Mysteries Recent Picks

May 2009

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The long fall, Walter Mosley. (2009)
"Mosley leaves behind the Los Angeles setting of his Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones series (Devil in a Blue Dress, etc.) to introduce Leonid McGill, a New York City private detective, who promises to be as complex and rewarding a character as Mosley's ever produced. McGill, a 53-year-old former boxer who's still a fighter, finds out that putting his past life behind him isn't easy when someone like Tony The Suit Towers expects you to do a job; when an Albany PI hires you to track down four men known only by their youthful street names; and when your 16-year-old son, Twill, is getting in over his head with a suicidal girl. McGill shares Easy's knack for earning powerful friends by performing favors and has some of the toughness of Fearless, but he's got his own dark secrets and hard-won philosophy. New York's racial stew is different than Los Angeles's, and Mosley stirs the pot and concocts a perfect milieu for an engaging new hero and an entertaining new series." (Publishers Weekly)

Life sentences, by Laura Lippman. (2009)
"Starred Review. This stunning stand-alone from bestseller Lippman (Baltimore Blues) examines the extraordinary power and fragility of memories. Writer Cassandra Fallows achieved critical and commercial success with an account of her Baltimore childhood growing up in the 1960s and a follow-up dealing with her adult marriages and affairs. The merely modest success of her debut novel leads her back to nonfiction and the possibility of a book about grade school classmate Calliope Jenkins. Accused of murdering her infant son, Jenkins spent seven years in prison steadfastly declining to answer any questions about the disappearance and presumed death of her son. Fallows (white) tries to reconnect with three former classmate friends (black) to compare memories of Jenkins and research her story. In the process, she discovers the gulf (partially racial) that separates her memories of events from theirs. Fallows's pursuit of Jenkins's story becomes a rich, complex journey from self-deception to self-discovery." (Publishers Weekly)

8th confession, by James Patterson with Maxine Paetro. (2009)
"As San Francisco's most glamorous millionaires mingle at the party of the year, someone is watching--waiting for a chance to take vengeance on Isa and Ethan Bailey, the city's most celebrated couple. Finally, the killer pinpoints the ideal moment, and it's the perfect murder. Not a trace of evidence is left behind in their glamorous home. As Detective Lindsay Boxer investigates the high-profile murder, someone else is found brutally executed--a preacher with a message of hope for the homeless. His death nearly falls through the cracks, but when reporter Cindy Thomas hears about it, she knows the story could be huge. Probing deeper into the victim's history, she discovers he may not have been quite as saintly as everyone thought. As the hunt for two criminals tests the limits of the Women's Murder Club, Lindsay sees sparks fly between Cindy and her partner, Detective Rich Conklin. The Women's Murder Club now faces its toughest challenge: will love destroy all that four friends have built?"(Amazon.com)

Devil's garden, by Ace Atkins. (2009)
"Starred Review. The 1921 rape/manslaughter trial of silent film star Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle provides the gritty backdrop for Atkins's outstanding crime novel, in which Dashiell Hammett, then a Pinkerton operative living in San Francisco, plays a significant role. A wild party Arbuckle throws at San Francisco's posh St. Francis Hotel results in tragedy after an actress, Virginia Rappe, is mysteriously injured and later dies. As the author explains in a behind the story introduction, the future creator of Sam Spade was actually assigned to help the defense on the Arbuckle case. With enviable ease, Atkins (Wicked City) brings to life Hammett, Arbuckle, William Randolph Hearst and other real figures of the period. Those familiar with the historical case will be impressed by how well the book meshes fact and fiction. Genre fans who enjoy the grim realism of James Ellroy's post-WWII Los Angeles will find a lot to like in Atkins's Prohibition-era San Francisco." (Publishers Weekly)

The lost witness, by Robert Ellis. (2009)
"Starred Review. Fans of Michael Connelly and T. Jefferson Parker will relish Ellis' second crackling thriller featuring Hollywood robbery-homicide detective Lena Gamble. On the outs with her department after the volatile outcome of her last case, shrewd, moody Detective Gamble is given a final chance to prove herself by solving the grisliest of homicides: a beautiful young woman chopped into pieces and dropped in a dumpster. Early clues reveal the victim, Jennifer McBride, as a prostitute. But as the investigation deepens, Gamble becomes convinced McBride was nothing of the sort. At the same time, Detective Gamble grows wary that she's being set up to fail by a vengeful chief of police and his minions. With the help of a handful of officers she trusts, Gamble sets out to untangle a web of lethal secrets and lies. Among the players: a corrupt pharmaceutical executive, a sleazy senator, and an American soldier turned sinister by tours of duty in Iraq. The body count climbs as Gamble inches closer to the culprit. Can she put the final elements in place before more blood is spilled? Movie director, producer, and novelist Ellis (City of Fire, 2007) serves up a killer crime tale with riveting characters and relentless twists." (Publishers Weekly)

Body copy, by Michael Craven. (2009)
"Ad man Craven's first novel introduces an extremely likable detective, Donald Tremaine, a former champion surfer, now a Malibu PI living in a trailer by the beach. Tremaine's willingness to go with the flow and trust his intuition in a crisis proves useful in the cold-case murder of a genius advertising executive he investigates. There appear to be no unexplored leads left until he dives in with his unorthodox tactics. Sometimes Tremaine squeezes more out of witnesses than the police could, sometimes he squeezes policemen, and a lot of the time he simply lays out the available facts and lets his subconscious play with different arrangements until a new pattern appears. Readers may be as baffled as Tremaine at the novel's unexpected plot twists; however, the mystery's solution is neatly set up and emotionally satisfying. Rather than solemn detectives like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, Tremaine resembles Jim Rockford, a sometimes clumsy, usually canny, always cool dude." (Publishers Weekly)

About face, by Donna Leon. (2009)
"The 18th installment of Leon's wickedly entertaining series featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti (after 2008's The Girl of His Dreams) focuses on garbage, illuminating the author's ongoing concern about the environment. Venice contends with polluted canals and a huge chemical complex. Trash litters Naples' streets. Incinerators in south Italy are full, and trucks laden with toxic waste travel the roads. Brunetti becomes an ecological expert when an investigator with the carabiniere wants him to look into illegal hauling that has resulted in a truck driver's murder. On a personal level, Brunetti's father-in-law asks him to investigate a potential business partner, Maurizio Cataldo. But Brunetti, who's devoted to his wife and children, is more intrigued by Cataldo's much younger second wife, whose once beautiful looks were ruined by a face lift. Leon flawlessly melds the two plot threads as she parallels her characters' vulnerability with that of Venice." (Publishers Weekly)

Mother's Day murder : a Lucy Stone mystery, by Leslie Meier. (2009)
"In Meier's fizzy 15th holiday-themed cozy (after 2008's St. Patrick's Day Murder), reporter Lucy Stone, of Tinker's Cove, Maine, knows that the victim of a shooting murder, Tina Nowak, was feuding with Barbara Bar Hume over the popularity of their respective 16-year-old daughters, Heather and Ashley. Tinker's Cove is still reeling from the disappearance 10 months earlier of a teen youth counselor, and Bar's arrest is almost as shocking. In digging for answers regarding the alleged killer mom, Lucy uncovers some icky revelations about Bart Hume, Bar's philandering cardiac surgeon husband. Meier's mix of family concerns and mystery turns darker than usual after Bart's mistress is killed in a suspicious car accident, and Lucy and Sara, Lucy's high school freshman daughter, are caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Along the way, Lucy must also deal with fears about Sara's first prom date and the sleepless nights all moms must face." (Publishers Weekly)

Schemers : a Nameless Detective novel, by Bill Pronzini. (2009)
"Gregory Pollexfen collects rare mystery books, and eight of his most valuable have been stolen. The police aren't paying much attention, prompting Pollexfen to file a claim with Great Western Insurance, which, in turn, hires semiretired San Francisco private investigator Nameless to work the case. Pollexfen is too rich to be suspected of an insurance scam, so Nameless focuses on the other members of the dysfunctional household: the gold-digging wife and her brother. In a parallel case Nameless' partner, Jake Runyon, investigates the harassment of the Henderson brothers. Their father's grave was recently desecrated, and one of the brothers was attacked. The agency's third associate, research wizard Tamara, is floating on cloud nine with a new man in her life, but he may have his own secrets. The award-winning Pronzini has more than a little fun with the locked-room mystery about missing mysteries, but as usual, the most compelling aspects of the book are the personal backstories of Jake, Nameless, and Tamara. These characters evolve realistically from novel to novel, and readers savor their growth as much as the cases they investigate." (Booklist)

Kingdom of silence, by Lee Wood. (2009)
"At long last, here is the second installment in Wood's British police procedural starring Sergeant Keen Dunliffe, which debuted in 2005 with Kingdom of Lies. Resigned to being his boss' favorite target, Dunliffe has settled into what he thinks is a below-the-radar beat: crimes against animals. That changes, however, when an animal-rights extremist group is suspected of murdering a U.S. marshall, and Dunliffe goes undercover to sort it out. Set during the time of the hoof-and-mouth epidemic of 2001, the action takes place in the Yorkshire countryside near Leeds. Along with his undercover assignment, Keen attempts to rekindle his relationship with American professor Jillie Waltham, a central figure in the first book, but the ongoing investigation takes its toll. This is a solid, well-crafted procedural in which the Yorkshire setting is nearly as much a character as Keen or his fat cat, Thomas. The dark and unsettling plot is riveting and taut, perfectly paced to keep readers turning the pages, right to the end." (Booklist)

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