Mini-Reviews #19…
[Two mysteries today with no earth-shaking themes. It’s amazing how murders can find their genesis in petty meaningless stuff. Happens all the time in real life, of course, but I’m not sure the events are worth a novel. Nevertheless, I like to try new authors, and these two were new for me. You can read the following and decide, but I found that I had to write the review immediately because it’s too easy to put them out of mind.]
Bone Hook (Lei Crime #10). Toby Neal, author (Toby Neal, 11/10/2015). Well plotted, interesting characters, and a setting that’s my second favorite Hawaiian island, Maui (Kauai is the first), but the author commits the sin of a cliffhanger (she apologizes for it in a note at the end, so every reader becomes her priest in the confessional). Lei is a Maui cop who has a lot of domestic problems but still has to solve a murder that has too many suspects. The cliffhanger isn’t a major negative, by the way, because it corresponds to the subplot associated with the domestic problems, which are a bit ho-hum because they’re more common these days than dishonest politicians. I still found the cliffhanger annoying, though. You might not. Reading between the lines, maybe previous books in the series don’t have this flaw? Still, this is only good for a few hours entertainment when you get tired of the schlock on TV. Sorry, Toby.
Shadows of the Past (Logan Point #1). Patricia Bradley, author (Revell, 2/4/2014). Many pros, one con. This is a well written mystery with a good plot and interesting characters. The settings are near Seattle and Memphis, about as far apart in distance and culture as one can imagine and still be in the U.S., and that creates some of the tension. Psych prof and profiler Taylor Martin is scratching a lot of old Southern family wounds by insisting on looking for her long-last Daddy. In the process, she acquires a stalker and has an on-again-off-again affair with a famous author. If it were shorter, this could almost be a cozy, but there’s a lot of criminal meat in this romantic stew. I enjoyed it by steaming by the romance, which wasn’t a wee bit steamy, and looking beyond the religious mumbo-jumbo associated with Taylor finding Jesus again (that one major con). In fact, it’s a shame all that fluff wasn’t eliminated to have a perfect mystery. I suppose there’s a big market for this stuff, but for me the price was right: $0. Sorry, Patty.
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Like more edgy mystery, suspense, and thrills that treat some important themes? Have you tried the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series”? Some of the books are more thriller than mystery, but in either case the two NYPD homicide detectives, often with viewpoints that are yin and yang, make an astonishing crime-fighting duo. There are six novels in the series that starts with The Midas Bomb, already in its second edition and available in all ebook formats and paper (Create Space)—other ebooks in the series are still Amazon only.
In libris libertas….
