Scottish Noir, THE DIARY OF LIES by Philip Miller (3rd Shona Sandison Book)

Beach reading is wrapping up -- it's time for substantial and satisfying crime fiction to go with the hints of autumn rolling in. And the newest investigative reporter novel from Edinburgh's Philip Miller is perfect for the task.

THE DIARY OF LIES picks up with Shona Sandison, whose necessary walking cane (an injury sustained in The Golden Acre; more about it in The Hollow Tree) disguises her determination to get the scoop for her newspaper, no matter the risks. The promotional material for the book calls it a "paranoid political thriller." That would almost qualify it for nonfiction at this point, wouldn't it? Shona takes the situation seriously and angrily (a good definition of Shona herself), making it frustrating when her investigation takes her into what feels briefly like some adult-level fairy-tale crossover between Britain's "Green Man" and the mythic Robin Hood. Yet violence keeps erupting around her, and her narrow escapes are far from amusing. 

When a sketchy woman armed with a shotgun opts to let Shona past the gateway to a hidden Internet guru, she's still stunned from her sudden morning tumble into blood and threat. "Her path had been disarranged. Now, she barely knew her way forward." Plus, she's a city worker — how can she handle a situation that's taking her away from paved roads and GPS and all? Her abrupt passage comes with instructions from a rough woman leading her further off road:

"Over the stile and through the trees," the woman said. "Keep going straight ahead ... you'll come to a large house. The manor. The curtains will be drawn. You'll find Robin in there."

"Robin?"

"Loxley.  You'll be entering the back of the house. Wait at the curtained window — you'll hear the radio. Don't go in, love—he's armed. Wait to be let in."

Shona looked at the woman, calmly exhaling smoke. She was warning of deadly violence, yes she seemed serene.

"Okay. This way?" Shona pointed to the fence.

"I'm not repeating myself, sunshine."

What she discovers at the crumbling old mansion is a far cry from an upscale data farm, yet it offers access to the information she needs to make sense of the political corruption she's discovered. 

Shona looked at the data loading, the entwined wires, the blinking lights. This was not the journalism she'd grown up with, in which she had made her way. This was about systems, codes, data and access. Arcane technologies. ... She felt uneasy. Aware of how afraid she might be. 

It won't be easy to run, when the time comes. Not with her cane, and not without it. But bullets will soon fly.

One of the delights of this dark and well-twisted novel is the steady echo of Britain's older cultures beneath the action. There's no need to read the two preceding novels, but those who have will notice right away that the sense of ancient mythos and of a universe that's not automatically friendly is still throbbing in Miller's version of Edinburgh and its surroundings. 

Watch for the threads that tie Shona, however reluctantly, to her uncertain allies. If she's going to both survive the threats and provide a top-notch and substantiated journalistic exposé, she'll need every connection she can summon.

Soho Press describes this new release as a good fit for "for fans of Ian Rankin, John le Carré, and Denise Mina." I'd extend the list to work by Paul Doiron, Lee Child, Ruth Rendell, Jaqueline Winspear, and Charles Todd. If "political paranoia" is getting to you, racing against it with Shona Sandison may bring a sense of relief and capability, as well as the satisfaction of a soundly constructed and resonant crime novel.

Joseph Finder's #4 for PI Nick Heller: HOUSE ON FIRE

[originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

“. . . [this is] the charm of a Joseph Finder novel, tugging readers into identifying with the PI, even without ever carrying a weapon or sneaking up on a suspect themselves.”

In book 4 of his Nick Heller series, House on Fire, Joseph Finder merges the traditional private investigator role of his PI protagonist with a dangerous form of industrial espionage: prying into the family secrets of the corporation behind a powerfully addictive opioid. The enormous wealth of the Kimball family, built on their share of the drug economy, is rooted in family guilt as well. And the minute Nick starts prying, he’s a target for those willing to protect their secrets and fortunes by any means possible.

You’d think Nick would realize this and decline the case. But as Finder demonstrates so deftly, Nick’s heartstrings are vulnerable to old loyalties. In this case, the funeral of his army buddy Sean, who saved Nick’s life in the service, summons Nick to support the grieving widow and kids—and sets him up as a target:

“One woman stood out from the other mourners. She was a hippieish woman in her thirties, wearing a busily colored fringed, crochet-knit shawl over a black dress. I’d noticed her before, at the church, sitting off by herself. . . . She didn’t look like she came from here. I couldn’t figure her out. My first thought was that she was a journalist, but then I ruled that out—she was dressed too nicely. I also had the strong feeling she’d been looking at me.”

Susan Kimball, it turns out, is there to recruit Nick to infiltrate her family’s compound and extract an important file of results: ones that showed how addictive the Kimball fortune-making drug would be, well before it gained approval for the marketplace. Susan, or Sukie, wants justice for the drug-related deaths, and is willing to help Nick expose the research hanky-panky.

In the big crowd of guests at the grand estate, unexpectedly Nick finds his his former colleague and lover Maggie. The two can still trust each other, and swap some details, discovering they’ve got parallel assignments to pursue. Good thing to have some companionship, because nothing among the Kimball crowd is as direct or honest as it may look, and by a third of the way through this investigation, Nick and Maggie are dodging murderous plots right and left. Even Sukie might not be playing straight, despite what she’s got to gain from Nick’s potential success.

Finder provides a straightforward suspense thriller in House on Fire, turning up the action and tension with each scene. When Nick tracks down the original whistle-blower for the pharmaceutical scam, the tension goes global, too, with connections to Eastern Europe. Soon one of the other Kimball family members suggests that Nick will need to tackle a necessary murder in order to get through the case: “‘Every document of civilization in also a document of barbarism. The son wants to redeem the sins of the father but at the same time he’s necessarily implicated in them, right?’”

Talk high philosophy to Nick, and you provoke him into questioning everything else he’s getting told—which is the charm of a Joseph Finder novel, tugging readers into identifying with the PI, even without ever carrying a weapon or sneaking up on a suspect themselves.

For those who follow the latest scandals of real-life pharma companies, some of the revelations in House on Fire will seem straight from the news. But fear not, Finder always has another twist ready, and the best of them involve loyalty, friendship, and compassion. Buckle up for a good read.

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

SUBVERSION, J. P. Choquette: Terrific "Green Mountain Thriller" with Heart and Courage

Does the move to independent publishing made you happy or sad? Actually, it sometimes makes me want to bang my head against the wall -- specifically, when I find really, really good mysteries that have been independently published in small regional ways, when I think the books are masterful enough to delight a national audience through an established publisher.

Somehow it doesn't seem fair that there are TWO Vermont authors in this category just on my own reading desk! The first is R. A. (Robbie) Harold, who lives in the Montpelier area and whose Dade Wyatt series -- historicals set in the time of Teddy Roosevelt -- is now two books long and enjoyable enough that I always want to stretch out the reading time, relaxing in the hands of a terrific storyteller whose decades of dramatic performance feed into her immaculate pacing and scene-setting. Dade Wyatt is a sleuth I'd love to meet in person.

Now there's a second. With this month's release of her third "Green Mountain Thriller," author J. P. Choquette from northwestern Vermont -- way up in a rural corner of the state -- had me talking out loud to my husband all the way through: "This first chapter won't let me put the book down ... sorry, I'll fix some supper in a while ... if the rest of the chapters are this good ... this book is SO good ..." And so it went, all the way through. I love this self-critical, always-trying-harder investigator. Take the moment when Tayt and a friend in a boat get capsized maliciously out on the big lake:

While he reverses the truck to the launch, I huddle in the mothball scented blanket and continue shivering. The whole event feels surreal: could a simple stakeout go any more wrong? What are the chances that Miller would not only see us but pursue us? And if Sam is staying there, what are the chances I'm going to apprehend him on the property? I snort at this thought.

T. R. Waters, Security Expert. Maybe instead my office door should say, T. R. Waters, Bumbling Idiot. ... Curses form in my head, but negative thinking and self-condemnation, while tempting, aren't going to change my situation. 

I am SO going to buy more copies. This goes on my holiday gift list, for sure. And as a collector, and as advisor to other collectors, I say: Get this book now. Because when -- not if -- J. P. Choquette moves away from "indie" publishing to contracts with the national publishers, SUBVERSION will be a rarity and you'll have a copy that shows you recognized her skill even back then (that is, now).

Here's the gist of the book: Tayt Waters, providing security services in the hardscrabble town of St. Albans, Vermont, faces the drawback that whether the person she confronts is a police officer or a drug-peddling criminal, it's often enough someone who knew her in high school and who doesn't take her seriously enough. But Tayt is tough: working out nearly daily with a boxing bag, carrying a handgun, training assiduously with her mentor Judy, one of the state's licensed private investigators. And she's determined to make her security business a success, even though she has to raise some of her rent money by cleaning empty houses (foreclosed, or seasonal on nearby Lake Champlain).

Plus, even the handicap of her off-kilter family (and everyone knowing about her past) doesn't stop her from operating an off-the-books support service for abused women, one that taps into both her creativity and her self-defense skills ... and oh yes, her rage against the unfairness of abusive fathers and husbands. She's got her reasons.

From the start, Choquette whips Tayt into commitment to rescuing victims of injustice, in a totally understandable way that justifies the handful of errors in judgment that she makes -- not enough to be dumb, but just enough to remind us that Tayt's not yet experienced in the PI business and has a lot of distractions, including former boyfriends and odd neighbors. The pace is sharp and quick, the quandaries risky and tense, and the demands Tayt makes of herself kept me engrossed in the tightly plotted story. And if there was one twist that I didn't fully buy into, and one sentence that bothered me -- well, that's way fewer than most nationally published thrillers are likely to have.

An impressive Vermont thriller, from a skilled and just-dark-enough author. Highly recommended. And don't forget -- when Choquette hits the nationals, you found her first. Here in Vermont.