JOSH LANYON'S PAGE: The Holmes & Moriarity mystery series

SOMEBODY KILLED HIS EDITOR (Holmes & Moriarity #1)
JOSH LANYON
Justjoshin Publishing(non-affiliate Bookshop link)
$19.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five...barely

The Publisher Says: Turning forty has left much to be desired for mystery writer Christopher Holmes. After both his boyfriend and long-time publisher dump him, he worries his life is officially at the start of a steep decline. Stranded at a writing conference for the weekend, he never expected to bump into an old flame... or stumble across a dead body in the woods.

Ex-cop JX Moriarty is soaking up all the newfound fame from his successful crime fiction. When the only bridge into the conference venue washes away to reveal a dead body, Moriarty falls back on old skills to secure and investigate the crime scene. But even his years of experience couldn't prepare him for the discovery of a second body: his ex-boyfriend Christopher's editor.

With all fingers pointing to Holmes, Moriarty has no choice but to clear the name of the man who broke his heart. Can the ex-lovers solve the murders and rekindle their passion, or will a killer attendee write them into the body count?

Somebody Killed His Editor is the first book in the madcap Holmes & Moriarty romantic gay mystery series. If you like tongue-in-cheek humor, crazy twists and turns, and sizzling chemistry, then you'll love Josh Lanyon's quirky novel.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS M/M GIFT EXCHANGE. THANKS!

My Review: I enjoy mystery fiction. I enjoy gay fiction. I should batten like a tick on this series of gay-themed Moonlighting-lite mysteries.

I liked this one fine. I was not enraptured, delighted, or more than amused (the banter between the exes was funny at times). That is, however, more than enough to get me to go further into the series. It really struck me how different it is to have my PoV character be forty. It's a lovely change from romances without mystery elements that feature hot boys. Kit (as he is called) Holmes being at a career and personal-life crossroads felt so relatable because it wasn't his first go-round...he's lost his audience for the mysteries he writes, and is doing whatever he can to get them back or find new people to amuse.

The romantic interest between Kit and JX is paced oddly, yet I found myself more intrigued by it because of that. We don't discover they're exes until almost halfway through this story! I mean the synopsis gives it away but it isn't established until later...this was peculiar, but worked for me, as Kit's strangely willing reluctance to get involved in JX's plans for what to do after the body's discovered made me feel really curious about this off-kilter attitude. In many ways this is the heart of the story...reuniting, re-meeting really, with a history neither of you is ready to confront and could never decide to confront. That's what makes dealing with older people so relatable. I'd guess most of us past forty have had this experience, probably not with a romantic entanglement though.

I did find my eyes rolling a bit when Kit declaims the solution to the mystery before a "you must be wondering why I've summoned you here" style audience. The murderer agrees with him. And that, laddies and gentlewomen, is that.

It's not the way I myownself prefer to get off the horse, but it's got the virtue of clarity. I will say I was not expecting the killer's motive, so points for that, Ms. Lanyon. I also note for more modern readers that the women in his story are repellently girly, all dressed pointedly in pink and mincing ever so ladylike through the action. It would demand howls of outrage if a man wrote it...it was uncomfortable to me anyway.

Decent series mysteries with gay leads are rare enough that I recommend it with only mild reservations.

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ALL SHE WROTE (Holmes & Moriarity #2)
JOSH LANYON
Justjoshin Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop link)
$18.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Giving screwball mystery a whole deadly new meaning.

A murderous fall down icy stairs is nearly the death of Anna Hitchcock, the much-beloved American Agatha Christie and Christopher Holmes's former mentor. Anna's plea for him to host her annual winter writing retreat touches all Kit's sore spots: traveling, teaching writing classes, and separation from his new lover, J.X. Moriarity.

For J.X., Kit's cancellation of yet another romantic weekend is the death knell of a relationship that has been limping along for months. But that's just as well, right? Kit isn't ready for anything serious and besides, Kit owes Anna far too much to refuse.

Faster than you can say Miss Marple wears boxer shorts, Kit is snooping around Anna's elegant, snowbound mansion in the Berkshires for clues as to who's trying to kill her. A tough task with six amateur sleuths underfoot, six budding writers with a tangled web of dark undercurrents running among them.

Slowly, Kit gets the uneasy feeling that the secret may lie between the pages of someone's fictional past. Unfortunately, a clever killer is one step ahead. And it may be too late for J.X. to ride to the rescue.

Warning: Contains one irascible, forty-year-old mystery writer who desperately needs to get laid, one exasperated thirty-something ex-cop only too happy to oblige, an isolated country manor that needs the thermostat cranked up, various assorted aspiring and perspiring authors, and a merciless killer who may have read one too many mystery novels.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK FROM THE GOODREADS M/M GIFT EXCHANGE. THANKS!

My Review: Note to self: this is a sippin' series, not a bingein' series.

Kit and JX are more in focus now, more dealing with relationship stuff...Kit's just enough older to feel insecure about JX's greater hotness indicating a willingness to, um, stray when offered opportunity to. JX is a romantic, a guy who needs his man to be sweet-nothing-spouting and, if not prone to offering, at least amenable to receiving romantic gestures. That ain't Kit, the sarcastic and self-protective pragmatist.

This is more relatable to me than the establishing of the relationship was...these are ral issues I've dealt with and understand, and make caring about the couplehood of Kit and JX more natural for me as a reader. “I threw a quick look back at J.X. His weary, drawn face reminded me of a young, handsome Don Quixote. I wouldn't have been surprised to spot pieces of broken windmill scattered in the sheets around him.”

That said we're still in a mystery series, so what was the mystery like? “Anyone who wasn't half-stoned on pain meds would have instantly realized what a really bad idea this plan was, but since that didn't include me, I didn't worry about it.”

It was fine. I didn't believe it particularly as it seemed far-fetched but it did the job. “This went beyond talent and hard work, this was gifted. This was the kind of acuity you were either born with or you weren't. Like having perfect pitch or Brad Pitt's cheekbones.”

You've got examples. You like the writing? You want a mystery that's got enough substance to it to keep you involved? Here you go.

July 2023's Burgoine Reviews & Pearl Rule Reviews

Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.

Think about using it yourselves!

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THE BITTER PAST by BRUCE BORGOS

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the tradition of Craig Johnson and C. J. Box, Bruce Borgos's The Bitter Past begins a compelling series set in the high desert of Nevada featuring Sheriff Porter Beck…

Porter Beck is the sheriff in the high desert of Nevada, north of Las Vegas. Born and raised there, he left to join the Army, where he worked in Intelligence, deep in the shadows in far off places. Now he's back home, doing the same lawman's job his father once did, before his father started to develop dementia. All is relatively quiet in this corner of the world, until an old, retired FBI agent is found killed. He was brutally tortured before he was killed and clues at the scene point to a mystery dating back to the early days of the nuclear age. If that wasn't strange enough, a current FBI agent shows up to help Beck's investigation.

In a case that unfolds in the past (the 1950s) and the present, it seems that a Russian spy infiltrated the nuclear testing site and now someone is looking for that long-ago, all-but forgotten person, who holds the key to what happened then and to the deadly goings on now.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

CW: torture, misogyny
My Review: Lots of names to keep track of, a shifting timeline, point-of-view changes...there are things to work at in this read, as well as a graphic account of torture and aftermath. They are all necessary, not just stylistic choices.

What I liked the best about the read was the melding of police procedural in the present with espionage thriller in the past told with a good leavening of snark. This is a read that agreed with my desire to be involved in a story not just a passenger on a train to a known destination. The publisher's comparisons to C.J. Box and Craig Johnson are apt. I'm a sucker for a series set in a place I don't want to go, and that included all deserts...especially irradiated ones! I could *feel* the dryness as I read along.

I found the polygamous-Mormons subplot to be tacked-on and found it contributed nothing to my experience of the read.

Available in hardcover and ebook now from Minotaur Books.

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The Decagon House Murders (House Murders, #1) by Yukito Ayatsuji (tr. Ho-Ling Wong)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The lonely, rockbound island of Tsunojima is notorious as the site of a series of bloody unsolved murders. Some even say it’s haunted. One thing’s for sure: it’s the perfect destination for the K-University Mystery Club’s annual trip.

But when the first club member turns up dead, the remaining amateur sleuths realise they will need all of their murder-mystery expertise to get off the island alive.

As the party are picked off one by one, the survivors grow desperate and paranoid, turning on each other. Will anyone be able to untangle the murderer’s fiendish plan before it’s too late?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: It's And Then There Were None with a Japanese accent. It works the same way, it has the same strengths (puzzles are fun!) and weaknesses (set-up is improbable in the extreme). This iteration is satisfying to me in that it doesn't ignore the conventions as does make use of its own vernacular. The translator chose, for example, not to switch family names and personal names around to suit western usage. I like that, others won't, so be aware of the fact.

The prose, as translated, is a bit flat. The world the tale takes place in is largely nuanceless, so it feels like it's a kabuki performance in front of scenery instead of an equally artificial film set where volumes flicker in front of our eyes fast enough to fool them into thinking they're real. That's not a flaw to me, but it does obtrude when I try to find an emotional resonance to the killings. Maybe that's a good thing? Whatever it is, good or bad, it's a choice that left me without a fourth-star's worth of involvement.

Satisfying read, though not in the ordinary ways of series mysteries. I will, however, read them as Pushkin Vertigo publishes them.

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The Mill House Murders (House Murders, #2) by Yukito Ayatsuji (tr. Ho-Ling Wong)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Every year, a small group of acquaintances pay a visit to the remote, castle-like Mill House, home to the reclusive Fujinuma Kiichi, son of a famous artist, who has lived his life behind a rubber mask ever since a disfiguring car accident. This year, however, the visit is disrupted by an impossible disappearance, the theft of a painting and a series of baffling murders.

The brilliant Kiyoshi Shimada arrives to investigate. But will he uncover the truth, and will you be able to solve the mystery of the Mill House Murders before he does?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Another more-than-competent hommage à Dame Agatha. This one, though, is much, much more dependent on you to pay careful attention to the dramatis personae on page 11. And pay close attention to the times on chapter opening pages! Most Anglophone readers aren't going to parse the Japanse names with the ease of those culturally familiar to us, so bookmark that page and save yourself confusion.

Enjoying, or even solving, the puzzle set before us is very dependent on you keeping track of dual timelines, and since all the same characters appear in both, this can be a challenge. It was my mistake to read this book so soon after the first one, The Decagon House Murders...it reinforced my opinion of the prose as flat to my more western reading-ear as the stage-sets of Japanese theater. The ending of this entry in the ongoing series is, peculiar though it sounds in light of my comments about the prose, melodramatic. Delightfully so, I hasten to add. Made me smile and even lift my hand in a fond salute. After a gap, I will certainly read more of these Pushkin Vertigo-published pleasures.

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A Stranger Here Below (Gideon Stoltz #1) by Charles Fergus

Rating: 3.5 of five

The Publisher Says: For fans of C.J. Box's Joe Pickett series, a fabulous historical mystery series set in early America.

“Deeply imagined and intricately plotted, A Stranger Here Below marries richly textured historical fiction with the urgency of a mystery novel. Fergus knows certain things, deep in the horses, hunting, the folkways of rural places, and he weaves this wisdom into a stirring tale.” – Geraldine Brooks, author of March and People of the Book

Set in 1835 in the Pennsylvania town of Adamant, Fergus’s first novel in a new mystery series introduces Sheriff Gideon Stoltz, who, as a young deputy, is thrust into his position by the death of the previous sheriff. Gideon faces his first real challenge as death rocks the small town again when the respected judge Hiram Biddle commits suicide. No one is more distraught than Gideon, whom the old judge had befriended as a mentor and hunting partner. Gideon is regarded with suspicion as an he’s new to town, and Pennsylvania Dutch in the back-country Scotch-Irish settlement. And he found the judge’s body.

Making things even tougher is the way the judge’s death stirs up vivid memories of Gideon’s mother’s murder, the trauma that drove him west from his home in the settled Dutch country of eastern Pennsylvania. He had also discovered her body.

At first Gideon simply wants to learn why Judge Biddle killed himself. But as he finds out more about the judge’s past, he realizes that his friend's suicide was spurred by much more than the man’s despair. Gideon’s quest soon becomes more complex as it takes him down a dangerous path into the past.

A Stranger Here Below is so atmospheric, so compelling and convincing, that readers will taste the grit of the dirt roads, cringe at the unsanitary conditions and medical superstitions that inflame a flu epidemic, and marvel at the immensely arduous task of carrying out an investigation using the primitive tools of the early 1800s. Fergus leaves us breathlessly waiting for the next Gideon Stoltz mystery.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Sometimes someone dies who just needed killin'. As this very deliberately paced mystery unfolds, that's the victim. I wasn't sorry he was dead, and was a little peevish about Gideon caring so much as to keep pursuing the matter. Well, anyway, if you're in the mood for a really atmospheric historical read, here's a very good candidate.

The blurb from Geraldine Brooks should tell her fans what they need to know: It's very immersive and has three-dimensional characters. I don't rate it higher because it was slow to get moving and occasionally wandered off down interesting but unnecessary tangents. I will, however, read the next one when Skyhorse Publishing brings it out.

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This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!

As she says:

People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.

So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.

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PEARL RULED @ 13%

An Improbable Pairing by Gary Dickson

I gave up when, a the end of chapter ten, I read this:

Was there room enough in Scott's life for Geneva's pleasues and scholarly pursuits? Though it might tale a while, he was confident he'd find the right balance between his newfound friends, social diversions, and schoolwork.

His editor needs to be sent back to school. That is a wodge of stodge that couldn't possibly be a worse way to end a chapter...it kills any sense of momentum, debilitates any emotional investment in the character, and, if it's absolutely crucial to the plot later, would've been better phrased as a letter home. It's believable as a twentysomething naïf's epistle to his worried Mama but dear GAWD not as a third-person omniscient narrator's voice!

As the book's now out of print, I guess I am not the only one who thought so.

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PEARL RULED @ 49%

Offerings: A Novel by Michael ByungJu Kim

Rating: A very generous, probably unwarranted 3* of five

The Publisher Says: The national bestseller that Gary Shteyngart has called, "A potent combination of a financial thriller and a coming-of-age immigrant tale. . . . Offerings is a great book."

With the rapidly cascading Asian Financial Crisis threatening to go global and Korea in imminent meltdown, investment banker Dae Joon finds himself back in his native Seoul as part of an international team brought in to rescue the country from sovereign default. For Dae Joon—also known by his American name of Shane, after the cowboy movie his father so loved—the stakes are personal.

Raised in the US and Harvard Business School–educated, Dae Joon is a jangnam, a firstborn son, bound by tradition to follow in the footsteps of his forebears. But rather than pursue the path his scholar-father wanted, he has sought a career on Wall Street, at the epicenter of power in the American empire. Now, as he and his fellow bankers work feverishly with Korean officials to execute a sovereign bond offering to raise badly needed capital, he knows that his own father is living on borrowed time, in the last stages of a disease that is the family curse. A young woman he has met is quietly showing the way to a different future. And when his closest friend from business school, a scion of one of Korea's biggest chaebol, asks his help in a sale that may save the conglomerate but also salvage a legacy of corruption, he finds himself in personal crisis, torn by dueling loyalties, his identity tested.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: When, oh when! will I learn from my own oft-repeated lessons?! IF SOMEONE WHOSE WRITING YOU HATE BLURBS A BOOK, AVOID IT.

At the end of chapter 15, almost halfway through the book, I encountered what was for me the last straw...an extended metaphor of submission to authority in order always to be protected from the hideous dangers of your baser nature, and simultaneously a warning that the most comfortable illusions mask a genuinely threatening reality, in the form of a Korean folktale about a fox-spirit mother guarding her son.

It might work better for you than it did me, because the writing is...competent-plus...and has descriptive passages of some charm; Arcade Publishing is offering it and doing okay with it. I wasn't sufficiently invested to keep going after that smack upside my li'l punkin haid.

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PEARL RULED @ 42%

Sucker Punch: Getting Killed Can Be The Least of Your Problems by Jim Carroll

Rating: 2* of five

The Publisher Says: Johnny Mack wanted to be an airline pilot who flew all over the world, made great money and met lots of girls. At 18 that seemed like a fair trade for a few years in the Army.

Johnny found out too late that in 1971 the Army only needed helicopter pilots. And they only needed them in Vietnam.

After an unfortunate incident involving a General’s daughter, Johnny ‘volunteers’ to go undercover on a Medevac crew suspected of selling Army medicines to the enemy.

Johnny’s control officer’s incompetence is deadlier than any enemy. Johnny’s crew are psychopathic pirates.

Then there is the regular job. Coming into hot landing zones. Loading the dead and wounded. Ignoring the screaming and thrashing about in the back. Holding the helicopter steady as bullets rip through the bird. Cleaning out the blood and gore as part of the regular post flight.

There is no one to trust. Death is coming from every direction.

As life spirals out of his control, Johnny realizes that getting killed may be the least of his problems. His sanity, his soul and everything that he believes himself to be, are in as much danger as his life.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A double-agent black-market-busting thriller in Vietnam by the author of The Basketball Diaries? Sign me up!, said my twentysomething avatar within.

I'm sixty-three, and the outer me trudged through horny-straight-boy stuff until he was ready to scream; then, at the end of chapter 23, the final blow to my youthful avatar was struck: "We'd never been called by the Ghost 4 call sign either. Everybody else just called for a Dustoff."

Absent a lot more typing, I can't give you the whole context for that, but it was too much of the same kind of Army-speak in too little space for my tolerance. Which, I think I mentioned was already over-stretched by horny-straight-boy boob-obsessed boringness.

I had the thought, as I read along, that Waino Mellas of six-stars-of-five must-read Matterhorn fame, never once gave me this kind of eyerolling impatience. It seems not to be the subject matter, then, but the execution I'm not responding well to.

MARY KELIIKOA'S PAGE: The Misty Pines Mysteries series

KILLER TRACKS (A Misty Pines Mystery #3)
MARY KELIIKOA
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$5.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A peaceful retreat. A maze of smoke and murder. Is their remote getaway about to become a death trap?

Sheriff Jax Turner is worried about going off-grid and leaving his young team of deputies behind. But while his getaway with his ex is meant to help them reconnect, Jax is distracted by signs of a break-in at their rented lookout.

After a string of unsettling events and an approaching wildfire turn their isolated retreat into a danger zone, he’s stunned to find a dead body with marks tying it to a killer he put away a decade ago.

Terrified his attempt at reconciliation has led them both into a fatal setup, Jax rushes back to his estranged wife before she joins the list of victims. But his dedication to serving and protecting could become an Achilles heel as other players join them among the darkening trees.

Can he fight his way out of the woods before the flames of revenge consume everything?

Killer Tracks is the tense third book in the Misty Pines Mystery Series. If you like tangled relationships, edge-of-your-seat suspense, and small town sheriff procedurals, then you’ll love Mary Keliikoa’s page-turning game of cat-and-mouse.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Tangled emotions, a History that beats any failure of your own relationships, and a stressful job as The Crime-Solver in a town as magnetic to crime as Midsomer or St Mary Mead...I am in my happy place. The stakes are very high, the people are familiar enough to be my real life neighbors, and the setting makes me pine away for a small-town life that, if I had it, would make me feel desperate and trapped.

Jax and Abby are still trying to fix what got broken by the awfulness of their shared world...he's an ex-Portland cop (bet they want him back now) and her FBI world...because they just can't quit each other. So while they're off in the patch-up place aka back of beyond, Rachel the deputy is trying her goddamnedest to solve an arson covering up a murder...when in flies her dad, delivering a crucial cold-case clue like a gangrenous carrier pigeon. (Me no likee daddums; he was also Jax's Portland force partner...my hackles will not stay down when he's around.)

Into Abby and Jax's doomed privacy wafts Hannah...wait, who? Exactly! Who's she, where'd she come from, and when's she leaving?

So a series'-worth of Jax pining unrequitedly after Abby, a murder case Rachel really wants to solve without some old man buttin' in (be it her old man or Jax's predecessor as chief), and a serial-killer cold case. Have I forgotten anything?

You'll want to read for yourselves, so I ain't tellin'.

*eville cackle*

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DEADLY TIDES (A Misty Pines Mystery #2)
MARY KELIIKOA
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A missing surf legend. Waterlogged clues. Can he trust his gut instincts to end the wave of murder?

Sheriff Jax Turner is learning to live again. Holding tight to the hope of reconciling with his FBI agent ex-wife, the wary man is determined to keep his focus on his coastal Oregon community. And after a concerned brother requests a welfare check, Jax is troubled to find the absent surf shop owner's tracks lead to a pool of blood.

Now investigating a potential homicide, Turner chases a tip from his former spouse about a severed foot found on the beach. But when a torrent of leads links the victim to a politician's son, a jealous competitor, and a get-straight program for youth, the steadfast lawman fears layers of lies and secret agendas will keep him from stopping a vicious killer.

Can he unravel the fatal agenda before he's the next corpse to wash ashore?

If you like flawed heroes, gritty crimes, and dark twists and turns, then you'll love Deadly Tides, the chilling second book in Mary Keliikoa's Misty Pines Mystery Series.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Local surfer dies mysteriously; unconnected human foot washes up on local beach, handled by Jax's much pined-after ex-wife the FBI agent, who knows he can handle it so hands responsibility over; lying liars lie and abuse people...okay, it's Misty Pines. Good to be back.

Abby, the ex-wife and FBI agent, gets a third person PoV like Jax because we need to know things he couldn't and she feels reluctant to tell his simping-for-her self. It helped me keep details clear in my head. I can't help but wonder why her FBI partner Olek is so present...but I like Jax getting the eager young Rachel onto his deputeam. He's settling in to the job of being The Crime Solver for Misty Pines. He's not as unsure of himself. It begins to feel more like a set team is forming.

I confess I do not see Abby's side of their divorce. It doesn't matter much because, unless decades of series-mystery reading and recognizing the need for ma'at to be restored, they *will* get back together. In their profession of law enforcement, each is the other's ideal mate. This time apart will, I predict, pay dividends.

You will pay an attention tax. This book does not hold to a spanking pace as it privileges introspection and the unending process of grieving. Rather we're shown the emotional gyrations in Jax and, to a lesser extent, Abby, as they circle each other simply by virtue of sharing the most important trait of them all: Values.

I think this book would be so fraught as to be meaningless if one had not read book one, Hidden Pieces (q.v.). The cast, the pace, the fuller backstory, all help defray the attention cost of the story's inward focus. Not to be skipped, but don't start here.

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HIDDEN PIECES (A Misty Pines Mystery #1)
MARY KELIIKOA
Level Best Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
99¢ ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Sheriff Jax Turner is staring down the barrel of his broken past. On the brink of ending it all, he feels like a failure following his daughter's tragic passing and his subsequent divorce. But when a schoolgirl vanishes and her backpack is found in a sex offender's backseat, the weary lawman drags himself into action and vows to nail one last sociopath.

Shocked to discover the teen's aunt had lost her life in an abduction years prior, the devastating outcome that he's taken personally, Jax believes the killer has returned with a vengeance. But as the desperate cop frantically hunts down a mysterious relative in search of a suspect, the girl's time keeps ticking away...

Can the jaded sheriff take down the culprit in time to bring the young girl home alive?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: We meet Jax in extremis...the very worst thing possible to happen to a person has happened, the depressingly most-common fallout of that hideous disaster has occurred and he is (he thinks) ready for The End.

He is not.

He is summoned back to participation in life by the disappearance of Allison, a teenaged missing person with frantic parents. Jax can gird himself to be involved, as he badly wants to give someone else the ending he did not get. All set in the scenic, peacfully beautiful coastal-Oregon town of Misty Pines. As a small town, it is of course a place of unspoken stuff Everybody Knows (or think they know) but which Jax, formerly a Portland detective, isn't privy to. And doesn't know he doesn't know.

All of this feeds the man's deep, well-entrenched anxiety about his skills, about his past coming home to roost, about his misery being without his FBI agent ex-wife who abandoned him...After. It's real, it happens, people are not their best selves when crushed by terrible grief. It does occupy a good deal of his mental energy, though not simply as plot dressing. Trust Author Keliikoa. She has a plan.

Why I wasn't offering nosegays and wreaths of stars comes down to the ending. It is something you'll resonate with or you won't. I felt it introduced more complexity than was necessary, even for a series mystery. But...and this is crucial to know...it was not simply pulled outta nowhere and tacked on. As a first in series read, I'll pin my reservations to my mind's corkboard and see if my issues are used to good advantage in a later book.

Definitely a series I recommend you pursue with me!

STILL LIFE, the first Gamache mystery set in Three Pines

STILL LIFE (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1)
Louise Penny
Minotaur Books
$7.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Winner of the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montréal and yet a world away. Jane Neal, a long-time resident of Three Pines, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more but Gamache smells something foul this holiday season…and is soon certain that Jane died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.

With this award-winning first novel, Louise Penny introduces an engaging hero in Inspector Gamache, who commands his forces—and this series—with power, ingenuity, and charm.

My Review: Oh, the raptures of a first novel that also inaugurates a mystery series! It's like your first piece of birthday cake as a kid...OMIGOD this is good wait whaddaya mean I gotta wait another whole year to get another one you stink and you're mean *waaahIwantmymommy*

But crafty old fifty-plussers like moi wait. We lurk behind the bakery, sniffing the ineffable esters of birthday cakes destined for the inexperienced and the impatient and the indiscriminate, mentally filing away those scents most closely followed by moans and slurps of ecstasy, biding our time and hoarding our book-calories (aka money) to see which annual yumyums consistently produce those sounds and smells.

Here it is, ladies and what-all-else, the first birthday cake from Canadian cake-baker Louise Penny, and my GOD was it worth the wait!

A friend sent this to me as a Christmas gift. It came after self-same friend raved and jumped up and down and yodeled the praises of the series, featuring Inspector Gamache of the Quebec Surete (I can't help myself, I hear Gestapo jackboots and Euro-sirens every time I see that word) and the odd, off-kilter inhabitants of Three Pines, Quebec. I was practically panting with eagerness to get this package, which when it arrived proved to contain *several* of the Gamache series.

Being a good Virgo, I snatched up the first in the series, and applied eyes to page. Steadily. For four hours. I was 2/3 through with the book then, and *forced* myself to put it down because a) I had to walk the dog, b) I had to feed my 91-yr-old aunt, and c) I had to pee.

Let's talk about mystery series for a minute. I like them, as readers of past reviews will yawningly recall, because they satisfy my need for order, for the world to work *right* for a change. I think a lot of people feel similarly to me. But a series, iteration upon iteration of similar plots/characters/motivations/dialogue...what makes a well-read consumer of Lit'rachure such as I, and so many fellow Goodreadsers, am/are seek these books out? Comfort? Yes, but... Ease? Yes, but... Quality.

Some of the best storytelling going on in literature today happens in mysteries and thrillers.

Yeup, you can love or loathe Grisham's writing, but you CANNOT fault, in any way, his eye for a story. You can fairly say it's not to your personal taste, but don't even TRY to say it's "not good." Likewise James Patterson, Stephen King, Iris Johansen, et alii. There is a reason these folks are bestsellers, and it is NOT that the People got no taste. It's that these are storytellers, entertainers, creators of worlds we-the-people want to inhabit if only for a moment.

As was Homer, may I remind the snobs. No one thought much about Homer's stuff, except that it was rollicking good fun. Nobody even bothered to write it down for a few centuries *after* writing was invented. Somewhere on the Times bestseller list is the work of the Homer our culture will be remembered for, and it's not likely to be Faulkner. (Horrible thought: What if it's HEMINGWAY?!?)

Louise Penny's Three Pines is a place I want to go and stay, eating Gabri's bounteous cooking and flirting with Olivier and lusting from afar at unattainable Peter and gossiping unkindly with Ruth...then settling in for a long, quiet snifter with Gamache and Beauvoir and Clara, to think it all through and come to a reasoned conclusion about life. I am there with these people, these words-on-page creations that have the life only a deep well of talent can water into existence. I believe them. I think you will, too.

I offer this moment from very near the end of the book, when Clara realizes who murdered her very best friend:

Clara stared at her reflection in the window of {the victim}'s kitchen. A ghostly,frightened woman looked back. Her theory made sense.
Ignore it, the voice inside said. It's not your business. Let the police do their work. For God's sake, don't say anything. It was a seductive voice, one that promised peace and calm and the continuation of her beautiful life in Three Pines. To act on what she knew would destroy that life.
What if you're wrong? cooed the voice. You'll hurt a lot of people...But Clara knew the voice lied. Had always lied to her. Clara would know and that knowing would eventually destroy her life anyway.

If that doesn't make you sprint out to get this book, nothing else I can say will.

MRS. CHRISTIE AT THE MYSTERY GUILD LIBRARY (Mrs. Christie #1), new cozy-mystery series with literary ghost-sleuth

MRS. CHRISTIE AT THE MYSTERY GUILD LIBRARY (Mrs. Christie #1)
AMANDA CHAPMAN
Berkley Books /Berkley Prime Crime (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Book conservator Tory Van Dyne and a woman claiming to be Agatha Christie on holiday from the Great Beyond join forces to catch a killer in this spirited mystery from Amanda Chapman.

Tory Van Dyne is the most down-to-earth member of a decidedly eccentric old-money New York family. For one thing, as book conservator at Manhattan’s Mystery Guild Library, she actually has a job. Plus, she’s left up-town society behind for a quiet life downtown. So she’s not thrilled when she discovers a woman in the library’s Christie Room who calmly introduces herself as Agatha Christie, politely requests a cocktail and announces she’s there to help solve a murder—that has not yet happened.

But as soon as Tory determines that this is just a fairly nutty Christie fangirl, her socialite/actress cousin Nicola gets caught up in the suspicious death of her less-than-lovable talent agent. Nic, as always, looks to Tory for help. Tory, in turn, looks to Mrs. Christie. The woman, whoever or whatever she is, clearly knows her stuff when it comes to crime.

Aided by a found family of unlikely sleuths—including a snarky librarian, an eleven-year-old computer whiz, and an NYPD detective with terrible taste in suits—Tory and the woman claiming to be her very much deceased literary idol begin to unravel the twists and turns of a murderer’s devious mind. Because, in the immortal words of Miss Jane Marple, “murder is never simple.”

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My Review: Need a puzzle to solve to see summer out? Something with just enough unreality to feel low-stakes and just enough emotional reality to make investing in it worth your time?

Berkley Books' Prime Crime imprint gotcha covered with Amanda Chapman's first offering.

I expected to be politely dismissive of this first in a proposed series by Amy Pershing's alter ego. I haven't read her other cozy series. I don't think I will because there's cozy, then there's so cozy you can't breathe, like an oppressively crowded Victorian living room. That's Cape Cod to me, where her other series is set.

I'll take Manhattan.

It's fun to find the call-outs to Christie's works scattered around, and it's fun...to my surprise...to have Dame Agatha just appear out of nowhere to work with Tory on solving what they know is a murder but are having trouble convincing others has that feel to it. For that matter how Tory becomes convinced that Dame Agatha is who she says she is gets handled the same way: tough and disbelieving attitude at first, then it just is part of reality in the story. In my own experience that's exactly how the unthinkable, the unbelievable, gets trojan-horsed into becoming the way things are. It's very much helped along in this narrative by the fact that Dame Agatha is only seen inside the library setting, not out wandering the Village.

It did not escape my notice that the first-person narrator, Tory, has the unbelievably cush life she has because she's a nepo baby. It's not really made much of, just presented as fact. There's no real pushback, but the situation isn't set up to draw attention to itself...Tory's a woman with a life and a style not available without lucky draws in the birth lottery.

That's all so very cozy as a backdrop. It is meant to offer the reader maximum comfort as rents in the fabric of society get repaired and ma'at is restored as it must be in a series mystery. A concern I felt going in was that the Christie-facing bits would really *require* the reader to know already what that particular story referred to was about, or the reference would fall flat; not at all the case. I found the varying levels of familiarity with Dame Agatha's works never impacted my understanding of the plot in any negative way. It offered a frisson of fun when I got it, but nothing was lost when /i didn't see the story connection for myself because that was dealt with in dialogue.

Tory, as the main character and the first-person narrator, will of necessity need to appeal to you for the read to work.

Later, when I'd had a chance to process our little encounter, I realized it made a kind of weird sense that if my guest was indeed Agatha Christie (which I did not believe for a minute), and if she had indeed decided to visit New York City some fifty years after she'd been airlifted to the Great Beyond (which I also did not believe for a minute), she might indeed choose New York's Mystery Guild Library as a home base.

Not quite the first words in the book, but darn close. This is what you're getting, so if you don't like it already, then horseman, pass by.

Me, I'm all in. And the next one, too. Fair enough play, a fun narrative voice, a premise silly enough to make me smile but never played for laughs at anyone...if only I'd liked the love interest I'd be raving!

THE SECRET OF THE STRATEMEYER SYNDICATE, a 32-year-old study of the *business* of the Nancy Drew publisher

THE SECRET OF THE STRATEMEYER SYNDICATE: Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and the Million Dollar Fiction Factory
CAROL BILLMAN
Out of print
$Oooodles and Gobs

Rating: 3.75* of five

What The Publisher Says must remain a mystery, since I forgot to copy the flap copy and the Amazon description is pointlessly brief. It is also the source of, or copied from, I can't say which, all other online descriptions of the book.

My Review:This is Author Billman's only book publication that I can find. An academic paper of hers on the virtue and values instilled by McGuffey's Readers and Horatio Alger Jr's grit-and-character novels, published in a 1977 edition of the journal Popular Culture, appears to be the remainder of her internet-accessible output. I am led to believe that she had a career as an English professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio during the period in which she published the Alger paper. So the question of why she wrote a book on the business of the Stratemeyer Syndicate is answered: Her interest in children's literature and its purposes through the years was deep enough to make it a career.

It says something about that fact that I am a bit sad more didn't come out of it.

My pleasure in reading this odd, out-of-the-way volume was deep.

For young readers, it would seem, mystery fiction represents an especially clear case of what any reading of a story involves. The process of reading is still an uncertain enough proposition. Thus the series mystery—replete with characters who are unmistakably good or evil, easily recognized clues as to the crime's solution and to the way the story is told as well (for example, cliffhanging chapter endings), and a writing style that is both familiar and undemanding—offers extraordinary inducements for apprentice readers just coming to feel at home with the idea and act of reading a novel.

No wonder I still like mysteries. The experience of reading the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew was designed to scratch that specific itchy place in me. It was my training ground for decoding stories. Simple words, obvious clues, and a strong linear plot gave me a track record of success in analyzing stories for their payoffs. Author Billman makes this memory fresh by going into the act of creating the novels I read. I re-experienced through the memories her book called up the sheer joy of reaching the solution to The Shore Road Mystery before Frank and Joe did. It was a story about stolen cars, and Mama figured that alone would get me going. How right she was!

The boys' slightly louche friend Dodd (first name escapes me) is being framed for car theft, along with his dad. The boys know he's innocent, so his dad must be too; Fenton Hardy, their dad, gets involved because this little drama is a side-show to one of his own, adult-therefore-important cases pursuing an interstate car-theft ring. The solution to both cases involves baiting a trap to get the thieves to lead the cops to the cars. It works, of course, and there's even some gunfire (no one's injured, naturally) to spice it up. I knew that the cars were hidden in the area before this coup de foudre struck the heroes. That was a wonderful feeling, as witness I can call it up more than a half-century later.

Author Billman's thesis, that this experience of mine was carefully designed and multiply repeated, isn't original to her. Bobbie Ann Mason's 1975 feminist work, The Girl Sleuth, gives voice to much the same idea when she says of the Syndicate's house style, "The series are so carefully styleless that you can't point to bad puns, strained metaphors, overloaded descriptions. There is an absence of language: there is vocabulary, but not language." It takes care and attention to detail to make that accurate assessment of Syndicate novels work over many hundreds of books. The Syndicate's business purpose, to make and sell as much storytelling as they could, followed a tried-and-true path of building brand loyalty:

First, Happy Hollisters readers move on to the Hardy Boys and/or Nancy Drew...readers do not simply abandon those books they once regarded so highly...They also carry over the confidence gained from stories about successful young discoverers and a literary template--a sense of how stories are constructed and proceed--that will be helpful later. Schooled in the elementary virtues of fiction and having fully discovered all the secrets of the series mysteries for themselves, they are ready, in both senses of the word, to explore what is beyond.

For many, many of us readers, this ladder of consumption was a step-ladder to a lifelong joy in reading. Millions and millions of delighted young story addicts spent billions of hours ignoring chores and avoiding busybody siblings by shoving out faces in a book. The Syndicate's profit motive, set by Stratemeyer all the way back to when he was ghosting the last few Alger books that had been outlined before the man died, was to create and then satisfy demand for stories.

Stratemeyer's idea wasn't, however, the first sally onto that field. Billman explains his own experiences as a juvenile-fiction writer were in service of the established leaders in the field like Grosset & Dunlap (now a Penguin Random House subsidiary and still in business!) with the Rover Boys stories. Thirty titles strong, this series began in 1899 and ended in 1926. It was Arthur M. Winfield's pseudonym that launched Stratemeyer's original idea: Hire the writers to work to his detailed plan for the particular story in a simple, pared-down style. While Stratemeyer wrote all the Rover Boys titles, he simply couldn't write all the books that a successful book packager would need to keep the demand for juvenile books (what today we call YA) met. Dozens of series were begun, many survived, but a few thrived.

The Hardy Boys series began in 1927 with The Tower Treasure, written by Stratemeyer himself. There followed a flood of titles, rewrites, and spin-offs in other media. The series was substantially rewritten beginning in 1959 to modernize its language, concerns, and attitudes; the world had changed a lot in the intervening 32 years. Another 20 years passed before further modifications became urgent; the series itself was rebooted in 2005 without the original titles and plots so RIP The Hardy Boys 1927-2005. Seventy-eight years!

Nancy Drew's adventures began in 1930 with The Secret of the Old Clock, again penned by old man Stratemeyer himself. As he died that year, he was unable to continue the series...his daughter Harriet Adams was the principal of the firm until it was finally sold in 1984. Nancy Drew was the unequivocal monster success of the Syndicate: Over 200 titles across several series! Aside from the obviously necessary tartings-up any book series over 80 years old (1930-2013) will need. The character survives to this day, though in unrecognizable form if one goes back to the ur-text of 1930.

Billman also details the Ruth Fielding series and the lessons it had for the syndicate. It lasted from 1913 to 1934 for a total of thirty books. Like the earlier Rover Boys series, the characters in this series aged at something like ordinary speed. By book 30, Ruth was married and had a child. That was the kiss of death for a series aimed at juveniles, like the main characters finally hooking up is for TV shows (eg, Moonlighting). It was a lesson that the Syndicate learned well:

In short, the Hardys remain locked in that period between childhood and adult life that psychologist Erik Erikson has characterized as a moratorium—the quiet and deep sleep of fairy tale characters that precedes awakening into maturity.

So Frank and Joe are eternally 18 and 16, up from the 1927 ages of 16 and 14; Nancy Drew is 18, having started at 16. And their audience, per much publisher research, got younger by two years with each reader generation. Now the audience is tweens, through 12 years old; in my day, I lost interest in the books at about 11 or 12. It's my observation that the need to puzzle out mysteries gets more urgent as the decades pass, so it's natural that the audience for lessons on the subject gets younger as well.

Ruth Fielding's thirty-book run sounds amazing to mere mortals; Nancy Drew, whose character is in the same moratorium Author Billman identifies, blows that record apart. The other part of the Syndicate's genius was in focusing its output on mysteries. Most of us like to solve puzzles, on some level. There's enormous satisfaction in the effort being rewarded for adults; for children, the pleasure is sharper and more immediate:

Psychoanalyst Lili Peller has commented that stories about uncovering secrets are naturals for children, for whom life is full of secrets adults are guarding. More specifically, {another author of psychological studies on the Hardy Boys} has suggested a Freudian fascination in the Hardy Boys series with yawning-mouthed caves.

Lots and lots of caves and tunnels in them Hardy Boys books...yep...but anyway, the point is well-made that kids need puzzle-solving as well as problem-solving skills and the Syndicate's output was tailor-made to satisfy both needs. Author Billman, writing in the early 1980s, saw the evidence of this successful meeting of a need leading to commercial success at flood tide. After the Syndicate was sold to Simon and Schuster in 1984, the books kept coming. The series, of course, were ruthlessly trimmed to the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew; this makes sense as the nature of mysteries is to be addictive.

Ask any Salvo Montalbano or Meg Langslow addict.

THE CASE OF THE MISSING MAID first in the Harriet Morrow Investigates lesbian-led series

THE CASE OF THE MISSING MAID (Harriet Morrow Investigates #1)
ROB OSLER
Kensington Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$22.95 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The acclaimed author of the Anthony, Agatha, Macavity, and Lefty Award-nominated Devil’s Chew Toy delights with the first in a new historical mystery series set in turn-of-the-20th-century Chicago, as America is entering its Progressive Era and Harriet Morrow, a bike-riding, trousers-wearing lesbian, has just begun her new job as the first female detective at the Windy City's Prescott Agency...

Chicago, 1898. Rough-around-the-edges Harriet Morrow has long been drawn to the idea of whizzing around the city on her bicycle as a professional detective, solving crimes for a living without having to take a husband. Just twenty-one with a younger brother to support, she seizes the chance when the prestigious Prescott Agency hires her as its first woman operative. The move sparks controversy—with skeptical male colleagues, a high-strung office secretary, and her boss, Mr. Theodore Prescott, all waiting for her to unravel under the pressure . . .

Only an hour into the job, Harriet has an assignment: Discover the whereabouts of a missing maid from one of the most extravagant mansions on Prairie Avenue. Owner Pearl Bartlett has a reputation for sending operatives on wild goose chases around her grand estate, but Harriet believes the stunningly beautiful Agnes Wozniak has indeed vanished under mysterious circumstances—possibly a victim of kidnapping, possibly a victim of something worse . . .

With Mr. Prescott pushing a hard deadline, Harriet’s burgeoning career depends on working through a labyrinth of eccentric characters and murky motives in a race to discover who made Agnes disappear. When her search leads to Chicago’s Polish community and a new friendship in Agnes’s charming older sister, Barbara, clues scattered across the city slowly reveal just how much depends on Harriet’s inexperienced investigation for answers . . . and the deep danger that awaits once she learns the truth.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: In her very first appearance in this (hopefully) ongoing series, Harriet Morrow receives her new name, "Harry," from her first client. The slightly dotty Mrs. Bartlett insist Agnes, her maid, has disappeared without so much as a by-your-leave. Highly unusual behavior for a servant, still less for Agnes, a most responsible girl according to Mrs. Bartlett.

As mentioned, her dottiness leads Mr. Prescott to assign this tyro woman to the likely useless search for a missing maid and to assign her a "mentor" who "investigated" earlier disappearances of stuff in that house, but they turned out to be an old woman's forgetfulness misplacing the items.

This setup pays off right away in the mentor/mentee relationship setting the tone for misogyny in her new world. She does find an ally in McCabe, another very junior agent, at least in part because she's so roughly dismissed by the senior agents...and the secretaries. While Harry looks into Agnes's disappearance with the diligence one hopes to find in an investigator, she also comes across a world she did not know existed in a gay bar that Barbara (Agnes's sister) introduces her to. Not only is she doing the job for dotty Mrs. Bartlett and proving her right about Agnes, she's discovering why "Harry" felt so fight and fitting as a name for herself.

The mystery itself isn't stunningly complex or stupid-easy. I think if you like Maisie Dobbs, you'll like the mystery and its tone. It's a solidly grounded setting, one that Author Osler is at pains to show you he's researched. It's a slightly over-explained setting for my taste but it's not a huge drag on the pace of the read. The stakes are set early and tension mounts as Harry finds this simple case is the tip of a much more worrying set of crimes. You already know Harry resolves the disappearance because this is a series mystery and ma'at must be upheld.

Choosing to revolve a series opener around a lesbian awakening for your sleuth is bold for a male author. I'm not a lesbian so I don't know what Author Osler might have got wrong. Nothing stood out to me, so at least it's sure he made no catastrophic mistakes. (I hope.) I always prefer to read genre fiction that centers my QUILTBAG siblings. I'll be looking for the next entry in the series with pleasure and anticipation.

MURDER ON MONTE VISTA, 1st Mason Adler post-WWII mystery & MURDER IN UNION STATION, 2nd of the series

MURDER ON MONTE VISTA
DAVID S. PEDERSON (Mason Adler Mysteries #1)
Bold Strokes Books
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: It’s 1946, and on a hot spring night in Phoenix, Arizona, things are only beginning to heat up at the Monte Vista Road home of flamboyant decorator Walter Waverly Wingate.

Private detective Mason T. Adler isn’t thrilled to be turning fifty, and the party Walter throws him makes him even more uncomfortable. Walter has arranged a special birthday present for Mason: a private hour with the handsome, young Henry Bowtrickle in Walter’s upstairs bedroom. But the night turns deadly when his birthday gift turns up murdered.

The room was locked, no way in or out, and only Henry and Mason were inside. Mason Adler is on the case, but he is also a suspect, along with the other assorted party guests who were all downstairs at the time of the stabbing. Or were they?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: What I expect from a first-in-series mystery is simple: Let me know what this world is about; let me in to the characters' interrelatedness; and tell me what kind of crimes we're going to be dealing with.

Can't say I didn't get all those things...a little bit too much of 'em.

The story is of Mason Adler, newly fifty gay man, and his social circle: gal-pal Lydia, long-term frenemy Walter, and cop Emil. Various peripheral people step a measure before us, but no one else really matters. The main thing about a series mystery is the series, not the mystery, and that very much comes true here. By the halfway mark there's no body worth mentioning. Things are slowly unfolding, and the tensions of Mason Adler's life are lying before us prior to a murder accelerating the plot.

Possibly one of the most mean-spirited murders I've ever encountered, spite and envy fueling the circumstances that enable the murder to take place, and then the dead body comes in for a lot of muffled amusement because of how the whole plot evolved. There wasn't much to recommend the dead one, but there was little enough to recommend a lot of these people.

Phoenix, Arizona, is a place I've never, ever wanted to be the few times I've been there. I dislike deserts. I was transported to Phoenix circa 1946 with the author's major characters. It was darn near told in real-time vignettes. I got the sense of the oppressive, horrifying heat, the blasting, battering sunshine, the dreadful helplessness of life in this kind of nightmare before home air conditioning was ubiquitous in the US. (Even with air conditioning I don't want to be in Phoenix or any other desert city. Or town. Or hamlet. Or structure. Or outdoor space.)

So there was that going against the read. The pluses were the economy of the author's characterization. He needn't linger over loving descriptions because he chooses the details that actually matter and doesn't linger on them. He also doesn't clutter up my mental landscape, choosing instead to focus on the telling details. It was a way of bringing me a vivid, textured experience without using a lot of words to do it.

But at the end of the read, I was just...repelled...by the murder's cruel, appalling conception. (Murder will never not be cruel! I'm going on about the *circumstances* not the act.) The person whose life was taken didn't get, in life or after, near enough sympathy. Then there's the person whose idea erected the framework for the murder...I truly do not ever want to see that person in this series again.

I'll certainly move on to the next entry in the series. I won't be likely to revisit this one, though.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

MURDER IN UNION STATION
DAVID S. PEDERSON (Mason Adler Mysteries #2)
Bold Strokes Books
$9.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.8* of five

The Publisher Says: Phoenix, May 6, 1946

At close to midnight in the Union Station baggage room, the air is hot, still, and thick. The eleven forty-five Golden State Limited to Los Angeles is approaching rapidly when the baggage handler, Alfred Brody, notices a stray hound dog sniffing around one of the steamer trunks. The horrific discovery of a body inside the trunk can mean only one thing: there’s a murderer among them.

The young woman was certainly murdered, but who did it, and why? Suspects and motives abound as Private Detective Mason Adler investigates. He soon realizes that nothing, and no one, are what they seem to be as he races to uncover the truth and bring the real murderer to justice without becoming the next victim.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Oh damn. Walter's back. *shudder*

After the nasty stunt he pulled in the first book, I really don't want to believe it's going to go well for him vis-a-vis this series, if we're going to keep seeing Walter. But the good part is the mystery Author Pederson chose this time is one ripped from the century-old headlines! I was really curious to see what would happen next.

What happens is the requisite amount of banter, a close friendship between a straight woman and a gay guy, bitchy-queen Walter being a complete cow when he wasn't being a tedious crook, oh let's see...hm...oh, Emil the cop being bested by Mason again like Perry Mason beats Hamilton Burger in every contest...um...the murder was done in vain as no one gets away with anything in these books.

I don't think this one took quite as long as the first one, but these aren't propulsive "...and then what happened?!" reads. They're going to take you down the path the detective treads with him, and cause you to get your helper's badge on your efforts and merits. I particularly liked the detail of Mason's car being a 1939 Studebaker Champion, famously a cheap-to-run and stodgy vehicle. The kind of car Uncle Dale drives to Thanksgiving and parks in front of the house despite everyone urging him to take the bus.

By the standards of the day, a real plain-jane-mobile though I myownself would love to have one.

The unmaksing event that Mason stages is very interesting, and not something I expected. Let's just say that Lydia is a useful gal-pal indeed. I was very interested in the book from giddy-up to whoa, and will certainly seek out the next Mason Adler mystery to check in on everyone, make sure they're doing okay.

THE AUNT BESSIE PAGE: Four of 26 (TWENTY-SIX!) BOOKS IN THE DIANA XARISSA SERIES REVIEWED

AUNT BESSIE ASSUMES
DIANA XARISSA (Isle of Man Cozy Mystery #1)
Kindle edition
$3.99

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Aunt Bessie assumes that she'll have the beach all to herself on a cold, wet, and windy March morning just after sunrise, then she stumbles (almost literally) over a dead body.

Elizabeth (Bessie) Cubbon, aged somewhere between free bus pass (60) and telegram from the Queen (100), has lived her entire adult life in a small cottage on Laxey beach. For most of those years, she's been in the habit of taking a brisk morning walk along the beach. Dead men have never been part of the scenery before.

Aunt Bessie assumes that the dead man died of natural causes, then the police find the knife in his chest.

Try as she might, Bessie just can't find anything to like about the young widow that she provides tea and sympathy to in the immediate aftermath of finding the body. There isn't much to like about the rest of the victim's family either.

Aunt Bessie assumes that the police will have the case wrapped up in no time at all, then she finds a second body.

Can Bessie and her friends find the killer before she ends up as the next victim?

THIS BOOK WAS A KINDLE FREEBIE.

My Review: First in a cozy mystery series set on the gorgeous 1990s Isle of Man, this Venerable-Friend-Kath-recommended story gets my seal of approval. What makes it so enjoyable is the acerbic-spinster heroine/sleuth (both apply to Aunt Bessie in this book). So I'm pleased to present my first post-strokes review of the delight that is Bessie.

If you're a fan of cozies you already know you're not going to be gore-splashed, or challenged to keep up with the pace of a police investigation; and that the cops will treat the amateur sleuth completely unrealistically as a colleague. This is, of course, nonsense. But if you can go with the suspension of disbelief that mysteries require it's definitely a good trip to make with a quest, and a character-driven story about a charming group of small-town friends who, regardless of their ages and genders and jobs, genuinely form a close community of supportive friends.

The mystery here is not hugely difficult to work out; but the stakes are personal by the time the solution hoves into view. If it hadn't been so, I would've turned the last page of the book and immediately forgotten the whole thing; shifting from resolving the murders of innocent people to keeping Aunt Bessie safe was a bolt of storytelling inspiration that kept me very invested in the proceedings. The Scooby-group the author's assembled is going to be the make-or-break as the series moves on through its 26 (TWENTY-SIX!!) volumes, as always with cozies. The beginning is promising enough that I've already used part of a gift card to get Aunt Bessie Believes (reviewed below) with the rest of that very generous gift card (thanks, Jeff!). I'm recommending them based on the ease of investing in the set-up and setting; the pleasures of being entertained by genuinely nice people doing their best and choosing to do the right thing at every turn; and the pleasantly direct yet descriptive prose.

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AUNT BESSIE BELIEVES
DIANA XARISSA (Isle of Man Cozy Mystery #2)
Kindle edition
$3.99

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Aunt Bessie believes that Moirrey Teare is just about the most disagreeable woman she's ever had the misfortune to meet.

Elizabeth Cubbon, (Aunt Bessie to nearly everyone), is somewhere past sixty, and old enough to ignore the rude woman that does her best to ruin the first session of the beginning Manx language class they are both taking. Moirrey's sudden death is harder to ignore.

Aunt Bessie believes that Moirrey's death was the result of the heart condition that Moirrey always complained about.

The police investigation, however, suggests that someone switched some of the dead woman's essential medications for something far more deadly.

Aunt Bessie believes that she and her friends can find the killer.

But with Doona suspended from work and spending all of her time with the dead woman's long-lost brother, Hugh caught up in a brand new romance and Inspector Rockwell chasing after a man that might not even exist, Bessie finds herself believing that someone might just get away with murder.

THIS BOOK WAS A KINDLE FREEBIE.

My Review: I didn't care who killed Moirrey, I wanted her dead, and felt as though a wee tiny bit of blind-eye-turning by starchy overly-upright Aunt Bessie would've improved the story 1000%. Take a page from Poirot...sometimes leaving stuff alone serves Justice if not the law. I disliked The Twist at the very end which wasn't really a well-done one, and felt completely underwhelmed by The Reveal, which pretty much got telegraphed much too early on as well. A new favorite character gets foregrounded, of course, that's the good bit about cozies, but on the whole I'm glad I've already got books 3 & 4 for free or I'd be weighing my options after what I consider to be a lazy piece of plotting that marred the many and still fun pleasures of spending Aunt Bessie time.

I will recommend to you that you not read these books while peckish or you'll be the size of a zeppelin before you finish this book. They eat well and often, these characters!

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AUNT BESSIE CONSIDERS
DIANA XARISSA (Isle of Man Cozy Mystery #3)
Kindle edition
$3.99

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Aunt Bessie considers it an honour to be giving a presentation about her research at a conference at the Manx Museum.

Miss Elizabeth Cubbon is known as “Aunt Bessie” to nearly everyone in her hometown of Laxey. While she never earned a college degree, she’s become something of an expert in the history of the island that she’s called home for all of her adult life. Once she turned sixty, she stopped counting how many years that includes.

Aunt Bessie considers it unfair when the entire conference schedule is thrown into disarray by Mack Dickson’s sudden arrival.

Mack promises that what he has to say is important enough to warrant the upheaval. But even more turmoil follows when Bessie discovers Mack’s body only a short time after he’s finished giving his speech.

Aunt Bessie considers Police Inspector Peter Corkill a poor substitute for her friend, John Rockwell.

But the Manx Museum is out of Rockwell’s jurisdiction and that means Corkill is in charge of the investigation, no matter what Bessie thinks. With Corkill insisting that Mack’s death was probably an unfortunate accident, Mack’s slides that shocked the conference disappear. Bessie finds herself drawn into another investigation, and she’s determined to drag her friends, Rockwell, Doona and Hugh, in with her.

This is the third book in the Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Series.

THIS BOOK WAS A KINDLE FREEBIE.

My Review: Fun and fluffy...lots of food eaten, a rotter murdered who comme d'habitude with La Xarissa just flat needed killin' and nobody shoulda done more than tut unconvincingly about these awful modern times and scarfed another jammy dodger or two and left it alone. I hope Aunt Bessie has occasion to delve into the murder of someone who's decent instead of another craptastic creep.

The setting Xarissa created for this outing, an archaeology conference about Manx history, was very interesting; I was especially pleased that Aunt Bessie's avocation as an amateur historian got further development...though it's not thorough-going or detailed, I was satisfied that she was presented as a colleague known and accepted by the professionals in the conference. Several of those professional people from this story will be returning or I have lost my spidey-senses along with my left side's strength and dexterity; and a big ol' hint about who'll end up in some bad trouble eftsoons got plonked before us.

The British obsession with tea remains opaque to me. Stuff's nasty, yet these folk swill absolute hogsheads of it, even polluting it with sugar and milk like it wasn't foul enough already. Still and all, they're good company, are Bessie and her Scoobygroup, and the stories feel so genuinely honestly reflective of the author's worldview that I continue to look forward to my next outing with them.

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AUNT BESSIE DECIDES
DIANA XARISSA (Isle of Man Cozy Mystery #4) Kindle Edition
$3.99

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Aunt Bessie decides that she and her closest friends should have an enjoyable night out.

Elizabeth Cubbon (known to almost everyone as Aunt Bessie) has made many friends over the lifetime that she’s lived in the village of Laxey, but few have been as close as the ones she’s made recently. Bessie relied on Doona Moore, Hugh Watterson and John Rockwell to help her through several recent murder investigations she’s found herself caught up in. Now she wants to treat them all to an open-air performance of a Shakespearean play on the grounds of historic Peel Castle.

Aunt Bessie decides that it doesn’t much matter what show the troupe is performing as long as she and her friends can relax and have fun.

Two members have recently left the theatre company. Now the troupe has thrown aside its usual repertoire in favour of a play written by one of their own. When those two former members appear in the audience, though, someone decides to get rid of one of them for good.

Aunt Bessie decides to give the show another chance, but a second performance almost ends in a second tragedy.

With all of the suspects blaming one another, and several of them turning up on the doorstep of Bessie’s cottage, it’s time for Bessie to decide to solve this murder herself.

This is the fourth book in the Isle of Man Cozy Mystery Series.

THIS BOOK WAS A KINDLE FREEBIE.

My Review: I was ready for the action to begin well before it did...but one of the charms of the Bessie stories is how she and her Scoobygroup hang together even when not solving crimes, and that's what a goodly part of this story does. It's not a bad thing per se, but I was, as stated, ready to get the body on the slab (so to speak) and figure out why the killer chose the time and place for the crime. I'll be honest...the theatre troupe was made up of nasty, unkind, un-Bessie-able people who won't reappear (if anyone does I'll be very surprised, not least because they're all just visiting from the US) who drink and cuss and comport themselves quite unbecomingly.

Xarissa has a low opinion of her countryfolk. As I tend to share that trait with her, I wasn't put off by it. I just don't see how the clear and rational deductions that lead her to the murderer's identity did not occur to her far earlier.

A quibble only. I'm not here for the puzzles, I'm here for the Scoobygroup and the food! Fair warning: do not start here. Start at the beginning or there will be a great loss of grounding in the whys and hows of Aunt Bessie's special little (term used advisedly) world.