Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: From the Dust: A Novel by David Swinson

  

I am a huge fan of David Swinson’s Frank Marr trilogy about a former DC cop turned private investigator and drug addict. Swinson himself is a retired police detective from the DC Metropolitan Police Department and his writing speaks with an insider’s knowledge of police operations.

In his newest book, released by Mulholland Books at the end of March, Swinson leaves the big city for a small town in rural upstate New York, south of the midpoint between Rochester and Syracuse. Graham Sanderson’s father has died and Sanderson has come to stay with his younger brother Tommy who has PTSD and severe agoraphobia, such that he has not left his father’s house for years. Sanderson’s wife died three years previously and he’s still grieving. The death of his father and his retirement from his long-time job only heightens his general sense of loss.

Police chief Bill Finn had been friends with the elder Mr. Sanderson and dropped in on the brothers a few days after the funeral. In passing he mentioned a local homicide, a rarity in the area, and his lack of trained personnel to investigate and dearth of staff in general. Days later the second murder occurred and Finn asked Sanderson to assist his newly hired detective. The victims both had the local dive and druggie hangout in common but not much came from questioning the regulars at the bar who were reluctant to rat on their buddies. By the time the third murder occurred, both Finn and Sanderson realized they had a bona fide serial killer at work in their tiny town.

This book is a significant departure from Swinson’s earlier books, which were all set in large cities. In a small town everyone knows everyone else and the killer almost inevitably is part of the closed village social circle. Swinson shows Sanderson slowly shifting into a new phase of his life as he adapts to the relaxed pace of life and the rural environment as well as beginning to move past the loss of his wife and his career. Fans of regional mysteries will enjoy the strong descriptions of rural New York, an area that does not get nearly as much attention in crime fiction as the metropolis in the southern part of the state.

For fans of regional mysteries and small-town police procedurals. Starred review from Publishers Weekly. 

 

·         Publisher: ‎Mulholland Books

·         Publication date: ‎March 31, 2026

·         Language: ‎English

·         Print length: ‎320 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎031652865X

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-0316528658

 

  

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4ccY7vQ

 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2026 

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

Publication Day Review: From the Dust: A Novel by David Swinson

 

Death is something the retired DC Metropolitan Police Department Detective is very familiar with, professionally and personally. Graham Sanderson has quiet working homicides in Washington, DC, and moved into his dad’s house in upstate New York. Most of his possessions sit in storage as he came to the house to help his brother, Tommy, after dad died. Tommy is agoraphobic and has not left the property in many years. With dad’s death, he had nobody to help him, so Graham came with a few things and moved into a guest bedroom in the house.

 

He came with some clothes and a few mementos. That includes the urn with his late wife’s ashes. It sits, top off, next to his bed and he talks to her on a daily basis. The grief remains strong and he is coping with that, and other issues, as best as he can. 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.

 

In the hours after the service for dad, William Finn, who is the Chief of Police, asks for his help as the small local department is very short staffed. A patrol officer was just recently promoted to investigator. The guy is good, or he would not have been promoted, but Chief Finn would like Sanderson to consult as they have a serious problem.

 

There has been a killer at work in the area and clues are scarce. Suspects are non-existent. Chief Finn wants to keep the investigation in house and not ask for outside agency help as the second, and most recent, victim was his nephew. He wants Sanderson’s help. Something Sanderson is reluctant to do at all as he is burned out, adjusting to being retired, mending a relationship with his younger brother that he has not seen in many years, losing his dad, among other things, and does not want to annoy anyone inside or outside the department.

 

But, Chief Finn is persistent, and Sanderson finally agrees to review the case file to this point and take an impartial fresh look. The rookie investigator, Mike Gottert, welcomes him with open arms and quickly invites Sanderson to go along as he goes back to the scene of the second body with a plan to recanvass the area, knock on doors, and poke around.

 

Before long, while not carrying a shield, Sanderson is almost as involved in the case as if he were a member of the department. Working helps occupy his mind, even if the case keeps coming closer and closer to home. A case that may have also, once again, made him a target.

 

From the Dust: A Novel by David Swinson is a complex and extremely enjoyable police procedural. With its rich characters and storytelling, it is also a testimony, in a way, about coping with complex mental health challenges in a world that often does not understand what folks are dealing with on a daily basis. This is one of those books that comes fully alive for the reader in a variety of ways and keeps the reader turning pages long after one should quit for the night.

 

All in all, From the Dust: A Novel by Doug Swinson is a mighty good read and very much recommended.

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4ccY7vQ

 

 

My digital ARC reading copy came by way of the publisher, Mulholland Books, imprint of Little, Brown and Company, through NetGalley with no expectation of a positive review.

 

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2026

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Second Girl by David Swinson (Mulholland Books, 2016)

Second Girl by David Swinson (Mulholland Books, 2016) is the first book about retired Washington, DC, cop Frank Marr and the gritty underworld of DC. Ostensibly Marr retired before he had his 20 years in because of burn-out, but in reality he is a drug addict and his supervisors eased him quietly out so as not to jeopardize the dozens of high-profile convictions Marr had obtained. Now Marr does investigative work for a few lawyers and whoever can pay him while he searches for his next fix. As the book opens, he’s panicking about his diminishing supply of cocaine.

He has identified a small-time group of drug dealers on the east side of DC. He watches the crew for a few days to learn their schedule. He waits until they leave with their first haul of product to sell at the nearby park, then breaks into their apartment and is searching methodically for their stockpile when he hears a noise from the closed bathroom. He opens the door to find a nude teenaged girl, handcuffed to the pipes under the sink. She is bruised and battered and terrified. While Frank generally has the tenderness of a Mafia hit man, he can’t bring himself to leave her there. He scoops her up and takes her to the office of a lawyer he works for, buying himself some time to manufacture an explanation for how he happened to be in the apartment where she was locked up.

The teenager is one of several missing girls from the Virginia suburbs. Her parents are so grateful to Frank that they tell another set of parents whose daughter has been gone for months. These people are desperate and beg Frank to search for their daughter. Frank does not want to take the case, believing the girl to be out of the area by now, but he agrees to work a week and begins to annoy the police on the case as well as the drug dealers who had been trafficking girls.

David Swinson is a retired police detective from the DC Metropolitan Police Department himself and his writing bristles with knowledge of local police operations and the neighborhoods of DC. Frank Marr is an inspired creation, casually cruel and unscrupulous while fundamentally kind. He spins one whopper after another to cover up his addiction. He tap dances around the DC and Virginia police and the drug dealers, all of them suspecting he’s pulling a fast one but none of them able to figure it out. Breakneck pace, good writing, authentic setting, and a brilliant antihero.

Starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus. Recommended!

 

·         Publisher: ‎Mulholland Books (June 7, 2016)

·         Language: ‎English

·         Hardcover: ‎368 pages

·         ISBN-10:‎ 9780316264174

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-0316264174

  

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023

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

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The Elephant of Surprise by Joe R. Lansdale

Joe R. Lansdale is a prolific and diverse writer, publishing nearly 50 novels and stories in a range of genres including mystery, suspense, horror, science fiction, Western, and comics. His stories have won an Edgar Award, a Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award, ten Bram Stoker Awards, a British Fantasy Award, a World Horror Convention Grand Master Award, a Sugarprize, a Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, and a Spur Award. His series about Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, unconventional PIs in eastern Texas, was adapted for television on the SundanceTV channel and ran for three seasons.

Hap and Leonard’s latest adventure The Elephant of Surprise (Mulholland Books, 2019) is a rock ‘em-sock ‘em sequence of skirmishes between our heroes and a group of racketeers intent on ridding the world of these two PIs who have stumbled into the mobsters’ path. Hap and Leonard are driving home in a pounding rain storm after a long stake-out, when Leonard glimpses the figure of a woman staggering across the road. They take her, drenched to the bone, into the car and learn she’s seriously wounded. They head to the nearest hospital, only to be confronted on the road by an oversized thug who wants the victim they’ve rescued and doesn’t mind killing Hap and Leonard to get her. From that point forward, between the hoodlums and the rain, wind, and tornadoes, the momentum seems unrelenting. For authors wanting to learn how to write shootout or fight scenes, this book is a great primer.

I enjoyed this story, more of a thriller than a mystery, a lot. What little mystery there is to begin with is soon sorted out when the mobsters’ original victim, the woman on the road, is well enough to talk. The rest of the suspense lies in watching to see how the bad guys will be brought to justice, and how Hap and Leonard will manage to save their skins. While it doesn’t hurt to have read earlier books in the series, enough backstory is provided along the way to make previous acquaintance with the characters unnecessary. Crackling action, snappy dialogue. Recommended.

·         Hardcover: 256 pages

·         Publisher: Mulholland Books; First Edition/First Printing (March 19, 2019)

·         Language: English

·         ISBN-10: 031647987X

·         ISBN-13: 978-0316479875

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

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

Buried Under Books: Book Review: Cold Bones by David Mark

Buried Under Books: Book Review: Cold Bones by David Mark 

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.

Crime Watch: Review: DEVIL RED

Crime Watch: Review: DEVIL RED: DEVIL RED by Joe R. Lansdale (Mulholland Books) Reviewed by Craig Sisterson Hap Collins and Leonard Pine return in a red-hot, mayhem-f...