Mystery Crime Books

After the stellar 'Death of a Perfect Wife' this book is a bit of a let-down. The beginning, the part that deals with the village of Lochdubh, is priceless. But then, for the mystery, it falls back to being more like the previous ones - a bit more outside of the community - and features an unlikeable cast of characters. The bright spot is the development of the relationship between Hammish and Priscilla, which is important for later books. I think the mystery itself was a bit of a bore, perhaps because I wasn't overly concerned with any of the participants. They didn't interest me and I certainly didn't care what happened to them. There was a bit of action, but mostly the characters left me scratching my head. And the conclusion was quite out-of-the-blue, rather jarring and odd. Or I missed something that was supposed to clue me in (always possible).

While the main story is a disappointment, it's still an important book in the series if you want to understand Hammish, Priscilla, and a lot of the dynamics of the village. And it's not a terribly long read, so if you're a fan of the series or plan on reading all of them, it's worth it. If you're reading it as a one-off, I'd strongly suggest another book in the series.

Constable Macbeth has an unusual problem, he is too good at his job. Crime in the village is down, way down mostly because Macbeth is very good at his job. Unfortunately for Macbeth, this coupled with the fact that his superiors suspect (rightly) that he is better at his job than they, has led to his assignment to a larger town. Macbeth is miserable there and the village of Lochdubh is miserable without him. What to do? New village resident Maggie Baird has a suggestion, Lochdubh needs a crime wave, one that can only be checked by Macbeth. Once Macbeth returns home the crime rate does return with yet another murder in this sleepy little town.

This is another in the Hamish Macbeth series of cozy mysteries. We are again treated to scenes of village life and given the chance to spend some time with the charming young constable. Of course there is a little more progress, of a sort, into the stumbling romance of Hamish and Priscilla and oh yes, there is this little murder thing.

The only complaint I have about this one is that it's a bit short (150 pages). I would have enjoyed a couple more twists to the plot and maybe a bit more time in Lochdubh, especially with Hamish and Priscilla.

Ms. Beaton is the queen of village mysteries, and each one of her Hamish Macbeth books is as delightful as the last. In this one, the story starts with Hamish living in Strathbane where he has been tranferred. He's not a happy man because he has had to move from his beloved Lochdubh. The villagers of Lochdubh aren't happy either, and they stage a number of "crimes" in their small village which forces the authorities to send Hamish and Towser back where they want to be. But in true Hamish fashion, murder seems to follow his reinstatement. One of the villagers is burned inside her car, and it's apparent to Hamish that it was murder. He opens up a whole wasp's nest of potential murderers, and it's up to Hamish to find the one who did it. This book is a delight - offbeat and funny.

What's a hussy? The definition that fits this book is "an immoral woman." As you can imagine, hussies are not well regarded in the conservative Scottish highlands. Put a hussy in that locale, and the results can be explosive.

If you love Hamish Macbeth mysteries, you have a great treat ahead of you with Death of a Hussy. But if you haven't read any of the books in the series, you owe it to yourself to begin with the excellent, Death of a Gossip. Then go on to read the books in order of their publication. You'll enjoy the development of the ongoing characters better that way.

As the book opens, Hamish has been banished to Strathbane to be beat officer. His new partner there proves to be a good foil for lots of humor. But he misses Lochdubh. Feeling forlorn, rescue comes from an unexpected direction: New resident Maggie Baird suggests that the locals make up imaginary crimes to force the powers to be to send Hamish back . . . even though she's never met him. Strathbane capitulates and Hamish returns. Then the story leaps forward in time as Maggie retires from the scene to work on recovering her previous good looks from the days when she was a highly sought-after companion for rich men. Her timid niece, Allison, remains behind with one thing on her mind: Becoming a driver. Hamish is pressed into duty as her driving instructor. The book alternates between Hamish and Allison as the narrators, and the contrast enlivens the story development. Maggie unexpectedly returns, much thinner, more toned, with freshly dyed and cropped hair, and wearing expensive clothes. But she's in a bad mood. She has set up four of her former lovers in competition to marry her for her money. In the meantime, Maggie makes life difficult for Allison, her heir. When Maggie dies following a suspicious car fire, the criminal investigation part of Death of a Hussy begins. You probably won't have any trouble figuring out who the murderer is, but it's a most enjoyable story. There's also a development on the Priscilla-Hamish front to look forward to.

Death of a Hussy has several qualities that make it stand out from other books in the series:

1. The subplots are long, interesting, and invariably humorous.
2. The time involved isn't compressed into just a few days. As a result, there's more room for interaction and development in relations among the characters.
3. There's more variety of locales than usual.
4. The humor is much stronger throughout the book. You almost get a sense of M.C. Beaton as being a perfectly happy person in reading this book.
5. The plot nicely brings out new dimensions of the on-going characters in ways that strengthen the series for future books.

This book shows much more care in planning and execution than the earlier or later books in the series. It's as though M.C. Beaton realized that she had a potentially bigger winner on her hands if she made some mid-course corrections in the series . . . and those corrections are perfect!

Short and sweet and jam-packed with fun, DEATH OF A HUSSY is the fifth in the series of Hamish Macbeth mysteries. There are some really colorful characters here. Beaton is so good at creating characters with both good and bad sides. Even the "hussy" has some good points -- and the combination of characters can be pretty funny. Satisfying conclusion. Thoroughly enjoyable.

This is the second collcetion of the Invisibles - and it helps to have read the first a couple of times, as the story and dimensions twist and turn even more in this second outing of Jack Frost, King Mob and the rest of the crew.

As you can judge from the cover - there is a darker undertone in this volume, death in his various incarnations plays a more central role as we are given a broader glimpse into the world of the Invisibles.

Does contain some strong passages, as this is not a mainstream comic book with caped heroes - but a dark tale in the spirit of Alan Moore (Watchmen and V for Vendetta)

...it begins with some one shots, some of them incredibly realistic and humane, and continues into Lord Fanny origin, which is Castaneda meets Morrison. The trade is coherent and not so psychodelic like rest of series is.

If you like this, get Say You Want A Revolution

The Invisibles hits an early peak with this collection, which features issues 9-16 of the series' first volume. It kicks off in slightly arbitrary fashion with 23: Things Fall Apart, which surely would have been more comfortable nestling up at the end of Say You Want A Revolution as a coda to the Arcadia story-arc reprinted there.

Still, beginnings as endings is a recurring theme throughout the series so it's just possible that the editors in charge of the Invisibles' release in graphic novel format are less incompetant and insane than the books' slapdash release schedule would seem to indicate.

Even this early in the title's run Grant Morrison is already going out of his way to shade our perception of the story and its protagonists, sowing seeds that will only grow to full bloom a year or more down the road. This can be seen first in the characters' varying reactions to the bloodbath of the opening issue, but it's telling that Morrison is willing to take (almost) an entire issue away from his main characters to continue the process, resulting in one of the best, most innovative stories of the entire series - the elegant, borderline-heartbreaking Best Man Fall.

From that high (or possibly low) we're immediately picked up and pitched straight into another. The She-Man arc is an example of that rarest of comic-book beasts - a back-story that actually serves to make the character involved more interesting. It helps of course that the character in question is the dazzling Lord Fanny ("I'm an international freedom fighter AND a photogenic witch, darling. I'm the most glamerous creature you'll ever meet!") and helps even more that the immensely talented Jill Thompson is on pencilling duty, but the net result is a story of initiation that's both brutal and - no pun intended - magical. Oh, and for good measure it concludes with the biggest, sheerest cliffhanger of the series so far, one that'll have any sane person scrabbling to get hold of Entropy In The UK, the collection that concludes Volume 1.

Throw in the always-fun Jim Crow making his scholck-horror debut, Jack/Dane trying (and mostly failing) to come to terms with his new place in the world, and a couple of absolutely belting covers and all in all you've got what is, despite strong competition, probably my favourite Invisibles graphic novel.

Plus it's got the best title of anything, ever. This isn't even open for debate.

A few years ago I read a bunch of Invisibles books, but somehow always missed this one. I might have stayed away because of the femme cover/title, and the inside art is all over the place quality-wise.

I'm wishing that I had picked it up sooner, though, because the storylines here are among the best in the series, and maybe in comicdom. One story I loved: yuppies at a pharmaceutical company distribute a crack that kills the bodies of users and leaves them as empty vessels for the yuppies to "joy ride." Another: the back story of Lord Fanny and her psychosexual "spirit quest" to become a transsexual witch.

For those who haven't been exposed to The Invisibles, you need to check this series out. I find it more twisted, more compelling, and more fringe than any of the other series I've read, including Transmetropolitan and Preacher. In fact, this is light-years beyond anything published in drab-text "Literature."

Book 2 of the Invisibles picks right up from Book 1's cliffhanger ending: Dane, one of his fingers chopped off by the sadistic (and demonic) Orlando, has taken flight, and the Invisibles have to find him. Unfortunately, heavily-armed "Myrmidons" have surrounded them, and what follows is the first all-out action scene since the very beginning of Book 1.

After this, things slow down a little, as creator/writer Grant Morrison "opens up" the world of the Invisibles. Even though we still don't know much about our main characters (King Mob, Boy, Ragged Robin, Lord Fanny), Morrison introduces new people to the fold, and we see how the exploits of the Invisibles affect the rest of the world.

First we are introduced to one of the more monstrous creatures ever witnessed in mass media entertainment, something that just might be the next king of England. Then we meet Jim Crow, an Invisible witch doctor who's both a world-famous rapper and a host for sacrifice-hungry voodoo spirits. And finally we are given one of the best single-issue stories in the series, "Best Man Fall," which, despite its seeming insignificance to the larger story, possesses more heart and emotion than any other in the series' history. A nonlinear narrative, this story shows how the "other side" works, and for once we see how our "heroes" (King Mob in particular) could just as easily be seen as "the bad guys." This is a great story, and worth the price of Book 2 alone.

The book closes out with a story arc that revolves around transvestite shaman Lord Fanny, in which we see his/her initiation as a young boy into the world of the supernatural. At the same time, the forces of darkness close in on the Invisibles in the present, and the two storylines merge into a narrative that defies the laws of the time/space continuum.

This arc is the first glimmerings of Morrison's grander scheme with the series; whereas before the Invisibles worked on an us-versus-them mentality, now we slowly begin to see that there are larger ideas at play. The volume ends with a story showing where Jack went, after his escape in the book's opening story, and finalizes his character arc from defiant loner to full-fledged Invisible.

The artwork is again split among various artists, with my favorite being Chris Weston in the Jim Crow story (Weston later became the regular artist, after Phil Jimenez's run on the title). Jill Thompson turns in the first story, capping off her run that began in Book 1, and she returns with the Lord Fanny arc, with a few one-off artists filling in on the other stories. Again, the artwork is nowhere near the level of Morrison's writing, but it's not terrible. In fact, the art takes second place to the writing in the Invisibles, because this isn't "just" a comic book: the Invisibles is subversive literature of the highest order.

The residents of Toussaint, Louisiana are rightfully upset and frightened to learn someone was murdered in St. Cecil's Church. Soon afterward the fear factor turns stratospheric, as more people die. The divided community knows the homicides are connected to the new school and teacher Bleu Labeau.

Over the edge over the deaths, Bleu also realizes she must be the target too of this serial killer. However, it is her feelings for her self anointed protector Dr. Roche Savage that frightens her most and not just because she mistrusts herself when it comes to men; she has learned that everyone who has been killed was his patient.

Fans will enjoy the return to Toussaint (see A MARKED MAN and A GRAVE MISTAKE) with this fast-paced serial killer thriller. The key to CYPRESS NIGHTS is the lead couple as she has to decide whether to trust her heart or the circumstantial evidence; a wrong choice by Bleu probably means death. However, Stella Cameron never takes her eyes off the ball as she uses the romantic subplot as support to the prime murder mystery. Ms. Cameron's fans will enjoy the steamy nights in the bayou where either love or murder occur.

Harriet Klausner

Exactly how many times will Professor Moriarity and Sherlock Holmes rattle literaty sabres?

John R King writes an interesting book that centres around the question...what if Holmes survived the fall from the Falls and lost his memory?

Mr King postulates that the daughter of Professor Moriarity found him (along with Thomas Carnacki) and in their escape from Moriarity, we learn about the 'real' Professor and his twisted life. A professor of mathematics at Jesus College, he descended into a personal hell after the murder of his wife by Jack the Ripper, and his subsequent possession. His daughter, Anna, vows to free him from the demon and through the course of the book, does so at a high cost to herself.

Holmesians will love the book. Much of the characterization is in tune with Doyle, and even Moriarity seems to be a shadow of his literary self here. Mr King must watch numbers, as the middle of the book reads like an episode quantizing human interaction by intergration and differentiation. This is the only weakness of the book.

Completists note, another entry has been made in the world of Sherlock Holmes.

Tim Lasiuta

I found this book to be a wonderful, page-turning read. It is well written and served as an excellent introduction to the Holmes canon. I am looking forward to more work from Mr. King.

You have to admire someone who thinks (and writes) outside the box. Jasper Fforde takes the realm of children's nursery rhymes and transforms it into a world of mystery and mayhem that's definitely for adults. The list of suspects who could have offed the womanizing drunkard Humpty Dumpty is as colorful as the folks trying to crack the case, so to speak. Though I found some sections a bit hard to plow through (I can't stick with a page- long paragraph)the humor and downright cleverness of the book kept me turning pages. I loved the fact that in Detective Jack Spratt's world, the fictionalization of the investigation for the local rag is more important than the quest for justice. Straight from the newspaper comes the sizzling headline, "Nursery Favorite Dies in Wall-Death Drama." The wildly nutty ending was way over the top in a perfectly wonderful way. A well seasoned story that will really hit the spot.

Jasper Fforde made his name in the literary world with his very popular "Thursday Next" series of books following the eponymous heroine on a series of fantastically convoluted adventures in the world of metafiction. There are some connections between the characters in this novel and characters who appeared as minor figures in one of the "Thursday Next" books, but the "Nursery Crime" series is a distinct animal, albeit though it plays with many of the same metafictional themes. "The Big Over Easy", the first entry in the new series, is a wonderful little book.

The basic story follows Jack Spratt, the head of Reading's Nursery Crime Division (NCD), who has worked for decades in what is considered a career dead-end (one step above the Ministry of Magic's Centaur Office, if you will), handling criminal acts involving nursery rhyme characters (he himself is one, though he doesn't know it, combining Jack Spratt, Jack the Giant-Killer, and Jack and the Beanstalk). He is joined by Mary Mary, a young Detective Sergeant who despairs at being put in the NCD, and really wants to work with Friedland Chymes, the celebrity detective whose adventures she grew up avidly following. The rest of the NCD crew includes a rookie assigned there for two months and then forgotten about, a hypochondriac, and an alien (yes, aliens have arrived, and, as documented in one of the fake newspaper clips included at the start of each chapter, were determined to not be very interesting). The case: the apparent slaying of Humpty Dumpty. The list of suspects is byzantine, and the plot has more contortions than the Gordian Knot, dragging in as incidental figures, among others, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer of Greek myth: he ends up renting a room in Jack's house and romancing his daughter Pandora (despite the 3980-year age difference).

The plot is ultimately not that important; Fforde wittily simultanteously employs and satirizes the various tropes of the genre (identical twins, red herrings, culprits who are only introduced toward the end), and the real fun of the book is in the numerous details (though the final resolution is quite fun; the sheer number of plots going on is itself a sort of parody of the standard detective story). Fforde has a dry, very British sense of humour in the vein of Monty Python and such. His depictions of the novel's world are endlessly entertaining; the book is marvelous fun to read. Each chapter begins with a quote from various in-universe sources, mainly newspapers, highlighting and parodying various fictional tropes. The other major theme in the book is Fforde's exploration of the idea of the celebrity detective; Watson loyally documented and published Holmes' exploits, but here we see this concept run amok: publictation has become as, if not more, important than actuall solving the case for many detectives, Chymes most of all. They actively conduct their investigations in order to make them readable and dramatically interesting.

Highly recommended.

Fforde just makes you think too much. There is so much nursery rhyme tie-in that it makes your head spin. It's too much to really concentrate on the story! You spend all of the time piecing together the little bits of clues and subtle allusions to the rhymes themselves, and the story gets a bit lost in the shuffle. It did make me want to look up a lot of information on nursery rhymes, but it was a hard book to follow with all the distractions.

If you get a kick out of those sorts of tie-ins and know a great deal about nursery rhymes, this is probably one of the best books you'll read. The parts I did get were masterfully done. And Fforde has a great writing style, which is normally very engaging. But if you're more like me, and are going to spend the whole book almost getting it but feeling like you're missing something you should know, I'd give this one a miss. His Thursday Next books are far more enjoyable!

I first became enthralled with Jasper Fforde through "The Eyre Affair" and have read all of this books. Resisted "Over Easy" at first since I am not a big fan on mysteries or children's books. I surprisingly loved it and didn't want to put it down. Cannot wait to read "The Fourth Bear." And I loved this book because it was almost as round as Karl Pilkington's head. But much funnier.

I read this book and thought it was extremely clever but I just could not bring myself to give it more than three stars.

The basic plot premis is that the Reading, England, police department has a section called the Nursery Crime Division where Detective Inspector Jack Spratt works. Jack has just finished a case (The Crown v. Three Pigs) which should have resulted in the certain conviction of three pigs in the murder of a wolf. But, in an unforseen development, a jury of the pigs peers acquit them of the murder and his department head is telling Jack that the departmental budgetary meeting is going to result in the disbandment of the NCD. Not a good day for Jack. But things get even worse. Humpty Dumpty is found dead at the bottom of the wall where he liked to sit and think. Was it an accident, suicide or could it have been murder? Jack is assigned a new partner, Sergeant Mary Mary, who has transferred in from Basingstoke in the hopes of working with her hero and longtime contributor to Amazing Crimes Magazine, Detective Friedland Chymes. Jack doesn't want a new Official Sidekick, Mary wants to work with another detective, and Chymes wants to take over the Dumpty case so he can write it up for Amazing Crimes. Let the intrigue begin!

The first book I read by Jasper Fforde was The Eyre Affair with the Thursday Next character. I just fell for the whole concept. I had wanted the Nursery Crimes stories to be as enjoyable for me, if not more so. Sadly I cannot say that it was. Fforde has the most incredible imagination. He has taken a topic which we are all familiar with, nursery rhymes, and turned them upside down and inside out. The characters are all familiar and yet he has given their entire world a skewed slant which makes them totally different from what we would expect. I can give him nothing but robust, appreciative applause for his ideas and concepts. But, I didn't enjoy this STORY very much. There was just too, too much going on in the story for my taste. Mr Fforde put in too many characters, too many situations and too many possible villains for me. He gave me one villain, explained why it couldn't have been that character and took him away (or did he?). He gave me another villain, exposed the falseness of the reasoning for his guilt and so took him away (maybe?). It just seemed to go on much too long. In fact, this is the same problem which I had with the Thursday Next novel, it too went on far too long to completely hold my attention. I wanted this to be over but it just kept plodding along and along and along. And the reveal about the true murderer was just so bizarre that I actually went back and re-read parts of it just to make sure I had gotten it straight. And the parts about the Jellyman and the Sacred Gonga, well, I never got those at all.

I liked the book, I enjoyed reading it up to a point, but I don't think I will search out the next Nursery Crime book. I'll stick with Thursday.

Loved this story of Peter & Harriet at the beginning of their married life. Will never forget the solution, it's imprinted in my mind.

A mystery, a love story, a classic work of literature.

After many years, Peter and Harriet marry. Those who have loved them are overjoyed (a feeling readers of earlier Sayers novels share). But murder follows the detective and his author bride-- a body is found on their honeymoon.

I love this book because of what Dorothy Sayers has to say about love between friends and equals. You will care about every character in this wonderful book and appreciate her portrait of life in pre-World War II England.

Others have covered the ground of the story itself pretty well so I'll try to add something new.
I liked "The Unpleasantness at the Belonna Club" and "Whose Body?" somewhat better than this title.... BUT this one is really still just a SUPER classic English murder mystery. The inclusion of Harriet Vane (mystery-writing wife of Lord Peter Wimsey), into the Wimsey series was, in my opinion, a big plus. She really gives Wimsey someone to play off of, in addition to the ever-present and loyal Bunter, Wimsey's astute right-hand man.
This work precedes "Thrones, Dominations," which was an incomplete manuscript by Sayers at the time of her death and was finished by Jill Paton Walsh, who did a superb job of tying up this worthwhile project. (I recommend that you read the two works sequentially!)
So, I highly recommend this fine mystery to all fans of the genre -- it's at least equivalent in pleasure value to Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd."

This entry in the Lord Peter Whimsey/Harriet Vane series is a little unusual because it has more humor than usual. You get to see a more light hearted Lord Peter, at least until the murder. Agatha Christi concentrates a little more on the relations between Lord Peter and Harriet, starting just after thier engagement and continuing through the honeymoon. You will have to sit through a lot of letter and journal reading in the beginning, but it is worth wading through for the background. A delightful story.

Lord Peter and Harriet Vane are married. In a series of letters we learn the details of the wedding and honeymoon. Due to the malicious meddling of Lord Peter's sister-in-law and the hounding of the press, the bride and groom decide at the last minute to be married in a small chapel in Oxford. Harriet has asked Lord Peter to buy her a beautiful and ancient farmhouse in the country where they decide to go for their honeymoon.

The adjustment to marring someone with money is a hurdle for Harriet. She buys him an expensive wedding gift that is just right, and with the last of her money she buys a gold designer wedding dress from Worth which suits her dark beauty perfectly. Lord Peter has made her independently wealthy but she has difficulty understanding the details. All that matters is that she has completely given her heart to Peter.

However, the honeymoon is not the quiet country idyll the Wimseys were longing for. The discovery of a body in the basement of their new home causes Lord Peter and Harriet to be swept up in a murder investigation and the press are once again at their door. While distracting, the investigation does not keep them from sharing many deep passionate moments. It does, however, cause them to confront difficulties in their personalities and temperaments.

Sayers writes with her usual wonderful characterizations and evocative style. The reader is transported to 1930's England, a simpler more elegant time. The intricacies of a grisly murder investigation throw into relief the charm of the simple life. Yet somehow this story has a more somber tone than the other Lord Peter mysteries, perhaps because it is the last book of the series. At any rate, once again Sayers delivers prime entertainment and an enchanting detective mystery, only this time Lord Peter is finally in a settled relationship with his beloved.

Spenser gets a note from love-of-his-life Susan, saying she's in trouble and Hawk's in jail. Seems her new lover, Russell, is possessive and part of a powerful family, and when she'd asked Hawk for help, Russell had him framed for murder.

So Spenser has to break Hawk out of jail, and rescue Susan... although Susan's not quite sure she wants to be rescued. And there are the corrupt cops and the FBI and CIA to deal with as well.

The action/mystery part of the book is exciting and just plain fun. I always love seeing Spenser and Hawk in action, and this is no exception. Just the scene of Spenser breaking Hawk out of jail was worth buying the whole book.

The personal/emotional part, though, is dark and both painful and joyous. Spenser loves Susan, and she loves him, but she also loves Russell. Something about their relationships, the way they're written, touches a chord deep inside (I know that sounds uncharacteristically fanciful, but it's the best I could come up with to describe it). Parker has a genius for conveying his characters' deeper feelings without resorting to flowery language--the essence of "show, don't tell."

I was a bit dissatisfied at first with Russell--it was understandable that Susan would pick someone very different from Spenser, but there didn't seem to be anything about him that would make Susan choose him. Then it clicked: it's in Spenser's POV. Duh. He's not going to see the same things in Russell that Susan does, nor does he want to. It's enough for him to know that Susan loves him. And when I realized that, I was awed all over again.

An entertaining enough outing for Spenser and Hawk, with the added bonus of Susan showing some flaws. She even seems to eat a whole meal at one point! The villian is extra-evil this time, and his wife is fat--therefore super-evil. One major flaw is a preposterous plot twist that has Spenser and Hawk hired by the all-knowing villian: what, he's too busy corrupting the planet to check references? Of course Susan goes back to perfection by the end, but a reader can hope that her penchant for Oedipal married men will crop up again in the future...

In this episode of the Spenser series, Spenser receives a cryptic note from Susan; she needs him to come to California. Hawk is in jail and she is afraid she might be in trouble. This is all the coaxing Spenser needs to drop everything and head to California, where he immediately sets out to break as many laws in as creative ways as possible ("It's not easy to mumble to yourself if you don't feel moved to mumble. I didn't know what to mumble and finally began to mumble the starting lineup for the impossible-dream Red Sox team of '67"). Along the way he gets hooked up with governmental agencies with whom, for a change, he has a goal in common - get rid of Jerry Costigan, the father of Russell Costigan, the other man in Susan's life. Then things get complicated . . .

A transitory chapter in Spenser's life - he and Susan begin to work out their differences, which is great. He and Hawk bond and Susan and Rachel Wallace (who makes a return appearance in this book) begin to catch a glimpse of the mystery that is Spenser and Hawk's friendship. Throw in some illegal immigrants basically being used as slave labor whose revolt Spenser and Hawk use to get to Susan, secret bases hidden in mines in Idaho and some typical Spenser kicking butt, and you have a great Spenser novel.

For those who are reading them randomly - please stop. Read them in order. Believe me, it makes all the difference in the world!

I read the hard cover version of this book and loved it so much. The best ever of all in the Spenser series in my opinion. I bought the audio version (read by, Michael Prichard),thinking it would be great fun to listen to it. I was very disappointed. The book was read, but with no character, (no emotion). I would love to listen to this one again, if read by Joe Mantegna

A CATSKILL EAGLE is the twelfth Spenser novel, and it's the first one with a really silly plot. The absurdity of the story makes this book difficult to thoroughly enjoy.

In this novel, Susan Silverman hooks up with a new boyfriend whose father just happens to be a evil arms dealer (and a white supremacist and anti-semitic to boot). Spenser and Hawk try to rescue her and somehow hook up with the CIA (!) who enlist them to covertly kill the arms dealer. The conclusion of this book involves Spenser breaking into the arms dealer's fortress and going through a secret tunnel to kill him.

Anyway, the whole plot of A CATSKILL EAGLE is absurd, and it's only Parker's snappy writing that makes this novel worthwhile. This is one of my least favorite Spenser novels, and I would definitely not recommend it to a newcomer to Parker's work. My advice would be to read PROMISED LAND, LOOKING FOR RACHEL WALLACE or EARLY AUTUMN first. Those novels have much more realistic, compelling plots that show Parker at his best.

Well - I've read the reviews for this book and I conclude that everyone who's contributed must be closely related to the author - brothers, uncles and grandmother.

There is nothing in this little yarn that warrants anything more than a one star rating.

Firstly - the storyline is weak: someone gets murdered and who did it? We have a few suspects. There are no interesting lines of enquiry or clues - indeed nothing that captivates the brain cells, or gets the reader thinking or working the imagination. Okay - so the maid did it - and we are told this at the end, by the author - who dedicates a paragraph or two. It could have been Mickey Mouse for all I cared. There was no build up and no suspense. No building up of tension. It was utterly lazy.

It was a drab storyline which offered nothing and delivered less.

What was the bloody point? Dunno.

Secondly - the characterisation was thin - De Luca (our policeman/detective) was the "big personality" of the book and all we knew about him was that he suffered from insomnia. That was the total sum of his humanity - the insight into the man. He was enirely one dimensional. Everyone else in the book was not worth a fig.

Lastly - this book was boring. Although it was a short - my Gawd did it feel like a long read. I was yawning and constantly checking how many pages of this turgid stuff I still had to endure.

In conlusion: if this is Italy's finest detective writer - well I am a monkey's uncle.

First Sentence: The bomb exploded suddenly, with a ferocious blast, right as the funeral procession was crossing the street.

It is April 1945, the final days before the Allies move into Italy. Those in power are desperately trying to find a way to survive the coming days.

In the midst of this, Commissario De Luca has been given "carte blanche" in his investigation of the murder and castration of Rehinard Vittorio, a member of the Fascist Republican Party. With a mix of female suspects, drugs, witchcraft and more bodies, De Luca is a policeman trying to solve a crime.

This was a fast, and absolutely captivating, book. Lucarelli's creation of time and place provided a sense of the confusion and conflicting forces at play during this time when the primary concern was trying to survive.

Into that he brings the character of De Luca who, in spite of insomnia, dyspepsia, and political forces, is dedicated to being a policeman, solving the crime and bringing justice. De Luca's emotions are so well conveyed, as is the danger and frustration. The story is well-plotted and the characters alive.

There is good suspense and surprisingly ironic twist at the end. The mystery is solved, the murderer identified but you are left wanted to know what happens next to Comm. De Luca. Happily, Parts II and III of the trilogy await me.

Author Carlo Lucarelli's "Carte Blanche" is a reminder that even in times of national emergency--Italy at the end of WWII--ordinary life goes on and people go about the day-to-day business of living, behaving well or badly as they would at any other time. This short novella is tightly and very neatly constructed and literally races along to its conclusion. That conclusion leaves the story and reader somewhat suspended, but definitely interested in the next phase of the saga. This is an excellent beginning for a trio of novels about the chaos in Italian society brought about by WWII and the political vacuum that followed. If you aren't particularly interested in history or the geographic setting, it's still a fine mystery story that will keep the best-read of the genre satisfied. It has definitely encouraged this reader to get the two other books in the series.

Here's the premise: decent man in the service of the Fascist police with the allies getting closer and closer each day. Partisans on the roofs and various militias on the streets. The atmosphere takes care of half the job already. Some hints of "Fatherland" and the whole canon of decent men in service of nasty regimes. A very short novel as well, only about a 128 pages. But a decent start and I'd probably read the rest of the trilogy as well.

It is April, 1945. Mussolini's regime is in its death throes, clinging to power in the north of Italy. Chaos and anarchy is rapidly replacing repression and order as the predominant feature of Italian life. Yet there is still some semblance of law and order so when a prominent and quite unsavory member of Mussolini's Republican Party is murdered, the police are called to the scene to investigate the crime. The crime is deemed sufficiently important for the police to be granted `carte blanche', to take any means necessary to solve the murder. Commisario De Luca is assigned to lead the investigation and his investigation is the heart of Carlo Lucarelli's enjoyable short novel "Carte Blanche".

"Carte Blanche", the first volume in what is known as the De Luca Trilogy, is rich in storytelling and atmosphere. As drawn by Lucarelli, De Luca is an interesting character. He is neither a hero nor an antihero. He seems to want to be nothing more than to be a detective yet as the story opens he has just transferred back to the regular police force after a stint with the secret police. He'd left because he didn't like that sort of work and seems quite willing to point out that no, he'd never tortured anyone. He is savvy enough to know that an investigation like this is one with political undercurrents that could put him in danger but his compulsion to gather facts and put together the pieces of a puzzle outweighs his sense of caution. As a result we see a story where De Luca persists in pursuing an investigation even when all his instincts tell him he is walking through a minefield.

The strength of "Carte Blanche" lies primarily in Lucarelli's ability to create an atmosphere of Italy on the edge of chaos. I got a real sense of time and place while reading "Carte Blanche". Apart from De Luca, Lucarelli does not invest a lot of time in presenting us with a full-blown character analysis of the key parties to the crime and its aftermath. We also don't get a lot of the internal life of De Luca but De Luca's actions tend to speak for themselves and over the course of the book I got a nice feel for his personality without having had Lucarelli spell it out for me.

At the story's end we see the threads of the investigation pulled together while the threads holding together the reigns of government come fully undone. The resolution is not so much a conclusion as it is a signal that De Luca and Italy are in for some very interesting times in the months and years to come. "Carte Blanche" was a very satisfying first volume to the De Luca Trilogy. Volume Two The Damned Season (De Luca Trilogy 2) has been republished recently and the third and final volume (Via delle Oche) is, apparently, due out soon. I've read and enjoyed Volume Two and look forward to the conclusion. Recommended. L. Fleisig

A typically good Kate Wilhelm story, but left a couple of loose ends untied - Who followed one of the characters, for instance, and why? In addition, I don't really like it in a series when a problem is brought up in one book, but left hanging for a future book. By the time the next book comes out, I have long forgotten the plot in a previous one. It doesn't make me anxiously await the next book, it just leaves me with an unfinished feeling on the current one.

Over two decades ago in Eugene, Oregon, someone murdered teenager Jill Storey. The police and much of the small town believed that either teens David Etheridge or Robert McCrutchen killed her. However, no evidence was found and the case went cold.

Twenty-two years later, David an author returns to his hometown and ends up staying with Robert who is a senator and his wife. Soon afterward, someone murders Robert. The police once again suspect David, believing they have motive, means and definitely opportunity. He, knowing that he is a person of interest, hires attorney Barbara Holloway to represent him. She and her team begin to investigate the two homicides with each clue making the case stronger against her client.

The latest Holloway investigative thriller is an enjoyable regional whodunit starring an eccentric Oregonian cast, but not quite as powerful as most of the previous tales (see SLEIGHT OF HAND and A WRONGFUL DEATH). With humor to somewhat abating the tension, fans will appreciate Barbara's efforts to find proof that someone else committed the recent homicide although she and the audience begin to believe David is guilty until a beating occurs. Her digging means no time to mount a defense and takes away from the overall story line as she gets nowhere for much of the novel. Still COLD CASE is a fine Holloway tale.

Harriet Klausner