Crime Watch: Review: WONDER VALLEY by Ivy Pochoda

Crime Watch: Review: WONDER VALLEY: WONDER VALLEY by Ivy Pochoda (Indigo Press, 2018) Reviewed by Craig Sisterson When a teenager runs away from his father’s mysterious c...

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: This Is What Happened by Mick Herron

Mick Herron is a talented author of crime fiction that is routinely shortlisted for major awards. His books about a group of failed MI-5 agents are utterly brilliant in concept and execution. This Is What Happened (Soho Crime, 2018) is a stand-alone spy novel with several surprises along the way.

Maggie Barnes is 26 years old, living alone in London in a sublet room and working a mediocre job in a large corporate mail room. Both parents are gone, her only sibling is a sister to whom she hasn’t spoken for years. Few friends and not many interests, she could disappear and no one would notice. She often treats herself at a coffee shop on the way home from work, where she’s approached one day by a stranger who engages her in conversation. Too lonely to question this man’s attention and motives, she comes to rely on meeting him. Eventually this stranger explains he’s from MI-5 and that the company she works for is under surveillance for its foreign connections. He needs someone to install a program on their computer network so MI-5 can monitor the company’s activities.

Naïve Maggie does not question anything this complete stranger tells her. He coaches her for weeks on how to install the program, which computer to use, how to escape detection by the security guards, etc. On the night she is to install the system, she hides in a ladies’ room until midnight, when she sneaks up several flights of stairs to the executive offices and successfully inserts the flash drive she’s been given in a senior manager’s computer and turns the computer on. En route downstairs, however, she runs into one of the security guards who knows she shouldn’t be in the building at that hour.

From that point on, the story takes so many twists and turns, the reader might reasonably feel the onset of whiplash. Unexpectedly dark, loaded with suspense, it’s easy to quickly become invested in Maggie and her well-being, which is seriously in doubt at several points in the story.

Publishers Weekly and Booklist starred reviews.

·         Hardcover: 272 pages

·         Publisher: Soho Crime (January 30, 2018)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1616958618

·         ISBN-13: 978-1616958619

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Bad to the Bones by Rett MacPherson

I was delighted to learn that Torie O’Shea has reappeared after a long hiatus. Rett MacPherson published 11 mysteries between 1997 and 2008, the most in any series I know of that uses genealogy as its theme. Torie lives in fictional New Kassel, Missouri, a small town on the Mississippi River about an hour south of St. Louis. Like many cities that sprang up along a river, New Kassel used its historic past to develop a thriving tourism industry. Torie is a docent in a local museum, giving tours of a restored mansion and researching family histories. And, since these books were written before Ancestry and other online research sites existed, she conducts her genealogy the old-fashioned way, by reading census records and visiting courthouses and checking ship passenger lists.

Bad to the Bones (Word Posse, 2018) brings Torie back, older, chunkier, with her children more or less grown. Torie is happy that New Kassel is still thriving but she is bored with life. In addition, her doctor told her she needs to lose 30 pounds, and the idea that she has to give up sweets is more than she can bear. Why can’t she eat pie twice a day every day? So unfair!

Torie rarely is asked to assemble a family tree these days, as most folks are using the online sites. So when the local Catholic church asks her to compile birth, marriage, and death records and cross-reference them against the cemetery inventory, Torie jumps at the task. While taking a break one day, she notices a coyote who seems to be interested in a particular spot on church grounds. Torie wonders what’s there and finds a bone that she is sure is human. She calls the police, and they unearth a recent skeleton; a few yards away they discover several sets of older bones. The presence of Civil War uniform buttons and belt buckles places the age of the older remains, but the newer set is harder to pin down.

Torie throws herself into the mystery of identifying the bones, older and newer. While genealogy does play a part, local and state history during the Civil War is more prominent. This latest story in the series has all of the same characters from the earlier books, a little older, but the dialog is similar to the previous books and the characters relate to each other in the same way. Torie uses her research skills to identify key clues, despite being warned away by the police, as usual, and ends up nearly getting killed along with her son and their newly acquired bear-sized dog. A satisfying read and a welcome return of a favorite series.

·         Paperback: 234 pages

·         Publisher: Word Posse (May 16, 2018)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1944089071

·         ISBN-13: 978-1944089078

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Fogland Point by Doug Burgess

An original mystery with an acute sense of place and plenty of wry humor, Fogland Point by Doug Burgess (Poisoned Pen Press, 2018) incorporates small town quirks, family loyalties, gender politics, and New England coastal history into a highly readable book.

David Hazard returns to his hometown on a peninsula jutting out from the edge of Rhode Island, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. (It used to be part of Massachusetts but Massachusetts didn’t want it.) He’s responding to a panicky telephone call from his grandmother that references blood everywhere and a body. She doesn’t pick up his return call and the friends that look out for her aren’t answering their telephones either. When he arrives, typical of those afflicted with Alzheimer’s, his grandmother has no recollection of her message or blood or a body.

The next-door neighbor who serves as his grandmother’s unofficial guardian hasn’t brought the evening meal yet so David checks on her to find her dead on her kitchen floor, the apparent victim of a broken shelf of cookware and a cast-iron skillet to the head. He calls the police and the wheels of bureaucracy begin to turn.

With her primary caretaker gone, David agrees to stay with his grandmother for a while until something else can be worked out. The local law enforcement become suspicious of the neighbor’s cause of death and begin to ask questions. David’s grandmother claims to have seen a vehicle belonging to a new town resident outside at the appropriate time but her memory is so unreliable no one is sure what she actually did see.

Then another death occurs, this one unquestionably a homicide, and a full-fledged investigation into events, both past and present begin.

Among the cast of decidedly eccentric characters, my favorite is the kitchen poltergeist who washes dishes and leaves sandwiches on the table. At one point David says he’d pay the poltergeist for its work if he could figure out how. Not a run-of-the-mill story by any standard – highly recommended.

Publishers Weekly starred review.

·         Hardcover: 288 pages

·         Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press; 1st edition (August 21, 2018)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1464210225

·         ISBN-13: 978-1464210228

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Lesa's Book Critiques: Live and Let Chai by Bree Baker

Lesa's Book Critiques: Live and Let Chai by Bree Baker

Buried Under Books: Book Review: The Storm Over Paris by William Ian Grubman

Buried Under Books: Book Review: The Storm Over Paris by William Ian Grubman

Crime Watch: Review: ONE FOR ANOTHER by Andrea Jacka

Crime Watch: Review: ONE FOR ANOTHER: ONE FOR ANOTHER by Andrea Jacka (2018) Reviewed by Karen Chisholm Laudanum. Irish whiskey. The tried and true escape routes of bordell...

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Wrecked by Joe Ide

Wrecked by Joe Ide (Mulholland Books, 2018) is the third book in the private investigator series featuring Isaiah Quintabe, known as IQ to his friends. I am just now getting around to reading these books and I understand why everyone raves about them. Early in the book IQ is bemoaning his lack of social connections, and it is more than interest in the case that causes him to accept the request of Grace Monarova, a young artist, to look for her mother who vanished 10 years earlier. He quickly learns that a dangerous paramilitary crew who committed some of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib is also looking for Grace’s mother, because she holds incriminating photos of them. These men are violent and amoral and will kill anyone at any time for any reason at all. The descriptions of their interrogations are sickening to read. It appears to be typical of Ide’s sense of humor to bring this psychotic group to The Burning Man arts festival in Nevada.

There are subplots aplenty, almost too many to keep track of. Dodson, IQ’s sidekick, is now his partner and wants to regularize the firm, collect past due accounts, set up a website, and establish a social media presence. IQ who accepts badly knitted Christmas sweaters as payment for services, is not on board with this approach, and their conversations on this subject are hilarious. Then there’s the creepy knife designer who is in danger of eviction from his store. He decides the only way out is to blackmail Dodson and IQ into stealing a drug kingpin’s bankroll on his behalf, which goes about as well as the reader has come to expect.

The characters are fresh and lively, down to the bickering middle schoolers IQ hires for a small surveillance task. IQ in particular is a likable individual, with his formidable brain, his MacGyver tendency to improvise weapons, and his total lack of business acumen. The dialog veers between snickeringly comic and deadly vicious, often with little transition. The action is relentless in its pacing, making for an exhausting but enjoyable read. Highly recommended.

Booklist starred review. One of CrimeReads Best Books of the Year.

·         Hardcover: 352 pages

·         Publisher: Mulholland Books (October 9, 2018)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 9780316509510

·         ISBN-13: 978-0316509510

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Breakers by Marcia Muller

Marcia Muller released her 35^th book about Sharon McCone last year. Sharon is one of the earliest contemporary female private investigators I could find. Of course there was Miss Silver who first appeared in the late 1920s and Honey West, who was a caricature of a PI in the 1960s. But as far as modern realistic attempts to portray a woman earning a living as a private detective, the first seems to have been Cordelia Gray, introduced by P.D. James in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman in 1972. Then came Sharon’s appearance five years later in 1977, followed by Delilah West in 1980 and Maggie Elliot in 1981. The iconic V.I. Warshawski and Kinsey Milhone both saw the light of day in 1982. Shortly afterwards the floodgates opened and readers had any number of women PIs to choose from, including taxi-driving Carlotta Carlyle and bartending Kat Colorado. Sadly enough, of the early arrivals only V.I. and Sharon are still around.

I found this series soon after it began and read each new entry with excitement. I was especially pleased to acquire the short story collections issued by Crippen and Landru. As reading options proliferated, I found it was harder to keep up with Sharon and her friends and, when she became obsessed with flying, I didn’t want to. The books during her flying phase read more like flight manuals than mysteries. Fortunately the emphasis on flying has all but disappeared but I still think I’ve missed a few of the later books because of that.

Sharon continues to operate her successful investigative agency in #35, entitled The Breakers (Grand Central, 2018). Her former neighbors, on vacation out of the country, have asked for help in locating their daughter. Michelle Curley used to feed her cats when Sharon lived next door to them, so Sharon is concerned to hear that Michelle hasn’t called her parents or responded to their phone messages in nearly a week. Michelle has become a house flipper, buying rundown properties and renovating them herself. Her current project is in a questionable neighborhood, known as The Breakers. While it was an upper crust locale at one point in San Francisco’s history, it isn’t now, and its denizens do not inspire trust. Sharon can easily believe that Michelle has run afoul of one of them but does not want to tell her parents that. While Sharon searches for a clue, Michelle’s parents suddenly stop responding to her calls, and the hotel where they are staying is evasive. Sharon is startled to find herself investigating multiple disappearances. In addition, crises within her family and her tight circle of friends demand her attention.

While the plot is competent and there are surprises at the end, what particularly intrigues me about this book, released 42 years after the first one, is the continuity in characterization. Sharon has a number of relatives and many friends, most of whom have been in every book. There may be as many as a dozen supporting characters in this series, yet I did not notice a single inconsistency between the behavior of the supporting cast, compared to earlier books. I don’t know how an author can maintain multiple threads over a significant duration like that, yet Muller does it. Intriguing! Those familiar with the series will not want to miss this one.

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Light It Up by Nick Petrie

Light It Up by Nick Petrie (Putnam, 2018) is the third book in the Peter Ash contemporary thriller series. Ash is a veteran of the Middle East conflicts, dealing with painful PTSD-induced claustrophobia. In this outing he is rebuilding hiking trails in Oregon, which allows him to stay outdors. One of the volunteers on the project is a Vietnam veteran named Henry. After a few months of working together, Henry asks Ash to help him out. Henry’s daughter has started a security business in Denver to protect deliveries of legal cannabis. This is a cash-only industry, leaving it especially vulnerable to robbery. Two weeks previously a shipment vanished, the cannabis, money, driver, vehicle, and security guards gone without a trace. While Henry’s daughter regroups, Henry and Ash, with a couple of other ex-veterans, will ensure the next delivery goes as planned.

Of course it doesn’t. The delivery truck is hijacked on the side of a mountain in a neatly arranged scheme that leaves Ash slack-jawed in admiration, when he isn’t trying to figure out how to escape. The hijackers, who have a considerable arsenal and don’t mind using it, seriously hurt Henry and kill one of the other guards. Nonetheless, Ash manages to extricate himself and Henry in a savage dogfight that left me wondering what could possibly happen in the remainder of the book to top it.

Back in Denver the police are very interested in Ash’s lethal escape methods, while Ash is very interested in finding out why this particular security firm has been targeted and in gaining revenge for his fallen comrades.

Some of the characters are a bit predictable: flawed protagonist and the psychopath who manages to fool most people most of the time, for instance. However, Ash is described as having the thoughtful eyes of a werewolf a week before the change, which is certainly not routine. The dishonorably discharged Marine, who is more or less blackmailed into supporting the crime boss, is a new one, though, and more sympathetic than he’s probably meant to be. Ash’s love interest is a fine twist on the traditional. June is self-sufficient and unafraid to let Ash know she wants him in her life, but on her terms. And since she carries pepper spray and a small knife with her, when she is captured by the psychopath, she doesn’t need to wait for someone to rescue her, thankyouverymuch. I really like this character.

A fascinating view into the world of legal cannabis growers and an excellent addition to the thriller genre. A galloping good story.

·         Hardcover: 400 pages

·         Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons (January 16, 2018)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0399575634

·         ISBN-13: 978-0399575631

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: What You Want to See by Kristen Lepionka

What You Want to See by Kristen Lepionka (Minotaur, 2018) is the second book in the contemporary private investigator series featuring Roxane Weary in Columbus, Ohio. Roxane is retained by the owner of a local printing company to follow his fiancé, whose behavior leads him to believe she is having an affair. Roxane follows her for a few days and sees nothing that suggests another man but also nothing that indicates she is a successful and busy interior decorator as her client believes. Late one night while Roxane is not on the job, however, the fiancé is killed in a neighborhood where she would not ordinarily be, and her client’s fingerprints are found on the bullets. Roxane can’t believe her client is capable of murder and dives headlong into an investigation that unfolds into a startling number of complicated family relationships that includes a gold-digging second wife, a drive-by shooting at the print shop, and a scheme to defraud seniors of their homes and the valuable antiques in them.

I am always looking for contemporary women crime authors who write police procedurals and private investigator novels, and I was initially enthusiastic about this one. The creative plot twists and turns and the different character threads are all tied up in the end in a masterful manner. I was frankly wondering where some of the storylines were going, yet they came together quite skillfully. However, Roxane’s tendency to self-flagellation in regard to her supposed failures as a daughter/sister/friend/lover/human being got old quickly. I have no idea why anyone thinks that stuff is fun to read – it isn’t. The last book I tried to read with an angsty heroine, also a contemporary private investigator story, went back to the library unfinished. The plot in this one was innovative and executed admirably enough to keep me reading to the end, but the main character is annoying nonetheless. The next in the series is not on my must-read list.

·         Hardcover: 304 pages

·         Publisher: Minotaur Books (May 1, 2018)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1250120535

·         ISBN-13: 978-1250120533

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Crime Watch: Review: TEETH OF THE WOLF by Lee Murray & Dan Rabarts

Crime Watch: Review: TEETH OF THE WOLF: TEETH OF THE WOLF by Lee Murray & Dan Rabarts (Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2018) Reviewed by Alyson Baker Scientific consultant Penny...

Crime Watch: Review: DARK SACRED NIGHT by Michael Connelly

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Buried Under Books Review: The Fairfax Incident by Terrence McCauley

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Beneath the Stains of Time: Goodnight Irene (2018) by James Scott Byrnside

Beneath the Stains of Time: Goodnight Irene (2018) by James Scott Byrnside: Back in 2015, "JJ" of The Invisible Event began a semi-regular blog-series, " Adventures in Self-Publishing ," in wh...

Lesa's Book Critiques: Read Herring Hunt by V. M. Burns

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Crime Watch: Review: NOVEMBER ROAD

Crime Watch: Review: NOVEMBER ROAD: NOVEMBER ROAD by Lou Berney (William Morrow, 2018) Reviewed by Craig Sisterson Frank Guidry’s luck has finally run out.  A loyal stree...

Barry Ergang Reviews: ONLY TO SLEEP: A Philip Marlowe Novel (2018) by Lawrence Osborne

ONLY TO SLEEP: A Philip Marlowe Novel (2018) by Lawrence Osborne

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

The time of the story is 1988 and its first-person narrator is a seventy-two-year-old retired private investigator living in a house he bought in 1984 “a few miles north of Ensenada in Baja.” His name happens to be—at least for the sake of the book and this review, if not necessarily by recognized literary standards—Philip Marlowe. The extremely flimsy plot consists of the elderly detective being hired by a pair of representatives from the Pacific Mutual insurance company to look into the drowning death of the supposedly well-to-do—but “profligate” and thus bankrupt and corrupt—seventy-two-year-old real estate developer Donald Zinn, sometimes referred to as “El Donaldo.” (Does Zinn remind anyone of a real-life personage of dubious character who is [unfortunately] active at the time of this review? Did Lawrence Osborne intend it? If yes, it’s one positive I can cite.)  

The retiree agrees to the job. What ensues, far from being the kind of hardboiled detective story one might reasonably expect, reads more like a travelogue of Mexico and many of its lesser-known cities, towns and locales, as the detective trails the Zinns hither and thither throughout the country, in the process meeting and becoming smitten with the thirtyish and very attractive Dolores Araya Zinn. His travels result in relatively little more than encountering a somewhat menacing character who likes to spin tops on the bars or tables he’s seated at, and an eventual violent tangle with same. No worries, though, because as he explains early on: “I also carried the cane that has been my constant servant since I broke a foot in 1977, and inside which slept a Japanese blade that a master smith had custom-made for me in Tokyo.”

Seriously? You forgot you legally owned at least one handgun before and after your retirement? More seriously, does like this sound like the Philip Marlowe any reader has ever heard of?

Hardcore fans of the genuine Marlowe novels know that you read Raymond Chandler far more for style, tone and characterization than for plot, the latter element being often rather difficult to make sense of depending on the particular novel. In the confusing ones—i.e., most of them—you simply coast along for the colorful, absorbing, and entertaining ride. But you needn’t concern yourself about a tumultuous journey through Only to Sleep. The ride is sluggish and largely uneventful. Lawrence Osborne reads stylistically and tonally like Chandler about as much as Ernest Hemingway sounds like Geoffrey Chaucer. The plot is practically non-existent, not at all a mystery, and the characterizations are very superficial. The protagonist could as well have been named Tooraloora Birnbaum, considering how little he resembles Philip Marlowe.     

What we have here is a considerable distance from the kind of hardboiled private detective novel one expects from a pulp pioneer/master of the genre, let alone most writers’ modern take on the form. Osborne’s is a self-consciously literary approach that includes more extended, descriptive, and philosophical moments than the kinds of crackling scenes and intriguing, well-delineated characters found in the works of Chandler, his finest predecessors and legitimate successors. It reinforces what I said in my review of Benjamin Black’s The Black-Eyed Blonde: authors’ estates and their publishers should stop trying to cash in on inferior products about classic characters from imitators who should stick to their own creations.

One thing is certain: the title of this one is unquestionably appropriate. The Big Snooze would have worked, too, because I truly yawned and fought to stay awake while plodding through its verbal Ambien.

© 2019 Barry Ergang

Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s mystery novelette, along with some of his other works, is available at Amazon and Smashwords. One such work is “Nocturne,” included in Dances of the Disaffected, in case anyone wants to call him out about his take on Marlowe, and the publication of which had nothing to do with a major publisher or Chandler’s estate.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Broken Ice by Matt Goldman

Broken Ice by Matt Goldman (Forge Books, 2018) is the second book about Nils Shapiro, a former police officer who has joined forces with former police colleague Anders Ellegaard to establish a private detective agency in Minneapolis. Anders brings business sense and marketing know-how to the partnership, and Nils contributes investigative skills and acute intuition. They are both fully realized characters; of the two, I liked Anders more. He is at a loss sometimes as to the moral ambiguity of the situations to which their work leads him. Nils, on the other hand, isn’t especially troubled by such considerations.

Two teenage girls are missing from the area and Nils is retained to find one of them, Linnea Engstrom. The two girls aren’t particular friends but the connection between the two events is unmistakable. While interviewing Linnea’s parents, the other girl is found dead in the St. Paul caves. Feeling increasing pressure to find Linnea quickly, Nils and Anders go to the scene to learn whatever they can that might apply to their search. Standing outside the cave entrance talking to the police, Nils is hit in the shoulder by an arrow. Not just any arrow, but one meant for big game hunting, with lethal razorlike edges. The medical examiner was leaving the cave as he fell and took prompt action to keep him from bleeding to death.

Nils arranges to leave the hospital with a full-time nurse, whom he escapes as soon as possible to continue his investigation, which takes him to a small town near the Canadian border known as the Hockey Capital of the World. Playoff season is in full swing and many of Linnea’s friends are there. Two more people connected to Linnea turn up gruesomely dead, and Nils is constantly on the look-out for the archer to come back to finish him off while he conducts interviews and visits Linnea’s known hangouts.

New information about halfway through suggests a different motive for Linnea’s disappearance than earlier assumed and leads Nils into Canada with an interesting pair of travelling companions. The supporting cast of characters in this book is one of its strong points.

This new series is a pleasant addition to the catalog of fictitious private investigators in general and to the Minnesota collection in particular. (Why is Minnesota so saturated with crime fiction? We don’t hear anything about private investigators in Idaho.) I noticed three or four jarring typos in the book. “Grilled leaks” instead of leeks and “Char road shotgun” instead of rode for instance. Someone used spellcheck instead of an actual proofreader. I expect better from a prominent publisher like Forge.

  

·         Hardcover: 336 pages

·         Publisher: Forge Books (June 12, 2018)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 0765391317

·         ISBN-13: 978-0765391315

  

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Nighttown by Timothy Hallinan

Nighttown by Timothy Hallinan (Soho Crime, 2018) is the latest in the adventures of Junior Bender, an enchanting burglar in Los Angeles. He would truly like not to be on the wrong side of the law but theft is so much more lucrative, not to mention fun, than a regular job. What is he to do?

In this particular caper he’s offered a ridiculously large sum of money to steal an old doll from an empty house that is due to be razed any day. The offer comes from a badly disguised woman in an orange wig in a McDonald’s who goes to the trouble of hiring three child actors to pose as her children for the short trip into the restaurant. He knows something is deeply wrong with the set-up. Normally he would run, not walk, away from it, but he is desperate to raise enough money to kidnap his girlfriend’s son from her controlling ex-husband. Good help doesn’t come cheap.

He takes extra care to case the empty house and learns that someone else has been hired to steal the doll or whatever is hidden in it. The second burglar ends up dead; knowing it could have just as easily been him, Junior is more motivated than ever to learn the identity of the originator of the strange request and why he or she is interested enough in the doll to pay so much for it.

As usual in this series, the characters teeter on the fine line between droll and terrifying. In Junior’s line of work he encounters a lot of folks most of us would not run into, nor would we want to. The last occupant of the empty house, the Marfan sufferer who keeps stuffed cats in her house, the aging and ill crime boss who finds new zest in life after he takes out one of his competitors, hair-raising but sad, every one of them. I wanted to laugh at them but I was too afraid of them to do so. I particularly liked the hitwoman Junior hires to protect his ex-wife and daughter after he receives death threats. The part where the hitwoman joins the ex-wife, the daughter, and her friends for a sleepover complete with a rousing game of charades is as delightful as it is unexpected.

Not surprisingly, Publishers Weekly gave this book a starred review. If you are not acquainted with Junior, this is a good place to begin.

·         Hardcover: 384 pages

·         Publisher: Soho Crime (November 6, 2018)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 1616957484

·         ISBN-13: 978-1616957483

Aubrey Hamilton ©2019

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.