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.

 

Where the Underworld Meets the Upper Crust

The House of Silk [by] Anthony Horowitz

New York; Little, Brown [2011]

978-0-316-19699-4; $27.99

It’s always a little awe-inspiring to take on a “new” Sherlock Holmes mystery.  Will it live up to the ones by the Master, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or will they fall flat, having totally missed on all counts?  Well, this one comes with a mark of approval “Sherlock Holmes – Conan Doyle Estate Ltd.” It darn well better be good!  And it is!

It purports to be the last tale, written when Watson is visiting Holmes, while his wife is away nursing a sick child.  Because of the far-reaching consequences of this story, he has had it locked away for 100 years, and it has only now come to light.

As with all Sherlockian tales, a visitor comes to 221B Baker Street. In this case it is a fine arts dealer who is being menaced by a man in a flat cap – a member of an American gang – the sole survivor, actually, of the Flat Cap Society.  These people have caused the loss of a quartet of Constables being transported from the gallery in London to their American destination.  There is a shootout and of of the Irish twins leading the gang is killed.  The other survives and is the person the dealer has seen , and who, later, breaks into his house, stealing money and jewelry.   Holmes and Watson visit the man’s estate, meeting his new American wife, his invalid sister, and a collection of servants.  One of the pieces of jewelry is quite unique, and Holmes unleashes his group of street kids, the Baker Street Irregulars, to see if they can find it.

What they actually do find is the man they are looking for.  The acknowledged head of the Irregulars comes to find Holmes, leaving one of the other boys, a boy named Ross, to watch in the alley.  When they arrive, with the art dealer in tow, the watcher becomes very frightened, but they do not notice, since they are trying to find the culprit. And they do.  He is dead, and the room is ransacked. When they go back to find Ross, he has disappeared.

In an attempt to find him, they go to the Chorley School for Boys, a rather strict school run by a clergyman and his wife for the Society for the Improvement of London’s Children.  They find the place uncomfortable, without being able to exactly put their fingers upon it, but they do learn that Ross has a sister, Sally, who works at a pub called The Bag of Nails.  They discover that there are two such places in London, and they want the one in Lambeth. They find her there, and she asks them if they are from the House of Silk.  They say no, and that they are Ross’ friends, but she strikes out at Watson, injuring him, and runs away.

Several times the detecting pair cross paths with Insp. Lestrade.  He asks them to come along to one of London's bridges, where the body or Ross has been discovered.  He has been methodically bludgeoned to death -- tortured. Around his wrist is a brand-new piece of white silk ribbon.

Holmes and Watson look for answers to why this beating happened and they come upon a pawnbroker who had done business with Ross.  They buy a watch with a family crest on it, which they find is the crest of the Ravenshaw Family.  They take the watch to the current Lord, who looks down his nose at them, and throws them out when they ask about the House of Silk, presumably the source of the piece of ribbon.  They continue to look for this House, raising people's hackles on the way.  Even Holmes' brother Mycroft, who has lots of irons in many fires, does not know about the House, and does not like it when he is warned off by someone in a very high place.

Someone suggests that they might find the House by way of an opium den.  Holmes goes in and is overcome by a number of thugs.  He is then set up as a murderer.  He has a gun in his hand and Ross' sister Sally has a bullet in her breast.  Holmes is taken to prison.  Watson turns to Lestrade for help, for the man in charge of the case, Insp. Harriman, seems to be incapable of hearing reason. 

Things move very fast, then.  Holmes gets out of prison by the clever means he has used before, and they ultimately find the House of Silk, which is a huge place of scandal and unlawfulness, with wide-reaching ramifications for many gentlemen in government, business, the church, and elsewhere.  As they strip off the layers of secrecy, they discover that many people are not what they seem -- even places they've visited are not what they seem, and that there are many little felonies along the way.  Not everyone gets their comeuppance, but enough do to make things just for those of us who are reading, but one is reminded that corruption has happened at every time in history, and the latter years of Victoria's reign were no exception.

The piece rings true from beginning to end.  The Estate picked a great work to support.  Highly recommended.
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Library book.



Death is Sneaky



Death comes Silently [by] Carolyn Hart

New York; Berkley Prime Crime [2012]

978-0-425-24570-5; $24.95

The book opens with a series of vignettes about various inhabitants of Broward’s Rock, one of South Carolina’s Channel Islands, and the home of one of the best mystery bookstores on the East Coast, Death on Demand, run by our heroine, Annie Laurence Darling.  Annie, it seems, is one of the few denizens of the Rock who doesn’t want Everett Hathaway dead.  All of his family did, and many of the people with whom he did business with also did. So it is not surprising that we learn that Everett was dead.  However, it seems that his death was an accident – his kayak capsized, throwing him into terribly cold waters on the 30^th of December.  He died of hypothermia and drowning.

Annie has asked Gretchen Burkholt to take her volunteer hours at Better Tomorrow, the Island charity shop and food bank, so that she could hostess an author brunch at her store.  Gretchen calls her to tell her that she is afraid of Jeremiah, the young ex-con who is chopping wood outside.  Annie blows her off, knowing that Gretchen tends to dramatize things.  Jeremiah isn’t really dangerous; after all, her friend Henny is giving him a second chance, which is what Better Tomorrow is all about.  When Gretchen calls again, she says she’s found a card in one of the pockets of the jacket that Everett wore on his last outing.  It explains why he was out on the water – it’s scandalous, she says, because it names names.  There’s also a little change and a pocket knife with it, all in a little pile on the storeroom table.  She says she’s called the Hathaway house to tell them of her find.

Annie goes over to the Better Tomorrow site.  Jeremiah isn’t around.  She calls for Gretchen, but she isn’t around either.  She goes into the storeroom to find Gretchen, dead on the floor in a pool of blood, with blood everywhere, as well as the axe Jeremiah has been using to chop the wood.  Annie calls the police, who come and check everything out, then put out an APB for Jeremiah, armed and dangerous.

The next day, Annie drops by Henny’s secluded home, where, unbeknownst to either of the others, she sees Henny and Jeremiah loading Henny’s boat, and then Henny taking Jeremiah to a secluded off-island tree-covered hammock, where he will camp while the APB is on.  Annie doesn’t tell Henny, when she sees her again, but Henny, Annie, Max, and the author, Emma Clyde, set out to find out what really happened when Gretchen was at the Better Tomorrow office.  They know that Jeremiah was not involved, he came into the storeroom from the back shed, where he’d been repairing some things, saw the blood, the axe, which he had used earlier, and Gretchen’s dead body, and he skedaddled on his bike, knowing he’d be blamed.  He heard no car and knows nothing else.

The “Faithful Five” continue to ask questions of all of the players, as well as most of the on-lookers (some of whom didn’t know they were onlookers), thus rattling a few cages.  When Henny returns to her home, she gets out of her car, and someone begins to shoot at her, breaking her car window.  A voice rings out, saying “I’m coming.  I’m on my way.”  Instead of heading towards her lighted home, she runs towards the darkened woods.  The shooter gets off 5 shots, and then all is quiet.  Soon the police arrive.  Jeremiah, still on the hammock, hears the gunshots, and knows that Henny is the target, so he yells and thumps some logs, as if he were running to the rescue.  Henny is found, and the cops go to get Jeremiah.  They know that he was trying to help Henny, and it is unlikely that he was involved.  He is sent home to his aunt, who is delighted he’s unharmed, and not guilty.  Henny is taken to the hospital, with Annie riding with her.

Max gives the Police Chief, Billy Cameron, the notes they’ve written up on their case about who killed Everett, and the Chief thinks it makes sense, and gives him a lot to go on.  One of their biggest tips is that the housekeeper at the Hathaway house is in danger.  When Sgt. Harrison gets there, she discovers the housekeeper is also dead – 5 shots.

The next day the pompous Mayor is having a press conference, having suspended the Chief.  Jeremiah has been taken into custody, and the local plumber has been appointed Police Chief pro tem.  Anything about Everett’s murder has been shoved aside as not being relevant.

But the “Faithful Five” prevails, turning the tables on the Mayor, getting the Police Chief reinstated, the miscreant behind bars, and Jeremiah once again freed.  Annie, once again, has put herself in danger, but for a greater cause.

This is the 22^d in the  series, and, if you’ve kept up with the series, as I have, it feels so comfortable coming home to Broward’s Rock and the people who live there. There are nice cozy moments, and there are some logic steps taken by the sleuthing crew, as well as the cops. It’s a splendid blend into a cozy police procedural.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.

Fin de Siècle Derring-Do

Dorchester Terrace [by] Anne Perry

New York; Ballantine Books [2012]                                                                                                        978-0-345-5102-4; $26.00

Many people believe that Thomas Pitt has been promoted beyond his capabilities when he was appointed to the head of England’s Special Branch. He can often tell when this  sentiment is being considered, and it leads him to painful moments of self-doubt.  Rumours have reached him of the plot to blow up a train bringing Austrian Duke Alois Habsburg to visit his British kin.  Is there some deeper significance to this obscure royal, or is this an attempt to draw Special Branch away from something even more devastating?

Meanwhile, in a bedroom on Dorchester Terrace in London, an elderly Italian woman, a former spy and adventuress, is sinking into dementia, terrified that she will reveal secrets that will get someone killed.  She calls to another former spy, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, related to Pitt’s wife Charlotte, for help.  Both Lady Vespasia and Charlotte come to her aid, and are appalled at her condition, but, when she dies, they are not convinced that it was because of natural causes.

Meanwhile, Pitt has turned to his friend, the former head of Special branch, Victor Narraway, as well as Evan Blanktyre, a British diplomat with interests in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  His wife Adrianna is Croatian. Pitt becomes more and more infuriated by the man who should be the most helpful to him, a minister in the Foreign Office named Thomas, Lord Tregarron.  Tregarron is Jack Radley’s new boss, and Jack Radley is married to Emily, Charlotte’s sister.  Pitt and Radley are at loggerheads many times, driving a bit of a wedge between the sisters, which means they must make up.  Strife in the Pitt household during this difficult time puts even more pressure on Pitt.

Soon after the death of Adrianna Blantyre, Pitt starts to put it all together.  Adrianna’s father was a martyr to the Croatian cause, betrayed by a friend.  If only he can put his finger on the friend – or the son of the friend…

When the disaster comes to a head, with a shooting on the train, one of the Duke’s friends is killed and Pitt goes after the shooter. He tries to negotiate with him, takes his horse, and heads for London, where there is a showdown with another enemy in a men’s room!  Nobody had expected Pitt to shoot down someone in cold blood, but, as Duke Alois has pointed out earlier to Pitt, when he says he’s not a gentleman, it is pointed out that, because his father was a gamekeeper, he has a servant’s sense of honor.  And most of the murder and mayhem have happened on his patch!

Anne Perry is very adept at creating the mood of the times, including the importance of fin de siècle Austria and the fire of mid-century revolution, as well as the beautiful balls, with exquisite clothing, food, and ambience. Very highly recommended. ~ lss-r