Mysteries Recent Picks

January 2009

The underlined titles will take you directly to our catalogue.
Some featured items are linked via a book cover to enable you to read more reviews.

The tin roof blowdown : a Dave Robicheaux novel, James Lee Burke. (2007)
"New Orleans is awash with corpses after Hurricane Katrina unleashes its awesome power. In a city patrolled only by looters, all law and order gone, the survivors wait in trees or on rooftops for help that never comes. In a landscape transformed into a violent wasteland, Dave Robicheaux must investigate the shooting of two looters and find out why some very dangerous people are hunting a third. Is it because they unwittingly ransacked the house of a notorious mob boss? Or did a chance encounter with the father of a raped girl seal their fate? Robicheaux starts to uncover a ruthless tale of greed, torture and murder." (Amazon)

A killing karma, by Geraldine Evans. (2007)
"While on holiday, DCI Will Casey's peace is shattered by a call from his mother. Two dead bodies have been found at the Fenland commune where his hippy parents, Moon and Star, live. On arrival, Casey learns that neither death has been reported, not surprising, when it emerges that the body of the first victim, Kris Kallender, was found lying on top of their crushed cannabis plants. The commune members need Casey to sort out their little problem without calling in the local constabulary. Casey is also called upon to solve a very unpleasant murder on his own patch: this time a John Doe found dead in a dark alley. With the help of his knowing sergeant, Thomas Catt and his assorted contacts, Casey must try to get to the bottom of both official and unofficial cases. Neither proves easy." (Amazon)

Majestic descending, by Mitchell Graham. (2007)
"Katherine Adams, a beautiful Atlanta attorney, is on her first vacation in years aboard the magnificent Ocean Majestic cruise liner. She witnesses a violent argument between two men, and that same night she discovers that one of them has been murdered. Before she can do anything about it, the largest cruise ship in the world starts to sink in the middle of the Atlantic. Katherine is thrown into a world of international conspiracy and terrorism. The mystery continues through the country side of Italy to the streets of New York, as layer upon layer of the plot unfolds." (Amazon)

The dead pool, by Sue Walker. (2007)
"Kirstin Rutherford's return to Edinburgh after two years away is tinged with sadness because five months ago her beloved father-in-law, Jamie, drowned in a deep pool in the Water of Leith, known locally as The Cauldron. No one is sure whether it was a tragic accident, or a suicide, or something much more sinister. One person who may know is the enigmatic Morag Ramsay. For Morag's boyfriend and his lover were murdered at The Cauldron only a few months before Jamie's drowning. Morag was accused of the killings but recently released due to lack of evidence. Convinced Morag holds the key to Jamie's death, Kirstin befriends her. Yet it soon becomes clear that the brittle and unpredictable Morag is a less than reliable witness." (Amazon)

The last striptease, by Michael Wiley. (2007)
"Chicago Private Eye Joe Kozmarski is very curious when Judge Rifkin, a man who double-crossed Joe's father, asks him to spend the day fishing, he reluctantly agrees. The Judge has more than trout and a twelve pack on his mind. The police suspect the Judge's assistant Bob Piedras of killing his lover, a Vietnamese beauty with a taste for hard liquor, drugs, and stripping in front of a camera. Soon Kozmarski is hunting for the real killer with the unwanted help of the woman's two thuggish brothers and his own eleven-year-old nephew. Then the Judge is murdered; and Bob Piedras disappears." (Amazon)

A picture of guilt, by James Brownley. (2007)
"A photograph of two young girls, sisters enjoying the summer sun on a day trip to the seaside, nothing could be more innocent but why did it turn up thirty-five years later, clutched in a child killer's hand as she lay dying in her prison cell? Alison Glasby is 25, ambitious and lonely. She's a journalist on the "Sunday Herald" but her career is going nowhere. Then she gets the chance to work with Fleet Street legend Bill Davenport. Four children were killed in Norfolk in 1969, murdered by Leonie Dellar and her lover. Bill Davenport covered the case and wrote a book about the crimes, he got very close to some of those involved. Glasby was only supposed to do Davenport's legwork, but then she finds the photograph that Dellar had hidden. How did Leonie Dellar get the photo and what made her keep it hidden for so many years? Suddenly Davenport wants Glasby off the story. What is it about the murders that he doesn't want her to know?." (Amazon)

Folly du jour, by Barbara Cleverly. (2007)
"The story is set in Paris, in springtime, 1927. Joe hurries to the assistance of an old friend who has been arrested for committing a murder at the Folies Bergere. In a cell at the Quai des Orfevres, Joe meets Sir George, still in blood-stained evening dress and maintaining an uncharacteristic silence. The only other witness, a blonde stranger who was sharing his box, has vanished. Assistance for Joe comes from an entirely unexpected quarter: Francine, a young usherette working her way into the world of the Paris Music Hall, becomes his guide through this treacherous place where Joe is sure the true killer is lurking." (Book Cover)

Damnation falls, by Edward Wright. (2007)
"Randall Wilkes, his big-city journalism career in ruins, has returned after twenty years to Pilgrim's Rest, the Tennessee hill town where he grew up. He has taken on a lucrative but low-prestige writing job for Sonny McMahan, a former governor and Randall's boyhood friend, whose own career is under a shadow and who needs a ghost-written autobiography to ease his way back into politics. Faye McMahan, Sonny's mother, is addled with age, imagining that her dead husband is alive and worrying that her son might be in danger. Amid a violent autumn storm, Randall finds Faye hideously murdered, hanged by the neck from a bridge over the town landmark called Damnation Falls. Within days, another person connected to the McMahan clan is murdered in an even more grisly fashion. And the bones of a third, long-buried murder victim, a young woman, have emerged from the earth. Randall's ties to the victims force him to acknowledge debts that go back decades. Drawing on his investigative skills and his roots in the region, he sets out to discover who is behind the killings." (Amazon)

Skin and bone, by Kathryn Fox. (2007)
"The corpse of a young woman is found bludgeoned, frozen and burnt to death. Then the post-mortem reveals that she recently gave birth and evidence suggests the baby may still be alive. Detective Kate Farrer must find the missing newborn if it's going to have any chance of surviving and catch the dead woman's murderer before her own personal demons overwhelm her." (Amazon)

Rebel Island, by Rick Riordan. (2007)
"Tres Navarre had given up private investigation and with it a violent past that had buried too many friends. Newly married, with a baby on the way, it was time to find a safer line of work. He and Mala had come to Rebel Island to celebrate their honeymoon and a new future. But no sooner had they arrived than a reminder of the past showed up in the form of a corpse shot dead in room 12. Just like that Tres finds himself flashing back on the memory of a grim childhood summer spent on the island a summer that changed everything in his life. A summer he could never forget but never entirely remember either. When second corpse turns up, it's clear to Tres that the past is not dead and buried after all, but is stalking Rebel Island with unfinished business of its own." (Book Cover)

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