Chicago Culinary Mystery: SMOTHERED, A WHIPPED AND SIPPED MYSTERY, G. P. Gottlieb

 G. P. (Galit) Gottlieb's first culinary mystery, Battered, won fans for both its Chicago neighborhood setting and its punchy, relentless amateur sleuth, Alene Baron. Owner of a café with a specialty in vegan, "cruelty-free" pastries, Alene has an unusual crew working for her: the sister and daughter of the previous owner, as well as some talented young people and her own old friend Ruthie. She knows her customers mostly by name, and otherwise by what they order or how they hang out (and most of them do hang out for a while). 

But nothing's exactly simple for her as the sequel, SMOTHERED, opens. Yes, she's started to date detective Frank Shaw, a nice by-product of his intervention in the earlier book. Yet her employees can be quirky and moody at a level that interferes with business; she's got three kids at home (and a nanny); and her father usually lives with her but at the moment is ill in a hospital.

On top of all this, her business neighbor, a scuzzy guy with a womanizing habit, is running a health gym that serves up smoothies and prepackaged snacks that are starting to rival her own food business. When the neighbor is found murdered, Alene has every incentive to solve the crime, so she won't be blamed.

Brace for roadblocks in her love life, of course, if Alene's involved with the detective on the case: "It felt weird to talk about plans for the evening while Frank was dealing with Stanley's death. Were their dates always going to be last-minute? And his partner Lee was with him."

Culinary mystery collectors will want this book (published in softcover by D. X. Varos) on their shelves (no recipes, though); so will Chicago-area crime fiction collectors, for the fun of local landmarks and neighborhoods. It does have two marked flaws -- an overabundance of unnecessary characters (to the extent that the book provides a character list before the story starts), and a number of genre-style hints of action or complication to follow that in fact are dropped abruptly, without explanation (even a romantic date that never takes place). Some focused editing would have helped a lot.

That said, the book is a good entry from an author whose professional training was actually in piano and voice; I hope she may bring in some of her expertise in those fields in future books, and I'll watch for those with interest. Publication for this one is scheduled for February 16, 2021.

 PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Oceanfront Cozy with Romance, CLOSELY HARBORED SECRETS by Bree Baker

Bree Baker's "Seaside Café Mystery" series from Poisoned Pen Press just reached book 5 with CLOSELY HARBORED SECRETS. This author's writing keeps getting smoother, and her plots, entangled with strands of romance, offer a strong amateur sleuth in action.

This time, Everly Swan's involvement in a murder begins at her seaside island town's annual ghost walk, when she discovers the dying body of an avid map collector and possible opponent of her great aunts -- who has scraped Everly's name into the sand with her final strength. Is it an accusation, or a call for Everly to solve the crime?

Of course, she's not gaining popularity by stepping into such trouble, and this time she has more at stake than ever, since her beloved great aunt Fran is running for mayor of the town of Charm. Any bad press for Everly could cost Aunt Fran the election.

Top that off with the huge complications she's facing in her romantic life with Detective Grady Hays and his family, and Everly's got tension in every direction. But also a lot of friendship and affection, sweetening the mystery in Baker's accustomed style.

Dixie's murder had shaken me. I'd already seen too many deaths since my return to the island, and Dixie had carved my name into the ground with her final breaths. I had no idea how I'd heard the scratching over the sound of the wind, but the whole night had felt somehow surreal. Right down to the doppelganger flapper who'd let me to Dixie's office and pointed me to the book of island families on her desk. All in all, I was freaked out, feeling a tornado of emotions and wholly exhausted.

Baker delicately hints at possible ghostly involvement, and gives Everly's 170-year-old house a spooky role in the increasing level of threat targeting this entrepreneur. And what about that curse on all the romances in her family—does that mean she should walk away from Grady ... if he doesn't walk away from her first?

This charming Southern cozy wraps up with three of Everly's recipes, in the tradition of the genre. Series readers will likely turn to those pages first! But this is an easy book to step into without reading the other four titles first, and makes a delightful break from the stresses of ordinary life.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Crime in Winter's Harsh Landscape: SNOWDRIFT from Helene Tursten

Swedish author Helene Tursten provided a strong police procedural series featuring Detective Inspector Irene Huss, set mostly in urban Gothenburg and portraying the fierce rivalry among police detectives, including the bitter gender and ethnic gaps that persist in today's culture. And that series earned a place on many a crime fiction collector's shelf as either Scandinavian crime fiction or women's police procedurals.

But Tursten's second series is stronger, launched in The Hunting Game (yes, brace for how humans target each other) and then Winter Grave. Her 2020 release through Soho Crime (imprint of Soho Press) is SNOWDRIFT. This is one of the rare crime novels where the book really will make a more dramatic impression on readers who've taken the books in sequence.

Since many Soho Crime authors are less highly advertised than, say, Grisham or Patterson or Penny, this may still be the first Tursten book many readers pick up. So here's a quick backstory: Detective Inspector Embla Nyström tackles violent crime in more than the city of Gothenburg. An avid hunter, she's been out in the winter forests every year. She's also been a competitive boxer and still has those lightning reflexes. But at age 28, she's also landed two traumas that shape her life: One is physical, a mauling described in an earlier book that gave her so much head damage that she won't be able to compete in the ring again (though that won't limit her self-defense). The other, and the root of the plot in SNOWDRIFT, is her acute sense of responsibility for a girlfriend's disappearance under violent threat. She's been searching for her friend Lollo ever since—and suffering crippling nightmares that affect her professional life.

So when she gets a terribly short phone call from Lollo herself, at the start of the book, nothing can dissuade her from investigating where her friend may be, and under what duress. Shortly thereafter, she pays a courtesy call and discovers a mob murder. The victim is one of the criminals who abducted Lollo, years before.

Suddenly Embla and her colleagues are neck deep in international intrigue and danger, along with all the prime areas of Eastern European criminal activity, including human trafficking. Is that what's happened to Lollo?

Marlaine Delargy's translation from the Swedish provides a slight flattening to the dialogue, without the rhythms of native English. To some readers, that may make the book feel "more Scandinavian" in its stiffness. Tursten's rapid pacing and portrayal of the risks and bonds of team policing override most of the drawback of the language, along with Embla's overwhelming sense of threat and peril. 

Series readers and first-timers alike may find it necessary to ignore the phone and email, and embed themselves in this dramatic winter crime novel. Brace for a page-turner, and enjoy this fierce new police procedural turned thriller, with its engaging and memorable "wounded" detective.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

MADNESS OF THE Q, Second Sam Teagarden Political Adventure from Gray Basnight

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“If you like a book that lands you back in reality feeling relaxed and happy about what could happen to an ordinary guy tossed into deadly events, Madness of the Q is ideal. It might even get you through the holiday season, feeling like you and Sam both have it pretty good after all.”

Breaking out of genre expectations, the new international thriller from Gray Basnight features a second appearance of math professor Sam Teagarden: a happily married American who agrees without argument to step forward when his nation calls him to fly to Europe to examine an epidemic of suicide and the ancient document that may be causing it, and who, when propositioned on a cruise ship by a woman who strips her lovely body in his cabin, prefers to get out on deck and have another imagined conversation with his smart and very supportive wife.

Madness of the Q leaps from one messy political murder to the next, as a killer working for the Vatican chases Sam through Israel and across Europe. Sam’s gentle stumbling pace upgrades to a desperate race, as a second assassination threat, this time from a group called Freedom From God (FFG), targets him as well. Once upon a time a CIA code analyst, and technically called into this case by the FBI, Sam is nonetheless way out of his depth, as even the first threat to his life sets off his posttraumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) at maximum level.

That PTSD is well earned, after what happened to Sam in Basnight’s 2018 thriller, Flight of the Fox. Sam, it turns out, is politically significant to both his nation and his world, because his analytical skills in the preceding adventure impelled him to discover, and then reveal to the world, corruption within the US government. He has become a symbol, a person who can be trusted completely. That’s why the FBI wants him to come reassure the world about the ancient document and its implications.

This newly unearthed document is Q­—that is, part of the source document for the Christian gospels. It includes a fragment that apparently is setting believers to kill themselves, and nonbelievers to try to get Sam to vouch for what’s said there.

Almost accidentally, he’s the sole survivor of a failed US government and Israeli operation that lands him with the car, spy devices, and huge wad of cash. But Sam’s no trained spy himself, despite his brief work in a CIA code team:

“He certainly had enough cash for bribery, although waving money around was not something he had much experience with. Neither was he experienced in secretly traveling around the Mideast with zealots hunting him like lions on the savanna.”

Although he can kill if forced to, Sam’s basically a nice ordinary professor who’d rather be home with his wife and students. As a result, instead of a Patterson or Le Carré global thriller, Madness of the Q feels like an updated and gender-switched version of the Mrs. Pollifax “spy mysteries” written by Dorothy Gilman in the 1960s and 1970s.

As Sam’s wife, in one of his imagined conversations with her, tells him: “Don’t overthink it. And don’t put so much faith in that silly firearm. You’re Sam Teagarden. You don’t outshoot villains. You outsmart them.”

Here’s the book’s somewhat annoying flaw: Sam doesn’t actually outsmart anyone. Even his math insights are basic to an extreme. But he does outlast the villains, by hiding, jumping, and clinging to those who want to assist him, save his life, and get him to the meeting where he can testify about the fragments of the Q. This turns out to be highly effective as a story device: Sam is such a well-meaning and honest person that the book becomes a page-turner, and while his choices repeatedly flop for lack of spy savvy, his alliances prove well chosen in protecting him and getting him to the unexpected and wryly humorous final twists of the adventure.

If you like a book that lands you back in reality feeling relaxed and happy about what could happen to an ordinary guy tossed into deadly events, Madness of the Q is ideal. It might even get you through the holiday season, feeling like you and Sam both have it pretty good after all. 

[Down & Out Books, released Dec. 14 -- a nice gift book, as well as holiday relief!]

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Predictably Charming New Mystery from Alexander McCall Smith, HOW TO RAISE AN ELEPHANT

 [Originally published in New York Journal of Books]

“Mma Ramotswe and her allies practice that love of land and courtesy to each other in gently amusing ways that eventually resolve the mysteries, potential crimes, and tensions of their lives. In a time of pandemic, there could be few more rewarding and soothing tales to read than How to Raise an Elephant.”

AlexanderMcCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series can be relied on for tender and kind surprises, and the reliability of love and trust among the main characters. Of course they have their flaws—Precious Ramotswe, who leads the unusual detective agency in Bostwana, is a woman of “traditional build” and careful attention to the guidance found in her detection manual written by Clovis Andersen. She can thus be a little short-sighted, and a bit hard-wearing on her small but practical van. Her assistant, Mma Makutsi, a secretarial school graduate with big dreams, tends to be suspicious and not very generous in her assessments of potential clients. And then there is Charlie, the brash youth employed parttime by the Mma Ramotswe and parttime in the adjoining car repair business of her husband Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.

In How to Raise and Elephant, the first mystery provided is fairly readily solved: The bent tailgate of the detective agency’s van and its powerful earthy scent after Charlie borrows it lead directly to the apprentice’s use of the van to transport a baby elephant. But Charlie’s neighborhood is not at all suitable for a growing elephant, even though it appears to consider him its mother.

There had been many occasions in the past when they had been obliged to clear up some mess left by Charlie. They could remain uninvolved if they discovered somebody else was looking after an elephant—such an elephant would be none of their business—but there was a sense in which any elephant in Charlie’s keeping was their problem, or soon would become just that.

And negotiating a future home for the friendly but ungainly beast requires all of the skills in courtesy and gentle teasing that Mma Ramotswe can summon.

Meanwhile, the detective agency owner has a family-related plea for financial assistance that Mma Makutsi mistrusts. Whether to believe the sad tale of a relative and donate accordingly requires attentive investigation, according to the best principles of detection.

Alexander McCall Smith’s storytelling provides great charm, as he unravels the experience and thinking of his rural but increasingly wise protagonists. A classic example is how Mma Ramotswe ponders the role of royalty, including the Queen and the Queen’s son, Prince Charles:

And there was Prince Charles, who she knew loved Bostwana. When he came again to visit the country, she would try to invite him for tea. He would be too busy to come, of course, and there were people around him who would fend off invitations, but she knew they would have a great deal to talk about: about the rains and the crops; about looking after the world; about remembering when all is said and done, we lived on the land and had to give the land the love that it needed if it was to continue to provide for us.

Mma Ramotswe and her allies practice that love of land and courtesy to each other in gently amusing ways that eventually resolve the mysteries, potential crimes, and tensions of their lives. In a time of pandemic, there could be few more rewarding and soothing tales to read than How to Raise an Elephant.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Book Within a Book, in MOONFLOWER MURDERS by Anthony Horowitz

[Originally published in New York Journal of Books]

“Moonflower Murders will be either adored or dreaded by readers, with no middle ground. Dare to open it if you’re ready to face both page length and puzzle solving.”

Moonflower Murders is a sequel to the noted Magpie Murders, and events follow from the earlier book. However, Anthony Horowitz gives plenty of guideposts for those entering the series at this point, as publisher Susan Ryeland is called back to England to deal with a mess created by her now-deceased author, Alan Conway. Conway’s fiction involved detective Atticus Pünd at a hotel clearly duplicating one where an owner is now missing and presumed murdered herself. And it all seems to result from the fictional crime and criminals, who are distorted versions of the “real” people at and around the existing hotel.

That should be adequate warning to readers that this is a puzzle mystery, one where the clues interlink and echo through two or more layers of narrative. Moreover, the book is a page-turner where suspense keeps ramping up, as various figures experience threats, and Susan agonizes over whether she could have prevented the whole mess. She has, in the past, tried to corral her author and get him to present a more logical and less malicious work. But as she soon enough discovers, all the perverse twists that Conroy inserted in his murder mystery are deliberate hints toward a real-life murderer who has already struck at the posh hotel, with an immigrant employee seized and convicted of the crime.

The missing British hotel co-owner, Cecily, worked out that the Romanian immigrant had been framed, and was about to pursue justice, when she abruptly vanished. And, of course, the closer Susan gets to figuring out means, motive, and opportunity for the real killer, the more risk she draws toward herself.

Once outside I found myself face to face with the nanny, Eloise … She was furious. In a way it was a repeat of what had happened that morning with Joanne Williams—yet this was different. The emotion coming from her was so strong, so pronounced, that I was actually quite shocked. …

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘I’m a friend of the family. I’ve been asked to help.’

‘We don’t need help. We just need to be left alone.’ She had a French accent that belonged in an art-house film. Her eyes locked on to mine.

I brushed past her and walked back towards the hotel. When I was some distance away, I turned back to take a last look at the house. She was still there, standing on the doorstep, watching me, warning me not to come back.

In a surprising twist of the Moonflower Murders, the entire clue-laden earlier manuscript that triggered the latest death is inserted within the book—so, as readers discover, there are two books included here, for a giant total of 581 suspicion-packed pages. In the tradition of Agatha Christie, the characters are trapped together and the clues are abundant, but perhaps only Susan Ryeland has the motivation to assemble them all and dare to accuse the killer.

The book’s size recalls mysteries of an earlier age—such as a Wilkie Collins crime novel. And like Hercule Poirot, Susan Ryeland’s contribution to solving the crime won’t come from her daring as much as from her determination to solve the puzzle created by her own rather wicked former author.

Moonflower Murders will be either adored or dreaded by readers, with no middle ground. Dare to open it if you’re ready to face both page length and puzzle solving. It should also appeal to those who adored Stuart Turton’s The 7½ Lives of Evelyn Hardcastle. Ready, get set, solve the puzzle! 

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

 

Fielding a New Author after M. C. Beaton's Passing, in HOT TO TROT (Agatha Raisin)

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Viewed as a “debut novel” by R. W. Green, Hot to Trot is a fine first showing. Red herrings and plot twists and ridiculous moments of embarrassment abound, and the most important characters survive to rise again. Viewed as a continuation of M. C. Beaton’s oeuvre, results are a bit more iffy.”

Beloved author M. C. Beaton (née Marion Chesney) died in 2019, but not before testing “R. W. Green” as her potential fill-in. According to Green’s Foreword to Hot to Trot, Beaton asked for a “first sample chapter” for the book she had in mind, and found only one or two changes to make in the version Green wrote. Green continued, “I thoroughly enjoyed working with Marion and I am honoured that she trusted me to meddle with her characters. I will miss her more than I can say.”

Reader, be warned: Green does not duplicate Beaton’s writing style in the long run, although many of the plot points of Hot to Trot were clearly discussed before the original author’s passing. One, for example, was a road to riches for protagonist Agatha Beaton’s ex, Sir Charles Fraith. Clearly, the two writing collaborators also shared a sense of what was humorous about Agatha, and both adored her as a character.

That said, this book will not please all series fans, since both the tone of narrative voice and the particular shadings of the characters are definitely different. On the other hand, for those not yet attached to the series, or who just enjoy humorous crime fiction without strings to the “original,” this is a lively and entertaining read, with a few strands of puerile British humor like repeating the phrase “rumpy-pumpy” (apparently slang for jovially “getting laid”). Which actually, come to think of it, is perfectly fitting for a British romp through the country lanes of mystery.

The main point is that Sir Charles, still an object of Agatha’s exasperated affection, has made a terrible mistake in commiting to marry a power-hungry fortune chaser with legal clout: Miss Mary Brown-Fields. In spite of crashing the wedding, Agatha fails to halt the proceedings, and discovers that she truly hates “Lady Mary Fraith.”

Her friend Mrs. Bloxby comments over sherry, “So the battle lines are drawn. It is always very awkward trying to involve oneself in whatever goes on between a husband and wife.” Agatha’s response is, “Not for a private detective. It’s pretty much my professional stock in trade.”

Despite the humiliating arrest that follows, Agatha’s soon able to discover blackmail in progress, and begins a series of costume and persona shifts that dazzles the reader and reveals the crime underway. But the path to resolution is paved with further humiliations, mistakes, and even betrayals, all packed into a village mystery that shifts back and forth between comedy and tenderness.

Viewed as a “debut novel” by R. W. Green, Hot to Trot is a fine first showing. Red herrings and plot twists and ridiculous moments of embarrassment abound, and the most important characters survive to rise again. Viewed as a continuation of M. C. Beaton’s oeuvre, results are a bit more iffy. But as Agatha says at one point, “You could try to be a bit nicer to me. We are still on the same side, after all.”

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Third Cat Kinsella Crime Novel from Caz Frear, SHED NO TEARS

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Frear’s writing has the sharp dark tang that Tana French exhibits, and she updates the British crime narrative to the dangerous conflicts of loyalty that Stuart Neville paints best, with their hungry roots in the ever-decomposing past.”

The third British crime novel in the Cat Kinsella series, Shed No Tears, strikes two powerful storylines: one of a serial murderer, imprisoned, whose full set of crimes may not have been uncovered yet, and the other of Kinsella’s personal closet of secrets. Though she’s steadily making her way as a member of London’s Metropolitan Police (she’s now a Detective Constable), her dad was and is connected with major criminals, and she’s managed to keep this out of sight in her own career. Until now.

The pressure’s on. The body of Holly Kemp, long presumed to be a victim of a convicted killer, turns up in the wrong place, in the wrong condition, and with a manner of killing that just doesn’t fit. Sure, serial killers can change their modus operandi. But the alleged killer can’t make up his mind whether he did or did not commit this murder, and the more Kinsella and her partner Luigi Parnell probe, the more the case problems keep leading back to the original investigation. And investigators.

Nobody could fault Kinsella for being slow to put together the pieces here. Her own heroes in the police force have done some of the manipulation that’s hiding the trick. Plus her dad’s been in the hospital, her sister is way too nosy, and her boyfriend can’t understand why she won’t introduce him to her family. One reason is, he might realize the crime connection; the other is, Kinsella broke the rules by pursuing this guy when he was a crime victim, and her sister is all too likely to divulge a much worse complicating factor (yes, dear old dad again, in another form).

Frear’s writing is intense and suspenseful, with a perfect balance of red herrings and dogged pursuit of the truth. She spills Kinsella’s stresses a bit at a time, from a first person point of view that always hides something:

“I’m going to be the best aunt in the world.

Because I can live with the Bad Sister tag. I’ve been living my whole life with the Bad Daughter tag. But the Bad Aunt tag—when it’s occasionally flung—stings like a bitch.

Although not as much as the Corrupt Officer tag.

The most poisonous tag of all, known only to me.”

The case turns at last, thanks to Kinsella’s insistent doubts about a “perfect” witness whose clearly memorized spiel of seeing Holly Kemp enter the killer’s home is too darn perfect. Her partner, without exactly countering her, comments, “You’re doing your suspicious face, Kinsella. I’m not even looking at you and I know you’re doing your suspicious face.”

But in uncovering what motivated the witness, Kinsella puts her own careful stack of cards at risk, not just of physical danger but of baring all her secrets.

Frear’s writing has the sharp dark tang that Tana French exhibits, and she updates the British crime narrative to the dangerous conflicts of loyalty that Stuart Neville paints best, with their hungry roots in the ever-decomposing past. If there’s a single weak spot in Shed No Tears, it’s in the overly optimistic ending. Yet with Frear’s record to judge from, it’s a good bet that the sequel to come will turn out to be more menacing and dangerous than Kinsella could have guessed, even from her own family’s experience.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.