Tag: crime fiction

Day 164: The Bone Garden

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Cover for The Bone GardenThe Bone Garden is one of Tess Gerritsen’s Risoli and Isles series, but Isles only appears briefly, so it is more of a stand-alone mystery.

The novel takes place in two time periods. In the present day Julia Hamill has just purchased a 130-year-old house when she discovers an old skull in the overgrown garden. Medical examiner Maura Isles determines that the victim, a woman, was murdered long ago. Julia becomes fascinated with a box of newspaper clippings and letters that hold the key to the mystery.

In 1830’s Boston, Norris Marshall has joined the “resurrectionists,” grave robbers, in an effort to pay for his medical education. After a nurse and a doctor are murdered on the university hospital grounds, Norris finds he is a suspect. He seeks help from another student, Oliver Wendell Holmes.

I have only read a few Risoli and Isles books. I thought this one was passable, but I didn’t like it as well as others I have read. The attempt at 1830’s dialogue is awkward and painful to read, and in this case I didn’t see any reason to use a real historical person in the novel when a fictional one would have done just as well.

Day 160: A Rule Against Murder

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Cover for A Rule Against MurderI am going to read Louise Penny’s latest soon, so in preparation I thought I’d review an earlier Inspector Gamache book, A Rule Against Murder. Inspector Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie are celebrating their anniversary at the remote but luxurious Manoir Bellechasse. The only other guests are the strange Finney family, there for a reunion. They intend to erect a statue on the grounds of the resort to the family patriarch, who is deceased. The Finneys are wealthy and privileged but treat each other and others with disdain.

Julia Martin, daughter of the family matriarch, Irene Finney, is attending the reunion for the first time in years, after her husband has been disgraced and imprisoned following a financial scandal. She is in the midst of divorcing him. The older brother is spiteful and his wife seems insecure. Gamache is surprised to find that “Spot” and his wife Claire, for whom the family has been waiting, are actually his friends from Three Pines, Peter and Clara Morrow. Unfortunately, Peter seems to revert to bad behavior under the family’s influence. The only pleasant member of the family is Irene’s second husband.

One night after a terrible storm they find Julia’s body, which has been crushed by the statue of her father. Gamache and his team must find out who murdered her, but they also must figure out how the huge statue could even have been moved.

As usual, I find Penny’s novels atmospheric and well written. Penny also creates believable and interesting characters. I am looking forward to reading her next book.

Day 158: Death of a Maid

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Cover for Death of a MaidI have been curious about M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series ever since seeing an episode or two of the TV series, so I finally picked up Death of a Maid. Luckily, I only invested a dollar in this purchase.

Mrs. Gillespie is the best maid in town, but she is also a malicious gossip. Hamish Macbeth has won her services in a raffle but he spends most of the day trying to avoid her. Then she is found bashed in the head with a bucket in the house of a retired professor who was out all day. Hamish, who spends his time trying not to look good at his job for fear of promotion, finds there are loads of suspects.

Meanwhile, an old girlfriend has arrived in town with a new suitor, and Hamish is feeling jealous.

I don’t think I have ever read a book where the author has made less of an effort. The novel devolves into a series of short scenes that all seem to be prematurely cut off, usually by someone flouncing away even in the midst of being questioned by the police. The mystery is only difficult to solve because the book is littered with suspects. Macbeth catches the murderer 20 or 30 pages from the end of the book, but it continues to maunder on as if the author doesn’t know how to finish. Although I know this is a popular series, in my opinion it has run its course.

Day 153: The Shadow Woman

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Cover for The Shadow WomanIn The Shadow Woman, a woman is found dead in a park during the Gothenburg Party, a citywide festival that is taking place during a blazing summer. Chief Inspector Erik Winter and his team are having a hard time finding leads or even identifying the body. All they have is footage from a surveillance camera of a Ford Escort and a strange symbol painted on a nearby tree.

Sandwiched into the criminal investigation is the narration of a little girl who doesn’t know where her mommy is and is being kept by strangers. When Winter’s team finally identifies the body, they find that the woman had a little girl. No one seems to know where the child is.

During an investigation that lasts months, Winter and his team begin to find links between the crime and a robbery that occurred 25 years ago. In the meantime, Winter’s long-time girlfriend Angela is thinking of giving him an ultimatum about their relationship.

I haven’t been reading Åke Edwardson’s Erik Winter mysteries in order, making the private lives of the recurring characters a little difficult to follow. The books keep my interest and provide complex puzzles, but I still don’t feel like I get much insight into the personalities of the main characters. The slower pace of Edwardson’s police procedurals is probably more realistic than the speed with which crimes are usually solved in fiction, but the author’s ability to effectively build suspense is also affected by this pace.

Day 150: The Torso

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Cover for The TorsoThe Torso is a pedestrian police procedural by Helene Tursten. A torso washes up on a Swedish beach. The investigation finds that a similar murder occurred in Copenhagen, so Detective Irene Huss travels there to consult with the Danish police. Victims are being strangled and then after death dismembered and their organs removed. Not only are the leads to the murderer few, but the police are having difficulty identifying the original torso.

The novel is ploddingly written with no particular suspense. The characters all remain sketchily depicted except Huss, and her every thought is recorded, no matter how mundane. Unfortunately, many of her thoughts are mundane. Every character is thoroughly described including each person’s changes of outfits.

Speaking of Huss’s thoughts, despite having a loving husband and two teenage daughters, she seems to be prepared at one point to launch into an affair with a Danish policeman without any thought at all for her family.

My biggest negative reaction has to do with unlikeliness in the investigation. Perhaps police procedure is different in Sweden than here, but I was surprised to find the coroner providing a profiler lecture based upon one examination of the body and a lot of supposition. For example, there is an assumption throughout that the organs are removed to be eaten, even though there is no proof of that. In addition, the reactions of Huss and other offficers to some sights and remarks seem to be implausibly squeamish, considering their positions. It also seems implausible to me that the team would retain the obnoxious alcoholic cop Jonny, who seems to be incompetent to boot. Rather than assume Swedish procedure and police behavior is that different, I am inclined to believe that Tursten doesn’t know anything about criminal investigations.

Finally, the denoument of the novel is anticlimactic. The murderer has been stalking Huss, so we might expect a terrifying finale. No such thing happens. Although the novel is clearly meant to appeal to those who like dark, gruesome fiction, it completely fails to provide any suspense or atmosphere.

Day 146: Broken Harbor

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Cover for Broken HarborBest Book of the Week!
I have eagerly awaited each new novel by Irish author Tana French ever since reading her first, In the Woods. She has only gotten better. A technique she has employed from the first is to use a secondary character from one book as her protagonist for the next–a creative way to provide continuity for a stand-alone story.

Mick Kennedy briefly appeared in French’s last book, Faithful Place, as a brash, abrasive cop. Although not all his coworkers like his bullheaded, aggressive manner, he has a high solve rate and goes completely by the book. He lands an important case, an attack on an entire family. Pat and Jenny Spain and their two children were attacked in their home in an upscale development that has floundered since the economic downturn–in Brianstown, which Mick knows as Broken Harbor. Only Jenny has a chance of surviving. Mick takes along as partner a rookie detective he thinks has potential.

When the detectives get to Broken Harbor, they find almost a lunar landscape of half-built, crumbling houses and rubble with only a few badly built occupied homes. The Spain’s house, however, is immaculate when you look past the blood. But something strange has been going on. Holes are smashed in the walls, monitors and cameras are strategically placed, and a vicious trap is set up in the attic. The computer has been wiped, and the “floaters” discover that someone has been camping out in a nearby house and spying on the Spains.

Broken Harbor holds a mix of confusing memories for Mick. His family spent two weeks there every summer when it was a modest fishing town. He was happy there, but at the end of the last summer, his mother committed suicide. Mick has been purposefully ignoring his unresolved feelings in addition to coping with a mentally ill younger sister.

Broken Harbor is a police procedural that becomes a riveting psychological suspense novel. Unlike with some of French’s earlier books, I was unable to decide between the competing suspects. But whether you can guess the solution or not, you’ll enjoy French’s novels. They are rich with complex characterizations and intriguing plots. The suspense builds as we begin to understand what was going on in the house and Mick begins to grasp how traumatized he actually is by the events in his past. The novel is dark and disturbing–just the kind of book I like!

Day 142: The Man from Beijing

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Cover for The Man from BeijingBefore I read The Man from Beijing, I heard it was really good, but I personally think Henning Mankell is better when he restrains the scope of his novels and refrains from long political discussions. This novel is not one of Mankell’s Kurt Wallander mysteries, but a stand-alone.

Almost everyone in a small village in remote Sweden is brutally murdered. Judge Birgitta Roslin figures out that one elderly couple was her mother’s foster parents, so she decides to go to the village and investigate.

The police are quickly convinced that the murderer is a local petty criminal, but Roslin finds diaries written by an immigrant ancestor of one of the elderly victims that she thinks may provide clues to the crime. Roslin’s story is periodically interrupted by a flashback describing the events following a man’s kidnapping in China in 1863 after he is brought to America to work on the railroad.

In the meantime, Ya Ru, a powerful Chinese businessman, is plotting a further acquisition of power and waiting to hear about the revenge he planned against the family of a man who harmed his ancestor. The novel travels to China, London, and Africa. It involves political plotting and maneuvering, corruption, and racism.

I thought the motive for the original murders was ridiculous. I also found many of the characters to be one-dimensional.

This novel is the second stand-alone I have read by Mankell, but unusually for me (because I often tire of series mysteries), I have preferred the Wallander novels. Both stand-alone novels are set partially in Africa, where Mankell lives part of the year. This novel is an improvement on the other one, which I thought was poorly written and extremely depressing, but it still has major flaws.

Day 140: Shoot To Thrill

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Cover for Shoot To ThrillWhen I say I occasionally read P. J. Tracy’s Monkeewrench mysteries when I want something light, do not think of cozies or quaint mysteries like those written by Alexander McCall Smith. The Monkeewrench novels are thrillers with plenty of action and sometimes horrifying crimes, but they have a lightness to them that makes them fun reading, probably because of the entertaining characters and witty dialogue.

Monkeewrench Software, a team of eccentric but world-class software developers, is the focus of all of these novels, which are written by a mother-daughter writing team. The main character is Grace MacBride, a mysterious woman who lives in a protected compound because her enemies have been trying to kill her since the first book. Also on the team are the wealthy company owner, Harley Davidson, who houses the eccentric team in his mansion; the flamboyant Annie; and Roadrunner, an exercise addict.

The FBI has contacted Grace and the team to ask for help because someone, or rather a group of people, is posting videos on YouTube of murders that take place all across the country. It is not clear if the murders are real or re-enactments. But a real murder that may be related is being handled by Leo Magozzi, Grace’s lover, and his partner Gino Rolseth of the Minneapolis Police Department.

The case is interesting, but even more interesting are the relationships between the characters, particularly the one that develops between the Monkeewrench team and John Smith, a quiet, correct agent near retirement who has been assigned to be their liaison.

Day 137: Little Face

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Cover for Little FaceIn Sophie Hannah’s complex thriller Little Face, Alice Fancourt leaves her infant daughter with her husband for a few hours and returns to find, she says, another baby in her place. Her husband David tells Detective Simon Waterhouse that the baby is theirs and insists his wife is crazy. David’s overbearing mother Vivienne is not so sure, but she treats Alice like she is the infant. The cops, for the most part, agree with David.

But Waterhouse is inclined to believe Alice and finds what he thinks is a very good reason to look into it further. David’s first wife was murdered. He thinks the key to the possible kidnapping may be in the first wife’s death.

Simon’s boss Detective Sergeant Charlie Zailer thinks Alice is losing her mind and refuses to let Simon investigate. She also thinks Simon is too protective of Alice and may also be inappropriately attracted to her. To add to the confusion, Simon and Charlie are navigating their own minefield of Charlie’s infatuation with Simon. But suddenly, both Alice and the baby disappear.

Sophie Hannah is a master of the psychological thriller, and Little Face is no exception. Her plots are carefully constructed, and Hannah employs her usual technique of alternating the point of view between characters. Sometimes I think that all the characters in Hannah’s books, including the detectives, are insane, but somehow this just adds to the atmosphere and the fun. You can bet with Hannah that the ending will be thrilling.

Day 134: A Red Herring Without Mustard

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Cover for A Red Herring Without MustardBest Book of the Week!
A Red Herring without Mustard is another of Alan Bradley’s delightful, comic mysteries featuring Flavia de Luce, the eleven-year-old detective and chemist.

In this book a mysterious gypsy woman is nearly beaten to death after Flavia allows her to camp on de Luce land. Something odd is going on. After Flavia surprises a neighborhood thug in the de Luce’s drawing room when everyone else is in bed, she finds him dead the next day, hanging from the trident of a fountain of Poseidon.

As usual, Flavia races all over the countryside on her bike Gladys, feuds with her sisters, consorts with her father’s shell-shocked batman, and tumbles into trouble in this novel, set in England just after World War II.

Bradley’s plots are implausibly complex, but it is not for the mysteries that I read these books but for the funny, irrepressible character of Flavia.