Bonked by a Gingerbread Man



The Gingerbread Bump-off [by] Livia J. Washburn

[New York] Obsidian [2011]

978-0-451-23483-4; $14.00

It’s Christmas, and someone has dropped out of the annual Jingle Bell Tour of Homes in Wasburn, Texas, causing organizer Georgia Hallerbee to ask her friend Phyllis to put her house in the tour at just about the last minute.  Leaving her roomer Carolyn to make cookies, Phyllis and another roomer, Sam, go out to buy decorations.  Even though Phyllis and Carolyn are going to have a bridal shower for another roomer, Eve, on Christmas Eve, Phyllis doesn’t want to disappoint her friend.

Early on the evening of the Tour, Phyllis’ doorbell rings.  When she goes to answer it, it looks like no one is there -- wait, what is that pile of bloody rags on the porch amidst the shards of the big ceramic gingerbread man dressed as Mrs. Claus?  Oh, my God!  It’s Georgia, barely alive.  She is taken away in an ambulance, the police process the crime scene and ask their questions, and the Tour goes on, missing Phyllis’ house and all the new lights and decorations.

But their work is not for naught, because parades of cars come by on subsequent nights to view their decorations.  Two other visitors come as well.  The first one, a friend of Georgia’s named Claudia, accuses Phyllis of causing Georgia to be struck down on her porch.  Phyllis’ arguments that she certainly didn’t want that to happen, fall on deaf ears.  Carl, who comes the next day, is a little less accusatory as he comes to ask her questions, but he also makes Phyllis uneasy and she asks him to leave as well.

Then Georgia dies without gaining consciousness.  Phyllis and Sam begun to look for clues, visiting all of the parties involved in the Tour and in Georgia’s tax preparation and bookkeeping business.  They come up with a number of theories, which they share with the none-too-happy Detective Latimer, who is in charge of the case.  Some turn out to be provocative red herrings, but, eventually the truth is outed, putting Sam and Phyllis right in the path of a murderer. 

In a subplot, Phyllis questions the motives of Roy, Eve’s fiancé.  Eventually, all’s right in the world again.  A fun romp of a mystery, with good humor amongst the friends of the rooming house.  Appended to this "fresh-baked mystery" are 9 yummy recipes and one for ornaments. Recommended. ~ lss-r

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This book came from my local public library. 

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Murder and Mayhem in Iceland

Jar City [by] Arnaldur Indriđason

Translated … by Bernard Scudder

New York; Picador [2005]

978-0-312-42638-5; $14.00

This is one of the darkest, most depressing books I have ever read.  The weather is oppressively cold and dark, and the detective, Erlendur Sveinson is a brooding man, a product of this country and its atmosphere.  Yet the story of a cold case of murder has such startling ramifications, it is a shock to the system, and, just as Erlendur is hunted into solving the case, the reader is haunted into following it.  We must understand – the case must proceed to the final conclusion.

The book opens with a dead body lying in the middle of its shabby living room.  It is a man named Holberg, who has been struck on the head by an ashtray and who knocked over his coffee table as he fell.

The upstairs neighbors found him and called it in.  He was not robbed.  In fact, the scene is neat and tidy, except for the overturned table and the blood on the floor.  The only thing out-of-place is the note:  “I am him.”  The only other clue, discovered a few days later, is a photo of a young girl’s grave.  The girl is Audur.

It turns out Holberg was accused of rape in 1963.  There wasn’t enough evidence to convict him, but records show that the woman he raped had a child named Audur, who died of a brain tumor at age 4.  The mother committed suicide.

This gives Erlendur enough information to begin his inquiries, talking to the victim’s sister, the police officer who dealt with the rape, and the doctor who performed the autopsy on Audur.  Another detective discovers that Holberg had a sister, who also died of a tumor.

Erlendur leads his team deep into the past, searching for anyone who might have a reason to kill the old man.  More violent, sordid secrets are revealed:  secrets that have been carefully guarded for a long time.  The detectives find themselves overturning stone after stone to find the anguish and pain beneath them.  The interviews are awkward and uncomfortable, and they encounter much resistance, anger, and shame.  They gradually piece the story together, with a race-against-time ending, bleak, and unexpected.

Parallel with the main story is the story of Erlendur, with his ill health, his divorce, his drug-addicted daughter Eva Lind, who is pregnant and whoring around the darker side of Reykjavik, meeting the same criminals that Erlendur meets in his job – who throw their knowledge of his daughter in his face.  Erlendur proves himself to have great intensity and complexity of character, which often buffaloes him at home, but which he finds quite useful on the job.

Jar City kept me engrossed throughout.  It is a taut, well-written police procedural, with an outstanding detective.  The writing is sparse, but quite visual.  You really believe yourself to be slogging through this story in gloomy Iceland right beside Erlendur.  This book demands to be read.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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This book is from my own collection.

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Serving Up Murder



Death on a Platter [by] Elaine Viets

[New York] Obsidian [2011]

9780451235244; $7.99

Josie Marcus is a “mystery shopper.”  She is assigned by her boss to visit places of business and evaluate their services, their products, and other aspects of their trade.  This time Josie is tasked with visiting a number of restaurants and food emporia in order to review their food for a tour group that wants to sample the representative foods of the city of Saint Louis, where she lives.  These items alternately thrill and repulse Josie.  The thrilling ones are gooey butter cake, toasted ravioli, St. Louis’ take on pizza, and chocolate; the ones that make Josie want to run for the hills are pig ears and snout sandwiches and fried brain sandwiches.  But Josie bravely collects willing friends and relatives to accompany her as she sallies forth to find the treats she thinks the foodie tour would like.  After all, “Who doesn’t like to eat?”

One stop on the mystery shopping tour is the famous toasted ravioli at Tillie's off the Hill, which is owned by her mother Jane's childhood friend, Tillie. The food is to die for, a wonderful concoction of handmade raviolis, breaded and fried, dipped in marinara sauce, and sprinkled with grated cheese.  Josie and Jane go for the treat, and Josie gets to meet her mother’s friend and her daughter Lorena.  Tillie also points out a developer’s scout, Desmond, who is kind of dating her Lorena, but mostly waiting for Tillie to cave in to his offer for her property in order to build a casino.  Unfortunately, they get a front-row seat as Tillie confronts a problem patron, Clay and his girlfriend Gemma.  Clay is drunk, yelling and swearing and beating up on the claw machine in the bar, which he has plunked money into without getting a prize.  Tillie finally call 911 and the cops come to carry Clay off.  They suggest that Tillie rehire her old chef, Jeff, who would scare Clay away.

Josie realizes that she can’t write up this experience of the restaurant for the tour people to read, so she calls up her best friend Alyce and invites her to go to the restaurant with her the next day, when she can get a fresh new look at the restaurant.  The food is fabulous, and Josie hopes that she can report a good experience to her boss, but her heart sinks when she sees that Clay and Gemma are also there.  Again, there is a scene.  Tillie calls Henrietta, Clay’s wife to take him home.  

Chef Jeff also drops by to try to get his old job back.    He suggests Clay eat something, so Clay calls for the specialty, T-ravs.  Tillie makes him some, but he complains that the sauce isn’t spicy enough.  She takes it back to spice it up, bringing back a big bowl of red sauce, to which she had added a lot of horseradish, seeing a chance that she might be able to get rid of clay once-and-for-all.  Clay shrieks that his mouth is burning and then he falls to the floor, making strangling noises.  Both Gemma and Henrietta, who has arrived and is sitting in the back of the room, watching, come forward to accuse Tillie of poisoning Clay.  The paramedics and the police arrive, to take Clay to the hospital and to question all of the witnesses, deep into the night.

Clay dies.  Tillie is arrested for his death.  It turns out that the cause of death was castor beans, which are deadly, and grow wild all over Missouri, including in the vacant lot next door to Tillie’s.  Jane is devastated, and urges her daughter to try to find out what happened.  Josie can hardly argue with her mother, who owns the building she’s living in at a reduced rent, and who provides free babysitting.  Her attractive veterinarian boyfriend Ted comes to visit and helps Josie’s daughter Amelia, who is practicing with variations of her name and asks to be called variously “Mel” and “A.”  Both he and Josie’s mother teach “Mel” to cook, and Ted is very supportive of “A”’s plans to become a dog-walker.  Ted also takes Josie for her BBQ pig ears and fried brains sandwiches. 

Josie gathers clues at Gemma’s Junktique, where Clay’s girlfriend sells dusty junk and tchochkes, and at Clay’s funeral, where Gemma is rudely turned away.  Josie gets a bee in her bonnet about a possible source of castor beans, and visits Gemma’s again, only to discover that the door is open and Gemma’s head bashed in.  There is a riveting scene in which Josie comes face-to-face with danger, once again at Tillie’s, before this exciting tale is brought to an end and all of the loose ends gathered up, some of them quite nicely.

Author Viets brings a light touch and good humor to this book, as well as useful notes and shopping tips on the food mentioned.  A fun read, with interesting and quirky characters, and a lovable, relatable central family.  Cleverly plotted – a fun weekend read.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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Book supplied by my Public Library.

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Silently Screaming

Scream in Silence [by] Eleanor Taylor Bland

New York; St. Martin's Minotaur [2000]

0312203780

Scream in Silence is a wonderfully rich layered story in which Mystery’s first African-American female homicide detective, Marti MacAlister, and her partner Matthew “Vik” Jessenovik join forces for good in the Chicago suburb of Lincoln Prairie. It is the eighth in the series by Eleanor Taylor Bland.

The detectives must track down a relentless and deadly arsonist and an elusive and psychopathic bomb-maker, who displays rage, frustration and plans for future violence.  Then someone Vik remembers from his youth, Virginia McCroft, a political gadfly and busybody with "the personality of a lemon," is found dead by gunshot in the basement of a home destroyed by arson.  Marti finds out that she may have been involved in shady land deals or even blackmail.  The detectives find themselves burning the proverbial candle at both ends as the pressure builds around them to solve the crimes before panic sets in in the sleepy little suburb.

And Marti, newly married, is now not only juggling her kids’ interests, but that of her new husband, an EMT with his own exhaustive schedule.  Marti and her family are wonderful characters, as are the members of the Lincoln Prairie Police Department and the citizens of the town, which is now on full alert and afraid.  The characters are wonderfully rich and engaging.  Some have very small roles to play, but they increase the flavor of the times and the sense of fear, where everyone screams in silence, due to their helplessness within the system, caused by race, age, poverty, and other factors.  When the author was alive, she was a mover and shaker in the Chicagoland area, and her social concerns make themselves felt in all of her books, but never in a heavy-handed way.  You come to care about the victims because they are so human, their plights so real, that you come to understand them so well.

A subplot about a petty con artist with lofty ideas about a big time money-making scam almost steals the show.  Geoffrey Bailey, worthless but charming, is endearingly inept, but very creative.  His antics will both anger you and make you laugh out loud, even as you realize how close he’s getting to real danger.  His interference brings him a hair-raising encounter with the arsonist, with unexpected consequences.

This is a fine police procedural with lots to think about. A Booklist reviewer called author Bland "one of today's most talented mystery writers."  When you read one of her books, you realize what a loss she was to the mystery world, for there were only 14 books about Marti and Lincoln Prairie written before Bland died in 2010.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r 

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This book is part of my private collection.

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Dying, Dying, Dying for a Date

Dying for a Date [by] Cindy Sample

Spring, Texas; L & L Dreamspell, 2010

978-1-60318-248-5; $16.95

Recently-divorced Laurel McKay realizes she needs to get back into the swing of things, so she reluctantly joins THE LOVE CLUB, a matchmaking agency advertised as the safe alternative to on-line dating. After Bachelor Number One decides, after a lovely dinner that she enjoyed, that he wants her for dessert, Laurel clocks him with her cell phone. The next day she finds out her drop-dead gorgeous date has literally dropped dead. Laurel has blood all over her dress, after she gave him a bloody nose, and her fingerprints are all over his car.  And the investigating detective turns out to be the hunky father of her son’s soccer rival.  He has to decide if the sassy soccer mom is a killer, which makes Laurel’s life just a wee bit uncomfortable, especially with all of the evidence against her.

Laurel soldiers on, going on a second Love Club date.  When Bachelor Number Two disappears during dinner, coming up dead while Laurel is in the restroom with no alibi, Detective Hunter’s crack that he should follow her on the next date to make sure the homicide rate doesn’t rise falls flatter than the proverbial pancake.

Then her boss at Hangtown Bank threatens to fire her when he learns the latest victim was an important client. Fortunately he needs her expertise to investigate some questionable loans. Laurel enlists help from a couple of coworkers at the bank, plus her mother, a high-producing realtor, who insists her daughter is innocent because she is too disorganized to plan a murder. This unlikely collection of investigators set out to save Laurel’s reputation, job, and life.

Sample’s characters are easily relatable.  You could see yourself hanging out with them.  Her friends from the bank are wonderful – everyone should have such friends!  They are quirky and, although murder isn’t funny, Sample’s light touch brings just the right amount of humor to this, her first novel. 

The only problem I see in this book is that it suffers from an economy of players.  When the obvious possible villains are bumped off, there just aren’t enough left to hide the bad guy very well, but the chase they go through to pin him down is definitely worth the price of admission – it’s a rollickingly good scene!  Laurel is a great gal, and you can tell that she got that from her mother!

The action takes place in the small bedroom community of El Dorado Hills, a suburb in the foothills above Sacramento, which is fun for those of us who live in the area and can relate to the streets and neighborhoods the author calls to mind in the story.  The bank Laurel works in is on the downtown main street of Placerville (called Hangtown in Gold Rush days), and you can really see the “hanged man” from the windows.

This is really a very good first book, and I look forward to more from Cindy Sample. 

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I purchased this book from the author, who is a friend, in order to review it.

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A Good Mystery that Teaches the Secrets

of the Country Music Industry

Murder on Music Row by  Stuart Dell                                                                                   Winston-Salem, N.C., [2011]                                                                                                        978-0-89587-565-5; $24.95



Ripley Graham is Galaxy Record’s best-selling artist, counting now more than 25 million legally-purchased downloads, becoming the industry’s first digital superstar. His career took off almost immediately, with 2 albums. Now another album is due out, and Ripley is filming a video at the Grand Ole Opry House to showcase one of the songs, prior to kicking off his big “Rip It Up” tour.  Suddenly, two shots ring out, whizzing past Ripley’s ear, to hit his manager, Simon Stills, an intern, Judd Nix, and a cameraman.  All are whisked away to the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where things are sorted out – putting Ripley in protective custody, treating and releasing Judd and the cameraman, and taking Stills, shot in the throat, into emergency surgery.

Ripley’s career has caused consternation at Galaxy Records.  The Nashville head of the company resigns, throwing some of the company’s plans awry and strengthening others as the company considers a secret international merger, making it the largest recording company in the world.

But the company still suffers from antiquated business models and the marketing of 12-song CD’s, outdated in this digital age. This upsets Ripley, and looks to cripple the company, even as it’s reaching new heights.  Rumor has it that Ripley and Stills are pushing for more money, and using the new CD as blackmail.

Simon Stills, still suffering from the shooting, has improved some, and looks to his right-hand, Megan Olsen, Ripley’s day-to-day manager, and her right-hand, Judd the intern, for help, collecting information from his computer, erasing data, and sending e-mails to unmask the murderer.  Then Stills falls into a coma, Judd is arrested for the shooting, and well-laid plans come a cropper.  A high-powered chase ensues, ultimately revealing the motives behind the shootings, with several of the major characters coming very close to losing their lives. 

Murder on Music Row leads readers through a maze of twists and turns that connect Nashville, New York, Los Angeles, and London in a behind-the-scenes look at an industry where there are virtually no limits in the pursuit of money, power, and fame.  Stuart Dill gives us an insider’s look from the vantage point of being an artist manager for over 25 years, helping to guide the careers of such luminaries as Minnie Peral, Dwight Yoakam, Freddy Fender, Michael Martin Murphey, Jo Dee Messina, and Billy Ray Cyrus. Murder on Music Row is his first novel.  This reader hopes there will be more.  Recommended.  – lss-r

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Book provided by my Public Library.
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Snowbound in the Norwegian Alps or The Scandinavian Phenomenon Strikes Again

1222; a Hanne Wilhelmsen novel [by] Anne Holt;

translated by Marlaine Delangy

New York; Scribner, 2011

9781451634716; $25.00



Imagine being hurtled through the bleak, snowy countryside on a train filled with a collection of priests and church members on their way to a conference, a group of doctors going to present at a convention, a bunch of teenage girls, members of a handball team, and an assortment of individuals, including a baby girl, a member of organized crime, a few rather seedy-looking and questionable young men, a Goth girl, a South African, two supposed Kurds, three Germans, a shrill television presenter, assorted businessmen, a woman who knits, and a former police officer in a wheelchair.  Then, imagine that the train driver makes a false move and crashes the train into an abutment inside a tunnel, so that the train is expelled out of the tunnel at great speed, derailed, jackknifed and in great ragged pieces as it enters the lonely depot, having killed the driver and thrown all of its occupants hither and yon, in various states of disrepair.  There you have imagined the first scene in Anne Holt’s 1222; a Hanne Wilhelmsen novel.

This is the first book in English, with a small taste of the first of the series, Blind Goddess, at the back (due out this June).  It’s the eighth in the Wilhelmsen series, when Hanne has more or less perfected her acerbic persona and misanthropic attitude towards her fellow human beings.  A police shootout several years before ended with the criminal apprehended, but not before his bullet had severed Hanne’s spinal cord, leaving her paralyzed in a wheelchair.  Holt is a best-selling author in her native Norway, and joins the ever-growing Scandinavian onslaught on English-speaking crime fiction readers in the wake of Stieg Larsson, Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø, and others.  Holt has good credentials as a lawyer and former Minister of Justice.

The battered passengers are cared for and welcomed to the hotel called Finse 1222, so-named because it is 1,222 meters above sea level, by its owner Berit. The passengers are assigned rooms in the four main buildings in the village, all of which serve the train station.  The storm around them rages on, with winds escalating, and mountains of snow dumping on them.  When finally rescued, they learn that the storm had been named Hurricane Olga, but while they are snowbound, the weather is of little concern.  After all, the hotel has stood for 100 years, and it is well-staffed and fully stocked with food and drink.

The first night one of the priests is found just outside the hotel door, partially covered with snow, with a bullet in his head.  His body is hidden by Berit and a local man, Geir, who is also a soliciter.  The others who know are Dr. Streng, the little-person who’d treated Hanne when a ski pole impaled her thigh in the wreck, and, reluctantly, Hanne herself.  Obviously, there is at least one person with a gun in their midst.  They feel a need to forestall panic, which they have seen when the television personality challenges them several times, so they keep the murder quiet.

Hanne spends much of her time observing the other hotel guests and speculating about them, as well as having philosophical conversations with Geir and Streng.  She muses deeply about Norwegian society and the character of the average Norwegian.  Unfortunately, she isn’t able to hear the speculations of another priest on the death of the first before the second is also murdered by what appears, from the resulting wound, to be an icicle.
 
Later, damage from the snow reverberates through the hotel, causing panic. In a brief moment the couple Hanne has assumed to be Kurds drop into a military firing stance, with handguns aimed at the staircase.  No one else notices, but Hanne sees that they are not what they seem to be.  In fact, that seems to be true of many there.  A man who escaped through an upstairs window, but dies in the weather, proves to be a gangster.  Although the storm eventually blows itself out, the tension in the hotel builds and builds, as might be registered on the Beaufort Wind Force Scale, a statement from which serves as an epigram before each chapter.

And what about the secretive party locked in an upper floor room after rescue from the mysterious last car, added to the train at the last minute – the one with armed guards?  Its presence is targeted and questioned, creating some panic, and then dismissed and forgotten.

This is essentially an icy version of the classic locked-room mystery, complete with a final reveal-all scene for Hanne, who, in the presence of all of the guests and the rescuing police, targets various suspects with questions, before finally unmasking the villain, and realizes that she misses police work.
The only false note, I felt, in the whole book, came about at the end, when the last tag-end needs to be tied up:  the explanation of the mysterious party, which is whisked away by black helicopter.  It was not fully explained, and what was there made me feel just a little bit cheated, especially since everything else was so rich and meaty.  It felt like an afterthought, more obvious because it was at the end.

This book has certainly whetted my appetite for the previous books in the series.  Fortunately, the earlier books are lined up for publication in the next few years.  Highly recommended.  ~ lss-r

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Reviewed from a copy borrowed from my Public Library.
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