FFB Review-- Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Death Shall Overcome by Emma Lathen

  

Dipping into the archive for this one today…

 

A few days ago someone in one of the mystery-focused Facebook groups asked the members to identify their favorite Emma Lathen title. Emma Lathen is the pseudonym of economist Mary Jane Latsis and attorney Martha Henissart. Their financial and legal expertise formed the backdrop of their mysteries, which each highlighted an industry or socioeconomic issue (fast food franchises, grain exports, parochial schools, professional hockey, the Winter Olympics). Inevitably money in some form is the impetus for the crime. No psychological suspense, no serial killer, no love triangle: money and the lack of it or the desire for more is front and center.

 

It is difficult to choose among the entries in a long and almost uniformly excellent series but I decided that Death Shall Overcome (Macmillan, 1966) was among my candidates for favorite. I then realized I had not re-read it for some time and pulled my worn paperback copy off the shelves. Its themes are timeless and I found it stands up to the passage of 50 years quite well.

 

Wall Street is in turmoil as one of the oldest brokerages among them proposes a black man for a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. The octogenarian owner of the brokerage has chosen Edward Parry of Atlanta -- Yale graduate, Rhodes scholar, and multimillionaire -- to break the color barrier at the NYSE hard on the heels of the signing of the Civil Rights Act. (The authors were only a little ahead of reality: Joseph Searles III actually became the first African American trader on the New York Stock Exchange floor in 1970.)

 

At the formal reception where Mr. Parry is to be introduced to the New York financial community, one of his prospective colleagues drops dead. Everyone assumes the cause is a stress-induced heart attack until the autopsy discovers nicotine poisoning. Then someone shoots at Mr. Parry as he leaves his house one morning. Protests, counter-demonstrations, and wild rhetoric ensue. (A number of the scenes from this book could have been ripped out of last week’s newspaper.) John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice-president of Sloan Guaranty Trust, the third largest bank in the world, is drafted to try to calm the various groups while the Exchange processes Mr. Parry’s application for a seat and the police search for the killer.  His own knowledge of the financial world and his involvement with the people most affected lead him to the identity of the culprit.

 

Part of the charm of this series is the inside look at the Sloan, which is very much like any large corporation with its internal politics, quirky personalities, and relatives of the president to be worked around. The supporting cast of characters that appear in each book are similar to office colleagues everywhere and invest the story with a personal flavor as well as help Thatcher’s investigations. This particular book is full of visually complex scenes that would film nicely: the sit-in at the main Sloan bank, the NAACP fundraiser, Thatcher and his colleagues hiding from demonstrators by riding the Staten Island ferry back and forth.

As always, the well-written story is witty and tightly plotted. If Emma Lathen is an author new to you, this book is an excellent place to become acquainted with her work.

• Publisher: Macmillan Pub Co; First Edition (June 1966)
• ISBN-10: 9997518446 
• ISBN-13: 978-9997518446

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/45XNjyr

 

 

Aubrey Hamilton © 2017, 2025 

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

FFB Review-- Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Rest You Merry by Charlotte MacLeod

 

From the archive….

 

Charlotte MacLeod (1922-2004) was the queen of the amusing cozy mystery.  Between 1978 and 1996, during the time the cozy began to be recognized as a subgenre, she turned out more than 30 books in four series. In classic sitcom fashion her main characters were always reasonable people doing their best to cope with the eccentrics and screwballs that surrounded them.

 

The Peter Shandy series of 10 books is set at a fictional small college in western Massachusetts. These books take one light-hearted potshot after another at academia while subtly expressing MacLeod’s concerns about the future of family-owned farms and the natural environment. Rest You Merry is the first title, introducing Peter Shandy as a tenured botany professor at Balaclava Agricultural College during the Christmas season. The college is realistic about the financial status of its students, most of whom are from small towns and farms, and encourages them in entrepreneurial ventures. The main fundraiser of the year is in December, when the campus hosts a winter fair called the Grand Illumination. The students pull children in sleds, sell baked goods and hot chocolate, host games, and generally do anything they can to generate a buck.

 

The college supports their efforts by decking every building on campus in Christmas lights, ornaments, and greenery. Shandy is the resident Scrooge who is happy the students are making money but doesn’t want to participate in the annual extravaganza of over-the-top embellishment. Every year his house is the only one without seasonal regalia. Every year the obnoxious chair of the decorating committee badgers him about his failure to measure up. This year Shandy reaches his breaking point. He hires a firm to hang lights, set to flash around the clock, and sets up a tape deck with a loudspeaker to blare Christmas songs in a never-ending loop. Satisfied with the lavish display of singular tastelessness, he leaves to celebrate Christmas elsewhere.

 

After a couple of days he is conscience-stricken and returns home to turn off the lights and music only to find the body of the committee chair behind his sofa. The college is quick to term the death an accident but Shandy is not so sure. His subsequent investigation revealed the victim had antagonized a number of people, and he suspects at least one of them had been goaded beyond endurance.

 

I first read these books for their wit but I return to them because I enjoy the droll but not cruel depiction of oddball characters. I also like to dissect the plots that appear to be effortlessly constructed but surely were not. This is a fine book to read at any time but especially now, with a couple of sugar cookies and a mug of something warm to drink.

 

·         Hardcover: 222 pages

·         Publisher: Otto Penzler Books (December 1, 1993) (Reprint)

·         ISBN-10: 1562870521

·         ISBN-13: 978-1562870522

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4dxCDbF 

 

Aubrey Hamilton © 2017, 2025
 

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

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Slow Burn by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

Andrew Welsh-Huggins is a legal affairs reporter for the Associated Press in Columbus, Ohio. Welsh-Huggins is also the editor of Columbus Noir (Akashic Books, 2020), and his short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, and Mystery Tribune. He’s written seven mysteries about Andy Hayes, a former Ohio State University quarterback turned private investigator. His nonfiction book No Winners Here Tonight (Ohio University Press, 2009) is the definitive history of the death penalty in Ohio. Hatred at Home: al-Qaida on Trial in the American Midwest (Swallow Press, 2011) documents a lengthy government investigation into terrorism that started in Columbus, Ohio. It provided the basis for the fifth Andy Hayes mystery The Third Son (Swallow Press, 2018). The seventh in the series An Empty Grave (Swallow Press, 2021) was reviewed on Lesa’s Book Critiques.

The second in the series Slow Burn (Swallow Press, 2015) finds Andy precariously balancing income and outgo. So when the grandmother of Aaron Custer, who was accused of setting a fire in off-campus housing two years ago that killed three students, says she’s heard there is a witness who can exonerate him and is willing to pay Andy to find the witness, Andy agrees to look into it. Custer pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, even though he was so drunk he has no memory of the night, and is serving his sentence with no hope of early release.

Andy is skeptical but dutifully begins to dig around, uncovering a local drug gang who objected to one of the dead students selling in their territory. Then there was the seismic activity log he found that implicated one of the biggest fracking companies in the state of Ohio. Some questions about Aaron’s inheritance from his grandfather arose. Before Andy knew it, he established a range of unexpected motives for the arson that were all outside Aaron’s knowledge and accountability.

Regional mysteries, mysteries that reflect the area and could not be set anywhere else, are among my favorite. Milan Jacovich in Cleveland, David Mapstone in Phoenix, Carlotta Carlyle in Boston, Rush McKenzie in St. Paul, Deb Ralson in Fort Worth, etc. I am pleased to add another Midwestern series to my list. The university in the background adds an academic flavor to the story. Andy is not a particularly original character but the people around him are, and the plots are innovative. Strong writing and sound pacing round out a well-conceived and -executed series. Recommended reading.

 

·         Publisher: ‎ Swallow Press (April 15, 2015)

·         Language: ‎ English

·         Hardcover: ‎ 312 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎ 0804011605

·         ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0804011600 

 

Aubrey Hamilton ©2021 

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

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Bloody January by Alan Parks

I learned about Alan Parks during the online Hull Noir conference in March 2021.  He is a Glasgow author who spent most of his career in the music industry. He wrote a book about social housing in post-war Glasgow which somehow metamorphosed into the first Harry McCoy historical thriller. It was one of the top crime debuts of 2018 and was shortlisted for the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, the most prestigious award for crime and detective fiction in France.

Bloody January (Cannongate, 2018) introduces Harry McCoy, newly promoted to detective on the Glasgow police force. Harry has a drug addict girl friend who’s a prostitute, and his best friend from his childhood is now a criminal kingpin. Harry also has a bit of a drinking problem. He gets a tip from a coldblooded killer in prison about a murder that’s about to take place. With little to go on and not really believing the stool pigeon, Harry still looks for the prospective victim and finds her just in time to see her killed and her murderer shoot himself in full view of a bus station packed with witnesses at morning rush hour. Harry returns to the jail to question his informant more closely, only to find he’s been killed too. Three murders in 24 hours is a lot, even for Glasgow, and Harry’s supervisor says he wants a resolution fast.

Set in January 1973 amid the poverty and desperation of Glasgow, the general population is sad, depressed, and struggling. Steelworks, coal mines, engine factories, and other heavy industries went out of business about that time, leading to long-term economic decline with mass unemployment, population flight, and high levels of urban decay. New gangs moved in, younger and more violent, and hard drugs arrived with them. This backdrop of Glasgow’s low point is perfect for noir crime fiction.

McCoy is an interesting character who faints when he sees blood, unfortunate in a homicide cop. He’s got a turbulent backstory and crosses the line between the police and the felonious element occasionally because of loyalty to his criminal friend who protected him as a child. He does have a mostly good relationship with his manager, who recognizes McCoy’s innate ability. Light relief comes through McCoy’s green-as-grass sidekick, who is a new addition to the department. He is supposed to be shadowing McCoy to learn the ropes, but McCoy avoids him in creative ways. Parks worked in details from his music industry experience in a nice touch. An excellent piece of Tartan noir. The fourth in the series is scheduled for release in August 2021.

 

 

·         Publisher: ‎ Canongate Books; Main edition (May 28, 2018)

·         Language: ‎ English

·         Hardcover: ‎ 320 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎ 1786891336

·         ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1786891334

 

Aubrey Hamilton ©2021

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

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Body Zoo by J. D. Allen

 

J. D. Allen is an accomplished writer, having published a number of romances before turning to crime fiction. In addition to contributions to various short story anthologies, her first full-length novel introduced the Sin City Investigations series and Jim Bean, former cop, now private investigator in Las Vegas, in 2018. Bean’s third adventure is Body Zoo, published by Severn River in June 2021. Number Four is scheduled for release in August 2021.

Bean is hired by an insurance company to look into a possible arson involving an old trailer. The trailer park in question has filed two claims already this year, and the insurance company is understandably cynical about a third one. They believe the owner is upgrading her rentals on their dime, but they need proof to deny payment. Bean visits the torched trailer and interviews the arson investigator as well as the owner. He’s struck by the lack of interest in the tenant, who has disappeared. Emilee Beck seems to have evaporated, which worries Bean. A young woman alone should have someone interested in her wellbeing. Bean decides that person is going to be him.  

Tracing her associates leads Bean quickly to her boyfriend AJ Ward, son and nephew of a pair of brothers who run a profitable sports, hunting, and taxidermy emporium in the area. AJ disappears soon after Bean starts inquiring about Emilee, and his worried father retains Bean to find him. Everyone assumes that he’s joined Emilee, so locating one will locate both. They learn that Emilee is on the run from a motorcycle gang who kidnapped her as a child and pimped her until someone helped her escape. With a price on her head and strong memories of the abuse she endured, Emilee is desperate to avoid capture.

Alternately told from Bean’s perspective and Emilee’s, the story becomes intense. It is a realistic and grim depiction of a human trafficking survivor, a subject of deep concern to Allen, with good cause. I was shocked to learn a couple of years ago that the county I live in is the fifth most likely locale in the United States for human trafficking and that a nearby shopping center is an ongoing focus of law enforcement investigation because of known criminal trafficking activities there.

The seriousness of the plot is balanced with ingenious settings and offbeat characters. For instance, Bean’s favorite greasy diner converted into a vegan café, but he continues to eat there despite not really caring for the food. His associates are great. My favorite of Bean’s sidekicks is a Vietnam-era veteran who can hack a computer with the best of the teenagers around. Well written, fact based, fast moving, intricately plotted. An absorbing book but may trigger more sensitive readers.

 

·         Publisher: Severn River Publishing (June 8, 2021)

·         Language: English

·         Paperback: 370 pages

·         ISBN-10:  1648750958

·         ISBN-13: 978-1648750953

 

Aubrey Hamilton ©2021

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

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Sleeping Witness by Fiorella de Maria

Fiorella de Maria is the pseudonym of Fiorella Nash, an English bioethicist whose research focuses on life issues from a feminist perspective. She is a conference speaker and nonfiction writer dealing with abortion, gendercide, maternal health, and commercial surrogacy. Her novels are published under her nom de plume and include historical mysteries featuring Father Gabriel, a Benedictine priest. The first of these is The Sleeping Witness (Ignatius Press, 2017).

The story takes place in the village of Sutton Westford and the nearby St. Mary’s Abbey in August after the end of World War Two but before the end of sugar rationing. The war and the damage it caused is fresh in everyone’s memories. Father Gabriel serves as narrator. He is approaching middle age, with gray now appearing in his hair, aching joints, and failing close-up vision. The reader is left with the impression he came to the monastery after a career in the world, much like his predecessor Brother Cadfael. Certainly he is more willing to engage with the outside world than many of his brothers are, and Abbot Ambrose must routinely redirect his attention.

The local doctor and his wife are the subject of ugly rumors in the tiny community. She is quiet, pale, and fragile, and the doctor is always by her side. Large bruises on her arms lead observers to some natural but unpleasant conclusions. When she’s found in the cottage of a Danish artist visiting for the summer, both covered with blood and apparently dead with a gun lying nearby, suspicion falls on her husband who steadfastly denies that he hurt either of them. Despite the active discouragement of Abbot Ambrose and Inspector Applegate, Father Gabriel plunges headlong into investigating the crime.

This is an unusual mystery. Much about the characters and the setting, especially Father Gabriel, are implied rather than stated. There is no back story at all. I wondered what Gabriel was doing in the abbey, as he doesn’t seem quite suited for the monastic life. Nearly everyone has something in their past they don’t talk about. Abbot Ambrose for instance seems to have served in intelligence during the war. Other characters turn out to be other than who they say they are. As Miss Marple stated in A Murder Is Announced, anyone could show up in a village in post-war England with a new identity and background. The records were in such disarray, they were likely never to be challenged. An intriguing read. Recommended especially for fans of historical mysteries and of religious detectives.

 

·         Publisher: Ignatius Press (February 10, 2017)

·         Language: English

·         Paperback: 176 pages

·         ISBN-10: 1621640760

·         ISBN-13: 978-1621640769

 

Aubrey Hamilton ©2021 

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

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Magic Line by Elizabeth Gunn

The Magic Line by Elizabeth Gunn (Severn House, 2012) is the fourth of the Sarah Burke contemporary police procedural series set in Tucson, Arizona. Gunn also created one of my all-time favorite fictional police detectives, Jake Hines of the Rutherford, Minnesota, police department. The Hines series seems to have stopped with 10 books. The seventh in the Burke series was published in 2020. Both series deserve a wider audience than they currently have.

Despite her plan for a quiet evening with her family in their new home, Sarah Burke is called out during dinner to a mass shooting in a quiet blue-collar neighborhood that appeared at first glance to be a home invasion gone wrong. A quick inspection revealed the house to be full of drugs and related paraphernalia. Five bodies and a significant number of weapons suggested a quick drug war with no winners. One of the victims wasn’t quite dead, however, so the police packed him into an ambulance for emergency treatment. In route to the hospital he managed to overpower the attendants and escape, adding another element of the unexpected to a crime that already didn’t quite look right.

Told from Sarah’s perspective and that of two of the criminals involved in the shooting, the story is a crisp portrayal of the law enforcement war on drugs along the United States/Mexico border and the kind of people who see it as a viable way to earn a living. The police investigation is balanced with quick looks at Sarah’s personal life, in which she, her live-in boyfriend and fellow detective Will Dietz, her mother recovering from a stroke, and her niece, abandoned by Sarah’s drug addict sister, have all recently become a blended family in a new-to-them larger house. This story is what fans of Gunn’s work have come to expect: a soundly plotted, well-written police procedural with interesting, credible characters. Highly recommended.

 

·         ASIN: B008L1FUS2

·         Publisher: Severn House (October 1, 2012)

·         Publication date: October 1, 2012

·         Language: English

·         File size: 589 KB 

 

 

Aubrey Hamilton ©2021

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

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Death by Equine by Annette Dashofy

Annette Dashofy is known for her long-running series about Zoe Chambers, a paramedic and deputy coroner in rural Pennsylvania. Five of the ten books in the series have been nominated for an Agatha award, the award given for traditional and cozy mysteries at the annual Malice Domestic mystery conference. The next in the series is scheduled for release in 2022.

 

This year Dashofy offers her readers a stand-alone, Death by Equine (ISBN Services, 2021), still set in Pennsylvania in a different milieu but readers of her Zoe Chambers series will recognize similarities. Dr. Jessie Cameron is a veterinarian with a thriving clinic who is asked to backfill for her friend and mentor Dr. Sam Lewis, the veterinarian at a nearby small horse racetrack, while he takes his first vacation in years. Early in the morning on the day Lewis is supposed to leave, he takes a last call about a colicky horse and is trampled to death in the horse’s stall. Everyone supposes it was a horrible accident. The horse wasn’t known to be difficult but horses are much bigger than humans and can do a lot of damage without meaning to.

 

No one admits to being the person who called Doc to treat the horse, who does not appear to have colic. Jessie insists on sending the horse to the veterinary school at Ohio State University for a complete medical evaluation. The toxicology results showed the presence of acepromazine, a sedative that adversely affects the horse and that no one had any reason to administer. Jessie became convinced that Lewis was sent in to the distraught horse’s stall deliberately to be murdered, and she turns sleuth to get to the bottom of the mystery. Her soon-to-be ex-husband Gregg is a state trooper who resists her efforts to investigate.

 

Animals are not routine murder weapons in mysteries but they have been used that way before, such as in A Risky Way to Kill by Richard Lockridge (Lippincott, 1969). Getting the logistics around this kind of murder worked out takes some thought by the author, since it involves an unpredictable four-legged being; it is not as straightforward as pulling a trigger.

 

The behind-the-scenes look at the operational side of a racetrack is authoritative in its detail. The colorful minutiae provide a compelling setting for the action. It also justifies a wide range of characters: people trying to earn a living, some who love horses, and a few unsavory types looking for an easy score. Inevitably the latter are found anywhere money is involved, and horseracing is a multibillion-dollar industry. IBISWorld projects 2021 revenues for U.S. horse race tracks to be more than $3.5 billion. Readers of the Dick Francis books will recognize many of these personalities.

 

Of interest to cozy readers and fans of animal-themed mysteries.

 

  

·         Publisher: ISBN Services (March 10, 2021)

·         Language: English

·         Paperback: 330 pages

·         ISBN-10: 1638485321

·         ISBN-13: 978-1638485322

  

Aubrey Hamilton ©2021 

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

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Lost You by Haylen Beck

Lost You (Crown, 2019) by Haylen Beck, Irish crime writer Stuart Neville’s alter ego, is a hair-raising thriller, anxiety-provoking in its plot, nerve-wracking and awe-inspiring in its execution. The book opens with a young unnamed woman climbing to the top of a wall on a hotel roof, holding a small child and preparing to take both of them over the edge to the pavement far below. After reading four pages of this intense scenario, I was not sure I was going to be able to proceed, but fortunately the story flipped to several months earlier, something that the book does a lot, and began to fill in the details of just how this desperate situation came to such a sorry pass.

 

Libby Reese’s dabbling in creative writing has turned into her first novel and after its sale her agent urges her to treat herself to a nice vacation. Libby has had a hard time since her husband Mason left her with a newborn three years earlier, and the luxurious getaway is a celebration of her successful new life and a well-deserved break. She and her son Ethan fly to a resort in Florida, where they enjoy the sun and the relaxed environment. Near the end of their stay, on their way to the pool one afternoon, Ethan dashes down the hall to the elevator, jumps in when the doors open, pushes buttons, and disappears before Libby can reach him. Hotel security starts a massive search of the property as well as a review of the films from cameras stationed all around the buildings. Then they call the local police who start asking a lot of questions.

 

Many authors can create suspense on the page but Beck is a master. He’s likewise incredibly skilled at folding flashbacks into a cohesive story. This book has two separate plot lines and both are built with chronological interruptions until they collide. Flashbacks are hard to write and even harder to incorporate smoothly. I know moving back and forth in a story timeline is in style but it’s one I never cared for, partly because it results in a disjointed read. However, I was struck by how well this one was accomplished. The plot itself is complicated, as are the main characters, neither of whom are quite honest with themselves or the reader. Crime fiction fans who find stories of children in jeopardy upsetting should avoid this one. On the other hand, followers of psychological thrillers will love it.

 

Starred review from Kirkus.

 

·         Publisher: Crown (August 6, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         Hardcover: 320 pages

·         ISBN-10: 1524759589

·         ISBN-13: 978-1524759582 

 

Aubrey Hamilton ©2021 

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