Instagram Facebook X-twitter Linkedin

Sign Up

Get the latest ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

All , Coverage

All Mystery Coverage

Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Murder at the Lobstah Shack

Review by Christy Lynch

In the Cape Cod town of Westham, Massachusetts, Mackenzie “Mac” Almeida gets a nightmarish wake-up call. It’s her friend and fellow Cozy Capers Book Group member Tulia Peters on the line. When Tulia arrived at her restaurant early that morning, she found more than just tubs of lobster bisque stock waiting to be boiled and buckets of shrimp needing to be peeled. On the floor of her walk-in freezer, former beauty queen Annette DiCicero was lying dead among the pickle jars.

Despite Westham’s quaint, touristy glow, this is not Mac’s first rodeo. Twice before, her Cozy Capers book club has put what they know from reading cozy mysteries into action to solve real-life murders in their small town. Despite the police’s insistence that they stay out of things this time, Mac and her friends are ready to use their considerable sleuthing skills to come to Tulia’s aid in Murder at the Lobstah Shack by Maddie Day.

Tulia, who is a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, had recently been seen arguing with Annette about changing Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day. This makes her person of interest numero uno in the investigation—but as Mac starts digging, she discovers plenty of other townspeople have surprising connections to the victim. As the list of suspects lengthens, readers get an around-the-Cape tour of Westham’s other charming-but-deadly locales: the pet store across the alley with the cranky owner; the free food market in the basement of the local Unitarian Universalist Church; the historic Quaker meetinghouse where members say things like, “Believe thee me”; and Greta’s Grains, the bakery where Mac’s new fiance works as a baker, just to name a few.

Short chapters keep the action moving at a good clip, and new revelations about Annette’s ill-tempered widower and past life as Miss New Bedford keep turning up the heat beneath the proverbial stock pot. When Westham’s more menacing inhabitants catch wind of Mac’s snooping, the danger threatens to boil this little seaside town alive.

Murder at the Lobstah Shack mixes up a satisfying recipe of good-hearted characters, brain-teasing mysteries and evocative writing. As readers work to put the clues together, they’ll enjoy all the details that makes a good cozy mystery so cozy: a community of close-knit neighbors, thriving small businesses, love interests who can make a mean lobster quiche and an easygoing pace of life—except, that is, for the occasional murder.

This novel mixes up a satisfying recipe of good-hearted characters, brain-teasing mysteries and evocative writing.
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Two mysteries show the dark side of true crime

Feature by Elyse Discher

Joanna Schaffhausen’s fifth book in her Ellery Hathaway series, Last Seen Alive, focuses on the horror of its central sleuth’s past. As a child, Ellery survived being kidnapped by the notorious serial killer Francis Coben—she was the only person to ever do so. Decades later, she’s changed her name and found purpose as a police officer, but she has never escaped the nightmares about her time as Coben’s captive. Now on death row, Coben makes an offer to reveal the location of the remains of his other victims, but only to Ellery and only in an on-camera interview. She initially refuses, disgusted with Coben’s desire to manipulate her even behind bars. But when a woman is found killed in Coben’s style, Ellery realizes that he is working with someone on the outside and that their meeting will affect more than just cold cases.

This gritty police procedural doesn’t flinch at violence, but spends as much if not more time exploring its effects and how they are compounded by sensationalist media. Ellery knows she must agree to the interview but struggles to reconcile this fact with the approach of the Nancy Grace-esque broadcaster, who is desperate to conduct it. While the special purports to celebrate Ellery’s survival, the coverage focuses on the torture she endured, to the point of zooming in on Ellery’s physical scars. 

Schaffhausen keeps the reader firmly in Ellery’s perspective as she follows Coben’s twisted clues, making the tension nearly unbearable. Fans of darker mysteries that don’t shy away from the gory details will enjoy this well-crafted and thoughtful whodunit.

Like Ellery, Micah Wilkes is looking to leave the past behind in Catch Her When She Falls by Allison Buccola. When Micah was in high school, her boyfriend, Alex Swift, killed her best friend, Emily Winters. Alex has spent 10 years in prison, and Micah has spent that time trying to escape being known solely as the ex-girlfriend of a murderer, a footnote in true crime history.

Alex was convicted on largely circumstantial evidence, and now a podcast is revisiting the case. Soon internet commenters are questioning her stoicism during the trial and wondering if she had something to do with the crime. When she receives threatening texts and someone breaks into her apartment, Micah starts to wonder if the media attention on Alex’s case has driven someone to harass her or if Emily’s real killer is still out there. She begins her own investigation, even as those closest to her criticize her need to unbury the past, making her feel attacked by both those she loves and those she’s never met. 

Buccola dives into the anxious, painful workings of Micah’s mind as she pieces together the bits of her past that she’s locked away. Readers will find themselves doubting reality along with Micah as she questions the narrative she’s always believed about her friend’s death. While not scary, Catch Her When She Falls is wildly suspenseful and almost gothic in tone, making it the perfect book for a reader looking for thrills without any gritty or gory aspects.

Both Last Seen Alive and Catch Her When She Falls show incredible empathy for the mental and emotional toll the media takes on not only victims of a crime, but also their friends and family. It’s a humanizing view of women’s trauma that’s not always found in a genre practically built upon their pain.

These two mysteries thoughtfully examine how the media commodifies female trauma, resulting in whodunits that are equal parts thrilling and empathetic.
Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

Whodunit: February 2022

Feature by Bruce Tierney

City of the Dead

Author Jonathan Kellerman published his first Alex Delaware mystery more than 35 years ago, but entries such as the stellar City of the Dead prove that this popular series has done anything but run out of steam. In the wee hours of the morning, in a tony neighborhood of Los Angeles, a naked man is struck headfirst by a moving van, rendering the now-corpse’s facial features totally unrecognizable. Meanwhile, a few doors down, a woman is found murdered in her bedroom. Veteran Los Angeles police homicide detective Milo Sturgis does not believe in coincidences, and as he is wont to do in these situations, he quickly solicits the aid of his longtime friend, forensic psychologist Alex Delaware. Alex is quite surprised to discover that he knew the murdered woman, Cordelia Gannett, a popular self-help influencer who once appeared as an expert witness in a court case Alex was involved in. Unfortunately for her, she was subsequently exposed as a charlatan who had created fake credentials in order to pose as a licensed psychologist. Despite this fraud, there is remarkably little evidence to suggest a motive for someone killing either Cordelia or the unknown man. This, of course, is where Alex steps in, probing the psychological profiles of everyone involved in the case, pulling on loose threads to see which ones might unravel and turning up damning evidence of previous murders in the process.

A Game of Fear

Charles Todd’s latest Ian Rutledge mystery, A Game of Fear, finds the intrepid Scotland Yard investigator chasing ghosts. This is fitting in a way, as Rutledge is no stranger to the otherworldly. The World War I veteran carries with him the “presence” of Corporal Hamish MacLeod, a man he was forced to execute for insubordination on the battlefield who now provides a snarky counterpoint to every one of Rutledge’s moods, reflections and decisions. An Essex noblewoman, Lady Benton, has claimed she witnessed a murder; the catch is, she has positively (-ish) identified the killer as someone who is already dead. In 1921 England, even an unlikely claim made by a member of nobility warrants at least a token investigation, so Rutledge is on the case. Another murder follows, seemingly unrelated save for proximity, and then there’s a too-convenient, evidence-erasing fire. The tension ratchets up when Rutledge himself bears witness to an event that seems to mirror Lady Benton’s apparition. Perhaps it’s a warning that he is getting too close for the comfort of resident evildoers, whichever side of the shadowy spectral divide they may inhabit. 

Marion Lane and the Deadly Rose

T.A. Willberg’s debut, Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder, generated a fair bit of buzz in literary circles and among mystery aficionados. Now she returns with the second volume in the series: Marion Lane and the Deadly Rose, named for “The Florist,” a serial killer who brands his victims with a rose. The aforementioned Marion is an apprentice at Miss Brickett’s Investigations & Inquiries, an underground (literally) and quite clandestine detective agency in 1959 London. In the grand tradition of English mysteries dating back to Sherlock Holmes, Miss Brickett’s serves as consultant to Scotland Yard when a case proves too baffling for the authorities’ plodding detective work. This time out, Marion is summoned to assist in bringing “The Florist” to justice. Marion Lane and the Deadly Rose’s central mystery is as strong as that of any traditional, beloved whodunit.  The book also features a cast of well-crafted characters, including a delightfully despicable villain, and a host of unexpected twists and misdirections. But the similarities to other mysteries end there, as Willberg takes readers on a wild, genre-bending ride with touches of steampunk, a dash of sci-fi tech wizardry and plenty of dry British humor. Willberg has noted in an interview that her first book was rejected numerous times for not fitting neatly into any category. I trust that the authors of those rejections have since sought more appropriate employment opportunities.

★ One Step Too Far

In my review of Lisa Gardner’s first Frankie Elkin novel, I opined, “Before She Disappeared is billed as a standalone, but I’m thinking it would be the perfect setup for a terrific series.” In revisiting that sentence, the only thing I would change is to replace the word setup with springboard. As good as the first book was, One Step Too Far is better in every regard, a tour-de-force in suspense and red herrings with a twist ending I did not even begin to anticipate. Frankie Elkin is a finder of lost persons. She does this on an ad hoc basis, for the satisfaction of doing some good but also to atone for some of the damage wrought in her 20s, when she was addicted to alcohol. Frankie, who has no fixed address, no car and no possessions to speak of, is a Jack Reacher-esque loner (minus the military connections and the musculature). This time, she joins a search party about to embark on their fifth expedition into the Wyoming wilderness to search for the remains of Tim O’Day, who went missing on a bachelor party camping trip, never to be seen again. Other members of the party include Tim’s father; his companions the night he went missing; a well-respected wilderness guide; a cadaver dog trainer and her golden retriever; and a noted—albeit thus far unsuccessful—Bigfoot hunter. Virtually all of them have secrets and underlying motives, as Frankie will find out, initially to her dismay and then to her peril.

Lisa Gardner outdoes herself, and a steampunk-influenced historical mystery blows our mystery columnist away.
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Crimes and Covers

Review by Maureen Ellen O’Leary

Many novels conclude with the wedding of characters we care about, but Crimes and Covers, the fifth book in Amanda Flower’s Magical Bookshop Mystery series, begins with one: the Christmastime union of Violet Waverly, the charming owner of Charming Books in the charming village of Cascade Springs in upstate New York, to the drop-dead gorgeous police chief, David Rainwater.

Among the guests are Violet’s energetic Grandma Daisy, the village mayor and former “caretaker” of the magic-infused bookshop; Violet’s warmhearted friend Sadie; and, to the bride’s astonishment, her elusive dad, Fenimore. But alas, the newlyweds don’t get to make merry post-ceremony because murder most rude pushes all else aside.

Blame Henry David Thoreau. As in previous volumes in this series, a literary classic lies at the mystery’s center. The murder victim is a strange woman who tried to sell Violet a signed first edition of Walden. Violet is an English professor, Thoreau scholar and bookseller, so she was able to discern that the book actually belonged to someone else, Imogene “Thoreau,” whose life is devoted to establishing her blood relationship to the author. Would Imogene spill blood to prove her claim?

Violet puts her honeymoon on hold and dives into a search for answers, some of which come from “the essence,” the magic that oozes from the ancient birch towering in the middle of the bookshop. Along with ensuring that the right books land in just the right hands (Violet’s customers are always so impressed with her recommendations!), the essence conveys clues to help Violet in her amateur sleuthing. (The bookshop’s star tenants, Faulkner the sharp-tongued crow and Emerson the tuxedo cat, also help.) Copies of Walden periodically float through the air, opening to pages that offer transcendental words of wisdom.

Crimes and Covers hits the right cozy notes: an appealing setting (with snow to boot!), a close community and a credible yet unchallenging plot that includes romance and deaths that break few hearts. Although not all the characters are fully drawn, threads occasionally dangle in ways that don’t feel intentional, and moments of tension or heart-stopping thrills are few, this is a satisfying read, providing hours of quiet pleasure rather than the “quiet desperation” Thoreau speaks of. The whimsical touches of bookshop magic are skillfully balanced by plot lines with more gravitas, like the publish-or-perish element in Violet’s academic community and the challenges of relationships, particularly between parents and children. Most importantly, Violet herself is a winning character and narrator: warm, witty, principled and smart, someone you’d enjoy meeting again. So if the tall birch in my backyard, stubbornly short on essence, were to toss another Magical Bookshop Mystery my way, I would be, well—charmed.

Crimes and Covers hits the right cozy notes and will provide hours of whimsical pleasure.
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Several years ago there was an actor, a former bodybuilder, who starred in some B-grade movies. While these films had made money, they really hadn’t taken his career to the next level. Then his agent sent him a script, a science fiction story about a man who is sent into the past to prevent an assassination. Would he be interested in playing the hero? The bodybuilder was muscular, but he wasn’t stupid; the part he really wanted, he told the agent, was that of the assassin. The agent pitched this to the director, James Cameron, and the bodybuilder, Arnold Schwarzenegger, became The Terminator and a star.

Let’s face it, in movies and in literature the villain is often the most interesting character. Look at John Milton’s Paradise Lost the devil gets all the good lines. So it is in Daniel Silva’s new novel, The Mark of the Assassin, a thriller set against the background of modern-day geopolitics and the covert war waged by intelligence agencies behind the scenes. A war that is suddenly made hotter by the actions of one man, a freelance killer for hire with a trademark signature three bullets in the face.

CIA operative Michael Osbourne is drawn into this war when a jumbo jet is shot down over Long Island. A middle-east expert, Osbourne is called in when the body of a known terrorist is found near the crash site with three bullet holes in its face. The evidence points to a Palestinian splinter group, but Osbourne isn’t so sure. What follows is an investigation that takes him to three continents as he unravels a startling conspiracy, and puts him on a collision course with the assassin known only as October.

The Mark of the Assassin shines is in its portrayal of October, otherwise known as Jean-Paul Delaroche, a deep-cover Soviet killer without portfolio. At least without a killer’s portfolio. Delaroche does have a portfolio of sorts he is also a painter who takes his art seriously. Indeed, there are many layers to Delaroche, and I liked the fact that as many things as Silva shows us, we never quite find out what makes the assassin tick. The one gripe I have with this book, and this is really not against Daniel Silva specifically, but to the authors of all thrillers, is the need to make up what I call the “Presidential cast of characters,” that is “President Smith,” “Secretary of State Jones,” etc. If they’re peripheral characters, write ’em out, I say. Use real politicians. It worked marvelously for Frederick Forsythe in The Day of the Jackal. It could have worked here. At any rate, the real story in The Mark of the Assassin is the assassin himself. Reviewed by James Neal Webb.

Several years ago there was an actor, a former bodybuilder, who starred in some B-grade movies. While these films had made money, they really hadn't taken his career to the next level. Then his agent sent him a script, a science fiction story about a…

Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Dark Night

Review by G. Robert Frazier

Beth Rivers stumbles upon more trouble in the tiny community of Benedict, Alaska, in Paige Shelton’s thrilling whodunit, Dark Night. The third installment in the Alaska Wild series finds Beth, who is working as the community’s lone journalist, investigating a case of domestic abuse that may have resulted in murder.

Known to the world at large as best-selling author Elizabeth Fairchild, Beth wants nothing more than to keep a low profile to avoid attracting any attention from her former abductor, who remains at large. Shelton quickly brings readers up to speed on these details and the events of the previous two novels in the series (Thin Ice and Cold Wind) in the opening chapter, just before unveiling the murder of local resident Ned Withers. Ned, who has abused his wife, Claudia, is found dead in what amounts to the town square, having been murdered in the middle of the night.

Initial suspicions naturally fall on an outsider: census taker Doug Vitner, who received a less than hearty welcome from Ned and the community at large and disappeared shortly after Ned’s death. (“We were all a secretive bunch. It wasn’t just me,” Beth muses at one point.) Along with her mother, a self-styled private investigator on the trail of her own missing husband, and police chief Gril Samuels, the only one in town who knows Beth’s secret, Beth begins piecing together the clues that will reveal the killer before they can escape, or worse, strike again.

Though she’s best known for her cozy mysteries, Shelton displays a talent for ratcheting up the tension in this series. As Beth’s fears and paranoia increase, events unravel at a rapid pace. Isolated from the Alaska mainland and cut off by an approaching winter storm, it’s increasingly difficult for Beth to know who she can trust—if anyone. You’ll want to bundle up against the cold dread, suspense and tension that permeate this mystery.

You’ll want to bundle up against the cold dread, suspense and tension that permeate this mystery.
Mystery & SuspenseAudioMystery

The Anatomy of Desire

Review by Deborah Mason

We appear to be living in a golden age of crime stories, with podcasts and series galore, but this popular fascination is truly timeless, everlasting and ever evolving. L.R. Dorn’s debut novel, The Anatomy of Desire (8 hours), updates Theodore Dreiser’s classic 1925 crime drama, An American Tragedy, by using the documentary format to explore whether Instagram influencer Cleo Ray murdered her ex-girlfriend in the middle of a lake.

Dorn uses interview transcripts, director commentary and courtroom clips to strip away Cleo’s “all-American girl” social media personality and expose the traumas fueling her relentless ambition. This narrative structure is perfect for the audiobook format, and it’s compellingly and convincingly performed by a fine ensemble cast. Tony Award winner Santino Fontana stands out as the documentary director Duncan McMillan, and Marin Ireland portrays a formidable defense attorney, but Shelby Young absolutely shines as Cleo. From Cleo’s chirpy pretrial Instagram posts to her gut-wrenching testimony, Young delivers a performance that is as vulnerable as it is ruthless, as loving as it is spiteful.

Make some popcorn, settle in, and get ready to devour an extremely enjoyable story.

The unique documentary format of L.R. Dorn’s crime novel makes for a winning audiobook, compellingly performed by a fine ensemble cast.
Mystery & SuspenseThrillerSuspenseMystery

Whodunit: January 2022

Feature by Bruce Tierney

Find Me

Three women take center stage in Alafair Burke’s latest thriller, Find Me: NYPD detective Ellie Hatcher, attorney Lindsay Kelly and amnesiac Hope Miller, who remembers nothing of her life prior to a devastating car crash she survived 15 years ago—or so she says. Now, sans ID or history, Hope works under the radar for a real estate agent, getting paid under the table to stage houses for prospective buyers. Then, as often happens in novels about amnesiacs, a random aha! moment triggers a memory, and we’re off to the races. Hope disappears, blood is spilled and the DNA found at her last-known location matches that of unidentified blood found at an old crime scene halfway across the country. The crime in question is one of a spate of killings thought to be the work of a serial killer, and the case was supposedly solved 15 years ago. Lindsay, who has been Hope’s friend ever since her accident, begins to investigate her disappearance and eventually draws Ellie into the fray. Ellie’s father, who was also a cop, was assigned to the same serial killer case that’s somehow connected with Hope’s disappearance. The two women feverishly piece together the disparate parts of the story, and Burke’s masterful control over pacing and plot reveals will make readers just as anxious to uncover the truth. 

★ A Narrow Door

Joanne Harris’ darkly humorous and deliciously evil A Narrow Door is a quintessential and unputdownable English mystery. Rebecca Buckfast, headmistress of noted Yorkshire boarding school St. Oswald’s and one of the first-person narrators of this tale, is nothing if not straightforward. She recounts the steps she had to take to become the first female head of the school in its 500-year history. Rebecca doesn’t sugarcoat anything, including the two murders she committed (“one a crime of passion, the other, a crime of convenience”), and yet it is difficult not to respect her motivations and even like her. Sort of. Meanwhile, a parallel tale is offered up by St. Oswald’s teacher Roy Straitley, in the form of a diary that outlines the discovery of what appears to be human remains in a construction site on the school grounds. As Roy’s and Rebecca’s stories unfold, both of the narrators take satisfaction in the secrets they are hiding from each other—or, more precisely, the secrets they think they are successfully concealing. A Narrow Door is an exceptionally good novel, such a masterpiece of storytelling that when Rebecca likens herself to a modern-day Scheherazade, it doesn’t feel like hyperbole in the slightest.

Silent Parade

By all accounts, 19-year-old Saori Namiki was on track to become the next big thing in the world of J-pop music. And then, inexplicably, she vanished, and stayed missing until her remains were discovered three years later in a suburban Tokyo neighborhood. Another body is found at the same place: Yoshie Hasunuma, an unremarkable woman save for her stepson, Kanichi, who is widely believed to have skated away from a murder charge years ago and looks pretty good for this latest double homicide as well. In the same way that Scotland Yard Inspector Lestrade often sought the assistance of supersleuth Sherlock Holmes, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Chief Inspector Kusanagi regularly summons brainiac physicist Manabu Yukawa, known as Detective Galileo, to consult on particularly difficult homicides. Keigo Higashino’s Silent Parade showcases the fourth such pairing, and is in many ways the most intricate. Detective Galileo must reconsider his theory of the crime again and again, tweaking it repeatedly until he is more or less satisfied with his assessment. He is a very clever man, smart enough to stay a step or two ahead of the police department, the perpetrator (or perpetrators?) and the reader, and that is no mean feat.

★ BOX 88

The title of Charles Cumming’s latest espionage thriller, BOX 88, refers to a fictional clandestine ops organization that is jointly operated by the United States and the United Kingdom. BOX 88 does not possess a license to kill a la James Bond, but the management certainly utilizes a “license to look the other way” on occasions when wetwork is required. BOX 88 begins a series starring Scottish spy Lachlan Kite, who in this book must come to grips with a very cold case: the 1988 downing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Close to half the narrative consists of flashbacks to immediately after the plane crash, when Lachlan was a green recruit. In the present day, Lachlan lets down his guard at the funeral of his old friend, with disastrous results. He is kidnapped by an urbane-seeming Iranian man who turns out to be anything but urbane when it comes to securing intelligence from a perceived enemy combatant. Worse yet, the kidnapper’s team has also captured Lachlan’s very pregnant wife. If torture will not get them what they want, perhaps threats to Lachlan’s family will do the trick. Despite his mistake at the funeral, Lachlan is a seasoned operative and, if anything, more dangerous to his captors than they are to him. Meanwhile, British intelligence agency MI5 is in hot pursuit, not to help Lachlan but rather to out him as an operative of a rogue agency. The suspense is palpable, the characters flawed but sympathetic in their own ways and the story gripping. In a month of really excellent reads, BOX 88 is a clear standout.

In a month overflowing with superb mysteries and thrillers, a deliciously evil boarding school-set thriller and a pitch-perfect espionage novel rise to the top.
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Fly on the wall

Behind the Book by Hannah Morrissey

Must have typing speed of 55 words per minute. Must not be emotionally affected by violent or traumatic reports. All hired candidates will be required to swear an oath of confidentiality. 

When I first read the job description for a police transcriber, I could hardly believe it was legit. This suspended belief percolated within me even as I applied, tested, interviewed, got hired, and sat down to type my first report. 

Hello, Transcriber. 

Those two words welcomed me into a world I’d never been privy to before—a world rife with death and derelicts and drugs. So many drugs. In my two years of having lived in that industrial Wisconsin city, I’d been oblivious to the underground economy that flourished there, the biggest players being heroin and crack cocaine. Sometimes prescription pills made their way into the mix. Suddenly, I knew every bad thing that happened before it hit the news. If it hit the news. 

In the days and weeks that transpired as I transcribed case after case—suspects in interview rooms, search warrants, homicide investigations, cell phone logs and more—I realized something: I had become the proverbial fly on the wall. I was a nameless, bodiless thing who stole into the police department at 10 p.m. and left before most people punched in for the morning, the only trace of my having been there a stack of perfectly typed reports and completed arrest paperwork. 

I slept by day and typed by night, utilizing my in-between hours to write another novel that would ultimately go nowhere. But if nothing else, it kept me afloat during a time when I was untethered and adrift. This dream of becoming a published author was my lighthouse when I feared I might never find my way out of the dark. 

Read our review of ‘Hello, Transcriber.’

My office was a terrarium, a narrow space with an outside wall that was a sheet of glass—the only shield between me and the horrors I typed up every night. I learned more in that small space, in that small slice of time, than I learned during any other period of my life. 

First, I awakened to the fact that I now existed in two parallel realities: one in which I was oblivious to the murders that happened just a few houses down from mine, the drug deals on the sidewalk, the car chases down Main Street; and the other in which I was the conduit between an investigator’s report and a criminal going to jail. I learned that just because the police arrest a violent criminal one day, it doesn’t mean they won’t be walking the streets the next. It’s up to the district attorney’s office and the judges to make the charges stick. 

I also learned that people are people, regardless of which role they’re assigned in a report (police officer, victim, suspect, etc.). The word sonder is a neologism from John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows that he defines as “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” I think that’s important for writers and human beings in general, having the ability to see things through a different lens. When you do that, you realize how fragile your own circumstances are. 

I picked up a lot of spontaneous knowledge, too, such as learning people by voice instead of face and knowing their pet words; thus, however and indicative are a handful that come to mind. I memorized badge numbers for all 216 sworn personnel, and I could guess the nature of the crime based on the length of the report. Car thefts were generally only a few minutes long, and your average search warrants were in the 7- to 12-minute range, unless you got stuck typing the report for the evidence technician. That could land you upward of 40 minutes, depending on how many items of evidentiary value were found. Homicides tended to be longer, especially if there were interviews or a neighborhood canvas involved. And so on and so on. 

Finally, I recognized that I had accidentally landed in a writer’s dream position: a unique job with behind-the-scenes access to fascinating stories and all the quiet time in the world to come up with a story of my own. This was the spark for Hello, Transcriber, a book that explores this unique and crepuscular work. Contrary to popular belief, there are professions much more solitary than being a writer. Take it from a former fly on the wall.

Author photo by Alaxandra Rutella.

Author Hannah Morrissey explores how her work as a police transcriber gave her the perfect perspective for her debut novel.
Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Perhaps no one is more well known or respected as a modern day master of crime fiction than Robert B. Parker. Like Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett, Parker has mastered the art of the hardboiled detective novel. He is best known for his tough but sensitive Boston private investigator Spenser. He has written over 20 Spenser novels, which spawned the 1980s television show Spenser: For Hire. With his latest book, Family Honor, Parker introduces an entirely new character a female P.

I. named Sunny Randall.

Sunny is a complex character: a former cop, college graduate, divorcee, and aspiring painter. Sunny is hired by a wealthy family to discreetly locate their daughter, who has run away. Tracking down the runaway Millicent does not prove to be difficult, but deciding what to do with her does. It appears that Millie’s problems are far greater than running away, and Sunny is now caught in the middle.

Unsure of what to do with Millie, Sunny finds herself acting as both bodyguard and surrogate mother, and occasionally as a moving target. It seems that a certain group of mobsters is also looking for Millie, and they have no problem taking out one female detective to get her. Fortunately Sunny is not without resources. Her ex-husband, Richie, is himself the son of a mobster, and her best friend, Spike, is an ominously dangerous gay man. With their help, Sunny delves into the mystery of why everyone wants Millie, all the while trying to teach her how to be a strong, independent woman.

Family Honor introduces what may be an ongoing series. Parker has created a number of engaging and well-thought-out characters in Sunny, Richie, and Spike. His writing style is short and to the point with very little extraneous exposition. And as with his other novels, the true joy of reading Parker is the stellar dialog. He writes the way people speak. There are no long speeches, no overly emotional outbursts; he writes it like it is. So intelligent and cutting are Sunny’s comments and come-backs, you’ll find yourself wishing you were as quick on your feet.

Family Honor is an enjoyable book that focuses more on the characters and their development than it does on the mystery surrounding them. While the mystery is interesting, it serves merely as a catalyst to propel the characters through the story. You may begin Family Honor for the story line, but you’ll finish it for Sunny Randall.

Wes Breazeale grew up in Robert B. Parker’s turf and now does research for a college in Oregon.

Perhaps no one is more well known or respected as a modern day master of crime fiction than Robert B. Parker. Like Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett, Parker has mastered the art of the hardboiled detective novel. He is best known for his tough but…

Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Is Nashville becoming a hotbed of mystery and suspense? You’d think so, judging from these two mysteries, both written by Nashville writers. Steven Womack’s Dirty Money doesn’t actually take place in Music City it takes place in and around Reno, Nevada but his private investigator, Harry James Denton, is from Nashville and the book is filled with references to the city.

Readers of Womack’s previous mysteries are familiar with Denton, a middle-aged investigative reporter-turned-private investigator who solves his cases with guile and persistence rather than violence or marksmanship.

Denton’s story begins as he is traveling west to be with a former girlfriend who is about to have his baby. Along the way, he is robbed by a pair of redneck road warriors who send him packing to a small town hospital where he meets a striking redhead who drives him into Reno and into the arms of his former girlfriend.

While visiting his ex and waiting for the baby to be born, Denton gets roped into going undercover at the Mustang Ranch, a world-famous house of prostitution, to gather evidence of a money laundering operation. A murder takes place at the brothel, and Denton is taken into custody by police as the prime suspect.

The remainder of the book consists of Denton’s efforts to clear himself, solve the money laundering case, wrap up his relationship with his ex, plant a seed of hope with the redhead, and then get the heck back to Nashville.

With Harry James Denton, Womack has created one of the most interesting detectives to surface in a long time. Denton is no slug ’em, cuff ’em up, and toss ’em into the slammer detective. He is a man with serious issues. Although he has a former girlfriend, flirts with the redhead, and is attracted to one of the prostitutes at the bordello, he seems to have problems with intimacy.

Womack is an excellent writer who knows how to merge character with plot, and fact with fantasy. Fans of Harry James Denton will hope to see him again and again. In Fall to Pieces, Cecelia Tishy’s detective is a former cop reporter named Kate Banning who gets trapped into working as an investigator for a country singer whose life has been threatened by a series of suspicious accidents. It’s Banning’s job to find out who wants the singer dead and why.

This mystery takes place in Nashville, and it is filled with references to the music industry. Tishy’s writing is crisp, and her character development is excellent. She doesn’t tell you who Kate Banning is she shows you in bits and pieces. Her research is off the mark on occasion (the Jordanaires provided background vocals for Elvis and were not his sidemen), but those are minor errors. Tishy is an English professor at Vanderbilt University, and her occasional missteps in the dirty world of country music can be overlooked.

Female detectives have become a staple of mystery novels, but Kate Banning is unique in many ways. She provides a female perspective on issues that previously have been the sole preserve of males.

I cannot recall ever suggesting that readers tackle two novels, one right after the other, but I am doing so in this case. Even better, I recommend that readers begin a letter writing campaign directed at Womack and Tishy. Somehow they need to figure out a way to get Kate Banning and Harry James Denton together in the same book, perhaps as investigative opponents. One thing is for certain: Kate Banning could help Harry James Denton with those intimacy issues.

Nashville writer James L. Dickerson is the author of a history about women in the music industry, Women on Top (Watson-Guptill), and a true-crime mystery, Dixie’s Dirty Secret (M.

E. Sharpe).

Is Nashville becoming a hotbed of mystery and suspense? You'd think so, judging from these two mysteries, both written by Nashville writers. Steven Womack's Dirty Money doesn't actually take place in Music City it takes place in and around Reno, Nevada but his private investigator,…

Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Is Nashville becoming a hotbed of mystery and suspense? You’d think so, judging from these two mysteries, both written by Nashville writers. Steven Womack’s Dirty Money doesn’t actually take place in Music City it takes place in and around Reno, Nevada but his private investigator, Harry James Denton, is from Nashville and the book is filled with references to the city.

Readers of Womack’s previous mysteries are familiar with Denton, a middle-aged investigative reporter-turned-private investigator who solves his cases with guile and persistence rather than violence or marksmanship.

Denton’s story begins as he is traveling west to be with a former girlfriend who is about to have his baby. Along the way, he is robbed by a pair of redneck road warriors who send him packing to a small town hospital where he meets a striking redhead who drives him into Reno and into the arms of his former girlfriend.

While visiting his ex and waiting for the baby to be born, Denton gets roped into going undercover at the Mustang Ranch, a world-famous house of prostitution, to gather evidence of a money laundering operation. A murder takes place at the brothel, and Denton is taken into custody by police as the prime suspect.

The remainder of the book consists of Denton’s efforts to clear himself, solve the money laundering case, wrap up his relationship with his ex, plant a seed of hope with the redhead, and then get the heck back to Nashville.

With Harry James Denton, Womack has created one of the most interesting detectives to surface in a long time. Denton is no slug ’em, cuff ’em up, and toss ’em into the slammer detective. He is a man with serious issues. Although he has a former girlfriend, flirts with the redhead, and is attracted to one of the prostitutes at the bordello, he seems to have problems with intimacy.

Womack is an excellent writer who knows how to merge character with plot, and fact with fantasy. Fans of Harry James Denton will hope to see him again and again. In Fall to Pieces, Cecelia Tishy’s detective is a former cop reporter named Kate Banning who gets trapped into working as an investigator for a country singer whose life has been threatened by a series of suspicious accidents. It’s Banning’s job to find out who wants the singer dead and why.

This mystery takes place in Nashville, and it is filled with references to the music industry. Tishy’s writing is crisp, and her character development is excellent. She doesn’t tell you who Kate Banning is she shows you in bits and pieces. Her research is off the mark on occasion (the Jordanaires provided background vocals for Elvis and were not his sidemen), but those are minor errors. Tishy is an English professor at Vanderbilt University, and her occasional missteps in the dirty world of country music can be overlooked.

Female detectives have become a staple of mystery novels, but Kate Banning is unique in many ways. She provides a female perspective on issues that previously have been the sole preserve of males.

I cannot recall ever suggesting that readers tackle two novels, one right after the other, but I am doing so in this case. Even better, I recommend that readers begin a letter writing campaign directed at Womack and Tishy. Somehow they need to figure out a way to get Kate Banning and Harry James Denton together in the same book, perhaps as investigative opponents. One thing is for certain: Kate Banning could help Harry James Denton with those intimacy issues.

Nashville writer James L. Dickerson is the author of a history about women in the music industry, Women on Top (Watson-Guptill), and a true-crime mystery, Dixie’s Dirty Secret (M.

E. Sharpe).

Is Nashville becoming a hotbed of mystery and suspense? You'd think so, judging from these two mysteries, both written by Nashville writers. Steven Womack's Dirty Money doesn't actually take place in Music City it takes place in and around Reno, Nevada but his private investigator,…

Mystery & SuspenseMysteryHistorical Mystery

When the lights go out

Feature by Elyse Discher

Set amid the glitz and glimmer of showbiz, these historical mysteries expose the corruption and abuse that exists after the shine of spotlights go out. But even more than that, they examine critical periods during which women’s roles were shifting as they demanded more freedoms.

As a teenager, Willowjean “Will” Parker literally ran away to join the circus. Stephen Spotswood’s Murder Under Her Skin (the sequel to 2020’s Fortune Favors the Dead) finds her as an adult in 1946 New York City, working at a detective agency with her mentor, the brilliant Lillian Pentecost. Fresh off an arson investigation, Will gets a telegram that her friend Ruby Donner, the tattooed lady of Hart and Halloway’s Travelling Circus, has been murdered and that another performer, Valentin Kalishenko, has been arrested for the crime. Will believes Valentin is innocent, and she and her boss set off for small-town Virginia to meet up with the circus and clear Valentin’s name.

Hart and Halloway’s Travelling Circus allowed Will to escape her abusive father and safely explore her sexuality as a lesbian. Now that she’s returning as an outsider, some of that closeness is gone and, in a melancholy but emotionally realistic twist, Will finds herself trapped between two worlds: She’s no longer completely trusted by her former peers, and she’s still working to gain the approval of her intrepid boss. 

As they work the case, Will and Lillian find the world in flux around them, which Spotswood ably explores without distracting from the central mystery. In the wake of World War II, U.S. veterans are dealing with displacement and PTSD, women are being shunted into more restrictive roles now that GIs have returned, and movie theaters are filling up while circus arenas are emptying. None of the characters in this mystery quite know how to cope with these seismic cultural changes, setting Murder Under Her Skin apart from more simplistic stories set in the same time period. Despite the cultural angst swirling around them, Will and Lillian focus on finding justice for Ruby, a woman many of their contemporaries don’t consider respectable or worthy of their compassion.

Elly Griffiths jumps ahead a few decades (and across the pond) in her snappy new Brighton mystery, The Midnight Hour. It’s 1965, and when theatre impresario Bert Billingham is murdered with rat poison, his wife, actress Verity Malone, is a natural suspect. Worried that the police will look no further than her, Verity hires PIs Emma Holmes and Sam Collins to clear her name. Among their suspects is magician-turned-actor Max Mephisto, who is filming a remake of Dracula along with Billingham’s son and is rumored to have had a fling with Verity.

Much like Murder Under Her Skin, this mystery focuses on a tightknit group of performers. Many of the actors, directors and costume designers in Billingham’s orbit worked together during the war, and everyone seems to have a story illustrating Billingham’s nastiness, giving Emma and Sam no shortage of suspects. 

As they navigate the complex showbiz web around Billingham and his family, Emma and Sam team up with 20-year-old rookie police constable Meg Connolly, which allows Griffiths to explore the experiences of three women at very different stages in life. The growing feminist movement has created more opportunities for women like Meg, but her male-dominated workplace still treats female sleuths as novelties. While Meg is just starting out, Emma struggles to balance her career with being a wife and mother, and she is frustrated that her detective work is treated like a hobby rather than a profession. Sam, meanwhile, worries that her own romantic interest in Max Mephisto could be clouding her judgment.

The sixth book in a series, The Midnight Hour is also full of secondary characters who have appeared in previous Brighton mysteries, so readers may want to start at the beginning before taking a stab at this one. But those who are already fans of the Brighton mysteries will be well satisfied with this installment, which tracks the evolution of Emma and Sam’s characters and careers without sacrificing one bit of Griffiths’ wit and charm.

Beyond being tantalizing whodunits, both Murder Under Her Skin and The Midnight Hour feature dynamic, complicated female characters who unapologetically stand up to and outshine their male contemporaries.

Set amid the glitz and glimmer of showbiz, these historical mysteries examine two critical periods during which women demanded more freedoms.

Sign Up

Stay on top of new releases: Sign up for our newsletter to receive reading recommendations in your favorite genres.

Sign up now

Recent Reviews

All Reviews

Author Interviews

More Interviews

Recent Features

All Features