Murder at the Mill. Irina Shapiro, author (Merlin Press). This is #3 in the “Redmond and Haze Mysteries.” Set after the US Civil War when war-weary Captain Redmond, a medical doctor who tended to wounded soldiers, finds he’s inherit property north of London (Oxfordshire?) and becomes an ex-pat and duke to enjoy it, Redmond enjoys an idyllic existence punctuated by crime-solving with young and newly minted Inspector Haze (Redmond has become the pathologist doctor in this novel), but that existence is sorely perturbed by the arrival of his ex-fiance. She tossed him aside when he was stuck in a CSA prison, but she’s now lost a husband and intends to get Redmond back at tll cost. Will he succumb to her advances? Not if his new love, the vicar’s daughter, has anything to say about it!

Of course, a murder occurs that calls Redmond and Haze back into action, complicating all the romantic intrigue. This is where the author creates a Poe-like dark tale of murder most fowl, where the victim is a lowlife who has done fowl deeds himself. The reader won’t know whom deserves their sympathies, the victim or his killers! In other words, the author explores the darkness in men’s souls, the universal evil that has haunted humanity since Cain and Abel.

Highly recommended. Although the author isn’t British, these novels are written like other British-style mysteries, and they’re historical fiction well worthy of the time-traveling trek back to 1860’s England. You can read all the novels independently. And,  by the way, I read the first two books in the series—they’re also great reads—so you can binge-read the entire series. #4 is on pre-order now at Amazon.

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Comments are always welcome.

Origins: The Denisovan Trilogy, Book One. Kayla Jones has dreams she can’t understand. Her future seems determined as the brilliant STEM student looks forward to a research career, but her past gets in the way. As if the chaos afflicting the world and leading to her adopted father’s death wasn’t enough, killers begin to pursue her. With some friends who come to her aid, she begins to discover a conspiracy that can be traced to prehistoric battles between hominins bent on conquest of their world. Coming as soon as possible from A.B. Carolan!

And to tide you over until this new novel is published, please try A.B.’s other three YA novels, now on sale through December 31, 2020 at Smashwords. These three YA sci-fi mysteries, Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games will take you from the near to the far future, all set in my sci-fi universe mapped out in “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” and other stories. They will provide many hours of reading pleasure for young adult readers and those adult readers who are young at heart.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

An Irish Tale. Barbara Dowd Wright, author; illustrations, Sokyo (2016). Sometimes you find more at the beach than you bargain for. One of my favorite places on the New Jersey shore is Spring Lake (it gets a cameo in my new novel Death on the Danube). The breakers there are impressive, and I can sit and watch them for hours, as they seem to tell me, “We will be here long after all you humans are gone.” You might think those thoughts are pessimistic, maudlin, or morbid; they’re not. It’s just a frequent come-to-reckoning that I have, stimulated there by watching the crashing waves, producing a realization that we should recognize our place in history and be humble.

Irish history as writ large is part of that reckoning. It arguably made Western civilization possible as Irish monks saved many documents from invaders like the Vikings. That history isn’t as big as this planet or Universe’s, but it’s large enough to be filled with mystery and meaning. I learn more about it as the years go by. In my review of Hegerty’s The Story of Ireland (June 24^th), I mentioned that St. Patrick wasn’t the first to bring Christianity to Ireland. He’s the most famous, though, and became its patron saint. His original name was Maewyn Succat, a Briton who was kidnapped as a young man and became a slave in ancient Ireland. He escaped and returned to Briton, became a priest, and took the name Patrick before he returned to Eire.

There is a bit of magical realism here as Maewyn comes to grips with the pagan beliefs of ancient Ireland. This undoubtedly was necessary for him, one way or another, so why not via a love story? To this day, the Irish believe in a mix of Catholicism and pagan myths and legends, which isn’t uncommon in any conversion process. (Hawaiians have similar beliefs, the missionaries who invaded their lands not being completely successful.)

This little book is a beautifully written historical fiction story about fifth century Ireland. It features Kiara the Healer, a wild Irish pagan woman, and the young slave-shepherd Maewyn, who changed Irish history forever. It’s a little pearl to be found among the many ordinary grains of sand represented by Amazon’s or bookstores’ offerings.

And that takes me back to Spring Lake. We found it at the Irish Centre there. I understand the author sells it from her website, and, although my copy says “limited edition,” it’s also on Amazon in both print and ebook versions. I certainly wouldn’t have read it without Spring Lake, though. Definitely worth the read, and you don’t have to be Irish to enjoy it! I sat back in my easy chair with my two fingers of Jameson and read it in one session. Fascinating!

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Comments are always welcome.

Death on the Danube. At the end of Son of Thunder, #2 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, ex-MI6 agent and ex-Scotland Yard inspector Esther Brookstone and Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden finally say their I-do’s. At the beginning of this new novel, #3 in the series, they embark on their honeymoon cruise down the romantic Danube. When a strange passenger who is traveling alone is murdered, Bastiann takes over the investigation because the river was declared international waters in the Treaty of Paris. Who really is this gaunt victim? And who on the list of passengers and crewmembers is the assassin? Mystery, thrills, suspense, and romance await readers who join them in their journey. You can’t take this trip now because of COVID, but you can join them in spirit. Available in ebook and print format at Amazon, and in all ebook formats at Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo and Walmart, etc.) and affiliated library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardner, etc.). Click to see the book trailer.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Disloyal. Michael Coen, author (Skyhorse Publishing, 2020). Of all the tell-alls about Trump aka Il Duce aka Narcissus le Grand aka that “f&%$ing moron” (SecState Tillerson quote), this one was the most enjoyable to read so far. (I’m sure there’ll be more if he gets another term–God help us!) I don’t know if a ghost-writer was used (the author claims he wrote it using pen and legal pads in his cell), but it’s well-written, a memoir more like a novel portraying the dark, psychotic mind of the most dangerous man on Earth. The difference with a novel? This is all reality, or, if you insist, a portrait of the fantasy world mentally ill Trump lives in. It’s very entertaining. I’m reluctant to confess that. But it also reconfirmed all the bad things I know about the orange-haired devil…and more. Perhaps as part of Il Duce’s faux “patriotism course” where he wants to brainwash grade school children, we should also include this book as required reading in all high school civics courses as lessons for what a responsible electorate should NOT do. If Trump’s presidency doesn’t destroy this country, I’ll be surprised.

“Oh,” you might say, especially if you’re one of Trump’s fanatic followers, “Cohen is just a disgruntled Trump ex-employee.” I’m sure Moscow Mitch, Loco Lindsey, Jimmy “Jones” Jordan, and other Trump toadies are all saying that. They think rational voters will swallow their damn poisoned Kool-Aid. To them and every other naysayer, I counter that with, “Read the book if you can stop bloviating long enough.” From a “f&^%ing moron” to soldiers being “suckers” and “losers,” even while killing thousands of US citizens with his mishandling of the COVID pandemic, Trump’s actions are plain for any rational person to see. With this book, you’ll discover that what you see is just the tip of the iceberg. There aren’t enough awful adjectives to describe this despicable excuse of a human being.

Cohen belongs in jail too, of course. His mea culpa here is a great service to the US, though, because of the coming elections. He allows us to enter the fanatic, feverish mind of Trump, and that mind is a psychotic morass of darkness and evil. That’s what’s so scary—a Hitler for the 21^st century. Those mental health experts weren’t wrong. He belongs in a straitjacket and a padded cell…for the rest of his life!

(more…)

“Heathcliff Lennox Mysteries.” Karen Baugh Menuhin, author. I continue to report on my binge-reading (I’m binge-writing too, and the manuscripts are piling up—more on that elsewhere in these pages). Most mystery series I’ve OD’d on are more or less modern-day, although the books are often “evergreen” (2019 or earlier, but as fresh and entertaining as the day they were written). Others, whether evergreen or not, are purposely set in earlier times—early 20^th or 19^th century (T. E. Kinsey’s “Lady Hardcastle Mysteries” and Carole Lawrence’s “Edinburgh Crime Mysteries” are fine examples).

Here the author has written five entertaining and authentic period stories (probably more to come?)—the last was just published, so not exactly evergreen. There’s humor, and there’s murder. The first book reminded me of Hiaasen and Moliere, and subsequent novels haven’t changed that opinion (the farce at the beginning of Death in Damascus is classic). The time is the early 1920s after the Great War, but the settings vary from merry olde England to Dmasccus and Scotland, and from mansions and castles to Syrian bazaars. The Damascus story is farcical; the one that takes place on a Scottish laird’s island is the spookiest. All are concerned with murder most fowl.

The stories are told in first person by the main character, Major Heathcliff Lennox. Readers will discover events and clues along with him. He doesn’t like his name Heathcliff, though; he prefers Major Lennox, or just Lennox. He’s a bit of an ingenuous gadfly, a dapper James Bond-like character who’s shy around the ladies! After sleuthing around to prove he’s innocent of murdering his uncle’s girlfriend in the first book, he fancies himself a detective. Swift, the Scotland Yard DCI, who pursues Lennox relentlessly in that first book to put him in the hangman’s noose, teams up with him in subsequent novels. Which one is Holmes and which one is Watson? Swift, a reformed socialist after marrying the laird’s daughter, adheres to police protocol, even after he retires from the Yard. Lennox is more intuitive. Together they get the job done.

These books aren’t cozies. Far from it. Some are dark, peering beneath the veneer of civilization at the darkness in women and men’s souls, and this makes the humor dark as well (and necessary to lighten things up a bit). The portrayal of class friction in 1920’s Britain is also serious if readers move beyond the humor found among the servants to the rich, all with their own problems and often perceptive takes on the foibles of their masters.

No, these books are solid mysteries that provided me with hours of quality entertainment. And yes, the author’s father-in-law is my beloved Yehudi, who continues to provide me hours of fantastic musical entertainment to accompany my reading. And yes, the mention of Jameson Irish whiskey in some books seems like an acknowledgement of that other essential component of my reading: Major Lennox, plus Yehudi’s music and Jameson whiskey—that’s the perfect trio for binge-reading!

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Comments are always welcome!

“Esther Brookstone Art Detective.” This series, at times very much in the style of British mysteries, might be binge-worthy too. Esther begins her adventures as a Scotland Yard inspector with an MI6 background as an ex-spy during the Cold War. Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden enters as her paramour. The wags at the Yard have nicknamed them Miss Marple and Hecule Poirot, but those adventures are very 21^st century, with mystery, suspense, and thriller elements. In the first two novels, Rembrandt’s Angel and Son of Thunder, poor Bastiann has to deal with Esther’s obsessions. In the first, she’s obsessed with recovering a painting stolen by the Nazis in World War II. In the second, she’s obsessed with finding St. John’s tomb using written directions left by the Renaissance painter Botticelli. In the third, Death on the Danube (soon to be published), Esther and Bastiann’s honeymoon is interrupted by a murder on their riverboat. Available wherever quality books are sold.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Surviving Autocracy. Masha Gesson, author (Riverhead Press, Penguin/Random House). Although I’m a fiction writer, I read a lot of non-fiction, as a glance at the “Steve’s Bookshelf” web page at this website will show. A lot of it has to do with politics. I know many authors are afraid of alienating some of their readership, but I’ve been a political junkie since high school when John Bolton’s hero, Barry Goldwater, ran for president (I was not a Dr. Strangelove fan). Some readers, in fact, criticize me for being too political. Well, sorry folks, I call it morality—there is evil in the US and the world, and my themes are often related to that. In other words, if readers are moral human beings, they shouldn’t have any problem with my prose. Trumpism isn’t a political issue—it’s a bad versus good issue, because Trump is evil. Yes, Trump, Trumpsters, and Trumpism are immoral, and so are all his followers, including the Christian right. They’re preaching evil when they should be preaching good.

Political tomes come and go, but Surviving Autocracy is one of the most incisive, relevant ones because the author basically analyzes why the three Ts mentioned are evil. It not only digs into the Trump’s evil autocratic personality thoroughly, as Garcia Marquez did so well in Autumn of the Patriarch (Otoño del Patriarca), she shows this narcissistic wannabe dictator might be worse than any Third World autocrat—or his handlers, akin to Hitler’s staff, made him that way, although I think they only provided him the tools.

The author doesn’t go into any details; this isn’t an exposé of White House dirty dealings seen through an insider’s eyes. She’s more interested in the big picture, and that is one that makes many people, myself included, fearful that our republic is in grave danger, the moral danger that Trumpism represents. It might not survive another four years of Trump. However, the author doesn’t call him a fascist. This is a failing. It might be that NY Times culture, which has become so antiquated and unable to meet today’s pressing issues head-on, but the author doesn’t want to call Donald J. Trump a fascist. He is exactly that, an evil, corrupt, and perverted one to boot, and that he’s able to be all that and still become president and holder of the nation’s nuclear codes is frightening and an indictment of about 35% of the American population. He’s neither a reader nor a thinker (he’s an unstable moron), and he reacts in the same way as Garcia Marquez’s main character, an amalgam of Latin American dictators (of course, Trump would probably call Latin American countries “$%#^holes” too).

To be fair, the NY Times isn’t the only paper afraid of calling Trump a fascist. And all sixteen reviews of this book on Amazon (incredibly and belying its importance, the last time I looked, that’s all there were), avoided using the word “fascist.” Presumably Amazon’s censors axed all reviews using that word, which is why I didn’t even try to post this one. (Besides, it was purchased in a bookstore, not in Amazon—the online retailer frowns on those kinds of reader-reviewers.)

While I’ve only seen excerpts from that Room book, Surviving Autocracy is a much better study of Trump’s mentally diseased mind than Bolton’s doorstop (see last week’s op-ed). I won’t read Bolton’s book to hone that comparison, but I was happy to read this one in its entirety. It doesn’t really tell us how to survive Trump unfortunately, but it explains why we should. We only have one choice left: Give that man with a sick mind the boot in the 2020 election!

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Comments are always welcome.

Binge-reading #1. Reading an entire series certainly qualifies as binge-reading…and why not? The books in the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” are examples of those rare kinds of thriller David Baldacci, Lee Child, Jeffrey Deaver, James Patterson,  and others might want to write but can’t: Each sci-fi novel in this trilogy is a big thrill ride. Full Medical is about a conspiracy where world leaders make sure they have enough body parts as they age; you’ll meet the clones. Evil Agenda is about an evil genius who’s out to take over the world; the clones are still around to try to stop him, and they’re joined by a mutant warrior. No Amber Waves of Grain is about a North Korean industrialist who’s out for revenge against the West; the clones team up with that first evil genius to try and stop him—but Chinese and Russians are lurking around too. The entire series can be found on Amazon and Smashwords and at all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker&Taylor, Gardners, etc.). Many entertaining hours of reading await you.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

“Eve Mallow Series.” Mystery on Hidden Lane, at Apple Tree Cottage, and at Seagrave Hall. Many readers of this blog know that the COVID-19 pandemic has driven me to more reading as well as writing (my finished manuscripts are stacking up—one is displayed below). In particular, I have binged on several series of British-style mysteries. Reading an entire series has been a lot more fun than watching TV reruns, cable TV’s old movies, summer game shows, and “family specials” (wasn’t that John Legend show last week a sappy mess—hey, John, I know you can sing because you were good in Jesus Christ, Superstar, but I really didn’t need to see how families of the rich and famous performers were getting on).

I’ve digressed. I’m happy to write I’ve discovered a new author, Clare Chase. I’ve read only the three novels indicated so far. All take place at Saxford St. Peter, a fictional village on the fictional river Sax (she admits the village is fictional, but so is the river, as near as I can tell), all in Suffolk, England. These are excellent mystery/crime stories with a dash of modern themes added to the Christie-like stew of suspense and intrigue. They will keep readers guessing right along with Eve Mallow. She’s the main character who uses her obituary writing business as a cover for doing some sleuthing (an original idea, to be sure, giving real meaning to Murder She Wrote).

All the village folk are well-drawn characters (in the real as well as literary sense), from the vicar who knows the villagers’ secrets, to the irrepressible woman who hires Eve to work in her tea shop because Eve makes such good scones. The latter nicely complements Eve’s main source of income, a necessary complement because her ex is an overbearing arse. Maybe the scone making justifies the classification “cozy” on the books’ front covers—that almost ended my desire to purchase the books, by the way—but I’ve lamentably read enough cozies to know this author’s novels aren’t well described by that mystery subgenre. They’re well-written classic mysteries. (The author uses that description on her website, although a more correct description would be “traditional mysteries with a modern flavor.” “Classic” make me think of Holmes and Watson.

Like Jessica Fletcher’s Cabot Cove in the TV series Murder She Wrote (one of the few good mystery shows, along with Columbo, that make the Hallmark mysteries seem like Harlequin romances), it’s hard to imagine that such a small village like Saxford St. Peter has so many murders. (I preferred to set my “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” and “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series in large cities for that  reason, although Esther does a lot more globe-trotting than Rolando Castilblanco and, of course, Eve Mallow.) The author solves the Cabot Cove problem in her little imaginary village in two ways: (1) villagers who have left often return, some to do dastardly deeds…or become victims; and (2) new people come through, some doing the same—with Eve having to sift through both sets of suspects to solve the crimes.

Readers who want to sit down with their tea and scone to enjoy all the village’s hidden secrets and meet the villagers there as well as the people who visit will find many hours of interesting and entertaining reading in these three novels—nothing earth-shaking but very pleasant.

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Comments are always welcome.

A Time-Traveler’s Guide through the Multiverse. Readers of this blog know I don’t write romance or erotica, but I’ve met those popular genres halfway with this sci-fi rom-com—that’s sci-fi romantic comedy. Enrico Fermi wasn’t the last physicist who was both an experimental and theoretical genius, but Professor Gail Hoff will never receive the Nobel Prize. She goes time-traveling through several universes of the multiverse, never to return to her little lab outside Philly. Jeff Langley, her jack-of-all-trades electronics wizard, accompanies her. Their escapades, both amorous and adventurous, make this novel a far-out road-trip story filled with dystopian and post-apocalyptic situations, first encounter, robots and androids—those and more await the reader who rides along. An excellent distraction from the pandemic that’s coming soon!

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

The Story of Ireland. Neil Hegarty, author (Thomas Dunne, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press). Ireland has an extensive literary tradition. On the bio page of my website, the second photo shows me at the Dublin Writers Museum. It’s a bit small and stodgy, but I enjoyed going there to read about the Emerald Isle’s famous writers. Who hasn’t read Swift, Yeats, Joyce, Wilde, Shaw, Synge, and the other Irish greats? Just from that sample, you’d think there’d be more good histories of Ireland written. But this small island’s history is so vast and its influence on England so important that it’s hard to imagine one book doing it justice. This is one, but it does it at the cost of emphasizing the political over the literary history. It probably should have been called A Political History of Ireland. (There’s a relation with a BBC documentary series I couldn’t quite understand.)

It covers a lot of that political history, though, from ancient Ireland with its Viking and Anglo-Norman influences to nearly the present day (it stops at 2011, so it can’t cover the effects of BREXIT, for example). For much of the book, it appropriately treatd the entire island as one, so it doesn’t distinguish Northern Ireland from the Irish Republic until the end, and that gives the reader a much better understanding of all the political currents that over centuries gave rise to the Troubles.

I learned some new facts too. Palladius brought Christianity to Ireland before Patrick, although the latter’s political astuteness and influence made him most remembered. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, was Irish (is Wellesley, a town in Massachusetts with a famous college—Hillary Clinton went there—named after him?). James Collins, of the Easter Uprising, faced the British firing squad sitting down—he’d crushed his leg in battle. And that other Collins, Michael, was killed near Cork at thirty-one. I have to wonder if social reforms would have come sooner if he’d lived as long as Éamon de Valera—this Collins was a Social Democrat in the style of many current leaders in Europe, at least in those countries differing from Hungary, Italy, and Poland, which are essentially fascist states now.

The author does as good a job as can be expected in condensing Irish political history into one book. The prose flows like a novel. It was more entertaining than a lot of the fiction I’ve perused in these days of pandemic too, and if the associated documentary ever made it to PBS, I’m sure it was better than that stuffy, silly Downton Abbey.

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Comments are always welcome.

Prequel cameos. Sometimes characters from already existing novels clamor for their own…and my muses (really banshees with Tasers) listen to them! Esther Brookstone and Bastiann van Coevorden of the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series are examples, in this case thanks to “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco.”

Esther appeared in The Collector and Bastiann appeared in both Aristocrats and Assassins and Gaia and the Goliaths. Esther’s prequel cameo is part of the story of how stolen art can be used to finance other evil activities, in this case porn videos. Bastiann’s first prequel cameo occurs when Castilblanco, on vacation with his wife, gets involved with a terrorist who’s kidnapping European royals. His second occurs when he’s helping track down the murdering head of an energy conglomerate.

You don’t need these cameos to understand Esther’s series, but they’re evergreen books you will have fun reading. Available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor’s, Gardners, etc.). “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.”—Mason Cooley.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Prelude to Extinction. Andreas Karpf, author. I hope Dr. Karpf reads this review because, as one physicist to another (ex-physicist in my case), I say to him, “You, sir, have written one helluva good hard sci-fi novel!” With a low price no Big Five conglomerate’s publisher would even consider, I suppose it’s self-published—Howey’s Wool and Weir’s The Martian were too (initially), and this one deserves more fame.

My summary here could make it sound like space opera, but it’s a solid albeit risky extrapolation of current science like all the best hard sci-fi novels that now are so hard-to-find in this current publishing universe. In fact, the technological razzle-dazzle even leaves Star Trek and Star Wars far behind as the reader interacts with the verbal imagery. And this novel is also far better than any computer game because there actually is a plot!

So here’s my summary: Captain Jack leads humans’ first expedition to a nearby star system (for some reason, not the nearest—there are stars like the sun that are much nearer). They find a destroyed ET colony—intelligent beings were already there eons ago, terraforming the planet. And when I say destroyed, I mean destroyed! The bad ETs even left deadly traps for anyone else who might arrive. The humans have to flee and are chased from one star system to another, using the murdered colonists’ (the good ETs’) stargates, until they finally meet the good guys. They’re so advanced they have lost the ability to fight those bad ETs bent on destroying all other intelligent beings in that part of the galaxy. Unlike the Rangers and Tali in the second novel of my “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” the author doesn’t provide names for the good or bad ETs, but the humans show the good guys how to fight the bad.

This summary doesn’t do justice to the novel or even the technological razzle-dazzle. The author gets carried away with the description of the flora and fauna on that first planet (reminding me a bit of Weir’s ugly, verbose potato-growing description in The Martian); this first part drags a bit. But readers should stick with the story because the plot accelerates. The author paints a nice contrast between the Earth crew and those complacent good ETs who are a million years more advance than humans. The crew has its typical organizational and command problems—as I read, I sometimes expected a mutiny by those in the crew as ready to run away from a fight as the good ETs.

The stargates are fun—huge devices (compared to starships) that create something like wormholes. They’re used to fold space-time and go from star system to star system in much shorter subjective time than a starship (of course, starships are needed to construct them and put them into orbit around target planets—you have to wonder why the good ETs haven’t invented something like von Neumann stargates that reproduce themselves around the cosmos). Both the stargates and the good ETs’s stardrives are examples of what a few million years of scientific progress can bring, while the bad ETs’ stardrives (they fear the stargates) are inferior. The bad ETs are evil thugs and not too bright in comparison to the good guys—we never actually meet the bad ones, only their soldiers, and they appear to be nomad marauders bent on murdering all the competition.

This is the best sci-fi I’ve read in a long time, much better than Wool or The Martian, and reaffirms my belief that non-scientists are a bit crippled when it comes to writing good, hard sci-fi (hard to be a touch typist with one arm tied behind your back?). The extrapolations of current science that are necessary are handled well in this novel and rarely well by non-scientists, including by those screenwriters for Star Trek and Star Wars. (Of course, I regret some of my own extrapolations. The difficulty is that the farther out in time the extrapolation, the more it appears like magic. Extrapolations aren’t that easy!)

By the way, the title and epilogue suggest that there will be a series. I hope so. I’ll look forward to it!

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Comments are always welcome!

The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection. Survivors of the Chaos takes the reader from a dystopian Earth dominated by mega-corporations and controlled by their mercenaries, to the 82 Eridani star system. Sing a Zamba Galactica starts with first contact with friendly ETs and the invasion of Earth by unfriendly ones, and ends with Humans saving that collective intelligence known as Swarm. In Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, Humans and ETs combat a psycho-industrialist who dreams of being the absolute ruler of Near Earth space. Exciting sci-fi that’s bundled in a three-novel package for your enjoyment. Available on Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Thomas, Gardners, etc.).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

“The Jenny Starling Series.” Faith Martin, author (Joffe Books). I don’t usually review an entire series, but I’ve been binge-reading during the pandemic, so it’s more efficient to review all the books. Because these novels are all republications (pen name to real name?), they’re definitely “evergreen”—no ground-shaking themes here, and pre-Brexit and pre-pandemic, but still as fresh and entertaining as the day they were written.

This seven-book series is all British-mystery storytelling. It takes place in the Thames Valley region, which includes Oxford and other delightful places northwest of London. (My own mystery/thriller, Rembrandt’s Angel, starts in that area as Esther Brookstone visits a school chum in Wantage and a professor at Oxford.)

The protagonist is a cook, a “Junoesque woman” of ample but sculptured feminine proportions, and not a Miss Marple-like old lady at all. I suppose she might take on jobs where a murder isn’t committed, but her posts in the novels are ones where at least one corpse appears. There’s often a Christie-style tell-all denouement at the end where the cook divulges what led her to solve the crime, showing the coppers how proper sleuthing is done. In each book, the authorities have a love-hate relationship with the cook because of this.

There are a few laughs here and there, but these aren’t cozies (heaven forbid!)—they’re deadly serious cerebral mystery/thriller novels. Digging into the first with trepidation—the hype “a mystery with lots of twists and turns” seems superfluous and frankly discouraged me—but I was pleasantly surprised, so I kept going through all seven books! The cook’s menus are interesting in themselves for those readers who also have gastronomic interests, but reading these novels was a lot more fun than seeing more COVID-19 stats on every TV network (I wonder what the BBC is doing). (Don’t get me wrong. The public must be informed, but we also need a break from time to time.)

I have two nits to pick, both of them a bit technical and maybe not important to most readers. First, the author has a bad habit of telegraphing a future event, incorporating teasers in the stories, if you will. These almost need a “spoiler alert” warning. Second, there’s also a lot of head-hopping, i.e. abrupt changes of point of view (POV), that made this reader say, “Huh? How did s/he know that?” Of course, the two nits are related, because the first is just an abrupt transition into the omniscient POV. (It’s interesting that the author attempts to correct this in heer Hillary Greene series, also republished. Someone must have told her to fix this, but the telegraphing still remains and her solution of breaking up prose into tiny sections to solve the second problem is almost comical at times.) Maybe British readers don’t mind these quirks, but I believe it’s sloppy writing and amateurish.

Other than those two nits, I found these novels quite entertaining…and I’m now onto Hillary Greene #3, another series about a clever DI in the Thames Valley PD with a lot of baggage. Stay tuned…but that series is even longer!

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Comments are always welcome!

The “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” Series. Do you want to read some mystery/thriller novels that motivate you to keep turning the pages? Wags at Scotland Yard call Esther Brookstone Miss Marple and Bastiann van Coevorden, her beau, Hercule Poirot, but their adventures are very twenty-first century. In Rembrandt’s Angel, Esther obsesses with recovering a painting stolen by the Nazis in WWII. In Son of Thunder, she obsesses with finding the tomb of St. John the Divine. Both obsessions lead her and Bastiann into dangerous situations. Available in print format from your favorite local bookstore, Amazon, and the publisher, Penmore Press; and in ebook format from Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker&Thomas, Gardners, etc.).  A third novel featuring this crime-fighting duo is in the works.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

A Palette for Love and Murder. Saralyn Richard, author. This well-plotted mystery and crime novel, along with its excellent characterization, is even better than the author’s first, Murder in the One Percent, which is saying a lot (the latter won a prize). Shortly after I reviewed that first book, I asked the author about plans for a sequel. She promised one, I eagerly awaited it, and here it is—and it’s a winner too!

My readers probably know that stolen art (The Collector and Rembrandt’s Angel) and lost art (Son of Thunder) are among my favorite themes. Here the story starts when two pieces painted by Brandywine Valley artist, Blake Allmond, are stolen. Detective Parrott takes the case, and the game’s afoot. I felt right at home immediately. The author even mentions the stolen artworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (they play an important role in The Collector). (We used to live in the Boston area and were shocked when we heard about that 1990 theft.)

Having read book #1, I also felt right at home with Detective Parrott from the West Brandywine PD. But another important character is now added to his life, his new wife Tonya, who suffers from PTSD due to her service in Afghanistan. She plays an important role in the story in addition to providing a bit of romance in her cop husband’s life.

Yet this is a murder mystery, so we need a murder victim. Allmond is murdered even before Parrott can interview him about the stolen paintings. This sets up a tense situation between NYPD and the local Brandywine police because the former are in charge of the murder investigation, the latter are in charge of investigating who stole the artworks, and, as you might expect, they step on each other’s toes due to the overlap of the cases.

Suspects start appearing: a ne’er-do-well nephew of the murdered artist; that artist’s live-in girlfriend, an ex-nun with a past; the nephew’s girlfriend and her brother, a landscaper at the artist’s estate; and the owner of an art gallery who was jilted by the artist’s sister. Which ones stole the paintings? Which ones murdered the artist? And how are they related? You now have a hoppy IPA for any lover of murder mysteries!

Parrott continues his expert sleuthing in a way that would make his old alter-ego Hercule Poirot proud. (Okay, the author doesn’t exactly mention that, but the analogy is sound.) Moreover, he’s my kind of guy! He likes his coffee “…delicious, strong and woodsy, and almost scalding…” (I’m not sure about the “woodsy”—I’m not partial to “chicory coffee,” for example, although I drank some in Orleans once just to try it). The author echoes several of my drinking preferences, in fact. The serving of Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio reminded me of a night in Boston’s North End where everyone in our four-member dining party drank a full bottle; the requisite visit to Mike’s Pastry followed (but we didn’t see Bill Clinton); and public transportation was used afterwards.

Readers, led along by Parrott, have to face lots of twists and turns as the two cases near resolution. Like many mysteries, there are some thriller elements in this story, probably more so than in the first book, which is more a classic Christie-like who-dun-it. Sexual relationships are a bit more complicated here too, to say the least, and are something Christie would never have written about. None of those are explicit, although some are implied in the paintings considered. Neither is the violence explicit, but the story is one for our times, and features the differences between one-percenters and the rest of us, as well as the similarities.

I put this book down with reluctance after reading most of it in one sitting, thereby forcing myself to take my time and savor the last few chapters in the next day’s reading. It’s that kind of book. You probably will feel the same way.

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Comments are always welcome.

Just a note about availability: The above book is available in ebook and print format at Amazon and from the publisher, Black Opal Books; it will also be available real soon in all ebook formats at Smashwords, as well as all their affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and lending and library services (Scribd, Overdrive, Bakers & Taylor, Gardners, etc.); and it will be available at your local bookstores (if they don’t have it, ask them to order it). I read the Kindle version.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!