Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

I should have learned by this point that being impulsive always got me into trouble. – Rebecca Robbins

Considering the misadventure Rebecca found herself caught up in upon her return to Indian Falls in series debut Skating Around The Law, you really would think the concept that impulsive = bad would have sunk in a little deeper. Fortunately for readers it did not, as Rebecca returns for another rollicking adventure in author Joelle Charbonneau’s second Rebecca Robbins mystery, Skating Over the Line.

Still stuck in tiny Indian Falls trying to unload the roller rink she inherited from her mother, things seem to be looking up for Rebecca when her realtor informs her a buyer has finally been located. Rebecca’s escape back to Chicago is interrupted, however, when her grandfather, Pop, and the folks down at the Senior Center implore Rebecca to help locate a car which has been stolen.

Despite having run afoul of Deputy Sean Holmes for her unwanted “assistance” investigating the town’s last crime wave, Rebecca just can’t say no to Pop, the man who helped raise Rebecca after her father walked out when she was twelve. Unfortunately, things get complicated quickly when the missing car turns up ablaze in a cornfield, Rebecca’s deadbeat father blows back into town – and promptly goes missing, along with his car – and a group of menacing men start lurking around the roller rink leaving poorly penned threatening notes… in Spanish.

Throw in a sexually frustrated best friend who’s trying to snag the local Lutheran Pastor, a new rink manager who’s more obsessed with directing his film than doing his job, Rebecca’s gorgeous but slightly patronizing boyfriend, Pop’s wildly popular at the Senior Center Elvis impersonator act, and Rebecca is in for another off-the-wall adventure. (more…)

“It was believed that only the death of someone young and without sin could appease the bad moon.” – Professor Reid

Along with the rest of the world, on July 20, 1969, the residents of Perry Hollow, Pennsylvania were transfixed by the images of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. One in particular, young Charlie Olmstead, was so overcome with excitement he begged his dad to let him go outside to look at the moon, convinced he’d be able to see Armstrong up there.

His father relented and young Charlie peddled off into the night on his bike, never to be seen again. A subsequent search turned up Charlie’s badly battered bike at the base of a local waterfall, and it was concluded by the police that Charlie had suffered a similar fate, his body washed away. A tragedy, but just an accident.

Forty years later Eric Olmstead, just an infant at the time his older brother disappeared, returns to Perry Hollow to tend to his mother in her dying days. Her final request of Eric: Find him. Find your brother. Apparently his mother always believed Charlie was kidnapped, and feeling the obligation to at least make a token effort to fulfill her request, Eric hires private investigator Nick Donnelly, whose foundation is dedicated to solving cold-cases.

In addition to being a former Pennsylvania State Police investigator, Donnelly is also specifically familiar with Perry Hollow, having previously worked with Perry Hollow Police Chief Kat Campbell on a serial killing investigation (Death Notice). Nick looks Kat up when he gets to town, and together they meet with Eric, who has discovered something interesting while cleaning out his mother’s house – a board containing a map of the state with six locations marked in red, each accompanied by a clipping from a newspaper detailing a missing child. (more…)

Spoiler Alert: Key details from One Too Many Blows To The Head are revealed in Borrowed Trouble.

Last time I set out to help someone things didn’t go too well. – Ray Ward

Ray’s luck isn’t faring much better in Borrowed Trouble, authors J.B. Kohl and Eric Beetner’s sequel to One Too Many Blows To The Head. Still mourning his brother’s death and the resulting carnage that followed, Ray is disarmed when he receives a package from California in the mail from his sister containing a reel of 8mm film and a plea for help.

The film depicts a brutal sexual assault, and as disturbing as that is, what makes the package truly disturbing to Ray is that to his knowledge he doesn’t have a sister. The letter contains enough details, however, to convince him that it’s legit. Determined not to lose another sibling, Ray resolves to do everything he can to help her.

Being as he’s a second-tier boxing manager in Kansas City, Ray’s not entirely sure how to go about things and so turns to his former nemesis – and now former police officer – Dean Fokoli, who’s working as a private investigator. Making it clear that he’ll be coming along, Ray hires Fokoli to go to Hollywood and track down his sister. Little could they have imagined that the film Ray was sent was only the tip of the iceberg, and that the bright lights of Hollywood only serve to cast even darker shadows. (more…)

No, you couldn’t leave anything to the people. You had to take up the cudgels on their behalf, even if it meant a few hundred of them were incinerated in the process. – Demyan Antonovich Kozodavlev

The Cleansing Flames, the fourth book in author R.N. Morris’ series featuring Russian Magistrate Porfiry Petrovich, finds spring creeping upon St. Petersburg. But as the snow and ice recede, the fires begin to burn. Fresh on the heels of revolution in Paris, pockets of radicals in Russia’s capital are sowing the seeds of revolution. Part of their manifesto includes setting fires to notable properties in order to burn down, literally and figuratively, the symbols of the perceived failures of Tsar Alexander II’s reforms.

Amidst this chaos, Porfiry and his partner, junior magistrate Pavel Pavlovich Virginsky, are called upon to investigate a body found in the newly thawed Winter Canal. An anonymous tip to Porfiry alerts him to the possibility there are larger implications to the body than a simple murder, implications which lead Porfiry’s investigation in the direction of the radicals at the heart of the city’s unrest.

Virginsky, for his part, takes advantage of a random meeting with a man believed to be one of the revolutionaries by using the connection to infiltrate the group. The further he gets into the group, however, the more he finds himself sympathizing with their cause. As events continue to unfold Virginsky’s loyalties are put to the test, forcing him to choose between his head and his heart. (more…)

“I think we need to ask ourselves a very important question: What would Sherlock Holmes do in this situation?” – Gustav Amlingmeyer

Though now a full blown series of novels that recently saw its fifth entry, World’s Greatest Sleuth!, author Steve Hockensmith’s Holmes on the Range series got its start as short stories appearing in magazines such as Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Now for the first time all seven stories which have featured the Amlingmeyer brothers, cowboys turned detectives in late 1890’s America, are available in one collection: Dear Mr. Holmes: Seven Holmes on the Range Mysteries.

The opening story of the collection, Dear Mr. Holmes, introduces readers to brothers Otto “Big Red” and Gustav “Old Red” Amlingmeyer. While out on a cattle drive, Otto entertains his fellow cowboys in the evenings by telling stories or reading from magazines. The Amlingmeyers lives change forever the night Otto reads a story called “The Red-Headed League” to the group.

Gustav is immediately captivated by the story’s lead character, some English bloke named Sherlock Holmes, and becomes obsessed with the idea of “detectin’ and deducifyin’” (“Some folks get religion. Gustav got Sherlock Holmes.”). When two of their fellow cowboys are murdered one night Gustav gets to put the lessons he’s learned from Mr. Holmes to the test sooner than anticipated as the Amlingmeyers attempt to solve the killings. And with that, Gustav “Holmes of the Range” Amlingmeyer is born. (more…)

“Anyone in this world could kill, in the right set of circumstances. The questions is, what circumstances?”
- Tariq Lawrence

Oh, what a deliciously tangled web of circumstances does author Hilary Davidson weave in her masterful debut, The Damage Done.

Travel writer Lily Moore is called home to New York from Spain with the horrible news that her sister, Claudia, has been found dead in the apartment they share. Even worse, Claudia’s death appears to be a suicide, tragically timed to coincide with the anniversary of their mother’s suicide.

Given she had fled to Spain in large part to get away from the downward spiral that had become her heroin addict sister’s life, Lily returns home under a shroud of guilt. Could she have prevented her sister’s death if she had been there?

Lily’s grief quickly turns to confusion, however, when upon going to the medical examiner’s office to officially identify Claudia’s body she discovers the person found dead in their apartment was not her sister. Someone had been impersonating Claudia and living as her for the past six months. But who, and why? And where is Claudia?

Lily’s quest to find the answers to those questions forms the framework for one of the most tantalizing, twisted, multilayered pieces of crime fiction I’ve read in quite some time. Like her protagonist, Hilary Davidson’s background is that of a travel writer, and the experiences she has had traveling the globe to varied cultures and locales clearly shine through in the wonderfully nuanced descriptions of both people and places that permeate The Damage Done.

Davidson has populated her tale with a cast worthy of an old school Hitchcock film: Lily’s overly attentive ex-fiancé and real-estate tycoon Martin Sklar; Claudia’s former lover Tariq Lawrence, a mysterious and extremely wealthy man; Lily’s fiercely loyal, and funny, best friend Jesse; the two detectives who vacillate between thinking Claudia is a victim or a suspect. Every player is so well defined you practically expect them to walk off the page.

In fact, The Damage Done is such a stunning debut it almost defies belief that this is Davidson’s first novel. The self-assurance with which she writes is breathtaking in its brazenness. Davidson doesn’t knock on the door, wait to be invited in, then politely ask you to read her book. No, she kicks that sucker down, makes herself right at home, and dares you to deal with the Damage. And it’s a dare you should readily accept, but you best be prepared to keep up because Davidson is going places, and she’s got no time to waste with anyone who’s not down with her beautiful brand of madness.

PS – Dear New York Times Best Seller List and Big Boys of Crime Fiction: Reserve space (near the top, of course) and watch your backs…Hilary Davidson is on the scene doing Damage.

The Damage Done is available from Forge Books (ISBN: 978-0765326973).

All Emily knew was that she had to get back on the field. Start over, start somewhere…retrace where it had all gone wrong.

There’s an awful lot going wrong in The Twinning Murders, the latest book from author Shelly Frome, not the least of which are two suspicious deaths which span the Atlantic.

Emily Ryder is a tour guide based in Lydfield, Connecticut who specializes in taking clients on international jaunts to England. At the start of The Twinning Murders Emily is preparing to take one of the town’s elder statesman, Harriet Curtis, and her siblings Silas and Pru to Lydfield-in-the-moor in Dartmoor, England for the annual Twinning ceremony (an event to celebrate the across-the-pond connection of the two “twin towns”).

A bit of a shakeup is occurring on the U.S. side of the pond, however, as the Gordon Development Company (GDC) has purchased a huge tract of land to pursue the development of a condominium community, an occurrence that would disrupt the idyllic town’s laid back way of life.

When Chris Cooper, retired roofer, conservationist, and head of the town’s Planning Committee, is killed in an accident shortly before the final vote to grant approval to CDG’s project Emily has concerns his death was more than an accident. The hasty, and premature, departure of Harriet to England ahead of the group’s scheduled plans only heightens Emily’s suspicions.

Things don’t get any more clear upon the arrival of Emily, Silas and Pru in tow, in England, where Harriet’s bizarre behavior continues. When Harriet herself winds up dead, also under suspicious circumstances, Emily knows it has to be more than a coincidence and sets herself to getting to the bottom of things.

Technically The Twinning Murders can be called a cozy as the profanity and violence are extremely minimal, the latter taking place primarily off-stage, and Emily is most definitely an amateur sleuth. Author Shelly Frome has also populated The Twinning Murders, on both sides of the Atlantic, with a wonderfully eccentric cast of characters. Unlike the cozies many readers are probably familiar with, however, The Twinning Murders has a genuine old fashioned, Agatha Christie-Miss Marple, British mystery feel to it, even though the bulk of the action takes place in Connecticut.

That British feel extends to the dialog and diction in the book. The characters use many British words and expressions, and the prose is a bit more formal than some readers may be used to encountering. For those not overly familiar with such a presentation this may be a little bit of a hurdle to jump initially, but if you like cozies, especially those with a British flair, you should definitely consider booking a trip to visit the two Lydfields with Emily and see how well you fare figuring out The Twinning Murders.

The global economy would collapse without proper energy management. He who controls energy has the ultimate power. It’s as simple as that.

The end game is that simple, but there’s nothing simple about how author Sam Yarney gets the reader there in his newest thriller, The Banjo Player.

In a move that initially seems puzzling, Wall Street insider and heavy hitter Mike Zimansky liquidates all his holdings, gives the majority of the $150 million in proceeds to charity, and disappears to a remote town in Ghana.

When the market crashes and the economy goes into a massive meltdown shortly thereafter Zimansky’s timing begins to look like more than just a coincidence. Add his subsequent death in a supposed boating accident to the mix and things start to look downright sinister.

PR firm owner Kimberly Piper receives an encrypted email from a friend, researcher Thor Rasmussen, that she’s unable to open. She forwards it to her husband for his help and within 24 hours both he and Rasmussen are killed.

Zac Pullman is a computer wizard, highly distrustful of all things “on the grid,” and spends his life living a low-key existence in the cyber shadows. At his academic father’s request, Zac is reluctantly pulled into Micheal Pullman’s latest project, a commissioned analysis of how the interplay of environmental, financial, security, and other factors affect shifts in global power.

Worlds collide when the Pullmans discover that Thor Rasmussen had been employed to complete the same project, and that he sent Kimberly Piper a mysterious email shortly before he died. Describing too much more of the plot of The Banjo Player would ruin the intricate puzzle and sense of adventure the reader experiences as the story unfolds. Suffice it to say that Zac and Kimberly end up together, on the run, and up to their eyes in a global conspiracy.

Author Sam Yarney has managed to take some very serious issues and multiple complicated plot lines and weave them all together into an engaging, fast-paced story built around real-world concerns (environmentalism, oil dependency) and events ripped from the headlines (global financial troubles, growing intrusions into personal privacy, the Deepwater Horizon disaster).

Investigation Discovery recently launched a new series called Hardcover Mysteries, in which top fiction crime writers share stories of real-life cases that inspired them to write, or captured their fascination.

The episode debuting tomorrow night (Monday, Nov. 22 at 9PM ET) features New York Times bestselling author and creator of Temperance “Bones” Brennan, Kathy Reichs.

In the episode, Reichs recounts her real-life involvement as a forensic anthropologist in one of the most sensational homicide investigations in Canadian history and how the case inspired elements in her first novel, Dèja Dead.

Discovery Investigation was kind enough to let me pre-screen the episode, and I assure you it’s a gripping case:

Louise Ellis, a 46-year-old journalist from Ottawa, Canada, was on her way to visit friends in the Gatineau Hills, but never arrived. When a friend finds her car parked on a roadside with her belongings inside, authorities begin to suspect foul play. Detectives narrow in on two suspects – her new husband and her ex-boyfriend – but they can’t find Ellis’s body.

Reichs, who was writing her first book at the time she was called in to work on the Louis Ellis case, recounts how she felt a very personal connection with Ellis. They were both writers, strong willed, independent and, at times, argumentative. Reichs also notes that the case contained many of the same elements that make a good fiction thriller: twists and turns, as well as several false leads.

Unlike the villains in her novels however, which she prefers to keep in the “deep background” until unveiled, the villain in the Ellis case ended up being right under the investigators’ noses from the very beginning. To find out who it was, and hear Reichs talk about how the case “stayed with her,” tune in to Hardcover Mysteries on Monday, November 22, 2010 at 9PM.

Investigation Discovery has generously provided an autographed copy of Kathy Reichs’ new Temperance Brennan novel, Spider Bones, for one of my readers. To be entered for a chance to win, just leave a comment below. Be sure to include your email address in the comment form so you can be contacted if you’re the lucky winner! Contest open to U.S. addresses only, and runs through midnight on November 27, 2010.

You can learn more about Investigation Discovery and the Hardcover Mysteries series by visiting the Investigation Discovery website. You can also find Investigation Discovery on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.

As far as I could tell, Sheriff Jackson was a gardener and Deputy Sean Holmes was annoying, which meant if I waited for them to do their jobs I’d have a lovely garden and a bad disposition to show for it. – Rebecca Robbins

When Rebecca Robbins returns home to tiny Indian Falls, Illinois she initially thinks she has one problem to deal with – selling the roller rink she inherited from her mother – but ends up with something decidedly more ominous on her hands… a dead body in one of the roller rink’s bathrooms.

Though at first it looks like an accident or suicide given the bottle of prescription pills found nearby, the town’s doctor / coroner soon rules it a homicide making Rebecca’s task of selling the roller rink even more difficult. (Who wants to buy a murder scene?)

And if a dead body throwing a monkey wrench into her plans to make a quick sale and hightail it back to Chicago wasn’t bad enough, the glacial pace – and incompetence – of local law enforcement’s investigation makes the prospect of Rebecca ever getting out of Dodge look downright grim.

What’s a girl to do? Take matters into her own hands, of course. So, with the “help” of her grandfather, Pop, Rebecca becomes a reluctant detective… and finds more than she expected.

Author Joelle Charbonneau has obviously drawn upon her extensive experience in the performing arts to give each of her characters a strong, and unique, voice. From Rebecca (who has a wonderful mix of whimsy and level-headedness), to Pop (who’s both well connected and disturbingly “active” in the town’s retired community), to Neil (Rebecca’s seriously misguided boss and would-be suitor), to Lionel (the veterinarian Rebecca loves to hate… or is it hates to love?), to Elwood the camel, every character has an incredibly rich, fully realized personality (yes, a camel can have a personality… trust me on this.)

A few of the situations Rebecca finds herself in are reminiscent of the early Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich (when they were still fresh and funny), though Charbonneau wisely never veers into the all-out slapstick territory that Plum frequently ends up in. Rather, Charbonneau has managed to deftly balance a healthy dose of comedy with a serious and engaging mystery. Add to that pitch perfect descriptions of the ins and outs of small town living and Skating Around the Law hits so many right notes it’s like reading an exquisitely conducted symphony.