Lesa's Book Critiques: October Treasures in My Closet – Part 1
Tuesday, September 01, 2026
Mystery Fanfare: The Art Heist: Guest Post by Claudia Hagadus Long
Mystery Fanfare: The Art Heist: Guest Post by Claudia Hagadus Long: I have a really hard time killing anyone. For a normal person, not being able to murder would be, well, expected. Or at least hoped for. But...
SleuthSayers: Writing Changes
SleuthSayers: Writing Changes: At the Merrion Hotel in Dublin last year, telling James Joyce how a real writer works. As I write this, my wife and I are packing for our ...
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
Monday, August 31, 2026
In Reference to Murder: Media Murder for Monday
In Reference to Murder: Media Murder for Monday: It's the start of a new week and that means it's time for a brand-new roundup of crime drama news: THE BIG SCREEN/MOVIES David Finch...
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 ...
Little Big Crimes: Treat or Trick, by Mark Thielman
Little Big Crimes: Treat or Trick, by Mark Thielman: "Treat or Trick," by Mark Thielman, in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Sept/Oct 2026. This is the twelfth appearance in t...
Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: The Ninth Circle: A Billy Boyle WWII Mystery by James R. Benn
The 21st
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
Sunday, August 30, 2026
Mystery Fanfare: How 20 years of Southwest Backcountry Hiking Inspired a Mystery About a Grieving Archaeologist: Guest Post by Skye Griffith
Mystery Fanfare: How 20 years of Southwest Backcountry Hiking Inspi...: My journey writing Bone Hash , developed from years of adventures on the Colorado Plateau. Ever since I visited Mesa Verde National Park, I’...
SleuthSayers: See You in the Funny Pages
SleuthSayers: See You in the Funny Pages: I started collecting comic books when I was about eight, and for many years took the hobby very seriously indeed--witness the twenty or so l...
Guest Post: The Detective Prays with His Eyes Open by D. L. Gray
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
Saturday, August 29, 2026
SleuthSayers: If You Don't Know Your Burro from a Burrow
SleuthSayers: If You Don't Know Your Burro from a Burrow: For today's post, I'm updating and expanding a column I wrote for the Criminal Brief mystery blog many moons ago. If you never saw t...
KRL Update
Up on KRL this week a review and giveaway of "A Murder at the Mansion" by Ellie Alexander https://kingsriverlife.com/08/29/a-murder-at-the-mansion-by-ellie-alexander/
And reviews and giveaways of 2 more fun historical mysteries-"The Abduction of Rosalind Thorne" Rosalind Thorne Mysteries by Darcie Wilde & "Murder at Rosecliff" by Alyssa Maxwell https://kingsriverlife.com/08/29/pair-of-historical-mysteries-by-darcie-wilde-alyssa-maxwell/
We also have the latest Queer Mystery Coming Attractions from Matt Lubbers-Moore https://kingsriverlife.com/08/29/queer-mystery-coming-attractions-september-2026/
Up on KRL News and Reviews this week we have a review and giveaway of "Purple, Blame, Game" by Joanna Campbell Slan https://www.krlnews.com/2026/08/purple-blame-game-by-joanna-campbell.html
And a review and giveaway of "Either Enchanting Elixirs" by Lynn Cahoon https://www.krlnews.com/2026/08/eight-enchanting-elixirs-by-lynn-cahoon.html
For those who enjoy fantasy with their mysteries, we have a review and ebook giveaway of "Dark Secrets" by Keri Arthur https://www.krlnews.com/2026/08/dark-secrets-by-keri-arthur.html
Happy reading,
Lorie
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