Crooning into Crime, THE SINGER FROM MEMPHIS, Gary Corby

I get a kick out of Australian author Gary Corby's wicked sense of humor -- but I should admit right away that THE SINGER FROM MEMPHIS is not an Elvis Presley mystery! Opening in ancient Athens like Corby's preceding five Athenian mysteries, it features Nicolaos, the only private investigator in his city-state at the time. And, of course, his highly intelligent and (gulp) philosophical wife Diotima, who's already broadened his views of women, life, and theatre in preceding titles.

This time his boss Pericles (who always has ulterior motives) is sending Nicolaos to Egypt (where there's a very different Memphis) as an undercover spy. Of course Diotima will go along -- more to the point, so will the author-in-research-stage Herodotus, whose mission of fact-finding is the excuse for what Pericles wants accomplished. At stake is the path to the throne for the contenders grappling to rule Egypt. Is Herodotus also a spy? What other Mediterranean political forces are muddying the Nile's waters? Quick as a trireme can sail (what, you don't know about triremes? trust me, you're going to love them), Nicolaos discovers there are at least three armies and spies in play. And at least one of them is determined to make things personal and get rid of Nicolaos along the way. Good thing Diotima's got his back, even in negotiations:

Somehow Herodotus knew that Diotima and I had been to Ionia, a province of Asia Minor ... it seemed odd to me that he knew such a detail.

Herodotus proceeded to ask us questions about Themistocles. We were able to fend off almost every sensitive issue, since we had only met Themistocles at the end of his life.

"How did he die?" Herodotus asked. He held the brush poised over his scroll and looked up at us expectantly.

The answer to that question was a state secret. I turned to Diotima. Diotima turned to me. We had both sworn never to reveal the truth of those terrible days. ...

I said, "He died of an illness. It was natural causes."

The explanation might have held, except that at the very same instant Diotima said, "It was suicide. He drank bull's blood."

Herodotus looked from one to the other of us in surprise. "Surely it must be one or the other."

"It was both," I answered, thinking quickly. "When Themistocles learned he was dying of natural causes, he drank bull's blood to end it all."

"I see," Herodotus said doubtfully. "I didn't realize bull's blood was poisonous."

"Oh, it is," Diotima said with a straight face. "I thought everyone knew that."

"Thank you," Herodotus said. He scribbled notes.

After that we resolved to avoid Herodotus whenever he had his scroll open.

The pen (or ink brush) may be mightier than the sword, but it's a crossbow that Nicolaos will soon fear, along with spears, crocodiles, and more. Among the forces fighting for Egypt's throne are a cabal of Public Service workers determined to protect their cushy jobs and incomes, at least two potential rulers, and the massive power of the Persians and the Spartans.

Sure, I had to have my arm twisted to start reading this series (revealed in an earlier review here), but Gary Corby's dialogue and plot twists are so entertaining that it's easy to put aside skepticism about "history this old" and relax in the grins and laughter that THE SINGER FROM MEMPHIS provides. Capers, politics, good old-fashioned murder and other crimes -- it's all here, like a happy bundle of papyrus fastened with a scarab or two.

Great summer reading, so add it to the stack! And yes, this is another winner from Soho Crime ... gotta love that press for lively international mysteries in all centuries, continents, and flavors.

Prime British Crime Fiction from Elly Griffiths: THE WOMAN IN BLUE, Ruth Galloway #8

The first book in the Ruth Galloway crime fiction series, The Crossing Places, won the Mary Higgins Clark award for 2011 -- and of course, the award took place some time after the book hit the stores. Now in 2016, author Elly Griffiths presents the eighth in the impressive sequence: THE WOMAN IN BLUE.

This series features forensic anthropologist Ruth Galloway, a professional at university level who still has to fight for her career, against the sexist and crass assumptions of people like her boss. Single parenting in a community that's gradually becoming aware of her daughter's father -- married and unavailable -- Ruth juggles child care and teaching and investigation, in a jumble that feels all too familiar for modern life: nothing's easy, there's never enough time, and all of it matters intensely.

As THE WOMAN IN BLUE opens, one of the most appealing of Ruth's friends, Cathbad, himself a parent and also a modern-day British druid, witnesses a "woman in blue" (how can I not think of T. S. Eliot's vision in blue, "in Mary's color") standing in an ancient Christian cemetery. "As Cathbad approaches, she looks at him, and her face, illuminated by something stronger than natural light, seems at once so beautiful and sad that Cathbad crosses himself. 'Can I help you?' he calls. His voice echoes against stone and darkness."

It's understandable that Cathbad wonders whether he's seen a real person, or a vision, even if that would belong to a faith very different from his own. But as Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson quickly discovers, along with the young woman's corpse, she's been a patient at an upscale drug rehab facility nearby. The blue "cloak" is a dressing gown, even if it does look -- to Nelson's usually unimaginative eye -- like a druid's down attire.

Ruth Galloway quickly becomes part of the investigation: partly because Nelson and his team count on her for her expertise (although usually for Iron Age skeletons!), and mostly because an old friend from archaeology school is in town for a conference of woman Anglican priests heading toward higher positions in the church hierarchy. When Hilary Smithson reconnects with Ruth, there's a powerful ulterior motive for getting back in touch: threats against her life, which Hilary hopes that Ruth can help assess, based on all the modern-day police connections that Ruth's clearly experienced in the past few (very public) years.

"The thing is," says Hilary again, cubing the cubes, "there are some people who just don't like the idea of woman priests."

Ruth knows. She's read about it in the Guardian. Though, to be honest, she usually skips those articles on the way to the TV listings.

"Most women priests get abuse of some kind, people saying things, refusing to come to their services. When I first started getting the letters I didn't think anything of it. A rite of passage ... Then, at the end of last year, the tone seemed to change, to become nastier, more sinister. But what worried me most were the references to archaeology ... because it was specific to me. ... He must have found out that I was coming to this conference."

Ruth's dubious about her ability to help -- but soon the twists of events threaten her carefully balanced life, including her relationship with her daughter's father, and when her own slant on the past comes into play (archaeology matters!), she moves several steps ahead of the police in grasping the motive for the spate of deaths of blond young women like the one "in blue."

Elly Griffiths spins a tight, taut, and neatly twisted crime plot where the significant characters -- Ruth, Nelson, Cathbad -- must learn something deeper about themselves and their part of England in order to solve the crimes and stop their escalation. Each time I read another in the Ruth Galloway series, I marvel at how few people know these. It's something about the English source of the books, of course ... THE WOMAN IN BLUE was release on the other side of the Atlantic in February, reaching us quietly in May through Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. If I could summon up a change in the way these books arrive here, I'd send Griffiths on a major tour, where she could reveal her own secret life (her name's not really Griffiths! -- see her website for more) and connect with the smart savvy readers who appreciate her books so much. (I reviewed numbers 6 and 7 here.)

But then again, that would get in the way of writing Ruth Galloway investigation number 9 -- and I want more of these, for a very satisfying shelf of mysteries that I re-read with pleasure. Now that I think of it, maybe that's how I'll celebrate the start of official summer in a few weeks: by returning to the start of the series and reading them all again. Yes!

NYC Legal Thriller, THE DEFENSE, Steve Cavanaugh (Debut!)

Steve Cavanagh's debut crime novel is a legal thriller set in New York City, mostly at the Manhattan courthouse on Chambers Street. It's a page-turner, at a wild pace, and full of twists, suspense, exhilaration, and highly satisfying conclusions. I would never have guessed THE DEFENSE was a debut -- but then again, Cavanagh has been writing for years ... as a lawyer in Belfast, Ireland.

It's not all that unusual for a British author to place a crime novel in the United States. And some authors seem to switch-hit on both sides of the Atlantic -- consider John Connelly, Irish but setting his Charlie Parker detective series in Maine. Then think about Adrian McKinty, another Belfast author who's also lived in Australia and the US. As it happens, Cavanaugh's first US debut, for a short story, came in the collection Belfast Noir, co-edited by McKinty and another extraordinary Belfast author, Stuart Neville.

All of which are great signs for what Cavanagh can produce, given the company he keeps! But if I hadn't checked on him, I never would have guessed Irish from reading the adept switches among New York urban dialects and the language of the Russian mob in THE DEFENSE.

Here's the premise: Eddie Flynn used to be a con man, but a situation changed his direction to law school and he practiced law for nine years. As THE DEFENSE opens, that hasn't been an option for months now -- some kind of disaster in one of his cases gave him a shove into deep alcoholic self-pity, his marriage is on the rocks, his 10-year-old daughter can't see him much, and he's definitely not going back to court as an attorney.

Except: Suddenly the Russian mob has him wired into a jacket of explosives and is demanding his performance at the courthouse -- starting now! -- and to make sure Eddie won't just yield to his king-size case of despair and opt for suicide by Russian mobster, they've kidnapped his daughter.

Eddie's life has been is a roller coaster of strengths and mistakes. But it happens he does know how to handle having psychopathic mobsters as criminal defense clients. Good thing, because he needs to be at the top of his game almost instantly, against a clever and well-prepared prosecutor, for the life of his little girl.

"Is Mom there with you? Can I ... please ... I want to talk to her. I want you ... I want you and Mom to come get me, please. I love you. Please come get me, Daddy ... please ..." She broke down completely, each shrill cry bringing her closer to hysterics. Her sobs grew fainter as the phone was taken from her.

What would you do under that level of threat? Yep. So will Eddie. And it looks like an impossible task, but after all those years, Eddie does have a few friends, and at least one of them is in the same courthouse.

A top-notch thriller with relentless suspense and highly memorable! And although the finale put a bit of a dent in my own recent memories of that same courthouse, I have to admit it's a good fit. I'm looking forward to more from Steve Cavanagh ...  and I see his next crime novel,  The Plea, is scheduled for next March. Nice to have Flatiron Books (linked to Orion and Macmillan) bringing these across the "pond."

Crime and Espionage in 1933 England, DIANA'S ALTAR, Barbara Cleverly

Charles Todd, Jacqueline Winspear, James Benn -- if you're already reading any of these authors whose mysteries depend on the actual history of the two World Wars of Europe and beyond, Barbara Cleverly's books belong on your reading table, too. Her first in the Joe Sandilands series, The Last Kashmiri Rose, came out in 2001 and grounded her character and "England" in the realities of Britain's failure as a colonial power. Sandilands begins to deepen as England's release of India means his own upcoming departure of the colony-turned-independent-nation, although it took until the ninth book of the series, The Blood Royal, for Joe Sandilands to embrace a leadership role in the Metropolitan Police.

Joe's not quite at the top of that force, but close enough to meet from time to time with the nation's political leaders. Personal losses deepened this character further, and it began to look as though he'd grow sadly alone in maturity -- but in book 12, Enter Pale Death, his competition with another man for the hand of a rural doctor seemed finally to bring him some happiness.

With that doctor, Adelaide Hartest, the new Sandilands investigaton (#13) opens in DIANA'S ALTAR. At the end of disturbing night -- whose details we learn much later -- Adelaide has bicycled before dawn to a small church in Cambridge, where she hopes to sit, think, and perhaps pray, seeking a way forward from the fatigue and anger shaking her.

But instead she confronts a dying man -- a young one, with a knife in his chest, proclaiming his own suicide. Although time, of course, turns longer and shorter in turns, as she sits with death, there's soon a constable on hand to assist, who in turn summons the local superintendent, Hunnyton; to Adelaide's surprise, this police office, after comforting her as best he can, asks whether Joe Sandilands is with her and moments later requests that she summon him immediately from London:

"Why should I? What's it got to do with Scotland Yard? The suicide of a Cambridge man in a Cambridge church?" She gave him a shrewd look. "The deceased would seem to have been an interesting man but surely of no concern to the Metropolitan Police? What's more, I would have thought ..."

He stopped her flow of protest by putting a finger over her lips. "That'll do, Adelaide! Look -- this here isn't a case for the Cambridge CID, I'm afraid. You'll have to take my word on it. I'll do the necessary for now but this is Joe's man."

The surprising presence of a man investigating in Cambridge for Joe Sandilands connects with Joe's extended responsibilities of liaison with the Special Branch, whose members Joe has described as "Twenty-six languages among them, guns in their armpits and fists like steam hammers. I try not to annoy them!"

To sort out this death and its importance to a dangerously international scientific laboratory in Cambridge (think German scientists, and more), Joe will need to immerse himself in the lives of the very wealthy and very prone to hurt and humiliate -- with high risks to all in his network. Adelaide herself has already seen too much and is in danger. So, for that matter, is England.

Espionage, crime, loyalty, and betrayal make this one of the more intense Joe Sandlilands investigations. Each twist -- and there are plenty -- is well outlined and intense, and the book accelerates in pace toward a dangerous confrontation, a revelation of secrets and pain, and two of the more grievous losses that Joe will ever witness.

A highly recommended book, and newly released from Soho Crime. By the way, Cambridge is home turf to author Barbara Cleverly, and her mastery of this crucial period in British history is laid powerfully against her meticulously portrayed university town.

British Gothic, THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT CASTAWAY HOUSE, Stephanie Lam

The US publication of Stephanie Lam's debut novel, a modern-day Gothic set on the coast of England, is a perfect excuse to curl up on the couch with a cup of tea (or cocoa) and slip into another world -- one where mystery, desire, and suspense mingle, enhanced by startling moments of joy and discovery.

Like the instant of revelation of a flash of lightning, THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT CASTAWAY HOUSE opens through the eyes of a small girl in a dirty dress, overwhelmed with longing for the grand house up above the cliffs of the British seacoast. But the storm quickly moves forward, placing us at the dark and very grubby entrance to the once-grand home as of 1965, as 18-year-old Rosie Churchill struggles to find rent for her first home away from home ... as a boarder in this peculiar rooming house. She's not that far away geographically from the home where she grew up, and her mother keeps trying to reach her by phone. But Rosie's got her reasons for running away.

Quite a few chapters will pass in this satisfyingly chunky book (500 pages!), with its pulsing narrative that flips madly from 1965 to 1924 and back again, before Rosie gets specific about those reasons. The damage to this teen, though, opens her to a number of compassionate actions toward the old tramp arriving at Castaway House, insisting he's stayed there before.

Twists of romance, friendship, and the strangely dark threat of a "dishy" man with a white Jaguar, leaving her unwanted messages and gifts, keep the plot stormy and Rosie's life precarious. In some ways it's a relief, then, for her to try to take care of Dockie the tramp, and to press for details of the artist who lived in the house a generation earlier. This artist, Robert Carver, is the other set of eyes -- and stories -- that Lam provides, with his 1924 visit to the home of his school friend Alec. Robert can fake for the butler that he's used to hot and cold running water as the grand home provide. But the emotionally charged atmosphere between his friend Alec and Alec's new wife throws him completely off track:

Alec glanced towards the door, and then whispered in my ear, 'She hates me because I've seen through her.'

I turned to him. 'What on earth do you mean?'

'Shh.' He looked at the open door, and then, loudly, 'Let's go out. I've something to show you.'

'Show me?' I asked, heavy with food and wine and not particularly willing to leave the house. 'Is is important?'

He squeezed my hand. 'Life-threatening,' he growled.

Rosie's secrets, Robert's secrets -- and it's Castaway House (and the tramp Dockie) who will tie them together.

Shelve this one next to Laurie R. King's dark British exhumations of the Sherlock Holmes "continuation" or the archaeological mysteries of fellow Brit Elly Griffiths; there's a tang of English despair that also echoes into the Charles Todd series. And underneath, of course, the dire precedent of Jane Eyre. Storm, grand house, secrets -- oh yes, leave room on that bookshelf. This is Stephanie Lam's debut, and it's clear she'll have more good mysteries to follow. Website here; the book is published by Penguin and distributed via Trafalgar Square Publishing.

Cli-Fi Turns Extreme, in KILLING MAINE, Mike Bond

Maine native Mike Bond brought out his second "superthriller" in July 2015, KILLING MAINE. The book's premise is that wind power has not only devastated the wildlife and scenic peaks of the northern New England state -- the big money involved in it has corrupted at least half of Maine's legislature. But Hawaiian/Maine Special Forces veteran Pono (Sam) Hawkins gets a call to rescue a former SF comrade from a frame-up during Maine's winter of discontent, and with the help of three women who want his body, Pono launches into the legal and legislative and bullet-riddled fray.

This chunky oversize paperback clocks in at 364 pages and is jammed with adventure, chase scenes, and hot sex (announced but not detailed). Military jargon and comrades-in-arms (and shared women) cram those pages. Count on a fast pace and a lot of details that are exaggerated past serious belief: Wind power isn't making all that much money, and legislatures aren't so easy to corrupt, and subzero temperatures rarely last as long as the story's hardships suggest. So if you pick this one up, ride along for the entertainment of a wild tale, especially if you enjoy Special Forces fiction. (That includes some coarse language, wild assumptions about women, and plenty of bullet details.)

KILLING MAINE recently won the New England Book Festival First Prize for Fiction, which is why the book is getting fresh attention this spring; the climate crisis and alternate energy aspects are fictionalized as extreme and terrifying, which turns out to support a fast-paced page-turner. Congrats to the author and his team -- and to the publisher, Mandevilla Press, which consists of Mike Bond and Wess Roberts.

Edging Into World War II with Maisie Dobbs in JOURNEY TO MUNICH, Jacqueline Winspear

The first Maisie Dobbs crime-solving mystery launched the former war nurse in her own private investigation business, in 1929 -- in the postwar desperation of bombed-out London and the grim almost-defeated mood of England as a whole. A trained psychologist with strong ties to her mystically inclined and very wise mentor, Maisie steps out of the noted English class system (shh! she was once a servant!!!) into a role connected with both the police and the upper classes.

In JOURNEY TO MUNICH, the 12th in the popular and highly readable series, it's 1938, nine years further away from the war that still haunts Maisie Dobbs. She's already had hints in the meantime that her home country suspects that war with Germany will be inevitable. Now the British government and the American Secret Service collude to send her into enemy territory: the city of Munich, where two missions at once call for her skills—one as agreed with the government, and the other a personal act on behalf of desperate parents.

Jacqueline Winspear sets up the plot to accomplish far more than letting readers apply their hindsight to the growing evil of the Nazi forces. Maisie's official task is to pretend she's the daughter of a British scientist who's been imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp, on the outskirts of the good-time city of Munich. As usual, she exceeds the assignment and delves deeply into the local resistance (portrayed in gritty and heart-pounding detail) in order to rescue this man.

Meanwhile, her effort to persuade a young woman of Canadian parents -- a grown daughter in the family that she blames for her own husband's death! -- increases Maisie's own likelihood of being fingered as a spy and captured, herself. And what game is the American agent playing in the midst of all these risks?

Winspear's readers can expect a top-notch page-turner as this skillful author draws Maisie closer to the very type of wartime conditions that still haunt her from two decades earlier. And although we can't have Maisie's intriguing mentor Maurice Blanche return to us, JOURNEY TO MUNICH demands so much from her that Maisie renews her commitment to Maurice's process of both investigating and protecting her inner integrity and calm. Best to read the other volumes first, to get the most from this one.

We who frame these books in our existing history know that the pace of the series is going to take Maisie into the Second World War, and the tension of that awareness ramps up the stakes in this volume. It's an excellent read, tightly paced, humanely inquisitive, and much deeper than the average page-turner.

If you are reading James Benn or Charles Todd, be sure to keep up with Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series -- for a very different and worthwhile face of British mystery in the fiery glow of the past century's most significant wars.

Ghana Mystery, GOLD OF OUR FATHERS, Kwei Quartey

In this fourth in the Darko Dawson investigations (there's also a novella), Darko's just been promoted to Chief Inspector in the Ghana Police Service, which ought to call for celebration -- especially because Darko's own promotion follows that of his cantankerous boss Theophilus Lartey. Readers of the first three books in Ghanaian-American author Kwei Quartey's series -- Wife of the Gods, Children of the Streets, Murder at Three Points -- know that Lartey made things difficult for Darko Dawson and especially for Dawson's family, with frequent assignments away from the family home in Accra, where his wife Christine teaches school and his sons are finally thriving.

But the new Chief Superintendent Oppong, although an unexpectedly tidy and organized man and reasonably kind on the first day of teamwork, has rough news for Darko: a year-long transfer out of headquarters, to take charge of a police station in 160-miles-distant Obuasi where the head officer just died. Considering Ghana's roads and traffic and more, that's not a workable commute. Darko's entire family life will need rearranging, including the care for his more vulnerable son Hosiah.

Even as Darko Dawson's family changes its plans, Darko's racing to his new position, where the discovery of a murder in the muddy terrain of the gold mines brings immediate relief from trying to straighten out backlogged records, lazy staff, and more. It's enough to cheer Dawson up and give him the satisfaction of an urgent investigation of a crime.

GOLD OF OUR FATHERS reveals the power struggles of comparatively wealthy mine owners and a labor force of people who have little control over their lives. But it also portrays in a tender fashion the customs, traditions, and linguistic dances of Ghanaian life, from the finger snapping that accompanies a handshake, to traditional foods and courtesies. Plus in today's Ghana, the presence of the Chinese -- as both land investors and working people -- challenges the local ways of life. In his new position, Darko Dawson has little leverage and no quick way to his staff's needed loyalty. Good thing he figures out how to pull his former assistant from Accra to come help for a while!

Meanwhile, in this new location, the Chief Inspector confronts many temptations and bad practices that his Accra post no longer offered him, from bribes to an informant being beaten and, most dangerous for Darko Dawson, the frank interest of an intelligent woman, journalist Akua Helmsley:

"Chief Inspector," she said. "We meet again."

"And I'm sure not for the last time," he said, barely slowing his pace as he walked by, but she kept up with him.

"Progress?" she asked.

"Not much. ... The legal status of miners isn't my concern, Miss Helmsley."

Obeng got in the back seat with Wei.

"So, no prime suspect so far," Helmsley said. "Where are you going now?"

"To make some inquiries," Dawson said unhelpfully as he got into the front passenger seat.

"I'll check back with you in a couple of days," Helmsley said. "Is that okay?"

"Yes," Dawson replied, not sure he meant it.

The journalist clearly has a role in the pattern of crimes Dawson's investigating. But was she an innocent party? An instigator, creating news by pushing people toward confrontation? Or an investigator herself -- and if so, an honest one, or corrupt?

The layers and tangles add to Quartey's adept storytelling and make this a well-paced and intriguing crime investigation with significant human costs and caring. I'm enjoying the series very much -- if you haven't yet read the others, though, Quartey makes it easy to step into this fourth novel "cold" and get close to Dawson and his team.

GOLD OF OUR FATHERS is a police procedural with the twist of how policing struggles in an underdeveloped nation that's suffered the colonial boot and then desertion, open to the money and power of foreign corporations and individuals. So although the scenery and family conflicts may call to mind the gentle frictions of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, Quartey's books are closer in texture to, say, Archer Mayor's or William Kent Krueger's -- add them to your contemporary mysteries shelf, with the fresh spice of international flavor. Available now, from Soho Crime -- of course!

Reviews Coming Thursday: Kwei Quartey, Mike Bond, Jacqueline Winspear

Excited to have three reviews to share on Thursday April 28 -- I wish I could share them today, but other deadlines have crashed through the week.

GOLD OF OUR FATHERS from Kwei Quartey is the fourth Darko Dawson mystery (fifth if you count the novella from 2013), set in Ghana, and confirms that the magic behind a really good mystery is the tension that crime and crimesolving place in the life of an important character.

KILLING MAINE from Mike Bond came out in 2015 and just won the New England Book Festival First Prize for Fiction -- lots of things to enjoy here, including the "buddies from Special forces" aspect and a focus on environmental risk.

And every Jacqueline Winspear novel of Maisie Dobbs is a great excuse to kick back and immerse in the story, and in JOURNEY TO MUNICH this World War I-related series reaches the terrifying start of the Second World War.

Check back in on Thursday afternoon. Sorry to keep you waiting!

Superb Hollywood Crime Caper, in KING MAYBE, Junior Bender

To me, there's only one king of the caper novel in crime fiction: the late, great Donald Westlake. Sure, Dave Zeltserman tied up the modern "noir" caper a few years ago. Rory Flynn's carving out Boston space for his, if not quite so cheerfully. And there are regional gems like Carl Hiassen's Florida titles and the Texas ones by Kinky Friedman.

But Westlake's gift was a combination of exquisite timing (the kind a good comedian has to have) and a willingness to show that criminals can be ordinary dumb bunnies like the guy next door. Beyond that aspect of his caper novels, Westlake also revealed, in a short early series of his under the pen name Tucker Coe, that he understood heartbreak, male style, and could write it with precision and a sharp blade of a pen (or typewriter key). Even though he ended that series before his career soared, the revelation insisted on slipping into his hard-working and often-failing criminals in the rest of his work.

Timothy Hallinan hasn't used the same sort of sleight of hand. His Bangkok series featuring Poke Rafferty rose steadily into a portrait of how a "family of choice" can form and be nurtured; the biggest risks Poke takes, he takes for the sake of the people he cares about.

So when Hallinan segued into the Junior Bender series (which despite the character's name is emphatically NOT "young adult"), he took that emotional dynamic directly into the life of his exquisitely skilled, art-expert, house burglar in Hollywood, Junior Bender. Bender is in many ways clueless about how relationships work -- but he chooses phenomenal women who, if he can manage to let them, not only put up with his gaffes but also teach him how to treat a smart, wise, savvy woman ... like his ex-wife, his teenage daughter, and his current girlfriend, who's so careful not to fully trust him that he's not even sure he knows her real name.

Good thing Junior stumbled into those liaisons, because the heist he's attempting at the opening of KING MAYBE (Junior Bender #5, from Soho Crime) goes wrong so fast and so hard that he'd be a bloody battered corpse, were it not for the rapid response of his ladyfriend (and getaway driver) Ronnie. And it's only Ronnie who can keep calm enough to sort out what's pushing the disasters into place, as Junior holds an incredibly valuable postage stamp in his hands while at least three people try to kill him. Even Stinky, who hired him:

Stinky ... settled his weight farther back in the seat, which made the car dip. "As you should know from recent experience, Junior, when I want to kill you, I'll hire someone to shoot you."

"Like that other man just did," Ronnie said.

Stinky said, "What other man?"

I said, "Never mind."

"And you thought," Ronnie said serenely to Stinky, "that they caught Junior in the act, as people say, and he told them you sent him, and they said, 'Well, all right, then, thanks, here you go,' and gave him the stamp as a reward and came after you."

"Well," Stinky said, "when you put it that  way -- "

"I said the exact same thing," I told him. "When she reacted to my theory. Word for word."

... "Both of you," she said. "You're hopeless."

Hallinan braids a very believable sort of triple betrayal into the plot, while at the same time leaving it to Junior and his two tech-genius teen crime associates (who aren't supposed to be doing that any more) to figure out how to salvage his own daughter's dating life and upcoming birthday party.

I laughed my way through this enjoyable adventure, and if only crime could be this rewarding (in the long run), I might have suggested it to a few other people looking for themselves, like Junior has been. But then again, Junior Bender's Hollywood career is just fiction. ... I think!

Thanks, Tim Hallinan, for great entertainment and the best of twists and conclusions. And PS -- I wish Donald Westlake could be reading your books now.

THE MASK, Taylor Stevens (Vanessa Michael Munroe #6)

There are some mystery authors -- maybe a dozen, maybe a few more than that -- whose books I follow from one release to the next, making sure I get a copy of each new title when it's published. But because I am 95 percent sure I'll enjoy those books (and also that the authors don't "need" my attention at the time of release ... they are already pretty well know), I don't race to open the covers. I wait until I can enjoy them at their own best pace.

So last week I indulged in reading THE MASK, which is the sixth book featuring Vanessa Michael Munroe. Call her Munroe, secret agent style ... or call her Michael, which is what her long-term lover Miles Bradford knows she calls herself. Slight of build, able to adeptly disguise herself as a young man as needed, Michael is also a very dangerous killer when in jeopardy.

Her reunion with Miles at the start of this book marks the end of a long period of recovery for Munroe. Her teammates in a private company based in the United States valued her for her multiple languages and her ability to unravel codes and intrigues of astounding complexity. But her path's been dangerous not just to herself but also to her friends. It's been a long time since she dared to be geographically close to even Miles Bradford, even though she has longed for the comfort of being with the one person who's ever really accepted her in all her emotionally scarred integrity.

Stevens, diverging in rare one-sentence hints from Munroe's viewpoint, hints to readers that the tender and amazing reunion of the lovers, in Japan of all places, isn't the honest coupling it appears. Munroe's tendency to blame herself for the hint of awkwardness, and for the puzzle of Miles not inviting her into his work in a Japanese biotech company, distorts her vision for long enough to ramp up the danger and risk involved. In perhaps the book's most bizarre yet also insightful twist, when Munroe has to turn professional to help Miles, she insists on being paid Big Bucks by their security company -- something the company leader back in the States finds despicable. Still, for the person Munroe is, and for the highly unlikely face that she can indeed love Miles, it's a necessary transformation of the emotional ground -- taking her out of the shoes of a woman desperate to save her beloved, and giving her instead the equivalent of steel-toed boots and a highly technical construction to pull together.

If you appreciate the powerful darkness of Karen Slaughter's crime fiction, this is for you; it's also the closest there is to a woman's version of Jack Reacher from Lee Child's books, although Munroe is more self-aware and gives herself a different skill set. But that pressure to set things right, and to undo injustice, is spot on target.

Curious about the title? No, it's not a reference to kinky sex, but rather to the way some people choose to protect their vulnerabilities -- and also, I think, to the willingness of many a Westerner to continue to buy the myth of the inscrutable Asian face. By the end of THE MASK, I also knew a bit more about myself. Which, come to think of it, may be the highest achievement for any book worth reading.

If you're new to Taylor Stevens, take a few minutes to explore her author website before you dip into the books. Yes, I think there's more depth in this book if you've read the other five, but you don't have to. On the other hand, after you read THE MASK, you may decide, as I have, that you want them all.

DELIVERING THE TRUTH, Edith Maxwell, A Clever Mystery With Insight

Quaker life, and the tender mysteries of childbirth: In DELIVERING THE TRUTH, Massachusetts author Edith Maxwell selects two areas that are intensely private, and in that choice she promises us secrets ... secrets to witness, to explore, and to reveal the human failings that lead to crime.

There have been other Quaker mysteries, of course, but Maxwell sets her new series (she has three others already spinning!) in the 1880s in the close-knit and prosperous town of Amesbury, Massachusetts, where several businesses manufacture carriages. Those complicated creations -- wheels, springs, issues of comfort for traveler and horse, and above all, stylish decor -- fuel the town's growth and keep its families well fed. So when sudden flames destroys a large carriage factory, also killing a dozen men trapped there, it's hard to find anyone untouched by the disaster.

Midwife Rose Carroll, slowly growing her one-woman business with integrity, medical care for mother and baby, and wisdom gained day by day, collides with this wave of grief and loss at a painful level. Although her own small family -- the brother-in-law and nieces and nephews, whose home includes an office that she uses for her midwifery, as she also assists with her dead sister's children -- takes no direct hit from the fire, their closest friends lose work and even loved ones. And Rose herself is still hurting from her own sister's recent death.

Almost immediately, Rose realizes she has observations that may assist the investigation into what's soon declared arson. She's seen a possible suspect right before the fire; she knows, because of her woman-centered work, at least one of the illicit ties in town that involve married men; and soon the police are even asking her to quietly seek answers and report to them on the inner workings of family in the town.

And it's not just her midwifery that makes her a candidate for a careful and observant sleuth: It's also her religious identity as a Quaker -- one of the Society of Friends -- where integrity matters as much as a willingness to wait for divine direction and guidance, and where silence is more common than gossip.

Maxwell's mystery has the hallmarks of a classic in historical fiction, and the softer side of crime investigation that is braided along with such a setting. As in many a "cozy," when death arrives, it does so discreetly, without graphic gore or agony, other than the emotional forces of grief, envy, despair -- the aspects that are seen via the insight and "Light" for which Rose Carroll wishes to be known. But to her shock, one of the deaths in this small-town catastrophe is linked to an item from her own bag that she carries to births: an item shown to her with dried blood on it.

"Is that your knitting needle, Rose Carroll?"

"Yes. It's one of a pair my mother painted for me as a birthday present." I closed my mouth and sat with my hands clenched in my lap. This was the murder weapon ... This was too awful to contemplate. But I had to. I forced myself to unclench my hands.

Kevin regarding me say in silence, as well. I'd read of this tactic in a serial novel, this silent treatment that was usually effective to prod guilty parties to talk. But I was a Quaker. I'd had a lifetime of sitting in silence. And I was guilty of nothing.

Rose's ability to sustain silence, along with her stiff backbone and refusal to bend away from the teachings of her religion, make her a prickly character. She's being courted by a doctor, and open to the courting, although the religious difference involved is rapidly becoming an issue. She's tough, and resolute, and clever.

All of this makes her sleuthing effective and often, for her, very painful emotionally. The cost of looking with clear eyes at the failings of others is high. And her self-judgment is at least as painful.

So DELIVERING THE TRUTH doesn't have the sweet side that many a cozy provides. Moving steadily from one clue to the next, one hypothesis to another, and seeking advice from Quaker leader and noted poet John Greenleaf Whittier, as well as from an older midwife who'd trained her, Rose epitomizes the calm and unyielding focus of, say, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, but with more personal cost and risk.

Maxwell has already shown her skill in building series characters and confrontations, so that her Local Foods series is deepening nicely and her Country Store mysteries provide another lively and warm community; DELIVERING THE TRUTH is subtitled "A Quaker Midwife Mystery" but also is signaled on her website as a "Carriagetown Mystery." So that makes three strong reasons to pick up a copy of this new mystery, released today in bookstores and online: (1) for the intrigue of learning about life within the 1880s Quaker community (Maxwell herself is also a member of the Society of Friends, in a nearby town); (2) for the persistent sense of awe and discovery and human risk that midwife stories by their nature enfold; and (3) to be able to follow this series in its debut and growth.

From the profound magic of childbirth to the personal horror of discovering a death and a killer, midwife Rose Carroll offers a clear-eyed gaze at the complicated lives we sustain. I think this is going to be a series that's both clever and insightful -- and DELIVERING THE TRUTH is a strong and enjoyable start.

[From mystery specialty publisher Midnight Ink.]

Bank Robbery, Scandinavian Style, in THE FATHER, Anton Svensson

John Dillinger, Jesse James, and Bonnie and Clyde may be America's most famous bank robbers -- but there was also Ma Barker, whose family formed the notorious Barker-Karpis gang, a ruthless group of three core members and some 20 others, and whose exploits spanned the Depression Era.

In Sweden, a string of bank robberies in the 1990s literally paralyzed commerce, as banks came to actually expect another violent attack from the team known as the Military Gang. Consider it Sweden's modern version of Ma Barker's gang. THE FATHER, the debut effort by "Anton Svensson," is the first of a two-book series that turns those robberies and the family behind them into compelling suspense fiction.

THE FATHER opens with an attack witness by sons Leo, Vincent, and Felix, as their brutal father returns after four years and batters their mother. For young Leo, struggling to both embrace his papa and stop papa's fists from pounding Mamma, the action is terrifying and confusing, and abruptly turned by his father into an object lesson in what it is to be a man.

Leo keeps hold of him, his arms around his father's waist, and leans into his body, as if he were still hugging him.

"It's your turn now, Leonard."

The smell of blood, spaghetti and meat sauce, and Mamma's blood. They look at each other.

"Do you understand? I won't be around any more, not here. You're responsible from now on."

And so this boy, oldest of the three but still heart-breakingly young, begins the confusing process of becoming a man as violent and powerful as his father. One who will, given the right plan and weapons, lead a set of crimes designed to make him rich and to terrorize Sweden.

THE FATHER is a powerful work of fiction, sweeping through years as Leo forges his team of brothers -- and one friend pulled into the group as well -- into an instrument able to commit the perfect robbery. By the time things go out of control, Leo is hooked on the addiction of increasingly violent and masterful crime, and can't seem to stop.

But the book's title beats the throb of drums under all of the action, because everything Leo puts together is a result of the "manning up" his father has taught him. And astute readers will see ahead into the catastrophes of his life far sooner than he can, as his father begins, after all this time, to seek a relationship with his son.

Although the book is the debut for "Anton Svensson," the author back-story is at least as complex as the novel itself: The pseudonym represents co-authors Stefan Thunberg and Anders Roslund. Thunberg is, in real life, the fourth brother of the actual notorious bank-robbing family, the brother who escaped the pattern and went to art school. Roslund's name should be familiar to readers of Scandinavian crime fiction, as he wrote for 14 years with Börge Hellström, creating the Roslund & Hellström author tag for award-winning Swedish crime fiction. When the Thunberg and Roslund met, they keyed into a new craft partnership -- writing a book that's neither "true crime" nor "crime fiction" but an entirely new hybrid. (The author website is layered and fascinating, by the way.)

THE FATHER is dark and often violent, but (thank goodness) stays out of the more perverse areas of crime fiction (not a sex crimes book, for example, and no gruesome games with corpses). I found it expertly paced, and the "dramatic" additions the authors made to shape the story are effective and memorable. The adept combination of narrative and inner revelation of how violence is forged in the soul is fascinating.

And for readers who become engaged with the fates of the dangerous men in THE FATHER -- a second book is on the way. The book's subtitle is MADE IN SWEDEN: PART I. It was released in Europe in August 2015, and released in the US this week; at a guess, the second volume may be a year or so away. Published by Quercus; pick up a copy of THE FATHER while the first US printings are still available.

Key West Food Critic #7, KILLER TAKEOUT, Lucy Burdette

Food critic Hayley Snow isn't a huge fan of Fantasy Fest, the 10-day "party for grownups" that's become an annual part of Key West life. Like most of the "conchs" -- that is, locals -- in the resort paradise, she notices the traffic issues, problem drinking (even the island's tourist bureau calls Fantasy Fest a "bacchanal"), and impossibility of everyday normal life.

Not that Hayley's life has every been all that simple ... readers of the earlier six books in Lucy Burdette's lively "Key West Food Critic Mystery Series" have seen Hayley work up crushes on hunky guys (including police officers), fall into crime-solving, struggle with her roommate situation (nothing's simple on a houseboat!), and wrestle with the workplace politics of the small weekly newspaper where her column runs regularly, along with write-ups of other events she's expected to cover. (I especially liked numbers 4 and 6 -- reviews here.) But as KILLER TAKEOUT opens, Hayley's life seems doubly hectic: Her mom's arriving to get married to a late-life love, her own love life is just getting into high gear with the delectable Nathan Bransford, Hayley's got parade duty to handle, and there's a possible hurricane headed her way. The weather kind, not the twisters of her life.

Add to that the zombie theme of the 10-day island festival, extreme tension at work (new owner Palamina is still determined to overrule Hayley whenever possible), a literal catfight -- and then there's the baffling and really upsetting situation of Hayley's sweet friend Danielle being attacked, just when Danielle should have been making the most of being crowned queen of the festival. Hayley's got a simpler-than-usual food assignment, nibbling from some of the island's best food trucks and takeout windows, but getting it written might not be easy.

Sure, you can call this a cozy mystery -- the yummy meals described, the recipes at the back, the brushes with lusty romance, and of course the cats send it in that direction -- but don't expect a relaxed sweetness in KILLER TAKEOUT! Burdette ramps the suspense up in multiple directions, and even Hayley admits she's overwhelmed. What's going to happen to her romance if she disobeys "police instructions"? Is there any way to retrieve the fun that Danielle should have been having? And what on earth is worth killing for, in the midst of the party?

I couldn't put this one down. It's downright delicious and adventurous, and I don't just mean the recipes (I can hardly wait to make a Mango Dog, or Hayley Snow's Shrimp Salad, tasty but pretty simple -- classic Burdette gifts to the reader).

And I'm still thinking about the stresses and catastrophes of this loaded investigation -- it occurred to me (and it has before, too) that Burdette probably borrows from her "other life" as clinical psychologist Roberta Isleib (Burdette is a pen name), so she knows what makes us happy and what makes us very, very worried. Still, I've gotten used to Hayley by now, and I trust her to get us out of danger. Well, at least, she's got the right friends to pull her, and her family, through the worst!

Release date is April 5, from Penguin Random House. Have fun!

Mystery in Maine and Chicago, Clever and "Snarky," HUSBANDS AND LAP DOGS BREATHE THEIR LAST, David Steven Rappoport

Philanthropist Cumming Flynn Wanamaker and his husband live in contemporary Chicago, but their network of friends and locales extends to the coast of Maine. That turns out to be very helpful for this amateur sleuth, when he's the guest of a friend at a Chicago meeting of an occult gathering with delicious steampunk accents. When the speaker self-combusts, Cummings quickly receives an urgent requent to discover more of what had been going on under the table (so to speak) in the group, as well as to recover an item of jewelry that the speaker had flourished.

But Cummings has barely begun to investigate the odd couplings within the group when he gets a second request for his amateur sleuthing skills: His only friend in the rural town of Horeb, Maine, the "elderly, upper class New Englander" Ernestine Cutter, needs him at once to investigate a suspicious death in her own circle. In quick succession, Cummings realizes that not only do both deaths connect with authors (including a gay romance author compared with Barbara Cartland for his many works), but they also both relate somehow to William Reich's psychological explorations of "orgone," a sexual force long since ignored. How can the two deaths share so much, at such a distance from each other?

Between artful descriptions of Chicago classic architectures, "snarky" (the author and publisher's term) interactions among several sets of husbands, and explorations of the occult, this romp through motives and means is in turns a bit naughty and very entertaining. The book is David Steven Rappoport's debut, but he's no raw beginner himself -- author of two Off-Broadway plays, holder of a pair of master's degrees (one is in writing), and a full-time consultant for high-dollar nonprofit plans for health care and other missions, he deftly crafts a lively and often humorous tale, with a lively balance of red herrings and a memorable cast of bizarre characters. I liked Cumming in particular for his habit of solving his choice dilemmas with a combination of stopwatch and random selection. But he's also a dogged investigator who won't leave a stone unturned in the hunt to solve his cases.

HUSBANDS AND LAP DOGS BREATHE THEIR LAST is titled from Alexander Pope's poem "The Rape of the Lock." The pace is lively, the twists abundant, and the characters unstoppable (including in their romantic commitments). I considered it a good page-turner, keeping me well engaged and chuckling, in spite of a few leftover-from-revisions errors that the casual publisher, Mainly Murder Press, allowed to slide by. The book came out in e-version first, and today is the paperback release date; I'll be watching for the sequels, which are Dead Words, and Heidi on the Half Shell. 

Haunting Photos, Frightening Tales, in THE STARLINGS, editor Ann Cleeves

There's a certain inevitability to it: When your best friends are crime writers, and everyone gets together around a stack of scary photographs, each picture can easily become the seed of suspense, twisted desire, and murder.

At least, that's what happened when British crime fiction author Ann Cleeves and the group calling itself Murder Squad -- a team of half a dozen writers co-promoting each other's bloody endeavors -- received a stack of photos of Pembrokeshire, Wales, with a proposal to write short stories to accompany the black-and-white-and-spooky images.

Hence: THE STARLINGS. Published in 2015 in Britain and just arriving in the US now (publication date April 1), this elegant and professional photo exhibit calls forth shudders of anticipation before the text starts to unfold. Packed for more than 200 pages with bizarre and calculated crime from a dozen writers (six in Murder Squad and six added partners), the book brings the hard-boiled home for these Britishers, who oddly enough all had connections somehow to the landscape of the photos that David Wilson had taken. And for us in "the States," the images recapitulate our own ghosts: deserted houses, unexpected and inhuman visitations, unfinished desperate circumstances of the past.

I particularly enjoyed Cleeves's own brief twist of plot and characters in the title story, "The Starlings" (and yes, the adjoining photo does call forth Hitchcock's "The Birds"):

She closed her eyes and thought that even an odd snatch of conversation might help.

When she opened them there was a face staring in through the Land Rover window. She was startled. At first she thought it might be the local officers, though the siren had been a long way off and even deep in thought surely she would have heard their car on the track. And the face belonged to an elderly woman. ... The woman was pale and dishevelled with white hair straggling over her face. Vera felt ridiculous. She might be haunted by the past but Forbes' death could be something more commonplace -- a domestic situation that had developed into a tragedy; she could see that this woman might have mental health problems. ... Vera introduced herself.

"You'll have seen that Edward's shot himself. The bloody fool."

"I can see that he's dead. No idea yet how it happened."

The woman blinked as though she'd been slapped.

Though the stories are all impressively compact crime narratives, they have an unexpected result, at least for me: What I wanted to do after reading the book was keep returning to those photos, the way they captured desolation and betrayal and death.

What a collection! From Graffed, brought to the US by Trafalgar Square Publishing.

[To explore more of this blog, click here, or on the title bar at the top of the post.]

Brief Mention: Loren D. Estleman Stories, in DESPERATE DETROIT (Mysteries)

Flint, Kalamazoo, Detroit ... those Michigan cities keep coming up in the news. To get a slant on the dark syndicate past of Mo-Town itself, there's nothing as enjoyable as a hard-boiled mystery from Loren D. Estleman.

Just in time for the distracted season of spring, when it's a challenge to find time to read a dozen pages at a sitting, Tyrus Books is bringing out (on April 1) DESPERATE DETROIT (subtitle: And Stories of Other Dire Places), a collection of Estleman's widely varied tales. From his earliest pulp-style fiction, to sneakily nasty "PI" adventures, this is a wicked and urbane collection. My advance copy doesn't have the original pub dates and venues for the stories, which I would have enjoyed; but Estleman's personal comments introducing the pieces give a good feel for his own sense of his past and his writerly pleasures. Good twists, classic noir, and a must for any collection of either this author or the pulps and their descendants.

Gower St Detective Series #3, DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA, M.R.C. Kasasian

M.R.C. (Martin) Kasasian's Gower St Detective Series is quirky, often confusing, frequently dark, threaded through with vicious humor -- and irresistible in terms of posing puzzles to solve and placing it all in the most graphic sort of Victorian world.

In short, I like these books. A lot. My only problem has been deciding which friends to share them with. It's entirely possible that anyone I give a Gower St book to will think I am as strange as the characters within. Alas!

And they are fiercely memorable characters. For instance, there's the narrator, a young woman named March Middleton -- except she only narrates part of DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA. There's her godfather Sidney Grice, most famous and most unpleasant detective in the mean streets of London. (Not to mention his insistence on disgusting vegetarian meals, his abuse of his untutored maid-of-all-work, and his scorn for March Middleton herself.)

The puzzles set before March and Grice in the previous two books, The Mangle Street Murders and The Curse of the House of Foskett, have dragged March into gutters and gruesome crime scenes. Her assistance to Grice is a painful necessity: Stranded in his home, unable to live separately due to the mores of Victorian London (and lack of funds), she's caught up in his investigations for lack of anything else to do. And even though his lessons to her are mean-spirited and stingy, she's learning how to assess a crime scene.

But as DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA opens, March is on her own, unexpectedly, when a summons arrives from a relative she never knew existed. Risky though it is to accept such an invitation, she feels compelled: Perhaps this new "uncle" can shed light on the terrible suspicion she's harboring about her godfather's role in the death of her own mother.

What March can't have expected, though, is that Uncle Tolly's home will exert such odd effects on her that she'll soon be convinced she herself has committed murder. Will Sidney Grice exert himself far enough to solve her case? Or will his evidence condemn her in court?

Even as March struggles to gain Grice's assistance, the pair continue to play out a "who's on first" sort of dialogue with the uneducated, blunt-tongued maid, Molly:

"Dear March," Mr G spoke tenderly, "I think you may be telling the truth that you do not know if you did it -- whatever it may be."

Molly came in and put a tea tray on the table. "Cook said I was very rude to say that about your dress the other day, miss."

"It does not matter," I told her.

"I just wanted to make it clear," she continued. "There wasn't not nothing wrong with the dress. Anybody else might have looked pretty in it."

"Thank you, Molly."

"And -- "

"Get out," her employer commanded, "before Miss Middleton attacks you as she allegedly did the last maid who crossed her path."

"Oh miss." Molly put her hand to her mouth. "I never even knew you had a path. I hope I never allegingly cross it."

As you can see, the further you're drawn into DEATH DESCENDS ON SATURN VILLA, the more you are trapped halfway between Alice in Wonderland, and Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with a dash of Jasper Fforde on the top. Is this your kind of book?

I confess it's mine on alternate Tuesdays and Thursdays, and crazy though the series is, I can't put the books down, once I start them. Kasasian's plot twists are always unexpected and bizarre, although perfectly reasonable in hindsight (considering the characters involved). The pace is brisk, and the frank depiction of the dirt and dismay of Victorian everyday life is oddly endearing. Most of all, March Middleton is someone worth saving, somehow, so her disappearance in the middle of DEATH DESCENDS presses the book into desperate straits.

I know -- you're going to tell me you are NOT one of the people I should give this book to. Wait -- you've read this far? Maybe ... maybe you like this crazy British humor in detective guise, after all? Go ahead -- get a copy and enjoy snickering and snorting.

Yes, you can read this without reading the other two books first. But I think it's a lot more fun for this series to take one after another. Mute the phone, and keep the tea and crumpets (no cold cabbage stews!) coming.

PS - There's no author website at the moment, as far as I can tell, although Pegasus Crime hosts a launching spot for Kasasian. Look for him on social media instead.

Diversion: Eighth Collection of Poems from Leland Kinsey, GALVANIZED

Poetry month will arrive in a few more days, and with it, on April 8, the publication of the eighth collection of poems from Vermont writer Leland Kinsey. Nearly 400 pages thick, the volume is a treasure of rural life -- of place, and of family, as well as the traditional trades of farming and "going to the woods" for trees, lumber, solitude, and consolation. GALVANIZED speaks to the energy and nearly alchemical process of refining experience into story, and story into poem, as Lee continues to do.

The collection is a "New and Selected Poems," fronted with a baker's dozen of poems that haven't seen the press before. They are not all "just hatched" ... but maybe they have lain on the desk long enough to detach their sharp edges from this poet's heart, so that he can allow us to enter his grief for his sister Helen, for instance, in "Transit of Venus." These newly revealed tales-in-lines are also a bit looser in form and sound, a bit more clearly the stories themselves that press toward the light. Kinsey's kneading, pressing, and forming of the narratives engage us in the sharp turning points, the sudden awareness of a son who echoes one's own childhood, a longing for long-passed times and family members, a connection between what was then and what stands strongly now: as "Work and Song" announces, "substrate, intrusions, and bedrock / redolant with song."

Of equal and lasting delight are Kinsey's selections from his seven earlier books, and I felt as though I were milling in a crowd of old friends, marveling at how their early appearances had lingered in their lined faces full of character and choice. From the Barton, Vermont, poet's first book, Northern Almanac, I found the memorable and still shocking (in the sense that a young man is shocked by his first exposure to the grit and glory of sexuality) long poem "Fair Days." From Not One Man's Work is the poem "Galvanized," with an ending that satisfies me all over again, describing the "niter," the unpalatable residue from boiling maple sap for a season:

When young we tried it ourselves
dared each other to like it.
It had the sour and bitter taste
of the metals that make the world,
and, if attention was paid,
left for a second on the tongue
a thin sweet coating.

Here is also one of my favorites, "Fireflies," one of the many poems drenched heart-deep with Kinsey's emotions and connections to his father and his upbringing. (This is unquestionably a man's world for this poet, in a good sense, the way that Maxine Kumin's poems were and are always a woman's.) "My father's face glistens / in the milk house doorway / the first hot night in June."

I paged eagerly into the section from In the Rain Shadow, poems that follow this quintessential rural Vermont poet on a once-in-a-lifetime visit to a cousin working in Tanzania, where people call out "Kinsey!" and don't expect Leland to reply! I love the ties of one working landscape to another, half a world away, as with "In the Rain Shadow of Mount Meru," where the first stanza opens with "Young camels' groaning calls / carry to their mothers" and then nips toward "The least of the camels produce more milk / than an average cross-bred cow." Each new experience is lapped over the earlier ones, building a fresh sense of both the distant location and the meaning of home.

Three-quarters through, the collection crescendoes into poems from The Immigrant's Contract, a book I share with people who find poetry confusing in general -- but who may find themselves deeply connected to Kinsey's portrait of the landscape of the Nullhegan River's surroundings, where "the immigrant" logger proclaims: "Took years to cut this region over once. / This river drove us both ways, / into and out of life, and, shining dark-like, / just kept coming." And at last there are poems from the sweet and intense exploration of the wildlands remaining among us, Winter Ready, which Kinsey gave to us in 2014, spilling out "bottle gentian, asters, nettles" as well as "Moose paths, vole and lemming runs" -- the varied and specific abundance of the places best explored alone, a little bit lost, aching with both grief and beauty.

GALVANIZED captures why we live in the vulnerable places of the world, tasting and savoring and exploring. It captures the root word "love" in "loveliness," without speaking those names, but instead showing us through story, memory, and vivid complexity. Let this book simmer and thus perfume the days and evenings ahead. With Leland Kinsey, Green Writers Press of Brattleboro, Vermont, has brought us this fine and treasured gift.

America's Revolution Begins in Murder, in BLOOD OF THE OAK, Eliot Pattison

What kinds of oppression awaken a nation to action? When do struggles for survival become a force to light a revolution? No, I'm not talking about this year's Presidential campaign, but rather, the simmering, smoky, and definitely violent build-up to the American Revolution. In the fourth book of his Bone Rattler series, BLOOD OF THE OAK, Eliot Pattison's protagonist confronts those questions -- and the investigation of multiple murders.

Exiled and shorn of his family and clan, Duncan McCallum's path during the three earlier books has meant turning his medical training into the baby steps of a new forensic science. Technically he's still a runaway from government justice, living in the forests of Pennsylvania, far from the vicious man who claims to hold him within an indenture. But readers of the earlier books have seen Duncan transformed through learning the ways of the Algonquin Nation. His friend Conawago is an elder of the Nipmuc tride, and together the men have survived brutal attacks, rescued the well-meaning and innocent, and upheld the tribal rights and customs. Duncan has, in fact, joined a New World clan, and he's well aware of how fortunate he has been. Now in 1765, he even has a woman in his life, someone he trusts and respects and who is also working for justice and, dare we say it, peace.

That may be a lot to swallow for first-time readers of this series. If it sound like further than you can imagine stretching, don't read this one yet -- go to Bone Rattler, then Eye of the Raven, then Original Death. Follow along on this remarkable but step-by-step reasonable path that Pattison outlines.

But many first-time readers of the series will find instead that the quick pace, dramatic action, and fiercely honorable allies presented here make it easy to leap into Duncan's adventures right away. Remember how William Penn thought he was creating a "city of brotherly love" in Philadelphia? Duncan's beloved Sarah Ramsey makes a smaller version possible on the western frontier (yes, Pennsylvania edged the wilderness then), in her Edentown. And Duncan needs some of that peace and tranquillity for himself.

Especially now, because he has a mission from the Iroquois. Summoning him to use his skills, Adanahoe, an elderly woman who leads the spiritual side of the tribes, needs him to retrieve a holy item that's been stolen -- before the tribes lose their ability to survive in the new age.

Almost before Duncan can reach his heart's home, though, killings erupt around him -- and without time to consider, he's thrust out into the wilderness again, chasing murderers and trying to interpret cryptic clues that surround him.

Without our hindsight, Duncan has no idea that the colonists around him in 1765 have reached a boiling point. He's been out in the forest, after all. In the taverns, and the back rooms of powerful men, rebellion is brewing. War is on the table for consideration -- and Duncan takes far too long to grasp what's at stake.

But he sees clearly enough the folly of the settlers and city men, even the ones who think they are healers bringing their art to the natives, like the young Benjamin Rush, an associate of Ben Franklin's.

Duncan eyed the tied leather roll Rush had carried through his ordeal, now resting on the pile of logs beside the young scientist. Rush sighed but did not stop him as he unrolled it, exposing a row of silvery instruments, each in its own sewn pocket. Surgical knives, tweezers, a metal rule, a small bone saw, probes, long needles with silk thread, and a reed-thin stem of metal with a tiny mirror at its end ...

Duncan eyed the tools uneasily. "What exactly in God's name are you doing here, Rush?"

"Gathering evidence, of course. With doctors in Philadelphia paying three pounds a body, there's no end of cadavers there. But it's damnable hard to find a native specimen. ... I showed them my coin. I asked about the recently dead. They did not seem to understand. Only one spoke any English and that poorly. So I pulled out a surgical blade to help him understand. He asked what it was and I told him, very slowly, to help him grasp the word. Then he pulls out his war ax and shouts at me."

Duncan stared in mute astonishment. "You must have an angel hovering over you to have survived so long. ... You come from Philadelphia, where they pay bounties for Indian hair, you show him your coin, then display your blade, naming it your scalpel." Duncan repeated the word, slowly, the way Rush must have done. "Scalp-el."

The color left Rush's face. "Dear God! I didn't ... I never meant to suggest ... dear God!" he repeated.

Duncan stared at the forlorn man, wondering not for the first time how learned men could be so unwise in the ways of the world.

But this interlude is almost a gentle one, compared with what Duncan and his friends are headed toward, as Duncan's hunt for a murderous cabal puts him into the way of the most angry patriots along the New World's coast. Duncan has never dreamed that good, wise men would ever actually choose to defy the King -- and as he begins to realize how wrong he has been, lives of the people he loves are on the line. He will have to mesh his training in deduction and reason, with the canny opportunism he's learned from both of his "tribes," to have a chance at surviving.

The horrible conditions of slaveholding, of manipulative indentures, of women who have no real rights, and of invaders uprooting a land's people in order to seize wealth -- all of these align againtst Duncan in this volume.

A small caution for mystery readers: Although Duncan's forensics operate powerfully here, especially in the first half of BLOOD OF THE OAK, several major twists and his eventual fate depend more on his ability to choose the right alliances and sustain them. Thus, this is less a tale of investigation than of revelation and maturing.

His confusion was like a physical pain. He stared at the foreboding words [on a slip of paper inside a Bible], which kindled anew his grief for the young couple in the churchyard.

It made no sense that amidst the urgent, mysterious work these men were engaged in they would take the time to speak of Shakespeare, to memorize passages ... He shook his head in bewilderment.

Pattison's deep strength is in his gift of in-life autopsy of the human mind and soul. He lines up, chapter upon chapter, the forces that Duncan must face in a new way -- or lose himself in the process.

So, this one's a little less of a clue-based mystery, but instead a powerful book of transition: for Duncan, from naive to knowing; for his friends, from tribal loyalty to spiritual search; and for the settlers and their gatherings, from ruled colonies to something that dares to whisper: Independence.

There must be a sequel already in the works; I'm looking forward to watching Pattison carry this striking and passionate narrative into the explosions that will forge the American Revolution -- and Duncan McCallum's fate.