More 2019 Crime Fiction to Sample, from J. D. Allen, Luca Veste, David Putnam

Sort these terms between the categories of "mystery" and "crime fiction": investigation, puzzle, elucidate, race the clock, sleep on it, round up resources, prevention, seek justice.

There, you see? Even on the days when you can't spell out the difference, it's there.

So here are three powerful works of crime fiction from 2019, with diverse locations and investigations, and a drive to cope with an often dark and violent world:

J. D. Allen's second in her Sin City Investigations series is SKIN GAME, again featuring Las Vegas private investigator Jim Bean, as in the first book, 19 Souls. The plot is intense — Jim's ex-fiancée turns up looking for her missing sister, and Jim's own disastrous past surges up to overflow and consume him. The human trafficking ring he faces turns this book into high-risk suspense. The writing also thrives by including great moments of what's important in life, like this cat, for instance:

[Ely] pulled the fussing feline out. "Didn't want the pigs to let her out or hurt her when they pulled their Stormtrooper act." He cooed at her. Patted her head. She calmed down some. ...

Again, Jim fought the urge to let the past and his anger overwhelm him. Annie [the cat] leapt from Ely's arms to his. She clung to his shoulder, digging in with her claws. He inhaled her kitty scent. Petted down her soft back fur. "I really like that damn door. Just painted it blue."

Reed Farrel Coleman blurbed this book, and Jeffrey Deaver blurbed the first one; it's close in feel to their urban suspense, but also a good match for those who enjoy Karen Slaughter and today's California Noir authors. [Midnight Ink is the publisher.]

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The sixth book from English author Luca Veste, who describes himself as of Italian and Scouse heritage, is a terrifying crossover of very dark (noir) crime fiction, and horror. THE BONE KEEPER begins with three teens daring each other to pass through a dark tunnel -- and one never makes it back out. DC Louise Henderson probes the case through the uncertain and frightening memories of victims who may have experienced related attacks:

"How did you get away, Caroline?" Louise asked, not taking her eyes off the woman in the bed. "How did you end up on that road?"

Caroline shook her head, blinking away more tears. "I don't know. I don't remember. I was just suddenly ... out. I must have broken whatever was holding me. ... I just know. It was going to kill me. There's no way it would have let me go. No one every gets away from it."

Veste has a perfect pace of terror, suspense, and discovery, so that even though the book had me checking the locked door and turning on extra lights, I never put it down until the end.

[This author's website is not up to date, but here is his agent's. Sourcebooks is the publisher.]

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David Putnam, a former law enforcement pro, writes the Bruno Johnson series. THE RECKLESS, his 2019 title, is the sixth. He won a lot of praise for the earlier books, of which I liked The Squandered, but not so much The Vanquished. I was relieved to find THE RECKLESS taut and well-paced with wonderful twists. Bruno Johnson, a young Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff, gets loaned out to the FBI and finds himself caught up in a criminal case that links back to a triple homicide from Johnson's own past, and an episode in the Watts riot of 1965, when he was a kid -- and his father witnessed an accident, extricated a child, and had Bruno, only a child himself, drive them to the hospital, the only way Dad sitting in the passenger seat could keep the child alive.

"Faster, son. You're going to have to go faster. You're doing fine. We only have ten blocks to go, that's all." He brought his foot over and put it on top of mine, and pushed down. The car lurched forward.

One block passed, then another.

"There. There's a police officer," Dad said. "Honk the horn. Honk."

Dad had always taught be to stay away from the police whenever possible, that sometimes the police did not treat blacks appropriately. That's all he'd say about it. My entire life, I'd dodged them, took the long way around, whenever I came upon them. Now, he wanted me to get their attention while I was committing a crime.

Putnam's writing isn't always as smooth as the writers at the top of the field, but it's always edgy, well paced, and comes squarely to grip with the grit and harshness of real life. He continues to earn praise from authors like Michael Connelly and Timothy Hallinan, and he's earned it for sure with THE RECKLESS. [Oceanview Publishing deserves big credit for these.]

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

Classic Village Mystery Turns Dark and Irish, with Andrea Carter's Debut, DEATH AT WHITEWATER CHURCH

Sometimes a review runs later than the release date -- just because life gets hectic. And that's the case here for Andrea Carter's stunning debut crime novel DEATH AT WHITEWATER CHURCH (Oceanview Publishing). The US edition came out a few weeks ago, and it's well worth grabbing a copy. Despite being a debut, the book from this barrister-turned-novelist took laurels at the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair, and is tautly plotted and a great new twist on the traditional village mystery.

When solicitor Benedicta ("Ben") O'Keefe tags along on a last-minute check of an old church being sold, the last thing she expects is a set of bones, wrapped tenderly in a blanket, in a crypt that hadn't been on the property map. Looks like the sale may not consummate. Meanwhile, along the coast of Inishowen, "everyone" expects the bones are proof of murder -- of a missing bridegroom from six years earlier. After all, who else could it be?

But soon there's another death in the village, and like any good Irish complication, it looks like a political twist underneath, one that may have its source in Ireland's terrible grief-stricken history. Or could it be just the results of the usual drinking and grieving? Ben's in the midst of it all, as a friend and neighbor as well as lawyer, and nothing seems straightforward:

"Well, what's happened?" I prompted.

Molloy took a sip of his coffee and leaned back, shaking his head as if in disbelief at what he was about to say.

"It looks as if we won't be opening a murder investigation in relation to the bones in the crypt, after all."

"How come?" I asked. "Last time I was talking to you, there was still no cause of death."

"That wasn't entirely true," Molloy admitted. "We'd established that the body had head injuries and a broken neck, which were probably the cause of death. We now know they were fatal injuries incurred as a result of a car accident."

I was confused. That sounded uncannily like Danny Devitt's injuries and circumstances of death. 

It's no coincidence. And Ben's effort to keep up with what the investigation reveals will turn inside out a lot of her relationships with what she thinks she knows about her home and her friends.

Carter's debut has already been followed by two more crime novels, and it's tempting to try to order them from across the Atlantic, since it will be a while until they arrive in "the States." Meanwhile, here's DEATH AT WHITEWATER CHURCH to savor -- an up-to-date and sophisticated re-braiding of what Agatha Christie did so well. My only wish would be to find more depth in Ben O'Keefe -- but maybe the sequels will satisfy that hunger. I hope so!

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

Grit, Violence, Dark Losses - and Somehow, Love, in David Putnam's Fourth, THE VANQUISHED

Placing his Bruno Johnson series within a network of friends who've worked the worst police beats in Southern California guarantees that David Putnam's suspense fiction will continue dark and violent. The third in the series, The Squandered, was a really good read, with plenty of unexpected twists. Brotherly friendships and the intensity of police work made the novel unusual and I liked it.

Number four in the series, THE VANQUISHED, hits a lot of the same buttons. But this time Bruno and his wife Marie find their Costa Rica haven -- where they are hiding the abused kids they've rescued -- is under threat from old enemies in an outlaw motorcycle gang. With the kids at risk, Bruno charges back to California to straighten things out. Soon Marie's at his side.

And that's the one drawback of this one ... the Bruno/Marie pairing doesn't leave much room for the police brotherhood that I liked in The Squandered. But there's no question that THE VANQUISHED is a page-turner, jammed with threat and danger.

Putnam has the solid investigative past himself to make the twists in his book authentic, and that's good. But I missed the redemptive notes of the earlier book. If you pick up THE VANQUISHED, let me know what you think. A must-own for those who especially appreciate the wild motorcycle world, too. Published by Oceanview.

Great New PI Mystery from D.P. Lyle, DEEP SIX, an Alabama Case

With a publisher name like Oceanview, it's easy to suspect the new detective title from D.P. Lyle might be set in Florida -- but no, even better, it's on Alabama's Gulf Coast and it's a lively investigation laced with both humor and danger.

And expertise! D.P. Lyle isn't just an award-winning author of crime fiction. He's also a forensics expert consulting for the top TV crime shows and is the expert I'd most like to know was coming to a crime-novel dinner party, because he's quick to correct the scenes and the reasoning. In other words, his firearms and 'tec services make sense. Thank goodness!

But who knew (from that background) that he could also be so entertaining? Well, the truth is, although I take note of his forensic pointers regularly, this is the first time I've read one of his crime novels ... and I'm going to have to gather up some of the others soon. There are already three series (see Lyle's website) and DEEP SIX launches the fourth.

Jake Longly is a former pro baseball player, and the last thing he wants to do is work in the family business, private investigations, for his dad Ray. But he's not above taking an occasional surveillance job for a bit of cash flow. Unfortunately, checking on a possible womanizer for his father's caseload puts Jake into the neighborhood of his suspicious and assaultive ex, who's good with a baseball bat. Escape from the situation takes Jake and his classic car directly into the circle of a gorgeous beach bunny, Nicole, who turns out to also be a very smart script writer -- and eager to assist in "surveilling" while also, umm, taking part in adult activities with Jake.

Add a Ukrainian mobster, a high-money land grab, and some deft legal and risk-taking twists, and it looks like Jake Longly could get hooked on the adventurous side of his dad's PI business, after all. That is, if he and Nicole can survive!

With a quick pace, great scenes, and "murder and mayhem" right and left, DEEP SIX promises a lively new series ahead for D.P. Lyle and Oceanview. Add it to the summer reading stack, for sure!

Good Police Gone Bad, Gone Good Again: THE SQUANDERED, David Putman

The third in the Bruno Johnson series from California author David Putnam, THE SQUANDERED, takes a dark view of how law enforcement and prison systems can turn lives upside down in all the wrong ways -- but for Bruno Johnson, on the run from the justice system where he used to work, the old connections still matter. Most importantly, his dad -- terminally ill -- needs him to go back to California and help his estranged brother's grandchildren ... kids Bruno didn't realize existed. His beloved Marie, now his wife, won't let him take his chances alone as a wanted fugitive slipping back into the old neighborhood. And thank goodness, Marie's not the only one who insists on helping: Bruno's former colleagues step forward one more time to help him dodge not just an arrest warrant, but drug dealers and government agents (and some of those are hard to tell apart).

I couldn't put this page turner down. Looks like I wasn't alone in that: The book has blurbs from Michael Connelly, C. J. Box, and T. Jefferson Parker, among others. I loved Connelly's comment about the preceding Putnam title, The Disposables: "Its a gritty street poem recited by a voice unalterably committed to redemption and doing the right thing."

Here's a taste of THE SQUANDERED, as Marie calls in some help before she and Bruno face entering a state prison, risking everything:

"Ah, Marie, I told you not to call him."

"Stop it right now, Mr. Bruno Johnson. He's your friend, and it's ridiculous that you're afraid to see him, let alone talk to the poor man. You owe him a lot, more than you can every repay him. Not after what he's done for us."

"I know, don't you think I don't know? I'm ashamed of what happened-- "

"Ashamed? Thre's no reason at all for being ashamed ... If you stayed, you would have been in prison. He knows that. He knew the rules of the game before he asked to play."

Marie pulls the best out of Bruno, and makes him live up to all of it.

This is a cop tale turned inside out, with the good guys labeled more by what they're willing to sacrifice than by who they're working for. It is indeed gritty and raw in places -- but it's also a ripping good read. Thanks, David Putnam and Oceanview Publishing. And if, like me, you're new to this author, check out his website here: "During his law enforcement career, “Deputy Dave” Putnam worked primarily in California on teams for Patrol, Investigations, SWAT, Narcotics (street level and majors), Violent Crimes, Criminal Intelligence, Internal Affairs and the Detective Bureau." Writing is Putnam's retirement gig. Here's to more of the Bruno Johnson series.