Great Fun Down on the Bayou

Creole Belle [by] James Lee Burke

New York; Simon & Schuster [2012]

978-1-4516-4813-3; $27.99

Our hero, Dave Robicheaux, is fighting to recover his health after a gunman put a bullet in his back a month ago.  The morphine is also recalling a fierce addictive behavior that used to be his before years of 12-step programs and sheer resolve put that on the back burner for him.  He is convinced that singer Tee Jolie Melton came to see him, and put some songs on his iPod.

Then he learns that Tee Jolie’s sister Blue has been found dead in a floating block of ice in the Gulf.  Dave resolves to find Tee Jolie and to learn what happened to Blue.  His best friend, Clete Purcel, decides to help him. 

However, Clete is also involved in his own troubles. He’s discovered that one of his one-night stands had produced a child, unbeknownst to him, who may be working as a contract killer named Caruso.  She has come gunning for some of New Orleans’ worst. When she drops in on Clete, they decide they really like each other, no matter what happened in the past, and he takes her – when she’s not a contract killer, her name is Gretchen – on as an assistant of sorts.

There are several members of a family with deep historic ties to the area who keep cropping up in their investigation.  Varina, who is the daughter of Jesse LeBoeuf, an old Cajun swampman, has the hots for Clete, although she is still married to Rick Dupree, who has piles of money and a big southern mansion on a neighboring bayou.  He has enormous power, and oars stuck in the economy everywhere, especially in oil and religion.  His father/grandfather – the relationship may be a bit blurred in the family history – claims to have been a prisoner at one of the Nazi concentration camps, but Dave sees him as about as opposite a person as he can be to the persona he has invented, and believes him to have been a Nazi and one of the guards.  Meanwhile, Jesse LeBoeuf has shown his true colors once again – he’s one of those southerners who just has to taste the flesh of a black girl, even while he hates them, and tries to destroy their menfolk.  He takes his latest rage out on a female deputy in the Sheriff’s department.  And this whole family seems to be behind an assortment of good ol’ boys, obvious crooks and  perverts, and religious fanatics, as well as oil impresarios, whose current activity with the oil spill in the Gulf, remind Dave of his father’s death on a rig many years before.  Dave’s daughter Alafair makes friends with Gretchen, and plan to do a documentary film on a show coming to their town.

Everything rather comes to a head at the end of the book, when our two galloping justice-seekers take on the family at its enclave next to the bayou. It’s rough and bloody, and very much what Clete and Dave have been known to do in the past, although this one has a vast and overarching theatricality all its own.  Makes you happy they’re on our side! Typical Burke and absolutely recommended (if you can stomach the gore.) ~ lss-r

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Library book.

Easy Come -- Easy Go -- NOT!

Die Easy [by] Zoë Sharp

New York; Pegasus Crime [2013]

978-1-60598-400-1; $25.95

Charlie Fox and her boss, and former lover, Sean Meyer, are working for a wealthy American businessman, who will be hobnobbing with other wealthy businesspeople, politicians, and sports stars at a fundraiser for cleaning up in the aftermath of Katrina.  There is noticeable tension in the group, partially because of all the bodyguards who are there, exercising their muscles and strutting in front of each other, with weapons only slightly out of sight.

There is tension between Charlie and Sean, too.  He had been her Sergeant when she had been in the British Army.  She had washed out finally, after 4 men in her unit gang-raped her.  Sean had not known about that until later, and he didn’t totally understand what it meant.  One of those men, Vic Morton, is also a bodyguard for one of the principles in this story, and he takes many opportunities to harass Charlie and show her up as being incompetent.

In most cases, Sean would have probably noticed, but Sean has not been himself lately.  He was shot and in a very long coma, from which he is not completely recovered.  It has affected him physically and mentally.  He is not as sharp as he once was.  He’s not “on top of things.”  His memory is shot full of holes.  He has incomplete memories of his army days.  He knows that he knows Charlie, but he doesn’t seem to comprehend that he had quite an intimate relationship with her, including having fathered a child with her.  He has a relationship with Vic which is also piecemeal – he remembers him from the army, but is not sure about him as a bodyguard, just as he unsure about Charlie.  This becomes extremely important, as it turns out.

The first time things seem to go wrong is when Charlie and Sean’s principle – the man they are body guarding – gets into a helicopter for a flyover the city of New Orleans to see the still extant damage.  They are actually shot at by a RPG, which destroys the tail rotor, causing the helicopter to autogyro into the ground, where it breaks up and a fire starts.  One of the bodyguards gets killed.  All of the living people do get out of the plane in a timely fashion, even though some of them are very badly hurt.  They find out that those after them are locals – the person threatening them unless they give themselves up to him has a Cajun accent!

Later, there is a real scene:  hijackers take over the paddle wheel casino party boat they are on, separating the bodyguards from their clients.  Others come on board after the hijacking, with plans involving C4, although half of their supply has been surreptiously dumped overboard by Charlie, as she fights the hijackers with two of the principles and Sean behind the scenes.  The whole scene makes quite a splash in the papers, when the boat is grounded when the blowing up is compromised.  A lot of people are killed or injured, and Charlie gets a much clearer picture of both Sean and Vic.  Fortunately, Sean gets a clearer picture of Charlie and Vic as well, which is why things come out as well as they do in the end.

This is truly one of my favorite series, and Charlie is in great form in this book.  She is so clearly in command of everything because of the training she has had from Sean, and her inner dialogue as she hopes for his recovery – and to what extent it will be, is just great. Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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My book.

Behaving Badly in the Hell of the City



Blessed are Those Who Thirst [by] Anne Holt

New York; Scribner [2012]

978-1-4516-3478-5; $15.00

Oslo is extremely hot this year, and people are behaving badly, as they are wont to do in hot weather.  And Hanne Wilhelmsen seems to be getting the brunt of the weather, in the form of too many cases for one person to deal with. Three of them, performed on three Saturday nights in a single month, are just crime scenes.  There are no bodies, but there is a prodigious amount of blood on every surface, along with unknown numbers – 8 digits long.

It is finally discovered that these numbers are the case numbers of women who have come to Norway to seek asylum.  A little boy digging in the dirt comes across the body of one of these women.  His mother calls the police, and, they discover, the body is, indeed, a foreigner.

Another one of Hanne’s cases is of a smart, savvy, female medical student who is raped.  She is seriously destroyed by this act, and her father is so sad because he feels he can’t do anything to help her. They grow more and more distant from one another, even though each is all that the other has.

Hanne is waiting for the other shoe to fall – why isn’t there another horrible death scene?  Then, she realizes that the rape is actually one of the Saturday “killings” deferred.  Instead of the gory splash happening one of the Saturdays, the rape happened instead.  She and her team rush back to the building that the girl lived in, before she moved back home.  There had been a foreign woman living in one of the apartments on a floor lower than the raped student, but she had disappeared.  Hanne sends her troops out to find this woman.

Meanwhile, both the girl and her father have been setting groundwork for their revenge.

The foreign woman has gone to Lillehamar, where she is living in a boarding house, but the boarding house owner has reported that she is an illegal, and the police pick her up. She languishes in jail, unable to understand why she is there, and ashamed that she did something wrong, although she doesn’t know what.  She is finally sent in a helicopter to Oslo, where she is encouraged to tell her story.

The story finally comes together as all of the cops, the rapee, and her father, end up together at the house of the rapist.

Somewhere in the middle of the story, the Chief Inspector keels over and dies in Hanne’s office.  Life may be changing for Hanne, since many want her to apply for his job.  Meanwhile, there is tension on the homefront between Hanne and her partner Cecelie, who is getting tired of being shoved into the background when Hanne’s police friends are around.  Although Hanne had made an attempt to invite her partner Håken over for dinner, he cancels and she can breathe a sigh of relief.  But, knowing it will have to come eventually, she offers a dinner invitation to her old motorcycle-riding cop friends, especially her dear friend Billy T. As things wind down, it finally rains.

Enjoyable police procedural, showing that it’s pretty much the same procedures everywhere, with excellent characters and good old-fashioned plotting.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.



Learning and Teaching

As the Crow Flies [by] Craig Johnson

[New York]; Viking, [2012]

978-0-670-02351-6; $25.95

Walt Longmire is getting ready for his daughter Cady’s wedding.  Henry Standing Bear has made most of the arrangements, but now it appears that the local Cheyenne college wants the wedding site at Crazy Head Springs for a Cheyenne Language total immersion class, and so Walt and Henry need to find a new place for the wedding.

Cheyenne Chief Lonnie Little Bird suggests that Henry show Walt the area around a colorful standing rock called the Painted Warrior, so Henry and Walt get into Henry’s broken-down old truck Rezdawg to go check it out. They take Dog with them. Just out of town, they are stopped by the new Tribal Police Chief, Lolo Long, who gives Henry a ticket for not stopping at a stop sign, plus other charges. Since her vehicle does not have any markings on it, Walt points out that they couldn’t have known to stop, which only angers Ms. Long.

When they get to the Painted Warrior, Walt concedes that it is a lovely place, but probably not where Cady and Michael would like to get married. Looking up at the cliffs, he spots something shiny, but can’t tell what it is. When he takes a picture to send to Cady, he sees something falling from the cliff.  Then they hear a scream and start running.  They find a girl, body broken, lying in an horrific position. As Henry takes her in his arms, she breathes 3 times and dies. Then Dog begins to bark.  Walt tells him to shut up, and calls to see if there is anyone at the top of the cliff, but no one responds.

Dog is so insistent, that they have to notice.  In front of him is a little bundle of blanket, with a tiny hand sticking out.  Then the baby cries and they run to it.  It’s a boy.  In their rush to get it to the Tribal Medical Center, they park Rezdawg too near the Emergency entrance.  Walt tries to move it, but the engine dies, as it is wont to do.  Lolo arrives at just the right time to arrest him, first for where the truck is located, and, secondly, for carrying a concealed sidearm, a 1911 Colt.

While all of this is happening, Rezdawg gains momentum, pulling away from them and aiming at the rest of the cars, taking out several, as the chief runs after it.

It is only when she comes into the building, and is faced by her mother, a nurse who has just registered the baby into the hospital, that Chief Long sees reason.  She tells her about the little boy and the dead woman, and introduces her to Walt.  Then she and Walt go out to the site of the woman’s death.  When Long recognizes the woman, Walt takes over, taking the photos and measurements, letting Long rest and recuperate from the shock.  Then he asks her who the victim is.  Her name is Audrey Plain Feather.  The little boy’s name is Adrian.

When they climb to the top of the cliff, Walt finds where a vehicle had driven in, parked, and then made a two-point turn to leave.  There are spots of differential fluid and wide tire track.  He guesses it was a Jeep.  Long tells him that the man Audrey lived with, Adrian’s daddy, drives a Jeep.

After a brief meeting with the FBI Agent in Charge, and the State Crime Lab folks, Long and Walt go to the home of Audrey’s common law husband, Clarence Last Bull.  He answers the door, with a shotgun in his hand. Walt notices that the gun is jacked open, but the Chief puts her foot through the door.  Walt runs around the house and trips Last Bull with a rake.  Long jumps on him just as he is trying to get up. She bashes him in the head with her gun and puts him in handcuffs.

Lolo offers to buy Walt dinner at the Charging Horse Casino, where they are greeted by the maitre d’, the previous police chief. They order and then the Chief asks the Sheriff how he thought she did in the law-and-order biz that day.  He said that she hardly did anything right, and began to tell her how wrong it was.  Last Bull would walk, if he had any kind of a decent public defender, because of the way she broke into his house. She told him that apologies are a sign of weakness, and he told her, they are a sign of being aware of what’s going on, and not being a cocksure idiot.  Just then, the waitress arrives with the food, and Lolo stalks off, flipping one of the plates of food over the woman’s shoulder, where it cascades down in a shower of broken china and food.  No apology forthcoming.

Walt apologizes for the fiasco and offers to help her clean up, but she says no. He introduces himself to her and finds out she is Loraine Two Two.  They talk a little about the case, and Loraine tells Walt that last year, when her daughter Inez was 13, Clarence Last Bull was paying entirely too much attention to her.

As Walt walks back to Lonnie Little Bird’s house, where he is to sleep that night, Walt finds a red truck aimed right at him, with a dead elk tied to the front. He manages to get out of the way, but just barely.  He gets to Lonnie’s house and, just a little later, Lolo turns up – to apologize and to ask for his help in training her.

Walt questions Clarence, and finds that he and Audrey and Adrian went to the cliffs to have a party.  Clarence was a chef in the Army, and he found a job cooking and he was celebrating it.  He would go first to the job, which is off the Rez, and then call for Audrey and the boy when he was settled.  Audrey didn’t want to wait to go, and there was an argument. They walked off a little, and Clarence, having drunk too much beer, fell asleep.  When he woke up, he couldn’t find them, and expected to find them walking home, but he didn’t he didn’t know where they were.  Walt admitted he was a widower, and created a bond with Clarence. Long was impressed, and mentioned it while her mother took Clarence to see his son.  Walt says there are problems with his story, but he doesn’t think Clarence killed Audrey.  Long agrees.  Walt also tells Long about his being attacked by the truck outside Lonnie’s.

The only truck that fits this truck’s description belongs to Artie Small Song, a guy that Walt’s Undersheriff Vic would call “a bad motor scooter.”  They go to see if he is at his mother’s.  She is cooking the elk that was on the front of the truck, but says Artie is not there. They

Come back later and partake of the elk, and speak to Artie, who denies he had anything to do with chasing Walt.  Walt participates in a peyote ceremony and has visions, which give him a perspective on things.

Cady, not believing that the menfolk in her life are doing very well at lobbying for her interests, arrives with her future mother-in-law in tow.  They take over Henry’s beautiful car Lola and proceed to getting things done.

Walt continues to mentor Chief Long, and he begins to involve more and more people, until he gets the full picture, and, just before the wedding he solves the crime, with a little help from his friends.  Then comes the wedding, combining red and white cultures in a beautiful ceremony.

This is a fun book, with teasing and fun passages amid the hard story, which lighten the load, even though it’s a story of abuse and neglect and misunderstandings all around.  Each character is beautifully drawn, and the story engages the reader at many levels. This is one of the best mystery series out there.  Highly recommended. ~lss-r

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My book.



Bodies Everywhere -- and Nowhere

The Diva Paints the Town [by] Krista Davis

New York; Berkley Prime Crime [2010]

978-0-425-233443; $6.99

Sophie Winston is feeling guilty:  her reclusive neighbor, Mordecai Artemus, has died, and she never took him a home-cooked dinner or a plate of cookies, or invited him to come over.  And, of course, she has been involved lately with Rooms and Blooms, an interior decoration and landscape show that is currently underway at a downtown hotel.

Very few people had ever seen the inside of Mordecai’s enormous mansion, and Sophie’s nemesis, Natasha, dashes in with the paramedics when his body is discovered.  She is appalled by the house, and – always wanting to make a name for herself – she decides to take charge of remodeling the big monstrosity.

Natasha assigns rooms for people to decorate.  Sophie is given the family room, where Mordecai lived – and died.  She sets about doing something about it with the help of her friends Nina Norwood and Bernie Frei, who is the manager of one of the best restaurants in town.  Mars, her ex-husband, and Natasha’s main squeeze, has decided he’d rather tote stuff for Sophie than Natasha, and joins her party.

But for Sophie, there is another party.  In Mordecai’s will, he left his house to his Pomeranian, Emmaline, but he also wants a party for a group of former students, who have already received their invitations.  He has a menu already set up, if Sophie will make these few dishes and put them out at the proper time, and also to order sprays of lilacs for the room, even though it is mid-February.

While getting ready for the bequest party, Sophie is cooking and her main squeeze, homicide detective Wolf is chopping vegetables, Nina comes running over, exclaiming that she has killed Kurt.

Kurt Finkel is Alexandria’s premier designer of kitchens, and has been tagged by Natasha to redo Mordecai’s kitchen.  When they get their keys from her to start the work, Sophie and Nina get to meet him, but Nina has known him for a long time – once in the dim, dark past, they dated.  There is a reunion, which gets out-of-hand, as Kurt begins to paw Nina.  She pushes him away, and he falls and doesn’t get up. Hence her hysteria.  But when they go back to check, the body is no longer there, so they decide that everything must be okay.

That is, until Sophie revisits the house and finds Kurt in a windowseat, very much dead.  She reports the body, which again disappears.  This time, policewoman Tara Borsos is not amused and threatens to arrest Sophie for having made a false police report.  Tara is both young and attractive, and Sophie hears that she is going with Wolf to the banquet for Rooms and Blooms.  Sophie doesn’t go on dates to events where she is working, but she is confused:  Wolf had been so attentive to her the other night when she was getting ready for the bequest party.

During the banquet, awards are presented for the best booths, and one of them, featuring a glass house, is a winner.  When they put the spotlight on it, they discover the dead body of Tara Borsos inside.

And then the bequest party comes along and Mordecai’s former students drop by.  The set-up is just like the last party they had at Mordecai’s, when an experimental structure they’d all built was torched – part of the reason that Mordecai became the recluse he was.  They discover a secret panel in the house, and inside it, the corpse of Kurt Finkel, also a former student, plus an older body.  Just when you think things are just about wrapped up – more bodies appear!

But it all comes together in the end, as it should in a nice cozy series.  This is one of my favorite cozy series – well constructed, good characters, and always a fun time, with great recipes and just the right splash of wit. Highly recommended.~lss-r

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My own book.

A Spunky WASP Goes A-Spying

Lipstick and Lies [by] Margit Liesche

[Scottsdale, AZ]; Poisoned Pen Press [2007]

978-1-59058-563-4; $14.95

Pucci Lewis is a WASP, a member of the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots.  She has just co-piloted a Liberator into its home – the manufacturing plant at Willow Run, Michigan.  On her way to finding a ride to meet her C.O., Jacqueline Cochrane, she discovers a dead body, and meets F.B.I. Agent Dante Cavaradossi, who, it turns out, will be her boss for her new assignment, which is to find out what’s going on with Countess Grace Buchanan-Dineen. She is currently in prison because she’s not talking, and they hope Pucci can make her talk.  She was an American agent, but she may have changed alliances, maybe even more than once.

Since the Countess mentioned Kiki Barclay-Bly to Pucci, Dante wants her to find out what she can about this woman, who is a wealthy member of the Cosmos Club and married to a man called V-V, that is, Anastase Andreyevich Volodynyr Vivikovsky.  Her sister Dee befriends Pucci, which helps marvelously with the introductions.

While in prison with the Countess, Pucci became acquainted with a book entitled Personality Unlimited!  It comes up again, when Kiki has it.  The Countess called it her bible.  It is to be passed on to a manicurist in the Club’s beauty shop.  When Pucci goes to see who that is, she looks into the face of her former WASP roommate, Liberty Leach!

Strange things happen at the Club. Pucci watches the German woman who works in the salon.  She also finds herself watching her friend, as well as the other women in the Club, particularly the Barclay-Bly sisters.  Pucci finally realizes that the book is actually giving signals to spies.  Pucci’s attention is also diverted by her handler, the FBI agent Dante Cavaradossi. 

This book, I think, suffers from wanting to put too much in it, wanting to show the roles of women in the war, and creating a homefront war story with excitement and suspense.  It’s too much, and the book suffers. The plot gets very murky and confusing, and this detracts.  It was fun, but still disappointing. I can’t really recommend it, except to diehard fans of World War II-era stories, who want to read it all. [I have read worse, and this has a spunky heroine I’d like to see again.]~lss-r

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Library book.





Interwoven Stories -- Old, Yet New



Cat Bearing Gifts [by] Shirley Rousseau Murphy

[New York]; HarperCollins, [2012]

978-0-06-180694-0; $19.99

This series, if you do not know it, revolves around a group of cats who live in a small town on the California Coast called Molena Point, with their humans.  The difference is that the cats can talk, and do, to their human friends, who feel special ties to their cats.  Joe Grey, Dulcie, Kit, and Pan are the major cats.  Ryan, a contractor, and Clyde, a mechanic and car-restorer, are married and own Joe, as well as a Weimaraner named Rock.  An older couple, the Greenlaws – Pedric and Lucinda, own Kit, and retired parole officer Wilma Getz, owns Dulcie.  Pan has just arrived in Molena Point and he and Kit are an item.  The only person who knows about the cats is Charlie Harper, the wife of the Police Chief, Max Harper.  Max doesn’t know about the cats, but he does get telephone tips from them about evils in the village, especially from Joe Grey.

Kate Osborne, an interior decorator, has returned to California, and is living and working in San Francisco.  She has returned from her travels with riches and tales of the Nether World, which is a lost kingdom, where she once lived, and where her parents died battling the evil there.  This is also the place where, it is believed, the talking cats came from.  There are legends and stories of the cats, some of which Pedric knows and tells.

Lucinda, Pedric, and Kit have gone to visit Kate, and they are on the way back from San Francisco with purchases for their home, as well as treasures from the Nether World, which they plan to store in safety deposit boxes in Molena Point.  On the winding highway, they are crowded off the road by two trucks – one, a delivery van, the other an old pickup containing Vic and Birely, a couple of low-level crooks.  There is an accident, with all of the vehicles careening off the road.  The driver of the delivery truck is killed outright.  Birely, in the passenger seat, is badly hurt, and Vic, although bloodied, is not much hurt.  Their truck is undriveable.

The Lincoln Town Car driven by Pedric is a bit dinged-up, but it is driveable.  Pedric, however, is concussed, and Lucinda has broken bones.  The little tortoiseshell, Kit, is fine.  However, Vic decides to take the Town Car, so he throws Pedric and Lucinda out of it, then, deciding that, if he leaves Birely, he might talk, takes him along, and drives away.  Kit runs back and forth between her people, keeping them awake and compos. Then, she takes Lucinda’s phone and calls 911, bringing the sheriff and paramedics, who take Lucinda and Pedric away.  Lucinda wants Kit to be found, but the paramedics don’t want to bother looking for a cat – they need to get these people fixed up. Kit realizes she would probably be caged in an animal shelter, which she couldn’t break out of, in a strange town where she wouldn’t know where her humans went, so she skedaddles into the woods as the ambulances drive away.

Then Kit gets scared – she is aware that there are coyotes coming to where she is and she calls Clyde and Ryan on Lucinda’s phone.  They bring Rock to track Kit and keep the coyotes at bay, and, of course, the cats come too.  They retrieve Dulcie, Ryan shoots one of the coyotes, and they drive away unscathed, heading for the hospital in Santa Cruz, where Pedric and Lucinda have been taken.

Meanwhile, Vic drives Birely to a stone building – a kind of garage structure, above the home that Birely’s deceased sister Sammie once lived, which is now occupied by Sammie’s chosen heir, Emmylou Warren.  Emmylou has discovered money in the walls of the house, and she is remodeling, partly to fix up the house, but also to find all of the money. She had also stashed some in the old stone building currently being occupied by Vic, Birely, and the Greenlaws’ Town Car.  Vic and Birely had originally been coming to the house to take it over as Birely’s inheritance, and to find the money.  Now, Birely is barely hanging on and Vic vacillates back and forth about what he will do: stay with Birely, leave Birely there to die, or take Birely to the hospital.

Meanwhile, all the friends are gathering around the two injured ones, keeping Pedric awake, with Kit in his presence, and Dulcie staying with Lucinda and standing in for Kit while Lucinda drifts in and out of consciousness.

Pan had come to Molena Point after he’d been thrown – quite literally – out of the house he shared with a little girl named Tessa, her older sister, Vinnie, and her mother, Debbie. The one who threw him out was Debbie’s husband, Eric, who is now in prison.  Debbie spends much of her time shoplifting from stores in Molena Point.  She had been fencing the stuff locally, but Vic has gotten her a bigger chunk of change for the stolen items, so he’s going to do it again.  Since she is living in a house owned by Ryan and Clyde, Ryan gives her an ultimatum to either return the materials and apologize, or leave the premises.  Debbie, of course, has no plans to do either one.

Vic finally makes up his mind to do Birely in, but this is after Emmylou has taken him to the hospital after finding him in her outbuilding, so he has to do it in a “medical” way, so the hospital gets blamed.  He botches it, the cats take over, and he flees – to an extremely fitting comeuppance.

This is a fun cozy series, with delightful conversation bordering on the mythology behind the cats, which is quite interesting.  Kit and Pan need to work on their relationship, which is quite nicely done. Recommended.~lss-r

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Library book.

Women's Murder Club Strikes Again

11^th Hour by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

New York; Little, Brown [2012]

978-0-316-09749-9; $27.99

San Francisco Homicide Detective Lindsay Boxer and her pals in the Women’s Murder Club are back and working together to solve several difficult crimes.  First, an unknown gunman visits a recital at a prestigious music academy and shoots millionaire Chaz Smith in the Men’s Room, escaping with the crowd.  It is discovered that the gun was stolen from the Department’s Evidence Locker, and is connected to the deaths of 4 of San Francisco’s most untouchable criminals.  Lindsay is heartsick when she has to stake out the home of her former partner, now Chief, Warren Jacobi.

The second case happens at the compound of an actor and legendary womanizer, Harry Chandler, who had been accused of killing his missing wife 9 years ago.  The housekeeper reports that 2 people are dead – very dead – she is in no danger.  It turns out that, not only are the people very dead, they are only two decapitated heads, or, more accurately, one decapitated head and one skull.  They do identify the head, but it doesn’t help.  No one knows this woman.  And more skulls turn up, buried on the property.  It turns out they are all women, but still unknown, and none of them are the missing wife.  Some fancy work by Claire Washburn, the M.E., and a colleague of hers, helps to narrow the field and puts the heads within a range for identification.  The heads are identified and they close in on the suspect.

But the most emotional case comes at the expense of Lindsay’s emotions.  She is now married to F.B.I. agent Joe Molinari, and she is finally pregnant.  Joe was in Washington for a while, and Lindsay calls him at one point, but ends up talking to a woman who had been his heartthrob before her.  She tells Lindsay that they are still together.  Lindsay tries to forgive. When a weasley reporter posts a picture of Joe escorting this woman at a formal Washington affair, with commentary on Lindsay’s life, she sees red.  Joe has told her there is no affair, but the photo belies what he says, and she kicks him out of the house. Then she misses him, particularly when she feels vulnerable.  She does get back at the reporter, with the help of the Women’s Murder Club, and it is such a joy!

This is a good series, which whips along via Patterson’s style of short chapters.  Recommended. ~lss-r

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Library Book.

British Royal Excitement

Princess Elizabeth’s Spy by Susan Elia MacNeal

New York; Bantam Books [2012]

978-0-553-59362-4; $15.00

In the Prologue, Ms. MacNeal sets the stage, with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Lisbon, meeting with Walther Schellenberg, personal aide to Heinrich Himmler.  The couple had just gotten “banished” to Bermuda by Churchill, and they are none too happy.  Their love was condemned by the Royal Family, for not only was Wallis Simpson a two-time American divorcée, but she was also a close personal friend of Joachim von Ribbentrop’s, Foreign Minister of Germany.  In fact, there were rumors that they had slept together.

Germany hopes to put the former King Edward VII back on the throne of Great Britain, along with his disapproved-of-wife, who had never even been given the title of Her Royal Highness. This would, of course, give Germany an easy road to conquering the resolute little island.

The scene then moves to Bletchley Park, a manor house about 50 miles northwest of London, the home of the Government Code and Cipher School.  The Poles had passed a reconstructed Enigma machine, used by the Germans, on to the British. Alan Turing and others were learning to use it and working on finding the right configuration to decode Nazi secret messages.

A young woman who works there, Victoria Keeley, and a young codebreaker named Benjamin Batey have a date. Batey, a proverbial nerd, can hardly believe his good luck, and is not paying attention to what is going on when she vamps him and takes away a decrypted message.  After a brief sojourn in her rooms, she kicks him out and makes a phone call, saying she has something for her “darling” to see, and that she’s coming to London.  She checks into the fashionable Claridge Hotel in Mayfair.  She puts the decrypt on the bed, and goes to take a bath.  There she is shot between the eyes, and the decrypt disappears.

Head of MI-5 Peter Frain goes to see his “go-to” guy at Bletchley, Edmund Hope, who is trying to suss out the traitorous person rumored to be working there.  Perhaps there is a connection?

Meanwhile, our heroine, Maggie Hope is falling into the mud of the obstacle course at “Camp Spook,” somewhere in Scotland. When she had been Churchill’s secretary, she’d never thought of being a spy. But here she is, a member of MI-5, the British secret service.  But she fails her training – she just not athletic enough to be dropped behind enemy lines, although she is fluent in both French and German, excellent at math, and a whiz at codebreaking.  She is sent back to Peter Frain in London for another assignment.  Just before leaving the camp, she gets word that the man she loves, John Sterling, an RAF pilot, has been shot down behind enemy lines:  missing, presumed dead.

Her new job is to be ostensibly a math tutor for Princess Elizabeth at Windsor Castle, but she is really there to keep watch on the Princess, to see that nothing happens to her, the heir apparent to the British throne, and to spy out what she can.  The Royal Family has decided to stay in England, and they are staying at Windsor, out of the direct flightpath of the Blitz.

Although Maggie is not happy to be in such a secondary “women’s work” sort of role, she rallies when she learns that a German, called Commandant Hess, is receiving radio transmissions sent from Windsor by an unknown.  She takes the position and meets her handler, Hugh Thompson, a pleasant and capable, and very good-looking, young man. 

Maggie’s flatmate and former colleague at No. 10 Downing Street, the gay secretary to Mr. Churchill, David Greene, agrees to chauffeur Maggie to Windsor.  She is greeted by Ainslie, the Royal Butler, who takes her to meet the Princesses Elizabeth, aged 14, and Margaret, aged 8, and their staff.  The end of the tour is at her rooms in the Victoria Tower – with the toilet and bath on the roof.  (Castles weren’t built with indoor plumbing, don’t you know?)  With the ominous “We dress for dinner,” Ainslie leaves Maggie to unpack.

The castle is so cold, and Maggie has so few clothes, she puts on a wool dress, and her coat, and goes downstairs.  Then she realizes that she doesn’t know where the Octagon Room is, where dinner will be served.  After walking what feels like miles and miles, she sees an apparition in the distance.

It turns out not to be an apparition, but a wounded war veteran of the RAF, Gregory Strathcliffe, who is currently serving at Windsor as an Equerry to the King.  He takes her to the room.  She enters and is rebuked for being late and for not dressing up.  She has witty response, which takes the rebuke aback.  The Gregory enters, says that, because they are late, they should go out.  Maggie agrees, causing the rebuke to be discomfited.

They go to a pub in town, where Maggie gets to meet 3 ladies-in-waiting, all recently returned from London, where they stayed at Claridge’s.  It wasn’t  a particularly pleasant stay, since there were air raids and bombs and not enough clothing rations to buy anything decent.  Maggie mentions that she’d read in the paper about a suicide there, and the young women agree that that wasn’t fun, either, will all of the police running around.  When one of the ladies gets ill as a reaction to the food, Maggie follows her to the Ladies’, learning that she is having morning sickness, and went to the city to see a doctor.  She is, indeed, pregnant, and no one else knows.  Her name is Lady Lily Howell.

The next day, Maggie is talking to Crawfie, Miss Marian Crawford, who is the governess to the two Princesses,  when the Princesses burst in with awful news.  They were out riding with Lady Lily and one of the grooms.  Lady Lily went on ahead, and fell off her horse!  When they came up, Margaret didn’t see her, but Elizabeth did – she had no head!  Yes, they say, it is most horribly true, and it must be, for the police come and interview everyone. Later, Maggie goes to see the detective in charge, and tells him about Lady Lily being pregnant.

But why was Lily killed?  Maggie goes to check and finds the place where the wire was attached that decapitated her.  She also goes to check in Maggie’s rooms, and discovers some books gone.  She finds them with the housekeeper, and takes a copy of The Phantom of the Opera with Lily’s bookplate in it.  When she sits down in her room to look at it, she discovers something under the endpapers: a decryption of a message from a German U-boat commander. It was dated the day that Lily and the others were at Claridge’s – the day the woman was shot in her bath.  What was Lily involved with?

Princess Elizabeth is not impressed with having to learn math, until Maggie tells her about Mary, Queen of Scots and Sir Anthony Babington, who communicated in code based on the frequency of letters in the message, and how Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, broke the code.  Elizabeth becomes very interested, and creates her own code.  She plans on trying it out with the man she’s sweet on, Prince Philip of Greece, who is now in the Royal Navy.  The Princesses also teach Maggie about the dungeons in the basement, and the secret passage out of the castle.

On another front, Maggie’s handler is changed from Hugh to a fellow named Nevins.  Hugh predicts that will not be a Good Thing, and he is right.  Nevins meets openly with Maggie, who tells him off for being so unprofessional.  He tells her he doesn’t take orders from women, and does not give her the information that she had asked Hugh to get for her, and which hugh has passed on to Nevins.  Maggie is revolted by Nevins’ condescension and patronizing attitude.

She is vindicated in her opinion of Nevins when Gregory asked her who the man was she’d been seen with.  She begins to work with the Princesses on the show they are to put on for Christmas, a version of Sleeping Beauty, and she works on the sets with Gregory.  They also play Sardines, a hide-and-seek game, and Gregory makes a pass at her, which she rebuffs, saying that she likes him, but “not in that way.” Then she breaks into Gregory’s office and films Lady Lily’s file.

Meeting with Nevins again, he orders her to give him the film, and calls her “Darling.” She tells him he was seen with her and she was asked about it.  She says Frain will not get the film unless it is picked up by Hugh.  When Nevins says that Hugh is a nobody, she tells him that Hugh is a better agent than he is, for he – Nevins – is all ego and no integrity.  Nevins calls her a bitch.

Determined to solve the murder of Lady Lily, Maggie goes back to the scene of the crime.  There she sees the Royal Falconer with his birds at the top of the Castle, and she convinces him to tell her what he saw.  He doesn’t want to tell, but finally does:  it was Mr. Tooke, the head gardener.  He was still angry at the Royal Family for having his German-born wife taken away to a camp, where she died.  Lady Lily didn’t have to go to a camp, and she was German, too.  Maggie reports this to the detective in charge.

Maggie had wanted to meet with her father, have dinner, and have her father explain to her the many secrets that seemed to swirl around her family, but her father stood her up.  Instead he sent her a book belonging to her mother – a volume of Grimm’s fairytales.  When she is with Princess Elizabeth, the Princess sneezes, and spills tea on the book.  She is ever so sorry, but Maggie then sees what she has not seen before:  little pinpricks above certain letters.  There is code in this book!

Maggie meets with Hugh and tells him about all she has learned.  They skate together while talking – she has been exercising all the time she has been at Windsor, and is much stronger now than when she was such a failure at Camp Spook.  Hugh agrees to get her father’s MI-5 file, which he does. That, plus the code in the Grimm’s adds up to some disappointing things.

Then it is Christmas, and the Princesses get to do their show.  Everyone is there, including Frain and Hugh, Churchill and his secretary, David Greene, Gregory, who has become even more prickly, but does show an interest in David, and all of the Royal Household.

This is capped off by a kidnapping of several people; the escape of several spies; the meeting of a U-boat, off the coast of England; several good guys being wounded; and a daring rescue at sea.  This last bit seems to be – as far as I know – out of the canon of World War II British experiences, but it has been built up to in a very exciting, and seemingly true-to-history way.

MacNeal has done extensive research on MI-5, Bletchley Park, and Windsor and the people who live there, as proven by her lengthy historical note. So much rings true.  It’s an exciting and plausible mystery, with a plucky heroine and excellently-drawn secondary figures.  Highly recommended. ~lss-r

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My book.



Crazy Happenings in a Crazy House



Peril in Paperback [by] Kate Carlisle

[New York]; Obsidian [2012]

978-0-451-23762-0; $7.99

Bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright has been invited to the quirky Lake Tahoe home of the aunt of one of her friends down the hall in her San Francisco apartment building, Suzie Stein. The aunt, Grace Crawford, has made a name, and a fortune, in the computer games industry, and her home shows her creative ingenuity, complete with secret passages, trapdoors, and arrays of gaming paraphernalia, such as a life-sized mouse cage that can be tripped to fall over one passing through the room.  Holograms appear to change the geography of the house, too – and Grace loves to confound some of her guests, especially those of the stuffy variety.

Grace also has a huge library, full of books, both simple modern paperbacks and genuine rare books.  Brooklyn has been invited as a friend of the family for the big 50^th birthday party Grace is giving herself, but also for her book-binding expertise, since Grace has decided to spruce up her library – having it cataloged and restored.  She has also hired an archivist named Nathan to assist in this project.

The guests are a varied lot.  Besides Brooklyn and Nathan, Suzie and her Lesbian partner, Vinnie, there are Grace’s brother Harrison, his wife Madge, and a niece, Kiki, who is daughter of the third Crawford sibling, who is not at the party.  There is Grace’s friend Ruth, who lives on the grounds, and her lawyer, Stephen Fowler.  There are the colleagues that she has worked with – her former partner Peter Brinker and his wife, Sybil, now the CFO, and Marko Huntley and Bella Santangelo, two game designers.  Lastly (but by no means least), Grace’s housekeeper and general factotum, Merrilee, is included in the general festivities.

After the first big dinner, Grace announces that she has finished her first novel, and everyone in the room is in it.  There are reactions from total joy to consternation amongst the crowd.  Each person is given a copy.  Brooklyn takes her copy back to her room and enjoys reading it.

But others must not have enjoyed the book so much, for things start to happen.  First, Bella dies; then Grace’s maid nearly is killed when the balcony outside Grace’s room collapses; someone pushes Kiki down the main staircase; Ruth behaves oddly; someone sends Brooklyn a dead blackbird in a shoebox; Lawyer Fowler disappears; a baby arrives at the house; Merrilee chucks a baseball at her employer; the corporate thief who nearly destroyed Grace and Peter’s company years ago is revealed; and the killer is apprehended.

Brooklyn’s friend Gabriel shows up just after the first diasaster, and helps her sleuth for clues.  In the last couple of scenes, Derek, Brooklyn’s main squeeze, arrives to help, too.  He is a member of British Intelligence, and was out-of-the-country for a while, and when Brooklyn, who had hoped he would be at the houseparty, tries to call him after she gets to the party, and a woman answers his phone, indicating that she had claims on the owner of the phone.  It has bothered Brooklyn all the time she has been at the house, and Derek apologizes to her.  Others in the party make their pairings known, and one person become unpaired, which is one of the best things that could have happened.  A nice, neat package of explanations turns up at the end, as should always happen at a houseparty, after the killer is revealed.  An excellent cozy with a spunky heroine.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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My book.

Redemption on the Highway



Blues Highway Blues by Eyre Price

[Las Vegas, NV]; Thomas & Mercer [2012]

978-1612183534; $11.95

Daniel Erickson has lost his way in more ways than one.  His wife has divorced him for their son’s former girlfriend’s brother, taking him to the cleaners financially.  He is estranged from his son, Zack, a wannabe musician, and his career in the music business in on a precarious downhill slide.  His gorgeous house above the ocean in Malibu is on the market.  And he’s attempted suicide unsuccessfully.  As we meet him, he is being dangled over the edge of a penthouse balcony 65 stories up in Las Vegas by the large economy sized enforcer of a Russian Mafioso, who is demanding he pay up.

He realizes that he still has a cool million stashed in his Malibu home safe, along with a handgun.  He could take out the big thug, Moog, and the little thug, Rabidoso, in the same sweep and be home free, still with the cash, and able to keep himself from the all-seeing eyes of Filat Preezrakevich.  No problem.  He offers cash to the greedy Russian, and the need for him to stay alive to get it – because the safe is voice-activated.  The Russian gives him 24 hours to get to Malibu and return, and off they go.  It is not a pleasant drive.  The 2 bad guys bicker a lot, and Rabidoso keeps mentally honing his knife – he is obviously a little crazy.

When they get to Malibu, Daniel discovers a shock awaiting him.  The safe is empty – except for the Ruger he’d locked away as suicide prevention, and a jewel case holding a CD by an unknown band called Dockery Plantation. He’s too slow on the uptake to get the gun out, but he does take the CD and jump off of his balcony, where he rolls and rolls on down to the Pacific Coast Highway.  There he causes a snarl in traffic and hijacks a man’s Lotus, which he drives to his ex-wife’s house, where he talks to his ex and her live-in boy toy, Randy.  He borrows their Kia, since Randy needs the Escalade and Connie needs the Jag.  He takes off, to find out where his money has gone and why he was left with “The Blues Highway Blues,” which he has listened to on the way over.

He doesn’t know it, but the two bad guys are just a few steps behind him.  When they get to Connie’s, she’s gone and only Randy is there.  They assume that Randy is Daniel’s kid, and, when Moog goes out to get food, Rapidoso kills him gruesomely and playfully.  They decide to follow Daniel and see where he is going.

Daniel realizes that the song is sending him to find answers. There is no satisfaction at Graceland, and he realizes that the first place to look is the legendary crossroads, where Robert Johnson was supposed to have sold his soul.  This sends him to Highway 61, the Blues Highway, which connects the Mississippi Delta with the greater world of Memphis, Nashville, and Chicago.  The name of the musical group is the name of the place Charlie Patton called home.  The crossroads is close by, where Daniel gets the next installment of the song from a strange character, who just happens by and calls himself Mr. Atibon. He joins Daniel in his drive to New Orleans.  There they encounter Moog and Rapidoso, but manage to get away.  They also have a conversation about “Today music,” which turns out to be a major learning for Daniel, although he doesn’t know it yet.

Next stop: Memphis, then Nashville, and then Chicago.  Daniel has adventures on his, while the other two are trying to find him.  On the south side of Chicago, they run into each other, quite literally, while Daniel is escaping the law, which is just one step behind him after Memphis.  Together they visit Detroit and Cleveland.  The next destination is Philadelphia, where Daniel is separated from the other two and meets a former punk rocker. Then he goes to New York, where he sees a photo of the complete band Dockery Plantation, and he recognizes one of the players.  They have one more concert, in Seattle. He has to get to Seattle.

Redemption happens in Seattle, until Moog and Rapidoso show up.  Their arrival creates several fights, including one in which Moog puts down the Mexican, whom they leave there.  They return to see  the Russian in Vegas. Daniel has acquired some money to repay him, but he still wants his pound of flesh.  He has enforcers from the New Orleans motorcycle gang, who are delighted to mix it up with our guys, as they have been doing ever since the Crescent City.  Rapidoso, left for dead, comes in with Zack, whom he is looking forward to taking apart.  But Daniel has learned lessons on the road. He imparts them to all, but the only one who understands is Moog, who has had some epiphanies of his own.  The bad guys are killed.  Zack gets away.  The Feds, who have been tracking them, get to pick up the pieces, and Daniel and Moog start a beautiful relationship.  In the Blues Highway Blues lies redemption. A most surprising book.  Highly recommended. ~lss-r

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Library book.