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Sheldon was a prolific writer of novels, plays, TV shows and motion pictures. Unfortunately, he passed away in 2007, but his family made arrangements with Tilly Bagshawe, a British author and one with her own stellar reputation, to continue his legacy. She has already written several successful books under the joint name of both writers. The Silent Widow is her latest continuing the tradition of engrossing works in the style of Sidney Sheldon.

The beginning of the novel concerns a young woman that has traveled to Mexico to become the summer au pair of a wealthy family living in Mexico City. At a point ten years prior to the opening of the story, she disappears with no trace and cannot be found. In a decade from this event, a series of murders are committed in Los Angeles. Psychological examiner Nikki Roberts is seemingly involved with all of these since the deceased were her patients.

Nikki is going through her own set of trauma since her husband was killed in an auto accident and was at that point riding with a woman that fingers point to as her spouse’s lover. Nikki does a bit of background checking on the murders via hiring Private Detective Derek Williams, who coincidentally had worked on the missing girl’s case from ten years ago.

A good story is enhanced even further by bringing in ties to both the Mexican and Russian Mafias and their battle to take over the drug trade in Los Angeles. The permutations and complications of the factors involved keep the reader glued to the book trying to tie the loose ends together. Two policemen assigned to investigate the murders have ties to the events going on in addition to working to solve the crimes.

Action is the keynote from start to finish and the combination of Sheldon’s guidance and Bagshawe’s literary abilities make for a mesmerizing read guaranteed to make the reader returning for more. A well done book.

5/19 Paul Lane

SIDNEY SHELDON’S THE SILENT WIDOW by Tilly Bagshawe. Crooked Lane Books (May 7, 2019). ISBN 978-1643850931. 393p.

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Lam has written a novel taking place today, and also in the past when the United States committed a crime against its own citizens during World War II. He uses the characters of Daniel Tokunaga and his father Ray to bring the events to life.

Daniel is a world renowned heart surgeon who has been estranged from his father for many years. What the problem was that fomented the distance between them is really the crux of the matter.

Daniel and Ray are Japanese Americans and Ray and his family were among the thousands that were rounded up due to an edict from president Franklin Roosevelt and sent to internment camps for the duration of the war. Most of these people were completely Americanized and could not understand the harsh treatment at the hands of the government even with their former country – Japan – at war with the U.S. To prove to the U.S. government that they were not traitors, many of the young men enlisted in the army and eventually melded into the 442nd regimental combat team used only in Europe against the German army. As an aside, and an important one, Lam indicates that the 442nd became the most decorated unit in the history of U.S. warfare in history.

Ray enlisted and served at the front. Returning home he became withdrawn and almost a tyrant to his sons, Daniel and his brother.
The book tells the story of Ray passing away and Daniel unearthing the real story about his father and the facts of the incident that made the man a hero winning the second highest military honor that can be bestowed on anyone. It is a poignant story beautifully touching on real human emotions and the relationship between father and son. The ending is certainly real enough in scope to leave a lasting impression on the readers. It obviously brings to life the crime against Japanese Americans when both German and Italian Americans were not thought of as anything but citizens of their adopted country.

Note from the BookBitch: It is a little known fact that there were Italian-American internment camps and that many Italian-Americans were forced to register as “enemy aliens” with the government. Lisa Scottoline’s brilliant legal thriller, Killer Smile, was inspired by her grandparents’ registration cards and her subsequent research on the topic.

5/19 Paul Lane

REPENTANCE by Andrew Lam. Tiny Fox Press LLC (May 1, 2019). ISBN 978-1946501127. 308p.

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A beautifully written story of great loss, the seeking of redemption and eventually finding of one’s self.

Alice Dupont is a happily married woman enjoying life with her adoring husband Chris. It is obvious that each has found the perfect mate in the other. They have one young daughter and Alice pregnant with another child. Chris had founded a small business building tennis courts which has become successful enough possibly due to his background of playing tennis on a semi professional basis. His work takes him to sites around his home area in getting business. He has always kept in close touch with Alice while traveling and made it obvious that it is her that he thinks about.

Suddenly Alice’s world comes crashing down on her head when she receives a dreaded call from the police that Chris has been severely injured in an auto crash. She rushes to the hospital that he is in but unfortunately only in time to learn that he has passed away from his injuries. After the funeral Alice decides that in order to find some sort of closure she has to learn about the project he has been working on when killed. When she finds that the accident occurred several hundred miles away from where he was scheduled to be Alice decides to discover where he actually was and what he was doing. Determination is made that Chris was on an island near Nantucket in Massachusetts. Made independent by a hefty insurance settlement Alice moves to that island and begins her search for Chris’ reason to be there and if he had been there more than once.

The story of her search and her experiences in befriending other residents of the island comprise the major part of the novel. There is no horror to the story and one that follows Alice’s closure as well as that of several of the island’s residents. Written originally in Spanish and later translated into English, Sanchez Arelvalo’s novel reaches a level of beauty that does captivate the reader. The ending is well done and an adventure into a level of prose that is a pleasure to find and certainly indicative of both a very skilled author and a translator that has complete understanding of the nuances of both English and Spanish. I trust that we will see additional works by the author translated into English for our great enjoyment.

4/19 Paul Lane

ALICE’S ISLAND by Daniel Sanchez Arelvalo. Atria Books (April 16, 2019). ISBN 978-1501171956. 400p.

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A Detective Varg Novel, Book 1

The novel is set in Malmo, Sweden and describes the activities and antics of a small group of policemen that have been set up to handle sensitive crimes that are strange and different. It is wrapped around a series of vignettes that are handled by the group.

Smith brings to bear a droll sense of humor that takes situations and shapes their form via a definite tongue in cheek delivery. No murder, no bank holdups, no mob beatings but a series of “crimes” adroitly handled by the members of the squad.

There is a case of someone stabbing another person in the knee. Why? What caused this heinous crime? A lonely girl trying to impress other girls who have boyfriends makes up a boyfriend via taking a selfie with a young man she meets on the street. Then in order not to produce him, tells a tale of him moving to a facility at the north pole. Problem is the police work on the premise that he was murdered and the girl making him up is the murderer.

Finally, an investigation is requested by a police executive into the weird goings on at a hotel that his cousin owns. These happenings are causing the hotel to begin failing. This one leads via a circuitous route into investigations of a werewolf being the cause of what is going on at the hotel.

A free and easy read. The characters are likable with a dedicated man in charge. One woman working for the group who is more than a little in love with Ulf (the man in charge of the group). Carl who loves filling out paperwork and can sit and do that all day, and Erik whose main interest in life is fly fishing. While the setting is in Sweden the group can exist anywhere and do supply a great deal of fun in a nice departure from more serious police procedural novels. I certainly look forward to learning about future escapades of this pleasant group of policemen.

4/19 Paul Lane

THE DEPARTMENT OF SENSITIVE CRIMES by Alexander McCall Smith.  Pantheon (April 16, 2019). ISBN 978-1524748210. 240p.

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Fiction Without Frontiers

A quick look at Cacek’s latest book could possibly deem it a horror story. [Especially if you like to judge a book by its cover. BookBitch.] It deals with possession by the essence of a person now dead of the body of another person in the process of passing away. Certainly one of the major themes of literature devoted to horror stories. This is very far from the reality of what is a fascinating book actually devoted to a brilliant treatment of human nature under great stress.

The beginning section covers the deaths of four people of different ages and in different years. There is a potential suffragette attending a meeting in the early part of the twentieth century and killed by a man completely opposed to the concept of women’s rights. Another is a little boy, with another a 16 year old girl. The final individual is a man dying from the effects of dementia.

The next phase of the novel involves those individuals in the process of dying that are possessed by the spirits of the first four. A doctor views the people being “resurrected” by the new life process coincidentally in the same hospital and about the same time. He indicates to the families of those expected to pass away that this situation has occurred before although not very a very common one. It is in this stage of the book that Cacek turns an interesting novel into one that becomes a fascinating study of human nature.

First, how do the previously dead persons react to finding themselves not only alive again, but in a different body than they had. Also, the reactions of the families of those expected to die when finding that their loved one is recovering, but is not the same person that had been brought to the hospital with the expectation of imminent death. And if their relationship is still the same or if previously families, if found have those rights.

The author has successfully written a powerful study of what could happen to all concerned if the postulated situation could ever happen. Human nature is of course, based on normal progression and ending of life at a certain point with no further contact with the decadent. There is no speculation of what happens normally after death as this is not germane to the described events. Very well done.

4/19 Paul Lane

SECOND LIVES by P. D. Cacek. FLAME TREE PRESS; New edition (April 11, 2019). ISBN 978-1787581593. 304p.

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Altman presents an extremely well planned and written novel about a sleeper spy living in the United States on behalf of the regime of North Korea.

The stark difference in ideas and life between the two countries has never been better presented than in this book. Song Sun Young was born in North Korea. She grew up in an environment of repression, semi-starvation and with even the slightest deviation from proscribed activity, punishment by death. In spite of this, Song has tried several times to escape along with her brother to South Korea. The last attempt meets with capture, but instead of executing her the government recognizes her intelligence and initiates a program to prepare her to become a mole; i.e. a sleeper agent in the United States.

Fast forwarding from her insertion into the U.S., Song is married to an American whom she loves and two children with him that are her pride and joy. But after seven years of this happy life she is called by North Korea to start the work she was trained for. Song’s brother has been held over her head with the threat that if she does not do as required he will be killed and she has no choice but to follow orders.

Song is not aware that the CIA knows of her and follows her as she moves forward with her mission for North Korea. Working with the CIA is Dalia Artzi a retired Israeli operative that Altman has used in other novels. The reader follows the counter actions of the CIA through the thinking of Dalia while working with them.

The culmination of the novel is a crisis that may lead to very unforeseen consequences and if you haven’t slept while reading the first part, what is happening will keep your eyelids open even wider. A very well done and well plotted adventure into international politics and conflict between nations.

4/19 Paul Lane

THE KOREAN WOMAN by John Altman. Blackstone Publishing; Unabridged edition (April 9, 2019). ISBN 978-1470826970. 272p.

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Carys Jones has a very unusual profession. She makes her living authenticating rare books for clients like museums, galleries, and wealthy collectors that can afford the high costs of establishing authenticity of the item or items they are interested in.

We meet her at the moment that her largest current customer is committed to an insane asylum. He makes a deal with Carys to authenticate a book and also follow it’s printed clues to a destination. In return he offers her his entire collection of rare books worth millions if she will successfully find the item that the book provides clues for. The veritable offer that cannot be refused sets Carys off on the adventure of a lifetime.

The item being sought is a tomb. Of whom is a find of all time and if excavated could change the course of history, possibly reshape national boundaries, and revamp all modern thought about the historic past. The estimated carbon dating for the writing of the book places it about the middle of the sixth century A.D. The writer is a monk that did live at that time, residing in a section of what is currently Wales.

The path to solving the puzzle delineated by the manuscript lies in a trip to Wales. Carys goes there, finds a romance with a young Welshman who helps her and also some confrontations with the ghost of the Monk that wrote the book.

To remove the book from the possibility of becoming a ghost story Frieswick offers an explanation of the spectral appearances that may be what is happening to Carys. Could be, but the ghost’s appearances does become important to several events depicted. The reader will be able to decide on their own which explanation is valid.

When it develops that the tomb in question is actually in the New World the action moves to the Cape Cod area of the United States. The finale of the novel becomes a bit of a spoiler when it develops into something that while a surprise, doesn’t do justice to the the crafting of the story. It is as if Frieswick found she was at the end of the main great idea and reached out for the first ending available. In spite of this I must indicate that future books by the author will be sought by me with a good deal of anticipation.

4/19 Paul Lane

THE GHOST MANUSCRIPT by Kris Frieswick.  Post Hill Press (April 2, 2019). ISBN 978-1642930245. 432p.

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