If inventor Pam Nash is right about Zappa, she could revolutionize law enforcement. If she’s wrong, they’ll kill her daughter.
Now you can read ZAPPED: AN EDGAR ROWDEY CAPE COD MYSTERY on your phone, tablet, or computer for just $3.99. Click to see it at Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Kobo, or Barnes & Noble.
A Perfect Victim by Patricia Dusenbury My rating: 5 of 5 stars This suspenseful mystery drops us into the Louisiana Bayou with a local oyster-poacher who’s about to blunder into the wrong place at the wrong time. From an explosive start it cuts to a business deal — at least, …
You’re invited! Join San Francisco writers & readers at the Mechanics’ Institute, 57 Post (nr Montgomery BART), at noon on Friday, Dec. 16 for drinks, snacks, & a Writers’ Lunch panel: “Indie or Traditional Publishing: Six Things You Need to Know Before 2017.” Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh My rating: …
Faint Promise of Rain by Anjali Mitter Duva My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a luminous journey into a long-ago time, faraway place, & little-known vocation I was fascinated to learn about. Congratulations to Anjali Mitter Duva for leaping — bravely & lovingly — into the 16th-century Rajasthan …
Last night, while my noisy next-door neighbor was out, I enjoyed the rare luxury of a peaceful evening. Instead of insulating myself from his TV (explosions, gunfire, car crashes, fistfights, screaming) with work, music, or my own TV, I lounged on the sofa and read a book. Emily Dickinson was …
The Black Mountain by Rex Stout
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Kudos to Rex Stout for grappling with the Poirot Problem: What do you do when your series detective, to whom you whimsically gave an exotic foreign background, becomes so popular that fans demand to know about his past? Agatha Christie created Ariadne Oliver to vent. Stout tops her by killing off Nero Wolfe’s oldest friend, forcing the sedentary sleuth not just out of his house but onto a plane to Montenegro.
This has to be the oddest book in the Wolfe/Goodwin series. Nero Wolfe, the legendary couch potato, transformed to a mountain goat? Archie — posing as his son — carries the luggage along with the narrative, which he’s reconstructed after the fact from Wolfe’s translations. I learned more than I could absorb about the geography and politics of that volatile region, which would soon explode into larger wars than the one our sleuths must navigate. The story is action-packed, full of disguises, deceptions, betrayals, and violence, suspenseful all the way back to New York.
So, more of a thriller than a Golden Age mystery. No women, except for the occasional glimpsed-from-afar wife or daughter. I enjoyed The Black Mountain, and I’d love to ask Rex Stout how he came to write it, but I’ll be happy to rejoin Wolfe and Goodwin in Manhattan.
What better publication date for Zapped: an Edgar Rowdey Cape Cod Mystery than October 31? Before it hits bookstores, please come help me toast this too-long-awaited sequel to Croaked. And thanks again to the many friends and experts who helped it along the way — I couldn’t have done it …
Information Received by E.R. Punshon My rating: 3 of 5 stars The opening sentence of “Information Received” is a whole 10-line paragraph. Each chapter has a title, with a pretty lines-&-leaves archway above it. Welcome back to literature before Hemingway & Hurston, when English (like Greek) comprised separate written & …
In the Bleak Midwinter by Julia Spencer-Fleming My rating: 4 of 5 stars In my quest for contemporary mystery writers as enjoyable as the Golden Age greats (Christie, Marsh, Allingham, Stout, Tey….), I was referred to Julia Spencer-Fleming. This first book in her series starts with an appealing title — …
Hank Phillippi Ryan: Truth Be Told It took me 2 tries to read this #3 in Ryan’s Jane Ryland series. Truth Be Told is half police procedural, from the POV of preppy Boston detective Jake Brogan, & half mystery, from the POV of mostly-TV journalist Jane Ryland. I hadn’t read …
