Tag Archives: mysteries

Review: No Witness – Cal Claxton #8 (Warren Easley)

Cal Claxton, former prosecutor in LA, now current one man show in Oregon, has been busy since I last encountered him (in Matters of Doubt). His niece joins him when Gertie, his accountant, becomes ill.

He also has another assistant, Timoteo Fuentes, a DACA recipient, who has convinced Cal to hire him. Timoteo wants to become a lawyer, and the first part of that involves a lot of filing and research. The first big case he sees come into Cal’s office, however, is one that hits too close to home: his sister’s murder.

It is not necessary to read books one through seven to get here as this does stand on its own; however, to fully understand why Cal quit the big city and moved north, it is helpful to have read them.

Timoteo, his sister, and the entire extended family are undocumented, which makes investigating the case much harder – no one in the community wants to talk to a big white dude who is also a lawyer, especially potential witnesses.

Perseverance pays off, though, and Cal is on the case. But nothing is simple, and as injuries and bodies pile up, the investigation becomes more dangerous for everyone.

As with Matters of Doubt, I’ll note that those who fall on the more conservative side of the aisle will be unlikely to enjoy this book. Cal is clearly what those sorts of people would call a social justice warrior, their voices dripping with derision.

Cal has a good heart and a better head. The investigation is fairly straightforward – although Cal has stopped turning up at every dead body before it’s even cold, so that’s a change of pace from the last one I read.

I’m giving it a solid four out of five stars.

Thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for the reading copy.

 

Review: Murderers Creek – Maggie Blackthorne #2 ( LaVonne Griffin-Valade)

Maggie Blackthorne is back, patrolling her area, considering moving in with Duncan, who she started dating in the previous book, and generally keeping the peace.

When her ex-husband JT shows up, it’s an unwelcome surprise. He has been demoted in between the last book and this one due to some sexual harassment claims. Maggie wants nothing to do with him and snaps at him to get to whatever it is he wants. He’s getting married, has become a Catholic, and want her to sign an annulment paper, to dissolve their marriage in the eyes of he church, even though they’re already divorced. She signs away, kicks him out and goes about her day.

The first item of the day is a pair of oxy addicts, reported to be in their area. The second, in conjunction with the first, is Dave Shannon’s stolen truck. It’s a fairly good call that the junkies have stolen it, because they’ve left their junker where his truck had been.

Then, the big one: JT has been found by a couple of tourists, dead. His throat has been slit and he had additional stab wounds. Bizarrely, his left ear is also missing. Detective Al Bach arrives as does Ray Gattis, the medical examiner. Maggie is a suspect, of course, since her and JT’s marriage had been rocky, to put it mildly. She’s also told later that JT’s new fiancee is pressuring the local State office to look into Maggie as the killer, and later that an IA case has been opened.

Attempts to find the pair of junkies prove unsuccessful until Janine Harbaugh, a volunteer fire watch lookout, calls into let Maggie know that she’s seen the truck weaving in and out of the forest, stooping, then moving again. Maggie gets to the area, driving through the forest, following the strange trail they’ve left.

Unfortunately for them, hey drive right over the edge of an embankment and are killed. Now Maggie has the task of figuring out why they were in town, where they thought they were going, and what they were looking for.

The resulting investigations of JT’s murder and the truck theft results in the two investigations coming together as actually the same case.

Meanwhile, Hollis and his wife are going through a tough time, Al and Ray are not really dating any longer, and Maggie has a bit of a secret she’s keeping from Duncan. The reader who is paying attention will guess that without any trouble at all.

Everything comes to a head at the end of the book, with a couple of confessions and a standoff with a disturbed man on top of the courthouse.

The only ding I’m giving this book is the road atlas tour we get whenever Maggie drives somewhere. I’ve said in previous reviews that I really don’t care how people get from point A to point B unless there is something important about the route. There are a couple of instances we do need to know about in this book, but the rest are useless to people like me or to people who have never been in the area (and sometimes those are the same people).

Four out of five stars, and another solid outing for Sgt. Maggie Blackthorne.

Thanks to Severn River Publishing and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: Matters of Doubt – Cal Claxton #1 (Warren Easley)

This is book one of a series that was originally published between 2013 and 2018. The books are being reissued – it’s always nice to come across another series I’ve not read. For those interested, it’s told in first person by the main character.

Former bigshot Los Angeles prosecutor Cal Claxton quits his job, moves to his cabin in Oregon, and hangs out a shingle as a small, solo legal operation after his wife commits suicide.

A young man appears in his office, asking Cal to find out who murdered his mother, an investigative journalist who was working on a big story. The man is homeless and an artist who goes by the name Picasso on the street. Cal brushes him off and Picasso angrily storms out of his office.

It wouldn’t be a jaded prosecutor finding his heart if Cal doesn’t change his mind, and so he does: he tracks down Picasso at a free clinic in Portland and offers to look into the circumstances surrounding the murder. Picasso has a ready-made villain in his mother’s murder – specifically, he believes that his mother’s boyfriend is the culprit. Cal has to rein him in a bit and caution him to not go after the man when there isn’t enough evidence.

Unfortunately for Picasso,but good for the book, that man is found dead. By Picasso. Cal happens to be arriving at the house just as Picasso is leaving. Did he kill the boyfriend? I’m not giving it away.

Cal has people he can ask for help, including Nando, a Cuban emigre with a fashion sense that sounds like it would have been at home in the 70s (at least in my mind). Nando knows other people who have specialized skills, and al uses Nando a lot – but Nando doesn’t work for free, and those ills start adding up.

Someone really wants to know what Cal is finding (or not) and Cal’s laptop, his own clients’ files, and Picasso’s material that he had entrusted to Cal are stolen. The only thing he now has to go on are some of the notes he made and what he remembers from the files.

There’s a romantic subplot involving the (obviously) super attractive doctor who runs the clinic. There’s also some conflict with a woman who runs an escort service, one of her employees who wants to break free, and a giant Russian dude who doesn’t like Cal all that much.

As Cal works his way through the case, we also get to see through his eyes various social issues: homelessness, inadequate healthcare, drug abuse, indifferent police officers, sex trafficking, a lack of mental health services, especially for veterans, and suicide by cop. Conservatives are not going to like these parts at all, so if you’re in that group, you might want to pass on this one.

Cal also finds that there are multiple divergent paths on this case that dovetail into one by the end of the book.

I have a few issues with the book. One is Cal’s name. Cal Claxton just doesn’t roll off my tongue. Two, virtually every side character Cal encounters is quirky or weird. there are people in the world who are just normal people, working through their days. Three, how is it that Cal always seems to be around when a dead boy is discovered? It’s rather odd, but maybe that’s his quirk.

Three out of five stars.

Thanks to Poisoned Pen Press and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: Out of Sight – DCI Warren Jones #7 (Paul Gitsham)

This is book number seven in a series. It is not necessary to read the previous six, but I certainly intend to do so, to find out more about DCI Warren Jones and the people with whom he works.

This outing opens with a dead body under a bridge, fingerprints and teeth removed. Of course, this presents challenges both in identifying the body and solving the murder itself. The team does manage to identify the dead man, but the investigation itself is slow-going, as the victim was a loner of sorts, and held his secrets closely.

To complicate things, it turns out DCI Jones has a lot going on in his personal life as well: his father has been moved to an assisted living facility, and he and his wife are recovering from her miscarriage and their discussions at attempting parenthood again are heartbreaking.

Eventually, they find the man was regularly seeing other men via a dating app, and the investigation becomes even more involve than before, as the team chases down the man’s partners and look into their whereabouts when the man was killed.

Ranging from people lying to damaged walls to nonworking or just slightly out of range or intentionally sabotaged CCTVs, this investigation has it all. But the team is dogged, and there are no slow parts for the reader, which is always a potential when the investigation is so large.

This book has an interesting murder investigation and a personal story that is not contrived just to have the main character have some kind of flaw or obstacle to overcome (and that’s easily solved).

Four point out of five stars, rounded up to five.

Thanks to HQ Digital and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: Her Consigliere (Carsen Taite)

FBI agent Royal Scott has just come out from another assignment, and has been promised both some time off and end to long undercover assignments in the future. Alas,this is not to be, as her boss wants her to go undercover and infiltrate the Mancuso crime family, which he assures her won’t last too long. She reluctantly accepts.,

When Royal leaves the FBI building, she saves a woman from being run over by an SUV. Intentional? Hard to tell. It turns out the woman, Siobhan Collins, is the consigliere (lawyer/advisor) to the head of the Mancuso family. Lucky break that Royal gets to start on the newest assignment right away.

Royal scores an assignment and introduction to a couple of low level associates working for Mancuso, and winds up at the Don’s house, unloading untaxed liquor, which seems to be their specialty. Royal and Siobhan run into one another again and share a few bantering lines.

Siobhan, speaking to the Don and his natural daughter (Siobhan was basically adopted by Mancuso, and raised in the family, much like Don Vito allowed Tom Hagen into the Corleone family in The Godfather). She’s a lawyer. She’s careful, as she should be, protecting the Mancusos. This is why I found it mind-boggling that she tapped Royal – someone she doesn’t know and hasn’t yet vetted – to come work for them as more than a driver of boosted liquor. Even the Don thinks it’s a good idea, just because She pulled Siobhan out of the way of the SUV. Why? Everything she is supposed to do is supposed to protect the family. This is one of the off notes in the story for me. I get it, The two of them need to be put in a situation where they will spend more time with one another, but this was ahead scratcher. At least Siobhan’s driver/bodyguard is suspicious of Royal.

Siobhan has a suspicion that the Don’s waspish, nasty daughter is up to some kind of no good, but decides she can’t act unless there’s hard evidence of it. Royal has her own family entanglement to deal with when her brother shows up at her door.

The romance part was okay. The mystery/mob part of it, even with the issue I noted above, was better, with Siobhan looking for anyone who might want to hurt the family, and Royal looking out for anyone who wants to kill Siobhan. They get more time together and in fact do wind up sleeping with one another (not: there are a couple of minorly explicit scenes.

The ending feels a little rushed, and not without a bit of a cliffhanger about what happens to someone other than the main characters. The end made me do a bit of a head scratch – it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility, but seemed a little too…public, I suppose if the word I’m looking for.

Overall, something that can be read in one sitting without a ton of plot holes, or at least none that couldn’t be ignored for the sake of the two mains. Three out of five stars.

Thanks to Bold Strokes Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: Every Hidden Thing (Ted Flanagan)

Worster, Mass EMT Thomas Archer and his partner have a problem. It isn’t the woman who has just delivered a baby who is respiratory distress, it isn’t even he woman’s boyfriend. The real problem is Eamon Conroy, a corrupt and sadistic cop Archer helped send to prison years ago.

Conroy is the fixer for John O’Toole, mayor of Worster from a prominent political family, who has his sites set on the Governor’s mansion. His issue is greasing the right palms, and getting Conroy to take care of other problems in a more violent way. That includes Archer now, given he and his partner’s witness of the baby scene.

Archer’s young son has a brain tumor, and one of the places they stop on their rounds is at a church where a young woman lies in a persistent vegetative state, while her mother stands by her, convinced that the power of god flows through her daughter. Many people come to pray in front of the woman in her be, seeing her through a window on the opposite wall, where a bench sits, ready for them to kneel. Archer and the mom have a number of conversations through the book, and at the end there’s a gigantic gathering where people can come to ask for miracles/to be blessed/and whatever other stuff religion does for people who believe. I’m not a fan off fraudsters and hucksters, so these parts had me rolling my eyes.

Luckily, the majority of the book is taken up by Archer trying to avoid crossing paths with Conroy.

We then switch gears to the POV of a reporter, who is going to be laid off not terribly far down the road. Her editor tells her it’s the best he could get for her, and she decides to go out with a bang, by investigating the new gubernatorial candidate, his shady deals, and his employ on Conroy. She faces some real danger, as an old white woman going to a rather rough part of town to talk to the woman who gave birth. She makes it out of there, but not before her car is set on fire by the crowd.

There’s a separate subplot about a man who is obviously a QAnon kind of nutjob, ascribing all sorts of ills in the world on Democrats, liberals, activists, and of course the LGBTQI+ category. He’s further indoctrinated by his father in law, and his father in law and what seems to be a council of sorts for the local militia have a job for him: go to Worster and assassinate someone. I found this the least compelling o the various storylines, not because it’s unrealistic, but because crazy seems to be his only character trait.

As we return to the main story, things stat getting out of hand and O’Toole is becoming impatient with Conroy. Conroy gets harder into his work, offering Archer’s partner enough money to put toward a new house for his family. Archer continues to be pressed by his life seemingly spinning out of control.

The end is….the end is good, and matches nicely with the events of the book. There is a loose string here and there, but nothing to make the ending less believable, and I kind of welcome that from time to time, since most writers seem to think everything has to be 100% in typing up everything that has happened in a book. In books like this, there’s too much ambiguity to do that, so like a lot of life, people wring what they can from it.

A very solid four out of five stars.

Thanks to Crooked Land Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: Thicker Than Water (Barbara Pronin)

Lacey Madison is supposed to be meeting her sister at the sister’s house, but (as usual) is running late. When she arrives, she finds the house locked, but she can hear her baby niece crying up a storm. Unable to find an open door, she winds up going in through the bathroom window. She finds baby Tina without issue. What she also finds is the dead body of her sister’s husband. When the police arrive, suddenly her sister is the prime suspect in her husband’s murder. Lacey doesn’t know her sister as well as many sisters do, but she knows Carolyn is not a murderer and is determined to track down whoever killed her husband.

There is quite a good bit off character shaping done quite well throughout the book, especially Lacey and Carolyn’s characters, as Lacey learns more and more about her. Then a body is found in the La Brea Tar Pits, and the woman pulled from the goo looks a lot like Carolyn.

Alas, I can’t say much about the investigative work Lacey does without revealing too much, but Lacy could take up a side gig as a PI if she were so inclined. My quibbles are two: the bad guy can be figured out about halfway through, because of their actions as described when the POV switches to him. Two, we get another “I’m gonna confront bad guy!” says the plucky hero(ine), without bothering to notify anyone of what she’s doing. It is, to me, the equivalent of a character her decides to go down into the spooky basement when all the power and phones are out. Can we get past this? Law enforcement could be notified but get held up to give the same worry about whether or not they will arrive in time.

Even with this, and the points of stars I remove, it’s a good read, suitable for a rainy day or a beach or plane or anywhere else you read books.

There point five stars out of five, rounded down to three.

Thanks to Crossroad Press and NetGalley for the reading copy.

As we start popping through the events in the book, making our way to the end

Review: The Darkness Knows – Detective Konrad #1 (Arnaldur Indriðason)

You can’t be in a rush with Indriðason’s Nordic Noir. If you’ve read his Erlandur books, sliding into this book featuring Konrad will feel like a warm bubble bath, comforting and familiar.

A group of German tourists and their guide find a hand sticking out of one of the glaciers that is melting thanks to climate change. The authorities are called, and the dead, frozen man is identified as a man who went missing long ago, with foul play suspected at that time, since his car was not found at the glacier, but in another location. Konrad was the original detective on the case, and the dead man’s business partner Hjaltalín was arrested based on a coerced confession.

Konrad has since retired. He had taken leave from the job to care for his wife who was dying of cancer, and after she died, he simply made retirement official. He doesn’t do a whole lot with his days, and the best times he has are when his son and grandkids come to visit.

Marta is in charge of the new case revolving around the dead man, and she asks Konrad to come in and consult on it. He reluctantly does, but as the investigation picks up, he finds not having a badge means people can just slam a door in his face and not answer questions they would have were he still on the force.

Then, a woman shows up at his door, asking him to look into the case of her brother, who was killed in what looked to be a hit and run. Were they connected? Konrad thinks so, even if few others do. He doggedly continues his public/private investigation, stirring up hornets’ nests and finding witnesses who can remember what was happening around the time the man went missing.

Meanwhile, Hjaltalín is back in prison, protesting his innocence, and wants Konrad to come see him. Konrad does, but is very cold toward him. Hjaltalín begs him to continue the investigation, to absolve him of a crime he didn’t commit. Hjaltalín has cancer and is dying, you see, and even though the two of them don’t care for one another, Hjaltalín believes Konrad to be a honest man and good cop.

People looking for nonstop action as the middle carries on into the final act will be disappointed. Most police work is not gunfights and car chases. It’s following the clues where they lead and evaluating evidence and suspects. That’s what Konrad does.

In the end, not only do we see the resolution of the crime, if there is one, and settling some of Konrad’s personal debts to his own soul.

Take a walk in the glacier field, and pick up this first book in what will hopefully be a long series.

Five out of five stars.

Thanks to St Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: Silent Ridge – Det. Megan Carpenter #1 (Gregg Olsen)

I’d previously read The Hive by the same author, and picked this up as that was okay. Silent Ridge, alas, is not. This is the third book in a series, and if you have not read the first two, it’s going to be a real problem. At least it was for me.

Police are called to the scene of a gruesome murder. Wait, before we begin that, let me say that this is primarily written in first person, present tense. I really do not like that. I persevered, though, and Detective Carpenter shows up at the scene. We immediately know she has some kind of connection to the victim, because we’re flat out told that she does. Does she tell anyone, so she can be restricted from investigating it due to her emotional compromise. As we all know for maverick cops, they do their own thing and basically flaunt everything there is about proper law enforcement and investigations.

I absolutely do not like this character. She is by turns whiny and angry. She lies to the people around her, and is paranoid even at the best of times. Without even an ounce of investigation being done, she’s decided that the murder has to be something related to her childhood. In fact, there are many, many, many, ad nauseum instances of connecting every single thing to her terrible childhood. This woman should be on desk duty at best, with mandatory psych evals once a quarter at least.

All of that psych stuff, after awhile, starts to feel like filler. There was no tension because we get the murderer’s scenes, too, so the mystery slowly drains out like one of those blow up kiddie pools that springs a small leak. Worst of all, Carpenter seems to wallow in the childhood trauma, and after awhile, I just didn’t care because it was boring. I wanted then to catch the murderer before I gave up on the book (which, to be honest, happened multiple times)

If you’re pressed for something to read, or you’re a fan of the series, you might like this. Sorry, but I did not. It took months for me to finish it, something completely abnormal for me.

Two out of five stars, and a vow not to read anything else in this series.

Thanks to Bookouture and NetGalley for the reading copy.

Review: A Fire in the Night (Christopher Swann)

Nick Anthony has retreated to his cabin in the middle of nowhere after the death of his wife. Retired now, he whiles away his time at the cabin in peace.

That peace is shattered when a local deputy appears at his door to tell him that his estranged brother and his sister-in-law have been killed in a house fire. He’s shocked, of course, but not as shocked as he is when he finds out he has a niece, Annalise – now on the run and the primary suspect.

Annalise, for her part, is running toward her uncle, as her father told her to, in possession of a flash drive she was told to take. She has no idea what’s on that drive, but bad guy Cole does: he and his mercenary teams are on her trail.

There’s a flashback that doesn’t make a lot of immediate sense, but be patient, the significance of it will be revealed.

Nick, though, is not just a mild-mannered professor. He’s an ex spy, with skills that Cole and his gang of baddies don’t know about. When Annalise arrives, Nick sets about trying to build a relationship with her, and she eventually thaws. To read the drive, they have to go to a public library. Cole sends a crew to snatch them up, because there’s some kind of whizbang thing that alerts when the drive is accessed. Highly improbable, but it’s a staple these days of thrillers than some hacker can break into just about anything, so just roll with it.

There’s a big showdown at the cabin, of course, and the final fight scene is quite enjoyable – that fight alone gets five stars from me.

The ending is what you might think and expect.

A solid four out of five stars, and good for a day (or weekend if you’re not a straight-through reader) of escapism.

Thanks to Crooked Lane Books and NetGalley for the reading copy.