Women's Business in a Man's World

Murder on Sisters’ Row [by] Victoria Thompson

New York; Berkley Prime Crime [2011]

978-0-425-24115-8 ; $24.95

Returning from shopping with her adopted daughter and her nursemaid, midwife Sarah Brandt finds herself waited for outside her home by a young man she does not care for, with a carriage.  He is to take her immediately to attend at a birthing where he works, a location he refuses to disclose.

She finds herself deposited behind an elegant house, where everyone seems to be asleep, except the cook, who takes her in the back door and up the stairs to a nicely-appointed room where an attractive young woman in a silk nightdress moans from a big bed elaborately decorated with curtains and draperies. Her name is Amy. The woman who waits with her is Mrs. Walker, who is obviously in charge, although she is strangely separated from the doings in the room.

Sarah has been trying to figure out what this great house is, with so many people asleep during the day, but with the sound of a piano and men’s and women’s voices at night.  Amy’s begging her to help her get away gives her a clue – the place is a brothel, Mrs. Walker the madam, who is angry that Amy has misled her by being pregnant.  Amy doesn’t want to lose her baby, and wants Sarah to contact Mrs. Van Orner, who helps rescue prostitutes from their depraved lives in brothels.

Sarah promises Amy to see what she can do.  She also lets Mrs. Walker have a piece of her mind – she didn’t like being taken to a brothel unaware.  She tells her friend Det. Sgt. Frank Malloy of the N.Y.P.D. about her encounter, and that she is planning to help Amy.  He is appalled and chastises her about her going to the brothel.  Her mind, however, is made up.

She visits the charity Mrs. Van Orner runs, Rahab’s Daughters, and meets a rather unattractive and unassuming woman, Miss Yingling, who is Mrs. Van Orner’s secretary.  She tells Amy’s tale, and is asked back, so that she may meet Mrs. Van Orner and her helpers.  They tell Sarah what to do – take the baby, which Mrs. Walker has allowed her to do, and take the young man away, so he will not be an impediment to their rescue, which she does, asking him to drive her and the baby away. 

After Sarah gets the baby away, Mrs. Van Orner, her friend Mrs. Spratt-Williams, and the two gentlemen, Mr. Quimby and Mr. Porter, come in and bodily remove Amy from the house and take her to the home where the rescued women can recover and live while they find jobs and learn to take care of themselves.

Mrs. Walker goes to the police, accusing Mrs. Brandt of kidnapping both the baby and Amy, wanting the police to get her property back, because, or course, she pays them money to do such things.  But our Mrs. Brandt is the daughter of a powerful and wealthy man in New York, and his power trumps Mrs. Walker’s in the New York of the gaslight era.

Amy is unimpressed with the place they’ve taken her to, and complains about her room, which is small and not as nicely appointed as the one in the brothel, and she is upset she couldn’t bring her clothes.  When Sarah asks if she has decided what to name her little boy, she says that she will name him after his father – Gregory.  Mrs. Van Orner runs from the room.  Others tell Sarah that Gregory is Mr. Van Orner’s name.  Sarah hopes they are not one-and-the-same, but she has heard a rumor that Mrs. Van Orner had started her charity because Mr. Van Orner liked prostitutes so much.

The next thing Sarah knows, Mrs. Van Orner has gone home by herself in her carriage, and is discovered dead by her coachman.  A greatly transformed Miss Yingling – so gorgeously decked out that Malloy, who had been greeted by her, didn’t recognize her when he saw her again the same evening, has influenced her employer, Mr. Van Orner, to commission Malloy to find his wife’s killer. 

Sarah and her mother make a condolence visit to Mr. Orner, who is an acquaintance of the mother’s.  Sarah gets to see the change in Tamar Yingling, and she also finds Amy, who bursts into the room, expecting a tête-à-tête between her and Mr. Orner, when, in reality, they are entertaining their guests.  Sarah can’t wait to tell Mrs. Orner’s colleagues where Amy has gone.

When Amy and Miss Yingling go out to shop for some clothes at Macy’s, Amy is kidnapped by Mrs. Walker, acting supposedly on a letter from Van Orner, who swears he didn’t write it. When they get her back to the brothel, she collapses and dies, and Malloy is called upon to investigate.  Sarah and Amy go into high gear, interviewing everyone they know who is connected with the case, but it isn’t until Sarah is almost killed that the culprit is finally captured.

These are great mysteries, with fine characters, and historic notes showing the author has done her homework.  A great slice-of-Victorian life in New York City , with considerations of the place of woman and the state of the law at that time.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.





Murder in the Heart of Sacramento

Dead Cat Alley [by] James Chatfield

[n.p.; Xlibris; 2011]

978-1-4568-8385-0; [$19.99]

In the year 2000, Dead Cat Alley had been declared an historic landmark. It was embellished with statues of cats painted in varied themes, but all with eyes that followed you eerily. Restaurants, shops, and bars opened onto the Alley, where people could stroll during the evening hours.

By 2025, it had become  a haven for Sacramento’s underclass, and then a murder scene.  On one fateful evening, a downtown personality, known as the “Wig Lady” for the dirty platinum wigs she would wear, was bludgeoned in the Alley right outside the former Phat Cat saloon.  Her real name was Alicia Hughes, but to most people she was an old drunk who would beg for a drink or for drugs; an easily shrugged-off street person no one would ever miss.  The Cat, which had gone through a downhill spiral from acceptable to very iffy, seemed the appropriate place for her final resting place, and no one had seen her lying amongst the trash and used condoms until Josh Adams went out to get a breath of fresh air.

On that same fateful night, Josh Adams, the young star reporter for the Sacramento Valley Times, had a drink with his editor, Justin Wright.  The two men split up, Wright going home, and Adams staying to chat up the bartender.  Then he set foot on Dead Cat Alley and was severely beaten – almost killed. This was such a shock to Justin that he began to reassess his whole career.  Trying to deliver the news should not end up with the reporter in the morgue, especially with the public not even knowing how involved he was with the story and with the people of his constituency.

Justin begins to delve into the mystery of the murders.  He also takes onboard, as a special intern, a woman who has worked as a computer tech at the Sacramento Communications Center, the system that broadcasts the Sacramento Valley Times. Jill McNalley is 10 years younger than Justin, and gorgeous. They end up in a relationship, which teaches them a great deal about themselves, as well as each other – they have both been unlucky in love before.

They also grow as professional people and as reporters, who care, not only about the story, but about what the stories mean, who the people in them are, the impact of their stories on the public (which is shown at the end of most of the chapters in feedback to the news stories by readers from the various towns around Sacramento), and their deeper impact on society.

And they also solve the mystery, especially driven to do so by the death of Josh, who, after a small spell of lucidity, succumbs to a virus crawling subrosa around the hospital.  Not only do they put the pieces of their investigation together, but they gain additional insights, and look in more profound ways for the meanings in what they see. 

This is a good book.  It was published through a publish-on-demand publisher, and the proofreading is not the greatest. The writing is not smooth – it lurches and gets hung-up along the way, but the storytelling is not sacrificed.  Recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.



Secrets and the Dangers they Reap





Hanging Hill [by] Mo Hayder

New York; Atlantic Monthly Press [2011]

978-0-80212006-9; $25.00

A beautiful and popular teenager, Lorne Wood, is found on the towpath of a canal in the picture-perfect city of Bath one morning, brutally murdered.

Zoë Benedict, independent Harley-riding police detective, believes that the Department is on the wrong track, and needs to look farther than the usual domestic motives, and begins to investigate on her own.  Soon it looks like Lorne’s interest in breaking into the modeling business has led her astray into the dangerous world of amateur porn, and there is danger that a secret Zoë has kept for years will leak out to sabotage her career.

Meanwhile, Sally Cassidy, Zoë’s estranged sister, has suffered a devastating divorce, and is trying to support her daughter – a friend of the victim’s, and not lose her little house.  She has started cleaning houses, when a strange man, who lives in the biggest house she helps to clean, asks her to become his housekeeper.  She is delighted with the increase in salary, until this eccentric man becomes more and more repugnant.  And why are his friends hanging around her daughter’s school?

Sally and Zoë have been estranged for many years because of an incident in their childhood, which hardly remains, except for the deep-seated guilt on both sides.  They reconcile as best they can, and share their secrets, discovering that each holds a piece of the puzzle that is threatening the peace of their town and its families.  They also realize that there are even more secrets to uncover and that the very lives of their loved ones hang in the balance.

This is a great procedural in the British vein, with wonderful characters, both good and evil, and shocks and surprises all around.  Exciting and unsettling. Highly recommended. ~ lss-r.

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Library book.

Things are Seldom What They Seem

The Hunted [by] Alan Jacobson

New York ; Pocket Books [2001]

0-671-02680-1 ; $24.95

Dr. Lauren Chambers is a psychologist in Placerville, California.  She deals with her clients, as well as her own phobias, which include agoraphobia.  Having tried to start a new practice with a colleague who abandoned her has left her weak and vulnerable.  Then she finds herself being followed on the mountain roads to her home, and her paranoia gets the better of her, especially when it seems like someone is trying to “gaslight” her by moving her dog in and out of the house, changing her sheets, and doing other small things to spook her.  If only her husband would come home!  But he failed to return from his ski trip to Colorado with his fraternity buddies.

As she fills out the missing person report for the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Department, she realizes she has no information.  Michael said he would leave information for her, but she can’t find it – she’s forgotten where she put it.  She doesn’t remember the name of the fraternity, or even what school it was from, beyond “somewhere back east.” She has no names of friends he might be with and only a vague idea of where they might be:  “somewhere near Vail.” No wonder law enforcement seems suspicious.

But the volunteer who works with the Community Policing Officer sets up a meeting of concerned citizens to help her, and she meets a private eye named Nick Bradley, who turns out to be very helpful. After another scare at home puts her on edge, she hires him.

Meanwhile, a man is rescued from a bad accident, in which he suffered a head injury.  He also has a bullet in his leg, and believes he drove off a cliff. He cannot remember who he is, and finds out where he is by asking one of the people at the hospital, Virginia Presbyterian. He remembers nothing before he woke up.  But he does know he has to get out of there.

He disappears into a storage room and comes out in scrubs.  He does a great job of portraying a doctor, first getting food, and then a cot in the area where doctors can grab a little rest in their long shifts overnight.  He finally gets out of the hospital by escaping to the mall across the street, where he shoplifts some clothes and spends a little time sending an e-mail to an address that suddenly comes to him as familiar.  It is Lauren’s. He asks for information about himself and help.  Then he runs away, stealing a car.

Meanwhile, the FBI is mobilizing.  They come for him, and explain that he is Agent Harper Payne of the FBI, who was put into the Witness Protection Program after he testified against a very violent man, an assassin who often tortures his victims.  He is known variously as the Viper, Hung Jin and Anthony Scarponi.  He has been let out of jail, and the FBI is hoping to bring the former Fibbie up to speed, so that he can testify again and put this super bad guy away forever.

Lauren discovers the e-mail sent to her from Virginia, and answers it.  Nick makes plans for them to go to the east coast.

Lauren is then kidnapped from her own home by a man she had just started working with in her practice – a man she knows as Steven, but who tells her he is Hung Jin.  He has taken her to a small cabin in the mountains, where he has tied her up in a system of Chinese knots.  He wants her to tell him where her husband is.  He calls her husband by a different name.  She denies that name and repeats that she doesn’t know where he is, and, each time, he tightens the ropes.

She tells him the only story he knows, which is that her husband is in Colorado.  Hung Jin leaves to check out her story, leaving her with a henchman named Cody and some rats.  He has also found Lauren’s father’s old Colt revolver, which he has waved in her face.  He fired one round, then left the gun behind.  When Cody is outside, Lauren manages to smash the chair and get away from the ropes.  She picks up the Colt.  Cody doesn’t believe that she’ll fire it, but he doesn’t know that this gun saved both Lauren’s life and her father’s, and he taught her to shoot to kill.  She does.

Taking off in Cody’s vehicle, she finds she’s in the Nevada town of Gardnerville.  She drives back to Placerville, where she tells Nick about her adventures, and they board the plane for the east.  Nick tells her her husband’s real name is Harper Payne, and about his history with Hung Jin.

Eventually, the various factions get together in a number of different configurations, running after each other through the streets and skies of Washington.  Scarponi shows up and they go after him with various cars and a helicopter.  He ends up fighting with his nemesis, Harper Payne, in a Lincoln Navigator, which later catches fire.  One of the Fibbies dies, just as his wife gives birth to their baby.  And Lauren discovers that there are more things – and people – that are not what, or whom, they seem to be.  I felt a little let down by the ending, but enjoyed the book up until then.

Interestingly enough, the first book by Jacobson, False Accusations, gets a mention at the beginning of this book, when Lauren remembers sending a patient for surgery at the hands of the doctor who was the hero of that book, whom she sees mentioned in a news story.  I preferred that book, but this was still pretty good.  Recommended. ~lss-r

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Library book.





Summertime for Hitler and Germany





A Game of Lies [by] Rebecca Cantrell

New York, Tom Doherty Associates [2011]

978-0-7653-2733-8; $24.99

Hannah Vogel is a journalist and part-time spy for the British. Posing as travel reporter Adelheid Zinsli, and lover of Hauptsturmführer Lars Lang.  Hannah has been collecting Nazi secrets uncovered by Lang, her espionage partner, and has smuggled them to Switzerland. She has just returned to Germany, ostensibly to attend the 1936 Olympic Games and to report to a Swiss newspaper on the fencing.  On their first day, at the opening ceremony, Lang gets drunk, and Hannah is afraid of what will happen, especially since they are with a friend of Lang’s, a professor of chemistry at the University, who intimates that Lang is dangerous.

Hannah’s mentor, Peter Weill, has asked her to meet him at the games – he has a package to give her.  She doesn’t know what it is, and he does not get a chance to tell her.  He pulls out his flask, as always, so that they may sip a celebratory drink, and he dies.  She has taken a small sip, and becomes groggy and confused.  Lang takes her away from Peter’s dead body, not wanting to cause a scene.

Hannah feels imprisoned at Lang’s house.  He isn’t happy she’s complaining about his drinking, and they have words.  She flees to the streets, hoping to find solace and help from her friends – the people that she knew with Peter.  First she visits his sister, bringing her sunflowers. It’s an awkward visit – the police have said he died of a heart attack, but Hannah knows that’s not what it was. The sister does not know what the news was that made Peter so excited. On the way out, Hannah steals Peter’s notebook from where he hid it in an umbrella.

Hannah tries to make sense of the notes in Peter’s book, but she cannot. In her attempts to find allies amongst the friends she had once known, she finds only betrayal. Most of the Jewish ones no longer see her as a friend, but as someone who might turn them in.  They move away and turn their backs on her.  Only a couple of them end up helping, such as the woman doctor, who patches her up when Hannah is hit by a car.

When Peter’s sister is also killed, Hannah finds there is so much unknown all around her.  Those she thought she knew stand ready to betray her, and even those she thinks she knows now are questionable. She turns to Lang for help, and he finds the answers in Peter’s notebook, and they find corroboration from unexpected sources.

It looks like all is lost when she and Lang are taken by the Gestapo, but old friends actually do come to their aid, and Hannah is able to escape to Switzerland with some of the secrets, while Lars goes to Russia to attempt to find more answers at one of the training colonies there.

This is a race-against-the-clock thriller, full of cliff-hangers and close calls, compelling in its story-telling, against a background of intense fear, uncertainty, and growing madness.  The times moving up to WWII are not well-known in this country, but Cantrell brings them vividly to life with her stories of a plucky heroine versus remarkable odds, the strange bedfellows war – and pre-war – times make, and the chilling, but true, background to it all.  It’s like watching a great black-and-white film.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.                                                             

Court Drama



Final Appeal [by] Lisa Scottoline

HarperCollins [1994, 2003]

eISBN: 0-06-056430-X; $2.99

Grace Rossi is starting over after a divorce.   A part-time job with a federal appeals court sounds perfect, especially when it’s Chief Judge Armen Gregorian’s court.  She finds herself extremely attracted to him, but keeps her distance because he is married – to a Senator, no less.  But a late night session on a big case finds her in his arms, as he tells her that his marriage is over and he wants her.  She floats home in ecstasy.

The next day she falls from the great height of her affair, as she learns that her lover is dead, by his own hand.  Not only is he dead, but his cases have been divvied up amongst the other judges, and there is a judge getting ready to move into his chambers.  The only thing that Grace has been able to do is to take his large dog Bernice under her wing, even though her daughter Maddie doesn’t like Bernice one bit. 

Grace is convinced that the judge didn’t kill himself – he was murdered, but the only person who seems to think she might have some claim to the truth is a man she knows as a homeless friend of one of the law clerks, a man nicknamed “Shake and Bake.”  But it turns out that this paragon of disguises is actually an undercover secret agent.

As Grace looks at the secret papers hidden in her lover’s credenza, she discovers he has a pseudonym and a secret bank account.  This doesn’t jibe with what she understands of him as a straight-arrow, and she begins to question not only who he was, but also who she is, and who her parents were.  She questions her relationships with her parents and with her 6-year-old daughter.  She vows to be a better mother, and, by the end, has decided not to beat up either of her parents for their failures.

Things get fast and furious at the end, when the killer unmasks himself, and threatens to throw Grace out of Armen’s window.  She has discovered a pool of corruption at the court, which affects some of the judges, clerks, and security staff and which has wide-flung ramifications.  However her friendships have gotten deeper with some of her colleagues, and the understandings they have about the law has solidified.  Grace Rossi has matured more than she would have ever expected.

This is about the ordinary life of a court and of the men and women who strut out the drama through it. The narrative is detailed and feels authentic, the arguments insightful, and the growing suspense really does come as a complete shock.  The central character of Grace will appeal to the reader with her problems and her strength in raising above it all.  Highly recommended.

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I read this book on my Kindle.