Mini-Reviews of Books #51…
Crystal Blue Murder. Saralyn Richard, author (2022). This third novel in the “Detective Parrott” series (Murder in the One Percent and Palette for Love and Murder were the first two) builds on the previous ones but can stand alone. I’ve been waiting for it for some time, and I was not disappointed. It’s an excellent mystery, crime story, and police procedural with thriller elements that’s better than the first two novels, and that says a lot because those first two set the bar rather high.
There’s enough background that the reader easily becomes familiar with Detective Parrott and his wife Tonya. He’s the plain-clothes detective in a three-man police department in a region of rural Pennsylvania not far from Philadelphia. The region has a lot of people with old wealth, yet murders still occur. In this case, an eighty-year-old woman’s bank barn remade into a million-dollar residence explodes as if it was a meth lab. A body is found among the rubble, but it turns out the man had died before the explosion.
From thereon, Parrott’s case becomes complicated with enough twists and turns to satisfy any mystery lover. I shall not give away anymore of the plot; I’ll only state that it’s a good one that kept me flipping the “pages” on my Kindle.
I only have one nit to pick: I could have used a cast of characters, not so much for the police officers but for the many other intriguing and well-developed characters.
Highly recommended for your reading pleasure!
Project Hail Mary. Andy Weir, author (2021). Better than that potato-growing story, The Martian, and much better than Artemis, which belies the prospects we have in the new NASA moon landing program, this novel still has many negatives.
First, it’s tedious. The parts occurring on Earth are okay and in many ways more interesting than the struggle for survival orbiting a planet in the Tau Ceti system where the reader suffers through too many details about the MC’s struggle to communicate and cooperate with an ET from a planet in the 40 Eridani system.
Second, I was continuously reminded of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, another detailed tale more dedicated to undersea flora and fauna—classic, plodding sci-fi that’s far too short on plot (again, except for the flashbacks to the Hail Mary project’s beginnings on Earth).
So, what’s the project? A strange ET organism is eating Earth’s sun! And the MC and his ET sidekick must try to save their home planets. Fred Hoyle portrayed this much better in The Black Cloud and did it all on Earth!
Not recommended, but Mr. Weir should still receive kudos for trying to make this all scientifically plausible (he fails) and running the Iron Man race to finish the novel.
“DI Ruth Hunter” series. Simon McCleave, author. My binge-reading of entire series of British-style mysteries (which has led to several more of my own) continued with this series of novels. They are a bit darker and grittier than average (even more so than my “Inspector Morgan” mysteries, my work in progress—see below) and worlds apart from fluffy cozies! Too much attention is given to the MC’s search for her lesbian lover and her sergeant’s battles with alcoholism, but if you skip over those continuing side stories, you’ll find some intriguing plots that will entertain you for many hours. (Side stories are useful to flesh out the principal characters’ backgrounds, of course, but the author overdoes it here.)
The worst of the series is the one where the inspector and her sergeant are tasked with babysitting an ISIS-radicalized terrorist. While the novels could be described as mystery/thriller fiction in general, this novel is more thriller than mystery and doesn’t seem too believable. The author seems out of his comfort zone here in his writing.
Better than average with flashes of really good storytelling, I can recommend this series to anyone who loves the genre.
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“Inspector Steve Morgan” mysteries. Inspired by a character introduced in The Klimt Connection, #8 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, I plotted and wrote the first three novels (there might be more) as a set in order to ensure a high degree of consistency. I’ve published only #1, Legacy of Evil. I’m considering options for the next two, Cult of Evil and Fear the Asian Evil. Obviously evil is the common theme. In #1, it originates in Russia; in #2, it comes from a con man who creates a cult (think of Jim Jones, David Koresh, or Charles Manson); and in #3, it originates is China. Thus local evil around Bristol, England is caught in a sandwich between two international evils from Russia and China, respectively. Try #1 and watch for #2 and #3.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
