Review: "Chain of Evidence" by Garry Disher

 

Chain of Evidence by Garry Disher Soho Crime, 2007   Chain of Evidence is Australian crime writer Garry Disher’s fourth novel to feature Inspector Hal Challis and Sergeant Ellen Destry. A police procedural set in the rural, but booming Mornington Peninsula area south of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. A place where poverty and wealth live side-by-side and crime is as deadly and ugly as it is in any large city. While visiting his dying father in his childhood home in the dusty, hardscrabble South Australia town of Mawson’s Bluff, Challis unofficially investigates the mysterious disappearance of his sister’s husband, Gavin Hurst, from eight years earlier. Hurst is a man not readily missed by many of Mawson’s Bluff’s residents and his disappearance is truly a mystery. His truck was abandoned at the desert’s edge and his body was never found. Back home at the Waterloo Station, Ellen Destry is filling in for Challis during his absence when a girl is kidnapped on her way home from school. She is found imprisoned in an uninhabited house. Abused by what Destry believes is a pedophile ring operating in the Peninsula. Her investigation hits roadblocks from within the police service and the only person she can trust is Hal Challis, more than 1,000 kilometers away. Chain of Evidence is a powerful and disturbing procedural. The two major mysteries are intriguing and executed with the sure hand of an absolute professional. It is Ellen Destry’s coming out as an equal partner with Challis. The setting, both the Peninsula and Mawson’s Bluff, is rendered with a muted artistry and adds immeasurably to the novel’s power. There is nothing gory or exploitative about either storyline and Disher has a way of mixing character stereotypes to develop tension between the characters, the plot, and the reader. It may be the best book in the series. If you are new to Garry Disher, Chain of Evidence is a very good place to get acquainted. *                        *                        * This is a slightly updated version of a review published on August 12, 2017.

Check out Chain of Evidence on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.

Review: "How's Your Mother?" by Simon Brett

 

“How’s Your Mother?” by Simon Brett Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Oct. 1983   Simon Brett’s, “How’s Your Mother?” is a traditional mystery with a humorous edge and a perfectly surprising twist. Humphrey Partridge and his ailing 86-year-old mother live quiet lives in a charming, if gossipy, English village. Humphrey is a doting son—he prefers the company of his mother over anyone else. But a rumor, started by a busybody at the post office, that Humphrey will inherit a bundle from his mother and that he would emigrate “to Canada if only he hadn’t got the old girl to worry about” raises suspicions about Humphrey when his mother mysteriously disappears. “How’s Your Mother?” is a snappy and funny whodunit—with a marvelously ironic ending—and a dead mother and gossip at its center. Brett adroitly plays with the reader’s expectations to deliver more than one surprise and he does it in his usual light-hearted style. But the real thrill is the smile it will spark on the readers’—at least this reader’s!—face with its perfectly ghoulish final words.

“How’s Your Mother?” was first published in the U.K. in The Mystery Guild Anthology, edited by John Waite (1980).

Review: "Death of an Ex" by Delia Pitts

Death of an Ex by Delia Pitts Minotaur Books, 2025     Death of an Ex, which is Delia Pitts’s second Vandy Myrick mystery, is a thoughtful, deliberately paced private eye novel with a rich New Jersey setting and a heaping of emotional healing. A former Rutgers University cop, the middle-aged Vandy moved back to her small hometown of Queenstown and took a job as a lawyer’s “pet private investigator.” Her boss, Elissa Adesanya, is also Vandy’s best friend and the work tends to be low market rackets like divorce, insurance fraud, and process serving. Vandy is thrown into the deep end of the investigative pool after attending a glitzy event at the high-end Rome School—a private boarding school in Queenstown—where her young friend, Ingrid Ramirez, is receiving an award. Vandy’s ex-husband, Philip Bolden, which is a great surname for any character, is at the reception and even after twenty years he still makes Vandy’s pulse rise and her knees weak. A few days later Vandy takes Philip to her bed and for a moment she doesn’t mind being the other woman. That changes when Philip is gunned down a few blocks from Vandy’s apartment and Vandy is left to figure out who did it and why. All while traversing the mine field of Philip’s personal life—he was married with a teenage son and his wandering libido caused nothing but trouble. While also hoping to keep her and Philip’s indiscretion a secret. Death of an Ex, while rightfully a private eye tale, has the atmosphere of an amateur sleuth in a particularly well-done cozy. Vandy’s investigative style is circular and primarily based on emotion rather than the linear style most often used in detective tales. She bumps around the primary suspects, as sneakily as an English Village sleuth, looking for motive and opportunity. A wobbly tactic because of its use of repetition—a repetition of Vandy’s emotions and a repetition of questioning the same suspects over and over—to deepen the mystery, but one that ultimately works since it reveals the illogic and tragedy of murder. But the true charm of Death of an Ex is Vandy’s own struggle with the death of her only child and Pitts’s vivid rendering of a predominately Black New Jersey town.

Check out Death of an Ex on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the hardcover.

 

Review: "The Frozen People" by Elly Griffiths

 

The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths Viking, 2025     Elly Griffiths’ latest mystery, The Frozen People—which is scheduled for release on July 8—is a likable first in a new and wholly original mystery series. In fact, it is a hybrid of sorts, since Ali Dawson, part of a secret cold case team with the meaningless title of the Department of Logistics, is tasked with solving cases so cold they use a new, and not completely understood technology, to travel back in time and gather evidence. The team’s operating procedures are simple: watch, bear witness, don’t interact, and stay safe. To date these rules have been easy to follow since the time jumps have been reasonably short and the people being watched were unable to see Ali. But things change when the politically connected Isaac Templeton—a Tory MP and the boss of Ali’s son, Finn—asks the Department to travel to the Victorian London of 1850 to clear his ancestor, Cain Templeton, of the suspicion that he killed three women. Isaac believes the whispers about Cain has sullied his family’s name and that Ali and the Department can clear it. Ali takes the challenge. With the help of an expert, she studies the era, readies the proper attire, and, not completely successfully, attempts to adopt the meek attitude of Victorian women. Of course, things go wrong quickly, the natives can see her, Ali gets stuck in 1850, and her son, Finn, is accused of murder back home in 2023. The Frozen People is a solid traditional mystery with an original concept and enough personality, in the form of Ali, to give it zing. While it starts slowly—the confusing number of characters introduced early-on is the primary culprit—the narrative picks up quickly when Ali jumps into the past. The Victorian London setting, from the attitudes and clothing to the colder than expected weather, is splendid. Ali is beset by one catastrophe after another until it seems her plight, and that of Finn, is doomed. And the time travel element? What isn’t great about a detective solving multiple murders across nearly 200 years?

Find The Frozen People on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the hardcover.

Review: "Night on Fire" by Douglas Corleone

 

Night on Fire by Douglas Corleone Minotaur Books, 2011     Douglas Corleone’s second Kevin Corvelli mystery, Night on Fire, is a snappy and sharp legal thriller with personality—in the form of the almost debauched and always fun Corvelli. While chatting-up a cougar in his favorite outdoor beach bar, in Ko Olina on Oahu, Corvelli is among the many witnesses of a nasty and drunken fight between newlyweds. Corvelli’s only thoughts about the dust-up are: 1) too bad he doesn’t do divorces; and 2) just how sexy the bride is. With that, Kevin follows his libido into the cougar’s room in the Liholiho Tower of the Kupulupulu Beach Resort where the fight would have been forgotten, except later that night the Liholiho catches fire, killing eleven—including the sparring groom—and very nearly gets Kevin, his cougar, and a four-year-old boy named Josh Leffler that Corvelli befriended at the hallway vending machine. It takes investigators only a few hours to rule the fire as arson and a few more to finger the angry bride, Erin Simms, as their prime suspect. Of course, Corvelli takes Erin’s case, pisses off his law partner, Jake Harper, and makes one or two ethically dubious choices while facing down a prosecutor that seems to have a personal grudge against him. Night on Fire is a great summertime read—from its vivid Hawaii setting to Kevin Corvelli’s questionable personal behavior; which Corleone obviously had fun writing. Corvelli is a borderline alcoholic, a confirmed skirt chaser, but a damn good lawyer and something of an okay guy once you scrape the gunk away. There is a bit of fish-out-of-water subplot here, too, as Corvelli takes a big brother-like interest in the young Josh Leffler. The mystery is nicely developed with a handful of well-placed clues and the courtroom scenes are excellent. The climactic twist ending is on the far side of wild, but it didn’t bother me a whit since the journey there was so damn fun. Night on Fire is a must read for anyone with a hankering for entertainment and a desire to get away this summer without leaving home.

Night on Fire appears to be out-of-print (for some sick reason), but you can check out the original hardcover here at Amazon.

Review: "Them Bones" by David Housewright

 

Them Bones by David Housewright Minotaur Books, 2025   David Housewright’s Them Bones—which is the twenty-second Rushmore McKenzie mystery—is a tale of… well, two tales of the same story. Okay, not really two tales, but rather a single story told in two different styles. The McKenzie books are written in first person from the perspective of McKenzie—an unlicensed private eye in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, that spends his time doing favors for friends. But Them Bones is distinct from its predecessors because the crime is detailed in third person from the perspective of the client, Angela Bjork. We last saw Angela as a girl saving McKenzie’s life in The Taking of Libbie, SD (2010), but now she is all grown up and working on her Ph.D. in paleontology at the University of Minnesota. Angela discovered a nearly intact fossil of an Ankylosaurus while working a dinosaur dig in Montana. It was a profound find because it is the most complete of its kind, but before the bones can be transported to the Twin Cities, the skull was stolen. Angela tells McKenzie, and the reader, about the discovery (in May) and the heist (in August) and everything that happened in-between. In this unofficial prologue, Angela introduces the suspects—professors, students, and other miscellany—that were present at the dig site when the heist occurred. The paleontology stuff was interesting, including how the dig was done, the problems they encountered and personalities involved; however, it took so long, about a quarter of the narrative, that I had begun thinking McKenzie had the week off. But once McKenzie agrees to help Angela recover the Ankylosaurus, and he takes charge of the narrative things really pick up. In fact, Them Bones, suddenly becomes a McKenzie novel. With his subtle and not-so-subtle wit, his penchant for finding trouble and breaking the rules, and his always gallant search for justice, McKenzie does an admirable job of flushing out the villains. The action moves from college campuses (there are two), to a museum, to high class neighborhoods, and from Minnesota to Montana to Canada and back again. And it is a good bit of fun. But that opening prologue made the entire enterprise a little wobbly. Its length almost made me give up before the good stuff started, which I’ve never encountered with David Housewright’s writing. It felt like Housewright was setting-up a traditional whodunit, which is cool, but (for me at least) it never quite worked that way. What I did like about Them Bones is far more than what I disliked. As usual, the setting—the Twin Cities, Montana, and even rural Canada—was vivid and melded perfectly with the story. The actual mystery, who was the Inside Man that helped the thieves steal the skull, is compelling and McKenzie’s self-deprecating style and often flippant attitude is fun. There is a good deal of subterfuge and the final reveal is both surprising and perfectly right. But a few hours spent with McKenzie, even in a flawed tale like Them Bones, is always a chore to look forward to.

Find Them Bones on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.

Review: "Little Old Ladies" by Simon Brett

 

“Little Old Ladies” by Simon Brett from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine May 2010   I’m ashamed of how few of Simon Brett’s mysteries I’ve read. A handful of shorts and a novel so long ago I don’t recall its title; although, I do remember it featured Charles Paris and that I liked it. I was thinking all this while I was reading his excellent tale, “Little Old Ladies” with a smile on my face and only a smidgen of an idea of where the story was going. Morton-cum-Budely is a swank Devon village—“of almost excessive prettiness”— mostly inhabited by retirees. And those retirees tend to be little old ladies since their husbands “were made of frailer stuff” and now spend their time lying about in the graveyard. When the Chair of the Morton-cum-Budely Village Committee, Joan Fullerton, is murdered, the village’s women are aflutter and the investigating detective, one D.I. Dromgoole, is flummoxed. In fact, Dromgoole’s bafflement is so great he follows the Golden Age tradition of enlisting the help of a little old lady, Brenda Winshott, to solve the village murder, which (of course) she does in short order. “Little Old Ladies” is a delightful, somewhat slanted—in the best possible way—traditional detective story with a light mood and a good deal of humor. Brenda Winshott, the quietest and most competent resident of Morton-cum-Budely, is a perfect sleuth. She is liked by everyone, a little sneaky, and her tactful manner puts everyone at ease. The clues are scattered in the narrative and there are three solid suspects—none of them with an alibi. I only cracked the case a few paragraphs before Brenda revealed it on the page. If you enjoy a solid whodunit with an English Village setting, “Little Old Ladies,” will do just fine. Did I mention, I smiled from the first page to the last, which is something in these harrowing times.

“Little Old Ladies” was first published in the U.K. in Women’s Weekly Special, January 2008.

Review: "Make with the Brains, Pierre" by Dana Wilson

 

Make with the Brains, Pierre by Dana Wilson Black Gat, 2025   The only bad thing about this 1946 psychological thriller from Dana Wilson—it is her only mystery novel—is the clunker of a title: Make with the Brains, Pierre. A title more apt for a Hollywood farce than a bleak ride into tinsel town’s darker side. In fact, Bill Pronzini, in 1001 Midnights, compared Make with the Brains, Pierre with the work of Cornell Woolrich and the New York Times wrote, “[it] presents a convincing picture of a troubled mind struggling with problems beyond its power.” Pierre Bernet is a French film editor, or what they call a cutter, lured to Hollywood in the years before France was defeated by Nazi Germany. But now he is 34, unemployed, living in a tiny apartment, and in love with a woman far too young for him: Eleanor Marr. Eleanor works as an onscreen extra and while she is fond of Pierre, she loves the very married owner of a film company, Joe Sherman. As a kindness to Pierre, Eleanor convinces Joe to hire Pierre. The job is less than a week’s work, but it pays eight times what M-G-M, when Pierre last had gainful employment, paid. While working, Pierre meets Joe’s dreadful wife, who refuses to grant a divorce to her husband, and the guy bankrolling the job. A shifty and well-connected lawyer named Frank Marshall. Of course, the film cutting job is for an audio splice that is used in a fraud and no matter how Pierre tries to play things, it always ends up with him hanging from the branch. Make with the Brains, Pierre, is a solid thriller—it opens with Pierre self-destructing in his tiny apartment, water dripping on something awful in his bathtub, while he awaits to be killed by the two men outside his building. Then the narrative goes into flashback to answer, How did Pierre get here? and What the hell is in the bathtub? It is told with sly humor and a sharp commentary of both Hollywood and post-WW2 America. The suspense is ratcheted slowly from chapter to chapter until, in the last pages, there is no doubt where it is going and the full horror of Pierre’s situation is starkly written into nightmare. Make with the Brains, Pierre—bad title and all—is a damn good book. *             *             * This new Black Gat edition includes an excellent introduction by Randal S. Brandt, “The Original Bond Girl,” detailing Dana Wilson’s life. She was an actress whose second husband was Albert R. Broccoli, the producer of the James Bond film franchise, and so much more.

Check out Make with the Brains, Pierre at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback. Or at the Stark House website here.

Review: "High Stakes" by John Lutz

“High Stakes” by John Lutz from American Pulp, ed. by Gorman, Pronzini & Greenberg Carroll & Graf, 1997   John Lutz, who died in Jan. 2021 from complications of Covid at the age of 81, was a writer that was (and still is) often overlooked. Sure, he had a couple novels translated into film, including the box office hit, Single White Female (1992), starring Bridget Fonda, but it’s rare to see Lutz on anyone’s favorite author list. Maybe it’s because he had a chameleon-like ability to adapt his writing to meet market changes: He started writing suspense in the 1970s, shifted to P.I. tales in the 1980s, then in the 1990s and 2000s he rode the serial killer wave until it smashed itself dead against the rocks. And then in the late-2010s he busted out a couple espionage thrillers. Or, and this more likely, there is some other reason that I haven’t identified yet. But one thing I know: I’ve never read a John Lutz tale—novel or short story—I didn’t like. For me, one of Lutz’s greatest accomplishments for a late-20th Century fictionist is the volume of short stories he published. My guess is, and this is purely speculative, Lutz’s byline appeared on more than 100 short tales that appeared in digests and anthologies. His first, “Thieves’ Honor,” appeared in the Dec. 1966 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and he kept on publishing well into the 21st Century. Which brings me to Lutz’s exceptionally good, “High Stakes”—originally published in the June 1984 issue of The Saint. Ernie is a degenerate gambler with an instinct for survival, but his luck went sour and now he’s hiding in a crummy room in a crummier hotel. He’s dressed in a dirty brown suit and a wrinkled white shirt because he had to abandon his smart clothes as he hustled away from his last hotel ahead of the bill. Even worse, Ernie owes a substantial sum to a card sharp, Carl Atwater, with a violent reputation and there is no telling what Atwater and his goons will do to Ernie when they find him. “Thieves’ Honor” was written in the 1980s, but it has the feel of 1950s pulp; which is good since I dig that kind of thing. Ernie’s plight is well described—as is Ernie in all his cockroach glory—and Lutz takes the story into unexpected places. At least I had no idea where it was going until it got there. There is true suspense, which Lutz is exceedingly good at writing, and that final climactic twist is as ironic as anything I’ve read in a good long while. In a couple words: “Thieves’ Honor” is damn fun.

Review: "Marguerite by the Lake" by Mary Dixie Carter

Marguerite by the Lake by Mary Dixie Carter Minotaur Books, 2025   Mary Dixie Carter’s second novel, Marguerite by the Lake—which is scheduled for release on May 20—is a brilliant thriller that will remind readers of Daphne du Maurier’s gothic masterpiece, Rebecca. Marguerite Gray is as successful as she is beautiful. A gardening and lifestyle influencer, Marguerite lives with her husband, Geoffrey, at their Rosecliff mansion overlooking “the spiral-shaped” Lake Spiro in rural Connecticut. Marguerite’s brand is built around Rosecliff, which she writes about and photographs exhaustively for her millions of followers. While Margeurite takes credit for Rosecliff’s glory, it is Phoenix Sullivan that designs the grounds and keeps the roses blooming. But this admittedly unequal relationship works because Phoenix would rather have her hands in the soil than anywhere else; however, their relationship begins changing when Phoenix saves Geoffrey from being crushed by a falling tree. Margeurite becomes more circumspect, even suspicious, with Phoenix. And things escalate when Geoffrey begins paying more attention to Phoenix—seeking her out on the grounds, inviting her into the house for drinks—before ultimately coaxing her into his bed. Then Marguerite plummets to her death and Phoenix moves into Rosecliff with Geoffrey. A move that seems wonderful to Phoenix at first, but she quickly begins hearing whispers from the staff. A detective, an old high school classmate of Phoenix’s, won’t stop pestering her about Marguerite’s death, and Geoffrey and Margeurite’s adult daughter, Taylor, moves back to Rosecliff. Taylor is a younger version of Margeurite and her hostility makes Phoenix feel small. And Margeurite seems to be haunting Rosecliff, speaking to Phoenix in hushed tones, and trying to destroy the younger woman. Marguerite by the Lake is a claustrophobic gem littered with paranoia, betrayal (both real and imagined), and a beating soul as terrifying as Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart.” Phoenix’s unreliable narration—made so by her own paranoia and guilt—is taut with suspense and infused with a teetering madness that makes it both terrifying and fascinating. The plot twists are small and act less to surprise the reader than to push Phoenix closer to her own demise. Marguerite by the Lake is a splendid and inventive thriller, and it is hands down the best book I’ve read so far this year.

Check out Marguerite by the Lake on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the hardcover.

Review: "Skin and Bones and Other Mike Bowditch Short Stories" by Paul Doiron

 

Skin and Bones and Other Mike Bowditch Short Stories by Paul Doiron Minotaur Books, 2025   Paul Doiron’s Skin and Bones, is an engaging collection of eight mystery stories. The tales are set in the world of Maine game warden, Mike Bowditch—Doiron has written fifteen Bowditch novels so far—but a few are told from the perspective of Bowditch’s mentor and retired warden, Charley Stevens. Many of the stories are closer to novelette than short story length, which allows Doiron the room to paint his characters with a rich hue and his rural Maine setting with vivid color. Even better, he does all this without an unnecessary word or losing the mystery for the trees. “Bear Trap”—which is one of Charley Stevens’s tales—is a play on the impossible crime. As a young warden Charley is confronted by an almost mythical hermit—nicknamed Sweet Tooth because of his proclivity for stealing candy—with a knack for burgling camps and then disappearing like a ghost. When Sweet Tooth raids the stores of a summer camp for underprivileged boys, Charley decides it’s time to introduce Sweet Tooth to Lady Justice. But first he must discover how the thief comes and goes so easily. In “Rabid,” Charley Stevens is called to the isolated home of John Hussey. Hussey, like Charley, is a Vietnam veteran but unlike Charley, Hussey’s post-war behavior has been erratic. When Charley arrives at the house, Hussey’s Vietnamese wife, Giang, says her husband was bitten by a bat. But Charley is more worried that Hussey is abusing his wife and daughter. Charley’s own wife gets involved in this one, and both she and Giang believe Hussey may have rabies. There is a nice surprise ending with a delicious slice of morality in the recipe. Something of a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, “The Caretaker”—which is narrated by Bowditch—stars Charley as a Holmes-like detective and Bowditch in Dr. Watson’s role. Together Charley and Bowditch investigate a harassment complaint by a Boston couple while staying in their backwoods summer home. Charley does a fine job of detection—he seems to notice everything, no matter how small—and Bowditch is duly impressed with Charley’s almost supernatural powers. But it is the solution, while revealing a serious crime, that makes “The Caretaker” downright fun. “Sheep’s Clothing,” which is the backwoods version of an English village murder mystery, finds the recently demoted Bowditch investigating what seems to be a murder-suicide of a couple living in poverty on a large patch of land. But Bowditch isn’t sure the husband killed his wife or himself. There are multiple suspects—the dead husband, an estranged son, his truly awful fiancée, the fiancée’s unempathetic brother are only four of them. There is more than one well-timed twist, which makes for bunches of fun. Skin and Bones is my first experience reading Paul Doiron’s fiction. The high-quality of the writing, the tight plotting, and the subtle humor (especially when Charley Stevens is on the page) impressed me enough that I’m planning to find another title in the Bowditch series to read. And likely another one after that, which is assuming the novels are as good as the tales presented here.

Check out Skin and Bones at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the trade paperback.