By Steve Steinbock
Mathematicians, physicists, librarians, and superheroes populate the novels we’re surveying this month. They run the gamut from modern cozy to hardboiled, and include two books set in the Pacific Northwest and several historical or period mysteries. Two of the historical works are told through letters or journals and are framed by stories of present-day characters who discover those documents and must face the consequences of their discoveries.
*** Ada Madison: The Square Root of Murder, Berkley Prime Crime, $7.99. In this new series by Camille Minichino (writing as Ada Madison), math professor and puzzle-writer Sophie Knowles finds herself mired in mystery. An antisocial chemistry professor, Keith Appleton, is poisoned in his office while faculty and students revel one floor below. There are plenty of people on campus who had the means, motive, and opportunity to dispatch the professor to the great beyond. But Sophie soon realizes that nothing is quite what it seems. The book is peppered with interesting characters, lively dialogue, and a good dose of brain-teasers. The setting, a small college in rural Massachusetts, is also well defined and believable.
*** Jenn McKinlay: Books Can Be Deceiving, Berkley Prime Crime, $7.99. In another first-of-a-series, readers meet Lindsey Norris, the new library director of Briar Creek, Connecticut. Against the vivid background of coastal Connecticut and the inner workings of a small public library, the newly single librarian finds herself struggling to prove her best friend’s innocence when the friend’s good-for-nothing boyfriend is found dead at his isolated island home. It’s not enough that Lindsey is struggling with a library knitting group, she finds herself entangled with dueling children’s authors, accusations of plagiarism, and library politics. McKinlay, who has also written two “Cupcake Bakery Mysteries” as well as two series under pen names, supplements the novel with a book-group guide, arts and crafts, and a couple of recipes.
**** Bernadette Pajer: A Spark of Death, Poisoned Pen Press, $14.95 (TPB); $24.95 (HC). Set in the Pacific Northwest in 1901, Pajer’s first novel provides a fascinating glimpse of life in Seattle as it evolves from frontier town to metropolis. With the country on guard against anarchists, the University of Washington prepares for President McKinley’s visit to tour the electrical facilities of the School of Engineering. When the body of an arrogant engineering professor is found inside a research lab, the dead man’s colleague, widower and single-parent Professor Bradshaw, becomes prime suspect in this well-plotted novel. The well-researched descriptions of the political landscape, the history of Seattle, and an engaging look at the burgeoning field of electrical engineering are presented without a heavy hand, and the coroner’s-inquest scene is particularly effective.
**** Michelle Black: Séance in Sepia, Five Star, $25.95. A photograph found tucked into a book at an estate sale becomes the vehicle for a fascinating and dramatic historical mystery set amidst Free Love and Spiritualist movements of the 1870s. Antiquarian bookseller Flynn Kiernan’s discovery of an early “spirit photograph” leads her and those around her to delve into the mystery surrounding the three figures in the photograph. The bulk of the novel is set in 1870s New York and Chicago where a love triangle leaves two people dead and the third holding the gun. Historical figure Victoria Woodhull—a suffragist, medium, advocate of Free Love, and first woman to run for the American presidency—intercedes to determine if Alec Ingersoll really killed his wife and his best friend. The narrative is deftly reinforced by courtroom transcripts and journal entries.
**** John F. Dobbyn: Black Diamond, Oceanview Publishing, $25.95.
Dobbyn, whose stories have frequently appeared in the pages of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, takes his hero of two earlier novels to greater heights and deeper depths in this novel of horse racing, Irish politics, and crime. The “Black Diamond” of the title is a long-shot at Boston’s Suffolk Downs who was winning the race until the jockey—lawyer Michael Knight’s close friend Danny—falls from the horse to his death. Knight and his partner Lex Devlin are hired to defend the Hispanic jockey accused of killing Danny only to discover that Danny’s young daughter has been kidnapped. Knight travels to Ireland to find the girl—or bring back her remains—and to discover the link between horse racing and the Irish mob. Ultimately Knight finds himself crossing the line to beat the Irish mafia at its own game of deception.
*** Daniel Robinson: The Shadow of Violence, Texas Review Press, $18.95. After four years in a North Carolina prison for committing a robbery, the unnamed hero of this short novel rolls into Trinidad, Colorado in his dusty Model A, looking for the money he left behind and the woman who took it. Set in 1934, the year that another great novella, James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, was published, The Shadow of Violence owes much of its style and atmosphere to Cain. The lead character is tarnished, but likeable, and while the novel is dark and dusty, it’s not quite grim.
*** Raymond Benson: The Black Stiletto, Oceanview Publishing, $25.95. Part historical novel, part thriller, and part superhero adventure, The Black Stiletto tells the story of a masked vigilante in the late 1950s through her diary entries. Framing the superhero tale is the modern-day story of her son as he discovers that his Alzheimer-afflicted mother had once been the notorious heroine, as well as that of the recently paroled hoodlum who wants revenge on the woman who put him away. Benson, who has written numerous James Bond novels and standalone thrillers, chose to tell this story from three unique perspectives using a simple, conversational narrative style appropriate to the story and its characters, but clumsy when compared to Benson’s other works. But what The Black Stiletto lacks in eloquence it makes up for with fresh adventure that is hard to put down.
*** Gary Alexander: Zillionaire, Five Star, $25.95. In his second novel featuring stand-up comedian Buster Hightower, the veteran short story writer takes readers from Hawaii on the eve of Pearl Harbor to modern Seattle, and then for an adventure in Guatemala. Hightower’s common-law nephew, several times removed, arrives at the home of the out-of-work comic just in time to discover that he is the only living heir to Saburo Taihotsu, the now deceased Japanese war hero, industrialist, and richest man in the world. His only clue is a card with twenty-six numbers on it. Hightower, his girlfriend, and an attractive mathematician neighbor help the nephew solve the puzzle and find the missing zillions before being outsmarted by a team of bumbling con artists.
© 2011 Steve Steinbock
|