Review: Pane and Suffering by Cheryl Hollon

Publisher: Kensington Books
Rating: 4*

Savannah Webb is forced to return home after the death of her father from "natural causes."  She is forced to take over running his glass shop after a second person, whom she plans to sell the shop to, also dies from the same "natural causes," leaving Savannah convinced that foul play is at hand, As Savannah struggles to decide whether to sell the shop, her father's clues lead her on a cipher-filled hunt to reveal the killer.  An inept police officer adds humour and a group of local merchants band together to perform their own investigation to find the killer before he strikes again.

The story is a little slow paced in the beginning as the author develops the main characters and sets the scene, but this pays off well later on.  Throughout the book, there is a beginner's class taught at the shop where the students make glass sun catchers.  Tidbits about how to cut and solder glass is woven into the story, but this enhances the story rather than feel intrusive to the overall book.

There might be a romance between two of the characters that gets explored in later books, but the fledgling romance feels a little out of place here.

I thought for sure I knew who the killer was, but it turned out to be a character not even remotely on my radar.  I enjoyed that twist in the plot-line and Savannah's ultimate decision of what to do with her family's store.

Overall, this was an enjoyable mystery. I learned a bit about the glass business and I'm looking forward to the next story, Shards of Glass, when it comes out next year.

Bookstore Links:  Amazon.com  |  Amazon.co.uk  |  B&N  |  Waterstones  |  WH Smith

Reviewed for MCT by Jamie A.

Home

Review: MOTIVE by Jonathan Kellerman

Publisher: Headline
Rating: 4*
   

Alex Delaware and Milo Sturgis are back in Motive, Jonathan Kellerman's latest in the Delaware series.

This new story opens with Milo stymied over a murder investigation that's run straight into a wall.
While commiserating with Delaware over the unsolved death a woman is found shot to death in a parking lot.  The pair check out the scene of the puzzling death but clues are in short supply.  Sturgis and Delaware investigate, pursuing their mutual suspicions but the new case also goes cold, frustrating the pair.

Ready to move on despite their frustration, a weird piece of evidence surfaces in the second corpse's home, seeming to link the two cold cases.  As they pursue leads the dead bodies continue to pile up and the connections between the stiff's leads the pair of investigators to pursue a serial killer.   They focus on a couple of suspects with Delaware making logical, psychopathic explanations that make a case against each suspect.  When one of their main suspects ends up dead, Delaware and Sturgis figure out who the serial killer was and how he was related to the others.

Motive is set mainly in Los Angeles proper and the setting is sometimes brought to life, such as the hills of LA and weird CD store but but other times it is just a backdrop. The clever plot unfolds as strings of evidence pointing each suspect are made, broken, re-weaved and strengthened, leaving the reader to bounce from target to target for the perpetrator. As readers of the Delaware series are aware, Kellerman reinforces a reader's guessing game with the banter between Alex and Milo. Its moves the story along and misdirects the reader with their plausible rationalizations of scenarios.

Kellerman really knows how to develop a line of questions to probe into a crime and his dialogue is simply stellar in Motive.   I liked the way Kellerman uses his skilful character development to demonizing a suspect for a period and then yanks them back to being sympathetic.  Deeper descriptions of persons and places ensure that Kellerman's stories are character driven and are able drag the reader into the setting and its world; not merely a plot driven shallow shell.  As any writer who has taken a first course in writing or has ever had an editor knows, visceral detail is what distinguishes a real writer from the slush pile.  I did enjoy the read; it was fast paced and entertaining.

Bookstore Links: Amazon.com  |  Amazon.co.uk  |  B&N  |  Waterstones  |  WH Smith

Reviewed for MCT by Dan Petrosini.

Home

Review: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson

Publisher: Quercus Books (Hachette)
Rating: 4*

The concept of this story completely drew me in. It starts with disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his journey to clear his name. Now this book has a lot going on, so of course in order to clear his name he has to first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. In the course of his investigation he enlists the help of Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius and researcher extraordinaire.

Does he solve the disappearance? Will he clear his name? Will he ever eat anything other than a sandwich?

Things I learned about Sweden from this book:

Swedish people only eat sandwiches. Throughout the book the characters eat sandwiches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Sometimes even as a snack. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t want to look at a sandwich. I wish the author had included some authentic Swedish food in the food as a filler as opposed to all the different sandwiches one can eat.

Swedish people also like their coffee. I have never read about so much coffee drinking in one book in my life! All those giant Tea manufacturing multinational companies out there, Sweden is an untapped market!

You might think that if my biggest problem with this book is the food they eat, then the book isn’t doing too bad a job. And it wasn’t. Until I got to the relationship between Blomkvist and Berger and of course all the shrugging off of rape.

Perhaps Blomkvist and Berger’s relationship won’t be an issue for a lot of people, but to me it just seems in the same realm as unicorns and nymphs.

I loved Salander as a character personally. It’s hard not to fall in love with a genius antisocial minx, but I managed. I adore how she refuses to be a victim and is a genuinely strong female character. Maybe I am not supposed to agree with how she acted out against her guardian, but I think she was being far too nice. I thought the story as a whole was interesting and yes I am a fan of stories that have neat little endings in theory, if not in practice.

I know this book is a translation, and I don’t particularly care for translated books because the writing comes off as too stilted and awkward. And I know that a lot of readers thought that the language in this book was stilted and awkward, but trust me, when you read a truly badly translated book, you will be willing to forgive a lot! I speak from experience. So I was a bit wary of this but really for me it has turned out to be quite well written.

There are a lot of different story threads in this book, something that a majority of people did not like but personally I loved. It kept me engaged and interested throughout.

Bookstore Links: Amazon.com  |  Amazon.co.uk  |  B&N  |  Waterstones  |  WH Smith

Reviewed for MCT by Celeste M.

Home

Review: Trust No One by Paul Cleave

Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: 4*

Jerry Grey is a bestselling crime author. Writing under a pseudonym of Henry Cutter, his twelve novels have thrilled readers and granted a comfortable life to him and his family. Jerry is hard at work on his thirteenth book when he forgets his wife's name at a party. This seems like a simple slip of the mind, but soon he becomes more and more forgetful. Finally, he agrees to see a doctor who gives Jerry an unexpectedly grim diagnosis. At the young age of forty-nine, Jerry Grey has the early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease.

Fast forward a year and Jerry's descent into dementia has reached a dismal low. His wife Sandra has left him. His daughter rarely visits him and refuses to call him Dad. Abandoned by his family and barely able to remember his past, Jerry finds himself in the care of a nursing home. As his malady continues to ravage his mind, Jerry begins to confuse his own actions with those of the characters he used to write about. He used the Henry Cutter pseudonym as a way to separate the horrors he wrote about from the joys of his family life, but now the two are indistinguishable. Most days find Jerry confused and confessing to murders that took place in his novel.

Jerry has a habit of wandering from the facility in the night. When he is found, he is disoriented and has no recollection of how he escaped or what he did during the time he was gone. The situation becomes more dire when the police show up at Jerry's nursing home. It is no secret that Jerry has confessed to crimes from his novels, but now he has confessed to the murder of a girl who actually existed. Worse, her murder occurred on a night when Jerry escaped. Jerry is certain that he is not a killer, but he has no memory of the events of that night. With no alibi and a group of police seeking any closure to the case, Jerry struggles to defend his innocence and maintain his grasp on reality.

The novel switches back and forth between the past and present. The past is told through Jerry's "Madness Journal" that he started keeping at the start of his diagnosis. He knew that his memory would begin to fail, so he wrote the journal to inform his future self of his life. These journal entries alternate with the story of present day Jerry and his ongoing mental decline. As the novel progresses, The past and present begin to come together and culminate in a electrifying conclusion. The mystery ends up being conventional to the crime genre, but the spin of an unreliable protagonist helps to keep the plot moving and the suspense tightly wound. Trust No One is an adequately dark thriller that skilfully breathes new life into the genre while adhering to the style that readers have come to expect.

Bookstore Links: Amazon.com  |  Amazon.co.uk  |  B&N  |  Waterstones 

Reviewed for MCT by Ethan S.

Home

Girl Waits With Gun by Amy Stewart

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Rating: 4*

Being a woman has never been easy, but being a woman, living alone with one’s sisters, on an isolated farm in 1915, becomes even more complicated for Constance Kopp.

After a young, rich and belligerent silk factory owner hit their buggy with his motor car, the Kopp sisters bill him for damages.  What should have been a simple manner of reimbursing them $50 for the reparation turns into a year of kidnapping threats, flying bullets and cops camping in the sisters’ barn.  To convict the culprit and his accomplices, the sheriff recruits Constance in the investigation.  Along the way, a chance encounter forces Constance to confront a family secret and face their uncertain financial future.

Based on true events, this novel introduces us to Constance Kopp, US’s first female deputy sheriff.  She is depicted as a strong and stubborn woman who is determined to get reparation from the gang who recklessly damaged their buggy.  After all, why should she accept another resolution than a man would!  Her interactions with other characters illustrate clearly society’s expectations about “simple woman” and how she should act.  The well-meaning, but oh so patronizing, “isn’t there a brother or an uncle who can take care of you?” question, asked more than once in the novel, is evidence of the place women occupied in society.

Even if a little stereotypical, Constance, Norma and Fleurette Kopp take life in this novel.  Norma, dependable and more conservative has a passion for pigeons, and Fleurette, childish and a little spoiled likes to design and sew new clothes.   After some time, I felt like I could predict how they would react to new situations.  Other secondary characters, such as the sheriff, are also well-fleshed and coherent.  In fact, the less detailed characters are the villains of the book.  Obviously, the author did not want to spend much time with them, or the documents she used did not offer more information about them.  The gang felt like an ominous and ill-defined presence throughout the book, which was a really effective way to transmit the oppressive feeling felt by the sisters to the reader.

I came to this book without knowing it was based on true events (in fact I discovered this information in the postface of the book).  So, I was expecting a fast-paced story, with a gun-bearing too-modern heroin.  What I discovered instead was a slower-paced book based more on the ambiance and social dynamics of the era than the action of the story.  It was for me a good surprise: good because I took away a lot more from this book than I would have from a “simple” mystery, but some sections seemed to lag a little.

All in all, I thought it was a good portrait of an era and of an exceptional woman and the circumstances that helped her show the world who she was and that she would not sit back and take the beating in silence.  Constance Kopp is a model that should be known and followed by many young, and less young, ladies nowadays.

Bookstore Links: Amazon.com  |  Amazon.co.uk  |  B&N  |  Waterstones

Reviewed for MCT by Marie Claude.

Home

Review: A Beeline To Murder by Mary Weimer

Publisher: Kensington Books
Rating: 4*

In this book we meet some interesting characters. Abigail Mackenzie is a beekeeper and she owns a small farmette outside of Las Flores, California, which is not too far from Napa Valley. Which is California's big wine country area. Abby was a cop on the Las Flores Police Department where her best friend Kat still works.  Abby also does some work for the DA in the town along with some private investigations for certain people. She has a standing order with the pastry chef in town to deliver honey to him for his many confections.

On this morning Abby was early delivering the honey because she had paperwork to deliver to the DA also. Abby was looking around for Chef Jean-Louis, but could not find him and he did not answer when she called his name. She continued to look and finally found him behind a baking table in the kitchen, DEAD. She quickly called the police and Kat responded with some new people from the morgue. The police did their investigation and when they were done in a few days, they determined that the death was a suicide.

When Philippe, the Chef's brother came to claim the body he said that no way would his brother take his own life, the chef was planning a big trip to the Caribbean in July for his birthday. So, Kat connected Phillippe with Abby who agreed to investigate the death for $10,000. She needed the money for renovations for her farmette.  Little did she know that she would find a love interest in the handsome French-Canadian.

She was able to prove that the death was a murder, but the trail lead them to many people and many twists and turns, before they finally got the correct people.

This book was well written, kept my interest, and I have recommended it to all my friends and family. I loved the descriptions of the small town setting which transformed me back to days spent at a farm.  The book helped me as an escape from busy daily life to an idyllic place and time.  I loved the adventure of solving the puzzle of the murder with Abigail who was easy to like and identify with. I would surely buy it for Christmas presents.

Bookstore Links: Amazon.com  |  Amazon.co.uk  |  B&N  |  Waterstones  |  WH Smith

Reviewed for MCT by Mary W.

Home

Review: Silent Scream by Angela Marsons

Publisher: Bookoutour
Rating: 4*

Very few books drive me to write reviews as soon as I'm done reading them, either because they stir very strong feelings of irritation and dislike or because they are so absolutely brilliant. Silent Scream is definitely one of the latter.

Silent Scream is one of those detective murder mysteries in the vein of Karin Slaughter. It’s realistic but not overly gritty, with a main character that is flawed but in a way that is so easy to relate to as to be likeable.

Set in the United Kingdom, D.I. Kim Stone is on the trail of a murderer, this is soon complicated when remains are unearthed near Crestwood, a former children's care home. The author manages to bring to light the hardships faced by children in the care system and at the same time shows the effect on someone who has had similar experiences without having the main character coming off as overbearing and whiny.

Now I adore mystery, I have read a lot of mystery books, so many in fact that I don’t even remember them all. A lot are predictable, it is hard to find something that is not, and this book was not only completely not predictable but that last twist still blew my mind even when I figured it out a little before the author could tell me what happened. And when I say a little before I mean 2 pages before!

So if you like whodunnits and even if you don’t but want to read something in this genre, do yourself a favour and read this.

Well executed, brilliantly done and I cannot wait to read the next one.

Bookstore Links:  Amazon.com  |  Amazon.co.uk  |  B&N  |  Waterstones

Reviewed for MCT by Celeste M.

Home

Review: The Last Policeman Series by Ben H. Winters

Titles: The Last Policeman, Countdown City, and World of Trouble
Publisher: Quirk Books
Overall rating: 4*

Henry Palace thought he had a future, a future to recover from his past.  Being a cop was his calling and he felt he could be good at it.  But now the world has just learned that an asteroid will hit Earth in just a few months and suddenly,  nothing is the same.  While many decide to quit their jobs to hit their bucket list or simply give up on life, Henry Palace finds himself a detective, and he is determined to do his job regardless of the circumstances.  When he is called to a suicide scene, some details seem to point to a more complicated solution.  Palace investigates against the advice of his colleagues and the world that is collapsing around him.

Some people, however, think that there is a way to save the world, a plan that the government is trying to hide.  Nico, Palace’s tortured sister is a member of a group trying to locate and free a scientist who pretends to know how to reroute the asteroid.

Even if the mystery part of the books is rather simple and more of a pretext, Winters succeed in telling a tale of the end of the world that is as sad as it is fascinating.  The books in the series are set at three different moments of the countdown to doomsday and give a realistic and complex view of how a civilisation collapses when day to day routines of life are replaced by hopelessness and chaos.

The Last Policeman is a series that will stay with me for a long time and has already provided many conversation topics with my family.

Bookstore Links: Amazon.com  |  Amazon.co.uk  |  B&N  |  Waterstones  |  WH Smith

Reviewed for MCT by Marie Claude.

Home

Review: Hostage Taker by Stefanie Pintoff

Publisher: Bantam, Random House
Rating: 4*

FBI Special Agent Eve Rossi, whose expertise are used in hostage negotiations, was not given an option when told to return to work while on bereavement leave. Asked for by name, a hostage taker at St. Patrick's Cathedral has given Eve his list of demands.

This well written novel is peppered with confidential files, news reports, and maps, giving Hostage Taker a more realistic feel. I found this to be an effective way of giving background information.  The main character, Eve Rossi, is a strong female, whose intelligence and inquisitiveness help get the job done. The only parts of the book that did not ring true for me are the numerous times that Eve's boss Henry Ma second guesses Eve's decisions. Seeing that she was the one requested by the hostage taker, it just did not seem likely that the Director would take such chances with the hostages.

With a well developed plot and interesting characters, Hostage Taker would appeal to readers who are fans of the police procedural/thriller genre.

Bookstore Links: Amazon.com  |  Amazon.co.uk  |  B&N  |  Waterstones  |  WH Smith

Reviewed for MCT by Sharon B.

Home