Short Reviews: Mystery, Erotic Romance and Paranormal Reviews

My apologies for slacking off on reviews the past few weeks.  I’ve been reading a lot, but too busy with life to get here as I should.   Here are a few books worth mention.

Well reading I’ve been lately has been quite a mixed bag – erotic romance, mystery and paranormal.  I’ve also had mixed results, as usual, but a couple worthy entries – one erotic futuristic and one mystery.

• Title: The Forgotten: Discovery
  
• Author:  Kaitlyn O’Connor
• Type:  Futuristic erotic romance
• Genre:  Human discovers cyborgs;  cybogs discover themselves and sex
• Sub-genre:  Science fiction with a touch of ménage
• My Grade: B  (4.0*)
• Rating:  NC-17 to XX
• Length and price:  Full length novel; about 90,000+ words for $7.99
• Where Available:  ebook available at New Concepts Press
• FTC Disclosure:  purchased book from publisher’s website

Book Review: The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

• Title: The Girl Who Played With Fire
• Author: Stieg Larsson
• Type: Mystery
• Genre: Complex multi-character story; investigative journalist
• Sub-genre: Social commentary on sex trade, social injustice and corrupt political systems
• My Grade: B- (3.8*)
• Rating: PG-13 to NC-17
• Length and price: Plus novel; over 100,000 words
• Where Available: any bookstore
• FTC Disclosure: ARC acquired from an online book swapping site

In September I reviewed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and commented on the how the book was used as platform for social commentary on various facets of corruption within Sweden’s social systems.  In The Girl Who Played With Fire it is a combination of morally corrupt people and fundamentally flawed systems that created the tragedy that forever changed Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo.  As with Dragoon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire seems less a true mystery than a kind of vehicle for the author to explore his take on the failure of the various social and protective services in Sweden through greed, corruption and indifference.

BOOK REVIEW: Lycan Instinct by Brandi Broughton

I’ve been hunting around looking for an interesting werewolf series that isn’t like every other series out there. I’d tried a couple of books from Cobblestone Press, one of the smaller ebook independent publishers out there, and found some that were decent derivatives, and then I saw Lycan Instinct, it showed that it was an EEPI Award nominee, so I figured I’d give it a try. This full length novel was quite unusual. No living in isolated places. No, overwhelming Alpha male dominance. The fact that Raphael Stone and his brothers Gabriel and Lucian are Lycans and all alphas actually has limited impact on their behavior. They are far more fully integrated into human society than usual and other pack members are conspicuous by their absence. Mostly they act like any other human brothers. This is less a werewolf story than it is a mainstream mystery novel with a little romance with a guy that happens to be a werewolf rather than a Spec Ops guy, the popular hero protagonist these days.

BOOK REVIEW: Death and the Chick Lit by G. M. Malliet

Having recently read and reviewed Death of a Cozy Writer, G. M. Malliet’s first book, I promptly bought and read her second British cozy, Death and the Lit Chick. Second books can be tough when the first was an unexpected gem. Readers now have higher expectations and will be easily disappointed. The concept, bringing together a group of classic mystery writers with a common publisher, most with moderately successful careers – some of which are on the wane, with the latest ‘chick lit’ mystery mega-hit writer has all kinds of potential. It gives the author a chance to show readers the ‘business’ side of writing, the jealousy, the struggle to stay on top, the fears and politely poisonous envy of newcomer phenoms. (Interestingly, Amazon rankings and Barnes and Nobel rankings are mentioned several times, so do NOT underestimate the importance of the #amazonfail event we just experienced!) The author reinforces the image by drawing parallels with how J. K. Rowling saved Scholastic Press with her Harry Potter novels. So here at Dalmorton Castle in Scotland we have one wildly successfully writer in a stable of ordinary ones getting fêted by their collective publisher at a mystery conference. I do find it curious that in both of her books G. M. Malliet chose to make a mystery author the victim. It would seem being a mystery writer in the UK is more dangerous than being a police detective.

BOOK REVIEW: Death of a Cozy Writer by G. M. Malliet

Rejoice you fans of classic manor house murders.  Give me an hallelujah and amen!  We have the heir to one of my favorite mystery categories in G. M. Malliet’s Chief Detective Inspector St. Just’s debut, Death of a Cozy Writer.  And it’s about damn time!  Cozy mysteries have become increasingly just too twee, too insipid, too contrived, too self-consciously cutsiepoo for words.  Filled with recipes, crossword puzzles, candle making tips, quilting, dogs, cats, ferrets – jeeze, you name it.  Worse still are some of those amateur sleuths who are really such annoying people you’re rooting for them to be the next victim.

I bought Death of a Cozy Writer because it was a 2008 Best First Novel nominee for an Agatha Award by Malice Domestic, the association of cozy writers, and the reviews were excellent.  If the cast of characters seem familiar, they should.  Everyone of them has been in an Agatha Christie mystery: the aging, rich, nasty, manipulative pater familias; the equally nasty, avaricious, self-centered eldest son with his grasping, greedy wife; the overweight, dowdy, socially clueless daughter who manages on her own; the pretentious, self-adsorbed art store owner son with his neglected but beautiful lady friend, and the alcoholic fringe actor son who knows even his marginal career is giving way to age.  Then there’s daddy’s bride-to-be, unexpectedly a woman of mature years but with a very scandalous background – suspected of having murdered her first husband.

If you’ve read Christie’s Hercule Poirot mysteries this is sounding a LOT like a mishmash of several of those books – and it is.  Christie used variations of these characters and basic plot devices numerous times.  Perhaps it’s why I found myself smiling so often while reading, it was like an unexpected visit with old acquaintances and finding them unchanged.  Some view this book as a send up of the manor house mystery, others as an homage.  Take your pick.  It is cheekily derivative, yet so well done you don’t care.

BOOK REVIEW: Death Song by Michael McGarrity

Death Song, billed as a Kevin Kerney mystery, is set in Northern New Mexico – known to most mystery fans as Hillerman Territory.  Unlike Hillerman, McGarrity has always focused on the police procedural format combined with the travails of his central character, Kerney.  Comparisons with Hillerman are inevitable, not just because of the location, but because McGarrity began passing the torch of his key character to a younger investigator – Mescalero Apache Sergeant Clayton Istee.  In a previous book we learned that unbeknownst to Kerney till a few years ago, Istee was his son by an old sweetheart who hid the truth from both of them.  Now, we have young sergeant to Kerney’s retiring Chief, a close echo of Leaphorn-Chee.  Istee is also a more ‘traditional Apache’ like Jim Chee’s traditional Navajo juxtaposed to Leaphorn’s modern Navajo.  Unlike Hillerman, both characters are regular police, not tribal police (though Istee formerly was tribal police).  McGarrity’s straightforward prose is much better suited to the procedural genre.  With Hillerman’s more lush, atmospheric writing that works well with his complex character studies, mixed with myth and culture, the mystery is almost secondary to the overall story.

Death Song gets off to a roaring start with a brutal double murder.  A new Lincoln County deputy sheriff, Tim Riley, is shot in the face as he arrives home.  His wife, Denise, who is still in their old home up Santa Fe County is missing.  While the wife resides is outside Kerney’s jurisdiction, Denise is the youngest sister his long time friend and administrative assistant Helen Muiz.  When Tim can’t reach Denise by phone, he calls Helen and asks her to go over to the house and check on her.  When things don’t look right, Helen calls Kerney.  It’s Kerney and his detectives  first on the scene, initially as a favor, but then as lead detectives under the Sheriff’s department when her body is found locked in a horse trailer.  So Istee and Kerney, whose relationship is distant at best, are again brought into each other’s orbit.  Just to layer on the complications, Kerney’s wife Sara, a career military officer, is back from an Iraq tour with a Purple Heart, Silver Star, a promotion to full colonel – and a case of PTSD. Kerney is a month from retirement, and has no direct authority over either crime scene, but using politics eventually gets himself put in charge about half way through the book. 

BOOK REVIEW: Heat Lightening by John Sanford

Like many quality mystery and thriller authors, John Sanford is a former Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. He moved to full time novelist with two books – his first Kipp novel, Fool’s Run, a computer based caper novel (it was really good in its day) was published under his real name, John Camp, and his first Lucas Davenport novel Rules of Prey, a police detective mystery, published under John Sanford. Though he wrote a second Kipp novel, it was the Prey novels that took off and became a classic series. (I waited years for a third Kipp novel by Camp before I learned he and Sanford were one and the same.) In 2000, by request of fans, he finally wrote a third Kipp novel, Devil’s Code – very good, and finally a fourth in 2003, The Hanged Man’s Song – good enough, but not his best. Now the 4 Kipp novels are under the better known Sanford pen name. In 2007 he introduced another investigator, Virgil Flowers, who now reports to Davenport in the BCA. Flowers got his own book – Dark of the Moon in 2007. Heat Lightening is Flowers’ second outing and Davenport will be back in the soon to be released Wicked Prey – May 2009 publication date.

It’s the middle of the night and Virgil is enjoying the warmth of a friendly visit to an ex-wife’s bed – and marveling at her ass, one of the natural wonders of the world, when the phone rings. A dead body, is found propped against a war memorial with a lemon in his mouth. Virgil heads out and his ex wife suggests he not let the door hit him in the ass on the way out. Ah yes, THAT’S why he divorced. Dressed in yesterdays’ clothes – jeans, tee shirt and boots, his usual uniform – Virgil hits the road.