were churned to the surface in the wake of Elvis Presley."

Hallinan's deft plotting soon tangles Bender into the saddest and most dangerous parts of the studio music scene, as well as -- could it be? -- mob connections from multiple locations. And all this, while Bender's daughter is getting involved in the actual detection, because, of course, she's so much better than her dad at all the Internet stuff that suddenly turns out to be necessary knowledge for him to survive DiGaudio's quickly closing net. If that's even possible.

Well, you know it must be possible -- I've already said there's a third book. The Fame Thief comes out at the beginning of July, just in time for vacation reading. But play fair: Read the first two books first, if you can! If you enjoy the best of Lawrence Block or the capers that Donald Westlake wrote (or, not to be gendered about it, Bethany Maines!); get a kick out of Los Angeles crime fiction like Raymond Chandler's; and appreciate a well-played hand of characters whose mistakes feel very, very believable, even though they're criminals and you're not (I hope!) ... then this is a series you'll enjoy.

One quick mention: For some reason, the ribbon of text on the cover saying "A Junior Bender Mystery" has made a few people this this features a teen detective and belongs on the "young adult" shelf. Banish the thought! Gently raunchy, always amusing, and a page-turner that will keep you going even when the summer sun's heating up, Little Elvises is a heck of a lot of fun. For grown-ups.

Joanne Fluke, RED VELVET CUPCAKE MURDER (Cozy with Recipes)

Amateur sleuth Hannah Swensen is part owner of a bakery. Whether it's consoling a (living) victim, trying reassure her two boyfriends, or creating an alluring day at the shop so that local sources of information find themselves hovering over the desserts and leaking a few clues, Swensen is sure to stir up some yummy recipes while sampling the murder mystery laid into her life.

Unlike many of the cozy-with-recipes books, though, this one doesn't group the baking directions at the rear of the book -- they are cleverly interspersed in the text, and even foreshadowed! From the Easy Fruit Pie to the Raspberry Bar Cookies to a killer guacamole, there's a lot to drool over. And that doesn't even count the condos Hannah Swensen is eyeing with envy, when sudden death interrupts her catered party. Even her coveted Red Velvet Cupcakes aren't an unmixed blessing -- in fact, they may be drawing more suspicion to her, something she could have avoided if she ever walked away from a crisis -- but that's just not Hannah!

Tuck this one in the beach bag this summer; just make sure you have reservations for supper after your day at the beach, because your tastebuds will only accept a certain degree of teasing before they insist on satisfaction ... something in common with this sweetly tangled murder plot, which Hannah needs to resolve before people she cares about are thrust into danger.

PS -- Cook's note -- If you're more into organic veggies, breads baked from scratch, and even gluten-free recipes, skip this one and wait for Edith Maxwell's locavore mystery, A Tine to Live, A Tine to Die (end of May release; review soon-ish). Fluke's recipes are more dependent on mixes and other staples of the 1960s kitchen -- yummy though they can be!

Michelle Hodkin, THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER (Young Adult Mystery)

I picked up this book for the same reason that I picked up the first in the Twilight series -- because a YA expert (librarian this time; bookseller last time) said she'd loved it and so did the teens (AND their mothers, said one of them!). The funny coincidence is, there turns out to be something paranormal involved in THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER, which is normally something I'd avoid. But with my earlier experience, I dipped into Twilight before I quite realized how much it depends on vampires, and the plot kept me reading anyway.

With Hodkin's book, though, it was the character of Mara Dyer that compelled me to stick with it after I realized the creepy aspect. Dyer's doubts about what she's experiencing make the creepiness much deeper. And the powerful resonance of Mara's version of courage and her stubborn refusal to give in to bullying drew me into the story. I've found very few books this year that struck me as so accurate about human nature and the emotions of newly forming independence -- not to mention that first uncertain taste of the perils of sexuality.

Mara Dyer wakes up in a hospital bed with no idea why she's there -- and when her parents yield to her frantic insistence and tell her all three of the friends with her on an adventure three nights ago are dead, her waking nightmare has just begun. A swift move to Florida, the agonies of a new school, an adorable boy who persists in courting her (not a great idea when he's ruined a lot of reputations already), and the threat that she's losing her mind: Mara's coping skills are only human, so how can she endure so much? And what will collapse first? Is it Mara's own self?

This is book one of a trilogy, and when I turned the last page, I knew I wanted to read the next one, and the final one. I exerted enormous adult self-control and waited 20 hours before ordering a copy (!!) of The Evolution of Mara Dyer. The third book, The Retribution of Mara Dyer, won't be available until October 2013. (Here's the author's website: http://www.michellehodkin.com/p/books.html.)

No, this doesn't have the long-term resonance of the Harry Potter series; on the other hand, it has way more depth than Twilight (no offense, Twilight can be good beach reading, but it's not going to pull me into re-reading that first volume, reading the others, or reviewing them). But it's a true mystery, with layers of revelation, agonized searching for the truth, and a dogged insistence on facing reality, no matter how strange that reality may become. Many thanks to the Maine librarian (nameless in the blog post) who wrote this list last fall -- I've consumed four of the titles this week, and will draw on the experience further, I'm sure.

But this above all: It's character that makes a book unforgettable. Michelle Hodkin knows how to craft character. I'm hoping (fingers crossed) that she can pull it off in all three books. I'll let you know later.

Jodi Picoult Book THE STORYTELLER Stirs Controversy

Controversy is not new for the novels of Jodi Picoult, a northern New England author whose medical/legal thrillers often target current moral quandaries. Her 2013 book, THE STORYTELLER, takes her onto Nazi/Holocaust territory, where history is in constant flux and opinions flare hot.

Today The Tablet provides an intriguing view of the issues for this book: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/130344/jodi-picoult-holocaust-vampires -- well worth reading.

New England Mysteries: Lea Wait, Steve Ulfelder, J.P. Choquette

Maine author Lea Wait's newest title, SHADOWS ON A CAPE COD WEDDING, slipped into print a week or so ago while I was navigating through major editing deadlines ... but the workload here made me all the more pleased to have read this neatly constructed Cape Cod autumn small-town mystery. It was the perfect antidote, keeping me interested, intrigued, and cheerful.

Wait's "Shadows" series has mostly been set in Maine (this is the sixth; http://www.leawait.com), but this time Maggie Summer, a dealer in antique prints, has an October wedding to attend on the Cape. She's the maid of honor for her dear friend Gussie, owner of local antique shop Aunt Augusta's Attic. And it would all be perfect -- except that before Maggie even has a chance to find Gussie, she finds a dead body on the beach. That's rough news all around: Maggie's record of stumbling over violent death is long enough to work against her by now, complications could affect the wedding plans, and Maggie's own sweetheart, Will, is definitely not going to appreciate Maggie's instant commitment to helping solve the crime.

Stormy weather and threats of violence lead to a far-from-cozy situation -- and if Maggie can actually solve the issues for her friends and for the family of the dead man, there's no guarantee it will solve her own. A good read, sweet with a smoky edge of intrigue and suspense.

I was very excited to latch onto an advance copy of Steve Ulfelder's third Conway Sax thriller, SHOTGUN LULLABY. Ulfelder is making the most of the socioeconomic fracture lines of the rest of Massachusetts (off the Cape) -- wealthy industrialists and hard-hitting criminals practically next door to blue-collar clusters of folks to scrape by on hard work and sometimes hard drinking. But Conway Sax is done with the drinking part, and done with getting in trouble with the law: An "oldtimer" in the local Alcoholics Anonymous group, he's trying to figure out ordinary domestic life (the kind that comes with rocky finances and confused stepdaughters) while also committing to straightening out the newly sober when they need a mature hand (or a boot in the seat) to get their lives back on track.

Sax even has a friend on the police force, as well as his AA buddies. But "sponsoring" young Gus Biletnikov has complications that the 12-step program doesn't address: the strong likeness between Gus and Sax's much-loved son who won't speak to him anymore, and Gus's own mixed-up family where money and love get misdirected, time after time. Before he's had time to say the Serenity Prayer, Sax is dodging hard-core criminals and psychopaths, while trying to redeem Gus's short life and make sense of his own family's needs. Taut, believable, layered, SHOTGUN LULLABY bears witness to life on life's terms: sometimes sweet, more often hard to handle, and occasionally downright dangerous.

Ulfelder's earlier work -- Purgatory Chasm and The Whole Lie -- brought him an Edgar Award nomination and a lot of fans. This third Conway Sax crime and detection novel is going to win more acclaim, more readers ... and earn a heck of a lot of appreciation. Release date is May 14; visit Ulfelder's website, http://www.ulfelder.com.

Add a second New England state to this crime fiction list with a debut thriller from J. P. Choquette of Vermont -- EPIDEMIC is a medical thriller set in the hardscrabble town of St. Albans, less than an hour away from urban Burlington. Choquette forms her own take on the medical thriller style of Michael Crichton and pulls it home to small-town life, where people's connections both complicate and comfort.  Ava Morely, a relatively new nurse confronting a rapidly spreading deadly virus, finds her life moving into reverse as she runs into journalist Everett James. He's not just a prying reporter -- he's also someone she last saw next to the altar on her wedding day. The two quickly align in both a medical battle to save lives, and a web of threats that connect to the epidemic around them. Self-published by its "Vermont independent" author, the book's small flaws (alas for the lack of a pro editor) are easy to overlook, and the pace and deft characterizations convince me that Choquette's second thriller -- already in process -- will be at least as good.


A great chance to catch a fine debut while Choquette's still less well known than she deserves! Order online, and visit the author's enjoyable website: http://www.scaredecat.com.

Diversion: Poet Martín Espada on Moyers and Company

photo by Bryce Richter

Although the snow and ice outside the window dare me to say "April" again, it really is still National Poetry Month -- and a cluster of stubborn daffodil stems are protesting the weather. It's great to keep hearing and reading good poetry all month ... Every month, of course, should be poetry month (and is better when poetry is added).

One of our favorite poets, especially for his powerful performances, is Martín Espada. Most of his upcoming readings -- schedule HERE -- are in upstate New York and New England. If you can't be there, check out this interview with him on Moyers and Company. FYI, his newest collection is THE TROUBLE BALL. More on the book, HERE.

Next post ... back to mysteries. Although, come to think of it, one of the best mysteries is the way a good poem can slice apart the cloudy sky over the soul.

Crime Fiction, Venice, the Commissario -- Yes, Donna Leon

Donna Leon's 2013 crime novel THE GOLDEN EGG features Commissario Guido Brunetti and takes us again to the canals and back streets of Venice -- a multilayered city whose layout is so complicated that even this life resident and seasoned police detective reaches again and again for his copy of the guidebook Calli, Campielli e Canali. Dark, damp doorways at the water side of structures echo for the Commissario the complicated families around him, some with pedigrees nearly as long at the city's.

THE GOLDEN EGG is far from a standard crime novel, however. Leon opens at the Brunetti home, where one of the most endearing of crime fiction couples, Guido and his wife Paola, are enjoying an evening meal and conversation with their two teenaged children. The family plays a word game in the conversation: One offers and ending, the next provides a sentence or two that preceded the end of a story, and so on, back to someone proposing the first sentence of the "story written in air."

The game quickly becomes a metaphor for detective work, as Guido receives a phone call at work from his distressed wife. Paola's abrupt question to him -- "You know the boy who doesn't talk? At the dry cleaner's?" -- is a lead-in to letting her husband know the "boy" is dead. Actually it's a young man who's died, and the assumption has been that he is deaf, and perhaps also "dumb," not just in the sense of unable to speak, but also in terms of mental capacity.

Yet both Guido and Paola find the abrupt and probably suicidal (surely not criminal) ending to this nameless young man's life tragic, and both feel guilty that in all the years they've used the cleaning service where the "boy" has done simple tasks, they never asked his name. Guido, mired at work in a highly political assignment for his reliably self-centered boss, begins to probe the death.

Seasoned mystery readers will expect murder to emerge from Guido's investigations. Be assured that Donna Leon's skilled and evocative tale does involve crime -- but you'll have to wait for it with Guido, as he pushes backward through the story of the young man he'd barely noticed before death.

James Salter: A Brief Note

I love the research access that the Internet provides. At the time when Dave and I found an elegant copy of James Salter's book FORGOTTEN KINGS: THE DAYS OF IRWIN SHAW, we were already experts in mysteries and gaining rapidly in poetry -- but literary reflections like this one were not our passion (and still we don't often "go there"). We purchased the book and added it to our Kingdom Books shelves for the sake of its physical beauty. It's a gem, and was created at the noted Stinehour Press to be issued by the Bookman Press.

This morning, however, I noticed a review by John Freeman in the Boston Globe, of Salter's newest novel, All That Is. So before reading the book, I pulled out our Salter item and enjoyed it again, then skipped through several archived pieces on Salter, found on the 'Net. I was particularly intrigued to discover that he'd been born Horowitz, in New Jersey, and had a strong military career before the success of his first novel took him away from the U.S. Air Force.

Then, at last, I settled into Freeman's review of the new Salter novel, and found it a mix of thumbs up and down, but always rich: There's Freeman's own evocative writing (he begins the review with "Desire is one of memory's most potent accelerants"), and a comment on Salter's writing that intrigued me: "No one in American letters moves a story along through dialogue as naturally as he does," Freeman comments. "One moment we're in Bowman's head, the next in his lover's, and at the start of new chapters we're briefly in the mind of someone entirely new."

That's a skill that I want to witness and explore, so I'll be watching for a Salter novel as we begin our spring purchasing binge (it is such fun to be married to Dave, as we share enjoyment of acquisition, reading, reviewing -- each in our way -- and introducing readers to more good books).  And I hope that FORGOTTEN KINGS soon reaches the shelf of the person who is passionate about literary reflections, and who's developing a Salter collection to enjoy.