Mayhem in Scotland

Death of a Kingfisher [by] M.C. Beaton

New York; Grand Central Publishing [2012]

978-0-446-54736-9; $24.99

It’s always fun to spend some time in the picturesque village of Lochdubh in the Scottish Highlands with Hamish Macbeth, the village bobby.  This time he is saddled with a sidekick, Dick Fraser, a man even lazier than Hamish, but is very good at quiz shows – he wins the police station both a dish washer and a flatscreen TV.  He’s also pretty good at getting information.

This one has more corpses than the average Macbeth book, starting with the kingfisher of the title.  This is indeed a bird – the highpoint on the tour of the Fairy Glen, a new tourist attraction outside a neighboring town.  The man who had lived in the neighboring house had left the lovely glen to the people of the town.  It is now run by a trust, with Mary Leinster as its head an major developer.  She is quite a looker, and briefly captures the heart of Hamish, who has a legendary problem with women.

The woman who lives in the old house near the glen is Mrs. Colchester, a rather poisonous person.  Her grandchildren are staying with her:  Olivia and Charles Palfour. They are even more unpleasant, for they lie, cheat, and steal, but this is not always obvious, except in hindsight.  They have obviously been damaged in the past, although how is not clear, since they lie.  Soon their parents come to join them.

Mrs. Colchester dies soon after the kingfisher (which is hanged in the glen near its nest.)  She used an elevator that went up the steps of the house to the second story.  On the occasion of her death, a rocket had been put under the seat, and the motor had been tampered with, so she was shot through the roof!  The heirs are most anxious to receive their inheritance, but that doesn’t immediately happen.  They do discover, however, that the treasure room in the house is missing some of its treasures, which rather heats things up.

The next person to die is Mary Leinster, drowned in the pond in the glen.  All of the proceeding work on the glen, including the gift shop being built by her brothers, is stopped.  The wife of the provost, and a dab hand with a chainsaw, is killed next, in a grisly way.  She had been critical of the glen development, and may have been guilty of damaging the bridge, which dropped a number of tourists into the pond.

What happens next indicates that the situation has a lot of outside influence, for the whole Palfour family is kidnapped.  Mr. Palfour dies, although the children survive so they can run away, and Mrs. Palfour dies in an attempt to drown Hamish in the nearby Loch.  Hamish bounces back, and manages to provide all of the really necessary clues to solve the crimes, much to his superiors’ chagrin. 

Although only a couple of the Lochdubh characters make an appearance, the flavor of the other stories in the series is maintained, and this is a top-notch humorous police procedural mystery series.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.

Vengeance is Mine!



Death at the Jesus Hospital [by] David Dickinson          

London; Constable [2012]

978-1-61695-084-2; $25.00

Here’s another convoluted mystery for Lord Powerscourt and Lady Lucy, along with 3 sets of Detective Inspectors and Sergeants in 3 different crimes.  The first man murdered was Abel Meredith, also known by the number of his room, #20, at the Jesus Hospital almshouse in Marlow near London. The second victim was Roderick Gill, bursar at the Allison’s School in Norfolk.  The third victim is Sir Rufus Walcott, former Prime Warden of the Silkworkers, at the Silkworkers Hall on the Thames in London.  The institutions where the others were murdered also have a connection with the Silkworkers, a livery company with its history in the guilds of medieval England.  All three men had their throats cut, and a strange marking, rather like a thistle, carved on their chests – a mark no doctor, coroner, or cop could identify.

Powerscourt is called in by the current Prime Warden of the Silkworkers, Sir Peregrine Fishbourne, to deal with the first murder, and the case just gets bigger and bigger.  Local law enforcement interviews the rest of the men at the Hospital, to no avail.  Powerscourt sends his former assistant from when he was in Military Intelligence, Johnny Fitzgerald, to buy drinks for the old-age pensioners and to interview them casually.  He uncovers a plot by the current warden, Monk, to bilk them out of the money in their wills, but not much more.

Powerscourt dispatches his wife, Lady Lucy, under her prior married name, to the school, to see what she can get out of the students, who had taken such a negative attitude towards the policeman from the Norfolk Constabulary, that they refused to talk to him.  The police did get some information from some of the women with whom Gill had dallied.  One of the boys tells Lady Lucy that the murderer, a man with a big black beard whom he had seen in the hall, dressed as a postman, the morning of the murder, had a South African accent.

The third murder seems to have no clues, except that there was a long time in the early adulthood of the victim, which is unaccounted for anywhere.

Despite meetings at Powerscourt’s house in London of all of the personnel investigating the murders, they don’t seem to be getting any closer to the truth.  Then Powerscourt decides to try to identify the strange marks made on each of the bodies, which leads him to the General Officer Commanding at Aldershot, the Royal Army Training Camp. 

Then things rush forward, leading them to Salcombe on the Devonshire coast, where the man with the painful past, linked to the three dead ones, has been hiding.  There is a race between a sailing yacht and a lifeboat crew, which is an exciting rundown to the conclusion.  It was revenge all along.

Dickinson is painstaking in the historical details and interesting in the aspects of the characters he chooses to highlight.  The plotting is intricate and interesting, and the overall bottom line is a highly recommended historical mystery! ~ lss-r

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Library book.

Miners, and Gamblers, and Crooks, Oh My!

Raylan [by] Elmore Leonard                 

[New York]; William Morrow; [2012]

978-0-06-211946-9; $26.99

Raylan Givens made himself known to the larger world in a TV show called “Justified” two years ago.  Raylan was excellently played by Timothy Olyphant, whose picture appears on the front of this book. [If that’s not him, it’s an amazing facsimile [and I’ll eat my cowboy hat!]

You can hear Olyphant’s voice saying these words, because Mr. Leonard, his creator, as writer and Executive Producer, is an integral part of the show [still running, in its 4^th season, on the FX Channel.], as well as the author of 2 other Raylan books, Riding the Rap and Pronto.

Raylan has returned to Harlan County, Kentucky, where he was once a coal miner, before he fought to get out of the state.  He’s come back as a U.S. Marshall.  He wears a great hat, knows all the players, and really does understand the people of his roots.This book is about several intertwined cases of Raylan’s, which have kept him on the go in Kentucky and surrounding states.

The first involves a couple of sons of a store owner who owns some valuable land.  The sons are known for selling marijuana, but they end up being the muscle for a transplant nurse and a Black chauffeur who are stealing body parts and reselling them.  The boys end up dead and Raylan almost loses some parts he’d rather not.

Carol Conlan, a hard-charging mining executive, comes to mining country to make a deal with the boys’ daddy, who owns the tallest mountain in Kentucky, which is filled with coal.  She is quick to point out that she grew up in mining camps in West Virginia, but she rings untrue to the miners and their wives.  The property owner outwits her and she doesn’t get the property she wants.  In a separate incident, she shoots a man who stands in her way, and reports that another man did it, to save her, making that man virtually her slave.  She ultimately gets he comeuppance in a rather unusual way.

The marshalls get wind that the daughter of a poker club owner is robbing banks with 2 other women, but that this is not true.  One of the robbers is caught and she tells all.  By this time the other 2 girls have been spirited away and shot.

The daughter is actually cleaning up at poker in various venues, including on TV, where she is bankrolled by a wealthy man who used to get money from his friends in different ways.  She wins $1,000,000 in one game.

The guy who killed the bankrobbers gets dolled up as a drag queen to kill Raylan, but he loses to Raylan in a rather public shootout.  Raylan wins the girl poker player too.

This is not much of a mystery, but it’s full of great writing:  crackling dialogue, sly suspense, great characters – not just Raylan, but many of the others as well, and interesting narrative – dark and droll.  The writing is sheer pleasure.  Recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.

He Said, She Said

False Accusations [by] Alan Jacobson

New York; Pocket Books [1999]

0-671-02678-X; $23.00

Two African-American victims are found at the scene of a hit-and-run in a low-rent neighborhood.  An eyewitness identifies the vehicle involved as a dark Mercedes and gives a partial license number.  The police ring the doorbell at Dr. Philip Madison’s house, waking him up.  He denies any knowledge of the accident, or of the victims, but his car does show the appropriate damage for such an accident.  He spends the rest of the night in the county lockup.

When his lawyer comes to get him, the doctor asks him to call Ryan Chandler in New York – he wants him to be the investigator on the case.  He used to be a Sacramento cop.  When he had been hurt on the job, the doctor had operated on him.  He was now working as a forensic specialist in NYC.

When Chandler, the lawyer, Jeffrey Hellman, and Madison get together, Madison relates what has been happening to him in the last couple of months.  Madison is on the boards of a number of charitable organizations, and, because his younger brother is mentally disabled, one of these organizations is the Consortium for Citizens with Mental Retardation.  He has just become its president, when the administrator  took some time off, later quitting due to health problems.  That’s when Dr. Madison came face-to-face with Brittany Harding, the absent woman’s assistant.

To say Ms. Harding was difficult would be to speak mildly.  She proceeded to try to seduce him, both in a restaurant and at his home, where she came to visit because she said she had abdominal pain, and the clinic she had gone to hadn’t taken care of it.  She also accused him of raping her, yelling her accusations all over a grocery store, and later to the police. Madison’s lawyer made a deal with her lawyer so that Madison wouldn’t have his reputation totally destroyed, and he paid the lawyer.  Then Harding sent a photo and a copy of the check to Madison’s wife.  Madison’s wife left him, taking their two kids with her.  The lawyers agree that this is a breach of the contract they had, and Harding’s lawyer sends a new check back as payment, thus denying Harding her money.  She is furious.  Articles appear in the paper with sly innuendos. And at her job, Harding was antagonizing the Consortium’s clientele and creating a bad air about the organization.  She was fired, causing her to attack the doctor even more.

His practice suffered, and finally the hospital, which he had helped financially in the past, revoked his surgical privileges there, when he had been considered the primo orthopedic surgeon in Northern California.  His career had really hit its nadir.  Then, an old girlfriend, whom he had almost married many years ago, called him up, wanting to get together.

She tried to seduce him, too, but he said no – he really wanted to get back with his wife Leeza.  “But she’s left you,” this other woman said.  The doctor explained that he really loved his wife and hoped that she would forgive him.  This woman calls up Leeza, who is staying with her sister in the Bay Area, identifies herself, and tells her to go back to her husband – he’s the real deal and a prize.  Leeza comes home and becomes part of the team supporting her husband.

Meanwhile, the investigator discovers a bunch of witnesses who had either not been interviewed, or not interviewed enough, by the cops. One of the people was a former boss of Harding, who had also been accused of rape, who had taped the payoff with her, in which she admits that she was out for the money.  He also has tests run – almost getting the official Sacramento Lab in hot water for doing the tests (which might have jeopardized the trial).  When his wife discovers a lump in her breast, she asks him to come home to be with her, leaving the rest of the team to carry on with the defense, when Madison finally does get arrested. 

By now, all of the evidence turns to point in a different direction, and it is  Harding who is arrested and taken to trial.  Her lawyer bows out, leaving her in the hands of a Public Defender, who does an excellent job until he can no longer fight the inevitable.  Harding goes down, dragged out of the courtroom screaming her innocence.

But Chandler, at home with his wife, has a random thought.  It might change the outcome.  Or not.  But he doesn’t call it in; leaving the opening for a little twist of surprise at the end.

A riveting page-turner of a book.  Recommended. ~ lss-r

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This is a library book.



Kidnapping in Brazil

A Vine in the Blood [by] Leighton Gage

[New York] Soho Crime [2011]

978-1-61695-004-0; $24.00

Chief Inspector Mario Silva and his team of detectives are really up against it.  The opening of the World Cup is less than two weeks away and the star of the Brazilian team, Tico “The Artist” Santos, is upset.  His mother has been kidnapped.  Suspects are many. Clues are few.  And the fate of Brazil is at stake.  It was hoped that Argentina would be brought to its knees by the heroic playing of The Artist, but this is not to be, if his mother is not returned.  Already, members of the Argentine Club are boasting about their expected victory. 

The kidnappers had certainly meant business, for the door was splintered, 2 maids were cut up and shot up, and a little toy poodle’s back is broken.  A photo has appeared in the morning paper, and the kidnappers have demanded a ransom to be paid for in diamonds.

The detectives put in the normal legwork, asking questions of neighbors and shopkeepers who know Juraci Santos.  There are those who liked her, and those who didn’t.  She had loud squawking macaws and a little yappy dog, she had loud parties on the lawn, with music blaring at all hours.  Her hens wander around.  She is not a classy lady – she swears, and is too low class for the neighborhood.  She even missed sessions with her hairdresser, surely a faux pas of the highest degree.

The detectives also interview Juraci’s famous son and his equally famous girlfriend, who is a model.  They genuinely like Tico, but Cintia is rude and bitchy.  Radiating out from them, they interview people in soccer clubs, gambling, the fashion and beauty world, and various underworld people. Their profiler gives them clues, and they even interview a famous kidnapper, now in prison. But things are not going well.  They have a lot of information, but it doesn’t add up to a lot of clues.  And does the fact that The Artist was sold to Spain make a difference?

A big clue is that Juraci was given Ketamine to knock her out when she was kidnapped, which takes them to a Vet Tech, who is lovers with one of the people they have been tracking. He sends them to a pharmacy, where they talk to the woman there.

The ransom demand finally comes in.  They are to take the diamonds to a tourist attraction by train.  When they get off, they learn they have a hike to one of the caves, which is not so important.  They have to put the diamonds in bags tied to a flock of pigeons, and let them go.  They try to track the pigeons, but the one they are tracking is taken abruptly out of the sky by a hawk. Making calculations, they end up finding a place that had been rented.

They go back to their inquiries, and ask about people who have homing pigeons.  They also question some new people, and they get all the clues they need.  They rescue The Artist’s mother, who, in turn, shoots one of the kidnappers.  The kidnappers were right in the middle of the mix of people they’d questioned all along.  When the director comes to find out how they are doing, they had him a nicely wrapped-up case.

The characters on the police team are nicely drawn.  You get a glimpse of life in another country, including its legal system, some of its underworld, and some of its celebrity world.  It’s a fun series, with a lot of humor, and a lot of insight into human nature.  A good police procedural, too.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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 This is a library book.

Machines and Machinations



The Big Cat Nap [by] Rita Mae Brown & Sneaky Pie Brown

New York; Bantam Books [2012]

978-0-345-53044-8; $26.00

“Harry” Haristeen and her menagerie throw a monkey wrench into the gears of a killer of grease monkeys in this, the 20^th anniversary celebration of the Mrs. Murphy series.

We open with a nice leisurely ride in the country for Harry and her mentor, late 60-ish former Postmistress Miranda Hogendobber, when Miranda’s Outback ends up in a roadside ditch, followed by a repair shop.  It seems there’s a spate of accidents lately, including the one that put the Very Reverend Herbert Jones’ truck in the same shop, and the one that put a young woman, hit by a deer, in the morgue.

After a church meeting, Harry and a group of friends go with the Rev. to get his half-ton Chevy truck back.  The clerk calls to the shop for the truck, but there is no answer.  They decide to go back, and they find the place strangely silent.  There is no work going on because nobody’s there.  But wait – there’s a pair of legs sticking out from under a car.  Unfortunately, the fellow’s head turns out to be terribly bashed-in by a tire iron.  The sheriff and Deputy Cooper, Harry’s good friend and neighbor begin their investigation.

Harry is very excited about her crops of hay and ginseng, which seem to be doing quite well.  She is very enthusiastic about her sunflowers, and considers selling the future of her crops to the fellow who owns and manages the Fresh, Fresh, Fresh grocery store, but she feels a bit leery of him, although she can’t put her finger on why.  But their old John Deere needs repairs.  To buy a new one is way beyond question – even being serviced by the manufacturer is too much money.  She invites an older farmer, friend of her parents, out to fix it and she picks his brain about the repairs.

Then Harry’s friend Franny Howard’s tire store is ransacked and all of the high-end tires stolen. Cooper also shows Harry, knowing she’s a car enthusiast, what was on the dead mechanic’s computer:  pictures of gorgeous naked woman and beautifully-restored old cars, most of them “orphans,” that is, cars no longer in production, largely from manufacturers no longer in production.

Then another of the mechanics gets killed.  He elects to race a big Camaro in his Subaru Impreza, and pulls a trick on the other driver.  It gets to be dead because of it, just as he pulls into his girlfriend’s driveway.

Harry and a girlfriend go to the drag races at a nearby track that they have never visited.  It’s where a lot of the mechanics race, as well as the insurer of many of the area’s cars, and the head of the garages that he refers his claimants to.  The last two men talk cars with Harry, who covets the Subaru the young mechanic died driving, and they hint that she might be able to get a deal on it.

The Lutheran Church celebrates Flag Day with a festival of ceremony, music, eating, a game of capture-the-flag, and other activities.  All the animals are there, and a collection of them, including the church cats and Harry’s  two cats, Mrs. Murphy and Pewter, and her Corgi, Tee Tucker, discover another dead mechanic in the cemetery, but not yet in a grave.

Harry, continuing to be curious about the murders and other things happening in her county, visits the salvage shop where the totaled vehicles from the insurance and repair shops go, and talks to the owner, the widow of the previous owner, and very knowledgable.  She also steers her to a website, where she learns more.  On her way home, she stops by the racetrack.  There she is confronted by a Porsche and a Camaro.  Obviously, the drivers don’t anticipate that Harry can drive as well as she can, and she gets away from them, calling Deputy Cooper as she hides at a Rite-Aide a little ways away.

The culprits are caught, and the reason for the crimes are discovered.  A great deal of discrediting happens all the way around.  The friends sit down for a nice BBQ and celebration that Harry didn’t get killed, her breast cancer is still in remission, and the crops sold well, although not to Fresh, Fresh, Fresh. A worthy outing for the 20^th anniversary of this beloved cozy series.  The animals, as usual, are fun, and the illustrations are wonderful. Recommended. ~ lss-r

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This is a library book.                                 

Powerful Forces

Force of Nature [by] C.J. Box

New York; G.P. Putnam’s Sons [2012]

978-0-399-15826-1; $25.95

An unemployed visitor to Saddlestring, WY has the shock of his life when a drift boat comes down the Twelve Sleep River right in the middle of town and runs into him while he’s fishing.  Inside there are the corpses of 3 men and a lot of blood.

The 3 men had been paid to ambush former Special Ops operator Nate Romanowski, but Nate got the upper hand, shooting them all, despite being shot himself with a hunting arrow.  After pulling out the arrow, Nate, Game Warden Joe Pickett’s good friend, packs his Jeep, torches his house, and leaves, knowing that his former boss in the elite Mark V Peregrines outfit, John Nemecek, is out to get him.

Joe Pickett is planning to take his trainee Luke Brueggemann to visit some elk hunting camps at the start of elk season, but they abandon their plans when Joe is called to ID the bodies of the 3 dead guys.  He takes Brueggemann with him.  Then they, the sheriff and his men, and the County D.A. go to find Nate, but he is not at his house.  Joe suggests that the sheriff talk to the wife and mother of two of the guys.  There is bad blood between them, and the sheriff doesn’t do that.

Nate visits Alice Thunder at the Wind River Reservation.  She raised his former girlfriend, who was killed in a previous book.  She treats his wound, and while she is cooking the ducks his falcon brought down, she tells him about a white man who came to visit her, asking about him.  The name of this man is Bob White.  Knowing that this is Nemecek, Nate gives her money to get out of town.  He also talks to his girlfriend’s brother, Bad Bob Whiteplume, who owns a convenience store on the Rez.  Bad Bob has also met Bob White. 

Nate arranges a meeting in the woods with Joe Pickett.  Nate tells Joe that Bob White is coming for him, and has been seen in the area.  He may also cause trouble for Joe and his family.  Once again he tries to tell Joe what happened so long ago and why he, Nate, is a target, but Joe doesn’t want to hear it.  Nate tells Joe how to get in touch with him through an old falconry website.

The first place Nate goes is his father’s place outside Colorado Springs.Nate remembers Air Force T/Sgt. Gordon Romanowski as a guy who was always pushing him.  It’s what drove him into the natural world, where he discovers falconry.  Then Nate is appointed to the Air Force Academy, where he becomes its falconer.  That’s where he meets Nemecek.

Nate sees his dad, who believes him to be a traitor who has shamed him.  Then Nate asks his father when he last saw his wife Dalishay and their two little girls.  He learns they have been taken awayby the bad guys.  He leaves.  He is followed.  He knocks the guys off the road and down the mountainside, then returns to his father’s place.  He polishes off the guy at his father’s, who brought Dalishay and the girls back.  He gives his dad money to make his family disappear.

Meanwhile, it’s been noticed that Bad Bob and Alice Thunder are missing.  So is the wife and mother of the two dead hunters, Pam Kelly.  The sheriff is looking for them all – it is, after all, election time, and the sheriff has a rival – one of his deputies.  He’s not getting very far.

Nate goes to the compound in Idaho, where he expects to find a number of people.  The only people there are Oscar Kennedy, a crippled ex-Peregrine, and the girlfriend of one of the other guys, named  Haley.  5 people from there have been killed in a variety of little “accidents,” plus Large Merle, one of Nate’s friends, who died last month.  Oscar does some research for Nate, and Nate sends a message to Joe, via the website, to, essentially, “get outta Dodge.”

Just as Oscar is explaining some of his findings to Nate, and Nate is telling Oscar why Nemecheck is after him, a sniper round takes out Kennedy, and Nate and Haley are on the run again.

Nate and Haley make their way back to Wyoming from Idaho, with their eyes out for the bad guys.  They find them in a hotel in Jackson, and follow them.  He kills the driver and questions the other, taking him apart piece by piece.

Marybeth Pickett, Joe’s wife and researcher, is a librarian.  One night a month, she works until 9:00 p.m., and this is that night.  Just before she closes, a man comes up to her desk with 3 books to check out, but no card.  She can’t find his name – Bob White – in the database.  Then he asks about her children and husband.  She gets scared, but tries to put on a brave face, as she opens her phone so that Joe will hear their exchange.  Bob gets a phone call, and leaves the library.  She reports him to the police, and calls her girls to have them lock the door.

Joe and Brueggeman are helping with the investigation, following up on sightings of the three missing people.  They find a dead deer in a line shack.  Getting back into range of their communication devices, they hear about the car near Jackson and the men, one dead, one tortured.  Joe also receives Marybeth’s phone call from the library, and Brueggeman receives texts in response to the texts he’s been sending to his girlfriend, who is missing him.  Joe puts on the speed to get home, calling Marybeth, but not getting her.

When he gets home, he finds out that Marybeth has been trying to get them a flight so that they can get lost in the outside world.  Deputy Mike Reed – the only one of Kyle McLanahan’s men Joe thinks is competent, is guarding them all until Joe gets home.  The next day they go to the airport, but Joe doesn’t get on the plane with them, he turns back to go help his friend.

Joe calls McLanahan, telling him that things are going to go down soon.  He tells him 3 things he needs to do.  Then he sets out to find Nate and his mortal enemy, Nemecek, who calls himself “Bob White.”  There is a gun battle in the woods.  Joe nearly loses his life, Nate is injured, and three others are killed.  The cavalry, in the form of the Sheriff’s Department, arrives late.  When all is said and done, McLanahan takes the credit for getting the bad guys, but not the blame for not following Joe’s directions to a “T,” getting one of his men killed, and another – Mike Reed, his opponent, seriously hurt.  Also dead are 3 civilians, but one returns from a vacation viewing bats in Texas, but homesick for the Wyoming mountains.  And Joe gets to have a well-deserved vacation!

The Joe Pickett books get better and better.  This one has a lot of heart and a lot of heartbreak.  Joe, who always wants to believe the best of everyone, is sorely tested.  There are discussions about important things, including ethics and morals, love, trust, and patriotism.  Good triumphs, but at a high price.  Good men are compromised.  It is a complicated book, and well worth the time to read it.  Very, very satisfying, and very good.  Highly recommended.~ lss-r

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This is a library book.