Barry's Reviews: "The Lord of Misrule" by Paul Halter

THE LORD OF MISRULE

by Paul Halter

Translated from the French by John Pugmire

My favorite kind of traditional mystery is the “impossible crime” tale. You know, the story in which a crime is committed in a room later found to be locked from the inside, from which there is no apparent means of egress for the criminal. Or the one in which someone is murdered in a field of snow or on a sandy beach--killed in a manner that requires his assailant to be up close and personal--but the only footprints in evidence are the victim’s. Or any other kinds of seemingly impossible situations writers can invent and solve. Writers who specialized in impossible situations included Hake Talbot, Clayton Rawson, Herbert Brean, Joseph Commings, Edward D. Hoch, and the acknowledged all-time master, John Dickson Carr.

Many others have contributed impossible crime stories to the genre, but few outside of those mentioned above have specialized in them. One notable modern exception is Carr disciple Paul Halter, an award-winning French author whose work, thanks to translator John Pugmire, is starting to become available to those of us who don‘t read French. Having previously translated some of Halter’s short stories and brought them out in the collection The Night of the Wolf (Wildside Press, 2006), Pugmire has recently given us the novel The Lord of Misrule, available as a trade paperback and in Kindle format.

Although first published in France in 1994, it has all the trappings of a Golden Age detective novel: an English country estate at Christmastime full of people who are not necessarily what they seem to be; a family curse that stretches back through several centuries; multiple “impossible” murders and the ghastly-looking title character who purportedly commits them; and the idiosyncratic amateur sleuth who ultimately unravels the puzzles.

 The story begins when, newly arrived in London from his native South Africa in the late 1890s, and believing that “Life is full of coincidences,” Achilles Stock makes the acquaintance of the quirky aesthete Owen Burns, after which his life is never quite the same. During the course of a year or so, the acquaintanceship burgeons into friendship.

Owen Burns, who has “been known to give the police a hand when they find themselves at a dead end,” and who is so smitten with an actress he has become involved with that he doesn’t want to leave London,  inveigles Stock, whom he knows to be an adventurous sort, into assisting him with an investigation by functioning as his remote eyes and ears. He wants Stock to pose as the fiancé of Miss Catherine Piggott. Miss Piggott, along with her brother Samuel, for whose life she fears, will be staying at the country estate of Charles Mansfield over Christmas.

Mansfield has two attractive daughters, Sibyl and Daphne. His son Edwin was murdered in a seemingly impossible manner several years earlier, another in a long line of victims of the Lord of Misrule. The additional house guests are Edgar Forbes, Samuel Piggott’s business partner, and Professor Julius Morganstone, a medium brought in to contact the murderous spirit and put an end to its life-taking.

Charles Mansfield explains to Stock that several hundred years earlier, as part of the Christmastime celebration in the village and its environs, a “Lord of Misrule” was elected to preside over the usual revels and create new ones, “the more depraved the better.” The Mansfields chose a man named Peter Joke to serve as the Lord. “That Christmas,” Mansfield explains, “Peter Joke dressed up in a thick black cloak, tights decorated with tiny bells, and a grotesque mask on his face made from some kind of whitewashed dough which gave it a horribly leprous effect.”  Behind the Mansfield house is a lake which was frozen over, and where the drunken revelers decided to play. Peter Joke drowned when the ice gave way beneath him. For years afterwards, every Christmas a member of the Mansfield family was murdered. The incidents became fewer with passing centuries, but resumed several years prior to the novel’s present. Several people in the Mansfield household have heard the tinkling of bells and seen the white-faced terror often enough to speak about him with a kind of jaded resignation.

As the story progresses, Stock learns about Edwin’s murder and is witness to the impossible murder of a house guest. Eerie incidents and seemingly impossible events follow one after another until Owen Burns finally arrives, learns what Stock has learned, and elucidates solutions.

Halter writes a leaner prose than John Dickson Carr, but he nonetheless manages to effectively create sinister events and atmospheres a la the master that will keep readers turning the pages. His weakness is characterization, and readers who demand well-fleshed-out characters who get up and walk off the pages will be disappointed. Halter distances himself from big emotional scenes as well, preferring to work up to them and then, in the next chapter, to retrospectively summarize the charged moments and their outcomes. He is almost exclusively concerned with moving his plot forward.

What differentiates Halter from Carr and the others, to my mind, is the way he piles on surprise after surprise when Owen Burns explains the whos and hows of the crimes. Almost nothing is what you think it is--and that includes the actors in the drama.

Despite its weaknesses, The Lord of Misrule will hurtle readers back into the Golden Age of the mystery story and leave them applauding its author’s skill. If you love “impossible” murders, you’ll chug through this novel and want to read more of Halter’s work. Let’s hope Mr. Pugmire plans to translate more of it.       

***This review originally appeared at The American Culture website: http://stkarnick.com/

Barry Ergang © 2011

Barry’s fiction at Smashwords can be found at:

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/cassidy20

Friday's Forgotten Books: "Killers Are My Meat" by Stephen Marlowe (Reviewed by Barry Ergang)

It is Friday and that means it is time for another Friday’s Forgotten Books Review. It also seemed like a good time to do something different. For the last several years, my friend Barry Ergang has been contributing the occasional review to this blog. One of the things I like about Barry’s well done reviews is the fact that he reviews books I normally would not do. It seemed like a good time to share the Friday workload with him as well as give you, the reader, a different perspective than what you see most days here. Therefore, Barry makes his Friday debut with Killers Are My Meat by Stephen Marlowe.

KILLERS ARE MY MEAT (1957) by Stephen Marlowe

Reviewed by Barry Ergang

One of the more literate of the hardboiled writers to emerge during the Fifties, the prolific but undervalued Stephen Marlowe created Washington, D.C.-based private detective Chester Drum, most of whose cases take him out of the country. 

 

 Killers Are My Meat starts when Drum is asked by the wife of his mentor, a P.I. named Gil Sprayregan, to find her husband. Drum soon learns Sprayregan has plans to blackmail Sumitra Mojindar, the round-heeled wife of a highly placed East Indian official, not realizing that everyone in D.C. knows of her promiscuity and that she herself doesn't care who knows it. Sprayregan is killed in a deliberate hit-and-run, and soon after his wife is shot to death by a smoothly vicious associate of Mrs. Mojindar who cannot be prosecuted because of his diplomatic immunity.

During the course of these events, Priscilla Varley tries to hire Drum to accompany her husband Stewart to Benares, India, where Varley will attend as a Western Observer an Afro-Asian Conference at which Mrs. Mojindar's husband is to be a key speaker. Varley is a man looking "to find himself" in the exotic, "mystical" East. Initially Drum declines the job, but after the Sprayregans are murdered, he agrees.

The plot develops further in Benares when Varley seeks out a sadhu, a holy man, and then goes missing; and Drum encounters an old friend and former lover, reporter Marianne Wilder, who is covering the conference. When Marianne is kidnapped by the same people who want Drum to deliver Varley to them, the action picks up and seldom flags. As things progress, Drum learns what Mrs. Mojindar and company feared Sprayregan had on them, and has to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion without causing an international incident--if he can survive the beatings he sustains along the way.

Imagine Philip Marlowe gone international and you have a sense of Chet Drum--though Drum's a lot more physical, less inclined to wisecracks, and a touch less cynical.

Born Milton Lesser (he legally changed his name), Stephen Marlowe writes in a crisp, literate style that shows definite flashes of Raymond Chandler, including the occasional Chandleresque simile. He has a good sense of character and an excellent sense of place and pace. If you enjoy quick, exciting reads, you owe it to yourself to seek out the Chester Drum novels by an author who was popular in his day but who, regrettably, is all but unknown nowadays except by collectors and nostalgia buffs.

More on the author can be found at: http://gadetection.pbwiki.com/Killers-Are-My-Meat

Barry Ergang © 2011

To celebrate e-book week, Barry Ergang's impossible crime novelette, "The Play of Light and Shadow," has been reduced in price at Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/24377 Download a copy to your e-reader or computer between now and March 12th. If you like whodunits/howdunits, try to solve this one.

Barry’s other offerings at Smashwords can be found at: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/cassidy20

Hands on Reviewing--A Hypothetical Review

While some readers expect those that review cookbooks to try the recipes and report that in the review, it seems like a good thing that same standard is not applied to reviewing murder mysteries or writing crime type short stories. The research could be brutal on the populace. :)))

Can you just imagine.....A Hypothetical Review


While the overall story to be a good one, the decapitation sequence outlined in the opening chapter did not work out as expected. While using the kitchen knife described in the sequence, I found the victim much more uncooperative than expected with a considerable amount of strong neck tissue that resisted my efforts. Furthermore, unlike the minimal blood splatter described in the book, I found the process extremely messy with an additional unexpected consequence of the victim spontaneously releasing his bowels. Considering I had gone to the trouble to procure white carpeting as described in the chapter to test the scenario, this was an unexpected complication I could have done without and had not been described by the author. In addition to violating repeatedly the "show--don't tell" dictum, the author failed to do basic research to make his story believable. Beyond what has been noted above, this reviewer also found fault with the crime scene cleanup as described in the second chapter in terms of the crime scene itself as well as the disposal of the body and the goat fornication scene in Chapter Three.

Then there was the romance angle between our computer analysis/day trader turned into a contract killer thanks to the global recession and the stunningly sexy sorceress thanks to their spontaneous meeting on a riverboat at the mouth of the Mississippi as a hurricane rolls into the area. That whole combination didn't quite work for me. Nor did the angle that she, who could see the future and had just left her fourth disastrous relationship thanks to his cheating and severe fondness for pork products, never knew that her half-brother was secretly the head of a Mexican drug cartel that was also engaged in funneling arms to rebel fighters across the Middle East and Asia at the behest of the American and Icelandic governments. However, the 85 page section on Icelandic History that comprised the entirety of chapter five was interesting.

All in all, this novel of over seven hundred pages and featuring sixteen blurbs on the back cover and an incredibly endowed and shapely woman waving a gun and wearing a pink bikini on the cover just did not quite work for me. Not only is the choice of pink bikini against a rolling thundercloud not the smartest in terms of the color appearance of the cover, it also worth noting that the gun is not correct and there are no fingers depicted inside the trigger guard. Additionally, no woman ever wears a bikini in the entire novel and nobody ever throws a grenade despite the fact that two are strapped to her waist. Billed as a "cutting edge cozy that pushes the boundaries" this book may offend some readers expecting a cozy.

All locked rooms are guarded by key pads and visual scanners despite the fact that the book opens in 1971 before moving to 1983 and eventually 2009. No dogs are harmed in the book. Four squirrels die due to claymore mines being miss set and there is the graphic goat fornication scene.

A recent entry on the best seller list, the author is making his rounds among the talk show circuit and the movie version is scheduled to be out next summer. Charlie Sheen and John Stamos are rumored to be in casting talks. The next novel in the series, currently unnamed, is in a bidding war with expectations it will be out fall of 2012.

Kevin

Reviewing: "Barefoot Contessa--How Easy Is That? Fabulous Recipes & Easy Tips" by Ina Garten

The point of this latest cookbook from Ina Garten better known as the Barefoot Contessa “… is all about saving you time and stress.” (introduction, page 1) According to her, while the book is not about a couple of items you can throw together in five minutes and make a fantastic meal, the book does feature ease in terms of ingredients, short cuts, techniques, recipes and menus so that you can spend your precious time with your family and friends. Like a lot of books that are pushing the idea of speed/ease lately, this cookbook does not use any capitalization for titles of the book, chapters/sections, or recipes. Since that is the way it is done in the book, the same format will be followed in this review.



The first recipe on page 18 is mentioned in the seven page introduction summarized above and serves as a showcase of what the barefoot contessa means in this book. We have all stood and made french toast a few pieces at a time. In this house, there are four who love french toast and by the time mom and dad actually got to eat any, it is a long process from start to finish. Instead of making it on the stove, with the “french toast bread pudding” recipe depicted here in text and photographs, one puts everything together and runs it in the oven for approximately an hour and a half.

“cocktails” actually gets the book going on page 22 after a brief commentary on the well-stocked pantry. It opens with “watermelon mojitos” featuring watermelon, crushed mint and freshly squeezed lime juice along with some other ingredients on page 26. While the section is titled “cocktails” and does feature a number of different drink recipes, the section also features snack recipes as well such as “chunky blue cheese yogurt dip” on pages 30-31, “roasted eggplant caponata on pages 38-39 and “crostini with tuna tapenade” on page 46-47.

“starters” follows after a brief commentary on menu planning. “onion & fennel soup gratin” on pages 56-57 starts things off with recipes for “celery & parmesan salad” on pages 62-63 and “soppressata & cheese in puff pastry” on pages 70-71 among others included.

After a brief commentary on equipment, the section on “lunch” comes next and begins with a “greek panzanella” on pages 88-89. As explained in the book this is basically the italian version with feta cheese and olives. That is followed on the next page with a “roasted vegetable frittata” on pages 90-91. Several recipes for different fish follow before the “ultimate grilled cheese” sandwich on pages 102-103. This is a serious grilled cheese sandwich using bacon, high quality mustard, aged cheese and a bunch of other ingredients. Several more recipes for other lunch treats are also included in the section.

“dinner” appropriately comes next after a brief commentary on table settings. “lemon chicken breasts” using chicken (of course), white wine, garlic, oregano, lemon, thyme and a couple of other things start off this section on page 120. There are several recipes for chicken, turkey, lamb, beef as well as different types of fish in this section. Also included are various pasta dishes.

Vegetables are presented in various ways in the “vegetables” section after a brief commentary about how to easily serve your guests. “roasted summer vegetables” states the section off on page 168-169 making heavy use of zucchinis, onions and peppers. Cauliflower has always been an evil disgusting vegetable as far as I am concerned but the barefoot contessa tries to make it appealing on pages 172-173 with her “garlic-roasted cauliflower” recipe. The jury is still out on that as the idea of spending money on cauliflower is hard to swallow on so many levels.

After all that has come before, if you have any room for dessert you are in luck as the “dessert” section begins on pages 200-201. After a brief commentary on saving time in baking, the section opens with an “easy cranberry & apple cake on pages 204-205. Chocolate, a basic ingredient and food source around here is not ignored in this cookbook as it is used in “mocha chocolate ice box cake” (pages 206-207), “chocolate pudding cream tart” (pages 210-211) and other treats. Strawberries, bananas and peaches also make frequent appearances in this section.

“more easy tips” follows with plenty of pictures of the various tips in action. Some, like having two dishwashers might be a practical impossibility though if I had a choice I would go with two ovens like my grandmother had. Other tips such as having plenty of sheet pans, timers, cooking bowls, measuring utensils, etc. may be of some use. Many of the tips seem to be nothing more than product endorsements for certain selected companies and have little use.

A five page index brings this colorful 256 page cookbook to a close. A cookbook that features lots of recipes with plenty of information regarding serving sizes and ingredients that are lovingly photographed for maximum effect. Visually the book is great and clearly well-organized with plenty of information to make time in the kitchen worthwhile.

However, absolutely zero nutritional information is provided of any type. One can only guess as to what the nutritional information would be for the recipes included in this book. Furthermore, a lot of the suggested ingredients are not easy to find or affordable nor are the dishes quick to prepare. Considering the title, that issue is a significant problem. Additionally, most of the tips scattered through the book are either very basic common knowledge type things or serve as nothing more than product endorsements.

With the obvious drawbacks noted above, this cookbook does feature a lot of good food, plenty of clear and easy to understand recipes. While well done in a visual sense, longtime fans of her work may be disappointed with this latest offering that is not only rather misleading title wise but is also primarily a long product endorsement project for those with deep pockets.



barefoot contessa how easy is that? fabulous recipes & easy tips
ina garten
http://www.barefootcontessa.com
Photographs by Quentin Bacon
http://www.quentinbacon.com/
Clarkson Potter/Publishers
http://www.clarksonpotter.com
October 2010
ISBN# 978-0-307-23876-4
Hardback
256 Pages
$35.00


Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano, Texas Public Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple © 2011

Barry's Reviews: 61 HOURS by Lee Child

61 HOURS (2010) by Lee Child
Reviewed by Barry Ergang



Ex-military man--specifically, military policeman--Jack Reacher is adrift in America with, quite literally, only the clothes on his back. To say the man travels light is one of the world's great understatements. 61 Hours is the fourteenth book in the Reacher series. As it opens, he's on a tour bus in South Dakota, having paid the driver to let him join the elderly passengers who are en route to Mount Rushmore in the dead of winter. It is snowing, with a bigger storm that's coming from Wyoming expected to hit, and the temperatures are bitter. An oncoming car goes into a skid and the bus driver, tired after a long day of concentrating because of the weather conditions, tries to avoid it. The bus slides on the glazed road surface and winds up in a ditch.

The nearest town is a small one named Bolton. Because of problems within the town, help is delayed in getting to the bus. But eventually it arrives, and the freezing passengers are taken to town--some to hospitals. The townspeople are kind enough to let the uninjured stay in their homes until new transportation arrives for them. The one who takes in Reacher is the deputy police chief.

As events unfold, Reacher learns that outside town there's an old military installation, long unused, that's currently occupied by an outlaw biker gang. The local authorities are sure the bikers are manufacturing and selling methamphetamines, but they haven't got sufficient cause to search the installation. However, one of the bikers has been jailed and is awaiting trial because a local woman, elderly librarian Janet Salter, saw him engaged in a transaction. The bikers are working for the ruthless and deadly head of a Mexican drug cartel, a man who goes by the name Plato. Janet Salter is willing to testify at the biker's trial and is consequently under twenty-four-hour protection.

The Bolton chief of police and his deputy chief realize that Reacher, with his experience and apparent willingness to help, is an asset they can't afford to ignore. And since neither he nor any of the other bus passengers can go anywhere until the storm lessens sufficiently for another bus to get there, they allow him to involve himself in their problems.

As matters progress, several mysteries develop, one of which is the identity of the hit man Reacher and the police know has been dispatched to kill Janet Salter, another the reason the military installation was built fifty years earlier and what might be there still.

The story moves along at a terrific pace--even during some chapters when all anyone can do is wait to see what will or won't happen--helped in no small measure by Lee Child's staccato prose style, one made up principally of short declarative sentences and sentence fragments. What seems at first to be a straight thriller proves to also be a detective story, with Reacher deducing from events the reader is privy to who the hit man is.

61 Hours is a thriller and a chiller, the frigid-beyond-imagining South Dakota winter playing a major role in the story. Child describes it vividly throughout the novel, and many a reader will shiver through these passages--especially if it's cold where he is while reading it.

The climax is tense and wild, as Reacher comes face to face with the nefarious Plato, and ends with a cliffhanger that's presumably resolved in the next book in the series.

This is the first of the Reacher novels I've read. I've heard and read good things about them from other reviewers. I don't know if they're best read in order, but after reading 61 Hours, I'm sure I'll be reading some of the others.


Barry Ergang (c) 2011
_____________________________
To celebrate e-book week, Barry Ergang's impossible crime novelette, "The Play of Light and Shadow," has been reduced in price at Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/24377 Download a copy to your e-reader or computer between now and March 12th. If you like whodunits/howdunits, try to solve this one.

EVENT: WGT-HOW TO MARKET YOUR BOOK AND YOU (RESCHEDULED FOR APRIL 30, 2011)

Writer's Guild of Texas Presents: How to Market Your Book and You

Come hear Author/Speakers Tony Eldridge and Kat Smith as they prepare you for the most important role of being an author, becoming a BEST SELLING author. Learn how to promote, sell and market your book product and yourself as an authority on your story or topic.

About the Speakers:

Tony Eldridge
is the author of The Samson Effect and shares book marketing advice and tips on
his blog http://blog.marketingtipsforauthors.com

Kat Smith
is the author of The Naked Author -Exposing the Myths of Publishing,
a publisher/manufacturer and former co-host of a sndicated radio show with ABC Radio.

When: April 30, 2011
Time: 9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Where: Richardson Civic Center
411 West Arapaho Road
Richardson Texas 75080
Phone: 972.744.4090

Fee: $25.00 Members $30.00 Public

Pay online at www.writersguildoftexas.org or send check to; Writers’ Guild of Texas, 6009 W. Parker Rd., Suite 149-175 Plano, Texas 75093 www.writersguildoftexas.org

Friday's Forgotten Books: "BURN" by Jonathan Lyons

It is Friday and that means it is time once again for another book for Friday’s Forgotten Books. This week I am selecting the very good BURN by Jonathan Lyons. Blending mystery and science fiction, author Jonathan Lyons created a strong mystery that just might come true the way things are going. Below is the original review written ten years ago.




Jonathan Lyons has crafted an intriguing mystery set on our world in a not too distant future. He has taken current events and extrapolated a logical futuristic setting from them while adding multi-dimensional characters. At the same time, he asks fundamental technology driven questions such as when does something totally technology based, achieve human status with feelings, emotions, and the like?

In this future world, giant corporations run the country. The effects of global warming have come to pass, raising the world's sea levels and destroying major cities. Permanent fogs of smog have rolled in causing a perpetual acidic rain. The well to do have managed to flee to where the sun still shines, artificial islands created in places like the South Pacific and Indian Oceans. Corporations caused it all to happen as they bought off the politicians and set themselves up to run everything. The biggest corporation around is Expedite, which among other things, is the corporate sponsor of Old New York's police force. The suits make the decisions about what gets investigated not the cops.

Cage used to be a cop and was a pretty good one. He annoyed the powers that be, by investigating the death of Joseph Fuhlber, an Expedite computer scientist. The doctor's partner was also killed and both were classified as suicide. Both deaths were clearly murder and when Cage wouldn't leave it alone, he was booted from the force, nearly destroying his life. Cage is surviving, financially and emotionally, but just barely.

Janice Gild, who wants her brother's death investigated, contacts him. The cops aren't doing anything to speak of and the dead brother has links back to Expedite. The man was incinerated in his own condo while in bed and amazingly, the rest of the condo did not burn. While vaguely interested and in need of money, Cage does not want to run afoul of Expedite again. He grudgingly agrees while at the same time warning her, that he won't fight Expedite if they don't want it investigated.

Soon, he discovers that the crime scene has been tampered with and Janice Gild's brother was only one of several to strangely die by incineration. If it wasn't spontaneous human combustion, a rare event, then what is happening? Bodies begin to pile up and Cage slowly figures out that the only help may come from the missing android domestic Jennifer Four. But, Jennifer Four is not what she once was and has developed her own agenda and Cage may be interference to be removed.

This debut novel (available in a variety of formats) is very good with plenty of action and multi-dimensional characters. Jonathan Lyons deftly mixes in back ground information and social commentary without sliding into preaching. He adds some downright funny parts, which I won't spoil by revealing. This is a very good book and I eagerly await Mr. Lyon's next project which this reviewer hopes just might be a sequel to this effort. Enjoy!


BURN
Jonathan Lyons

http://www.the-foundry.net/

Donham Books
August, 2000

ISBN# 978-1583454428

Hardback
207 Pages


Material provided by the author in exchange for my objective review.


Kevin R. Tipple © 2001, 2011

Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine: I'm Repeating This Post . . .

Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine: I'm Repeating This Post . . .: ". . . in a blatant effort to get a lot of you to click over to the site and show the folks at EQMM how powerful the blog is. So what are yo..."


Another very worthy thing to consider today.

CrimeFictionWriter: Respect the freelancer

CrimeFictionWriter: Respect the freelancer

A piece well worth your attention. A big thank you to Michael Bracken who brought attention to this recently. If you are not already following Michael Bracken's blog--you should be.


Kevin

I sent you the book---where is the review?

A sentiment I have received from a number of authors over the weekend who expressed their annoyance with various levels of irritation. As I pointed out to several of the authors, if they had been reading this blog, they would have had a pretty good idea of what is going on. I have made no secret of my health situation that caused my eventual termination of employment from my job with the local school district (a job I was pretty damn good at if I do say so myself), derailed my writing career, wrecked our financial situation, and in essence pretty much destroyed my life.  The last thing I ever wanted was to be sued by a third party debt collector d/b/a as ALLEN ADKINS & ASSOCIATES on behalf of Citbank, to file for food stamps, to file for social security disability, to fall in parking lots despite using my cane or any of the rest of it.


That is my reality. Every...single...day. 



 I don't blame anyone for being frustrated. I guarantee you--absolutely no one is more frustrated than I am. My worsening health continues to have a huge impact on what I can do and how fast I can do it. That is why I pretty stopped accepting anything for review starting last summer and made a rare exception here and there for authors I knew well and had worked on their stuff before.


Because I am trying to keep my column going in the newspaper SENIOR NEWS as long as I physically can, my focus right now is on books that fit that review market first and secondarily elsewhere. Those books have priority with me because reviews for them fit the column and then other places. Clearly, if the book fits that column, I can double my effort as the review can fit there and elsewhere. As I can, I work in other things, but for now that has to be my focus.


I am doing the level best I can--even if it does not appear that way.


Kevin

Reviewing: "Nights of the Red Moon: A Mystery" by Milton T. Burton

Milton T. Burton’s third novel sets the stage for a series with a rock solid foundation, interesting characters, and a complex case. Sheriff Bo Handel has been the strong, and at times compassionate, arm of the law in Caddo County, Texas for nearly thirty years. Forty miles away from the Louisiana border and half that north of Nacogdoches, the county is fairly quiet though there have been strange events over the years. With a

drought and heat wave gripping the state and painting the Texas moon blood red, Sheriff Bo Handel knows the Cherokees were right to fear such times as periods of madness and death.

It was some time on an early September morning that Amanda Twiller, wife of the local Methodist preacher, was murdered and then dumped on the front lawn of the parsonage. Shot three times in the back, her body has been left like trash out on the lawn for one and all passing by to see. Including her husband, who found her just after dawn and called it in. While the fact she is dead is not a surprise, the actual manner of her death is a little bit. In the three short years that Reverend Bobby Joe Twiller and Amanda had been in town, she had made quite a name for herself as an adulteress, prescription drug addict, and a few other things before running off with Emmet Zorn, owner of a local liquor store. None of that explains why the FBI in the form of two agents is also present at the local crime scene.

Agents Muldoon and Hotchkiss of the FBI are interested because Emmet Zorn has links to organized crime down in Houston. Their agenda is to get evince against Emmet Zorn and leveraging him to talk about those higher up the food chain. What starts as a simple local murder case quickly puts a personal and professional strain on Sheriff Bo Handel. He doesn't care about the federal government, inter-agency cooperation, or why it all matters in the world. He just wants the actual killer brought to justice. Along the way, if he can, he will help others and try to stem the rising tide of collateral damage in his county where outside forces are turning the county into their personal turf war.

Author Milton T. Burton’s latest effort after The Rogues' Game and The Sweet and the Dead is a powerful, and at times, dark mystery set in East Texas. Sort of a weird cross between the style of Bill Crider and Joe Landsdale, this is a powerfully good noir style cozy. Borderline graphic at times, full of dark nuance and meaning, the book moves quickly through its 294 pages to a powerful resolution with no easy answers.

Along the way the complex character of Sheriff Bo Handel as well as numerous major and minor secondary characters comes alive for the reader. Plenty of East Texas history is woven into the tale in such a way that by the end of the book, the very county itself fully exists as a character in its own right and is lodged in your mind. Couple all that with plenty of action, mystery, suspense, a hint of romance, and the result is a breakout book for Texan Milton T. Burton. While you do have to wait for a sequel, there is this one and his two others if he is new to you. If he isn't new to you and you have not read it yet, what are you waiting for?


Nights of the Red Moon: A Mystery
Milton T. Burton
http://obscuredestinies.blogspot.com/
A Thomas Dunne Book (Minotaur Books)
http://www.minotaurbooks.com
December 2010
ISBN# 978-0-312-64800-8
Hardback (available on Kindle)
294 Pages
$24.99


Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano, Texas Public Library System.


Kevin R. Tipple © 2011

Friday's Forgotten Books: "Cruel Cuts" by John Richard Lindermuth

For this week’s Friday’s Forgotten Books hosted by Patti Abbott, I have selected Cruel Cuts written by John Richard Lindermuth. Years ago, I first read this book back when I reviewed books for the CrimeandSuspense zine run by Tony Burton. Unfortunately the run was all too short and the zine has been no more for quite a long time now. But, this book is still available and still very much worth your time.

                                     

 Living in a small town means everyone knows your business. It also means that virtually everyone is a suspect when something heinous is going on. That was the case twelve years ago when letters harassing Charles Edward Kline known as "Chick" to one and all surfaced. No one was caught then and no one is a real suspect now in the current letter campaign.

What is being alleged now is a lot more serious. According to the letters Chick, now a successful small town attorney and twenty-six years old, is killing and mutilating animals and livestock in the area during the night hours. While some may believe the letters, others like retired police chief Dan "Sticks" Hetrick don't. Neither does Flora Vastine, an officer new to the force who unluckily found the most recent animal killing/mutilation.

Combining the threads of a disturbing mystery, domestic violence and at least two potential romances, this second novel in the series from author J. R. Lindermuth weaves a complex and very enjoyable cozy read full of murder, deceit and greed. Along the way he provides a revealing glimpse into a small town with characters just as real as your neighbors next door. Take the journey to Swatara Creek, Pennsylvania and you won't be sorry.

Cruel Cuts

By J. R. Lindermuth

Whiskey Creek Press

http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com

ISBN# 1-59374-910-4

Large Trade Paperback

243 Pages

Kevin R. Tipple © 2007, 2011

Tangent Online: Recommended Read List-2010

As announced at the Tangent Online homepage, htttp://www.tangentonline.com/ the Tangent Online: Recommended Reading List-2010 is now up. Complied by Founder and Managing Editor Dave Truesdale and Assistant Managing Editor Steve Fahnestalk, the 2010 list features nearly 190 recommendations as to the best reading as judged by the reviewers working for Tangent Online. The entire list can be easily found at http://www.tangentonline.com/news-mainmenu-158 and covers short stories, novellas, and novelettes in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres.


Kevin R. Tipple
Assistant Editor, E-Zines

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Bill Crider, AND ME!

“Kevin Tipple reviews books over at Kevin’s Corner (http://kevintipplescorner.blogspot.com/), old books for Friday’s Forgotten Books and new ones on other days. He reviews anthologies and novels, always thoughtfully and often at more length than some reviewers. Well worth a look.” (Bill Crider, Blog Bytes, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April 2011, Page 186)

How very cool is that? I am thrilled!