Wrap-Up of the 2019 My Kind of Mystery Reading Challenge

I read 20 books for the My Kind of Mystery Reading Challenge during this past year. There were no required number of books to read, which is what I prefer in a challenge.  No pressure! Below are links to the books that I read for the challenge:

The New Girl
Brewed Awakening
Genesis
Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry
Angel's Share
Publish and Perish
The Widow's Guild
Bad to the Bone
The Time for Murder is Meow
The Persian Gamble
The President is Missing
Saving Meghan
Pandemic
Broken Bone China
The Bengal Identity
A Plain Vanilla Murder
A Body in Barcelona
The Malta Exchange
Harvest of Secrets
Murder by Misrule

Favorite Book:  Genesis by Robin Cook

Second Favorite Book:  Brewed Awakening by Cleo Coyle

Least Favorite Book:  A Body in Barcelona by Jason Webster

The Other Woman

The Other Woman is the latest book in Dan Silva's Gabriel Allon spy series. I have loved this series from its inception but feel that with this installment of the series Silva's writing is slipping.  After reading 200 pages, nothing in the book remotely matched the inside cover blurb. This was almost the halfway point of the novel. Other authors who have written a series for decades have gotten bored with their characters and their writing suffered. With 21 books in the Gabriel Allon series, perhaps this is what happened here.

Here is the plot summary from the inside cover blurb: "In an isolated village in the mountains of Andalusia, a mysterious Frenchwoman begins work on a dangerous memoir.  It is the story of a man she once loved in the Beirut of old, and a child taken from her in treason's name. The woman is the keeper of the Kremlin's most closely guarded secret.  Long ago, the KGB inserted a mole into the heart of the West - a mole who stands on the doorstep of ultimate power.  Only one man can unravel the conspiracy - Gabriel Allon, the legendary art restorer and assassin who serves as the chief of Israel's vaunted secret intelligence service. Gabriel has battled the dark forces of the new Russia before, at great personal cost.  Now he and the Russians will engage in a final epic showdown, with the fate of the postwar global order hanging in the balance.  Gabriel is lured into the hunt for the traitor after his most important asset inside Russian intelligence is brutally assassinated while trying to defect to Vienna..."

At the halfway point in the novel, Allon's Russian asset Konstantin Kirov is murdered in Vienna. However, the reader does not yet know that Kirov is Allon's asset. The woman in the blurb was finally mentioned and her story was interesting. The plot began moving much quicker at the midway point but the resolution of the story did not fit the series. The bad guy didn't just get away after being caught. The bad guy was knowingly given away to the Russians by a western intelligence agency, leaving the world open to more malicious attacks.

The Other Woman was a disappointing read.

Brewed Awakening

Brewed Awakening is Coffeehouse Mystery number 18. This installment of the series opens with a marriage proposal to main character and amateur sleuth Clair Cosi from her long time boyfriend Mike Quinn. Clare's life suddenly takes a turn for the worse when 2 months later she finds herself waking up on a park bench in someone else's clothes. She is not sure why she is in New York City when she lives in New Jersey but decides to walk to the coffee shop her former mother-in-law owns, the Village Blend. When she arrives there Clare is surprised to see her daughter Joy looking 11 years older and that coffeehouse staff whom she does not know seem to know her. Clare has amnesia!

A few pages later we find out that Clare witnessed a crime that she cannot remember. She had been missing for a week and when she woke up in the park her memory did not register anything that happened in her life in the past 11 years. Society wife and hotel owner Annette Brewster went missing alongside Clare when an armed and masked man forced them in a car but Bewster has never been found. Clare is the key to locating her, if she can remember.

I thought it was creative for the authors to use amnesia as a way to slowly reveal the clues to the crime. It certainly breaks up their usual way of telling a story and keeps it fresh for loyal readers of the series. Her compatriots at The Blend also commit a crime, removing her from a hospital against her crazy psychiatrist's knowledge, and are themselves laying low from the police. The psychiatrist is planning to take Clare to a private hospital in the north part of the state for treatment that he refuses to describe to her family for up to a year. We have the tension of two crimes here which made the plot more interesting.

Brewed Awakening may be the best book in the series to date. 5 out of 5 stars!

Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry

Mary Higgins Clark has completed her 46th novel with this mystery; 56th novel if you count those she has co-written with other authors. Every year she continues to churn out book after book and it amazes me how much she has accomplished in her writing. Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry is another stellar piece of writing. Clark captures the reader's attention on page one and keeps you glued to the pages until the end.

The inside cover blurb summarizes the book as follows: "When investigative journalist Gina Kane receives an email from a 'CRyan' describing her 'terrible experience' while working at REL, a high profile television news network, including the comment, 'and I'm not the only one,' Gina knows that she has to pursue the story. But when Ryan goes silent, Gina is shocked to discover the young woman has died tragically in a Jet Sky accident while on holiday.

Meanwhile, REL counsel Michael Carter finds himself in a tricky spot. Several female employees have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct. Carter approaches the CEO, offering to persuade the victims to accept settlements in exchange for their silence. It's a risky endeavor, but it could well make him rich.

As more allegations emerge and the company's IPO draws near, Carter's attempts to keep the story from making headlines are matched only by Gina Kane's determination to uncover the truth. Was Ryan's death truly an accident? And when another accuser turns up dead, Gina realizes someone-or some people-will go to depraved lengths to keep the story from seeing the light."

I read this book before reading the blurb. I am glad that I didn't because the entire plot, except the denouement, is given in the blurb. It's a little surprising, that's all. Another point that I would like to make is that while Higgins Clark is known as being the Queen of Suspense, there was no suspense here. The book is a well plotted murder mystery but it's not a suspenseful novel. As usual, her protagonist is a female, this time an investigative journalist. I think this was a great job for the sleuth to have and this character, Gina Kane, could be a continuing character in a series. Higgins Clark has never written a series before but this book could be the start of one.

5 out of 5 stars!

Bad to the Bone

Bad to the Bone is the third book in a cozy mystery series called the Barkery and Biscuits Mysteries. It is the first one in the series that I have read.

The back cover blurb summarizes the book as follows:  "Veterinary technician Carrie Kennersley, owner of the Barkery and Biscuits Bakery for dogs, is reluctant to sell her recipes to pet food manufacturer VimPets. Jack Loroci, a VimPets representative, assures Carrie that it would be a great opportunity to grow her business. His promising new relationship with Carrie's friend Billi Matlock doesn't hurt his cause. But the budding romance takes a bad turn when Wanda Addler, another VimPets employee, sets her sights on Jack. After threatening to ruin Jack's career if he doesn't give her what she wants, Wanda is found dead. Jack and Billi are put at the top of the suspect list, and Carrie is doggone determined to rescue them from a life behind bars."

My initial impression was that something was lacking in the story but I wasn't sure what it was. The murder occurred early in the story.  The main character/amateur sleuth then had conversations with several people over the space of 100 pages concerning whether she should investigate the murder. I thought that was odd since this is a cozy mystery and the reader knows that the amateur sleuth is going to investigate. It was a waste of 100 pages. Once the investigation began, the amateur sleuth only performed witness interviews in her investigation. Again, I thought that was odd. Usually there is back story written in to the plot as well as research being done by one of the characters and an "aha" moment on the part of the main character. I finally realized that there was only dialogue in this novel. There was no other writing technique used to break up all that dialogue.

In addition, there were no clues pointing to who the killer was interspersed throughout the novel. There were no red herrings used either. The relationships between Carrie and her employees were not written into the story as you would normally see in this type of a cozy so the Barkery and Biscuit Shop connection to the plot was not fully formed. I thought that the final resolution to the murder wasn't plausible. Perhaps it's because of the aforementioned issues but in any event it was not a satisfying resolution of the murder.

The plot summary was interesting but there were too many shortcomings in Bad to the Bone. 2 out of 5 stars.

The Time for Murder is Meow

This cozy mystery is the first installment of a new series featuring former actress and pet shop heiress Crishell McMillan. "Shell" inherited her shop, the Purr N Bark Pet Shop, from her grandmother.

The back cover blurb summarizes the plot as follows: "Crishell 'Shell' McMillan sees the cancellation of her TV series as a blessing in disguise. The former actress can now take over her late aunt's pet shop, the Purr N Bark, and do something she truly loves. While getting the shop ready for reopening, Shell is asked to loan her aunt's Cary Grant posters to the local museum for an exhibit. She finds the prospect exciting-until a Museum board member, who had a long-standing feud with Shell's aunt, votes against it. When she discovers the board member dead in the museum, Shell becomes suspect number one. Can she, her Siamese cat Kahlua, and her new sidekick-her aunt's Persian named Purrday-find the real culprit? If not, her latest career will go up in kitty litter."

The murder to be solved did not occur until page 100 of this 296 page book. For me, that is way too late for a whodunnit to be successful. Also, when a series is about a shop, the shop should be featured in the story. The Purr N Bark Pet Shop was rarely mentioned as it had not opened for business yet. The reader doesn't know what type of series this is going to be when the supposed setting for it has not been introduced. We don't  know the decor, the characters who work there, and how the business is woven into the sleuthing. I think this is a fatal flaw for the series but we shall wait and see what book number two turns out to be when it is published in 2020.  As for the two cats mentioned in the back cover blurb, they were only involved to greet the protagonist when she came home in the evening. I don't know why they were even mentioned in the blurb.

The main problem that I had with this book was that the conflict between the main character and her adversaries was based on an unrealistic premise.  I can forget the other problems with the book and see this as a stand alone novel. What I cannot do is get interested in a plot that is based on a person being upset that a charity will not allow her to exhibit her vintage movie posters on their premises. Any one who takes offense over something like that has psychologist issues. Unless the author wants to take us on a murderous rage, this plot falls flat.

2 out of 5 stars.

The President is Missing

Former President Bill Clinton co-authored this political mystery with James Patterson. It is eerily similar to Clinton's presidency.

The synopsis from the publisher:

"As an unprecedented cyberterrorist attack cripples the United States, the president must face an unthinkable truth:

There is a traitor in the White House.
His life is in danger.

And the only way to stay ahead of the shadowy forces tearing at the heart of America is to go off grid, leaving behind his presidential protection. The president must go missing and he may never resurface... Set over the course of three days that shake a nation to its core, The President is Missing
sheds a stunning light on the inner workings and vulnerabilities of the American government."

I expected alot from this book. I heard many friends say they couldn't wait to read it. If I was using my brain I would have realized that no one said anything else about the book.  At the midway point in reading this novel I read a few reviews of it because I was disappointed with it. Most of the reviews were negative. It finally clicked in my brain that the problem was the plot.

In The President is Missing there is something that never happens...the president never goes missing. Why this title was chosen is a conundrum.  The main character, the president, was basically Bill Clinton. This president faced an impeachment, was the former governor of a small southern state, met his wife in the law library at Yale law school, hired his best friend whom he met in kindergarten to work for him in the White House and failed to capture a foreign terrorist. As these details about the character unfolded, I was disappointed. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it just wasn't creative to use the author's background for a character.

The plot wasn't believable. First of all, I kept waiting for the president to disappear. Second, there were several groups of commandos shooting characters and I couldn't tell who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. The story was confusing. Third, there is no way in hell the Secret Service would allow a president to go off grid and meet someone who is probably a terrorist without protection. In the book the president orders the Secret Service to not follow him and also orders his physician to not treat him for an illness which is about to kill him because the drugs he needs will cloud his judgment.

The story was written with suspense to keep you reading. While I was bored and disappointed at the halfway point, I kept thinking that there was more to this story than I could see. Also, with the synopsis telling me that there is a traitor in the White House, I expected to read about this traitor early in the book. The reader doesn't read about it until the conclusion of the story. Why the build up in the media about a traitor when there's no build up in the story? Finally, it would have been nice for the authors to have written a Note to the Reader describing their writing collaboration.  Who contributed what? I wonder how much writing Clinton contributed to the novel, if any. 

Saving Meghan

Daniel Palmer has written another amazing medical mystery with Saving Meghan. With this novel he examines the illness called munchausen's by proxy.

The Gerard family is falling apart due to daughter Meghan's undiagnosed illness and her mother Becky's constant demand for her to see new doctors and have more tests. Husband Carl doesn't seem to believe that his daughter is really sick.  Meghan, a former high school athlete, is now homebound with nausea, cramping, fevers, fatigue and dizziness. However, every medical test keeps coming back normal until the family meets Dr. Zach Fisher who thinks she has a mitochondrial disease. She begins treatment but White Hospital is considering an intervention. They think Becky is intentionally making Meghan sick.

This novel was one heck of a page turner! I had to stay up until 2 am to finish it this morning. The plot moved very quickly and each chapter ended with a bang so I had to continue reading. I was familiar with Munchausen's so I knew what to expect from the mother's character. However, the daughter's character surprised me. By age 15 she had already learned what made her mother happy so Meghan was somewhat complicit in acting out her illness. I had no idea that was normal in these situations.

The plot had incredible twists and plenty of suspense but the final resolution of the story caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting it and I don't think it fit the story well. Still, it was a fun read and I am looking forward to Palmer's next novel. 

Pandemic

Pandemic is Robin Cook's 36th medical mystery novel. The plot was inspired by a 2012 article in Science magazine concerning bacterial immunity. In his Preface the author stated that the article also introduced the world to a biologically active chimeric molecule called CRISPR/CAS9.  This molecule can be custom-tailored to alter genes in plants and animals.  With CRISPR/CAS9, any gene whose sequence is known can be replaced, removed, turned on and turned off and this can be done by anyone, even a high schooler in his garage. You don't need to be a molecular biologist to know how to do this. Therein lies one of the dangers. Another danger is that this technology is unregulated.

The story opens with a woman suddenly dying on a New York subway. Medical Examiner Jack Stapleton performs her autopsy and is astonished to find that she had a recent heart transplant but was not on any immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of the heart. Her DNA also matched the DNA of the transplanted heart which would be impossible unless it came from a twin. A lung virus is the expected cause of death and the woman's short period of illness is reminiscent of the 1918 flu epidemic.

With troubles at home that he wants to avoid, Stapleton throws himself into this case. He tries to identify the woman by visiting a  tattoo parlor to determine the origin of her unusual tattoo of a puzzle piece with the name Helen on it. He locates the hospital that performed her transplant and is led to a Chinese billionaire who owns a hospital and research facility that uses CRISPR/CAS9. Then, a second woman ends up in his morgue with a puzzle piece tattoo with the name Carol in the middle.

I loved this book. It was fast paced and the search to identify the cause of death was interesting. When the plot came to what the Chinese billionaire was doing with his transplant business, I was astonished that anyone would even think about doing what he was doing. I won't be a spoiler here but it was shocking.

The relationship between the two main characters, Jack Stapleton and his wife Laurie Montgomery, was quite different from prior novels. Laurie is now Jack's boss. She has no problem yelling at him. He cannot handle it though. Jack is usually the dominant person in this relationship and this mixup feels awkward. To make things worse, they have a new child who was just diagnosed as being autistic. I am not sure where these two characters go from here. Is this 11th book featuring them the last one?

4 out of 5 stars.

The Persian Always Meows Twice

This is the first book in a new cozy mystery series by Eileen Watkins. I reviewed the 2nd book in the series a few weeks ago and liked it so much I ran out to the library to find the first one. In this series the cat is not the sleuth. Cat groomer Cassie McGlone, owner of Cassie's Comfy Cats is the sleuth.

The story opens with Cassie visiting a client in his home where he has a full grooming station for his Persian cat named Harpo. George DeLeuw is one of her best clients. He is Chadwick's wealthiest resident and pays her well, wanting extra attention for his cat whose long hair gets matted without the attention. When Cassie arrives for one of her regular visits she hears a scream and finds the maid Anita trembling. Anita leads her to DeLeuw's body, lying dead on the floor.  Cassie calls the police and Detective Angela Bonelli arrived on the scene. While several officers processed the scene of the crime Bonelli interviewed them both along with the landscaper Louis who had come inside when he heard Anita scream. Anita and Louis both said they thought DeLeuw was killed by an art thief because his home was filled with expensive artworks. Cassie was grilled on why she moved to Chadwick four months earlier.

Worried about Harpo's care, when Cassie attends the funeral she asks questions of all of the family and business associates of the deceased about whether the cat is named in the will and who is getting possession of the cat. She wants to take care of Harpo herself but all the questions only got her the attention of Detective Bonelli who now thinks that she is a suspect. Every person Cassie spoke to was considered a suspect by the police.

His ex-wife Marjorie sued him for possession of Harpo's brother and then had him put to sleep for spitting up a hairball. Marjorie hates cats and this was just another way to be cruel to him during the divorce. His sister Danielle wanted to get the cat from Cassie and return to the west coast even though she too did not like cats. Danielle had asked her brother for a business loan but he told her no.  Cassie thought that whoever got the cat would get some money in the will for Harpo's care. Then there were the business associates at DeLeuw's old Wall Street firm Redmond & Fowler, where DeLeuw had tried to sell an encryption program created by the son of Cassie's handyman, Dion Janos, but passed it off as his own and used it to hide documentation of the firm's corruption.

De Leuw's attorney agrees, however, that Cassie should board Harpo at her shop until the will is read. Before that happens, there are two attempted break-ins at Cassie's Comfy Cats, an arson at the shop, and an attempted kidnapping of Harpo and attempted murder of  Cassie herself at the shop when the crime is solved. Many twists and turns happen in between these main events.

This was a fabulous read but there were two odd things that stood out in my mind. The author referred to Harpo as a blond Persian. There is no such thing as a blond Persian cat. There are goldens and there are also silvers. How do I know? I helped a breeder of golden and silver Persians when I was a teenager through my thirties and attended cat shows throughout the Midwest with her. To me, a "blond" cat would be more golden in color but the cat on the cover of the book is a silver. The next item that irked me was how Cassie referred to her shop assistant Sarah as "moving much faster that she should be able to for her sixty years." I am sixty! Is the author saying that I should not be able to move? There is a little ageism here.

Aside from these two issues this book was fast paced with an intricate plot. I lost count of how many suspects there were, maybe 8, that had to be worked through with red herring after red herring. The writing was tight as the crime, occurring in the first chapter, was resolved in this little book's 261 pages. Several regular characters were also introduced for future novels so a lot happened here.

5 out of 5 stars.

A Plain Vanilla Murder

A Plain Vanilla Murder is Susan Wittig Albert's 27th China Bayles Mystery. Each novel features a different herb and this installment of the series features an orchid plant that grows vanilla pods. If you like to bake then you know that the price of vanilla extract and vanilla beans has skyrocketed. The author has chosen a timely subject to write about in this novel.

The summary from the inside cover blurb:

"China and Ruby Wilcox are presenting their annual Not Just Plain Vanilla Workshop, always a huge hit with customers at Thyme & Seasons Herb Shop. But someone involved with the workshop is driven by a deadly motive, and China soon finds herself teaming up with the very pregnant Pecan Springs police chief Sheila Dawson to solve a vanilla-flavored murder. But the lethal roots of this mystery reach back into the dark tropical jungles of Mexico, where the vanilla vine was first cultivated. At stake: a lucrative plant patent, an orchid that is extinct in the wild, and the life of an innocent girl."

This cozy mystery at times felt like a political mystery. The reader learns how vanilla plants are smuggled into the U.S. and sold at horticulture shows throughout the country. The murder victim had been developing a disease resistant vanilla plant. His secrecy over this activity resulted in him making many enemies at his college. Some of the prime suspects in his murder included jealous colleagues, orchid smugglers, and a disgruntled grad student that the victim was working with.

There were a few anomalies in the book. Police Chief Sheila Dawson has been pregnant in more than one installment of the series. In this book she is 8 months pregnant. How long can she be pregnant? Or should the question be what is the time lapse between murders in Pecan Springs that are written about in separate novels? In order to be able to investigate the next crime in the series Dawson has to have given birth and be back on the job. Also, two new secondary characters were introduced who had nothing to do with the plot. Ruby's daughter Amy Wilcox and her partner Kate Rodriguez were introduced and they are having a baby together with the assistance of a brother-in-law and a test tube. That was all that was said about them.

I thought that the investigation into the murder itself was intricately plotted. The pace was fast. There were as many red herrings and twists and turns as you might find in a standard political mystery but the writing was still done in Ms. Albert's folksy manner.

The author always has recipes at the back of her books. However, in this book the recipes at the back are more basic such as how to make your own vanilla extract, vanilla sugar, vanilla salt, vanilla paste, vanilla powder, vanilla syrup, vanilla butter, vanilla whipped cream, and vanilla vinegar. I am a baker so I had to write down these recipes for my own use. Recipes for dishes that the characters made in the novel are interspersed throughout the novel.

A Plain Vanilla Murder was truly a salute to vanilla. 5 out of 5 stars!

A Body in Barcelona

A Body in Barcelona is the 5th Max Camara Novel but the first one that I have read. It is a police detective novel set in Valencia, Spain but is categorized as a political thriller by the publisher.

The murder of a prominent businessman's young son did not occur until 70 pages into the book.  Setting descriptions abounded before the crime occurred. This overwhelmed me because they were about the police divisions in Spain and the Spanish language was used to describe the names of all of the divisions. Throughout the book I kept forgetting who was who. Place names, street names, district names were also all in Spanish. Spanish words were thrown in the book here and there. I don't speak Spanish so it was difficult for me to follow the plot. I tried to find a map to determine where each locale was at but couldn't find the right map. Location seemed important when cities are culturally divided in half, i.e., one part Spanish and one part Morrocan.

There was much writing about the current state of political affairs in Spain and in the EU. Since I am totally unfamiliar with their politics I kept wondering what part of it was true, if any. I didn't know what to believe. In essence, my lack of knowledge about Spain and various EU political departments made it hard to follow the story. The author presumes the reader can follow along. The mystery part of the book did begin moving around page 125 but the above problems handicapped my ability to understand the book. Each time the story started moving for me the author threw in a Spanish word and I could not understand the sentence. It was frustrating.

The author grew up in the UK and lived in Spain for several years so I believe that this book was written for Europeans. Also, I have to wonder if it would have been an easier read if I had begun reading the series with the first book.  I became so frustrated with the book I skipped about 100 pages to get to the end just to find out why the boy was killed. I still don't know due to the Spanish words that were occasionally used.

I don't quite know how to rate the book. It might be a great book for someone who speaks Spanish and is familiar with Spain. For me, it was a 0. Yes, 0 out of 5 stars. My first 0 rated book.