Friday, July 24, 2026
In Reference to Murder: Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Death of a Busybody
In Reference to Murder: Mystery Melange
Review: Dirty Little Town: A River City Novel by Frank Zafiro
When I recently read and reviewed Frank
Zafiro’s cozy mystery novellas (Hallmarks
of the Job, Shades
of the Job), I was reminded that I was way behind in my reading of
his police procedural River City series.
I knew I was behind. I had no idea how far behind I was. Dirty Little
Town: A River City Novel is the seventh book in the series and was
released back in November 2021.
The read opens in August 2003 and a bit after
the events in Place
of Wrath and Tears. Officer Katie Macleod has been through some
things. In the here and now, she’s getting a provisional promotion to detective
and being assigned to assist Detective Browning on his hunt for a serial
killer. No pay bump due to contract issues, and it leaves patrol shorthanded
due to ongoing staffing issues due to budget and contract issues, but it could
give the department some positive PR at a time when that is very much needed.
It also gives her a chance to shine. She’s been an officer for twelve years.
But being a detective is like starting all over again.
As is the department as a whole because
the mayor has installed a new chief of police. Chief of Police Richard Sannael
has arrived and Captain Robert Saylor is way less than impressed. It does not
help that Saylor had been the acting Police Chief after being appointed to the
position by the previous mayor.
The recent election went way different
than planned or expected, and the new mayor has been a micromanager and
problematic. This new chief selected by the mayor seems to be focused on
casting blame and making changes that will make things worse and sacrifice
loyal officers to do it. He is a political animal and maybe something worse.
These are just two of a number of
storylines at work in Dirty Little Town: A River City Novel. I
have long said that if you loved the work of Ed McBain, the tv shows Hill
Street Blues, Southland, Line of Duty, Blue Lights,
and other authors and shows, you will love this series. These books detail
police work and the men and women who do the job. It showcases them off shift just
as much and how their jobs affect their personal lives.
This series has evolving and ageing
characters, like any really good series, and that always results in good
reading. Such is the case here. As always with any good series, start at the
beginning and work your way forward. In this case begin with Under a Raging Moon.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4b80yye
According to Amazon, I picked this up
back in November 2021. I suspect it was by funds in my Amazon Associate account,
but I do not know that for sure.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2026
Thursday, July 23, 2026
Jerry's House of Everything: SUSPENSE: THE BLACK CURTAIN (NOVEMBER 30, 1944)
Thursday Treats: 7/23/2026
Some reading opportunities of interest this week.
SMFS
list member Mia Dalia announced that her short story, B Minor, was published
online at The Sunlight Press. You can read it for free here.
SMFS
list member James Patrick Focarile
announced that his short story, What Whiskey Won’t Cure, was published online
at The Saturday Evening Post. You can read it for free here.
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Black
Cat Weekly #255 is out and includes short stories by SMFS
list members N. M. Cedeño (Mirror Life
Meltdown), Stacy Woodson (She Loves You), and others. You can pick up the
latest issue here.
SMFS
list member James
W. Ziskin announced that his latest novel, The
Prank, comes out on the 28th. “Set in Christmas 1968, a
thirteen-year-old sociopath befriends his teacher, unaware she loved the man
his prank accidentally killed.” Published by Level
Best-Historia, the read is available in both digital
and print formats at Amazon and other
vendors.
Coming early next month. and edited by SMFS list members, Editors Gigi Pandian and Tom Mead, All the Crime in the World: Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Puzzles. According to the synopsis, the anthology will feature 14 short stories by Victor Bonini, James Scott Byrnside, Shelly Dickson Carr, S.A. Cosby, Anne van Doorn, Martin Edwards, Sulari Gentill, Paul Halter, Christopher Huang, Vaseem Khan, Josh Pachter (The Allegory of the Five Senses), Masaya Yamaguchi, Ovidia Yu, and a brand-new collaboration from the editors. It is currently available for preorder at the publisher, Crippen and Landru.
And,
finally, for something completely different, the fantasy novel, Immortalized
Memories of the Omniverse: Rise of the Draconic Hero, by Alex Rosen is now out. Epic Fantasy and more are present
in this read. I am reading more than one book right now, always a dangerous
practice on my part, and this is one of them. I am not one for fantasy these
days, but I am enjoying it. Sent to me by the publisher, you can get it at Amazon or many other vendors.
Until next time….
Kevin R. Tipple ©2026
Wednesday, July 22, 2026
In Reference to Murder: Media Murder for Monday
Jerry's House of Everything: SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: ICU
Bitter Tea and Mystery: Short Story Wednesday: "Kill Now—Pay Later" by Rex Stout
Short Story Wednesday Review: The Last Laugh by Robert Jakues (Thriller Magazine: June 2026)
The police procedural short story, The
Last Laugh, by Robert Jakues appears in the Thriller Magazine: June 2026
issue and it is a very good tale. The story opens with Detective opens with Detective
Pilsudski being awakened by Sergeant Jack Couch calling him at home long before
dawn. Pilsudski is the weekend on call Homicide Detective in South Central Los
Angeles. There is a body and he is needed. Before long he meets his partner
Detective Jim Hampton at their 77th street station house. Together, they head to
the scene.
It is mid-winter and the chilly night air
off the Pacific certainly isn’t warming anything or anyone on the deserted
streets.
The dead man is sprawled out on the
sidewalk mid-block on Dalton Avenue. He’s been shot in the back of the head. When
the body is rolled on its side by the coroner investigator, he found an open
black wallet. Inside, the driver’s license identifies the dead man as Gaylord Pettis.
Now it is up to Detective Pilsudski and Hampton to determine who killed Mr.
Gaylord Pettis and why in this very good short story by Robert Jakues.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4futRwr
My digital reading copy came by way of
my ninety-day free Kindle Unlimited trial.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2026
Tuesday, July 21, 2026
Publishing ... and Other Forms of Insanity: Science Fiction and Fantasy Journals - Paying markets
Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett
Monday, July 20, 2026
Beneath the Stains of Time: A Murder is Announced (1950) by Agatha Christie
Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Deadly Odds 9.0 by Allen Wyler
Allen Wyler
is a retired neurosurgeon who lives in Seattle. He’s taken up writing thrillers
as a second career, first publishing seven medical thrillers and then using the
technology-rich environment of Seattle as the basis for the Deadly Odds series
about a reformed computer hacker named Arnold Gold. Three titles in the series
have been finalists for Best Thriller awards, www.bestthrillers.com. The ninth book Deadly
Odds 9.0 was released in mid-July.
Gold has
established a strong reputation as a trusted IT security specialist for the
most sensitive of systems. He and his small team are booked for weeks to come,
often for security testing of crucial networks and data centers. The most
challenging of this kind of testing is to determine how easy the network in
question is to break into, both digitally and physically, and to formulate
recommendations for strengthening the system’s defenses. In the background the
artificial intelligence network Gold developed privately is always working,
monitoring financial markets and assessing political threats.
A terrorist
cell Gold helped take down years ago has revitalized. Its members have learned
about Gold’s powerful AI tool and they are determined to acquire it as well as take
revenge against Gold himself. Gold juggles the workload of his company to
maintain its public status while collecting data on the terrorist organization
to hand off to law enforcement and bolstering his AI network against theft. The
latter includes dismantling his back-up network in Hawaii and shipping it to
Seattle for establishment in a safe location.
A fast-moving
techno-thriller with geopolitical overtones. The story is replete with
technological references, as should be expected, with concise explanations of
more obscure aspects that are worked smoothly into the narrative flow. The
occasional references to character ethnicity, although within the context of
terrorism, can be jarring. Readers who enjoy political thrillers or
technology-driven plots will want to consider this series for their reading
lists. In particular fans of the Monkeewrench novels, 11 books about another
group of technology gurus set in Minneapolis by P. J. Tracy, will want to look
at these stories.
·
Publisher: Stairway Press
·
Publication date: July 14, 2026
·
Language: English
·
Print length: 264 pages
·
ISBN-10: 1960405713
·
ISBN-13: 978-1960405715
Amazon
Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4fnS5bF
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2026
Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.
Sunday, July 19, 2026
Little Big Crimes: The Briar Patch, by Tom Milani
Favorite Books: January to June 2026
I wasn’t really planning to compile this, but then Lesa Holstine did her list. So, I decided she could not have all the fun and came up with my own list. As I have said more than once, I am a big fan of police procedurals. So, my list heavily features those books and police procedural adjacent ones. We don’t need no stinking romance! My list below begins in January and features eight reads that I very much enjoyed.
Inside
Man: A Head Cases Novel by John McMahon
is the very enjoyable sequel to Head
Cases. As always in any good series, it is best to
have read the first book before
the sequel. Agent Gardner Camden leads an FBI unit named PAR. The Patterns and
Recognition team exists to find peculiarities in cases that have stalled or
gone cold. Each member of the team brings a unique set of skills. Their current
case is a fraud one out of Florida. You can read the rest of my January review here.
It is
October as Bitter Fall: A Detective Justice Novel by
Bruce Robert Coffin begins. It is just after midnight on a desolate stretch of
Maine roadway. For Maine State Police Detectives Brock Justice and Chloe
Wright, what was already a long day is about to get way longer. Homicide
Detectives from the Major Crimes Unit North out of the Troop E barracks in
Bangor are not called out to investigate fatal motor vehicle accidents. They
were told to make the ninety-minute drive, one way, not simply because Summer
Randall is dead in the road. The drunk driver did not kill her though there is
no doubt that the vehicle hit her. The stab wound in her stomach probably did
the deed. You can read the rest of my review here.
The
third book of
the police procedural series that began with The Face of Greed delivers in every possible way
for the reader. Illusion of Truth: A Novel begins a few
months after River of Lies and starts with a bang. The
call out to a local church was a ploy to get police officers to respond. For
the several officers that responded to the scene, the place was anything but
safe. Within minutes of their arrival, two separate improvised explosive
devices are detonated. You can read the rest of my review here.
Marybeth
Pickett always knew that being the wife of a Wyoming Game Warden meant the
worst could happen at any time. She knows from the start of The
Crossroads: A Joe Pickett Novel that it has almost happened. At
least her husband is still alive, if only by a thread. In one of the most
intense books I have read this year, Joe fights for life as his daughters work
to figure out who ambushed their dad. You can read the rest of my review here.
Death
is something the retired DC Metropolitan Police Department Detective is very
familiar with, professionally and personally. Graham Sanderson has quit working
homicides in Washington, DC, and moved into his dad’s house in upstate New
York. He’s there to help his younger brother, Tommy. A widower who misses his
wife tremendously, he’s coping, but not well. With no hobbies and the memories
of a lifetime of police work, he has far too much time on his hands to think
and brood. Soon, he is helping the very small and short-staffed local police
department hunt down a killer in From the Dust: A Novel by David
Swinson. You can read the rest of my review here.
Grief
over losing a spouse also is a major part of my next favorite. These days,
there are few books that
just grab me and don’t let go. Seldom Seen Road: Burnt River
Mysteries by John Degen is one of those books. Mark Roth is living
in an isolated cabin on the north shore of Lake Huron. Getting drawn into
investigating a murder was never planned. But, it happens. You can read more of
my review here.
So, there you have it. I easily could have added a dozen more. The goal was to not bury you in books. Though, come to think of it, if the series reads are new to you, and you follow my advice to read the prior ones before you get to these, I probably did bury you in books.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2026
Saturday, July 18, 2026
KRL Update
Up on KRL this week reviews and giveaways of 2 fun cozy mysteries perfect for your summer reading-"The Chowder House Murder" A Downeast Maine Mystery by Lee Hollis, & "A Cyclist’s Guide to Poppies and Predicaments" by Ann Claire https://kingsriverlife.com/07/18/pair-of-cycling-food-cozies-for-summer-reading/
SleuthSayers: The Washed and the Unwashed (Once Again)
Scott's Take: Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan
Long Live Evil
by Sarah Rees Brennan is a book I would not have gotten except for the fact
that when I was scrolling through Libby the cover made me take a look at it.
There was a blurb comment attributed to Leigh Bardugo that she liked it. I like
Leigh Bardugo’s books, so I picked it up.
This first book in the Time of Iron series is a strange read
with a lot of metafictional elements making fun of adult fantasy novels. In
this novel, a woman who is dying of cancer is given a second chance at life by
going into a book series she has somewhat read. Without spoiling the read,
there is a way for her to come back to the real world and be well, if she escapes
into the fictional series and does what she had to do. This is not explained in
the book synopsis.
So, she goes into the fictional world and ends up
taking over the body of a villain that is going to be executed. She thinks that
by paying the role of a villain, and using her knowledge of the series, she can
find a way for the bad folks or, at least the bad woman she now inhabits, can
win. This is also not really explained well in the book synopsis. I think the
book synopsis does a bad job of explaining the book, but a good job of
describing elements of the book.
There is humor, action, adult sexual content,
violence, and more, as this book weaves through multiple perspectives until its
abrupt end. This is a read that I think you will enjoy more if you have read a
lot of these kind of fantasy novels. There are jokes that one character makes
that another does not like, such as calling his horse, Google Maps, since it
never gets lost.
It gets weird since it’s a book about someone
becoming part of another book, which is changing the original plot line of the
book that the real person got inserted into, which also gets even weirder
because of spoiler reasons. Having a normal person interacting with fictional archetype
people is a big part of the fun. The next book, All
Hail Chaos, is already out and I have put a hold on it through
Libby.
Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/432zZpW
As mentioned, my reading copy was a digital read
through the Libby App and the Dallas Public Library System.
Scott A. Tipple © 2026
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