Unlawful Acts: Small Crimes for 12/1/2020

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Beneath the Stains of Time: Sleightly Invisible (1986) by Patrick A. Kelley

Beneath the Stains of Time: Sleightly Invisible (1986) by Patrick A. Kelley: Back in March, I reviewed the third novel in Patrick A. Kelley 's short-lived Harry Colderwood series, Sleightly Lethal (1986), which c...

Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Jane Austen’s Emma on Film

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Lesa's Book Critiques: DEATH AT A COUNTRY MANSION by Louise R. Innes

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The Practicing Writer: Markets and Jobs for Writers for 11/30/2020

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The Rap Sheet: Views from Across the Pond

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Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: The False-Hearted Teddy by John J. Lamb

The Bear Collector mysteries by John J. Lamb were published between 2006 and 2009. Only five titles in the series but they earned a devoted following who still miss them. One of the perils of publishing is the compulsion to identify a niche and when a book doesn’t fit the niche assigned it especially well, readers who would love the book are more likely not to find it, losing the book essential reviews, praise, critical acclaim, and ultimately sales. This is what happened to this series, I think, which deserved more attention than it got. The teddy bear angle attracted cozy readers who didn’t bargain for the policework in the books, and police procedural readers didn’t consider them because of the teddy bears.

 

These books sound fluffy and cozy and they are, to the extent they are centered around an ex-cop and his second career as a high-end teddy bear artisan. However, they are also rock-solid police procedurals. Lamb writes authoritatively and with experience about the process of investigating homicides and his knowledge informs nearly every page. He is also invested in the world of artisan stuffed animals, which is big business with the potential for franchise sales to toy manufacturers and Saturday morning cartoon shows. In this aspect these books remind me a good deal of the Emma Lathen books which featured John Putnam Thatcher, a banker who was forever getting involved in murders committed for money. In each Lathen book the reader received an education in a specific industry while following the banker/amateur detective.

 

In The False-Hearted Teddy (Berkley, 2007), the second in the series, the economic side of the business is clearly displayed. Brad Lyon and his wife Ashleigh travel to Baltimore for a national teddy bear convention and public show. This show is important because of the industry judging and awards and the attendant sales and publicity. Receiving one of the awards can mean a significant boost to an artisan’s career. One of the exhibitors dies suddenly after being accused of stealing her bears’ designs, which a big-time toymaker had offered to buy and mass produce. Brad unofficially starts looking into the evidence, invoking the ire of the investigating officer, and is promptly arrested for the murder.

 

The beginning chapters of the book are mostly centered on the bears but once the murder is committed, the police procedural side takes over for the rest of the story. The comments on the traffic and area landmarks are entertaining to residents. There is an indirect reference to Mystery Loves Company, a mystery bookstore that resided in Fells Point for a long time and has since moved to Oxford, Maryland.

 

These books are still in print, which should tell the publisher how much of a mistake it was to drop them, and are therefore readily available. Recommended for readers of middle-of-the-road mysteries looking for a new pandemic series.

 

·         Mass Market Paperback: 262 pages

·         ISBN-13: 978-0425216101

·         ISBN-10: 0425216101

·         Publisher: Berkley; First Edition (June 5, 2007)

 

 

Aubrey Hamilton ©2020

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

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Bitter Tea and Mystery: Moonflower Murders: Anthony Horowitz: Moonflower Murders is the sequel to an earlier book by Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders . In both books the main character is Susan Ryeland...

Do Some Damage: Special Delivery by Claire Booth

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Lesa's Book Critiques: FINISHED OFF IN FONDANT BY ROSEMARIE ROSS

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KRL This Week Update for 11/28/2020

Up in KRL this morning a review and giveaway of another Christmas mystery, "Candy Slain Murder" by Maddie Day  https://kingsriverlife.com/11/28/candy-slain-murder-by-maddie-day/

And a review of another Christmas mystery, "A Garland of Bones" by Carolyn Haines https://kingsriverlife.com/11/28/a-garland-of-bones-by-carolyn-haines/ 

We also have the latest mystery Coming Attractions from Sunny Frazier along with a giveaway of "Can't Judge a Book By Its Murder" by Amy Lillard  https://kingsriverlife.com/11/28/coming-attractions-covid-christmas-edition/  

For those who prefer to listen to Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast directly on KRL, you can find the player here for the episode that went up this week featuring the mystery short story "No More Excuses" by Guy Belleranti, read by local actor Sean Hopper https://kingsriverlife.com/11/28/new-mysteryrano-more-excuses-by-guy-bellertanti/ 

Up in KRL News and Reviews this week we have a review and ebook giveaway of "Gooseberry Christmas" by Kathi Daley https://www.krlnews.com/2020/11/gooseberry-christmas-by-kathi-daley.html 

And a review and giveaway of "Lowcountry Boughs of Holly" by Susan M Boyer and published by Henery Press https://www.krlnews.com/2020/11/lowcountry-boughs-of-holly-by-susan-m.html

 

Happy reading,

Lorie

Lesa's Book Critiques: MURDER AT VERONICA’S DINER BY J.D. GRIFFO

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Publishing ... and Other Forms of Insanity: 59 Calls for Submissions in December 2020 - Paying Markets

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Beneath the Stains of Time: Sudden Death (1932) by Freeman Wills Crofts

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Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly

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Lesa's Book Critiques: Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade

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FFB Review: Instruments of Night (1998) by Thomas H. Cook Reviewed by Barry Ergang

For this final Friday in November as you surface from your Turkey driven coma, I offer you Barry’s Review of Instruments of Night by Thomas H. Cook. The review originally ran in late 2007 and then again in 2012, so it has been quite some time since it saw the light of day here. After you read his review and mosey around here, make sure you ride over to Patti Abbott’s blog as well as Aubrey Nye Hamilton’s Happiness Is A Warm Book blog and see what they suggest today. Be sure to comment with your own FFB reviews and links. 

 

Instruments of Night (1998) by Thomas H. Cook

reviewed by Barry Ergang

 

Novelist Paul Graves is a man literally haunted by his past. The ghosts of one grim and brutal night invade his thoughts daily, summoned or unbidden, and lend their power to his books.

 

Raised on a small farm in North Carolina, Graves was already an imaginative young man who had taken a liking to writing when his parents were killed in a car accident. Paul was twelve and his sister Gwen was sixteen. The two continued to live on the farm for about a year until the night Gwen was tortured and eventually slain by a sadist named Kessler and his tremulous sidekick Sykes. Forced to witness his sister's agonies, Paul retreated into a long silence.

 

In the story's present, a forty-five-year-old Graves lives a life of self-imposed relative seclusion in New York City. He's the author of a popular series of novels set in that city at the end of the 19th Century. They feature a detective named Slovak who, much like Sir Denis Nayland Smith chasing after Dr. Fu Manchu, pursues the bloodthirsty Kessler and the slavish Sykes from murder to murder, aging and wearying in the process—much as his creator has aged and wearied and considered self-extinction.

 

Graves is invited to Riverwood, an estate in the Hudson Valley that remains a family home and also an artists' colony, by wealthy Allison Davies, who grew up there and who has never left. She offers him an odd commission: look into the fifty-year-old murder of her closest friend Faye Harrison, who was killed at the age of sixteen, and write a story about it that will satisfy Faye's dying mother about who killed her daughter. The story needn't be true, only plausible.

 

Reluctant at first, Graves finally accepts the job and takes up residence at Riverwood, where he's given access to all of the information about Faye's death, including the detailed reports by the investigating police detective, Dennis Portman. He is joined by Eleanor Stern, a playwright, who is quite possibly more intrigued by the project than Graves is.

 

What might seem like a dry historical probe is rendered dramatic by Graves's vivid imagination. He visualizes the players and the scenes they enact so as to carry the reader into the moments Portman's summaries only sketch. His investigations lead to revelations about Riverwood and its denizens in that long-ago time, and about Graves's own past.

 

I should add, for Golden Age fans, that although Instruments of Night is very much a psychological thriller, it's also a fairly-clued mystery. The key clue is extremely subtle and easily overlooked.

 

I discovered Edgar Allan Poe in early adolescence, William Faulkner in my late teens. What struck me about both of their prose styles was the quality of envelopment: you might be sitting in a riotous, crowded stadium during the Super Bowl or the World Series, but if you were reading one of their stories, you'd feel as though you were alone in inky blackness, aswirl in the story's events. Thomas H. Cook—at least in this novel, the first of his I've read—conveys that same envelopment.

 

So why am I torn about this book?

 

It's very well-written, Cook's prose often lyrical. The characters are properly fleshed-out, the pacing spot-on, and the suspense carefully built and sustained.

 

But its tone is unremittingly dark. In short stories like Poe's, where uniformity of tone was a goal, that quality is tolerable. Many of Faulkner's darker novels were occasionally relieved by moments of levity. Not so Instruments of Night. Cook sometimes overdoes Graves's recollections of his own horrors. Thus, compelling as the storyline is, I found it hard to sustain long periods of reading. I can't recall ever having read anything darker: not Sanctuary, The Sound and the Fury, or Light in August. Nor Bernard Malamud's The Fixer. Not even Elie Wiesel's Night.

 

With that caveat in place, I can recommend Instruments of Night as worth your time.

 

For more on the Golden Age follow the link http://gadetection.pbwiki.com/

 

 

Barry Ergang © 2007, 2012, 2020 

 Derringer Award-winner Barry Ergang’s written work has appeared in numerous publications, print and electronic. Some of it is available at Amazon and at Smashwords. His website is http://www.writetrack.yolasite.com/ where he is available for your editing needs.

 

Happy Thanksgiving To You And Yours

Thanksgiving Day is always tough as it was this day in 2011 when the docs came in and broke the news to us about Sandi and her cancers. Our world changed that day and was never normal again. Certainly, this past year has been tough as both Scott and I have had some major medical stuff.

But, in the awesome news department, Scott has not had a seizure since the nightmare night in July and the cancer scare for me turned out to be nothing more than a scare. I am very grateful for both deals as either or both could very easily have gone the other way. We are also still here and hanging in despite everything and that counts for a lot. Yes, I am damn near broke and may have to sell the house in a year or so to survive, but we are still better off than back the apartments where we were often within hours of eviction every month those last few years.  Many of you continue to make the point here, on FB, and elsewhere, that you are thinking about us, praying for us, etc., and we both are very grateful. 

Whether or not Covid 19 was possibly lurking in every breath you take, it would be a quiet one here at the house. As always, the NFL is on and the Cowboys play later today. This year, for the first time in several, a turkey will soon be in the oven as I try to bring a little sense of normalcy back into our lives. Since  turkeys are really nothing more than chickens jacked up on steroids, I think I should be able to do this. Time will tell how well I pulled that feat off. 

Big time thank you to one and all who keep following this blog, reading my reviews and other things, and think of us now and then. Big time thank you to Lesa Holstine whose picture above on her blog this morning cracked me up and I am borrowing and using without shame. 

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours from Scott and I. May you have a wonderful one. 

The Rap Sheet: Revue of Reviewers for 11/25/2020

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Publishing ... and Other Forms of Insanity: 50 Writing Contests in December 2020 - No entry fees

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