Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

“If I’d blinked, I would have missed it.” – Troy Chance

The blink of an eye. That’s just how quickly freelance writer Troy Chance’s life irrevocably changes in Learning to Swim, the debut novel from Sara J. Henry.

While on the deck of a ferry bound for Vermont, Troy sees what she believes to be a small child fall from the deck of a ferry traveling in the opposite direction. Instinctively Troy dives in and swims to where she saw the object enter the water.

Several frantic dives under later Troy discovers it was indeed a child, a boy about six years old, and she’s shocked to discover a sweatshirt tied around him binding his arms to his body; clearly the boy was meant to drown.

No one from either ferry saw the events, so Troy has to make an arduous swim to shore with the boy in the ice cold water. Upon reaching shore she can’t shake the feeling that taking the boy to the police is the wrong thing to do, and the decision she makes to take him home with her instead sets in motion a chain of events that turns Troy’s comfortably low key life upside down.

Living for the most part with no close friends, only minimal contact with the majority of her family, and involved in a relationship that’s more friends than lovers, Troy is used to moving through the world with minimal attachments. Therefore the strength of the feelings awakened in her when she saves the boy overwhelms and takes her completely off guard. In fact, Troy finds herself obsessed with the mystery of who tossed the boy from the ferry, so much so that even after the boy is reunited with his father and the police are finally involved Troy refuses to stand down on her own investigation, despite the increasingly dire consequences of her continuing. (more…)

If you are unlucky enough to have known the dark as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for darkness is a movable feast.
- Adam Lee

There’s enough darkness following Adam Lee, the main character in Grant Jerkins’ debut novel A Very Simple Crime, to fuel a Thanksgiving sized feast.

The book opens with Adam on trial for the murder of his wife, Rachel. As we learn through Adam’s narrated flashback to the events that brought him to this point in his life, it seems that darkness has followed him like a specter from the time his parents were killed in a car accident when he was a child.

He grows up only to marry a woman whom turns out to be seriously mentally disturbed, and with her has a son, Albert, who is born severely developmentally disabled. Though he doesn’t grow much mentally, Albert does grow to be a very physically large young man, one prone to violent outbursts. After nearly killing his mother during a confrontation Albert is finally institutionalized.

Trying to get some breathing space from his suffocating home life, Adam begins having an affair with one of Albert’s attendants at the institution. To occupy his wife while he sneaks away with his mistress for the weekend Adam brings Albert home from the institution for a visit. Upon his return home from the tryst, however, he finds Rachel dead and Albert nearly nearly catatonic, rocking back and forth in a corner of the room.

With Albert the only one present, and having a history of violence against his mother, the police conduct a perfunctory investigation; it’s clear to them what happened. The setup and majority of the backstory established, it’s at this point A Very Simple Crime turns from pure Southern Gothic into a legal thriller that just happens to be set in the South. And, if possible, it gets even darker. (more…)

To be effective the punishment has to be so severe as to be frightening, ten times more frightening than whatever else is driving your actions. Citizens can’t abide that level of punishment, and I understand now why the secret has been so well guarded. – Michael O’Connor

Ever imagine what would happen if all the people in prison were released at the same time? Author C.J. West has, and his latest novel, The End of Marking Time, is a look at just such a scenario.

Michael O’Connor ended up alone on the streets at age 15 and turned to a life of burglary in order to keep himself fed. He became quite skilled at his chosen profession, and was careful to never commit a violent crime. After unknowingly stealing from the home of the District Attorney, however, Michael’s luck runs out. He’s arrested, tried and convicted, and sentenced to prison.

During the course of a breakout by a fellow prisoner during their transportation to prison Michael is shot in the head. When he comes out of the resulting coma four years later the world is a very different place.

Shortly after Michael entered his coma the Supreme Court declared long term incarceration to be cruel and unusual punishment. As a result, two million felons were released. Not just left to run wild the relearners, as they are called, are monitored 24/7 via a chip implanted in their heads and an electronic ankle bracelet. Additionally, they must complete an individually tailored education program before they will be deemed reeducated and released from monitoring. Sounds straightforward and relatively benign, right? Not so fast.

As Michael quickly learns, there is more going on in the reeducation programs than the public has been led to believe. The relearners’ programs are administered via a black box connected to their TVs, one that has the capability of administering electric shocks. Further, some of the programs’ instructors aren’t above extorting favors from the relearners in exchange for assurance of good performance results. Refusal results in the lessons increasing to an almost impossible level of difficulty and no hope of ever graduating.

Additionally, in exchange for their “freedom” relearners have lost all rights. Should they be arrested for a subsequent offense there is no jury trial, no presumption of innocence, no appeal. If they’re lucky, they are returned to their program for a second chance. If they’re unlucky – or have already blown their second chance – they get sent to one of the last ditch reeducation programs… programs from which no one ever graduates because, as Michael discovers, relearners sent to those programs are subjected to experimentation and torture so severe that if it doesn’t kill them outright the person eventually goes insane and commits suicide.

Told by Michael in the first person in the form of a speech – a plea, really – he’s delivering to an unseen panel he believes has the power to set him free, The End of Marking Time is a fascinating look at a dystopian future in which the public is willing to turn a blind eye to the methods by which criminals are controlled in exchange for a virtually crime free society.

The End of Marking Time will challenge your beliefs about the criminal justice system. Are long term/life sentences cruel and unusual? If so, what’s the alternative and, as presented in the book, is it really any better or more humane? This is not a book for those who want to breeze through some mindless entertainment. Far from it. It is, however, a thought provoking read that presents questions and scenarios that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

“The worst pain in our lives comes from the mistakes we refuse to acknowledge – the things we’ve done that are so out of harmony with who we are that we can’t bear to look at them.” – Mark Mellery

Former detective Dave Gurney is a man trying desperately to be in harmony with himself. Recently retired from the NYPD as their top man in homicide, he and his wife, Madeleine, have retired to an idyllic little town in upstate New York.

Try as he might, however, he just can’t completely detach himself from his deep-seated desire to solve puzzles and figure out what makes killers tick. And so it is a double-edged sword that lands in his lap when an old classmate, Mark Mellery, seeks him out for help with some mysterious, threatening letters he’s been receiving.

The letters are all in the form of poems that set forth a puzzle, the first of which also included a “game” – think of any number between 1 and 1000 and then open the small envelope included. Mellery was understandably freaked out when after picking 658, he thought at random, he opened the envelope to find written on the paper inside it… 658.

As the letters are thinly veiled threats against Mellery’s life, Gurney tries to convince him to take them to the police. Mellery refuses and makes Gurney promise that he will not either. When Mellery is brutally murdered in his home a few days later, however, Gurney has no choice but to take all the information he has to local law enforcement. When more people are killed, including a police officer, Gurney is reluctantly invited to join the investigation as a consultant. (more…)

If there was one thing I had learned in the U.S., it was the benefit of nailing your enemies before they nailed you. – Matt Wells

In Maps of Hell, British crime writer Matt Wells initially has a bigger problem on his hands than nailing his enemies… he has to figure out who he is first.

The book opens with Matt regaining consciousness in a tiny cell, naked, beaten and unable to recall who he is or how he got there. He’s taken from his cell repeatedly for bizarre, Clockwork Orange-esque sessions aimed at conditioning his mind… but to what end? Matt doesn’t want to stick around long enough to find out.

Taking advantage of a lapse in one of the sessions he makes a daring escape, during which he realizes that he – and many others – are being held and experimented on by a fringe militia group at a compound deep in the forests of Maine. His memory slowly returns while he’s on the run trying desperately to stay one step ahead of his militia pursuers. And they aren’t the only ones looking for him.

A series of gruesome murders have been occurring in Washington, D.C., with Matt’s fingerprints turning up at one of the crime scenes. If that wasn’t bad enough, he’s also wanted for questioning in the disappearance of his girlfriend, British DCI Karen Oaten, who was in D.C. to meet with the Department of Justice.

Now, in addition to trying to stay one step ahead of the militia members tracking him, Matt also has to decide whether to go to the authorities and trust them to believe his story, or try on his own to solve the puzzle of his abduction, his girlfriend’s disappearance, and why he’s being framed for murder.

Maps of Hell is a truly frantic and engaging read. It is decidedly unnerving to be thrust into a world where the narrator, normally the reader’s guide, himself doesn’t know precisely what’s going on. And author Paul Johnston has captured Matt’s fear and confusion in a way that’s so vivid it’s almost palpable:

When I came round, I didn’t have a clue where I was. My head was ringing with strange sounds and I saw a blur of colors and shapes. Gradually my vision cleared, but my ears were still filled with discordant voices. There was a foul stench in my nostrils. I tried to move, but my arms and legs were confined. I looked down and saw that I had been tied to a wheelchair. I was wearing paper clothes again. I felt a twinge of alarm and glanced around. What I saw wasn’t reassuring.

Having read the previous two books in the Matt Wells series is not required in order to enjoy Maps of Hell. In fact, not having done so could arguably enhance the experience as the reader would truly be discovering everything for the first time right along with Matt as he struggles to understand who he is and what’s happening to him.

Author Paul Johnston consistently produces books that manage to take a familiar premise and completely turn it on its ear, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Maps of Hell. If you’ve not read anything by Johnston before, grab a copy of Maps of Hell and begin your journey into the mind of one of the most creative – and criminally under the radar – thriller writers working today.

Maps of Hell is available from Mira (ISBN: 978-0778327783).

I’m very pleased to have a guest post from Steve to wrap up Steve Mosby Week. I’ll just let him get to it…

I’ve been thinking about dead people recently. More specifically, dead women.

That’s not as weird or wrong as it sounds. I’m a crime writer, after all, so it’s natural for dead women to crop up. And these are fictional dead women, not real ones. The victims of murder – and worse – that cross my mind are pretty much always made-up, so it’s a harmless process: I think about this stuff; I write it down; and someone eventually reads it (cough cough). Nobody in the real world actually gets hurt.

But I’ve been thinking about the subject more than I normally do, for a few reasons. It started a couple of months back, during a conversation with another writer, who mentioned that my writing often contain ‘dead girlfriends’. Guilty as charged. As it happens, it’s even worse than that. I started out doing short stories, and even then I was well aware of my unfortunate tendency to include dead girlfriends. That was before I started writing my first book, so I should have known better, and yet The Third Person happened anyway.

Okay, it has a missing girlfriend rather than a dead one, but that’s the slimmest of technicalities and, from a narrative standpoint, they do exactly the same job. In a leap of unbridled creative genius, The Cutting Crew has an estranged wife rather than a dead one. Go, me. Except don’t go too far, because the story’s driven by an anonymous dead girl that haunts the main character. Next, in The 50/50 Killer, there’s simply a very obvious dead girlfriend. It’s shameless. Let’s just move on quickly … to Cry For Help, in which the whole concept is based around dead girlfriends. Now, at this point you might be wondering what the hell is wrong with me (I am), and we haven’t even got to Still Bleeding, which begins with the suicide of the main character’s wife. Jesus. Wept. (more…)

The final review of Steve Mosby Week is of The 50/50 Killer. Even though it’s not Steve’s most recent release (that’d be Still Bleeding), I saved The 50/50 Killer for the final review because it was the first book of Steve’s I read, and as such will always be my favorite for having been my gateway into Mosby’s world.

As any experienced officer will tell you, there is always room for instinct. As the years pass, you develop a finely tuned inner voice that you learn to listen to even when others cannot hear it. And, within reason, there is no harm in following this voice where it takes you. – From Damage Done, by John Mercer

Detective Sergeant John Mercer has made himself a legend in the police force by following his inner voice. Doing so has resulted in the capture of many killers, receipt of numerous professional accolades, and even a self-penned book based on his career.

Young officer Mark Nelson sees his new assignment to Mercer’s team as a tremendous opportunity, both for hands-on learning and as a way to advance his career. Little does he know he’s about to get the education of a lifetime.

Nelson has barely arrived for his first day at his new assignment when he and Mercer are called to a gruesome scene where a man has been found burned to death in his home.

The evidence indicates he was severely tortured before succumbing to his ultimate fate. Even more ominous, the evidence also suggests it’s the handiwork of a killer Mercer has seen before.

Known as the 50/50 Killer, his preferred method of madness is to stalk a couple, kidnap them, and then force them to choose which of them will die – after being slowly tortured – while the other is made to watch. He sees it as a game:

The last time Mercer got dragged into the 50/50 Killer’s game the investigation ‘ended’ with the murder of a member of Mercer’s team, and Mercer having a nervous breakdown. The 50/50 Killer was not caught.

When a badly tortured, barely coherent young man is subsequently found wandering at the edge of a densly wooded area the police are able to get three pieces of information out of him: he and his girlfriend were kidnapped, he escaped, she’s still somewhere in the woods. Based on their previous experience with the 50/50 Killer, Mercer and his team know if they don’t find her before dawn she has no chance of survival. The race against the clock is on.

With the exception of a brief setup, the entire investigation unfolds over the course of an incredibly tense 15 hour timeline, and the story is told in short, tight chapters from multiple characters’ perspectives. The alternating narrative and frantic deadline result in the reader feeling slightly off balance, as if they were right there along with the police, racing to stay one step ahead of the ominous dawn deadline.

Without question The 50/50 Killer is the Mosby novel that comes closest to fitting solidly in one genre, in this case a straight-up psychological thriller, and as such may be the most accessible of his works as an entry point into his catalog. This being Mosby, however, there is definitely a philosophical subtext at work. Though the 50/50 Killer is an actual person, what he does to people is symbolic of any event that threatens a relationship and forces people to evaluate the depth of their commitment, to ask, “How much am I willing to sacrifice for this person?” It’s a tough question, from an author not afraid to show you how brutal the consequences can be depending upon your answer.

*****

As you can tell from my dedication of this entire week to reviewing Steve’s work, I am a huge fan of his writing. I think he has a way of combining action and intelligence that is incredibly rare, and thus a joy to read. Hopefully you’ve found something here this week which has intrigued you enough to give his work a try, and I’d love to hear back from anyone who does. Oh, but we’re not done yet…

Coming Tomorrow: Here to wrap up Steve Mosby Week, a guest post from the man himself.

In today’s continuing celebration of Steve Mosby Week here on Musings of an All Purpose Monkey I’m reviewing Steve’s most recent release, Still Bleeding, and just when you thought there was no way he could get better, Mosby goes and blows the roof off the joint.

In his experience, people were always interested in violence – attracted to it, even – so long as it wasn’t happening to them. – Detective Paul Kearney

Alex Connor couldn’t possibly have known when his wife, Marie, left to run a quick errand one January evening that it would be the last time he’d see her alive. When she fails to return in a timely fashion he calls her cell phone, only to have it answered by a policeman; Marie, he’s informed, committed suicide by jumping from an overpass.

Overwhelmed by the loss, Alex strikes out on a trip to clear his head that ends up lasting two and a half years. He’s only eventually drawn home again by the news one of his dearest friends, Sarah, has been murdered. The police have her killer, a confession, and a blood soaked crime scene, but no body.

The bodies of other several other women have been found recently though, each of them completely drained of blood. In charge of the investigation, Detective Paul Kearney is focused on the most recent woman to go missing, Rebecca Wingate, whom he’s convinced is still alive.

Kearney’s search for Rebecca puts him on a collision course with Alex, who’s determined to find Sarah even though he knows she’s dead. What they find, however, is a twisted underworld where people gather to celebrate death and collect other people’s suffering.

Going through Sarah’s things one evening Alex discovers she had apparently been researching a project online. Further poking around reveals a list of websites that focus on photos and videos of violent death: war crimes, crime scene and morgue photos, car crashes… suicides. As horrific as the sites are in and of themselves, Alex is stunned to find a cell phone video of Marie’s death among the gruesome collection, and the scene of Alex watching the video of his wife’s death is as emotional and difficult to read as anything I’ve ever come across in fiction:

Determined to find out who took the video and how it got online, Alex beings backtracking through the other posts only to discover photos that appear to be of some of the women who’ve recently gone missing. By the time Alex’s and Kearney’s investigations collide they are forced to confront the reality that there exist individuals so depraved that they collect more than just photos and videos of death, and that there are others all too happy to provide the collectors with what they desire.

If The Cutting Crew is Mosby’s most ambitious novel, Still Bleeding is far and away the most intimate, the one whose characters will hit you the hardest. Though he visited similar territory in his debut novel, The Third Person, the three novels in between have given Mosby a chance to really hit his stride as an author, the result of which shines through in Alex and Kearney.

Even in the darkest possible situations Mosby brings a believable, subdued humanity to them that one does not often find in crime fiction. There are no overwrought hysterics or brash campaigns for vengeance, merely people so haunted by feelings of guilt and confusion, anger and obligation that they feel they have no choice but to see their investigations through to the end, despite the devastating toll it takes on them.

Right from the start with The Third Person Mosby’s writing has been confrontational; not for the sake of shocking readers, but in order to demand readers ask themselves, “Does this shock you and, if not, why not?” He’s an author who absolutely will not let readers be passive, nor will he allow them to remain within their comfort zone. He will drag you, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the very uncomfortable places most people would rather not visit.

Still Bleeding is an intensely challenging and engaging novel, one that clearly demonstrates Mosby is willing to continue to push himself, and readers, with each new offering. With five novels under his belt and just barely into his 30’s, it’s scary – and exciting – to think of what’s yet to come.

Coming Tomorrow: A review of The 50/50 Killer.