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January 06, 2011

Love Me To Death by Allison Brennan

“When the system fails, someone has to uphold justice.”
– Dillon Kincaid

Lucy Kincaid graduated from college with a double major in psychology and computer science, has interned with the United States Senate and Arlington County Sheriff’s Department, and currently works as both an intern with the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office and volunteer for Women and Children First! (WCF), an organization dedicated to fighting the sexual exploitation of women and children.

It’s an impressive string of accomplishments for anyone, but doubly so for Lucy. Six years ago she was abducted by a sexual predator she met online and was brutally tortured and assaulted, all broadcast live on the internet. She survived her ordeal and emerged with a single goal: join the FBI and fight the kind of crime she fell prey to.

While waiting for word on her application to the Bureau, Lucy and WCF are running an online sting designed to catch sexual predators on parole in situations that will send them back behind bars, before they get a chance to reoffend. But instead of ending up behind bars, the people Lucy and WCF are targeting begin turning up dead. Murdered. Suddenly Lucy has the attention of the FBI in a way she never wanted. →

January 04, 2011

Gone ‘Til November by Wallace Stroby

That’s what life is. You make one decision, take one action, and it affects everything. It spreads out across your present, into your future. And it never stops.
– Sara Cross

Late one night St. Charles County, Florida Deputy Sheriff Sara Cross is dispatched to the scene of a traffic stop gone wrong. Upon her arrival at the deserted rural location where the stop occurred Cross finds Deputy Billy Flynn, a dead suspect, and the suspect’s car trunk stuffed full of illegal weapons.

Flynn indicates that despite it being a routine traffic stop the suspect was acting inordinately nervous so he asked him to open the trunk. Instead the suspect fled, and when commanded to stop turned and pulled a gun on Flynn who shot in self-defense. Sounds believable, and the evidence at the scene backs up Flynn’s story, so Internal Affairs clears Flynn in the shooting.

Sara isn’t entirely convinced, however, and the arrival of the dead man’s widow in town issuing threats of retribution from the people in New Jersey her husband was working for does little to ease Sara’s concerns that there is more to the situation than initially met the eye.

Her suspicions are confirmed when thugs from Jersey show up looking not for what was found in the trunk… but for what wasn’t. Lead by old-timer and career criminal Morgan, the gangsters make their presence known in a very violent manner that quickly turns the small, backwoods town upside down.

Author Wallace Stroby skillfully moves the story forward through alternating looks at the dilemmas facing Sara and Morgan. Sara wants to believe Flynn, with whom she was previously romantically involved, and Stroby does a masterful job portraying the internal conflict Sara wrestles with between her lingering feelings for a man she once loved and her desire to do her job objectively and pursue the truth no matter where it leads her.

Where it leads her, slowly but surely, is into direct conflict with Morgan. Recently diagnosed with cancer and needing serious money to pay for the treatment, Morgan is on his self-declared last assignment. Determined to get to the objective before his fellow gangsters and leverage the job for his own benefit, Morgan is willing to do whatever it takes and go through whoever stands in his way in order to secure his last big score.

Gone ‘Til November is an intense character study that explores the devastating consequences a single poor decision can have, not just on the life of the one who makes it but on the lives of everyone around them. Stroby has taken a relatively straightforward crime story and developed it into a wonderfully nuanced look at the terrible choices people have to make when confronted with situations that challenge their moral compass, especially when the easiest choice would be to do nothing at all.

There’s no dilemma about what choice

December 24, 2010

The Damage Done by Hilary Davidson

“Anyone in this world could kill, in the right set of circumstances. The questions is, what circumstances?”
– Tariq Lawrence

Oh, what a deliciously tangled web of circumstances does author Hilary Davidson weave in her masterful debut, The Damage Done.

Travel writer Lily Moore is called home to New York from Spain with the horrible news that her sister, Claudia, has been found dead in the apartment they share. Even worse, Claudia’s death appears to be a suicide, tragically timed to coincide with the anniversary of their mother’s suicide.

Given she had fled to Spain in large part to get away from the downward spiral that had become her heroin addict sister’s life, Lily returns home under a shroud of guilt. Could she have prevented her sister’s death if she had been there?

Lily’s grief quickly turns to confusion, however, when upon going to the medical examiner’s office to officially identify Claudia’s body she discovers the person found dead in their apartment was not her sister. Someone had been impersonating Claudia and living as her for the past six months. But who, and why? And where is Claudia?

Lily’s quest to find the answers to those questions forms the framework for one of the most tantalizing, twisted, multilayered pieces of crime fiction I’ve read in quite some time. Like her protagonist, Hilary Davidson’s background is that of a travel writer, and the experiences she has had traveling the globe to varied cultures and locales clearly shine through in the wonderfully nuanced descriptions of both people and places that permeate The Damage Done. →

December 21, 2010

Naughty: Nine Tales of Christmas Crime by Steve Hockensmith

If you think about it, Santa Claus is a little like Batman. He’s a vigilante. He decides who’s good and who’s bad and he does something about it on his own terms. – Hannah Fox

Well, boys and girls, Christmas is almost upon us. Hopefully you’ve got your shopping finished, presents wrapped, and are free to curl up with some festive holiday reading. And man do I have a great suggestion for my fellow lovers of crime fiction, Naughty: Nine Tales of Christmas Crime by Steve Hockensmith.

As the title suggests, the nine stories in Naughty all have a Christmas theme and involve a crime of some sort, and they are all also laced with a wicked sense of humor. And though a few characters – and a fruitcake – make appearances in more than one story, each stands on its own.

I enjoyed the entire collection from start to finish, but a few of the stories particularly stood out to me:

“Fruitcake” finds septuagenarian widow Ethel Queenan stalking the Always Sunny Trailer Park looking for a replacement for her dearly departed husband. Given that widows outnumber the widowers by about 5-to-1, competition is fierce. Ethel is therefore upset, murderously so, when virtual spring chicken (just sixty-five!) Connie Sandrelli swoops in and steals Ethel’s latest target out from under her. Evil plots involving fruitcake (recipe included) ensue. →

December 20, 2010

Baronne Street by Kent Westmoreland

In my mind, my indifference to Coco’s call for help played a part in her death. Rather than dwell on my complicity, I moved on to my responsibilities. – Burleigh Drummond

New Orleans private investigator Burleigh Drummond takes his responsibilities very seriously. So when he learns ex-girlfriend Coco Robicheaux has been brutally raped and murdered, and that several phone calls from Coco he had ignored were placed only hours before her death, he makes it his responsibility to find out who killed her and why.

Drummond’s investigation takes him deep into the seedy underbelly of the Big Easy, where he discovers that Coco had become an unwilling pawn in a plan to influence the mayoral election. To get to the ultimate truth Drummond will have to thread his way through a maze of corrupt politicians, crooked cops, the Velvet Mafia, and an entrenched, old money blueblood society who will close ranks to thwart any perceived threat to their power and control.

At first blush the wisecracking, gin & tonic drinking Burleigh Drummond brings to mind Philip Marlowe. Indeed, author Kent Westmoreland even tips his cap to Raymond Chandler by having Drummond describe one of the characters in Baronne Street with words reminiscent of Marlowe’s description of Moose Malloy in Farewell, My Lovely. →

December 17, 2010

A Death at the North Pole by Joel M. Andre

“If this is some weird ass reality show, I want no part of it.” – Detective Lauren Bruni

Detective Lauren Bruni can be forgiven for thinking someone is playing a sick joke on her. After all, how often does one get called out to a remote North Pole village to investigate the murder of Kris Kringle? Yeah, that Kringle.

Bruni’s first clue that this isn’t going to be a typical day at the office is the hundred or so “little people” she finds clustered around the victim’s body upon her arrival at the scene. Not one given to belief in fantasy or the supernatural Bruni is skeptical, to say the least, when the little people inform her that they are actually elves and that the deceased is none other than Santa himself.

But when Bruni’s questioning of the witnesses, including a distraught Mrs. Kringle, finds them all telling similar stories she has no choice but to accept that either they are suffering from a mass delusion, or there really is more going on than her mind can readily comprehend.

In fact, when Bruni accidentally discovers a member of her investigative team is actually a flesh eating ghoul masquerading as human, the possibility that the deceased really was Jolly old Saint Nicholas and the little people are elves starts to seem decidedly sane in comparison. And when another prominent member of the community is murdered and she herself comes under attack, Bruni finally understands that something seriously evil is happening at the North Pole.

Author Joel M. Andre has taken a traditional murder investigation, mixed in the legend of Santa Claus, added a dash of horror, and topped it all off with a generous splash of fantasy. The result of this mad concoction is a world where security concerns over trade secrets and prototype designs requires swipe card access to the Top Secret Toys lab (an area which Head Elf Pepper refuses to allow Bruni to enter without a search warrant), and where Satan has hatched a sinister plot designed to destroy Santa and the spirit of Christmas, raise an army of the undead, and usher in Armageddon.

A Death at the North Pole is a delightfully entertaining, seriously demented, dripping with dark humor Christmas tale not unlike something I’d expect from the likes of Jeff Strand or Christopher Moore. If you’re ready for a change of pace from the traditional Santa story, and have a strong stomach (the medical examiner’s postmortem on Santa is quite graphic), give A Death at the North Pole a try.

Joel M. Andre is an American writer from Cottonwood, AZ. In addition to A Death at the North Pole, he is also the author of Pray the Rain Never Ends, a collection of dark poetry, Kill 4 Me, The Pentacle of Light, and The Return. Andre’s latest book

December 16, 2010

The Twinning Murders by Shelly Frome

The Twinning Murders by Shelly Frome All Emily knew was that she had to get back on the field. Start over, start somewhere…retrace where it had all gone wrong.

There’s an awful lot going wrong in The Twinning Murders, the latest book from author Shelly Frome, not the least of which are two suspicious deaths which span the Atlantic.

Emily Ryder is a tour guide based in Lydfield, Connecticut who specializes in taking clients on international jaunts to England. At the start of The Twinning Murders Emily is preparing to take one of the town’s elder statesman, Harriet Curtis, and her siblings Silas and Pru to Lydfield-in-the-moor in Dartmoor, England for the annual Twinning ceremony (an event to celebrate the across-the-pond connection of the two “twin towns”).

A bit of a shakeup is occurring on the U.S. side of the pond, however, as the Gordon Development Company (GDC) has purchased a huge tract of land to pursue the development of a condominium community, an occurrence that would disrupt the idyllic town’s laid back way of life.

When Chris Cooper, retired roofer, conservationist, and head of the town’s Planning Committee, is killed in an accident shortly before the final vote to grant approval to CDG’s project Emily has concerns his death was more than an accident. The hasty, and premature, departure of Harriet to England ahead of the group’s scheduled plans only heightens Emily’s suspicions.

Things don’t get any more clear upon the arrival of Emily, Silas and Pru in tow, in England, where Harriet’s bizarre behavior continues. When Harriet herself winds up dead, also under suspicious circumstances, Emily knows it has to be more than a coincidence and sets herself to getting to the bottom of things.

Technically The Twinning Murders can be called a cozy as the profanity and violence are extremely minimal, the latter taking place primarily off-stage, and Emily is most definitely an amateur sleuth. Author Shelly Frome has also populated The Twinning Murders, on both sides of the Atlantic, with a wonderfully eccentric cast of characters. Unlike the cozies many readers are probably familiar with, however, The Twinning Murders has a genuine old fashioned, Agatha Christie-Miss Marple, British mystery feel to it, even though the bulk of the action takes place in Connecticut.

That British feel extends to the dialog and diction in the book. The characters use many British words and expressions, and the prose is a bit more formal than some readers may be used to encountering. For those not overly familiar with such a presentation this may be a little bit of a hurdle to jump initially, but if you like cozies, especially those with a British flair, you should definitely consider booking a trip to visit the two Lydfields with Emily and see how well you fare figuring out The Twinning Murders.

Shelly Frome is a Professor Emeritus of dramatic arts at the University of Connecticut.

December 14, 2010

Blood of My Brother by James LePore

“I waited too long, Dan. I’m sorry. If I was the one killed like that, you’d have started the next day. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I’m starting now.” – Jay Cassio

What Jay Casio is starting in James LePore’s Blood of My Brother is an investigation into to the murder of his best friend since childhood, Dan Del Colliano. And start with a vengeance he does.

Jay’s and Dan’s friendship was forged under fire during the turbulent race riots of 1967 in Newark, New Jersey when, barely school age, they were caught up in the violence that erupted in their formerly peaceful neighborhood.

As they grew so did their bond, strengthening ever deeper as they weathered through tragedies such as the death of Jay’s parents in a plane crash. By the time they are adults, Jay a successful attorney and Dan a not so successful private investigator, the two have come to think of each other as brothers, through their common bond if not blood.

When a woman Jay is representing in a divorce is killed, beheaded, her high-powered soon to be ex-husband is the number one suspect… until he too is found dead. The discovery of Dan’s brutally tortured and murdered body in Miami a short time later initially seems like a case of coincidental bad timing. But when the FBI shows up and indicates Jay should stop asking questions it becomes clear to him that something more sinister is going on, something he’s determined to get to the bottom of. →

December 13, 2010

‘Back to the Basics’ by James LePore

Tomorrow I’ll be reviewing James LePore’s most recent novel, Blood of My Brother. Today, however, I am pleased to welcome James for a guest post and a peek behind the curtain at his writing process.

When my publisher asked me to write this post, I was in the middle of writing a love scene in the novel I am currently working on. When I say love scene, I do not mean a scene in which two people make love, although that may be part of it. I mean a scene in which the spark is lit, the click occurs, that moves two people into the mysterious state we call romantic love.

Since Musings had given me carte blanche, and since the difficulty of writing such scenes——for me at least——was much on my mind (I had already spent about five hours on an interaction that would take up no more than two or three pages in the new novel) it occurred to me that I would write about writing a love scene.

The first thing I did was to look at what I believe is the pivotal click moment in Blood of My Brother, to see how, and what, I did. This is it: →

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