Fresh and Lively Summer Reading, THE PRESIDENT'S DAUGHTER, by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“How could a former US President finally be able to take over an action-hero team? And what might the costs of that effort become? Or even, dare we imagine, the rewards?”

 

A fresh release of this lively thriller from master author James Patterson and presidential expert Bill Clinton comes just in time to add gusto to the summer reading stack. The President’s Daughter offers a quick and believable trip into the lives of a former President and his family, tucked into a secure compound in the White Mountains of New Hampshire—but no longer protected the way a serving President’s home would be, in any sense.

 

Bill Clinton’s humor and persistence peek through the narrative every couple of pages, making double-takes common all the way. For example, Matthew Keating is far from resigned to a quiet post-importance life, despite losing his slot to the maneuvering of the woman he’d brought in as vice president: “Unfortunately, I went into a tough presidential campaign with more experience as a Navy SEAL in battles overseas than in political wars at home. And I was still angry about it, so angry I was tempted a couple of times to resign and let her have the d*** office before she rode to victory in the November election. But I couldn’t do it. No current or former SEAL would ever give up before the job is one. And no president should, either.”

 

Between the pithy statements of a former President commenting on his own role, and the page-turning plot with James Patterson’s quintessential crime threats and villains, there’s barely room for the “President’s daughter” of the title to exert her own leadership. Off for a romantic hike with Tim, a possible long-term partner, Melanie Keating no longer has any Secret Service coverage—and a Muslim terrorist with a personal vendetta against Mel’s father can access other resentful global allies as he aims to torment the Keating family.

 

Still, Patterson knows the drill, and when Mel can finally take the lead in this action thriller, she does so from her own form of strength, having practiced and prepared in advance in case she was ever taken hostage: “Me feels the SUV stay on a dirt road for a good length of time, and she resumes counting one more time, going one thousand one, one thousand two, and keeping focused. The tears have stopped. No time for tears. Her legs and arms are cramped, her mouth is dry-raw with the cloth stuck inside, and she’s wondering how long it will be before Tim’s body is found.”

 

One of the delights of this partnership of authors is their expertise—there’s no moment of doubt about a proposed weapon or strategy, because Patterson is an established pro. And the insights into POTUS emotions and actions are surely as authentic. In The President’s Daughter the former President takes opportunities to spring into action himself (“former SEAL” = “always SEAL,” right?), which is worth a few chuckles, imagining that Clinton couldn’t resist putting himself into a landing party. In fact, much of the plotting for this exhilarating novel must have put that aspect front-and-center: How could a former US President finally be able to take over an action-hero team? And what might the costs of that effort become? Or even, dare we imagine, the rewards?

 

One small flaw to all this imagining is the way the book’s villains are painted as vulnerable in terms of emotion, intelligence, and insufficient planning. That’s the part that shouldn’t be taken as a portrait of the real world of global threat. War isn’t a game when real lives are engaged.

 

But that’s a minor complaint, compared the skillful and well-paced plot of this entertaining thriller. An easy and enjoyable summer read, this book from a pair of clever and often humorous authors makes a great addition to the summer reading menu, and leaves a bright lemony aftertaste. May every President’s daughter get to be the hero of a global interchange and family survival, despite the often soiled politics of American life.

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

Genre-Busting Irish Crime Fiction from John Banville, THE LOCK-UP

 

[Originally posted at New York Journal of Books]

“What neither can say aloud is, Strafford failed to save Quirke’s wife in a shooting the year before, and there’s no forgiveness on the table.”

 

Crime may be impulsive, launched by a forgotten set of car keys dangling from a sports car’s ignition or an easily hacked online account. On the other hand, it can root deep in the history of grievance, violence, prejudice, and war—which makes a far more complex narrative and is, of course, how John Banville situates The Lock-Up. War and its profits, going back to an escape from Germany during the Second World War, mean an excuse for a twisted soul to take revenge via markets and manipulation. 

 

The death of youthful historian Rosa Jacobs, found murdered in her car in Dublin, provides the entryway for investigating both the “not yet past” past and today’s market rewards. It will take dedicated research (and a bit of provocation) to untangle the threads of motive for this crime, and in the process, two of Banville’s noted characters of previous novels, Detective Inspector St John Strafford and police pathologist Quirke, collude. This isn’t new to Banville’s work—the pair, originally introduced in separate books to probe different Irish issues, appeared together in April in Spain (2021)—but because each is enduring a personal crisis, their conversations cut deeper this time around.

 

For instance, Quirke (gulping whiskey, of course) abruptly offers an awful description of an autopsy on a child, to which Strafford struggles to make a sympathetic response. Quirke next asks Strafford, “What was your first death?” Strafford takes the question as meant, and briefly tells of shooting an IRA man who’d pointed a tommy gun at him. And what neither can say aloud is, Strafford failed to save Quirke’s wife in a shooting the year before, and there’s no forgiveness on the table.

 

“Do you dream about him, the IRA man?” Quirke asked.

 

“No. Do you? Dream about the child?”

 

“I remember him, that’s all … All that, and the plume of steam coming off the child’s brain.”

 

The novel won’t get much more graphic than that, although the clumsy dance of intimacy between these two aging men continues painfully throughout. As is the case for the Troubles that background the book, and the Second World War yet further back, there seems to be no calm resolution for the long-term effects of trauma when nurtured today.

 

Still, with Banville’s Irish home terrain in mind, it’s startling as the action begins to tilt toward distant Israel. Perhaps the ongoing presence of war and violence there provides an apt counter to the fumbled efforts to make peace in Ireland. Or between Quirke and Strafford, a matter that becomes increasingly urgent as the walls separating their private lives are pierced. Loneliness followed by attraction may force the stones of resentment to move, like water that’s been frozen, then thaws, leaving gaps where it’s been.

 

For some years, Banville separated his literary fiction from his genre work in crime by using the pen name Benjamin Black for the genre books. But The Lock-Up comes out under his own name, and stitches together the two forms of narrative, the way Quirke and Strafford also become painfully connected. The death of Rosa Jacobs? Yes, of course, the investigation brings a solution, even resolution.

 

But what about the pain of Ireland and its besetting illnesses, alcohol abuse and divisive religion?

 

“We know a great deal,” Strafford lied. “We have all the pieces, we just need to put them together. You can help us.”

“Why should I?” one likely murderer replies to him. Which is, when you think about it, a very sensible response, one that pierces the walls of genre and makes reading this crime novel a haunting and memorable experience.

 

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

 

Next from Mick Herron, THE SECRET HOURS, in September

I generally review books pretty close to the publication date -- so if the review intrigues you, you'll be able to get the book soon afterward. As a result, I won't post a full review of THE SECRET HOURS  until later this summer.

But not only are there exceptions to waiting for the right moment. There are reasons for exceptions to self-imposed rules like this one. 

Mick Herron's new book, THE SECRET HOURS, will be released in September. Layered, rich, flavored with political insight, wry humor, espionage of course, and above all, love and loyalty, it's being promoted as a stand-alone spy thriller.

However, this book unfolds many of the secrets that have been lurking in Herron's Slough House series. And it's going to resonate more deeply for you if you've already devoured and at least partly remember what happens to which characters in the series.

So this is your book alert: Buy Mick Herron's series now, or borrow it, or dust off your own copies and spend the summer refreshing your attention to the quirkiest, bravest, most ordinary, most-difficult-to-share-an-office-with spies of Herron's disastrous failure side of MI5. 

You will thus guarantee yourself an astonishingly good time in September.

Which in turn causes me to suggest: Get your spouse and/or best friend reading these, too. Then you'll have the ultimate pleasure of sharing a fantastic book with the person you most like. Couldn't get much better than that.

Oh yes, the books you are about to buy, borrow, or dust off (lucky you!) are:

1. Slow Horses (2010)
2. Deal Lions (2013)
3. Real Tigers (2016)
4. Spook Street (2017)
5. London Rules (2018)
6. Joe Country (2019)
7. Slough House (2021) 
8. Bad Actors (2022) 

And you can see a lot of them reviewed on this site by clicking here. 

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

Victorian Mystery/Thriller from Tim Mason, THE NIGHTINGALE AFFAIR

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Because Mason places the killer and his excuses openly among his protagonists, and the threats to Field and his family are menacing and time-linked, The Nightingale Affair is at least as much of a thriller as it is a historical novel.”

 

Tim Mason’s earlier historical mystery, The Darwin Affair, brought Chief Detective Inspector Charles Field into investigating the attempted London murder of Queen Victoria. In a clever twist of expectations, The Nightingale Affair offers a sequel in which Charles Field no longer holds a position with the police, and has sunk to investigating cheating spouses to earn a living. Other aspects of his life seem well in order, though, with his foster son a newly approved mounted policeman, his foster daughter no longer a thief but a clean and cheerful young woman eager to study nursing, and his wife Jane managing the household happily.

 

Then, in a matter of hours, it’s all upside down, as Field discovers a murder with the unmistakable “calling card” of a killer he thought he’d finished off during his career, in a stint with Florence Nightingale’s British nurses during the Crimean War in the 1850s. At the same time, his son Tom loses his new job through making a morally right choice that counters his superior officer, his daughter Belinda comes under threat, and his wife is summoned once again to the support of now ailing and aging Miss Nightingale.

 

The book dances back and forth in time, with the heroic Miss Nightingale at the focus of each scenario, and Field himself endlessly struggling to catch up with the nobility and self-denial that the nursing leader models. Mason shifts points of view often, including indulging the killer himself with a podium that allows vicious revenge to justify all sorts of violence.

 

Mason’s background includes the stage, and there are abundant Shakespearean moments scattered through almost 400 pages of this lively Victorian thriller. Cameo appearances by Benjamin Disraeli and Wilkie Collins and the involvement of the most noted novelist of the time, Charles Dickens, add twists of interest and humor. But death itself is treated solemnly, a fitting counterpart to the woman Mason presents as a guardian of the lives of young men at war and postwar hospitals: a woman of “breathless speed” and irresistible commitment, Florence Nightingale herself:

 

“There were fully a dozen people, almost all female, rushing in and out of Nightingale’s tower headquarters when Charles Field first saw her. He knew it had to be Nightingale; she was the calm eye of a whirling storm, standing at her desk, answering questions and asking them, issuing orders, and occasionally making entries in a ledger as she stood. Her voice was quiet but had a reedy strength that cut through the seeming chaos around her.”

 

Because Mason places the killer and his excuses openly among his protagonists, and the threats to Field and his family are menacing and time-linked, The Nightingale Affair is at least as much of a thriller (think: ticking clock) as it is a historical novel. Yet the portrait of Nightingale both in her prime and as an aging yet still effective advocate is strong and memorable, giving the book its lively flavor that hints at all the shifts in women’s rights and health care about to unfold. Don’t expect an extraordinary police investigation here; read the book instead for the colorful storytelling around this classic “change agent” and her insistence on respect, honor, and care.

 

 

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

Cold War Espionage, MOSCOW EXILE from John Lawton (Both Joe Wilderness and Lord Troy)

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Lawton’s approach to espionage lacks the multiplying deaths and poignant self-blame of a Le Carré novel. But the resilience and determination of his Charlie, Coky, and eventually Joe Wilderness provide a strong portrait of Lawton’s real-life sense of espionage.”

 

Moscow Exile is offered as a “Joe Wilderness Novel,” the fourth in John Lawton’s international espionage series. Aside from a cryptic prologue set in 1969, though, Joe Wilderness is conspicuously absent from this lush historic novel until nearly 300 pages in.

 

That still gives Joe plenty of work space, though, since Lawton’s model for this work might as well have been a classic Russian novel, lengthy and rich with generations of conflict, wealth, and fractured loyalties. And there’s no need to rush: Moscow Exile offers a bitter promenade through the Red Scare years of American politics and the malicious maneuvering of the Senator who in real life was Joseph McCarthy —here, Robert Redmaine, sleazy and powerful, tearing apart Hollywood’s professionals with accusations of anti-American affiliations.

 

Making the novel even more delicious for fans of Lawton’s British Inspector Troy investigation thrillers, Troy and his politically potent brother slide directly into the story, as the British leadership—especially via MI5 and MI6—attempts to shape its Iron Curtain diplomacy.

 

The heart of Moscow Exile is an alliance between a British spy who’s actually working for Moscow—the elegant Charlie Leigh-Hunt—and a far cleverer and beautiful woman, Charlotte (aka Cokey) Shumacher, also working for “the Reds,” for different reasons. Lawton provides many sexual liaisons for the pair (such a relief to read untwisted sexuality, despite the international betrayal going on) and demonstrates how direct international espionage can be. It would be nice to think that the America of the 1950s and 1960s wasn’t really infiltrated this way. But for Charlie and Charlotte, with specific reasons to prefer “anyone but Britain” handling world leadership, spying comes easily and with lower risks than expected.

 

An ”ordinary” espionage novel would make sure that those betraying America and Britain to Russia/the Soviet Union would pay a deadly price. Lawton offers a mirror inversion instead: Secrets, seduction, and certainty fuel a path to safety behind the Iron Curtain. Only Joe Wilderness, with the Troy brothers oddly interconnected to him, sees clearly what Soviet ideology means for Moscow.

 

Oddly, Moscow Exile lays out reasons that people chose on behalf of global Communism and active socialism, and those characters who sustain their loyalty to related ideals somehow manage to escape deadly failure. This “Russian novel” hosts an unusual morality that places loyalty—to whatever cause—and generous friendship together as allies, so that even a politically crooked philanderer can become heroic in his or her way.

 

That allows Joe Wilderness, with his plain British loyalty and willingness to be used as a pawn in a spy swap, to sit on the outskirts of this hefty book. Instead, Coky Schumacher demonstrates how an unsuspected wife of a half-mad politician can protect the Soviet side. She spells it out for Charlie: “Why, you think it happenstance that Bob chooses the innocent and harmless to grill? I steer him away from the real Communists.” She also details the moral quagmire of creepy politicos like her Senator husband: “The amazing thing about Red-baiting is that he’s stuck with it. I think he was on a quest to find out what would win, and if it turned out to be right-wing, racist, paranoid bigotry, so be it. That is the mask he has adopted,” she explains. And when Charlie gets her point and suggests, “We might become what we pretend to be,” Coky provides a blunt summary: “We are what we pretend to be … and in that is a lesson for us both, Charlie-boy.”

 

Lawton’s approach to espionage lacks the multiplying deaths and poignant self-blame of a Le Carré novel. But the resilience and determination of his Charlie, Coky, and eventually Joe Wilderness provide a strong portrait of Lawton’s real-life sense of espionage: calculating, well-armed, self-defined. The irony of Moscow Exile is that those with undivided loyalty in the novel—the Troy brothers, Lord Troy’s wife Anna, and Joe himself—occupy only “bit parts” that require swift decisions and able allies.

 

On the other hand, the true villain of the book, Senator Redmaine, bears a strong resemblance to some of today’s political rising stars. “And that is a lesson for us both,” as Coky would point out.

 

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

Dr Ruth Galloway (Archaeologist) Mystery 15, THE LAST REMAINS by Elly Griffiths—Oh Yes!!

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“By positioning a vital threat to Cathbad, the most mysterious and loyal and honorable person in the series, Griffiths creates heart-wrenching power within what might otherwise be a relatively routine investigation for Ruth Galloway.”

 

The Golden Age of British crime fiction is marked with authors Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers,  John Dickson Carr, and Josephine Tey, among others. Today, American readers benefit from quick cross-Atlantic publication of British work, as well as masterful translation of Nordic, French, German, and Spanish work, and from authors in African and Asian nations.

 

The “special relationship” of America and Britain reinforces the power of top-notch British mysteries and espionage today. With the fifteenth title in the Dr. Ruth Galloway series from Elly Griffiths, the continued growth and deepening of both Griffiths and her characters enhance a thoroughly satisfying mystery: The Last Remains.

 

Ruth Galloway is an archaeologist who’s developed a forensic side-specialty, thanks in part to being the primary researcher in the field for her area of Britain, one rich with artifacts from the ever-fascinating Druids. Her efforts for the police have also grown in significance because of her personal relationship with the local investigator, DCI Nelson.

 

So when builders renovating a café find a skeleton hidden behind a wall of bricks, Dr. Ruth Galloway gets an immediate summons to the scene—and it only takes her a few minutes to declare it a crime scene and don her forensics hat, along with involving Nelson and his team.

 

At the core of this series, beyond Ruth’s complicated relationship with DCI Nelson, has been her friend and ally Cathbad, a modern Druid opening up ancient ways and bringing both tenderness and wisdom into the circle of friendship that includes Ruth and Nelson. Cathbad’s allegiance to both the pagan past and the children he and Ruth nurture parallels his dual nature of ferocity and caregiving.

 

The Last Remains amps up the tension when Cathbad becomes a person of interest in the teen’s death, then vanishes without warning. However, he has written a farewell and a will, a terrifying aspect that suggests the time to find and save him could be very short, or even nonexistent. His life partner Judy is a police officer but can’t investigate because she’s too close. Desperately she suggests, “Maybe he decided to go on a pilgrimage? The only things is …” her face crumbles, “why wouldn’t he tell me?” DCI Nelson hopes Cathbad, suffering the blurring effects of “Long Covid,” may have amnesia and will turn up. Ruth, however, has increasing reason to doubt such a happy result.

 

By positioning a vital threat to Cathbad, the most mysterious and loyal and honorable person in the series, Griffiths creates heart-wrenching power within what might otherwise be a relatively routine investigation for Ruth Galloway. There will be no putting down this compelling mystery until Cathbad’s disappearance can be solved. And in classic heroic manner, to get to that point will require Ruth to risk her own life, even as she struggles to define her future nd her daughter’s.

 

It's remarkable to realize that The Last Remains is the fifteenth book in this series, which began with The Crossing Places. Where Griffiths’ early books offered quirky and lightly twisted plots, this latest one suggests that, a century after the original Golden Age, British crime fiction exhibits a second surge of development underway.

 

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

Missing Westlake's Richard Stark Crime Novels? Try Charles Salzberg, MAN ON THE RUN

 

[Originally posted at New York Journal of Books]

“Crime fiction readers may think they know what’s ahead, based on other noir work. But Salzberg is way funnier and more unpredictable himself, and the ride with the podcaster and the master thief—and the obsessed cop—takes great twists.”

 

How do you like your noir crime fiction served? If you mark the checkboxes for unpredictable, twisty, fast-paced, wry, mocking, and “with a side of dark humor,” by all means order up Charles Salzberg’s mystery Man on the Run.

 

If fact, the humor is much more than a “side” for this seasoned author. Even the premise, revealed in alternating points of view, comes with a feeling of “how come nobody thought of this sooner?” And there you have it—even the review begins to sound like Francis Hoyt, an expert in burglary and pressing the “scary psycho” buttons when he wants to spook someone and get them to leave him.

 

But that’s not really his motive in ambushing a true-crime podcaster as she’s coming out of a California coffee shop. Francis is turned on by the off-beat confidence he sees in Dakota Richards (and her lack of a bra, her pixie features, that hint of a previously broken nose). Francis Hoyt is a predator at heart, but his decision to tease this would-be journalist means he gets a new kind of attention, and frankly, he wants it.

What about Dakota? Sure, she recognizes the mythically capable criminal and fugitive. It’s her business! But she knows enough to play it cool. Besides, she’s already fascinated by what he’s like in person. Small, neat, compact. And she should be careful:

 

“He’s also got this palpable sense of danger thing about him. And it’s not because I know who he is and what he’d done. He’s just, like, like dangerous looking. And there’s something else. It’s in his eyes. Intelligence. … There’s something going on behind those eyes, something that only adds to this sense of danger that surrounds him.”

 

If that sounds like a classic tough-girl-lusts-after-bad-boy plot opening, you’re underestimating Salzberg: He’s in here for the darkness, the quirkiness. And how do you ramp that up? First, add a job, a bank to rob where even thinking about the task could get you into the crosshairs of the mob bosses who own it. Next, in the tradition of pushing your protagonists to their limits, Salzberg drops a retired state investigator, Charlie Floyd, into the middle of it all.

 

Actually, credit Dakota with both appearances, since she deliberately involved the two antagonists in her plans for a compelling podcast: She trailed hints about doing a piece on Francis, to the point where she knew he’d want to get into the reality show. Plus, she tracked down Charlie Floyd with every intention of aiming him at Hoyt. And as her own fascination with Francis Hoyt balloons, she clear-sightedly scolds herself for becoming “that sad, pathetic, desperate woman who falls for the guy in prison.” Except she’s actually fallen for risk and danger, the ultimate comeback to her mother’s snarky criticisms. She knows she’s got a hot podcast already: “I was stalked by Francis Hoyt and lived to tell the tale. How’s that for a show-stopping teaser?”

 

Crime fiction readers may think they know what’s ahead, based on other noir work. But Salzberg is way funnier and more unpredictable himself, and the ride with the podcaster and the master thief—and the obsessed cop—takes great twists, all the way to the very delightful finale. 

 

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

Brief Mention: Dark Revenge Crime Fiction from Eli Cranor, OZARK DOGS

My home-grown measure of a good crime novel is the number of people I'd like to give a copy to. On that scale, alas, OZARK DOGS by Eli Cranor scored really low. 

And it's not because of the violence. Anyone reading dark stuff, "noir," knows how to handle that. Plus I really appreciated Cranor's earlier crime novel, Don't Know Tough.

Partly it's because nothing turns out right for anyone in this Southern thriller with a missing teen and her secretive granddaughter.

But the bigger part is because it paints a compelling image of "country folk" as violent, menacing, and ready to hold deadly grudges across generations (the pre-publication publicity even mentioned Hatfield–McCoy blood feud). Cranor is such a convincing writer that readers run a risk of thinking this Southern Gothic shows the real world.

Sure, you can put menace and despair into fiction, and maybe some readers won't take it personally. But give me a choice and I'll take the way Randall Silvis handles the theme instead, where courage and loyalty have as much of a presence as the junkyard dogs and the weapons.

Get a copy if you want to go really, really bleak. Just don't blame me if you drop into a week of depression or waste the grocery money on chocolate, to recover.

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

Brief Mention: Light-Hearted French-Countryside Cozy, DEATH AND CROISSANTS by Ian Moore

Did you seriously consider turning part of your home into an Air-type bed-and-breakfast right before the pandemic? Are you still longing to jump into the short-term rental market to make some cash on the side? Or (confess now) have you always pictured yourself baking marvelous muffins and serving them to international guests who leave glowing comments on your Yelp listing?

DEATH AND CROISSANTS by Ian Moore will save you a lot of trouble (and apron laundry). Set in France and written with a clever and light touch by British stand-up comedian Ian Moore, it offers all the complications of running a bed & breakfast, complete with complaints, crabby clients, fraud and failed payments, and most of all, apparent murder.

Richard Aisworth is still not sure what's going on with his marriage, since both his wife and his daughter have left him to manage the B&B, and both seem to cordially despise him and his passion for old films. At least his chickens (their fresh eggs are a feature of his inn) don't disappoint ... until  they begin to vanish, and one is clearly killed as a message.

His personal complications with his guest Valérie, well-intentioned though they may be, tangle quickly with the bloody handprints, mysterious messages, and multi-village chase scenes. So if you're ready for a fun and deliciously French addition to your summer TBR stack, fix yourself a pitcher of something fresh and cold, open up the hammock or lawn chair, and settle in with your copy. 

[This is Moore's American debut, but there are more titles in his series; cross your fingers that they will soon come "across the pond."]

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

New Tight, Dark Canadian Hard-Boiled from Vern Smith, SCRATCHING THE FLINT

Run Amok Crime Fiction releases today/tomorrow a new hard-boiled detective novel from Vern Smith. SCRATCHING THE FLINT continues to wind his dark twists tighter, until explosion is inevitable. Set in pre 9/11 Toronto, the book opens with a grim killing of a squealing witness that implicates a sleazy lawyer in the messy patterns of mob execution.

Hard-boiled as a genre is saturated with rage and impulse; Smith takes it a layer deeper by leaking the real precursor to rage, the inner morass of doubt and shame invading lives spent avoiding human connection. Here's Gordon, for instance:

First came Gordon's return to drink, falling down after last call in front of the Bovine Sex Club, breaking his wrist, claiming he did it rollerblading. The emergency doctor prescribed enough painkillers to kill all kinds of hurt. Then Gordon was hooked on those, too. Luckily, the cops didn't bother with a blood test three weeks ago, relying only on his breathalyzer reading, 0.81, which was bad enough. That made him not just a bona fide boozer, but a bona fide boozer inside the small world of Toronto journalism. ... Did that make Gordon lowlife? ... And did he even want to know?

Meanwhile, anti-fraud team Alex Johnson and Cecil Bolan (from Smith's earlier short story collection The Gimmick) try to break into the mobbed-up crime ring that Gordon wishes he were good enough to expose — and Gordon sneaks up on their investigation. Not surprisingly, he digs himself into deeper messes, while the detectives circle around the same swamp. At times it's hard to tell the good guys and their guilt from Gordon and his shame ... except Gordon's making worse mistakes because he's so darn scared. 

If you cut your reading teeth on Los Angeles noir, or Donald Westlake's series under his Richard Stark pen name, here's a great chance to step deeper (or, considering Gordon, higher) and grab the bitter disillusionment of modern police challenges and the messy choices that power provides. Oh, and that title? Think a Zippo lighter ... and all the steamy and screwed up moments likely to follow that scratched flint.

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

The Living, Lasting Legacy of Author Anne Perry (1938-2023)

(Author Anne Perry in 2012. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.)

Dave and I met one of the great mystery authors of our lifetime at a reader/writer conference, Bouchercon, when it was held in Albany, New York. We'd prepared for months —even years—for this, collecting the books written by Anne Perry. Others in line around us clutched to their chests one or two books to be signed; some, like us, had more. We toted ours in big canvas book bags.

I recall how awestruck I felt when I reached the front of the line and stood in front of this British author. There wasn't time for conversation: Maybe another hundred people waited behind us. Briskly, in our practiced rhythm, Dave and I opened each lovely hardcover book to the title page for this author's bold signature, then the next, and the next, as one of us put away signed copies and the other lifted more books to the table.

In minutes, it was over; I felt breathless, truly amazed that life could include such a moment.

Historical mystery author author Charles Fergus, however, made much different use of his time with Anne Perry. I love his story of that moment and its lasting legacy in his writing. Here you are (the original is published on his blog, https://charlesfergus.com/blog-posts):

Anne Perry's Advice to Me: Make True a Major Character

Anne Perry, who died recently at age 84, wrote dozens of popular mysteries set in Victorian-era England. According to her website, more than 26 million copies of her novels have been sold since the first one was published in 1979.

 

Perry wrote 32 William and Charlotte Pitt mysteries; they feature a police officer in late 19th-century London and his wife, an unconventional aristocrat. Perry also wrote a 24-book series about a detective named William Monk, who loses his memory after a carriage crash, and Hester Latterly, a former Crimean War nurse who ultimately becomes William’s wife and helps him adjust to his brain injury and solve crimes. 

 

I met Anne Perry in 2013 at a conference of the Historical Novel Society, which was held in an old hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida. I had completed a manuscript for the first Gideon Stoltz mystery, A Stranger Here Below, and was looking for a literary agent. I’d also signed up for a course on how to craft effective pitches – both a longish description of a novel, and a shorter one, sometimes called an “elevator pitch” from the notion that you can deliver this near-breathless summary during a brief elevator ride. 

 

Perry gave the keynote speech on the conference’s first evening. The next morning when I came down to breakfast, I saw her sitting there by herself. I asked if she wanted company, expecting her to say no, but she was delighted to share the meal and some conversation. 

 

She asked where I was from and what I was writing about. I said with a laugh that I’d just give her my brand-new elevator pitch: “In 1835 in the Pennsylvania backcountry, a young sheriff unearths disturbing links among a judge’s suicide, a trial and hanging 30 years ago, and a recent murder. To conduct his investigation, he must relive his own mother’s murder, a crime that remains unsolved.” 

 

I also mentioned that one reason I’d written a murder mystery was because I had lost my own mother to a murder, and I wanted to write a story that did not trivialize the horrific, life-swerving effects that a murder leaves in its wake. 

 

Years later, I would find out that Anne Perry had committed murder herself. In 1954, in Christchurch, New Zealand, at the age of 15, she and a pathologically close 16-year-old female friend killed the friend’s mother by bludgeoning her using a sock with half a brick in it. They somehow thought that killing the woman would prevent the friend’s parents from leaving New Zealand, which would have forced the two adolescent girls to separate.

 

Ms. Perry’s criminal past had been revealed in 1994 when Peter Jackson told her story in his film Heavenly Creatures, starring Kate Winslet as the confident, conniving teenager Juliet Hulme – who, after serving five years in prison, would be given a new name and ultimately would become the bestselling mystery author Anne Perry.

 

That morning in St. Petersburg, after hearing about my planned mystery series, Perry urged me to develop Gideon’s wife, True Burns Stoltz, into a major character. Perry said that in writing her novels, she felt that having both male and female main characters helped her examine situations, relationships, and crimes from two very different perspectives. She felt that readers liked that approach. And she said that writing from those differing viewpoints was fun. 

 

By then I’d begun working on my second mystery, Nighthawk’s Wing. In it, True hauls herself out of a deep and nearly suicidal depression brought on by the death of her and Gideon’s infant son. And in the third mystery, Lay This Body Down, True blossoms into a quirky, tough, determined heroine whose way of looking at the world differs from – and complements in an important way – that of her rational, thoughtful, sometimes almost plodding sheriff husband. 

 

Perry’s obituary in the New York Times noted that she never married; friends felt she ended romantic relationships because she didn’t know what to say about her past. It also quoted some things she’d said in a 2017 documentary film about her life: “In a sense it’s not a matter – at the end – of judging,” she said. “I did this much good and that much bad. Which is the greater?” 

 

She continued: “In the end, Who am I? Am I somebody that can be trusted? Am I someone that is compassionate, gentle, patient, strong?” She mentioned other traits, including bravery, honesty, and caring. “If you’re that kind of person,” she said, “if you’ve done something bad in the past, you’ve obviously changed.”

 

Anne Perry offered me encouragement and spot-on writing advice. I’m glad to think of my character True as one of the things she gave to the world.

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

Cuban-American Romantic Suspense from Chanel Cleeton, THE CUBAN HEIRESS

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“A tenderness for Cuban life and the way the island draws people back to their roots colors the determined women of this novel and the men who assist them. Cleeton’s characters offer a beautiful pairing of tenderness and passion, anger and revenge, courage and resolution.”

 

This lively and twisty suspense novel from Chanel Cleeton pairs the glamour and desperation of women’s survival in the Great Depression, highlighted with a delicious Cuban American flair. Occupying different parts of the magnificent luxury liner S.S. Morro Castle are two women whose secrets intertwine, and two determined thieves, one charming, and the other a clear menace. Cruise-ship entertainment may hide the dangers during daylight, but on the night decks, murder knows few bounds.

 

Elena Reyes, say one woman’s false documents. Her first mission on the boat is to retrieve a pistol that’s been smuggled aboard for her, thanks to other Cuban American allies. Her justofied rage is more than sufficient for the pistol’s use—but are her other skills enough to protect her?

 

New York heiress Catherine Dohan can flash emerald earrings and a massive diamond engagement ring while traveling with her wealthy fiancé and his small child from an earlier marriage, with whom she’s not supposed to interact. But when the earrings turn out to be as false as her persona, that’s another revelation about the supposedly wealthy man she’s engaged to.

 

When the charming and insightful Harry pays too much attention to Catherine, her hunger for romance and real affection flares into an uncontrollable response. And even though she can see the hard-scrabble career of seduction and theft that Harry juggles, the complications of the deception she is working mean she needs an alliance with this mysterious rogue.

 

She’s done her best to size him up: “Perhaps he’s hunting for a wealthy spouse as well … While I shouldn’t fault him, given my own ambitions, I won’t countenance anyone jeopardizing mine.” Prodded, though, she spits out her reality: “I like seeing people get what’s coming to them.” With Harry’s widened eyes, she instantly knows she’s made a mistake and revealed that she’s not the spoiled and pampered heiress she’s working so hard to portray.

 

Cleeton deftly alternates points of view between these two crafty, scheming women, and only gradually is the connection between them revealed: a fire, an abusive man, an escape. A false death certificate. And something about Raymond, the man Catherine’s engaged to.

 

As Harry becomes a more trusted ally, he shares his criminal insight with her: “There’s something about Raymond—a disregard for others, disdain for anyone he views as beneath him. … Whatever your game is, don’t think he doesn’t have one of his own.”

 

Cleeton, a Florida native with Cuban roots of her own, shows the skills she’s honed in four earlier romantic historical novels as she whips between the two women’s deceptions and risks. A tenderness for Cuban life and the way the island draws people back to their roots colors the determined women of this novel and the men who assist them. Cleeton’s characters offer a beautiful pairing of tenderness and passion, anger and revenge, courage and resolution. Not until the poignant final chapters will all the twists be satisfyingly revealed, with Catherine’s wish fulfilled: that people “get what’s coming to them.” And that includes the possibility of love, after all.

 

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

Extraordinary Graphic-Novel Version of Sherlock Holmes, "The Final Problem"

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

 

“Sherlock Holmes: The Final Problem in the hands of Hannes Binder is a must for any collection of Baker Street investigations, opening new awareness of the impact of this classic in its time.”

 

Ignore the any “young readers” alert where this book is promoted or displayed for sale: Hannes Binder’s graphic novel version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tale, The Final Problem, is a masterpiece of dark significance and foreboding. To a Holmes fan or collector, each page offers an art-embedded insight into a story that once shook thousands of readers, as Doyle attempted to escape the burden of writing more about the noted detective.

 

The 1893 story called “The Adventure of the Final Problem” began with an abrupt appearance by Holmes at the private consulting room of his ally, Dr. Watson. Binder’s graphic version begins at the same point. Then, however, an adventure opens in compressing the retelling of this tale into a slender “picturebook” format. This will be most appreciated by readers already familiar with Doyle’s original and with the impact of the story in 1893 (and through the next century). The intense and detailed illustrations—which vary from full-page, to two-page spreads, to boxed sequences like an old comic—convey at times even more than the original text.

 

For example, a haunting triptych offers the smoke curling from (probably) Holmes’s cigarette, rounded contours of a brain’s “white matter,” and an ominous arachnid gripping a globe that echoes the mind of the arch criminal—or does it belong to Holmes himself? A glaring embedded eye later views Watson’s tortuous maneuvers to escape Moriarty. Mountainous landscapes, fierce skies, and storm-torn waters deepen the degree of threat and terror.

 

Binder, a seasoned creator in this form, is noted for his scratchboard illustrations. Here, in haunting detail, they are printed in a deep blue that exerts more impact than a black-and-white might have. Glaring faces and ominous oncoming weather nestle among views of rocks and rivers. The smallness of Holmes and Watson, compared to the enormity of Moriarty’s evil and related network, emerge in ways beyond the wording of the original text, yet without distorting it in any way. So when the pair of sleuths approaches the Reichenbach Falls, you can see both their attempt to be casual, and their vulnerability. The inevitable closing of the story, conveyed with a bold series of waterfalls and desperation, is suddenly tremendously moving—as the story must have affected its first-time readers more than a century ago.

 

Sherlock Holmes: The Final Problem in the hands of Hannes Binder is a must for any collection of Baker Street investigations, opening new awareness of the impact of this classic in its time, and even today, as new forces of evil confront humanity. If we could illustrate the chaos and threat of our times as Binder has done here, and present it to each available reader, perhaps it could act as a deterrent to the end of the world as we know it.

 

At last, it is Watson’s words that echo with the well-paced return of the drawings to urbane England: “Two years have passed, but I still feel the gap that Holmes’s death has left in my soul.” Most readers will know that, under pressure from readers, Arthur Conan Doyle found himself forced to pick up the narrative of Sherlock Holmes once again. But this graphic version conveys the agony of the years “in between,” and offers a new impact to what could never be reduced to a mere series of detective fiction.

 

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