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: Alive! A Valentino Mystery by Loren D. Estleman

Alive! A Valentino Mystery (Forge Books, 2013) is Loren D. Estleman’s third full-length book about UCLA film archivist Valentino, I’m not sure his first name is ever mentioned. A collection of short stories is available in ebook. Valentino spends his days tracking down rare film footage and artifacts from the golden days of Hollywood on behalf of the university while fending off collectors with deeper pockets. 

A friend from the past calls, claiming to have found the long-lost Bela Lugosi screen test for the part of the Frankenstein monster in the 1931 movie, a part that went to Boris Karloff and made him famous. Valentino doesn’t believe him and doesn’t follow up. Within 24 hours the friend is dead and the police are questioning Valentino. The police think they’ve found the killer but Valentino knows they haven’t and delves into the case for the sake of self-preservation. Along the way the acting careers of Lugosi and Karloff are described and the not-quite-sane acquisitiveness of collectors is fully illustrated.

Valentino is no stranger to collector obsession; he has purchased a defunct movie theatre with the intent of returning it to its full 1920s glory and is selling some of his own movie memorabilia to pay for the restoration. His efforts to establish the exact shade of blue paint used in the original theatre demonstrate just how far over the edge he has gone.

In this adventure Valentino finds a sidekick in his intern, who educates Valentino on the world of steampunk. The intern and his friends come to Valentino’s rescue at the Hollywood wax museum in a frantic resolution scene. Film lore, steampunk, historic building renovation, all wrapped into a carefully plotted mystery; there’s something for everyone in this entertaining book.

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Forge Books; 1 edition (April 2, 2013)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765333317 
• ISBN-13: 978-0765333315

Aubrey Hamilton © 2017

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