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Altered Carbon - by Richard K. Morgan

It is the 25th century and humanity has achieved immortality, for the entirety of a person's mind and memory can now be recorded into a neural implant and inserted into a new body (or sleeve) after death.  Takeshi Kovacs, a former U.N. Envoy (a kind of super soldier) turned criminal, is taken out of storage (a.k.a. prison) and given an offer he cannot refuse.  Laurens Bancroft, a very old, very wealthy, and very powerful man has committed suicide.  Trouble is, Bancroft doesn't believe he did it and, since his suicide conveniently occurred before his implant could record his memories of the act, he wants Kovacs to find out who murdered him. 

I could try and explain the plot more, but it would just get confusing.  It would also spoil all the fun and ferocity of reading how Kovacs navigates the twists and turns of the complex mystery that Bancroft has forced him to solve.

When I first cracked open Altered Carbon I could not stop myself from wondering at how author Richard Morgan managed to pad his story to fill 526 pages and worrying if that content would hold my interest.  My worries were completely unfounded.  Morgan expertly balances his narrative between entertaining bouts of old school P.I. machismo and intriguing brave new world building.  I was taken by both, so Altered Carbon had a delicious one-two story hook.  I loved learning about this dystopian future every bit as much as I enjoyed getting to know the colorful cast of characters that populate it.

Also helping is how Morgan takes his noir narrative into the darkest realms made possible by this philosophically terrifying technology.  Since the sting of potential death has been removed, "enhanced" interrogation techniques have become a thing of the distant past.  Now thugs (or soldiers) can just torture a person to death and place the subject's mind into a fresh "sleeve," either real or virtual, and begin again.  Not that real death is impossible.  A neural implant can be destroyed and a mind "erased."

Morgan also explores just how extreme longevity can change, or warp, a person's mind.  Ditto the effects of having to grow old and infirm before dying more than once.  The latter being something that the very wealthy are spared, of course.

By the time I had reached the end of Altered Carbon I had forgotten all about my worries at the beginning.  I didn't want the book to end and I am eager to return to the dark and fascinating future that it introduced me to.

Holmes on the Range - by Steve Hockensmith

When Gustav and Otto Amlingmeyer (Old Red and Big Red, respectively) are hired on as hands at the Cantlemere Ranche (known as the Bar VR to the local populace) Big Red fears the worst.  The Bar VR, so called for its distinctive cattle brand, has a nasty reputation and a nastier way of keeping its secrets.  Big Red's fears are confirmed when he discovers that his Sherlock Holmes admiring older brother has decided to try his hand at some Holmes style "deducifyin" when not one, but two of the men working the Bar VR turn up dead.  The first in a tragic "accident," the second clearly a victim of foul play.

Terrific.  Just what I need, another series to become addicted to.  I dare any murder mystery loving reader to crack open Holmes on the Range and, by the novel's tense and touching conclusion, not be eager to track down the next novel in the series, On the Wrong Track, and read it.  Go ahead, I Triple Dog Dare You.

Some books grab me and refuse to let go until I finish them in huge gulps of binge reading.  Others demand that I go easy with them.  That I slow things down just a tad and enjoy all the pleasant scenery as the story unfolds.  Holmes on the Range was just that kind of book.  I was so enjoying getting to know the colorful cast of characters (some of which seem to have wandered out of a Joe R. Lansdale story) and the world that they inhabit that I not only did not want the story to end, I wanted to take my sweet time getting there.  I am quite happy to report that the ending was well worth the extra time I took.  Usually I can polish off a 294 page book in two or three days, at most.  This time it took me a little over a week.

Your time spent reading Holmes on the Range will vary, of course.  But I do not doubt for an instant that, like me, you close the book eager to find out what happens on Old Red and Big Red's next mystery solving adventure.

Hit Time - by Yolanda Joe (writing as Ardella Garland)

WJIV-TV reporter Georgia Barnett is providing live coverage of a swim club's charity relay race in Lake Michigan when the race is disrupted by a swimmer's discovery of a dead body in the water.  Barnett wastes no time chasing down the story's developing clues, but is dismayed when they point straight at a close friend of her twin sister.

Although I enjoyed reading Yolanda Joe's brisk and entertaining Hit Time, her excessive use of slang had me wishing that an editor had told her "less is more" and "a little goes a long way."  The abundance of it became distracting after awhile and continually pulled me out of what was, for the most part, an engaging and well constructed whodunit. 

The lack of a red herring or two - not to mention a subplot to run interference - might have veteran "second guess" mystery readers figuring out the killer's identity rather quickly.  I did not try to guess, I cracked the book open simply to enjoy some short and simple genre entertainment.  But looking back at the set-up after the killer's identity is revealed I found it so obvious that I could not help but wonder if I had tried to guess, would I have been able to?  Who knows and who cares, really?  Hit Time aspires to be nothing more than a light and frothy read, one that a reasonably quick reader could gulp down in one lazy weekend afternoon spent sprawled across the sofa.

And with the book's realistic series set-up (TV news reporters can cover a lot of murder cases during their careers) and its cast of colorful and likable characters, I wouldn't be at all against spending another lazy weekend afternoon sprawled across the sofa with Georgia Barnett.

Wait, that came out wrong...

High Country - by Nevada Barr

National Park Ranger Anna Pigeon is placed undercover to investigate the disappearance of four young employees at Yosemite National Park.

To say anything more about the plot of High Country would be to run the risk of spoiling the joy of reading it.  It's a solid mystery with a harrowing middle act iced with blood-chilling tension and stuffed with heart-pounding action.  That author Nevada Barr is not the least bit afraid to go for the throat and give it a none too gentle squeeze gives the action a brutal edge.  One that has been missing from most of the mysteries that I have cracked open of late.  There were times when I actually thought that Barr's tough as nails heroine would not make it to the end of the book, that she would be solving the mystery of the disappearing four from beyond the grave.  Reading a book this vicious was kind of refreshing, in a masochistic kind of way.

As most mystery readers know, there are usually two mysteries for the investigating protagonist to solve.  More often than not, the primary mystery is buried under a red herring laced secondary mystery that muddies the waters and distracts the protagonist from noticing clues that would usually be seen easily.  High Country's plot gives Pigeon plenty of distraction to contend with, but it all comes together so neatly that, despite my figuring out where a syringe of tainted blood came from, I had to marvel at how well Barr hid the hows and whys of it from me.  But I really don't want to spoil it for you by going into any greater detail.  Just read the book, you will not be sorry that you did.

80 Million Eyes - by Ed McBain

Detectives Meyer and Carella investigate the death of a popular television comedian, while Detective Bert Kling attempts to smoke out a violent stalker terrorizing a woman from his past.

It's just another week for the hard working cops at the 87th Precinct...

80 Million Eyes may not be one of the better 87th Precinct novels out there, it has some minor pacing problems and, with the exception of a few scenes, more on that in a moment, the narrative has a soft-boiled texture to it.  But there are enough special moments sprinkled throughout the novel's 165 pages to make it an enjoyable read for fans of the long running series.  Newcomers to the 87th Precinct, however, might do better by picking up a different book in the series.  Some of my favorites, and books I feel comfortable recommeding to newcomers,  are Tricks, Ghosts, and Poison, but that's just me and my idiosyncratic taste in fiction.

This entry, like many others in the series, switches back and forth between two very different cases.  The copyright page even goes so far as to list two separate titles, The Dear Hunter and Eighty Million Eyes.  Perhaps they had originally been published individually as short novels elsewhere.  Of the two, I thought that Hunter was the better.  It had a rough and tumble feel to it that was missing from the more gimmicky Eyes portions.  The best parts of Eyes were the occasional moments of playful banter between Meyer and Carella as they released their gradually mounting stress, while Hunter had several scenes of intense violence and nail biting suspense to keep the reader enthralled and wondering what would happen next.  Those sections of the novel make it worth cracking open, but, as I said in the previous paragraph, only after you have another 87th Precinct mystery, or three, under you belt.

Dust - by Martha Grimes

After young Benny Keegan finds a dead body in the hotel room that he had been tasked with delivering a coffee service to, he immediately calls his friend Richard Jury, of the Scotland Yard, for help.  The dead body was once a wealthy and well-like young man named Billy Maples, grandson of Jury's friend Sir Oswald Maples.  As Jury digs into the victim's background and familial connections, he uncovers a very dark and very dirty secret.

There is a line of dialog at the very end of Dust that could have been me speaking to author Martha Grimes.  "No, I don't want to think about it," one exasperated character complains to Richard Jury.  "I want you to tell me."  I know exactly how he feels, believe me.  But think about it I did and, I am fairly certain, that I have guessed the correct motive for the murder of Billy Maples.  Unfortunately Grimes doesn't take a moment to confirm with the reader that his or her theory is the correct one, for she is far too busy setting up a frustrating cliffhanger to get the next Richard Jury novel off and stumbling.

Dust overflows with all the negative aspects of reading series fiction that, far more often than not, keep me from reading series fiction regularly.  Namely a large cast of characters that have interacted over several stories and a confusing plot thread (or two, or three) that is being strung through several different novels.  The result is a feeling akin to of having wandered into a room filled with strangers that know each other very well and, on more than one occasion, are discussing things that just leave me feeling confused and left out of some of, but not all of, the fun.

But what fun I did not get left out of was of sufficient quality and quantity (most of it revolving around a supporting character's investigation at Henry James's house in Rye) that I did not regret taking the time to read the book.  There's some choice character interactions (again, mostly involving the supporting character staying at Henry James's house) and several sequences that could have been excerpts from a Peter Straub novel.  But none of that could distract from the book's unsatisfying conclusion.  I have to say that my reader's jury will be spending quite some time deliberating over whether or not to commit to reading another one of Martha Grimes's Richard Jury novels.

A Fine Dark Line - by Joe R. Lansdale

The year is 1958, the place is Dewmont, Texas, and it is summer.  Thirteen year old Stanley Mitchell's life changes forever when he trips over and discovers a box buried in the ground near the ruins of a once stately home.  Inside the box is a collection of anonymous love letters.  Curious to find out who wrote the letters and why they had been hidden, Stanley, thinking he might be able to return them to their rightful owner, begins a clumsy investigation into the history of the ruins.  What he uncovers, and what happens to him while doing so, opens his eyes to the monstrous cruelties of life.

I can best describe Joe R. Lansdale's A Fine Dark Line as A Damn Fine Novel.  While it may not be the best thing he has written, it certainly is one of the better ones.  Then again, I'm biased.  I've been a huge Lansdale fan since 1983, when I first discovered him in the pages of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, and have many a fond memory of taking in a movie at the local drive-in.  So I related to A Fine Dark Line's narrator's childhood of matinee/drive-in movie watching and comic book/pulp novel reading on a personal level that some, if not more, might not be able to.

But that nostalgic doorway to an innocent time that wasn't (to be blunt, the "innocence" of youth is just plain old ignorance) leads to a dark and suspenseful murder mystery soaked in Deep Southern Gothic.  Lansdale has written in numerous genres - crime, horror, action, and western, to name but a few - and he sprinkles his mystery with generous seasonings from all of them.  There is a little bit of everything in the book, and it is that very thing that keeps this Damn Fine Novel from becoming a Damn Good one.  There is just no way that all Stanley Mitchell and his family go through could happen in just one summer.  Then again, all that hogwash about being realistic is overrated.  Sometimes all a story needs to be is good, solid entertainment and A Fine Dark Line is chock full of it.  It had me laughing out loud on one page, then squirming on the edge of my seat and chewing my nails on the next one.  Then there were times it had me in tears, and not tears from laughing too hard.  The best literary comparison I can make is that it's a coming of age story not too far removed from Robert McCammon's fantasy laden mystery, Boy's Life.  Only A Fine Dark Line doesn't really cross over the line into magical realism the way McCammon's did.  Lansdale is content to only go as far as a whisper and a tease of the supernatural, but that was more than enough to give me the chills as I worked through the book.  My only hope is that, should you choose to read it, you enjoy it every bit as much as I did.

I think you will.

People of Darkness - by Tony Hillerman

Navajo Tribal Police Sergeant Jim Chee is asked by Rosemary Vines, the wife of B.J. Vines, one of the richest men in New Mexico, to find a box of her husband's keepsakes that has been stolen.  Chee doesn't know if he will take the job, but his curiosity is further piqued when the local Sheriff, a man who shares a bitter and tragic history with Vines, tells Chee to leave the matter alone.  Then Vines calls upon Chee and tells him to forget the whole thing, the contents of the keepsake box were not all that important.  Just a few papers, photos, and some rocks of limited sentimental value.  Nothing worth the effort of looking for.

Certain that something rotten is going on, or has gone on, or both, Chee begins searching for the keepsake box and the answers to the mystery that it holds.  His efforts not only uncover a rat's nest of clues, but also places him at the top of an assassin's kill list.

It has been years since I last cracked open a Tony Hillerman mystery.  My previous experience with Hillerman's Native American mysteries had been Coyote Waits and my memory is of setting it down feeling unimpressed and disappointed.  I did not have the same reaction to People of Darkness, I put this book down eager to pick up the next Jim Chee novel in the series (this was the first) as soon as I could get it.  My only regret now is that I was not faster at giving Hillerman a second chance.

Chee's struggle with his cultural balancing act - an unresolved subplot has him facing a decision on whether or not he wants to become a Navajo Singing Man and stay on the reservation or leave the reservation and attend the FBI Academy - gives both his character and his investigation a unique perspective.  He doesn't quite understand the white man's traditions or his social structure, so his observations and overall approach to an investigation is that of an outsider.  An outsider that is refreshingly different from the usual burned out outsider cops and/or private detectives that play by their own rules.  The rules Chee lives by are those of his people, not of some self-serving personal code of malleable "honor."  But Chee is also colored by his education, constant interaction, and experience in the world outside of the reservation.  While Chee struggles to keep in touch with his people and their traditions (i.e. the Singing Man/FBI Academy dilemma he faces) he finds himself drifting away from them far too easily, for his curiosity about the white man's ways is very strong.  So is his interest in a certain white woman.

It is that strong curiosity that gets Chee into so much trouble during his first adventure.  Hillerman crafts a compelling mystery for his character to navigate, one that is rooted in Native American culture and history, but laced with white man's greed.  He artfully mixes together the legitimate clues with the red herrings, creating a confusing tangle that is all the harder for Chee to untie because of the accomplished and very determined hit man that is chasing after him.  But untie them he does, managing to bring all the clues (and suspects) together for a truly satisfying conclusion.

Raven House Mysteries #40: Clutterkill - by Gary Paulsen

Detective Ronnie Gold, Chicago's only Jewish cop, gets a bad case of Clutterkill when he catches two very hot cases.  Case number one: find the child killer that is dropping the mutilated bodies of little girls into a shopping mall's trash dumpsters.  Case number two: track down a sniper with a grudge against the sex trade that is blowing holes in both prostitutes and cops.

The title for this entry in the Raven House Mysteries imprint is an appropriate one, for Gary Paulsen's novel is a very cluttered one indeed.  It also trips over its own story clutter, with some of the plot details not quite coming together in a satisfactory manner.  The better of the two mysteries, ironically, is the one that the marketing materials do no mention: the tracking down of a child killer.  What makes it better is that it involves some actual detecting, but the utter absence of suspects renders guesswork a moot point.  I knew the guilty party from scene one and author Gary Paulsen never bothered to throw any red herrings at me because he had an entirely unrelated mystery for Detective Gold to solve: the sex hating sniper.

It is the marketed sniper story that really fails to jell and renders this semi-competently written novel unrecommendable.  The biggest problem: both the detectives and the sniper must be psychics for the mystery to work.  Gold deduces from thin air that the sniper "hates sexual sin," because the second victim is a street walking prostitute, but the first is a woman that is not a prostitute.  She was an adulteress who has gotten pregnant from the on the side sex.  Since Paulsen makes a point of telling the reader that the pregnancy was known only to the victim and was not someone known to the sniper, nor is it something that Detective Gold uncovers in his supposed investigation of the crime, I wondered how is it that the first victim qualifies for the "hates sexual sin" theory?  Unless the author hates sexual sin and is simply getting his point across in a ham fisted manner.  On the plus side, the identity of the sniper is rooted out via good old-fashioned detective work.

If Gary Paulson had chosen to focus on the better mystery instead of cluttering his novel needlessly with two, then Clutterkill might have been a category mystery worth reading.  As it is, I can't recommend cluttering up your bookshelf with it.

Blaze - by Richard Bachman

"It's how we roll."

Clayton "Blaze" Blaisdell and his partner-in-crime George Rackley have a plan to net themselves a cool million a piece.  Kidnap Joseph Gerard III's newborn son, Joseph Gerard IV, and hold him for ransom.  There are only a few problems with the plan.  Problem one is that kidnappings are almost impossible to pull off successfully.  Problem two is that Blaze is mentally handicapped.  Problem three is that George Rackley has been dead for several months.  But that doesn't mean he is incapable of helping his good buddy Blaze pull off the crime of the century, does it?

I remembering first hearing (or reading, as the case actually is) mention of Richard Bachman's novel Blaze in an essay by Stephen King titled On Becoming A Brand Name, back when King still considered it one of his novels.  In that particular essay King mentions Blaze as one of two novels he offered Doubleday as potential follow-ups to his successful debut, Carrie.  Doubleday decided to pass on Blaze and picked the other novel instead, the one about vampires taking over a small town in Maine.  Blaze got dumped into a trunk (King decided the novel wasn't worth salvaging) and the rest, as the old cliche goes, is literary history.  Flash forward some twenty-five to thirty years (Mythical-Christ, has it really been that long) and an older, wiser King looks over the novel that was Blaze and decides that it isn't nearly as bad as his memory had said it was.  The book is pretty good, in fact.  Good enough to share.  It just isn't good enough to warrant the cost of a hardcover.  The book is best suited for Dorchester's popular Hard Case Crime imprint, because Blaze is just a pulpy paperback original at heart, not a prestige hardback.  Hell, I think that the $9.99 the publisher is asking for the newfangled (and rather dumb-ass) rectangular paperback edition is a bit too much.  This book is only worth $6.99, tops.

Oh, well...so it goes.

The best way to describe Bachman's "final book" (this being the second one to date, the first being The Regulators) is as a pastiche of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and the pathos laden crime fiction of Jim Thompson (The Grifters, etc) sprinkled with what is now Stephen King's trademarked spookiness (i.e. the question of whether or not George Rackley's spiritual presence is a genuine haunting, or if he is just in Blaze's handicapped mind).  Blaze, despite being a brutal and very dangerous criminal, is quite the sympathetic anti-hero.  Although the parent in me wanted Joseph Gerard IV to be returned safely to his family, another part of me wanted Blaze to get away with the crime, so he could have a decent shot at finding some peace and happiness in the world.  Something that Blaze is cruelly denied time and time again during his unpleasant childhood, the details of which create a sub-plot that gives the novel a strong dose of tragedy and makes the inevitable ending all the more, um, tragic.

Also included is the short story Memory, a work credited to author Richard Bachman's lighter half, bestselling author Stephen King, and serves as a teaser for King's current bestseller Duma Key.  It's yet another one of King's recent, and not so recent, fictional explorations of recovering from a traumatic and near life-ending accident.  This time around he opts for a straightforward dramatic story, avoiding the supernatural trappings that the novel the story grew out of fell into.  It's not a particularly strong story and it does not make my interest in reading Duma Key anything more than tepid.

So it goes.

The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams - by Lawrence Block

Bernie Rhodenbarr, part-time bookseller and one time full-time burglar, has pretty much retired from the thievery business.  He is now semi-content to simply run his second hand bookstore in Greenwich Village and teach his inventory guard Raffles, a cat bestowed upon Bernie to rid his store of a potential mice infestation, how to better hunt the prey hiding behind the shelves.  Sure he's been getting the urge to get back to his one true calling, but life is good without taking the risk.  Right?

Wrong.  Bernie's life goes south in a big way when Borden Stoppelgard buys an original hardcover of Sue Grafton's novel "B" is for Burglar.  Stoppelgard is not only a snotty customer, he is also Bernie's new landlord and he intends to raise Bernie's rent to a level that will drive him out of business.  Whether he likes it or not, or he wants to or not, it looks like Bernie will be forced to get back into his old line of work.

To say anything more about The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams would only rob the reader of the joy of discovering all the witty and suspense filled surprises that await Bernie when he finds a dead body littering what should have been a simple burglary.  And there is a great deal of wit (most of it at the expense of Sue Grafton and her alphabet titled Kinsey Millhone series) and surprises (no spoiler hints in this gratuitous parenthetical, dear reader) in Lawrence Block's novel.

I don't think it will come as any surprise to share with you that I simply adore books and that one of my all-time favorite recreational pursuits is browsing through a bookstore, preferably a secondhand bookstore.  Having shared that, it should also come as no surprise that I also adore books (or movies) about books.  In both real life and the escape of good fiction, I love any and all time spent wandering through rows and rows of books, and hearing people talk books.  The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams not only had plenty of that, but it also had a truly baffling mystery (one that is perhaps a bit too baffling) for Bernie to solve.  While it wasn't perfect, it had enough good and smart fun to get me good and hooked.  I'm going to make dropping in at Barnegat Books to visit with Bernie and Raffles a regular habit.

One For The Money - by Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum has fallen on hard times.  The former lingerie buyer for the now defunct E.E. Martin has been out of work for six months.  With no money, no food, and most of her personal belongings sold for quick cash, Stephanie is forced to swallow her pride and ask her cousin Vinnie for a job.  Problem is Vinnie is a Bail Bondsman in no need of smart mouthed office help, but he does have a need for a temp-to-perm bounty hunter.

Thinking that she might have lucked into some quick and easy cash, Stephanie goes on the hunt for one Joseph Morelli.  A disgraced cop ducking a murder charge.  Bounty hunting turns out to be a lot more complicated, not too mention flat out life threateningly dangerous, than Stephanie had first thought.  Now she not only has to manage to both find and capture Morelli (the former being far easier than the latter), she also has to deal with a psychotic sadist of a boxer named Benito Ramirez.

As I have mentioned in a previous review, investigative mysteries such as One for the Money really live or die by the cast of (hopefully) colorful characters the investigator interacts with as she hunts for the clues and chases down the various suspects.  On this level alone Janet Evanovich's premiere Stephanie Plum novel (I think the number count has reached all the way to twelve by now, so I am really behind the times with this series) succeeds brilliantly.  The novel is filled with quirky characters that run the gamut from endearing (Grandma Mazur), to irritating (Joseph Morelli), and all the way down to flat out blood-chilling (Benito "the champ" Ramirez).  Less successful is the central character of Stephanie Plum, who is so incredibly naive about the inherent dangers in her newfound career I found it an almost major miracle that she managed to survive long enough to get the soft edges rubbed off.  Maybe she had some kind of Hero's Death Exemption.  Yet by the story's end Stephanie does manage to become something that approaches formidable.  For somebody of her size, gender, and temperament, that is.  Dog the Bounty Hunter she ain't ever gonna be.

While One for the Money has quirky characters and humor to burn, what it lacked, for me, that is, was the kind of edge that can be found in most, if not all, or Elmore Leonard's comedic caper novels.  Stephanie Plum finds herself against some very dangerous situations, but the noir only hovers in the shadows and, save for some tense scenes involving the psychotic boxer Benito Ramirez, never truly saturates the tale in manner guaranteed to give it some truly memorable sizzle.  Nonetheless the novel was an entertaining way to pass a rainy weekend and the conclusion left me eager to find out what happens in the next Stephanie Plum novel, Two for the Dough.

'A' is for Alibi - by Sue Grafton

Nikki Fife, having spent eight years in prison for a crime she says she did not commit, hires private investigator Kinsey Millhone to find out who really killed her husband, Laurence Fife.  Millhone takes the cold case and soon discovers another, possibly related, murder.  The hunt for the real killer begins, but the hunter soon finds herself to be the hunted...

The blurb on the cover of the edition of "A" is for Alibi that I have proudly states that the book was "Named One of the Century's 100 Favorite Mysteries by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association."  It might be one of theirs, but it certainly isn't one of mine.

A short while ago, while discussing this very same book with a friend, I blathered and pontificated about "mysteries of this type."  Please feel free to roll your eyes if what I am saying is either blatantly obvious or the overly simplistic opinion of a rank amateur, as I cannot see you doing so I won't mind it at all, really.  "Mysteries of this type" usually have two mysteries.  There is the real mystery, then there is the red herring mystery that sends the investigator (be it of the private or gifted amateur variety) on his or her merry goose chase.  Sometimes the red herring mystery is nothing, a dead end.  Sometimes it's a bona fide crime, one that may or may not be related to the crime the investigator thinks he or she has been investigating.  Trying to figure it all out before the writer reveals the secret is what makes reading mysteries so much fun.

Well, sometimes.  Because it is that very thing that ruined "A" is for Alibi for me.  I knew the identity of the killer from the very moment the character was first introduced and, more often than not, I was just skimming over the pages, patiently waiting for Kinsey Millhone (or Sue Grafton) to catch up with me.

Another thing I pontificated about, this time while discussing "A" is for Alibi on the message board I currently frequent, was that private investigator novels mostly live or die by the colorful cast of characters said P.I. will interact with during the course of his or her investigation.  Unfortunately Grafton's cast is lively in all the wrong spots.  What the novel needed was a stronger distracting device.  Since this was Grafton's first mystery (and she has pounded out twenty plus mysteries since "A" is for Alibi debuted in 1982 - Jesus H. Christ, has it really been 26 years!?!) I'm willing to cut her some slack and, since Kinsey Millhone is a somewhat likable, albeit no nonsense, character, I'll probably give Ms. Grafton a few more letters of my reading time before I begin to seriously consider whether or not I'll stick around all the way through to Z.

Snow Blind - by P.J. Tracy

A snowman building contest is disrupted when two murder victims are found inside a pair of sculptures.  Adding urgency to the investigation of the gruesome crime is the uncovered fact that the two victims were members of the Minneapolis Police Department.  When another victim is found mummified inside a snowman in a rural county north of the Twin Cities, Detectives Magozzi and Rolseth light out for the territories.  What began in Minneapolis will end in Dundas County.

I'm not all that comfortable stating how glad I was that Snow Blind was written by two women (the name P.J. Tracy is a pseudonym for the mother/daughter writing team of P.J. Lambrecht and Traci Lambrecht).  I don't believe for a second that a male writer could have handled the motives behind the crime as well as this writing team did.  (Unpleasant memories of reading Stephen King's disastrous novel Insomnia kept coming to mind as the red herrings were sorted out and the ultimate truth revealed.)  Nor do I think that a male writer could "get away" with the early characterization of the hopelessly ill-prepared Sheriff Iris Rikker.  I don't know whether or not that is a politically incorrect criticism to make, but my gratitude that two women wrote this book was palpable during most of the difficult (and difficult to believe) passages.

Tossing all gender based discomfort (or plain old sexist bias) to the side, where it belongs, I found Snow Blind to be a fun, smart and almost too quick read.  The only downside was that the book suffered from something that could best be described as Series Syndrome.  For the first quarter of the book I felt like I had wandered into a room where everybody knew everybody else quite well, but I knew no one.  No matter how solid the start of the story was, it took me almost one hundred pages to get comfortable with a cast of characters that, because this book is branded as "A Monkeewrench Novel," I assume are reoccurring and share a two book history that I was unaware of...and one that I remain unaware of, because, as far as I could ascertain, the events in both Dead Run and Live Bait are not mentioned or described in anything close to expository detail.  But that issue didn't stop Snow Blind from being a very readable and highly entertaining mystery and, when I finished the book, it left me hungry from more Monkeewrench mysteries.

Invisible Prey - by John Sandford

Lucas Davenport's investigation into a home invasion robbery/murder uncovers subtle hints that it might be something more than what it first appears to be.  If that intriguing puzzle weren't enough, Davenport also has to handle a political hot potato of a statutory rape case.  Sensing an opportunity to create a credible distraction for Davenport to chase, the killers attempt a vicious attack.

Invisible Prey, John Sandford's 17th (that many, already?) Lucas Davenport thriller, is an enjoyable thrill ride.  One that kept me turning the pages, anxious to find out what happened next.  Yes, I know that is a critical cliche, but its over usage doesn't make it any less true.

This is the third or fourth Davenport novel that I have read (and it will not be the last, not by a long shot) and I am pretty sure that I have Sandford's series formula figured out.  A brutal crime is committed in the opening chapter.  Davenport arrives on the scene in the second or third chapter and begins his investigation, meeting the list of suspects.  Shortly thereafter Sandford reveals the indentity of the killer(s) and a game of cat and mouse begins, with Davenport and the killers switching back and forth between being the cat or the mouse on every other page.  I can't say if it works in all of the Prey novels, but in this one it worked beautifully.  It is clear that Sandford knows a thriller is only as good as its villain and these are a smart and nasty bunch; a wonderful counterbalance to Davenport's equally smart and decent, albeit sharp edged and nasty in his own way, character.  The plot did take some twist and turns that I would have preferred not happen, not because they were bad developments, but due to the simple fact that I had come to care about the characters.

If you are not a Prey series reader, I'm pretty sure that Invisible Prey will make you one.

Short Straw - by Stuart Woods

On the day that his elegant new office suite opens, Santa Fe attorney Ed Eagle awakens to find that his wife Barbara has left him, and taken all of his money with her.  Eagle quickly takes action, getting back most of his stolen money and sending two private detectives after his wife, who has fled to Mexico.  What Eagle doesn't know, but soon finds out, is that his soon to be ex-wife has placed a contract on his life...

The thought that most reoccurred to me while reading Stuart Woods' novel Short Straw was, "Why yes, Mr. Woods, I am a big fan of Elmore Leonard myself.  But you, sir, are no Elmore Leonard."  While Short Straw is an acceptable piece of escapist trash entertainment, it lacks the razor sharp and strangely good-natured edge that make the novels of Elmore Leonard so much fun to read.  Author Stuart Woods does an adequate job of aping Dutch's story rhythm, Short Straw plays out almost like a comedy of errors, where everything that can go wrong does for the story's hapless heroes.  Those heroes are actually private detectives Vittorio and Cupie Dalton, an Apache and a retired LAPD detective, respectively.  The central character of Ed Eagle really doesn't do a whole lot, other than blow away a potential hit man and hook up with a hot n' comfy Hollywood actress in what has to be the most laughable excuse for a middle-aged romance fantasy that I have read in quite some time.

Short Straw's biggest failure, however, is its characters.  They're not really characters, just stick figures that move through the novel's "Whatever can go wrong, does" style plot with an emotionless vigor.  There is not a single moment during the book's 286 pages where any of the characters ever truly come alive, emotionally speaking.  Plot twist after plot twist is delivered by Woods in a monotone narrative voice, with his cast reacting with all the heartfelt emotion of a Pod Person from Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  With no one in the story described as reacting in an emotional manner to the countless double-crosses and repeated murder attempts, it was hard for me, as a reader, to really care about any of it.

Unless another Stuart Woods novel is selected for the Mystery Book Club, I seriously doubt that I would care to read another one of his books.  (Although I do recommend Woods novel Under the Lake unreservedly.)  I think I'll just stick with Dutch from now on.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - by Agatha Christie

Dr. James Sheppard narrates the tale of how the famous, albeit now retired, Belgian detective Hercule Poirot solved The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.

According to some of the reviews that I have read, it was The Murder of Roger Ackroyd that cemented Agatha Christie's name in the ranks of the murder mystery genre giants.  Although the comparisons are probably suspect, I think it is safe to say that The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was The Sixth Sense/The Crying Game of its day.  The book's power rests entirely on the surprising reveal of the identity of Ackroyd's murderer, all other literary aspects are irrelevant.  How Christie managed to pull off such a seemingly outlandish narrative trick so effectively is precisely why the book not only went on to become an international bestseller, but made the author a living legend.  It's really an impressive act of misdirection and, not surprisingly, the book is required reading for any and all that aspire to write, or simply admire, murder mysteries.

But do not for a moment think that knowing the identity of the murderer before hand (which I did, thanks to an essay on mystery writing that I read several years back) will ruin the book.  It won't.  Instead I found myself admiring just how effectively Christie sprinkled the subtle clues (spelled clews in the edition I have) of the killer's identity amongst all the red herrings that clutter up Poirot's investigation.  And there are a lot of red herrings.  It seems that everybody has some dirty little secret to hide from Poirot.  But hiding secrets from Poirot and his "little gray cells" is futile, as he repeatedly warns those under suspicion.  "Me, I know everything.  Remember that."

And I know that you will find reading, and enjoying, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd a memorable experience.

Beyond the Beyond - by Lee Goldberg

Ex-cop turned ex-actor turned security guard Charlie Willis has his hands full when production starts on the relaunch of the classic science-fiction series Beyond the Beyond.  The sure-to-be-hot television series has attracted the attention of not one, but two organizations willing to kill to get their way.  First is The Company, who Charlie first did battle with in My Gun Has Bullets, a talent agency that isn't afraid to use threats and violence to get who or what they want.  The second is an obsessed group of Beyonders, rabid Beyond the Beyond fans that will do anything for the former, and now quite insane, lead actor of the original series.

Lee Goldberg's Beyond the Beyond is a scathing satire of the crazy Hollywood life, one that belongs on the same shelf as Joseph Wambaugh's novel The Glitter Dome and Blake Edwards film S.O.B.  It's the dark hearted and mean-spirited twin of the light hearted and affectionate Star Trek fandom parody/tribute Galaxy Quest (although Beyond does pre-date Quest by two years, at least).  With the exception of "lead character" Charlie Willis and his developing girlfriend Anne, there are no sympathetic characters to be found in the book, so it was hard for me to care all that much whether any of them lived or died.  I was hoping that they would all die, actually.

The book's largest dose of venom is poured out not on the industry itself, but on the fiercely devoted fanbase of the fictional television show (which is, of course, a blatant parody of Star Trek) Beyond the Beyond.  I'm guessing that Mr. Goldberg has had one or two unpleasant experiences during his science-fiction convention appearances.  If that is so then it wouldn't surprise me at all, considering how often I have seen "fans" insult guests (or speak disrespectfully to them) during convention appearances.  Another thing that did not surprise me all that much was that the central fandom villain was an obsessive fanfic writer determined to have the new show follow her own personal interpretation (and thus the ONLY canonical one) of how the Beyond the Beyond universe developed in the twenty years that have passed since the original program's cancellation.  If there is one thing Lee Goldberg seems to hold in more contempt than the shallow nature of the industry he toils in, it is the meddlesome weirdos that not only devote their complete attention to an entertainment program, but who have also let said entertainment program take over their entire lives.

While it's easy enough to point, make fun of and laugh at the misfits and self-involved idiots that are clustered within the entertainment industry (Goldberg is really just shooting fish in a barrel with an elephant gun on that level), it is far harder to weave a compelling mystery/crime story with such a colorful cast of clowns.  I thought Beyond the Beyond worked best before all the backstabbing and killing got out of hand, then the book just got silly and mean.  The novel's strongest section was a sub-plot involving a self-centered hack screenwriter (one that seems to be modeled after 90s scriptwriting superstar Joe Eszterhas).  Now that was a story I would have loved to see developed further, but it wasn't.

By the time I turned the last page, it was clear to me that Beyond the Beyond was a book written for the express purpose of giving a bunch of weirdos and shallow Hollywood types what they appear to richly deserve.  If you like that sort of thing, and also have a healthy dislike of science-fiction fandom, then you just might enjoy reading it.

Batman: The Ultimate Evil - by Andrew Vachss

When Gotham's Dark Knight vows to take down an organization that provides child molesters with victims, he discovers a painful link to his own past.

Although it might be a Batman novel on the surface, beneath all the pulp novel adventure The Ultimate Evil is 100% Andrew Vachss.  Those familiar with Vachss's Burke novels already know what that means.  If you have yet to read one of Vachss's books, then let me just say that The Ultimate Evil lives up to its title.  The story follows Batman down a very dark path, one that takes the reader into the darkest regions of the human heart with Vachss fearlessly shining a light on the sleazy predators that prey on children.  But the grotesque events are far from being mere fiction.  An appendix educates the reader on just how real the evil the fictional Batman has fought is.  As sickening as they are, none of the descriptions of child abuse and the methods/behavior of child predators that appear in any of Vachss's novels are fictional.  It's all real.

As far as the overall tone of the book, it is considerably lighter than the blacker than pitch Burke novels and, for the Vachss curious, the novel makes for an excellent starting point for those that have yet to read "pure" Vachss and "pure" Vachss, as dark and nasty as it can be at times, is essential reading.  Vachss's books are bursting with enraged energy, a strong sense of both purpose and, most important of all, justice.  The Ultimate Evil is no different.

Diagnosis Murder #8: The Last Word - by Lee Goldberg

The sociopath serial bomber Carter Sweeney, the man responsible for destroying Community General Hospital, calls for a meeting with Dr. Mark Sloan.  Against his better judgment, and unable to ignore his powerful need to question and investigate, Sloan agrees to the visit.  Sweeney proceeds to taunt Sloan, painting their relationship as one of like minds rather than polar opposites, and offers to take Mark to lunch after he gets out of prison.  Sloan dismisses the invitation as an empty threat and leaves.

But shortly after that meeting Sloan's career, both as a doctor and as an amateur sleuth, is not only ruined, but so are the lives and careers of those closest to him.  Carter Sweeney's offer of lunch was no empty threat.

With Diagnosis Murder #8: The Last Word author Lee Goldberg takes to the status quo of the series the way Godzilla takes to Tokyo.  He leaves no recognizable landmark standing, completely obliterating the status quo.  By the story's end everything and everyone in the life of Dr. Sloan has been destroyed; the only question that remains unanswered is whether or not they will pick up the pieces of their lives and try and rebuild, or will they simply move on to other pastures.  While this makes for a rather powerful ending, it doesn't make for an entertaining piece of a escapist fiction.  This is dark stuff indeed and a major change of pace for the series.  Instead of enjoying the spectacle of Dr. Sloan and friends solving yet another mystery, the reader gets a long and lingering look at the utter destruction of these beloved characters and, because of issues in my personal life, I found it to be a painful and unpleasant reading experience.  I don't think that it's a bad novel, far from it, it's just so different from what has come before that it caught me off guard. 

This time around Lee Goldberg takes the gloves off and does more than put Mark Sloan in a coma, he beats him bloody and senseless.  Watching Sloan rebound and regroup in an atypical manner completes the deconstruction of both the character and the series.  The Last Word truly is.

You Have The Right To Remain Puzzled - by Parnell Hall

When a small-time hustler named Benny Southstreet accuses Cora Felton of plagiarism, the nationally known Puzzle Lady (who is the "Puzzle Lady" in name only, since it is Cora's niece Sherry that actually does all the work) tells the man what physically impossible act he can go do with himself.  Benny is not inclined to do that, of course, nor does he intend to simply go away, and he quickly becomes a nuisance.

Then Benny Southstreet is murdered, and all the incriminating evidence points to Cora as the killer...but why?

I've been a fan of Parnell Hall since the late 1980s, when I first cracked open his Stanley Hastings mystery series.  The Hastings books were fresh, funny, and featured some admirably solid and very well thought out mysteries.  I wish I could say that lightning has struck twice, but You Have the Right to Remain Puzzled only scored one out of three for me.  While its mystery is a very well constructed one, I didn't find the book to be very amusing, nor any of the characters particularly likable.  This made the book a chore to read.  While Hall's earlier hero made for a comically inspired (not too mention realistic) amateur detective, Cora Felton came across as a meddling, and quite foulmouthed, dolt that, while incapable of constructing a crossword puzzle to save her life, nonetheless seems to love solving mysteries.  Go figure.

You Have the Right to Remain Puzzled looks to be the eighth book in the Puzzle Lady series and, being a fan of Hall's excellent mystery construction, I hesitate to say that it will be my last.  But I can say that if the book was by another writer, it would be.

The Husband - by Dean Koontz

Mitch Rafferty has managed to put his painful past behind him.  He has started his own gardening business and has become happily married, to a lovely woman named Holly.  But a sadistic evil infiltrates his life on an ordinary workday afternoon.  Mitch answers a call on his cell phone and his wife Holly tells him, "Mitch, I love you.  Whatever happens, I love you."  Then she cries out in pain and there is the sound of a struggle.  The no nonsense voice that replaces Holly's on the phone informs Mitch that he has only 36 hours to procure two million dollars.  If that amount is not paid, then Holly will be tortured and killed.  To prove to Mitch that they are serious, the kidnappers shoot a passerby in the head.  The terrified Mitch asks how they expect a mere gardener, one with only ten or so thousand dollars to his name, to get his hands on two million dollars.  "You'll find a way," the voice on the phone tells Mitch.

The Husband is standard Koontz: a bullet train paced story, filled with suspense, humor, and almost as many plot twists as your average afternoon soap opera.  If Dean Koontz weren't so formulaically consistent, I would be tempted to call the novel a return to form.  But Koontz's story template is rigidly set and The Husband does not deviate from it in the slightest.  It's no different from any other novel that Koontz has pounded out in the last thirty years.  Character overcoming the childhood traumas inflicted by his psychotically abusive parents?  Check.  Villains so capital E-vil that they don't qualify as human beings?  Check.  Ticking clock plot device that makes the story unfold like a protracted action sequence, with the hero barely getting time to catch his breath, much less sleep or even rest?  Check.  Saintly female figure, one whose love heals the hero's wounds and ends his suffering?  Check.  Golden retriever?  Check.  Libertarian pitch?  Check.  A denouement that is reads like the last few pages of a romance novel?  Check.  It's all there, but how does it read this time?

For the first hundred or so pages The Husband races along, following Mitch as he desperately tries to figure a way out from under the kidnappers seemingly omniscient gaze, and it had me hooked.  But Koontz's story takes a fatal stumble when he breaks away from Mitch to spend some time with the captive Holly and his story never gets back its urgent momentum.  Because of this, I found myself wondering how Mitch was ever going to get himself out of all the legal hot water he was in, rather than if he would be able to save his wife.  It was an odd storytelling misstep for a suspense writer with as much storytelling experience as Koontz.

But Dean Koontz is pretty much critic proof.  Fans of his frenetically paced stories do not need any encouraging to pick The Husband up, and those readers that have long since grown disinterested with his constantly recycled plot devices and characters already know to give the book a pass.  Koontz's name alone will be the deciding factor, not this or any other review.

Santa Cruise - by Mary Higgins Clark & Carol Higgins Clark

"Commodore" Randolph Weed has decided to give a special Christmas gift to those that have selflessly given of themselves in the past year: an all expense paid four-day "Santa Cruise" in the Caribbean on his freshly refurbished ship, the Royal Mermaid.  Alvirah Meehan, a lottery winning amateur sleuth, and her husband Willy, who have won a place on the cruise, thanks to their sizable donations to charity, invite their crime solving friends, Regan Reilly and her husband Jack, and Regan's parents Nora and Luke, to come along.  It's a good thing that they do, because several disreputable types have snuck aboard...

The old cliche "No good deed goes unpunished" serves as the springboard for this moderately amusing suspense novel, which is more a comedy of errors than it is of capers.  All the clandestine shenanigans by the stowaway criminals makes the Royal Mermaid's maiden voyage only slightly less trouble plagued than that of the Titanic.  I chuckled a time or two as the far too large cast of characters (apparently this isn't the first time these characters have teamed up, and it probably won't be the last) unwittingly stumbled upon the hidden criminals.  But the lightning fast pace of the story, not to mention the thinly developed characters that populate its supporting cast, keep Santa Cruise from becoming anything more than a frothy and easy to forget piece of holiday escapism.  It's like a heaping spoonful of whipped cream.  Sweet and tasty while it lasts, but incapable of truly satisfying.

Murder, She Wrote: A Little Yuletide Murder - by Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain

It's Christmastime in Cabot Cove and Jessica Fletcher is looking forward to spending the holiday at home.  She's also making plans to participate in the town's famous Christmas Festival.  But then someone goes and puts a bullet in the head of Cabot Cove's resident Santa Claus.  Who is the Grinch that killed Santa?

A Little Yuletide Murder is an okay little mystery, but Jessica Fletcher's reluctance in pursuing an investigation robs the book of much needed suspense.  If a story's narrator isn't all that eager to find out out who killed Cabot Cove's beloved Santa Claus, then why should the reader?  The book does have a nice comfort level, however.  There are numerous scenes of Jessica sharing a pleasant meal and conversation with her friends, with meal preparation sometimes playing an important part.  There are also plenty of scenes that involve Christmas shopping, card writing, and party planning.  All of which gives the book a real lived in quality that brings both the town of Cabot Cove and the people who live there to vibrant life.  Yet that vibrancy doesn't distract from the fact that Jessica Fletcher doesn't do a whole lot of detecting this time around.  Her investigative technique seems to consist of her simply being a gossip, which is not the best way to generate a suspenseful narrative.  A Little Yuletide Murder may leave some Murder, She Wrote fans feeling like they received a lump of coal for Christmas.

The Big Bad City - by Ed McBain

It's August and the city of Isola is cooking in the summertime heat.  A semi-sweet burglar is kind enough to leave chocolate chip cookies at his crime scenes and the body of a strangled woman is found in Grover Park.  While a great many people are on vacation this August, it's still business as usual for the working detectives of the 87th Precinct.

The Big Bad City is one of the late, great Ed McBain's last 87th Precinct mysteries, and it is a damn good one.  As with the forty-eight or so novels that have come before it, The Big Bad City overflows with gritty realism as the detectives go about the mundane work of tracking down clues (and interrogating suspects) as well as those quiet personal moments and observations that make the detectives such realistic and, for the most part, sympathetic characters.  Thanks to McBain's gift for snappy dialog, how they investigate a crime is just as fascinating as the crime itself.  Carella and Brown's investigation of the murder, as well as the rather unorthodox history, of Sister Mary Vincent (formerly Katie Cochran) is the centerpiece of the novel and fuels several feisty scenes between the detectives and those they are questioning.  The novel's secondary mystery, wherein Meyer and Kling attempt to track down and apprehend a chocolate chip cookie gifting oddball of a burglar, is good enough for a book of its very own.  A sequence where one of the media dubbed Cookie Boy's burglaries goes murderously awry is the brilliant highpoint of the novel.  (A bungled arrest comes in a close second.)  Finally there is the subplot involving the vengeance seeking Sonny Cole, the man that killed Steve Carella's father and who is now determined to kill Carella as well.  The only thing about The Big Bad City that didn't sit all that well with me was the matter of Carella's impending fortieth birthday.  With over forty years worth of novels behind him, I could not help but think that Carella should have been just a little bit older.  On the verge of turning 50, perhaps.

Even with police procedural shows like Law & Order, NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Street cluttering up cable stations (and DVD rental shelves) and countless other writers walking similar beats, nobody has come close to surpassing the wonderful 87th Precinct novels of Ed McBain.  The Big Bad City is a perfect example of why that is, read it and enjoy.

Blood Orchid - by Stuart Woods

Orchid Beach's chief of police Holly Barker's pleasant evening with a newly made acquaintance, a recently retired and quite wealthy real estate developer named Ed Shine, comes to an unpleasant end when a sniper takes a shot at the man.  Chief Barker's investigation of the attempted murder uncovers two other real estate developers that had not been as lucky as Mr. Shine.  The sniper's bullets had found their intended targets.  All three had put in bids to purchase Orchid Beach's Palmetto Gardens, a luxury community the Mafia had been using to launder money and that had been seized by the federal government.  Holly suspects that the Mafia might have been trying to muscle their way back into Palmetto Gardens.

Stuart Woods' Blood Orchid, his third Holly Barker thriller, is as readable as it is predictable, and it is very predictable.  I had the "who" figured out from moment one and none of the plot twists and turns that Woods attempted were strong enough to distract me away from the blatantly obvious.  Blood Orchid is the kind of book that makes one question the intelligence of its characters on just about every page, because they all need to have the IQ of a glass of water for the plot to work.  About the only thing I could say in the book's favor is that Stuart Woods knows how to make even a predictable thriller readable.  His prose is crisp and efficient to the point of being utilitarian, there's not an overly descriptive sentence to be found anywhere, and his cast of characters are likable, even if they are intellectually challenged.  If you want to read a good Stuart Woods novel, then pick up Under the Lake and give Blood Orchid a pass.

Diagnosis Murder #7: The Double Life - by Lee Goldberg

Disclaimer:  I am acquainted with Lee Goldberg, and in this book he kills a character that has my name.  (With my permission, of course.)  I do not think that this will keep me from being objective about the book.  In fact, it sets my standards a tad higher.  Think about it, who would want their name appearing in a crappy book?

Before Dr. Mark Sloan has the chance to put all the pieces together and solve yet another mystery that has been vexing him, he is nearly killed in a hit and run incident just outside of Community General Hospital.  After spending three days in a coma, Dr. Sloan awakens to find himself facing another, more personal mystery.

Who is this woman that is claiming to be his wife?

For the seventh book in his series of Diagnosis Murder tie-ins, author Lee Goldberg has concocted a mystery concept so unnerving, it would even give veteran medical thriller writer Robin Cook the willies.  Somebody is murdering people that have survived recent brushes with death.  Sloan knows that the killer is out there, but the concrete evidence of wrong doing is concealed beneath a mountain of statistical data that just as easily disproves that a killer is at work.  What Doc Sloan needs to do is separate the facts from the theory, but he can't figure out where, or even how, to begin doing so.  Couple that with the troubles stemming from his loss of two years of memory and the sudden appearance at his bedside of Dr. Emily Noble, the woman that claims to be his wife, and Doc Sloan has a lot to handle.

But those events are only half of the mystery.  Mark's son Steve, a detective in the LAPD, takes center stage for a time, when he discovers a pattern to the killings that his brilliant father did not.  This causes some interesting dramatic conflict between the two, as Steve sees this investigation as a way to finally work his way out from underneath his father's sizable shadow.  That the trail of clues in Steve's investigation don't match up to the ones that Mark has found brings out some pretty, not to mention petty, negative feelings.

Lee Goldberg has done it again, mixing an emotionally nuanced character study (of Steve Sloan, this time around) with an intricate puzzle of a mystery, where finding out howdunit is just as essential, and entertaining, as finding out whodunit.  Like the best of series fiction, The Double Life both satisfies and leaves the reader hungry for more.

Hallowe'en Party - by Agatha Christie

When 13 year old Joyce Reynolds seeks to impress Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, a bestselling mystery novelist, by telling her that she had, at one time, witnessed an actual murder, no one believes her.  But later that night, during a Halloween Party, Joyce Reynolds is murdered.  Drowned in a tub used for a game of "Bobbing for Apples."  Mrs. Oliver calls upon the legendary detective, and her personal friend, Hercule Poirot to assist in the investigation.  No one that Poirot interviews about the crime believes that Joyce actually witnessed a murder being committed.  This is something that fascinates Poirot, for there exists no other possible motive for murdering the girl...

Hallowe'en Party was a product of Agatha Christie's twilight years (she would only write five more novels after its 1969 publication, before her death in 1976) and it shows.  It's not that the plot is out of date and creaky with age, it isn't, but Hercule Poirot certainly is.  His black hair color now comes from a bottle and it is pointed out on more than one occasion, by more than one character, that the detective is no longer the robust man he once was.  Repeated references are also made about the radically changing times, the alien nature of the forthcoming generation, and, in an obvious nod to the current entertainments of the day, the supposed sexual nature of the crime.  But age has not dulled Poirot's razor sharp deductive abilities.  Despite there being no evidence of Joyce's murder being a psychopath's "thrill killing," everyone is quick to declare that it was so.  But Poirot suspects that the murder is the work of a panicked killer attempting to snuff out a witness to a previous crime.  Watching Poirot prove that theory correct, and also solve the mystery of what Joyce was supposed to have seen, is nothing short of a delight.

While Hallowe'en Party may not be a classic on the level of And Then There Were None or The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, it is still a solidly constructed mystery with a tense finale and satisfying solution, and is deserving of inclusion in any serious mystery aficionado's library.

Raven House Mysteries #39: Murder in Focus - by Robert Julian

Photographer Alec Bradley has come to Parkerstown to shoot pictures for an article on the lobstermen that choose to work year round.  Before he even has a chance to set up his darkroom, Bradley finds himself a suspect in a local art robbery investigation.  After that misunderstanding is cleared up, Alec, while working on his assignment, witnesses the discovery of the dead body of a local art dealer.  Alec then begins to ask too many questions to too many people and that draws the unwanted attention of the killer...

A short while ago, while listening to a CBS Radio Mystery Theater broadcast, I heard a commercial for the Raven House Mysteries imprint.  I could remember hearing that very same commercial 25 or so years ago, when Raven House Mysteries made its debut.  I even went out and bought one and read it. I don't remember the title, or all that much of the plot, but I do remember that I enjoyed it.  Raven House didn't last long, though.  Maybe a year, perhaps two.  But hearing that commercial brought back such a vivid memory, one blanketed with warm and fuzzy nostalgia, that I soon found myself prowling the local used bookstores, searching for a Raven House Mystery I could crack open.

Murder in Focus won me over on its opening page, with its first paragraph, when Alec Bradley described how the cold, salt spray filled wind that swept over the seaside art colony and summer resort named Pinchon's Arm smelled like winter.  Perhaps it was living in San Francisco for nine years, or growing up in Alameda, but there is something about cold wind and gray skies that says home to me.  Couple that feeling with the nostalgia factor of revisiting a quasi-cherished childhood memory and the book would have to be a flaming car wreck in order to disappoint.  While it didn't disappoint, it did have its flaws.  The narrator behaves stupidly for the sake of suspense (running for his life, he calls the police department, but hangs up without telling anyone of the attempt on his life because the Sheriff isn't there), the killer all but shouts out "I did it!" at one point, and the red herring subplots aren't built up nearly enough to effectively distract from figuring out the central mystery long before our clueless hero does.

I think most, if not all, of the book's flaws have to do with its being a category novel.  Categories are short (60,000 or so words, give or take 10,000) and rigidly formulaic.  They're meant to be gulped down in a few hours (how few depends on how fast of a reader you are) and, more often than not, quickly forgotten and disposed of.  Released in numbered clusters every month, the category novel is the literary equivalent of a TV series and, if the books are done well more often than poorly, they can be every bit as addictive.  Like any given number of TV series episodes, some category novels will be solid and well constructed, while others will come across as rushed and slapped together.  Murder in Focus, despite its problems, came across as a pretty solid entry.  I thought the setting was vividly realized and the supporting cast fairly colorful.  I found it entertaining enough to warrant making a return visit to Raven House.

Murder, She Wrote: Trick or Treachery - by Jessica Fletcher & Donald Bain

The annual Halloween bash held by one of Cabot Cove's wealthiest citizens is ruined when an unpopular woman gets her head bashed in during the party.

I'm sure that I have said it before, but I just don't watch all that much TV, I just read a lot of books based on TV series (not to mention movies and video games).  But one of the shows I did like to watch, when able, was the old fashioned murder mystery series, Murder, She Wrote.  The mysteries didn't strain the brain, but they did entertain.  Trick or Treachery does the same.  (Hey, I'm a poet and didn't even know it!)

Writer Donald Bain (there is no Jessica Fletcher, of course) does an admirable job of capturing the series's quaint and cozy feel.  He also concocts an appropriate witches brew of a mystery for the Halloween season, garnishing the tale with the legend of a gruesome ghost and other assorted psychic phenomenon that may or may not have a tangible connection to the murder.  Taking into consideration just how well this rather cozy series of tie-ins is doing, I do not think that Murder, She Wrote fans will need any encouraging to pick Trick or Treachery up for some Halloween mystery fun.  But if they haven't yet, now is the perfect time to do so.

Captains Outrageous - by Joe R. Lansdale

Hap Collins isn't doing too hot.  His home has been destroyed by a tornado, his lady love is giving him the cold shoulder, and he's working the dead end job of Security Guard at a local chicken plant.  But all that changes when he stumbles across a horrible assault in the parking lot and manages to save a young woman's life.

Given a generous reward for doing the right thing, Hap decides to take a little vacation trip with his best friend, Leonard Pine.  A sea cruise seems like a lovely idea.  Well, a lovely idea to Leonard's boyfriend.  But Hap and Leonard can't go anywhere without pissing somebody off and, long before the boys get a chance to firm up their sea legs, they are stranded in a small Mexican tourist trap of a town.

From that point onwards things quickly go from bad to worse, and then to the outright nightmarish...

I have been a fan of Joe R. Lansdale since 1982, or thereabouts, when I first got my taste of his frothy and addictive blend of black-as-oil-and-just-as-crude humor and bone chilling violence.  Of his dozen plus novels, none do a better job of mixing that humor and horror than those that feature the constantly down on their luck Hap Collins and Leonard Pine.  Just imagine Abbott and Costello as two head busting East Texans (one white and straight, the other gay and black) strolling through the most violent crime thriller you can think of.  That should give you an idea of what the average Collins and Pine adventure is like.

Captains Outrageous is the sixth in the series (following Savage Season, Mucho Mojo, The Two-Bear Mambo, Bad Chili, and Rumble Tumble) and it reads like the final one.  In between all the head knocking and joke cracking, Hap does a lot more soul searching about what a mess his life is than he did in the previous stories.  (Which says a lot about the book right there.)  He also points out, on more than one occasion, that both he and Leonard are "well into their forties" and beginning to get old.  Far too old to be wasting their time with life threatening adventures in head busting.  But when the murderous fallout of their botched vacation follows them to Texas, Hap and Leonard, and a few of their friends, have no choice but to return to Mexico and make things right.

If Captains Outrageous is Hap and Leonard's final adventure, I don't think that another Collins and Pine novel has followed it, then I have to say that it is the closet thing to a perfect farewell that a fan could hope for.  Read and enjoy.

Diagnosis Murder #6: The Dead Letter - by Lee Goldberg

Disclosure: I have both corresponded with and personally met author Lee Goldberg.  I also regularly visit his blog.  Mr. Goldberg has also, with my permission, used my name for a victim in one of his forthcoming Diagnosis Murder novels.  (It's the seventh and yes, I will review it here.)  I don't think any of this clouds my objectivity about whether or not I enjoy one of his books, I just believe in being honest.  (I also like to brag.)

It begins with a murder, but one that Dr. Mark Sloan won't be investigating.  He is too busy trying to save the life of the victim, a man whose affair with his own stepdaughter had been revealed to his wife that very morning.  What intrigues Dr. Sloan most about the tragic event is that the affair had ended the year before.  Why reveal it to the wife now?

The reason for that delayed revelation sits inside a box that the good doctor receives in that day's mail.  Private Investigator Nick Stryker, a disreputable sleazeball that, through circumstance, had aided Sloan in capturing a killer, has gone missing.  Since Stryker had been supplementing his income by blackmailing those he had been hired to investigate, he had left instructions that any and all material regarding those that would most want him dead for doing so be given to Mark Sloan.  As the fallout of Stryker's payback revelations spread through Los Angeles, Dr. Sloan follows the detective's last visible trail.  But what exactly is Sloan searching for?  A missing person, or a murder victim?

The Dead Letter is another winning entry in Lee Goldberg's entertaining line of Diagnosis Murder spin-off novels.  In The Past Tense, the mystery that preceded this one, Goldberg put poor Dr. Sloan through the emotional wringer.  So it is no surprise that The Dead Letter avoids the personal trauma and, instead, places its emphasis on Sloan obsessively sifting through all the red herrings of Stryker's many blackmail schemes, retracing the detective's final investigation, and then trying to...

But why should I spoil the book for you?  The fun of any mystery novel (or romance, or adventure, or suspense for that matter) is in its journey, not its destination.

The Dead Letter makes every effort to make the journey one that is both fun and comfortable.  Goldberg tosses in numerous personal and pop culture in-jokes and/or homages.  He also brings back several key characters from The Shooting Script and The Death Merchant.  While reading those two books isn't essential to enjoying The Dead Letter on its own, it does help create a more textured literary world for Sloan to inhabit.  One that I hope to revisit again and again.

The Man With the Iron-On Badge - by Lee Goldberg

Disclosure: I have both corresponded with and personally met Lee Goldberg.  I also regularly visit his blog.  Mr. Goldberg has also, with my permission, used my name for a victim in one of his forthcoming Diagnosis Murder novels.  (It's the seventh and yes, I will review it here.)  I don't think any of this clouds my objectivity about whether or not I enjoy one of his books, I just believe in being honest.  (I also like to brag.)

To gated-community security guard Harvey Mapes, Cyril Parkus's under-the-table job offer is a dream come true.  What Parkus wants is for Harvey to follow Mrs. Parkus, and find out what she has been up to.  Instead of just sitting in a shack and watching the time pass, Harvey can now live the action packed life of an actual private detective.  Visions of being like Mannix, or Magnum, or Rockford, or Spenser fill Mapes's starstruck mind. There is only one problem.  All those guys, and the cases they investigated, aren't real.  The secret that Lauren Parkus is hiding from her husband leads to some very real trouble.  But Harvey has been bitten by the detecting bug and he refuses to give up until he solves the mystery, although his first case might very well be his last.

Lee Goldberg's The Man With the Iron-On Badge is a fun little page turner that, on more than one occasion, reminded me of Parnell Hall's Stanley Hastings series.  Like Stanley Hastings, what Harvey Mapes thinks he knows about private detective work comes entirely from television shows and crime novels.  (Goldberg's novel references so many different television shows and/or books that it almost qualifies as an exercise in metafiction.)  Unlike Stanley, when Harvey gets in over his head he finds an inner reserve of strength and character that he never even knew existed within him.  (Stanley usually makes an ass out of himself, or he just gets lucky.)

But Mapes amateurish fumbling and on-the-case training are just sly misdirections on Goldberg's part.  While the reader is distracted by Mapes's growth from junk food guzzling slacker to junk food guzzling detective, all the clues are artfully dropped.  Another trick is how The Man With the Iron-On Badge manages to spoof private detective story cliches while letting Mapes discover that the reality of amateur detecting isn't all that different from what is on TV or in books, after all.

The Man With the Iron-On Badge is a fun mystery with an engaging and easy to relate to hero, and plenty of unexpected plot twists to keep the reader guessing.  I can only hope that the book finds a large enough audience to encourage Harvey Mapes in pursuing his new found career.

Diagnosis Murder #5: The Past Tense - by Lee Goldberg

While taking a morning stroll on the beach outside of his Malibu home Dr. Mark Sloan discovers the body of a murdered young woman.  Dr. Amanda Bentley's autopsy uncovers a personal message left by the killer that only Doc Sloan could understand.  The killer not only knows Sloan, but also knows about the very first homicide investigation that the amateur detective ever conducted, back in 1962.

The Past Tense spends most of its time in the past, with Sloan himself narrating how he got started on his obsessive hobby (I guess that is what you could call it) of solving murders.  The story also gives the reader a good understanding of the pyschological needs that drive Sloan to do so.  Its 1962 portion is a simply wonderful murder mystery, filled with the to be expected, and delighted in, twists and turns that keep the reader second guessing the author.  However, the contemporary half of the story is less so.  I guessed the identity of the killer the moment the character was introduced into the narrative, but that didn't make the final confrontation between the killer and Sloan any less harrowing.  It's the best in the series to date.  Goldberg also stages a final reveal that, because it is subtly hidden inside a taunting statement that the killer makes to Sloan, is utterly bloodcurdling in its emotional intensity when Sloan later realizes what the killer admitted to doing.  I really don't know how Goldberg could top the emotional power of this entry.

It is nice that Dr. Sloan finally gets his origin story, and I think that readers will no doubt set the book down feeling that they know more about Dr. Mark Sloan as an actual person than before.  I think murder mysteries come in two different styles.  One is puzzle focused, where the solving of an intricate and confusing crime takes center stage.  The other is more character focused, where the reader delights in watching a particular individual solve the crime.  I think that these Diagnosis Murder spin-offs clearly fall in the second category. 

TV-writer/producer-turned-novelist Lee Goldberg was an excellent choice for writing these books, probably due to his actually writing and producing several seasons of the popular television series.  He not only knows exactly how the characters should interact with each other as they piece together the clues to solve the crimes, but he also understands just what it is about them that makes them so appealing as three dimensional characters.  That understanding, coupled with the fun of reading about Doc Sloan doing what he does best, solving crimes and helping the sick and injured in Community General Hospital's ER, will keep me happily reading his Diagnosis Murder mysteries for as long as he is asked to write them.