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!

For a historical mystery to be a success, an author must mind the four P’s. First, the plot must be engaging. Second, the place must be evoked with skill. Third, the period must be described accurately and in some deal. And fourth, the people must be plausible.
Such is the case with Ann Granger’s second Lizzie Martin mystery, “A Mortal Curiosity” (320 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95).
Introduced in last year’s “The Companion,” Lizzie is — guess what — a companion to her godfather’s widow in London in the early 1860s. But in this outing, she’s sent to Shore House on England’s southern coast to be the companion of young Lucy Craven, whose husband is in China and whose infant has recently died. Also present in shore house are Lucy’s maiden aunts, Christina and Phoebe Roche, the usual retinue of servants — and an alienist (the modern term is psychiatrist) whose is trying to determine if Lucy is mentally ill; Lucy, you see, believes her child is alive.
Enter a murderer, followed quickly by Lizzie’s beau, Inspector Ben Ross of Scotland Yard, the man she met in her first adventure, in which she helped solve a murder. Between their two different approaches, they ferret out the truth at Shore House.
A dandy mystery and a vivid evocation of another time and place, “A Mortal Curiosity” is another triumph for Granger and her appealing heroine.

Nobody knows crime — and how to write about it — like Edna Buchanan. The Pulitzer Prize winner, who covered the cop beat for The Miami Herald for 18 years, is a first-class reporter — and a first-rate novelist, too.
“Legally Dead” (367 pages, Simon & Schuster, $26) finds Buchanan embarking on a third mystery series. You won’t find ace crime reporter Britt Montero or the Miami Police Department’s Cold Case Squad here, but you will discover an appealing new hero.
Michael Venturi is a deputy U.S. marshal who works in the witness-protection program. Over his objections, a sexual predator who’s important to an organized-crime case is relocated to a small town in New Hampshire, where he kills. Disgusted, Venturi —he’s fired before he can quit — relocates from New York to the Miami area, where a chance encounter gives him an idea: He’ll help relocate innocent people whose lives have been ruined.
But first, he has to fake their deaths. And when one of them turns up not just merely but really dead — as do three bad guys he had relocated — Venturi has to race to protect himself and his other clients.
Buchanan knows how to fashion a page turner, and she’s especially adept at creating believable characters and including plenty of local color. And the genuinely shocking conclusion — which may or may not be what it appears — shows her at her most cunning.

For six novels featuring early-20th-century British detective Joe Sandilands, Barbara Cleverly has lived up to her name. And the seventh, “Folly du Jour” (288 pages, Soho Constable, $24.95) is no exception.
This outing finds Sandilands, a commander at Scotland Yard, in Paris for an Interpol conference. Shortly after he arrives, he finds that his old friend from India, Sir George Jardine, is suspected of murdering another old India hand, Sir Stanley Somerton, in the latter’s box at the Folies Bergère.
As always, Cleverly weaves a stylish and intricate plot, as Sandilands and a French counterpart uncover a fiendish killer. And Cleverly has perfect pitch for period and place, whether her hero is unearthing evil in India, England or France.
Missing “Folly du Jour” would be a folly extraordinaire.

You’re a 5-foot-2 woman, an assistant chef at the White House, you’re returning from picking up a retirement gift for the departing executive chef, and you see an intruder scale the fence and head for the mansion.
The Secret Service doesn’t seem to be able to catch the guy, so what do you do? Knock him upside the head with the silver frying pan, of course.
Welcome to Julie Hyzy’s “State of the Onion” (325 pages, Berkley Prime Crime, $7.99), the first in a projected series.
For heroine Olivia “Ollie” Paras, her act of courage places her in grave danger. It seems the intruder was a good guy who was trying to warn the president of a serious threat. And the bad guy — a hit man known as the Chameleon — later crosses paths with Ollie. Meanwhile, Ollie’s in competition with a TV-cooking-show diva for the top job as executive chef.
Complete with recipes and a trove of White House lore, “State of the Onion” will keep you turning pages and rooting for Ollie. Hyzy has whipped up a winner.

The Southern gothic has a reputation as a cliché — and a particularly shopworn one at that — but few can deny the genre’s impetus toward page turning.
Such is the case with Edward Wright’s “Damnation Falls” (352 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95), a heady concoction of journalism, the Civil War and family secrets.
Wright, the author of three books in the John Ray Horn series set in 1940s L.A., shifts time and place in this stand-alone. The time is now, the setting the small town of Pilgrim’s Rest in east Tennessee, the protagonoist Randall Wilkes. He’s a disgraced reporter who has returned to his hometown with an assignment from his childhood friend, former Gov. Sonny McMahan, to ghost-write an autobiography. But when McMahan’s mother is found hanging from a bridge over Damnation Falls, the stakes grow infinitely higher.
Wilkes plays this hand skillfully as he covers ethics (journalistic and political), the legacies of family and the South’s endless fascination with the Late Unpleasantness. And he plays fair with clues as he works toward a conclusion at once shocking and inevitable. “Damnation Falls” is a fine choice for a late-summer read on the porch. 


A murdered cat. A missing son. A widow in distress.
Charles Finch, the author of last year’s “A Beautiful Blue Death,” now returns with “The September Society” (320 pages, St. Martin’s Minotaur, $24.95), another period piece that combines the sensibilities of Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dorothy L. Sayers with the creative talents of its young author.
“A Beautiful Blue Death” was a remarkable debut mystery, set in England in 1865 and featuring Charles Lenox, a wealthy, aristocratic, amateur detective. He returns in “The September Society,” an equally fascinating puzzler with even more surprising twists. And in addition to the finely tuned plot, Finch invests his work with wonderful characters — Lenox and his close friend Lady Jane Grey top the list — and a detailed evocation of mid-Victorian London.
Finch’s second novel begins with a visit to Lenox from a frightened Lady Annabelle Payson, whose only child, George, has gone missing from Oxford. As Lenox investigates (and as Finch writes in an intriguing prologue), it becomes clear that George’s fate is tied to deaths that took place nearly 20 years ago in British-ruled India.
A creative storyline with some genuine surprises, well-drawn characters, a keen sense of place and time and refined prose combine to make “The September Society” an all-around winner.

Ann Purser completes a week with “Sorrow on Sunday” (272 pages, Berkley Prime Crime, $6.99), the seventh — but not last — book in her series featuring Lois Meade, who runs a housecleaning business in Long Farnden, England.
As this entry begins, someone has stolen all the tack equipment from Col. Horace Battersby’s stables.  Not much later, a young man dies when he swerves his van to avoid a horse bolting across the road.
More mayhem follows, of course, but Lois and her cop pal, Inspector Hunter Cowgill, set things to rights.  And beyond the puzzle, Purser’s novels evoke the contemporary English village with verve and style. 
And now that she has worked her way from “Murder on Monday” to “Sorrow on Sunday,” Purser will continue the series, but with different titles.  “Warning at One” is due out in November. 

There’s a story — possibly apocryphal — that the acerbic comedian W.C. Fields was so terrified of poverty that he stashed money under fake names in safe-deposit boxes around the globe.  When he died, the story goes, many of his secret stashes went undiscovered and unclaimed by his relatives.
The tale may come to mind when you begin “Exile Trust” (213 pages, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Minotaur, $23.95), the third installment in Vincent H. O’Neil’s series featuring Frank Cole.
Frank, a victim of the dot-com bust now living frugally as a fact-checker on the Florida Panhandle, is called in to try to find the owners of dormant safe-deposit boxes.  He’s sidetracked, naturally, by murder that seems to have sprung from an old land scam (in Florida, you say?  Horrors!).
O’Neil writes briskly, and Frank is an intriguing and appealing hero.  “Exile Trust” is a perfect beach read — whether you’re in the Sunshine State or lolling in the kiddie pool in your backyard. 

Spirituality and murder may be strange companions, but Jackie Lynn makes the combination work in her faith-based series featuring Rose Franklin.
In “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” the third entry, Rose and her friends at the Shady Grove campground in West Memphis, Ark., are trying to help a young woman from South Dakota whose boyfriend was murdered there and for whom the police are looking.
As in “Down by the Riverside” and “Jacob’s Ladder” — Lynn draws her titles from spiritual and hymns — the plot is intriguing. But the real strength of the series is in the character of Rose and the lessons of kindness that Lynn imparts without preachiness. Mystery fans can be grateful for this off-beat but satisfying series. 

When Rhys Bowen introduced Lady Georgiana Rannoch in last year’s “Her Royal Spyness,” mystery fans and anglophiles knew they were in for a treat.
The fun continues in “A Royal Pain” (320 pages, Berkley Prime Crime, $23.95), the second in the series featuring Georgie. This time, Queen Mary has assigned her to look after visiting Princess Hannelore of Bavaria — an 18-year-old fresh out of convent school — and to try to get Hanni to charm the queen’s eldest son, Edward, Prince of Wales, and thus lure him away from American divorcée Wallis Simpson.
But that’s easier assigned than accomplished. Edward shows no inclination toward Hanni, and Georgie must rein in the princess’s predilection for American slang and distinctly unroyal behavior. When murder intervenes, the old queen instructs Georgie to ferret out the truth and spare the royal family from scandal.
Fun, irreverent and clever, “A Royal Pain” is a perfect summer accompaniment to a cup of tea or, better yet, a Pimm’s cup. 


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. 