Haunted Hibiscus

Haunted Hibiscus is the 22nd Indigo Tea Shop mystery by Laura Childs.  I have loved this series since it began but in the last several years the books have been hit or miss for me.  This particular installment of the series is a miss.  I think that because the author writes three different series concurrently and pushes out 3 books per year, she is getting lazy with her writing.  I will explain more fully below but here is the publisher's summary of the novel:

"It is the week before Halloween and Theodosia Browning, proprietor of the Indigo Tea Shop, and her tea sommelier, Drayton, are ghosting through the dusk of a cool Charleston evening on their way to the old Bouchard Mansion.  Known as the Grey Ghost, this dilapidated place was recently bequeathed to the Heritage Society, and tonight heralds the grand opening of their literary and historical themed haunted house.

Though Timothy Neville, the Patriarch of the Heritage Society, is not thrilled with the fund-raising idea, it is the perfect venue for his grandniece, Willow French, to sign copies of her new book, Carolina Crimes & Capers.  But amidst a parade of characters dressed as Edgar Allen Poe, Lady Macbeth, and the Headless Horseman, Willow's body is suddenly tossed from the third-floor tower room and left to dangle at the end of a rope.  Police come screaming in and Theodosia's boyfriend, Detective Pete Riley, is sent to Willow's apartment to investigate.  But minutes later, he is shot and wounded by a shadowy intruder.

Timothy begs Theodosia to investigate, and shaken by Riley's assault, she readily agrees.  Now, she questions members of the Heritage Society and a man who claims the mansion is rightfully his, as well as Willow's book publisher and fiance, all while hosting a Sherlock Holmes tea and catering several others." 

Perhaps I have become tired of this series. The exact same things happen in the exact same places in the novels. You always know what Timothy Neville's reactions will be. The Heritage Society is always about to go under.  There is no variety to the series.  While all of the prior books in the series could have been standalone novels, this one isn't.  There is no background information on the characters.  Also, Theodosia seemed quite angry throughout the story.  She is normally a sweet, polite southerner.  A few of the phrases in Haunted Hibiscus that annoyed me in include:

• the front door da-dinged
• I only have time for drive-by kisses and hugs
• He's as wide as a soccer mom's van
• Holy cats, what a mess
• Floradora Florist
• Being young and dipped in folly, I fell in love with melancholy

I think that I will check out from this series.  I doesn't do anything for me.  I am rating it 2 out of 5 stars because the plot premise was good.  It just wasn't executed well.

The Lost Ancestor

The Lost Ancestor is the 2nd book in Nathan Dylan Goodwin's geneological crime mysteries but the 5th story.  3 earlier books are novellas. It is a little different from the prior books in the series as the sleuth, Morton Farrier, is trying to find a person who went missing almost one hundred years ago. Morton's new client, Ray Mercer, asked him to investigate the 1911 disappearance of his great aunt, a housemaid working in a large Edwardian country house. Instead of spending his time reviewing microfilm at national and local record offices, Morton uses old photographs and interviews members of the Rothborne family who still live at the estate.

As an amateur geneologist myself, I couldn't help but love this novel. I learned how to use photographs to piece together a family history.  It also shows how someone can disappear off a census and ship passenger lists as well as not have a death certificate.  This information will serve me well in the future.

The story alternates between 1911 and 2014.  The ending nicely ties up all of the loose ends for the characters but there is one surprise for the reader that isn't revealed until the last sentence. The did a great job with this book. I highly recommend it.

5 out of 5 stars.

Raven Black

Ann Cleeves's Raven Black is a fantastic story.  Taking place on the main island of the Shetland Islands, it is the first book in her Shetland series.  It has also been produced as a TV drama for BBC1.  There are 5 other books in this series.

It is a cold January morning and Shetland lies buried beneath a deep layer of snow.  Trudging home, Fran Hunter's eye is drawn to a vivid splash of color on the white ground with ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbor Catherine Ross. As Fran opens her mouth to scream, the ravens continue to peck at the body. The locals on the island stubbornly focus their gaze on one man - loner and simpleton Magnus Tait. However, when Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez insists on opening out the investigation, a veil of suspicion and fear is thrown over the entire community. For the first time in years, Catherine's neighbors nervously lock their doors, while a killer lives among them them.

The ice cold setting of Shetland is prominent to the story. Not only does the harsh weather hide most of the body, it also impedes the law enforcement investigation. Experts from other islands, as well as Scotland, cannot travel to the crime scene immediately. They must wait for weather conditions to safely allow them to fly in to the island. Thus, Catherine's body lies in the snow for more than a day. However, the snow and ice prohibit her deceased body from decaying. The Shetlands are only accessible via boat or plane.  They lie several hundred miles north of the Scotland coast.  

I really liked the Magnus Tait character.  He was a lonely person who seemed to be afraid of people but I thought he was lovable. Because he is a recluse, Tait was taunted by the children in their community.  The Jimmy Perez character had a good introduction as the protagonist.  However, without the kooky citizens in town this book would not be as great. They are essential for providing contrast to the serious minded Jimmy.  

The element of surprise in each twist and turn of the plot make this novel a thriller. The ending was also a surprise when the killer's identity is revealed. It was not anyone that I suspected.  5 out of 5 stars.

In a Dark, Dark Wood

Mystery novelist Leonora  Shaw lives a solitary but comfortable life in London.  One day while checking her email she finds an invitation to a hen weekend for Clare Cavendish, a friend from childhood whom she hasn't spoken to or seen for ten years.  After some urging by a mutual friend, Nora reluctantly agrees to go and finds herself at a mysterious house with a group of near-strangers, deep in the forest far from the city.  Quickly, old rivalries and new relationships bubble to the surface and the weekend turns violent, leaving Nora battered and bruised in a hospital bed.  As she struggles to reconstruct the sequence of events that brought her there, secrets emerge about her past and her present that force her to question everything she knows about herself and everyone she has ever loved.

While I was aware of what a hendo, or hen weekend, is before reading the book, it probably would have been helpful to American readers to have this British term defined in the beginning of the story.  You basically know from the start that inviting your fiancé's ex-girlfriend to your hendo will not have a good outcome.  However, the advertisement of this book as a psychological thriller falls short. It just wasn't suspenseful and during the first half of the book there were a few boring sequences.  I was not engaged until the latter third of the plot.  

The assumed wooded setting, taken from the title, is not the true setting.  Most of the events take place in a house owned by a relative of one of the characters.  While the house is located in the woods, all of the action takes place inside.  The plot is revealed through dialogue, both inner and spoken, from the characters.  Speaking of the characters, only one was interesting to me and she was a foil for the main characters.  All in all, this was an OK book, nothing to write home about.

3 out of 5 stars.

In the Blood

In the Blood is a genealogical mystery featuring Jefferson Tayte as the geneologist.  The geneological mystery sub-genre is a new favorite for me. This is book one of seven novels to date and it is fantastic.  

Jefferson "JT" Tayte has been working on a project for Walter Sloane. Sloane believes that he is related to a loyalist family that fled to England at the end of the American Revolutionary War.  The family seems to have disappeared after leaving the American shore and Tayte has been tasked with finding a link between Sloane and the Fairborne family. With few clues to the family history left to do via a phone, Sloane orders him to catch a plane ASAP for England and finish the research within a week.  Tayte is afraid of flying but he cannot give up another assignment because of his fears. It will affect his ability to get new jobs. The research leads him to the short life of a woman in Cornwall, a writing box and a possible dark secret about the Fairborne family.

I loved this book!  The mystery is not just about the resolution of Sloane's genealogy but also about why several minor characters were killed. JT believes that everything is connected to his research and he needs to find proof. Each new lead turns into a plot twist that moves the plot along quickly.

The JT character is sympathetic given all of his phobias and difficulties communicating with British record office staff. He is a goofy introvert.  JT's nemesis, Peter Schofield, is hired by Sloane to assist him after JT's first few days in England.  Sloane wants fast results and believes that JT needs assistance. However, JT does not trust Schofield because he senses that Schofield wants to take all of his clients away. On this particular assignment Schofield is trustworthy but  JT does not realize this until Schofield is killed. This is a shame because Schofield could have provided some conflict in future novels. The author has not given the reader any other prominent characters other than JT.  The secondary characters are so far in the background that I would categorize them as third party characters, if there is such a thing.

I can't wait to read the remaining books in the series.  To date, there are six more novels in the series. 5 out of 5 stars.

Deliberate Duplicity

Deliberate Duplicity is David Rohlfing's debut novel. It is the first installment of the Sasha Frank Mysteries, a police procedural series. The author is a retired businessman and I am blown away at his ability to craft a magnificent novel with no prior work in the writing world. Deliberate Duplicity will keep you up at night reading until you finish the book. It grabbed me from the first chapter mainly because it takes place somewhere I used to live but the suspenseful chapter endings grabbed my attention too.

When bodies begin to appear along the Constitution Trail in the Bloomington Normal twin cities, detective Sasha Frank is assigned to investigate.  The killer has a particular method of staging the bodies.  He/she poses them in a park with their eyelids glued open and he kills every ten days.  The book is more a howdunnit that a whodunnit.  The police cannot find decent clues to the killer's identity until the fifth death occurs.  What the readers sees in this book are the meticulous methods used in investigating a homicide. 

It was interesting to see the strange way that the serial killer set up the murders to avoid getting caught.  The reader gets a glimpse into the mind of a serial killer as the book is written from the point of view of both the police and the killer. The book does not follow the traditional serial killer formula. Most of these type of books begin with establishing the main character and then show a sequence of unsolved crimes.  Normally there is an unrelated subplot but there wasn't one here.  However, the usual bureaucracy in a police department is shown in the novel.  

If you like serial killer novels, this one is for you.  4 out of 5 stars.

Now and Then Stab

Now and Then Stab is the seventh Francis Bacon Mystery novel by Anna Castle.  I thought that the series ended a few years ago when The Spymaster's Brother was published in 2019. However, it will continue. The eighth book in the series will be published in 2022.

The story opens in the Spring of 1593 when a ballad promoting violence against immigrants is found posted on the Dutch Church door in the center of London. After the Lord Mayor promises a 100 crown reward to the person who can identifiy the author, Tom Clarady begins to investigate. He needs that money in order to file legal papers to assert his livery in the Court of Wards.  Tom interviews poets while his patron Francis Bacon analyzes the verse. At first, this investigation is solely about collecting the reward. After two of Britain's best poets are targeted, both are killed. One of them dies after being tortured for information and the other dies under dubious circumstances. Christopher Marlowe, one of Tom's friends from his Cambridge University days, is killed after starting a brawl in a pub. However, Tom doesn't believe Marlowe started the fight and thinks he was murdered.

This novel is one of the best in the series. The period is, as usual, meticulously researched. Our real-life Francis Bacon was at odds with Queen Elizabeth in 1593. The author wrote this fact into her novel to add to its authenticity. English poet Marlowe was, likewise, killed in a bar room brawl. These facts are only background information to the plot, which moved forward quickly. 

The characters are lovable, even the stern Francis Bacon.  I love how their lives advance significantly with each novel.  Here, Francis is about to receive the promotion he has longed for and Tom's love affair with Alice "Trumpet" Trumpington continues after her marriage.  Tom, Trumpet and Tom's university friends provide lightweight fare while Francis Bacon's serious demeanor offers a contrast.

Another great installment of the series!  5 out of 5 stars.

One by One

 

One by One is a modern locked room mystery, offering technology with old-fashioned suspense.  Locked room mysteries consist of a key set of ingredients: a fixed location, a fixed set of characters and a murder or two.  There is a striking aspect to this novel which I doubt the author intended as it must have been written before its 2020 publication date.  The characters, as well as the readers, are confined in isolation.  Sound like a pandemic? 

The publisher's summary of the plot:

"When the co-founder of Snoop, a trendy London based tech startup, organizes a weeklong trip for the team in the French Alps, it starts out as a corporate retreat like any other:  PowerPoint presentations and strategy sessions broken up by mandatory bonding on the slopes.  But as soon as one shareholder sends the agenda by pushing a lucrative but contentious buyout offer, tensions simmer and loyalties are tested. The storm brewing inside the chalet is no match for the one outside, however, and a devastating avalanche leaves the group cut off from all access to the outside world. Even worse, one Snooper hasn't made it back from the slopes when the avalanche hit.  As each hour cases without any sign of rescue, panic mounts, the chalet grows colder, and the group dwindles further . . . one by one."

I loved this book! There were a few hiccups, though. There are nine major characters in the novel.  Initially, it was hard to remember who was who. Once I got them all firmly set in my mind, I could not put the book down. The suspense was riveting. Another hiccup is that the story is told from the point of view of two characters. I could not tell the difference between them because their personalities were similar. I am not sure why the author wrote the story in this way but these points of view didn't make a difference in how the plot unfolded. However, the suspense was ratcheted up high and it carried the novel. 

I will definitely be reading more of Ware.  4 out of 5 stars.

With No One As Witness

Elizabeth George's books run hot and cold for me. With No One As Witness was lukewarm.  The mystery to be solved was interesting in the beginning but I got bogged down in all of the British words that I did not know the meaning of. The book read slowly for me.  At 627 pages, this book qualifies as a selection for the Chunkster Challenge.

The publisher's summary is below:  

"When an adolescent boy's nude body is found draped over a tomb in a graveyard, the police recognize the work of a serial killer who's been murdering boys in London.  This is the killer's fourth victim but the first to be white.  Hoping to avoid charges of institutionalized prejudice in their failure to pursue the earlier crimes to their conclusion, New Scotland Yard takes the case and hands it over to Detective Constable Barbara Haverstraw and Detective Sergeant Winston Natalie.  The killer is a psychopath who does not intend to be stopped.  But a devastating tragedy within their ranks causes the police to fumble in their pursuit, which may bring more fatal consequences."

This is a slow moving book. In addition to all of the unfamiliar British words, the abundance of descriptions made this book painfully slow. For example, an entire page may contain only a description of what a character wore or what a room or street looked like. Put two or three of these pages together and you get a bored reader. The author's note at the conclusion of the story states she is an American writing a novel set in England. I would never have guessed she was American. In fact, I thought that the book may have been written for a European audience. The plot was lost amidst this backdrop.

A disappointing read. 2 out of 5 stars. 

Piece of my Heart

 

Piece Of My Heart is the 65th book that Mary Higgins Clark has written and the 6th with co-author Alafair Burke.  Since Clark died one year ago I assume that this is her last novel.  I haven't heard about any unpublished manuscripts from her.  The last novel that she wrote on her own was Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry which was published in 2019.  I am going to miss her but all good things must come to an end.  She lived a great life and lived to a ripe 92 years of age.  

In Piece of My Heart TV producer Laurie Moran and her fiance Alex Buckley, criminal defense attorney and the former host of her investigative television show, are just days away from their August wedding when events take a dark turn.  While vacationing in the Hamptons with their family and friends, Alex's seven-year-old nephew Johnny vanishes from the beach while playing with Laurie's 10-year-old son Timmy.  The boys had been supervised by Laurie's babysitter and her girlfriend but an attractive lifeguard had caught their attention.  A search party begins and witnesses recall Johnny playing in the water and collecting sea shells behind a beach shack.  However, no one remembers seeing him after the morning.  As the sun sets, Johnny's skim board washes up to shore and everyone realizes that he could be dead.  When it appears that he was kidnapped, the question arises whether he was the actual target or was another boy the target. Laurie's father, a former NYPD officer, believes that the abduction could be related to a murder case that he handled eighteen years ago.  Laurie decides to do a show on that eighteen year old case and possibly connect it to Johnny's disappearance.

As you would expect from Mary Higgins Clark, this novel is suspense at its best.  Not only does each chapter end with suspense but so do the pages and paragraphs. I don't know anyone who can write suspense this well and it's a cliche to say that in her books there are lots of twists, turns and suspects to keep you reading. The characters were all compelling, even the villains.  The secondary characters had just as much prominence as the main characters, Laurie and Alex. Alex's brother and sister-in-law, Marcy and Andrew Buckley, were the parents of the missing child.  Laurie's father Leo Farley was also prominent as he was able to use his work in law enforcement to help Laurie investigate the crime. There were five additional characters who were possible villains and their backgrounds were fully developed by the authors.  On top of that there were three characters affiliated with the villains whose lives were interwoven into the story.  How all of these characters are connected is a mystery for the reader.

I am sad that this is my final review of Clark's novels.  Perhaps I should begin rereading them in the order of publication.  That would be fun and I know that I have only reviewed the last 10 of them so the reviews would be new.  5 out of 5 stars!

Followed

 

I loved Helen Macie Osterman's Emma Winberry mystery series so when I found her book Followed, I knew that I had to read it. It is a cozy mystery and is a stand alone novel.

Meg Lewis feels that she is being followed. Soon she sees a blue car every night driving past her grandmother's home where Meg lives with her daughter and grandmother. Meg recognizes the driver as a man who visited a patient at the hospital where she works at as a nurse.  Taking precautions, Meg doesn't let her daughter Becky out of her sight. Meg's grandmother, Lillian Sparks, decides to get a dog and install an electric fence for added security. However, the first time they become lax in watching Becky, Becky and her dog disappear from the back yard. 

While the book follows a mystery formula, there is also some romance. Meg has begun dating a young doctor who she met at work. Curt Williams is the perfect boyfriend who also loves Meg's daughter. Grandmother Lil also has a boyfriend. Together this fivesome would make a great family, that is, if they ever get hitched. 

Followed is a traditional cozy with no sex or violence. I assumed all would end well in the plot since this is a cozy, but there was still a mystery concerning how it would happen. I devoured the book in one sitting. It was the perfect respite for a snowy afternoon.

5 out of 5 stars.

The Girls in the Snow

The Girls in the Snow is the first book in a new detective series featuring FBI agent Nikki Hunt as the detective.  The second book in the series will be published next month and I am looking forward to getting a copy of it as this novel was fantastic.  This tight psychological thriller begins in 1995 with Nikki coming home from a high school party and finding her murdered parents in their Stillwater, MN home. Fast forward 20 years and Nikki is a FBI agent who has been dispatched back to Stillwater to investigate the deaths of two girls.  There are two mysteries to be solved in the book. The first one is who killed the girls. The second mystery deals with whether the right person was convicted and jailed for killing Nikki's parents.

The Nikki Hunt character is mysterious and makes a great protagonist for a series. Her job as a detective in the FBI's Behavior Analysis Unit will make a great backdrop to the investigations that she will be involved with in the future.  In addition, being familiar with violent crime in her personal life is always going to be an issue for her. I expect that this family history is going to be a part of all the investigations that she heads in future books. 

The weather is the main setting in the novel. The ice cold temperatures in Minnesota during winter works well with finding two dead girls whose bodies were staged by the killer frozen in the snow. Winter is what comes to people's minds when they think of Minnesota so this was a bonus for the setting. 

Nikki's reunions with friends and neighbors help move the plot along.  For example, her former boyfriend John is a local police officer who is supposedly assisting her but there is a hint that he is hiding something. It seems that everyone in Stillwater is hiding something, which only adds to the suspense.

The advertisement for the book says that it is unputdownable. I agree with that assessment. I read it in one sitting. One Perfect Grave is the next book in the series. It will be published on February 25, 2021 and I have already pre-ordered a copy. 

5 out of 5 stars.

Plaid and Plagiarism

Plaid and Plagiarism was a disconnect for me.  There were too many descriptive phrases per page instead of action. For instance, Obsessive Outlanders and Born Again Braveheart were one of 10 descriptions on a page.  "Janet and Christine made comforting bookends for the young women in between them." "You didn'task Rab why he rabbited off the harborwall." " I didn't want to ask about his Nessie boxers." "Ooh, is that one of those fancy instant-hot, instant-cold, instant ooh-la-la taps?"  "Let's put the unsavory bits to bed." What the heck do these descriptions mean? I guess the book was written for a UK audience as the author has used many words that only the British use.

Also, the run-up to the murder itself made no sense.  Our two main characters were searching someone's house because it had been trashed. The body was found elsewhere, in a shed, and I did not see the connection between spending 20 pages on searching the house and one sentence on the shed. In addition, when they were peeking into the windows of the house?  Why did they call the police for an emergency when they saw a person move inside the house?  Perhaps the person lived there. Afterward they entered the house to see if more than the kitchen was trashed. Why? This was not connected to the body in the shed and there didn't seem to be any reason why they could enter this house.

What is the book supposed to be about? The publisher's blurb refers to two friends opening a bookshop and they are going to be amateur sleuths solving a murder. Nothing else is written about the plot in the blurb and I can only assume that even the publisher doesn't see any plot action. 

It seems to me that this book is all setting descriptions and no plot. Perhaps the author was trying to set some groundwork for a new cozy mystery series. However, the book was too dull for me to even consider reading any future books in the series.

Death and the Maiden

Ariana Franklin's daughter Samantha Norman wrote this book. Franklin had no input in the writing. The book that Franklin was writing when she died in 2011 was The Siege Winter, which her daughter finished. Norman is a chip off the old block. Her writing is superb and as a lover of medieval mysteries I am glad that she wrote this final installment in Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death series.  This historical mystery is set in Norman England during the year 1911.

With this installment of the series, Adelia Aguilar has just lost her friend and patron, King Henry II.  Adelia is living comfortably in retirement and training her 19 year old daughter Allie to carry on her healing craft.  Allie is already a skilled healer and has a particular gift for treating animals. Being of marriageable age, Allie's father, Rowley, the Bishop of St. Albans, and his patron, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, have plans to marry  Allie to an influential husband. 

When Adelia's lifelong friend in Cambridge, Gyltha, falls ill, Allie is sent to Ely to help her.  There she crosses paths with Lord Peveril, a young aristocrat who would make a most suitable match for Allie. However, when Allie arrives in Ely, all is chaos.  A village girl has disappeared and she is not the first.  Over the past few months, several girls from the villages surrounding Ely have vanished.  When the body of one is discovered, Allie manages to examine the remains before burial. The results lead her to suspect that a murderer is on the loose. The question remains, will Allie be able to help find the killer before becoming the next victim?

The period details of the era were beautifully described. One detail that I have never read about before was the level of power a bishop had over the communities he oversaw. In this case, an interdiction was issued that prevented a priest from performing mass, funerals and burials. Bodies that could not be buried were piling up outdoors with no where to be interred. The effect this had on individual people was aptly described; they were horrified.

The writing was good but there was one thing that bothered me. The murder to be investigated happened late in the story. While I was reading I was captivated by the background information but I kept expecting a crime to occur. It finally happened at the halfway point but, for me, the crime should occur early in the story. I prefer for it to be in the first two chapters but this doesn't always happen in a historical mystery.

4 out of 5 stars.

2021 Cloak and Dagger Reading Challenge Sign-Up

I love reading mysteries so I will be rejoining this challenge again next year. I plan on reading 36-55 books which will meet the challenge's Special Agent reading level.  The challenge host is once again the Carol's Notebook blog and the challenge rules are:  

1.    All mystery sub-genres are accepted for the challenge.

2.    The challenge will run the 2021 calendar year.

3.    Crossovers with other challenges are accepted.

I already have many mysteries on my Kindle ready for me to read but am looking forward to favorite authors publishing new ones.  I especially like Daniel Silva, Brad Thor, Daniel Palmer, P. K. Adams,  S. D. Sykes, James Rollins, Mary Higgins Clark and Cleo Coyle.  On to 2021!