Mysteries Recent Picks

April 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.

Run for your life, James Patterson & Michael Ledwidge. (2009)
"A calculating killer who calls himself The Teacher is taking on New York City, killing the powerful and the arrogant. His message is clear: remember your manners or suffer the consequences! For some, it seems that the rich are finally getting what they deserve. For New York's elite, it is a call to terror.Only one man can tackle such a high-profile case: Detective Mike Bennett. The pressure is enough for anyone, but Mike also has to care for his 10 children-all of whom have come down with virulent flu at once! Discovering a secret pattern in The Teacher's lessons, Detective Bennett realizes he has just hours to save New York from the greatest disaster in its history. From the #1 bestselling author comes RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, the continuation of his newest, electrifying series." (Amazon.com)

Promises in death, by J. D. Robb. (2009)
"At the start of bestseller Robb's megablast 28th novel to feature Lt. Eve Dallas (after Salvation in Death), Eve is dismayed to discover at a Manhattan crime scene that the victim is a friend, Det. Amaryllis Coltraine, who's been fatally zapped by her own stun gun. Dallas uncovers a connection to Coltraine's ex-boyfriend, Alex Ricker, whose father, a notorious criminal serving a life sentence at the Omega Penal Colony, blames Dallas and her husband, Roarke, for his imprisonment. Humorous touches, like the wild poolside wedding shower Dallas must abruptly leave after receiving word of a prime suspect found shot to death, provide relief from the intensity of the murder investigation. In a nice paranormal twist, Dallas uses dream visits with Coltraine to help expose a devious killer whose identity is a stunner. Robb (aka Nora Roberts) has a real gift for keeping this long-running thriller series fresh." (Publishers Weekly)

The night stalker : a novel of suspense, by James Swain. (2009)
"What crime fiction fan can resist a guy who isn't afraid to knock a few slime-bag heads when no one is watching? In Swain's fine second suspense novel to feature South Florida PI Jack Carpenter (after Midnight Rambler), imprisoned serial killer Abb Grimes hires the tough, unrelenting ex-cop to find his kidnapped grandson, Sampson Grimes. The chief suspect is the child's father, Jed Grimes, but Jack thinks Jed is innocent, even though the evidence suggests otherwise. There's plenty of action and intelligent sleuthing, but it's Jack's uncompromising character and Swain's equally uncompromising writing that will keep readers turning pages and eager for the next installment: I'd visited many prisons, and the smell was always the same: a choking mixture of piss, shit, fear, and desperation, wiped down by harsh antiseptics. The winner of France's Prix Calibre 38, Swain is also the author of Deadman's Bluff and six other books in his Tony Valentine gambling series." (Publishers Weekly)

Plum spooky, by Janet Evanovich. (2009)
"Evanovich fans rejoice! Stephanie Plum is back in town, along with her sidekick Lula, her Grandma Mazur, and an ever-widening cast of freaks, criminals, deranged felons, and lunatics looking for love. And just when Stephanie thinks her life can’t get any more complicated, in walks the mysterious Diesel. A man who seems to show up at the most inconvenient moments. This time, he’s the instigator for Stephanie’s new adventure, which involves camping in the Pine Barrens with Lula, and perhaps even a sighting of the Jersey Devil…so hang on for a Stephanie Plum novel that is sure to send chills up your spine – it gives new meaning to the words hilarious, and ‘spooky'." (Amazon.co.uk)

City of fear, by Alafair Burke. (2009)
"The breakout novel from the highly acclaimed thriller writer delves into the underworld of the Manhattan nightclub scene. In a city full of victims, it's murder to choose just one...Chelsea Hart, a fresh-faced Indiana college student, spends the final night of her spring break in the VIP room of an elite New York City nightclub with her girlfriends and a fake ID. The next morning, joggers find her in East River Park, her celebrated blonde hair hacked off. NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher catches the case and quickly homes in on a group of privileged men who were last seen partying with Chelsea. When a tight case is built against a young hedge fund manager, the department is elated. But Ellie has her doubts. Chelsea's murder is eerily similar to three other deaths that occurred a decade ago: the victims were young, female, and in each case, the killer had taken her hair as a souvenir. Ellie's search for the truth pits her against her fellow cops and places her under the watchful eye of of a psychopath eager to add the prideful young detective to his list...." (Amazon)

Starvation Lake: a mystery, by Bryan Gruley.
"Starred Review. Gruley's outstanding debut effortlessly incorporates his inside knowledge of both the newspaper business and his hockey avocation into a tale of violence and betrayal that will remind many of Dennis Lehane. After crossing an ethical line while writing an investigative series for the Detroit Times, reporter Gus Carpenter has returned to his hometown of Starvation Lake, Mich., to work for the local paper, whose stories mostly reflect the pedestrian and placid nature of smalltown life. That changes when evidence surfaces that the town's legendary hockey coach, Jack Blackburn, who disappeared after an apparent snowmobile accident a decade earlier, was actually murdered. Carpenter's reopening of the case, which has personal resonance for him (he'd been the goalie for the amateur boys' team Blackburn coached), shakes all sorts of skeletons loose. Gruley, the Wall Street Journal's Chicago bureau chief, has a gift for making all his characters, from the leads to the bit players, realistic." (Publishers Weekly)

No lovelier death, by Graham Hurley. (2009)
"A judge and his wife go away on holiday and lose everything. While they are away their 17-year-old daughter throws a party, it goes out of control, there is a riot and she and her boyfriend are murdered. A massive police investigation, stretching the force's rescources to breaking point, is launched with D/I Faraday in charge. The judge's neighbour who has promised to keep a eye on things while he was away feels he owes the man a debt. And he has his own reputation to think about. He wants the name of the killer. The neighbour? Bazza McKenzie, a man who made his fortune supplying the city with class-A drugs. The man in his organisation charged with getting the job done? Ex D/C Paul Winter. In Graham Hurley's gripping new crime thriller Faraday and Winter are finally on the opposite sides of the law. But they're both after the same thing. Paul Winter is treading his most dangerous line yet." (Amazon.co.uk)

Dead or alive: a Kevin Kerney novel, by Michael Mc Garrity. (2009)
"McGarrity's 12th Kevin Kerney novel (after Death Song) displays the author's usual fine sense of place along with an unusual amount of gore. When escaped convict Craig Larson goes on a rampage that includes the murder of Riley Burke, a neighbor and business partner of former Santa Fe police chief Kerney, that's enough to bring Kerney, at least temporarily, out of retirement—and back from London, where Kerney's wife is a U.S. embassy employee. Larson's crime spree becomes more deadly as he tacks back and forth as far south as Texas and north almost to Colorado. Kerney, acting as a special investigator with the New Mexico State Police, and his lawman son, Clayton Istee, partner up for the statewide manhunt. McGarrity is particularly adept at portraying multijurisdictional investigations. While this isn't a good starting place for newcomers, series fans will relish the deepening relationship of Kerney and Istee, who only recently learned they were father and son." (Publishers Weekly)

A rule against murder, by Louise Penny. (2009)
"Murder interrupts Chief Insp. Armand Gamache and his wife's annual summer holiday at Quebec's isolated, lake-front Manoir Bellechasse in Agatha-winner Penny's intriguing, well-crafted fourth mystery (after 2008's The Cruelest Month). Irene Finney, the matriarch of a large eccentric family having a reunion at the Manoir, marks the event by having installed in the lodge's garden a statue of the long-dead father of her middle-aged children. When the massive statue falls and crushes one of the daughters, Gamache investigates and discovers no love lost among the surviving offspring. Also in the suspect pool are Bellechasse's owner, chef and maître d'. Despite the scorn the snobbish Finneys heap on Gamache's sleuthing efforts as well as his own infamous family tree, the inspector treats them all respectfully as he seeks to bring a killer to justice. Seamless, often lyrical prose artfully reveals the characters' flaws, dreams and blessings." (Publishers Weekly)

Oolong dead, by Laura Childs. (2009)
"At the start of Childs's soothing 10th Tea Shop mystery (after 2008's The Silver Needle Murder), Indigo Tea Shop proprietor Theodosia Browning and her horse, Captain Harley, encounter murder most unsavory during the annual Charleston Point-to-Point Race. Shortly after clearing a jump, they're spooked by encountering the corpse of Abby Davis, an evening TV news anchor, who's been shot through the forehead. In parallel with CPD Det. Burt Tidwell, Theodosia pursues her own investigation, prompted by attorney Jory Davis, the victim's brother and Theodosia's ex-boyfriend. Prime suspects include anchorman Webster Hall, who lost his job to Abby, and Abby's husband, who may have known she was having an affair. As usual, Childs's plot simmers slowly while Theodosia's dogged yet always elegant sleuthing is as satisfying as sipping a cup of jade oolong." (Publishers Weekly)

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