MYSTERIES in PARADISE: 2014 mystery author challenge

Showing posts with label 2014 mystery author challenge. Show all posts

18 December 2014

Mystery Challenge completed

The A-Z Mystery Challenge was run at Red Headed Book Child for the calendar year of 2014.
I began my record page on 3 March and completed the final book on 17 Dec.

Mostly it was not hard to find books for the challenge but I have had to make conscious efforts in the last few weeks to locate titles for authors whose surnames begin with E, Y and X.

It is really is a bit of a variant of the Crime Fiction Alphabet challenge that I have run for the last few years.

The rules

A-Z represents the LAST name of the author in the mystery, thriller, suspense, cozy, noir, etc. genre.
Read as many or as little as you want.
Post your links here for your Challenge post and your reviews!
Challenge Runs January 1, 2014 - December 31, 2014
Have fun!

Number of letters achieved: 26/26

17 December 2014

Review: ENIGMA OF CHINA, Qiu Xiaolong

published 2013 by St. Martin's Press
ISBN 978-1-250-02580-7
277 pages
#8 in the Inspector Chen series
source: my local library

Synopsis (MacMillan)

Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Department is in an unusual situation—a poet by training and inclination, he was assigned by the party to the Police Department after he graduated college, where he has continued to shine. Now he’s a rising cadre in the party, in line to take over the top politic position in the police department, while being one of most respected policeman in the department. Which is why he’s brought in by the Party to sign off on the investigation into the death of Zhou Keng.

Zhou Keng—a trusted princeling, son of a major party member—was head of the Shanghai Housing Development Committee when a number of his corrupt practices were exposed on the internet. Removed from his position and placed into extra-legal detention, Zhou apparently hanged himself while under guard. While the Party is anxious to have Zhou’s death declared a suicide, and for the renowned Chief Inspector Chen to sign off on that conclusion, the sequence of events don’t quite add up. Now Chen will have to decide what to do – investigate the death as a possible homicide and risk angering unseen powerful people, or seek the justice that his position requires him to strive for.

My Take

ENIGMA OF CHINA is not just a murder mystery, but also an exploration of Chinese history and culture. It also explores the role, even in China, of social media, of crowd-sourced investigation, so-called "human-flesh" searches, triggered in this case by the release of a photograph of Zhou Keng with a pack of very expensive brand cigarettes sitting on the table in front of him. The irony does not escape Chief Inspector Chen who has also accepted gifts in kind from Big Bucks customers.

But in Zhou's case a number of other examples of corruption have been unearthed, including a batch of compromising sex photographs. But it still doesn't seem very likely that he would have committed suicide. Chen's curiosity is further piqued when a police colleague is run down and killed outside the Party newspaper headquarters. Chen realises that he could very well share Wei's fate if he doesn't tread carefully.

Xiaolong paints a fascinating picture of life in Shanghai with vast economic and social gulfs between ordinary people and those who have access to privelege.

My rating: 4.5

I've also reviewed 4.4, DEATH OF A RED HEROINE which won the Anthony Award for best first novel in 2001.

About the author:
Qiu Xiaolong was born in Shanghai and, since 1988, has lived in St. Louis, Missouri. A poet and a translator, he has an MA and a Ph.D. from Washington University. He is the author of several previous novels featuring Inspector Chen, including the award-winning Death of a Red Heroine and A Case of Two Cities.

This is my final title for the 2014 A-Z Mystery Challenge

6 December 2014

Review: ANTIDOTE TO MURDER, Felicity Young

first published by Harper Collins 2013
ISBN 978-0-7322-9369-7
325 pages
#2 in the Dody McLeland series
source: my local library

Synopsis (publisher)

Set in Edwardian London, this fantastic mystery series features Britain's first female autopsy surgeon.

When an act of compassion misfires, autopsy surgeon Dr Dody McCleland must fight not only for her career, but also for her life. The body of a scullery maid is discovered in her room. When it emerges that she had recently begged Dody to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, the coroner recommends Dody be tried for criminal abortion causing death. Meanwhile, the one man who might be able to help her, Chief Inspector Matthew Pike, is nowhere to be found.

After another woman's body is discovered bearing all the hallmarks of the same crime, Dody suspects that a rogue doctor is on the loose. Amid the turbulence of Edwardian London with its mix of strikes, suffragettes, German spies, exotic dancers and an illicit drug trade, Dody must unmask the killer before more girls are butchered and her own life ends on the gallows.

My take

Australian crime fiction author Felicity Young does a good job with a historical setting, giving her novel a feeling of authenticity, at the same time presenting the problems which women faced in the medical profession in the early 20th century.

Set in London in 1911, when conducting an abortion is a criminal offence, and encouraging women to practice birth control is also illegal, Dody assists the famous Sir Bernard Spilsbury in autopsies. But even with the great man's patronage, she treads a very thin line as she advises women towards better contol of their child bearing.

Dody faces not only public opposition to women like her breaking into the professions, but also opposition among males already working there. And treachery comes from an unexpected place, almost resulting in her death.

My rating: 4.5

I've also reviewed
A CERTAIN MALICE
HARUM SCARUM
TAKE OUT
4.7, A DISSECTION OF MURDER -#1 in the Dody McLeland series

4 December 2014

Review: THE SHADOW WOMAN, Ake Edwardson

Format: Kindle (Amazon)
File Size: 787 KB
Print Length: 355 pages
Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0143117947
Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (September 28, 2010) - it was originally published in Sweden in 1998
Translated by Per Carlsson
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B003XQEVRG

Synopsis (Amazon)

It's August and the annual Gothenburg Party is in full swing. But this year the bacchanalian blowout is simmering with ethnic discord spurred by nativist gangs. When a woman is found murdered in the park-her identity as inscrutable as the blood-red symbol on the tree above her body-Winter's search for her missing child leads him from sleek McMansions to the Gothenburg fringes, where "northern suburbs" is code for "outsider" and the past is inescapable-even for Sweden's youngest chief inspector.

Chief Inspector Erik Winter investigates the murder of Helene Anderson, whose body was found in a local park. Armed with few clues, Winter soon learns that the young woman left behind a child who may still be alive. Further probing leads him more than two decades back in time to a bank robbery in Denmark that a very young Helene likely witnessed. (The perpetrators remain at large, a source of great frustration for local law enforcement.) Winter travels to Denmark, and soon a cold case turns hot. Back on the home front, the inspector must contend with the annual Gothenburg Party, a hedonistic free-for-all that prompts riots among nativist gangs.

My Take

The novel begins

For three years a massive drug war between the Hells Angels and the Bandidos has ripped through Scandinavia. Antitank rockets swiped from the Swedish military have been launched at club-houses, gun fights have erupted in airports, car bombs have been planted and bystanders killed. A well-publicized truce will soo bring the Great Nordic Biker War to a close, but not before dozens of lives are claimed by the violence, many of them innocent.

While this foreword helps put the action of the novel in 1997 it also confused me until I realised the novel was a reprint.

It actually takes some time, and a lot of careful police work, and a vital contribution by a concerned elderly citizen, to identify the young woman's body. Erik Winter becomes concerned with what has happened to the red-haired little girl who was seen with the young woman. Winter is a policeman who can't focus on anything else once an investigation gets underway.

One of the interesting features of this story is the feeling of history repeating itself. Twenty five years earlier the young woman was involved in a similar incident when her own mother disappeared. Both mother and daughter leave behind paintings that give clues to the life they've been leading. My guess is that some readers won't realise there are two young voices in the narrative.

My rating: 4.3

I've also read FROZEN TRACKS

EuroCrime lists the titles available in English in this order
Chief Inspector Erik Winter, Gothenburg, Sweden

• Death Angels	2009	1
• The Shadow Woman	2010	2
• Sun and Shadow	2005	3
• Never End	2006	4
• Frozen Tracks	2007	5
• Sail of Stone	2012	6
• Room No. 10	2013	7

6 October 2014

Review: CURTAIN CALL, Anthony Quinn

Random House UK, Vintage Publishing
Pub Date Jan 8 2015
source: NetGalley

Synopsis (NetGalley)

On a sultry afternoon in the summer of 1936 a woman accidentally interrupts an attempted murder in a London hotel room. Nina Land, a West End actress, faces a dilemma: she’s not supposed to be at the hotel in the first place, and certainly not with a married man. But once it becomes apparent that she may have seen the face of the man the newspapers have dubbed ‘the Tie-Pin Killer’ she realises that another woman's life could be at stake.

Jimmy Erskine is the raffish doyen of theatre critics who fears that his star is fading: age and drink are catching up with him, and in his late-night escapades with young men he walks a tightrope that may snap at any moment. He has depended for years on his loyal and longsuffering secretary Tom, who has a secret of his own to protect. Tom’s chance encounter with Madeleine Farewell, a lost young woman haunted by premonitions of catastrophe, closes the circle: it was Madeleine who narrowly escaped the killer’s stranglehold that afternoon, and now walks the streets in terror of his finding her again.

Curtain Call is a comedy of manners, and a tragedy of mistaken intentions. From the glittering murk of Soho’s demi-monde to the grease paint and ghost-lights of theatreland, the story plunges on through smoky clubrooms, tawdry hotels and drag balls towards a denouement in which two women are stalked by the same killer. As bracing as a cold Martini and as bright as a new tie-pin, it is at once a deeply poignant love story, a murder mystery and an irresistible portrait of a society dancing towards the abyss.

My Take

The King died at the beginning of 1936 and so this crime thriller is set firmly against that year: not only is there the scandal of the king-to-be's affair with the American Woman, and lurking in the background a gruesome murderer who has already claimed three victims; but Hitler and Mussolini both menace on the European horizon. The popularity of Moseley and Fascism are growing apace throughout the country, anti-Semitic sentiment grows in London society, while other institutions cling to the old ways, homosexuality is condemned and punishable by gaol sentence when detected, and the Crystal Palace burns down.

The plot has at least three bases that feel their way towards each other. The historical background is wonderfully well done, without losing sight of the characters whose lives play out in the foreground.

An excellent read.

My rating: 4.6

7 August 2014

2014 Mystery Author Challenge A-Z

This is the first of many updated pages and posts.
I'm doing quite well on this challenge but I can already see some problem letters like Q, X, and Z.
Page first begun on 3 March 2014
Completed 17 Dec 2014

I really am a bit of a sucker for challenges aren't I, but this one appeals to me, and will overlap my existing reading and challenges quite well.

It is really is a bit of a variant of the Crime Fiction Alphabet challenge that I have run for the last few years (and I may well do that again some time in 2014)

The A-Z Mystery Challenge is being run at Red Headed Book Child for the calendar year of 2014.

The rules

A-Z represents the LAST name of the author in the mystery, thriller, suspense, cozy, noir, etc. genre.
Read as many or as little as you want.
Post your links here for your Challenge post and your reviews!
Challenge Runs January 1, 2014 - December 31, 2014
Have fun!

I am going to use this page as my record page too.

Last updated 17 December 2014

Number of letters achieved: 26/26

1 July 2014

Review: FINAL CURTAIN, Ed Ifkovic

Format: e-book (Kindle)
review copy from publisher via NetGalley
File Size: 1288 KB
Print Length: 268 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press (June 5, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00KTCTXHK
#5 in the Edna Ferber series

Synopsis (Publisher)

Who murdered the handsome young actor? And why?

In 1940, against the chilling backdrop of Hitler’s rise and the specter of another war, Edna Ferber decides to follow an old dream: to act on the stage. Selecting The Royal Family, the comedy she wrote with George S. Kaufman, for her starring role, she travels to Maplewood, New Jersey. But her escape from the troubling daily headlines is short lived. Before opening night, a mysterious understudy is shot to death, opening up a world of lies, greed, and hypocrisy.

Ferber, along with Kaufman, who is directing the production, begin a different kind of collaboration: the discovery of the murderer. As rehearsals evolve, they deal with a cast of characters who are all hiding something from their days spent in Hollywood: a stage manager, a young ingénue, an American Nazi and his boisterous girlfriend, a stagehand named Dakota who is the son of a famous evangelist, his charismatic preacher-mother, her money-bags husband, and a driven acolyte of the church. Each character, Edna discovers, has some connection with the dead man. Why have they all converged on quiet Maplewood? As Edna investigates, she realizes that the answer to the murder lies back in Hollywood.

As Kaufman wisecracks his way through the story, Edna methodically examines the facts, determined to find the answer. Opening night looms and so does World War II. Edna, resolute, believes that justice needs to prevail in a world that is falling apart.

Background material (Wikipedia)

Edna Ferber (August 15, 1885 – April 16, 1968) was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron (1929; made into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), and Giant (1952; made into the 1956 Hollywood movie).

She also wrote

Minick: A Play (1924) (play, with G. S. Kaufman)
Stage Door (1926) (play, with G.S. Kaufman)
The Royal Family (1927) (play, with G. S. Kaufman)

FINAL CURTAIN is #5 in the author's Edna Furber series. - check Publisher Poisoned Press.
The others are
#1. LONE STAR: Writer Edna Ferber arrives on the set of Giant to find her self in the middle of a murder investigation. Set in 1952.
#2. ESCAPE ARTIST: 19 year old reporter Edna Ferber interviews Harry Houdini.Set in 1904.
#3. MAKE BELIEVE: in June 1951 Edna Ferber heads to Hollywood to support an old friend who has found himself blacklisted as a result of the McCarthy hearings.
#4. DOWNTOWN STRUT; Manhattan 1927: Edna Ferber prepares for "the Ferber season on Broadway." On December 27, the musical adaptation of Show Boat by Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern opens. On December 28, The Royal Family, her comedy of manners written with George Kaufman, hits the stage despite Ethel Barrymore’s disapproval of the play’s depiction of “theatrical royalty.” But despite the excitement, Edna misses both opening nights. She has something else on her mind—murder.

My Take

I've included the background material above in my review because it indicates the search I did to understand the background to this novel. My curiosity was pricked by the foreword to the review copy provided by Barbara Peters, Editor-in-Chief, Poisoned Pen Press.

Initially the name Edna Ferber meant nothing to me, but then discovered that I knew at least about ShowBoat. However I don't think I have ever read any of her novels or short stories. That may be because I am not an American resident, and so her work has never been part of any course reading I have done either at school or university.

I really am of two minds when a contemporary writer hitches his star to that of a "great". However I have tried to be as objective as I can be about FINAL CURTAIN, even though it attempts to bring both Edna Furber and G.S. Kaufman to life. I have no means of deciding how accurate these depictions are.

On its own, FINAL CURTAIN, is quite an intriguing plot. Edna Furber is delighted with the opportunity to go on stage, but from the very beginning there is a murder and intrigue. There is a focus on the Nazi element in the USA in 1940 which adds period authenticity. Furber and Kaufman are Jews. There is a second murder and Furber's investigation intensifies.

I think the author has taken great care with the style of these novels, to try to capture the style of how Edna Furber wrote - did I mention that the novel is presented in the first person?

My rating: 4.3

If you want to understand why I've used the graphic to the right, you might want to check this post.

23 June 2014

Review: GREY MASK, Patricia Wentworth - audio book

first published 1928
#1 in the Miss Silver series
Narrated by: Diana Bishop
Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
Format: Unabridged
audio book from Audible.com

Synopsis (Publisher)

The first of the classic mysteries featuring governess-turned-detective Miss Silver, who investigates a deadly conspiratorial ring.

Charles Moray has come home to England to collect his inheritance. After four years wandering the jungles of India and South America, the hardy young man returns to the manor of his birth, where generations of Morays have lived and died. Strangely, he finds the house unlocked, and sees a light on in one of its abandoned rooms. Eavesdropping, he learns of a conspiracy to commit a fearsome crime.

Never one for the heroic, Charles’ first instinct is to let the police settle it. But then he hears her voice. Margaret, his long-lost love, is part of the gang. To unravel their diabolical plot, he contacts Miss Silver, a onetime governess who applies her reason to solve crimes and face the dangers of London’s underworld.

My Take

I've read this as part of the 2014 Vintage Mystery Challenge. I'm sure I have read a Miss Silver novel before, maybe even several (see these posts about forgotten books), but have not reviewed any on this blog, so a long time ago. Although the first in the Miss Silver series, this was far from Patricia Wentworth's first novel. There would eventually be over 30 titles in this series, which she kept publishing until 1961. However the second title in the series does not appear for another nine years.

It is probably inevitable that readers compare Miss Silver with Agatha Christie's Jane Marple, who made her first appearance in 1927. In contrast to Miss Marple, Miss Silver had had a previous career as a governess, and seems to be more experienced in the ways of the world, whereas Miss Marple is mainly experienced in village life. While Miss Silver appears to be attempting to be make a living as a private detective and sleuth, Miss Marple gets her cases from the things that happen around her.

Miss Silver does not appear to be as old as Miss Marple, but at the same time is rather more non-descript. Both are spinsters, and both seem rather small and harmless. Both do a lot of knitting. The author stresses how colourless and drab Miss Silver is. In fact the plot seems to bear that out for there are long passages between her appearances, and the reader could be forgiven for forgetting that she is "on the job" at all. But she has the knack of turning up when you least expect her, and she certainly is a shrewd observer. And in the long run it is Miss Silver who initiates the decisive action that brings everything to a satisfactory resolution and saves the day.

So how well has GREY MASK weathered? The plot is passable but I think perhaps the language of the novel is a bit dated. It seems set in a world of inheritances and a social structure that even by 1929 was rapidly disappearing.

My rating: 4.1

19 June 2014

Review: THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE, Carin Gerhardsen

first published in 2008
This edition published in 2012 by Stockholm Text Publishing
translated from Swedish into English by Paul Norlen
Also available from Penguin Australia and Amazon (Kindle)
ISBN 978-9-1871-7330-1
first title in the Hammarby series
305 pages
source: my local library

Synopsis (Penguin Australia)

Ingrid Olsson returns home from a Stockholm hospital to discover a man in her kitchen. She's never seen the intruder before. But he's no threat - he's dead.

Criminal Investigator Conny Sjöberg takes the call, abandoning his wife Åsa and their five children for the night. His team identify the body as that of a middle-aged family man. But why was he there? And who bludgeoned him to death?

Lacking suspect and motive, Sjoberg's team struggle until they link the case to another - apparently random - killing. And discover they face a serial killer on a terrible vendetta . . .

My Take

A reading friend introduced me very enthusiastically to this author. Our local library has the first two titles in the series, and I'll be reading the second.

The reader sees the story not only from the angle of the police investigators who identify the body of the 44 year old man on the kitchen floor, but also from the point of view of one of his victims. As the bodies of other 44 year olds turn up, the police team tries to identify the thread that connects them. But we, the readers, already know what that thread is.

There is quite a lot of background about members of the police team, as we would expect at the beginning of a new series. A female member of the team is drugged and raped and undertakes an investigation of her own into the perpetrator. That thread provides an interesting second story.

The byline on the front cover of the edition I read says "published by the same team that brought you THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO", and I did think "Oh no, someone else riding on Stieg Larsson's coat-tails". The writing in THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE is not as complex as Larsson's nor the story quite as deep, but the blurb is right when it says "dark, suspenseful, and deep".

So here is a new name in Scandinavian crime fiction for you to track down. The next in the series is CINDERELLA GIRL which I gather may have had the working title of PLAYING HOUSE.

My rating: 4.7

About the author

Carin Gerhardsen was born in 1962 in Katrineholm, Sweden. Originally a mathematician, she enjoyed a successful career as an IT consultant before turning her hand to writing crime fiction. Cinderella Girl is the second novel in The Hammarby Series, novels following Detective Inspector Conny Sjoberg and his murder investigation team. Carin now lives in Stockholm with her husband and their two children. She is currently working on the seventh title in the series.

26 May 2014

Review: THE AMBER FURY, Natalie Haynes

format: Kindle (Amazon)
File Size: 535 KB
Print Length: 320 pages
Publisher: Corvus (February 6, 2014)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00GW5DYA0

Synopsis (Amazon)

When you open up, who will you let in?

When Alex Morris loses her fiancé in dreadful circumstances, she moves from London to Edinburgh to make a break with the past. Alex takes a job at a Pupil Referral Unit, which accepts the students excluded from other schools in the city. These are troubled, difficult kids and Alex is terrified of what she's taken on.

There is one class - a group of five teenagers - who intimidate Alex and every other teacher on The Unit. But with the help of the Greek tragedies she teaches, Alex gradually develops a rapport with them. Finding them enthralled by tales of cruel fate and bloody revenge, she even begins to worry that they are taking her lessons to heart, and that a whole new tragedy is being performed, right in front of her...

My Take

This book was chosen by a group member for our next read in our face to face group. It is not hard to understand why she chose it. The group is composed mostly of retired teacher librarians and English teachers, and I guess some of us have even taught drama at times. I guess we have even had challenging classes like the one Alex teaches at The Unit.

There are two murders in this story, the second in particular surrounded by mystery which the author maintains to the point that the reader doesn't even find out much about what has happened until about three quarters of the way through the book. In telling you that, I hope I am not revealing too much.

For our particular reading group there will be a number of interesting discussion points: the dynamics of the class and the problems of teaching students who have been excluded from other schools; the appropriateness of teaching violent Greek plays to teenagers; the problems of being stalked by one of your students; and inclusivity in the classroom and the problems of teaching a student who has a physical disability.

So I don't think this book will be everyone's cup of tea, but it was mine. There are few flat patches in the novel but the level of tension remains fairly high throughout. There is just enough of a puzzle about what has happened to keep the reader sorting facts and putting things in order.

My rating: 4.5

About the author (Fantastic Fiction)

Natalie Haynes is a writer and broadcaster. She appears on BBC Radio 4 as a presenter of documentaries and she is a reviewer of books, films, plays, television and art on Saturday Review and Front Row. She has judged the 2012 Orange Prize (now the Baileys Womens Prize for Fiction) and judged the 2013 Man Booker Prize. She judged Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel in 2010.

Her first non-fiction book, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life, was serialised by The Times in 2010. It has also been sold in the US, and translated into Greek, Spanish and Portuguese. Among many other favourable reviews, The Financial Times suggested you shouldn't read AC Grayling's The Good Book without reading The Ancient Guide first.Natalie was also a stand-up comedian for 12 years, and was the first woman ever to be nominated for the prestigious Perrier Best Newcomer Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She retired in 2009 to spend more time writing. She delivered the Voltaire Lecture at Conway Hall in March 2011.

4 May 2014

Review: THE DOCTOR OF THESSALY, Anne Zouroudi

originally published in 2009
now available as an e-book, published 2012
ISBN 9780316217859
review copy made available from NetGalley by publisher Little Brown & Company
#3 in the Hermes Diaktoros series: aka the Seven Deadly Sins Mystery series (Envy)

Synopsis

A jilted bride weeps on an empty beach. A local doctor is attacked in an isolated churchyard. Trouble arrives at a bad time to the backwater village of Morfi, just as the community is making headlines with a visit from a high-ranking government minister. Fortunately, where there's trouble, there's Hermes Diaktoros, the mysterious fat man whose tennis shoes are always pristine and whose investigative methods are always unorthodox.

Hermes must investigate a brutal crime, thwart the petty machinations of the town's ex-mayor and his cronies, and try to settle the troubled waters of two sisters' relationship. But how can he unravel a mystery that not even the victim wants solved?

My take

I'm still as intrigued by the character and origins of the central character in this series, Hermes Diaktoros as I was when I read the first in this series a couple of years ago. He introduces himself as coming from Athens, not a policeman, but responsible to "higher authorities". He shares characteristics with Agatha Christie's Mr Harley Quin as he seems to mysteriously appear from nowhere to see that justice is done. But he also reminds me both of Hercule Poirot of the immaculate patent leather shoes, and Shamini Flint's Inspector Singh who also wears rather incongruous white sandshoes.

It is easy to accept Hermes Diaktoros, always referred to as "the fat man", as a messenger of the gods. He arrives on Thessaly driving his cousin's immaculately kept vintage car, and he interferes willy nilly in the machinations of local politicians who want to bring the downfall of the newly elected young Mayor. The sort of justice he brings to bear would not be found acceptable by the police and yet it seems what the perpetrators deserve. His methods of investigation involve him listening and observing the locals.

If you are looking for a cosy that is just a little different this may be just the trick. It may also set you hunting for others in the series.

My rating: 4.5

About the author (from Fantastic Fiction)

Born in rural Lincolnshire in 1959, Anne moved to South Yorkshire at the age of two. Following her education at Sheffield High School for Girls, she went into the IT industry, a career which took her to both New York's Wall Street and Denver, Colorado. In America she began to take seriously her ambition to write fiction, and bought a typewriter for her first short stories.

On returning to the UK, she booked a summer holiday with her sister. The location they chose was a tiny island in southern Greece. Anne spent a number of years living in the islands; she married a Greek, and her son was born there.

Returning again to the UK, she was still writing, but the short stories had grown into novels.Anne currently lives with her son in Derbyshire's beautiful Peak District, where she's working on the next book in the Greek Detective series.

The Hermes Diaktoros series (Fantastic Fiction)
1. The Messenger of Athens (2007)
2. The Taint of Midas (2008)
3. The Doctor of Thessaly (2009)
4. The Lady of Sorrows (2010)
5. The Whispers of Nemesis (2011)
6. The Bull of Mithros (2012)
7. Feast of Artemis (2013)

I've also reviewed
4.5, THE MESSENGER OF ATHENS

3 April 2014

Review: THE GHOST RUNNER, Parker Bilal

published 2014
ISBN 9-781408-841112
#3 in the Makana series
413 pages
from my local library

Synopsis (Fantastic Fiction)

It is 2002 and as tanks roll into the West Bank and the reverberations of 9/11 echo across the globe, tensions are running high on Cairo's streets.

Private Investigator Makana, in exile from his native Sudan and increasingly haunted by memories of his wife and daughter, is shaken out of his despondency when a routine surveillance job leads him to the horrific murder of a teenage girl. In a country where honor killings are commonplace and the authorities seem all too eager to turn a blind eye, Makana determines to track down the perpetrator. He finds unexpected assistance in the shape of Zahra, a woman who seems to share Makana's hunger for justice.

Seeking answers in the dead girl's past he travels to Siwa, an oasis town on the edge of the great Sahara Desert, where the law seems disturbingly far away and old grievances simmer just below the surface. As violence follows him through the twisting, sandblown streets and an old enemy lurks in the shadows, Makana discovers that the truth can be as deadly and as changeable as the desert beneath his feet.

My take

This really is one of those books that takes the Western reader into a very different world.

Makana is at first engaged to track a lawyer whose wife says she thinks he is having an affair. The lawyer in turn hires Makana to find out the truth about the death of a young woman in a house fire. The investigation takes him out of Cairo to the desert and he finds himself assisting local police in solving the horrific murders of two local men, one the local Qadi who was trying to make money from selling land that he didn't own, and the other a simpleton who thought he saw a ghost.

Predictably, it is all quite a tangled story, but one that has its roots in the past. In the end I thought the plot became just a little too tangled for the author, and I didn't think the final resolution was all that satisfying, although probably realistic.

My rating : 4.4

About the author
Parker Bilal is the pseudonym of Jamal Mahjoub. Mahjoub has published seven critically acclaimed literary novels, which have been widely translated. Born in London, he has lived at various times in the UK, Sudan, Cairo and Denmark. He currently lives in Barcelona.

28 March 2014

Review: VISITATION STREET, Ivy Pochoda

Format: Kindle (Amazon)
File Size: 602 KB
Print Length: 320 pages
Publisher: Sceptre (July 18, 2013)
Sold by: Hachette Book Group
Language: English
ASIN: B00BQDC7MO

Synopsis (Amazon)

Summer in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a blue collar neighbourhood where hipster gourmet supermarkets push against tired housing projects, and the East River opens into the bay. Bored and listless, fifteen-year-old June and Val are looking for some fun. Forget the boys, the bottles, the coded whistles. Val wants to do something wild and a little crazy: take a raft out onto the bay.

But out on the water, as the bright light of day gives way to darkness, the girls disappear. Only Val will survive, washed ashore semi-conscious in the weeds.

June's shocking disappearance will reverberate in the lives of a diverse cast of Red Hook residents. Fadi, the Lebanese bodega owner, trolls for information about the crime. Cree, just beginning to pull it together after his father's murder, unwittingly makes himself the chief suspect - although an elusive guardian seems to have other plans for him. As Val emerges from the shadow of her missing friend, her teacher Jonathan, Juilliard drop-out and barfly, will be forced to confront a past riddled with tragic sins of omission.

In VISITATION STREET, Ivy Pochoda combines intensely vivid prose with breathtaking psychological insight to explore a cast of solitary souls, pulled by family, love, and betrayal, who yearn for a chance to escape, no matter the cost.

My Take

First of all I'm going to say this is not really crime fiction although crimes are committed in the novel's background. It is more an exploration of how one girl copes with the disappearance of her friend, of what makes up the community of Red Hook on the waterfront in Brooklyn, of how residents work to create community cohesiveness, and the lengths that someone will go to to pay a debt.

Ivy Pochoda creates a vision of a community that is haunted by the ghosts of the past. Sometimes the voices of the past reach out and keep the people of the present anchored there.
There was a passage that I particularly liked:

He understands what keeps Gloria in Red Hook. It’s not what is here now, but what was here back when—the history being buffed and polished away in the longshoreman’s bar.

As he crosses from this abandoned corner of the waterside back over to the Houses he becomes aware of the layers that form the Hook—the projects built over the frame houses, the pavement laid over the cobblestones, the lofts overtaking the factories, the grocery stores overlapping the warehouses.

The new bars cannibalizing the old ones. The skeletons of forgotten buildings—the sugar refinery and the dry dock—surviving among the new concrete bunkers being passed off as luxury living. The living walking on top of the dead—the waterfront dead, the old mob dead, the drug war dead—everyone still there.

A neighborhood of ghosts. It’s not such a bad place, Cree thinks, if you look under the surface, which is where Gloria lives.

Hovering on the horizon is the imminent arrival of the Queen Mary II, promising great things for Red Hook, and in the long run failing to deliver.

This is a book that will provide many engrossing talking points.
My rating: 4.6

See review on Reactions to Reading

11 January 2014

Review: THE SECOND DEATH OF GOODLUCK TINUBU, Michael Stanley

format: Kindle (Amazon)
File Size: 478 KB
Print Length: 496 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books; Reprint edition (June 2, 2009)
Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
Language: English
ASIN: B002BD2V1U
aka A DEADLY TRADE

Synopsis (author site)

Goodluck Tinubu, an ex-Zimbabwean who has taught in Botswana for many years, is viciously murdered in his tent at the Jackalberry bush camp, situated on an isolated peninsula in northern Botswana. Peter Sithole, allegedly a tourist from South Africa and a second guest at the camp, is found bludgeoned to death a few hours later. Detective “Kubu” Bengu is sent from Botswana’s capital, Gaborone, to assist the local Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in solving the crime.

Another guest at the camp – Ishmael Zondo - departed unexpectedly at dawn the morning after the murders. Now Zondo has completely disappeared, and the Zimbabwe police are unable – or unwilling – to trace him. Reports surface that he is wanted as a dissident in Zimbabwe. And, as a final enigma, matching fingerprint records reveal that Goodluck Tinubu was killed in the Rhodesian civil war thirty years earlier

Background (author site)

The first book in the series, A Carrion Death, was set in the deserts of Botswana, where the world’s richest diamond mines are located. The story dealt with greed, power, lust, and the conflict between modern views and traditional values.

The second book, The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu (USA) or A Deadly Trade (elsewhere), is set in the very north of Botswana, which contrasts vividly with the dry rest of the country. The Okavango delta, and the Chobe and Linyanti rivers, alive with hippos and crocodiles, push against the desert with lush vegetation and teeming wildlife. Huge numbers of elephants make this area their home, and herds of several hundred are common. The crystal-clear water and trees rich in fruit make these waterways a bird-lovers paradise. Hundreds of species of birds make their home here, from huge vultures to colorful parrots and lovebirds.

The area is also where four countries come together: Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The rapidly declining situation in Zimbabwe, with its shattered dreams and human suffering, provides the subtext of the story. The countries surrounding Zimbabwe often find themselves caught between old loyalties from the struggles for freedom, and the embarrassment of having a neighbor like Zimbabwe as a member of the New Africa.

The story begins with the murder of a gentle teacher and a South African policeman.

My Take

This is #2 in the Kubu series and I read it to fill in a gap in my reading.
What I have enjoyed about these books is not only the very clever and tight plotting, but the lovely character development of Detective “Kubu” Bengu, his immediate family, and those he works with. It seems to me also that the setting provides another strong character. The initial action is set in tourist camp, but the roots of the plot go back decades into the history of Zimbabwe.

The character of Bengu gives the authors plenty of scope to show policing in Botswana in a good light. It comes across as a rather different Botswana to that of Precious Ramotswe but the values are the same.

A good read.

My rating: 4.8

I've also reviewed

About the author

The author with their Barry Award

Michael Stanley is the writing team of Johannesburg natives Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip. Sears lives in Johannesburg and teaches part-time at the University of Witwatersrand. Trollip was on the faculty at the universities of Illinois, Minnesota, and North Dakota, and at Capella University. A full-time writer, he divides his time between...

In 2012 Michael Stanley won a Barry Award for DEATH OF THE MANTIS

	Current books - see author's website

1. A Carrion Death (2008)
2. A Deadly Trade (2009)
aka The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu
3. The Death of the Mantis (2011)
4. Deadly Harvest (2013)

MYSTERIES in PARADISE

Pages