Happiness Is A Book: The Right to Sing the Blues by John Lutz

 Happiness Is A Book: The Right to Sing the Blues by John Lutz

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Murder on 34th Street: A Novel by Mariah Fredericks

The newest historical mystery from Mariah Fredericks will be released in early October by Minotaur. Murder on 34^th Street is a holiday story that is set in the flagship Macy’s Department Store on 34^th Street in New York City and narrated by the personable Grace Verlander, assistant to the Human Resources Manager who hides in his office all day while Grace does his job for him. it is a fine period piece, not overloaded with obvious historical research but nonetheless true to its time, which is November 1932, the depths of the Great Depression.

Macy’s is gearing up for the holiday shopping season, which the store owners have every reason to believe will not be especially successful, while preparing the floats for the annual Thanksgiving Parade. One of the floats will carry the Macy’s Santa Claus in a bid to bring children and their parents (with money) into the store. Grace is alarmed to learn that Santa Claus, actually Harry Gardner of children’s shoes, has received a threatening letter promising that he will not live to see Christmas. Grace cannot imagine who would find the quiet older gentleman offensive but she alerts store security in the person of former police officer Frank Halsey. Halsey agrees that Santa is likely safe within the store but vulnerable in his perch on the Macy’s float in full view of thousands and he decides to ride on the float with Santa.

While Gardner survives the parade, others do not, and Grace has a mystery to solve while dealing with dozens of personnel crises that become more urgent daily as Christmas draws near. She is also devoting more attention than perhaps absolutely necessary to the window display section where the new creative manager has captured her imagination.

Absorbing story with believable characters from the major to the folks with a single throw-away scene. The operational details of the enormous store that occupied an entire block are fascinating and worth the read alone. And the mystery is not forgotten. It steadily unfolds bit by bit, ending with an entirely unexpected revelation.

Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review & Editor's Pick):

“Fredericks’ dialogue is sharp as a box cutter and her cast of characters as lively and colorful as Christmas itself. Grace is a marvel: witty, perceptive, and kind, yet not so perfect that there’s no room for moments of self-reflection . . . Fredericks’ latest adventure should be in everyone’s Christmas stocking this year, tied with a big red bow.”

Expect to see this one on the short list for major 2026 awards. I will be nominating it for a Lefty. Highly recommended.

 

·         Publisher: ‎Minotaur Books

·         Publication date:  October 6, 2026

·         Language:  English

·         Print length: ‎288 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1250367549

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1250367549

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link:  https://amzn.to/4xZDSc3

  

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2026

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

Lesa's Book Critiques: Ten Perfect Guests by Jonathan Santlofer

 Lesa's Book Critiques: Ten Perfect Guests by Jonathan Santlofer

KRL Update

Up on KRL this week a review and giveaway of another Halloween mystery, "'Tis the Season to Be Scary" by Vicki Delany https://kingsriverlife.com/10/03/tis-the-season-to-be-scary-by-vicki-delany/

And a review and ebook giveaway of "That Time I Killed You" by Lisa de Nikolits along with an interesting interview with Lisa https://kingsriverlife.com/10/03/that-time-i-killed-you-by-lisa-de-nikolits/

And a review and giveaway of "An Artful Dodge" by Karen Oden https://kingsriverlife.com/10/03/an-artful-dodge-by-karen-odden/

We also have the latest Mystery Coming Attractions from Victoria Fair, this one includes some fun Halloween and spooky recommendations https://kingsriverlife.com/10/03/mystery-current-coming-attractions-october-2026/

Up on KRL News and Reviews this week we have a review and giveaway of "Dog of Secrets" by Neil Plakcy https://www.krlnews.com/2026/10/dog-of-secrets-by-neil-s-plakcy.html

And a review and ebook giveaway of "Murder at the Horse Auction" by DonnaRae Menard https://www.krlnews.com/2026/10/murder-at-horse-auction-by-donnarae.html

 

Happy reading,

Lorie 

Lesa's Book Critiques: The Devil in the Details by Vicki Delany

 Lesa's Book Critiques: The Devil in the Details by Vicki Delany

Don't Need A Diagram: David Heska Wanbli Weiden, “Wisdom Corner”

 Don't Need A Diagram: David Heska Wanbli Weiden, “Wisdom Corner”

Lesa's Book Critiques: Mrs. Claus and the Fatal Figgy Pudding By Liz Ireland

 Lesa's Book Critiques: Mrs. Claus and the Fatal Figgy Pudding By Liz Ireland

Lesa's Book Critiques: The Curious Case of the Poisoned Professor by Lucy Connelly

 Lesa's Book Critiques: The Curious Case of the Poisoned Professor by Lucy Connelly

Dru's Book Musings: New Releases ~ Week of September 20, 2026

 Dru's Book Musings: New Releases ~ Week of September 20, 2026 

In Reference to Murder: Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Ghost of a Chance

In Reference to Murder: Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Ghost of a Chance: William Roos (1911-1987) was born in Pennsylvania, eventually heading to Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh to study drama, first as an actor, then...

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: A Murmuration of Starlings: A Birder Murder Mystery by Steve Burrows

A Murmuration of Starlings (Durndurn Press, September 2026) is the tenth book in the Birder Murder Mysteries by Canadian Steve Burrows. The first title, A Siege of Bitterns, won the Crime Writers of Canada award for Best First Novel and was selected as one of the Globe & Mail’s top 100 books of the year. Burrows has pursued his birdwatching interest on eight continents so far and has published articles on travel and environmental issues around the world.

In this newest story with a multi-layered approach Detective Chief Inspector Dominic Jejeune visits a former superior, Detective Chief Superintendent Colleen Shepherd, now in the Australian outback, to discuss his future career and becomes enmeshed in the kidnapping and death of the Environmental Compliance Officer of a large mining firm. Meanwhile his team back in Norfolk has the sudden death of the CEO of the largest lithium battery production facility in the country to investigate. It could have been an accident but the timing was entirely too convenient for some people not to suspect foul play.

Relationships are in high focus in this story, both personal and professional, and the outcome of both cases lead to major turning points for several of the characters. What is even more prominent is the discussion of present-day Australian environmental concerns, their history, current impact, and possible solutions. An aboriginal elder adds a strand of mysticism to the narrative. The descriptions of the Australian landscape, the animals, and of course the birds are wonderful and make the book worth reading for the travelogue alone.

Usually I have no trouble collecting enough back story to understand the context of a mid-series title but just identifying the location of action, Norfolk or Australia, wasn’t always clear in this book. This is not the right place to start the series. Environmentalists and nature lovers will likely already know this author, but if not, they definitely should. Police procedural fans will enjoy the complex plot and the careful work of both the Norfolk and the Australian investigation teams to unravel the mystery. Recommended. 

 

·         Publisher: ‎Dundurn Press

·         Publication date: ‎September 22, 2026

·         Language: ‎English

·         Print length: ‎360 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1459756592

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1459756595

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4rd08xw

 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2026

 

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

Beneath the Stains of Time: Half-Mast Murder (1930) by Milward Kennedy

Beneath the Stains of Time: Half-Mast Murder (1930) by Milward Kennedy: Milward Kennedy was an English civil servant, journalist, literary critic, reviewer and mystery writer, who was a founding member of the De...

Lesa's Book Critiques: A Treacherous Tale by Elizabeth Penney

 Lesa's Book Critiques: A Treacherous Tale by Elizabeth Penney

Happiness Is A Bird: A Dead Liberty by Catherine Aird

 Happiness Is A Bird: A Dead Liberty by Catherine Aird

Publication Day Review: Hidden Currents: A Sheriff Hank Worth Novel by Claire Booth

 

Branson County Sheriff Hank Worth is always trying to help people. He’s been trying to help Gursey Rugg, a 23-year-old meth addict, and very well known to all for his very low-level shoplifting. As Hidden Currents: A Sheriff Hank Worth Mystery by Claire Booth begins, he has been arrested yet again.

 

But this time he stole enough in one take to rise to a felony level. He swiped 14 hand tied feather lures from the local Reel Life Outfitters store. A two-store chain with stores on the opposite ends of the Lake Taneycomo. The chain is now managed by the new owner, Gene Willard, who seems very much determined to press charges.

 

The same Gene Willard who has no chance to pursue charges, or change his mind, and he is soon very much dead in one of his stores. That means Sheriff Hank Worth, Deputy Sheila Turley, and the others have to figure out who did it and why. The fact that Gene Willard was going through a contested divorce just means the suspect pool is even bigger.

 

While that case is the main storyline, quite a lot is going on in secondary storylines. Among the various threads is the fact that the attackers of Chief Deputy Sheila Turley are finally about to stand trial. It’s been a long time coming, thanks to the pandemic and other issues. Just seating a jury is going to be hard enough in the small community where everybody knows you and your business. Having to deal with being a witness in a trial is bad enough, but trying to investigate a murder at the same time means she and everyone in the department will have a lot on their plate

 

The latest installment in a great series that began with The Branson Beauty is another good one. Much is going on in Hidden Currents: A Sheriff Hank Worth Mystery and things remain complicated and evolving. This is a series that must be read in order as events happen, create consequential ripple effects just like in real life, and people change. These characters have been through a lot in these books, so  I very much recommend reading them in order.

 

I also encourage you to read the “acknowledgments” section at the end of the book as the author goes into some background detail on location and other issues.

I also encourage you to read Lesa Holstine's review here. And, if you are not already paying attention to her site, slap yourself with a wet noodle, and get onboard. 

 

Strongly recommended as is the entire series.

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4d5CLzR

 

The read will also be added to the Kindle Unlimited program on publication day.

 

 

I picked this up through NetGalley by way of the publisher, Severn House, which has me on their preapproved reviewer list. A fact I am very grateful for as the ability to instantly download and get reading, as I did here, is a wonderful thing. There was no expectation of a review.  

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2026

Beneath the Stains of Time: Murder at the End of the World (2022) by Akane Araki

Beneath the Stains of Time: Murder at the End of the World (2022) by Akane Araki: I previously reviewed Ross Montgomery's The Murder at World's End (2025), a classically-styled, retro-Golden Age mystery, which is ...

Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: The Ninth Circle: A Billy Boyle WWII Mystery by James R. Benn

The 21^st appearance of Billy Boyle is scheduled for 1 September 2026. How is it possible this series has trundled along for 21 books? A book a year consistently since the introduction of Billy and his colleagues in 2006. With publishers dropping outstanding authors and wonderful series right, left, and center, James Benn continues to turn out solidly researched, strongly plotted, and beautifully written historical crime fiction and wonder of wonders, Soho Press stands back and lets him do it! Readers everywhere owe Soho their gratitude.

The Ninth Circle (Soho, September 2026) is the latest outing of Billy, part of a large Boston cop family and cousin by marriage to General Eisenhower. Only months before Germany surrenders, Billy and his sidekick Lieutenant Piotr Kazimierz go to Havana where ostensibly Billy is to liaison with the Cuban Army and Piotr is a business man seeking to establish himself in the busy capital city. Really they are to investigate the death of Lieutenant Commander Hugh Sinclair of the Royal Navy, who was shot while outside drinking his morning coffee. Someone is suspicious of them even with the plausible cover stories, as within days of their arrival a bomb is set off in a bar where they are waiting for an informant. While they escape, their informant is not so lucky, turning their job into a double homicide investigation.

Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, crime boss Meyer Lansky, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor all appear in the story, as do increasingly desperate German spies. Fleming is anxious to capture one of the new German U-boats before the Russians can, conscious of the respect he would earn by doing so. Lansky has established a popular and profitable casino in Havana and has targeted Bermuda as a potential extension of operations, even though gambling is illegal there. The Duke was appointed governor of Bermuda during the war, where he and the Duchess were relatively safe.

Billy ends up working with the local thugs and Lansky himself before the homicides are resolved. Lansky assures him that he is as committed to the Allies as anyone and demonstrates that loyalty, even as he maneuvers to expand his gambling empire. Billy isn’t sure if Fleming is help or hindrance at first; he turns out to be a bit of both.

The Havana setting and its people are vividly described with historical details worked invisibly into the narrative. Faultless research, I always appreciate the author’s notes at the end. Another very good entry in the series. Historical crime fiction fans will want to add this title to their reading lists. Recommended.

 

 

·         Publisher: ‎Soho Crime

·         Publication date: ‎September 1, 2026

·         Language: ‎English

·         Print length: ‎400 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1641297484

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1641297486

 

 

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

 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2026 

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

Guest Post: The Detective Prays with His Eyes Open by D. L. Gray

 

Please welcome author D. L. Gray to the blog today. Article 7 is the first book in his new mystery series featuring a detective of deep religious faith. It is available to preorder from the publisher, Saint Dominics Media.

                     The Detective Prays with His Eyes Open

When I tell many of my friends and potential readers that my detective is a lay Dominican brother who unlocks a Cleveland church at seven and runs skip-traces by nine, I see the flinch arrive. It is a perceptible and honest flinch. I imagine they have been burned before. They bought a crime novel and got handed a tract with a body in it, and they have learned to smell an altar call three chapters out. So let me put my working rule on the table first: if the reader can smell the sermon coming, I have already failed twice. Once as a novelist, and once as a man selling a book under an honest label.

Here is the thing, though. The praying detective is not a trespasser in this genre. He helped found it. Father Brown was solving murders decades before Philip Marlowe took his first retainer, and Chesterton’s whole trick was that the little priest’s religion was not a message but a method. The confessional had taught him what people actually are. Harry Kemelman ran the same engine on Talmud with Rabbi Small, and Ellis Peters ran it on the cloister with Brother Cadfael. None of those books preach, because in none of them is the faith decoration. It is the lens. So the craft question was never whether a praying man belongs at the center of a crime novel. The question is what the praying does on the page.

I gave myself three rules when I wrote ARTICLE 7.

First rule: the prayer has to do detective work, not be his work. My Brock H. Winters is a pardoned felon, a forensic accountant by instinct, and the sacristan of St. Joseph’s. The night before the worst day of his life, he walks the arena district at one in the morning and prays the perimeter. By name, where he has names. For the candidate asleep in her hotel. For the old cop walking a sector on bad knees. And for a would-be shooter he believes he has never met. He prays for that unknown young man, as the book says, with real love and total blindness, not knowing he has already taught that boy the bells. That prayer is a surveillance sweep, a threat inventory, and a piece of dramatic irony wearing a devotion. My test is simple: If I can cut a prayer and the case does not change, the prayer goes.

Second rule: the code must cost, and never pay. Every private eye worth his license carries a code. Marlowe had one. Spenser recited his. Brock’s is just older and better notarized: the Rule of the Dominican Brothers of Saint Joseph, thirteen articles, seven centuries old, and the seventh article is the reason he takes a case he knows better than to take. On the page, a code is only interesting when it removes options. Brock cannot hand a grieving woman the comforting lie that would end her questions, because, in his words, a laundered lie is a forged entry, and he went to prison once for exactly that. Faith that solves the hero’s problems is a cheat code. Faith that creates them is an engine. Nobody has ever called Marlowe’s code a sermon, and the reason is that it never once paid him either.

Third rule: keep the actual sermon offstage – don’t preach to the reader. There is exactly one homily in my novel, and the reader never hears a word of it. What the reader gets is the review Brock hands his pastor in the sacristy afterward: “Three points and a boat. Bishop Sheen sleeps secure.” God, meanwhile, keeps His own counsel during business hours. Prayers in this book get interrupted by the case, go unanswered for weeks, or get answered sideways and late, and the interruptions are the honest part. There is a scene where Brock kneels for his nightly examen and the stakeout rolls in uninvited and, as he puts it, parks itself between two sins he was fonder of. Any praying reader will recognize that man. Any noir reader will recognize him too, because prayer occupies the exact slot the genre has always kept for what a detective does with his solitude. Marlowe played chess against dead masters. Bosch has his jazz. Brock has a kneeler, a notebook, and a habit of praying the way a prison guard eats: fast, standing up, before something happens.

Underneath all three rules is the one conviction I carried over from my first writing life, which was Catholic theology. Theology tells you what is true. Fiction gives you a beautiful image of what it costs. A doctrine can be stated correctly in one sentence and still leave a man with no idea what it would do to him. Crime fiction has never had that problem. Cost is our native currency. The whole genre is a ledger where we tally what our codes charge us, which is why a praying man does not break a crime novel. He balances it.

---

ARTICLE 7 is the first novel of the Brock H. Winters series: a man vanishes from an ordinary Cleveland job, nobody comes looking except the woman who lit a candle for him, and the pardoned felon she asks to find him has seventeen days to learn who is watching whom in an American city. D. L. Gray is the fiction byline of David L. Gray, whose books on Catholic history and doctrine run under his own name. He comes from the Cleveland area and writes from Germany. ARTICLE 7 is available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook. Follow the series at BROCKHWINTERS.COM.

D. L. Gray ©2026

Happiness Is A Book: Friday’s Forgotten Book: Blueprint for Murder by Roger Bax

 Happiness Is A Book: Friday’s Forgotten Book: Blueprint for Murder by Roger Bax

Beneath the Stains of Time: The Murder at World's End (2025) by Ross Montgomery

Beneath the Stains of Time: The Murder at World's End (2025) by Ross Montgomery: Last year, Ross Montgomery , a British author of more than twenty children's books, debuted with his first novel for adults, The Murder...