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Book Bag
Welcome to Book Bag, the Richmond Times-Dispatch's blog on everything literary! Check back often for posts on new and upcoming books we think you would enjoy. Want to participate? Check out our Virginia Authors and Book Groups blogs and post your own stories!
It’s a pesky thing, traumatic amnesia.
It’s even worse when you’re a cop, you’ve been shot, you’ve lost a day of memory and you can’t tell your colleagues if the shooting was linked to the case you were investigating.
That’s the premise of Cassandra Chan’s “Trick of the Mind” (338 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95), the third entry of her series featuring Detective Sergeant Jack Gibbons and his wealthy friend Phillip Bethancourt.
Gibbons has been looking into the theft of extremely valuable jewelry from the home of Miranda Haverford, a recently deceased nonagenarian. When he’s shot, not only his colleagues but also Bethancourt follow in his footsteps as Gibbons struggles with a painful and prolonged recovery. What follows is the revelation of murder and more attempted murder.
Chan, a devotee of Dorothy L. Sayers, brings a contemporary sensibility to the traditional British mystery. In “Trick of the Mind,” she gives readers another well-paced
Picture a nice, calm antiques business: plenty of beautiful and interesting old things, helpful folks, the grace of the past.
Then throw in murder, and you have Jane K. Cleland’s well-crafted series featuring Josie Prescott, the owner of an antiques operation on New Hampshire’s coast.
In “Antiques to Die For” (307 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $23.95), the third entry in the series, Josie’s friend Rosalie Chaffee has been found dead, leaving a 12-year-old sister, Paige, for whom Rosalie had been guardian since their parents’ deaths. In the course of appraising Rosalie’s estate on Paige’s behalf, Josie finds evidence of shenanigans, a possible motive for murder — and herself in danger.
With appealing characters and a well-grounded knowledge of antiques, Cleland matures and improves with each book. This is a series antiques buffs will love, and one that those who don’t know a Queen Anne secretary from a majolica pitcher will appreciate.
Few storylines can complete with the missing-person plot to hold a reader’s attention. And when the writer is the queen of suspense, Mary Higgins Clark, well ...
“Where Are They Now?” (289 pages, Simon & Schuster, $25.95) begins 10 years after Charles “Mack” McKenzie Jr., a college student, disappears from his New York apartment. But every year on Mother’s Day, he calls home to assure his family he’s all right. At year 10, his younger sister, Carolyn, tells him she’s going to track him down for her sake and her mother’s (Carolyn and Mack’s father had died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11). But Carolyn’s visit to a police detective sets a wildfire that has the cops thinking Mack may be a serial killer.
With twist following turn and with Clark’s exquisite pacing and trademark multiplicity of suspects, “Where Are You Now?” will keep you guessing till near the end, when Clark reveals all in this deeply satisfying whodunit.
Imagine, bibliophiles: a town filled with specialty bookstores. That’s what the town fathers of Stoneham, N.H., have done to try to revive downtown, and Tricia Miles has taken the opportunity in Lorna Barrett’s “Murder Is Binding” (281 pages, Berkley Prime Crime, $6.99) to open a mystery shop, Haven’t Got a Clue.
But trouble arises in Doris Gleason, the owner of the Cookery, a cookbook shop net door to Haven’t Got a Clue. Doris is abrasive, short-tempered and nasty — and when she’s found dead, stabbed in the back, the local police chief tries to pin the crime on Tricia.
“Murder Is Binding” is the first in a projected series, and booklovers — particularly mystery fans — will want to stroll through Stoneham as the stories proceed.
“Ellie, the headmistress wants to see you.”
Could any other words strike as much fear into a boarding school girl?
But not to worry. Ellie Haskell is 35, and her old headmistress needs her help. Seems the Loverly Cup has gone missing from St. Roberta’s School, and wouldn’t it be loverly if Ellie could find it and identify the thief? But murder intervenes in “Goodbye, Ms. Chips” (278 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $23.95) by Dorothy Cannell
The 12th book in the series, “Goodbye, Ms. Chips” is another romp of killer wit. Take Cannell’s description of Mrs. Battle, the headmistress: She “would have needed one of the contestants to die on the runway not to come in last in a beauty pageant.”
Wicked? You bet. But wickedly clever and wickedly funny, too — and a worthy entry in an entertaining series.
As a wildfire rages in the canyons of southern Colorado, Jamaica Wild, a young employee of the federal Bureau of Land Management, is searching for an elderly American Indian, Ned Spotted Cloud.
When she finds his body, she also finds that the old man was universally reviled. And so goes Sandi Ault’s second novel featuring Jamaica, “Wild Inferno” (287 pages, Berkley Prime Crime, $23.95).
As she did in “Wild Indigo,” Ault combines Indian lore with a dandy whodunit, and the result is a fine mystery. Animal lovers will rejoice at the reappearance of Jamaica’s pet wolf, Mountain. Ault has another page turner, and readers can anticipate more of Jamaica’s adventures.
As timeless as the Hippocratic oath, as timely as the contemporary torture debate, Liam Durcan’s debut novel, “García’s Heart” (296 pages, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, $23.95), combines the two in memorable fashion.
At the heart of the story is Dr. Patrick Lazerenko, a physician-turned-researcher-turned-businessman who heads a company that helps retailers market their products through “cognitive analysis” — knowledge of consumer’s brain responses. As a teenager in the mid-1980s, Patrick worked in the Montreal convenience store run by Hernan García and his family — and later became the lover of Hernan’s elder daughter, Celia.
Now, Hernan, a one-time cardiologist charged with torture during Honduras’ troubles in the early 1980s, is on trial before the war-crimes tribunal in the Netherlands, and Patrick has traveled to The Hague to confront both their pasts.
Elegaic and stately, “García’s Heart” is as much a meditation on memory and our ability to deceive ourselves as it is a political thriller. And Durcan, a neurologist himself, paces the story expertly, giving the reader ample time to ponder a number of imponderables — particularly the tyranny of the heart and the mystery of life’s complexities.
Few mystery writers know Washington as well as Margaret Truman — and why not? She lived in the White House when her father was president and visited the city often as the wife of New York Times journalist Clifton Daniel.
And like her father, Truman isn’t shy about exposing Washington’s dirty little secrets. In “Murder on K Street” (318 pages, Ballantine, $24.95) her 23rd Capital Crimes novel, she takes on lobbyists.
When Illinois Sen. Lyle Simmons’ wife, Jeannette, is found dead in their home, the senator has an alibi: He was making a political speech in front of hundreds. But the senator is worried and calls his old college roommate, Phil Rotondi, a retired federal prosecutor. What Rotondi finds is a web of intrigue that leads right to K Street, the den of lobbyists.
Truman’s longtime protagonists, Mackensie and Annabel Smith, appear in supporting roles, but this is Rotondi’s story — and it’s a winner, ripped, as they say, from the headlines.
Mysteries about strong women are nothing new, but Eugenia Lovett West provides a page turner of a twist in her first mystery, “Without Warning” (294 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95).
Former opera star Emma Streat is living large in Connecticut: Her husband, Lewis, is a big success in the world of high tech, their two sons are in college and she’s a busy woman, not a sad empty-nester.
But then Lewis is killed by a hit-and-run driver near their home, and Emma sets out to find his killer. Convinced that the murder has something to do with her husband’s business, she travels from Connecticut to the United Kingdom and back several times, all the while rubbing elbows with the aristocrats of the U.S. tech world and those of England’s old nobility.
Despite threats to her life, Emma will not be dissuaded as she ferrets out not only Lewis’ killer but also a mega-threat to the world. West makes all this believable and tells her story with style, with wit (Emma’s godmother’s voice “sounded like a tuba filled with gravel” ) and with panache worthy of Ian Fleming.
Near his 50th birthday, London advertising man Ambrose Zephyr fails his annual physical and is given about a month to live. Alphabet-obsessed since childhood, Ambrose is determined to put letters to each of his final days with his wife, Zappora “Zipper” Ashkenazi, a literary columnist for a fashion magazine.
Such is the premise of CS Richardson’s “The End of the Alphabet” (120 pages, Doubleday, $16.95), a lovely and poignant story of love and death.
Ambrose wants to travel — alphabetically, of course — so he and Zipper set off for Amsterdam and move on to Berlin, Chartres, Deauville and other places before his illness forces them to return to London.
Written with imaginatively spare prose, “The End of the Alphabet” is a moving fable for lovers, a thoroughly adult and restrained love story that shows us that death may end a life but not a relationship. It’s Richardson’s gift to anyone in love.
You know the joke: How many Richmonders does it take to change a light bulb? Five — one to change the bulb, four to reminisce about the old one.
When Richmonder J.B. Stanley began her antiques-themed mystery series two years ago, it was apparent that she’d have a legion of hometown fans. That shouldn’t change with her third entry in the series, “A Deadly Dealer” (224, pages, Berkley Prime Crime, $6.99).
Antiques reporter Molly Appleby and her mom, Clara, are off to Nashville for the Heart of Dixie show. The morning after their arrival, Molly finds the body of Tom Barnett, who lives in Blacksburg and is a dealer in medical antiques. It’s not long before Molly and Clara are trying to help the Nashville cops crack the case.
Running through this tale is a weapon cane made in Germany in 1805 and wreaking death and injury wherever it goes. Appleby knows her antiques, and “A Deadly Dealer” is educational and entertaining.
Last year’s “Down by the Riverside” established author Jackie Lynn and protagonist Rose Franklin as folks to watch. The second entry in Lynn’s faith-based series, “Jacob’s Ladder (243 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95), cements that reputation.
Rose, a nurse who has fled a failed marriage in Rocky Mount, N.C., for the peaceful riverside life of a campground in West Memphis, Ark., this time finds herself caught up in the murder of an elderly American Indian from New Mexico. At the same time, she’s struggling with whether to return to Rocky Mount to make peace with her dying father.
“Jacob’s Ladder,” like its predecessor, is a dandy mystery. It’s also a meditation on hope and healing, fodder for the mind and balm for the soul.
When mystery series collide, and the author is Edna Buchanan, watch out.
In “Love Kills” (320 pages, Simon & Schuster, $25), Miami’s Cold Case Squad has equal billing with intrepid reporter Britt Montero, and the results are explosive.
The story starts near Miami on the edge of the Everglades, where the body of a man known as the “Custody Crusader” is unearthed. A zealot who specialized in abducting children for their fathers, he’d been missing for nine years.
In the Caribbean, Britt is trying to put her life together after the fiery death of her fiancé. When she finds a camera washed ashore, the photos turn out to be of honeymooners. And when Britt learns that they’re missing, and then that the groom survived but the bride died, her instincts tell her something’s amiss.
The cases intersect, of course. Even before they join, the action is breathtaking. When they do, it’s heart-pounding.
Buchanan, a former police reporter, writes like a journalist. Her stories are told well, and her descriptions will make you think you’re in South Florida. Hit the beach with this one.
When Kansas’ BTK killer made contact with police after years of inactivity, his downfall followed quickly.
Chris Grabenstein takes that premise and spins it forcefully in “Whack a Mole,” the third installment in his John Ceepak series set on the Jersey Shore. Not long after the story opens, policeman Ceepak — and Iraq war veteran who neither lies, cheats, nor steals, nor tolerates those who do — and his young police partner, Danny Boyle, begin to find body parts labeled by name and dating to the 1980s. But no murders had been reported. So what’s going on?
The answers come as fast and twisty as one of Sea Haven’s thrill rides, as Grabenstein continues to spin a rich story and to develop his main characters. Here’s some perfect summer reading to take to the beach (or if you’re heading north, to the shore).
Last year’s award-winning “Still Life” marked Louise Penny as a writer and storyteller of immense talent. This year’s “A Fatal Grace” (314 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $23.95) proves she’s no one-hit wonder.
“A Fatal Grace” returns the reader to Three Pines, a small village in Quebec near the U.S. border. There, the odious CC de Poitiers is electrocuted in full view of all those gathered for the annual Boxing Day curling match.
Enter Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, a complex and compassionate cop whose humanity pervades Penny’s work. Penny also reintroduces us to several fascinating characters from “Still Life.
Blessed with a beautiful prose style and an ability to create a satisfying if tricky solution (as well as a personal cliff-hanger for Gamache), Penny repeats — and expands on — her stylish and sensitive triumph as a master of the mystery genre.
She’s 92, a poet, a deputy sheriff and, most of all, a common-sense New Englander.
She’s Victoria Trumbull, and the senior citizen makes her seventh appearance in Cynthia Riggs’ “Shooting Star” (272 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $23.95). This time out, Victoria has written an adaptation of “Frankenstein” to be performed at the community theater on Martha’s Vineyard. But when an 8-year-old boy who’s part of the cast goes missing and an adult actress is murdered, Victoria changes hats from playwright to sleuth.
Riggs, a 13th-generation Martha’s Vineyarder, brings a sharp eye and spare New England prose to this entertaining series, and Victoria is a real role model for baby boomers who can only hope to make such graceful seniors.
‘Sight Unseen’ by Robert Goddard begins with a kidnapping of a little girl, a murder investigation and the downward spiral of everyone involved. And that’s just the first chapter.
In 1981, a two-year-old girl was abducted during in broad daylight at the tourist village of Avebury. Her sister was killed by the abductor’s van fleeing the scene. One of the witnesses to this tragic event was David Umber, a university history student who may or may not have lured there intentionally.
Twenty years later, the wounds of the past are reopened when Umber reluctantly agrees to examine the case and discover what really happened on that tragic day. He travels from Prague to London to the English countryside to unravel the mystery of Avebury and encounters many who would stand in his way of learning the truth.
Comments (0)Few could match the old master of the movies, Alfred Hitchcock, for creating intelligence suspense. Hitchcock is gone, but fans can find his touch in “Jigsaw” (288 pages, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Minotaur, $23.95), the first in mystery author Jerry Kennealy’s projected Carroll Quint series.
Quint, an entertainment critic for a San Francisco newspaper, finds himself in darker territory when he’s assigned to cover the murders of several entertainment figures. The catch: All seem connected to a Hitchcock scene: a shower stabbing, birds pecking at a corpse, a frozen leg of lamb used as a blunt instrument.
Start with a true whodunit, add a dash of wit and a hilarious send-up of newspapers, and you’ve got a story that would make the old man proud.
Start with an English village and stir in equal parts of Agatha Christie and Carol Burnett. Pretty soon, you’ll have a new Ellie Haskell mystery from Dorothy Cannell, and you’ll spend equal time guessing and smiling.
“Withering Heights” (248 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $22.95) — Cannell’s first book in five years — finds Ellie, husband Ben and cleaning lady Roxie Malloy in the Bronte section of Yorkshire, where Ben’s cousin Tom and his wife, Betty, have won the lottery and bought a manor house, Cragstone House.
Trouble is, the previous owner’s husband, Nigel Gallagher, has gone missing, so the occasion is perfect for Ellie and Roxie —whose long-estranged sister lives in the area, too — to do a bit of sleuthing.
As always, all comes right, but not before our heroines suffer their share of misconceptions. Cannell writes a clever cozy, and “Withering Heights” might amuse even Cathy and Heathcliff.
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A damsel in distress. An enigmatic boyfriend/lover/husband. A growing sense of doubt.
Best-selling suspense author Mary Higgins Clark has sold gazillions of books with that winning copy, and her latest, “I Heard That Song Before” (336 pages, Simon & Schuster, $25.95) is no exception.
When he was a 20-year-old Princeton student, Peter Carrington, the scion of a megarich New Jersey family, drove Susan Althorp, an 18-year-old neighbor, home from a party. Her parents heard her come in and speak to them, but then she vanished.
Years later, Peter’s heavily pregnant wife, Grace, is found drowned in the mansion’s outdoor swimming pool. And Peter, despite being a “person of interest” in both cases, is never charged. Eventually, he marries librarian Kay Lansing — and the fun really begins.
Yes, this is a familiar theme. But Clark once again makes it work — and this novel is even more of a whodunit than some of her recent books. Readers may have heard this song before, but this book will still be music to their eyes.
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Augusta Trobaugh’s fictional Tea-Olive, Ga., reminds me of Jan Karon’s Mitford.
Except for one thing: In “The Tea-Olive Bird Watching Society” (228 pages, Plume, $14), the very proper and correct residents are plotting a murder.
Instead of giving anything more away, I’ll just say that the intended victim is so much the villain, you’ll cheer as the murder plot moves along.
