AS RED AS BLOOD by Salla Simukka

January 18, 2015

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The Snow White Trilogy
Translated by Owen Witesman

Lumikki’s day gets off to an odd start when she discovers a mass of bloodied money in her school’s darkroom. While she isn’t tempted to take any, she is curious about the story behind the stained bills and soon returns to the darkroom for further investigation. But Lumikki’s curiosity sets a deadly plot in motion and catches the attention of some dangerous men. Men intent on sending a message. Men who will soon discover that Lumikki is standing in their way.

This Finnish teen debut is the first in a projected trilogy. The translation is smooth and the story is overall quite intriguing but Lumikki herself isn’t as fully developed as I would have liked. It’s hard to say at this stage whether this is intentional; my hope is that her story will be fleshed out further in the next two books. That aside, As Red as Blood stands fairly well on its own. There are no real cliffhangers or terribly open plotlines, which is nice considering the translations of books two and three aren’t available just yet.

1/15 Becky LeJeune

AS RED AS BLOOD by Salla Simukka. Skyscape; Reprint edition (August 1, 2014). ISBN: 978-1477847718. 272p.

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WHITE PLAGUE by James Abel

January 16, 2015

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The country’s newest sub is stranded in the Arctic under unforeseen circumstances and Joe Rush finds himself called in to head the rescue mission. The sub reported a fire on board and that’s all the official story will reflect, but there’s much more to the distress call than that. A deadly and as yet unidentified virus has broken out amongst the crew, spreading swiftly and killing many who become infected. As a biowarfare expert, Rush is tasked not only with ensuring the sub itself remains out of enemy hands but in finding out what is infecting the crew. But when things start to go wrong on board the ship, Rush starts to suspect a saboteur amongst the crew.

White Plague kicks off a new series featuring bioweapons expert Joe Rush. The combination military and medical thriller is chock full of action, suspense, and exclamation points. (Seriously, there are lots of them.) Rush is a great lead and the idea of basing a series around a character with a job like his is definitely one I’m on board with 100%.

1/15 Becky LeJeune

WHITE PLAGUE by James Abel. Berkley Hardcover (January 6, 2015). ISBN 978-0425276327. 336p.

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THE DEVIL YOU KNOW by Elisabeth de Mariaffi

January 14, 2015

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Evie Jones is a young reporter in 1993 Toronto, doing more investigating than actual writing. Her latest assignment is for an ongoing story that Evie nicknames “dead-girls weekend section.” She gets bumped up from digging through basement archives for stories about long dead girls to LexisNexis, which intensifies the search.

Evie has never really recovered from her best friend’s kidnapping and murder when they were eleven years old, and the suspect, Robert Cameron, was never caught. With the digital age upon her, Evie starts digging into her friend’s case as she tries to deal with a growing suspicion that someone is stalking her, but it could also be a figment of her imagination.

Paranoia is the main theme as the suspense slowly builds in this literary thriller, but reaches a frightening climax as Evie, who apparently has never seen a horror movie, goes off alone into the basement of a possible suspect’s hunting cabin deep in the woods. De Mariaffi was long-listed for the Giller Prize for How To Get Along With Women, a collection of short stories, but this is her first novel.

Copyright ©2015 Booklist, a division of the American Library Association.

1/15 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW by Elisabeth de Mariaffi. Touchstone (January 13, 2015). ISBN 978-1476779089. 320p.

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COLD COLD HEART by Tami Hoag

January 13, 2015

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Tami Hoag has been writing nail biting thrillers for years, but takes a different turn here, while fans will recognize some series characters in minor roles. While the suspense is high, the stakes are even higher as Hoag delves into traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dana Nolan is a TV reporter who is kidnapped and tortured by a serial killer, Doc Holiday – until she kills him. She suffers a traumatic brain injury in addition to a host of other injuries, and her physical recovery takes close to a year, but her psychological recovery will take much longer. The news reporter is now the news story, and she considers herself as “Before Dana” and “After Dana,” as if she were two different people.

Her family works hard to help her learn to live a more independent life, but she soon realizes that she needs goals in order to move ahead. She starts by trying to re-learn her own life, reading her old journal from high school, and slowly her memories start coming back. The summer before college, her best friend Casey disappeared and was never heard from again, and as Dana looks at her own life, she also looks at Casey’s life.

Casey’s old boyfriend, who was always under a cloud of suspicion surrounding Casey’s disappearance, is back in town, now a veteran and suffering from PTSD and a brain injury. Seven years have passed, and as these two damaged people try to find ways to live a normal life under the most difficult of circumstances, the old mystery gives them focus – he to prove his innocence, and she to find out what happened to her friend.

This unusual look at the serial killer genre is a most welcome exploration of traumatic brain injury and what it is like to be a survivor.

Copyright ©2015 Booklist, a division of the American Library Association.

1/15 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

COLD COLD HEART by Tami Hoag. Dutton Adult (January 13, 2015). ISBN 978-0525954545. 3684p.

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THE THIRD TARGET by Joel C. Rosenberg

January 11, 2015

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Rosenberg ties in a brilliant novel of conflict and terror in the Middle East with a story about two crusading foreign correspondents. These are men that live to get that story and will do anything to be first on the scene, scooping the competition and delivering the news as quickly as possible to the readers of the services they work for.

The first reporter we meet is A. B. Collins, who had been granted an interview with the King of Jordan forty years previously. He is a reporter working for the Associated Press and goes to the place where the King has agreed to meet him. Events ensue preventing the meeting but allowing A. B. a major scoop.

In the next segment, J.B. Collins, grandson of A.B. and a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, manages a meeting with a jailed officer of ISIS and learns of their plan to launch an attack on a third country. The terrorist’s insinuation is that ISIS has obtained weapons of mass destruction, quite possibly poison gas which they will use in their attack on the country they have in mind.

Action accelerates, J.B. meets and begins a love affair with a beautiful agent of the Israeli Mossad. He then manages to arrange a meeting with the actual head of ISIS held in a Jordanian prison and is advised that the terror group does have poison gas. In a well executed escape from the prison by the Terrorists, J.B. is forced to view the killing by the gas of several members of the prison’s authorities.

Next on J.B.’s list of events is to witness and write about a high level meeting in Jordan of the U.S. president, the King of Jordan, the prime minister of Israel and the head of the Palestinian people living next to Israel. The events of the meeting’s organization and what happens there are realistically described by Rosenberg, who in several prior books, has proven himself a master of events that took place and are taking place in the volatile Middle East.

The ending is a well executed cliff hanger that is obviously page one of the next book, in what should be more than one, possibly more novels utilizing the author’s prodigious knowledge of what is really happening in the Middle East.

1/15 Paul Lane

THE THIRD TARGET by Joel C. Rosenberg. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. (January 6, 2015). ISBN: 978-1414336275. 448p.

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GAME by Barry Lyga

January 5, 2015

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The Sequel to I Hunt Killers

Things haven’t gotten any easier for Jazz Dent in the wake of his participation in the hunt for the Impressionist. While that killer is safely behind bars, Billy Dent has managed to escape and Jazz is almost certain he holds some responsibility.

But Jazz doesn’t have time to worry about Billy at this point. A new killer is on the move in New York City and the police there have approached Jazz for help. It seems his work in solving Lobo’s Nod’s recent case has gained some attention and has finally made the authorities admit that Jazz’s particular upbringing could be useful in hunting down serial killers.

This second in the Jasper Dent series is an excellent follow up to I Hunt Killers. It picks up just months after the end of its predecessor, immediately addressing all of the questions that one left in its wake. Of course by the end there’s a whole slew of new questions. (And it’s a cliffhanger of an ending if ever there was one.)

This time around Jazz is even more concerned about his potential in following in his dad’s footsteps – in spite of all of his efforts – and that’s thanks mostly to the fact that Billy is once again out on the streets. Jazz is plagued by his father’s voice both figuratively and ultimately literally.

This second installment also brings Jazz’s friends, Howie and Connie, even further into the mix. Howie is stuck in Lobo’s Nod helping with Jazz’s crazy grandmother and meeting his friend’s long lost aunt for the first time. Connie, on the other hand, tries to follow Jazz to NYC and lands in hot water with her parents. Their involvement with Jazz not only leads to their discovering some big news about their friend but also places them both in potentially big danger.

1/15 Becky LeJeune

GAME by Barry Lyga. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition (June 17, 2014). ISBN: 978-0316125857. 544p.

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I HUNT KILLERS by Barry Lyga

January 4, 2015

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Jasper “Jazz” Dent wants nothing more than to be an ordinary teen. But that’s kind of impossible when you’re the son of William Cornelius Dent, probably THE most notorious serial killer. From the very start, Billy raised Jazz to think and plan like a killer.

Fortunately for Jazz, Billy was finally caught and has since been serving so many consecutive life sentences that he’ll never see the light of day.

But that doesn’t mean Jazz is free of him. The teen spends much of his time terrified that he might actually be just like his father. So when a killer strikes in Jazz’s tiny hometown of Lobo’s Nod, he makes it his mission to help solve the crime by putting his particular skills and knowledge to work.

Barry Lyga’s Jasper Dent series is like a teen mashup of Dexter and Criminal Minds. Of course unlike Dexter, Jazz isn’t actually a sociopath. At least he hopes not.

It might seem strange to have a teen detective with so much direct access to the police and the crime scene (which is the case with this series) but I think Lyga does a great job setting the story up in a way that is almost believable. Anything that stretches the imagination too far is forgivable in my opinion because I Hunt Killers is just that much of a fun read.

I Hunt Killers should most definitely come with a warning. Anyone who thinks a book about serial killers might be less dark or graphic simply because it’s meant for a teen audience would be very mistaken in this case; I Hunt Killers is quite dark indeed.

1/15 Becky LeJeune

I HUNT KILLERS by Barry Lyga. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition (April 2, 2013). ISBN: 978-0316125833. 384p.

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GRAY MOUNTAIN by John Grisham

January 2, 2015

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I used to love John Grisham. The Firm, A Time to Kill, The Pelican Brief were all favorites. I also loved the non-legal books like Playing for Pizza, Calico Joe and A Painted House. But somewhere along the way, I lost patience with the legal thrillers, especially when the main characters, generally well educated lawyers, started doing incredibly stupid stuff. I stopped reading them, tried again with The Litigators because my library patrons raved about it, but again found the main character too stupid to live. I gave up. Then came Gray Mountain.

I heard it may be the first book of a series, and I liked the environmental angle so I picked it up and read it in a day (okay, I was on vacation.) I loved it. Welcome back to my reading circle, Mr. Grisham.

The story revolves around Samantha Kofer, a Columbia Law School grad with a great six-figure job for one of the behemoth law firms on Wall Street. And then there was Lehman Brothers and the financial crisis and all those big law firms started cutting and cutting. Samantha got a good deal – she could take a one year furlough, do some good work pro bono, keep her medical benefits and maybe, just maybe, after the year is up she might get her job back.

The pro bono jobs were going fast; Samantha received nine rejection letters in her first day of applying. Until she heard from the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic in Brady, Virginia, a small town in the Appalachia’s. And so she moved to Virginia, at least temporarily, to work at the all girl clinic.

For the first time, Samantha likes her work and feels useful. She actually gets to help people and they appreciate her help. Until her first black lung case – a huge problem with all the mining in Appalachia. When she finds evidence that the coal company and their lawyers hid evidence, people start dying.

I learned a lot about coal mining today and what the miners go through, none of it good. I really liked these characters and the setting, and the stupidity was left to minor characters, a much welcome change. I would love to read more about Samantha and her life in Brady and hope the rumors about a series come to pass.

1/15 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

GRAY MOUNTAIN by John Grisham. Doubleday; First Edition edition (October 21, 2014). ISBN 978-0385537148. 384p.

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THE BAKER STREET LETTERS by Michael Robertson

December 22, 2014

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Reggie Heath got a great deal on his new office lease, but if he’d read the paperwork he’d have understood why. It’s his brother who points it out to him – a clause that stipulates that they, the holders of the new lease at 221 Baker Street, are responsible for handling correspondence addressed to a certain famed and fictional detective.

When Reggie’s brother Nigel becomes overly interested in one of the letters he hightails to America to track down the letter’s writer. But Reggie only realizes his brother is gone after discovering a dead body in his office. Reggie is almost certain there must be a connection and is forced to follow his brother to Los Angeles where they both find themselves in the midst of a decades-old mystery.

This first in Robertson’s series is quite fun! It’s a light mystery paying a bit of homage to Holmes while not being overly focused on Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation. Rather the premise is that Reggie and Nigel – two trained lawyers – are dragged into a mystery thanks to the address alone. (Which means you don’t have to be a Sherlock Holmes aficionado to enjoy this one.)

The Baker Street Letters is the first in the series. To date there are three additional titles that follow.

12/14 Becky LeJeune

THE BAKER STREET LETTERS by Michael Robertson. Minotaur Books; Reprint edition (February 1, 2011). ISBN: 978-0312650643. 288p.

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BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF LOCKED-ROOM MYSTERIES, ed. Otto Penzler

December 15, 2014

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If I lived up north, I’d keep this book for those days that I was snowed in. Since I’m in Florida, I would keep it with my hurricane supplies except hurricane season just ended and I couldn’t wait until June to read this. It is a big door stopper of a book, close to a thousand pages, and very much worth the time it takes to read it all.

I fell in love with locked-room mysteries when I was a kid and tearing my way through Agatha Christie – And Then There Were None is a splendid example.  It reawakened when I read Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane, and then again in college when I took a class on Noir/Hard-Boiled Fiction. We started with classics like The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, probably the earliest locked-room mystery, published in 1868, then to short stories in Black Mask magazine, and moved forward only to about the 1960s, where my professor believe noir to have ended. I tried hard to abuse him of that notion, and perhaps made some headway with books from publishers like Akashic Books and their series of city noir (Baltimore Noir, Brooklyn Noir, Tel Aviv Noir, etc.,) Bleak House Books, and of course, Hard Case Crime.

If you’re a fan of locked-room mysteries, do yourself a favor and pick up this tome. Included are such gems are Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” G.K. Chesterton, “The Invisible Man,” Dashiell Hammett, “Mike, Alec and Rufus” (“Tom, Dick, Or Harry,”) Stephen Barr, “The Locked Room to End Locked Rooms,” Bill Pronzini, “Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade?,” Erle Stanley Gardner, “The Bird in the Hand,” Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Poisoned Dow ’08” and many, many more.

This is an exceptional collection that Penzler has pulled together, and I highly recommend it to mystery fans.

12/14 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF LOCKED-ROOM MYSTERIES, ed. Otto Penzler. Vintage (October 28, 2014). ISBN 978-0307743961. 960p.

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