Fresh Meat: Death of a Dyer by Eleanor Kuhns
The Revolutionary War has ended, but death lingers...
Fresh Meat: Crime of Privilege by Walter Walker
Is justice always for sale?
Fresh Meat: Her Last Breath by Linda Castillo
How far will someone go to escape the past?
Fresh Meat: The 9th Girl by Tami Hoag
Who killed "Zombie Doe?" Plus a chance to win!
Justified's Raylan Givens is about to be a parent. Every person takes on parenting in different ways and we're sure that'll be no different once there's a giggling baby Givens out there. But do you think this Baby Hjölster (which doesn't seem very practical we might say) will feature on the Givens's baby registery?
Unfortunately, this product isn't actually real, just another unlikely product in the Bad Product Ideas section from the brilliant minds of the blog, HowToBeADad.com
Absaroka County must be the West’s weirdest and unlikeliest cultural melting pot. First there were the Mennonites, now there are the Basque. This week’s episode, which bears a strong resemblance to season one’s third episode (yet sadly, no striptease interrogation from Vic), explores the strange little subculture of a family of Basque (ex-pats from the French/Spanish border) shepherds. When a mountain biker literally stumbles over the dead body of Marko Vayas, the cause of death is unknown for the young, relatively healthy-looking man and Walt and Vic suspect he might have been poisoned.
Their investigation of his cabin leads to them finding a mysterious picture of a lovely young woman. Tracking his brothers Costa and Sal to a local Basque festival (where Walt indulges in a delicacy called barrabillak that I do not suggest you Google), they’re told the girl was a mail order bride Marko was thinking of marrying, but didn’t. Walt calls BS, though, as he's recognized a tiny bird in the picture as being a local breed, meaning she’s from Wyoming.
Robert Mitchum is the King of Film Noir. Not only was he one of the great leading men (starring in masterpieces like Out of the Past), he was one of the great villains (issuing chilling turns in The Night of the Hunter and Cape Fear). He made some of the darkest noirs (Angel Face) and some of the goofiest (Her Kind of Man). He got to the party early, at the dawn of the classic era, starring in his first noir film, When Strangers Marry, in 1944. And he stayed longer at the party than anyone else, notching up late career hits like The Friends of Eddie Coyle in 1973 and Farewell My Lovely in 1975. Mitchum was the King.
There are, of course, other contenders for the title. Bogart’s greatness is beyond debate. Robert Ryan was recently crowned king by no less an august organization as the Film Noir Foundation. And a pretty solid case could be made for either Sterling Hayden or Charles McGraw. These men were all great stars, and each, in his own way, is essential to film noir.
For my money, though, Mitchum seemed to embody the ethos of noir better than anyone else.
[It ain’t a gamble if you put your money on a sure thing...]
Some of our greatest writers have perpetuated a negative image of the legal profession. “The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers,” William Shakespeare famously writes in Henry The Sixth, Part II. Or how about this from Robert Southey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge from The Devil’s Thoughts (1835):
He saw a lawyer killing a viper
On a dung hill hard by his own stable;
And the devil smiled, for it put him in mind
Of Cain and his brother Abel.
In 1975, Bob Dylan’s Hurricane railed against the 1967 conviction of middleweight boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter for, in Dylan’s words, “something that he never done”—a triple murder in a Paterson, New Jersey bar. The song’s lyrics target the lawyers: the judge “made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slums;” the district attorney prosecuted the crime without evidence.
[Come, now, you're not saying lawyers are innocent, are you?]
The Hanging by Lotte & Soren Hammer is the U.S. debut of this Danish brother/sister writing team. (available June 11, 2013).
One morning before school, two children find the naked bodies of five men hanging from the gym ceiling. The case leads detective Konrad Simonsen and his murder squad to the school janitor, who may know more about the killings than he is telling. Soon, Simonsen realizes that each of the five murdered men had a dark and terrible secret in common. And when Simonsen’s own daughter is targeted, he must race to find the culprit before his whole world is destroyed.
Published in twenty countries around the world, with more than 150,000 copies sold in Denmark alone, this book introduces a brother and sister duo who have taken the thriller world by storm. Fast-paced, suspenseful, and brilliantly written, The Hanging is a stunning crime novel from Lotte and Soren Hammer, two Danish authors whose international fame is exploding.
Chapter 1
Monday morning, fog rolled in over the land in white woolly waves. The two children could hardly see a meter ahead of them as they crossed onto the school grounds. They had to find their way from memory and soon their steps became hesitant and searching. The boy was slightly behind the girl, his school bag in his arms. All of a sudden he stopped.
“Don’t go on without me.”
First we had Drive and more recently we got Fast and Furious 6. So are we beginning to see a resurgence of the car-chase in movies? It certainly starting to look that way in the trailer for the new film Getaway. Ethan Hawke plays a former race car driver who's wife is kidnapped. Hawke must complete a series of requests to get her back. Here's the official blurb:
Getaway is the gritty, heart-pounding action thriller from Warner Bros. Pictures and Dark Castle Entertainment in which former race car driver Brent Magna (Ethan Hawke) is pitted against the clock. Desperately trying to save the life of his kidnapped wife, Brent commandeers a custom Shelby Cobra Mustang, taking it and its unwitting owner (Selena Gomez) on a high-speed race against time, at the command of the mysterious villain holding his wife hostage.
What do you think?
Another Little Piece by Kate Karyus Quinn is a dark young adult paranormal thriller (available June 11, 2013).
A girl stumbles out of the night wearing a garbage bag as a poncho. She has no idea where she is or how she got there. When the Oklahoma family who finds her call the authorities, a missing person report pings and her identity is revealed. The girl is Annaliese Rose Gordon, a teenager who disappeared one year ago from Buffalo, New York. On the night she vanished, she appeared at a party, covered in blood and screaming. No one had seen her since.
But the girl remembers none of this. She can’t explain where she’s been for the past year. She can’t explain the scar on her head or her short hair. Her mother and father pick her up, take her home, and try to reintroduce Annaliese to her love of chocolate, her best friend Gwen, and her love of family road trips.
The only problem is that the girl they’ve brought home isn’t Annaliese.
The Navigator by Michael Pocalyko is a financial thriller that wends from Nazi Germany all the way to modern-day Wall Street (available June 11, 2013).
On the darkest night of 1945, a 20-year-old B-24 navigator assists in the liberation of a German concentration camp. His haunting trauma is prologue to destiny.
Flash forward to present-day Manhattan. Warren Hunter, reigning master of the financial universe, is poised to close the world’s first trillion dollar deal. ViroSat is the Street’s biggest-ever technology play—an entirely new worldwide communication system. It will catapult his investment bank and the global economy into a bright future . . . if the deal goes through.
In Washington, ViroSat captures the attention of Senate political aide Julia Toussaint. Meanwhile, battered tech start-up veteran Rick Yeager has just landed his dream job at a mysterious but well-connected financial firm whose partners want a piece of the action.
Warren, Julia, and Rick are caught in a web of intrigue, money, power, and dangerous secrets. Coincidences are not what they seem as the past collides with the present in a way that will change their lives forever.
Prologue
April 1945
As darkness edged the empty dawn, the navigator inhaled violently. The Lucky Strike stub burned both his thumb and his lip. He chased the cigarette smoke with a shallow gulp of thick air then held his breath tentatively. The nicotine swirling in his lungs provided no relief. He flicked the tiny butt with a hrsssp into the thick mud at his feet. Nothing helped. The stench of death screamed, outshouting the senses. His head hammered hard. His heart raced in the comfortable tobacco rush as his stomach and bowels clenched in irregular spasms. Unable to hold the smoke in any longer, he exhaled and panted involuntarily, wishing for the hundredth time tonight that he could have stayed with the damn plane.
“Lieutenant?” The voice, kind and firm, called out to him. “Come on over here.” It was the tall captain from air intelligence. “Stay with me. We have to talk to this Kraut. He may be what I’m looking for. He wants to say something. How about lending a hand? Can you make me understand him?” The navigator slogged through the rain-bred swamp. The mud, ankle-deep, stuck like paste to his flight boots. He approached the German soldier. Christ, he thought. How old can this one be? Sixteen? Seventeen? He studied the German intently. The young face was drained and quite pale, sweating despite the chill night mist. He had no facial hair except an uneven bristle of black stubble on his chin. A wild panic flushed in the boy’s eyes. It was the instinctual fear of a trapped animal.
The navigator himself was twenty, and he suddenly felt very old.
[Read the complete excerpt of The Navigator by Michael Pocalyko]
While you might not have been at Book Expo America, Criminal Element has you covered. BEA is a great chance to find authors with a little bit of something for everyone, so that's what we're bringing you today with four great advanced reader copies: Brilliance by Marcus Sakey, Mystery Girl by David Gordon, Spider Woman's Daughter by Anne Hillerman, and The Book of Someday by Dianne Dixon.
CLICK HERE TO ENTER for your chance to win four ARCs and find new favorites!
(This is NOT a Comments Sweepstakes. You must click link above to enter.)
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. A PURCHASE DOES NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCE OF WINNING. You must be 18 or older and a legal resident of the 50 United States or D.C. to enter. Promotion begins June 10, 2013, at 12 pm ET, and ends June 24, 2013, 11:59 am ET. Void in Puerto Rico and wherever prohibited by law. Click here for details and official rules.
It's unsure what would come of the nation without Florida. It seems as though the whole state has to be able to take a hard look at themselves and laugh. But especially the police force. The boys in blue in the Sunshine State get called on to take care of a lot of crazy. And when two different police departments were called on two tame unruly wildlife.
On two separate occasions, and in two completely isolated incidents both a Llama and an Kangaroo where forcibly subdued by Florida police officers. In Tallahassee, Scooter the llama escaped his pen. The 7 year old llama managed to evade authorities and lead them on a very merry chase down the middle of the road, only to be finally taken down by a Taser. Meanwhile, outside of Tampa, police chased a kangaroo for 10 hours before finally bringing down the errant marsupial with tranquilizers.
Scooter's owner weren't cited for any kind of damages, and in Florida, llamas are considered a domestic species, therefor not requiring a special permit to own. Florida officials also say that you can own a kangaroo as long as you get the popular permits, however no one has come forward to claim the “Hop-a-Long Roo” (see what I did there?).
Say it with me, only in Florida…
When I first saw posters for Hemlock Grove plastered on the walls of the New York City subway, I knew it was a series I couldn’t resist. Based on the book by Brian McGreevy, Hemlock Grove follows Peter Rumancek, a Gypsy boy and potential werewolf, and Roman Godfrey, heir of the local wealthy family, on their mission to solve and stop the series of grisly murders haunting their small Pennsylvania town.
The 13-episode series is Netflix’s attempt to rival HBO with similar content on demand, featuring a cast of familiar faces—including Bill Skarsgard, brother to True Blood’s Alexander—an excellent score, and direction from Eli Roth, of horror fame.
This show might just be the crime genre's answer to Mad Men. Starz's Magic City follows hotel manager Ike Evans in late-1950s Miami. Not only is he left dealing with Miami's mob boss, Ben “The Butcher” Diamond, but is now faced with the changes of Castro's Cuba spilling over into Miami.
Season 2 premieres June 14, will you be tuning in?
Enigma Of China by Qiu Xiaolong, the 8th book in the Inspector Chen series, involves political machinations in Shanghai (available June 18, 2013).
China is a country in flux, with a government determined to retain its communist heritage while also accommodating demands from a technologically advanced citizenry for increased personal liberties. These contradictory impulses birthed “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” a unique form of modern government at once rigidly idealistic and deeply pragmatic. Citizens struggle to reconcile political ideology with personal ambitions, taking advantage of the system without letting go of deeply Confucian values of family and face. It’s a setting built for secrets, that only the smartest, most persistent investigators can navigate toward truth.
Chief Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau is one of these people. He dreamed of being a poet when he was younger but, upon graduating from university, found himself hand-selected to work for the police department instead. Over the years, he’s worked his way up to being second-in-command, his promotion to the top stymied only by his superior’s not necessarily unwelcome political maneuvering. Chen has gained a reputation for being a cop who answers more to the truth and humanity than to political orders, and in Enigma of China, the 8th book in his namesake series, this rectitude may finally prove to be his downfall.
Ecko Rising by Danie Ware is a science fiction thriller with literary qualities that questions what it is to be human (available June 11, 2013).
In a futuristic London where technological body modification is the norm, Ecko stands alone as a testament to the extreme capabilities of his society. Driven half mad by the systems running his body, Ecko is a criminal for hire. No job is too dangerous or insane.
When a mission goes wrong and Ecko finds himself catapulted across dimensions into a peaceful and unadvanced society living in fear of 'magic', he must confront his own percepions of reality and his place within it.
Prologue
“We’re bein’ stalked.”
It was evening. The press of people was close, huddled and submissive to the public monotone that accompanied them home.
Overhead, the streetlights were halogen-brilliant, obscuring the heavy, belly-down sky. The drizzle sparkled like shrapnel.
Fuller, tarnished aplomb in suit and overcoat, gave Lugan a nervous look. “You’re sure – ?”
“Shut up an’ keep moving.” One of the Cell commander’s massive, oil-stained hands grabbed Fuller’s elbow and propelled him swiftly through the crowd. A gang of kids, laughing at their own defiance, barged into them and were gone.
Reflexively, Lugan checked his pockets.
Get Collator. Sub-vocalised, his voice was transmitted from the back of his throat directly into Fuller’s ear. I want CCTV access – like now. Drones if we can get ’em.
Fuller gave a brief nod.
Tense now, Lugan checked the street. The light-pools were bright but the shadows were hard-edged and darker than oil. Everywhere he looked, unseen eyes looked back, unseen teeth were bared in black grins. He shivered, bristled.
What’re you looking for? Fuller asked him.
Dunno. Trouble.
Half-a-head taller than the blindly ambling workers, Lugan picked out the police-blue glow of the hoverdrone, watched it swing about and head back towards them.
Fuller was re-broadcasting Collator’s info-stream. Data input commencing 18:42:06… 07… Camera locations accessed. Drone ID: 23-987b accessed. Download commencing one minute and 45 seconds…
Lugan reached for a dog-end. “This stinks.” Watching the drone, he headed for the shelter of the buildingside. As he moved, the crowd stirred and parted.
A shred of silent darkness flickered in his wake.
What was...? Further back, Fuller’s voice came over the aural-link. Lugan!
“What?” Without thinking, Lugan spun, back to the wall and crouching, hand going for the ten-mil that wasn’t there. Breathing tightly, he kicked in his ocular heatseeker, but the ambivalent temperature of the blankly trudging people defeated him.
There was nothing there.
As a child, I used to make “fortune tellers” out of a square of paper – remember them? It was my only real experience of what I now know is called origami. And if that word has conjured up crude swan and rabbit shapes, then think again... because Katie Stainer takes the skill to a whole new level. And books play a huge part in her work too.
Katie is based in Nottingham – in the UK's Midlands region, an up and coming area for contemporary craft and design. Originally from the historic city of Bath, she found inspiration in her gorgeous surroundings.
She explains: “I was surrounded by breathtaking architecture and natural beauty, and always had a fascination with the asthetic. My childhood passions leaned towards music and creative writing before I finally discovered my love of art and design. I completed a BA(Hons) in Decorative Arts at Nottingham Trent University in 2011 and haven't looked back!”
A designer maker specialising in unique origami jewellery and sculpture created using recycled and reclaimed books, Katie has a long-established love of reading.
Fatal Descent by Beth Groundwater is the third in the traditional Outdoor Mysteries series featuring guides Mandy Tanner and Rob Juarez (available June 8, 2013).
Mandy Tanner and her fiancé Rob are leading an offseason rafting-climbing trip in Utah’s remote Canyonlands. Experienced guides, Mandy and Rob know they have to keep their cool after one of their group, Alex Anderson, appears to have become bear bait. Walled off from the outside world with eleven shell-shocked clients and miles of Colorado River whitewater ahead, Mandy’s nerves threaten to unravel when she learns that Alex’s death was not the work of a homicidal grizzly. Whether it was a crime of passion or the random act of a psychopath, Mandy fears that if they don’t root out the river rat among them, another camper will be running the rapids in a body bag.
Chapter 1
“I could kill him.”
With hands on her hips, Mandy Tanner surveyed the pile of gear heaped in the back room of the outfitter’s building. The rafts, oars and paddles, sleeping bags, mats, and tents were all there, as were the kitchen supplies, water jugs, coolers, portable toilet, first-aid kit, handheld radio transceiver, and myriad other supplies needed for a multi-day rafting trip. But Gonzo, one of the guides and their provisioner, had forgotten to bring some vital equipment—camping lanterns to light their campsites in the evenings.
Mandy swallowed to tamp down the frustration threatening to clog her throat. That meant the only light they would have at night would be thin beams cast by flashlights or headlamps. Could they make do? No, dammit. They had to have at least two lanterns, and preferably a third for backup.
Mandy’s fiancé and business partner, Rob Juarez, gave a shrug. “Gonzo will find some.”
How could Rob be so nonchalant? She gazed at his infuriatingly calm and handsome face. “The clients will start arriving any minute, and I was counting on Gonzo’s jokes to put everyone in a good mood. He’s supposed to be here to meet and greet them instead of running around Moab trying to beg lanterns off another outfitter. With so many outfitters closed for the season, it’ll be tough finding them.”
Contrary to her better judgment, Mandy and Rob had assigned Gonzo Gordon, their best rafting guide, to provision this expedition, their first outside of Colorado. She would have preferred to let Gonzo learn the ropes on a local trip that was less complicated. But Rob had suggested it to show their support of and trust in Gonzo, who was making good progress in his alcohol rehabilitation program. And Gonzo had assured her—multiple times—that he could handle being the “Quartermaster,” as he had dubbed himself.
“‘No problemo’, he kept telling me,” Mandy said as she stared at the equipment pile, “and now look where we are.”
Rob put a firm hand on each of her shoulders and turned her to face him. His puppy-dog brown eyes crinkled with worry as his gaze searched her face. “Yes. Look where we are. We are in Moab, Utah, ready to embark on our first combo rafting and climbing trip. We have twelve paying clients and all the gear we need except for two lousy lanterns.” He cocked his head. “You don’t usually get this stressed out by trip snafus. What’s got mi querida wound up so tight?”
While he waited for an explanation, he massaged her tight shoulders, easing the tension out of them. “Take a deep breath.”
Mandy did, inhaling Rob’s familiar aroma of leather, soap, and the grassy outdoors, and blew the breath out slowly. This was no way to start out. She needed to be relaxed and cheerful for the clients to make sure they felt excited and confident about taking the five-day, hundred-mile trip down the Colorado River. They would travel along the placid waters of Meander Canyon, the whitewater rapids of Cataract Canyon, and a finger of Lake Powell that had flooded lower Cataract Canyon before they took out at Hite Marina. She couldn’t let her own worries cloud the clients’ perceptions of the upcoming adventure.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s not Gonzo’s fault. It’s mine for not going over the manifest with him. I’ve been too distracted to manage the setup for this trip as well as I should have.”
“This is the way it’s going to be as our business grows, Mandy,” Rob responded with frustrating reasonableness. “You’ll have to trust our employees to do their jobs. You can’t do everything. And what’s been distracting you?” He grinned lasciviously. “The handsome hunk you’re going to marry in a few months?”
Mandy finally smiled. She playfully slapped the standing waves tattoo on one of his muscular biceps. “Sure, I can’t keep my hands off your bodacious bod.”
Rob turned his face to show her his profile. “More like bashed-up bod.”
She traced a gentle finger down his crooked nose, accidentally broken by one of his best friends when Rob tried to break up a fist fight between fishermen. “The bashes just make you look more hot, my macho mountain man. No, the problem is the handsome hunk’s mother, who has to talk to me every single bleeding day about the wedding plans.”
[Read the full excerpt of Fatal Descent by Beth Groundwater]
Baseball season is well under way, so it’s time to start reading about fictional murder in our favorite ballparks. Here are some of my favorite series and standalones, and even a short story anthology that talks about the great American pastime. So let’s play ball…
A subway train roars through the night. Sweaty and surly, the crowded passengers inside avoid eye contact. The train lurches to a stop and more people squeeze in. Two men watch a pretty young woman carrying a white purse. A third man pushes his way though the cramped New Yorkers and stands beside the woman. She makes eyes at him. He makes eyes back at her while he picks her purse. The train lurches to another stop, and he slips off. The two men rush to catch him, but the doors slam shut and the train shoots off again.
So begins Samuel Fuller’s masterpiece Pickup on South Street. The pickpocket is Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark), a three-time loser who’s only been out of the joint for a few days. If the cops catch him picking pockets again, he’s looking at a life sentence, but he has bigger problems than jail. It turns out that the wallet he lifted on the train contains some secret microfilm that was on its way to a drop off with Communist agents when Skip liberated it.
On February 2, 1959, in the Ural Mountains, something mysterious happened that remains unexplained to this day. A group formed as a ski tour of the Northern Urals led by Igor Dyatlov, consisting of 9 men and women, all mysteriously died. When the group failed to check in by February 12, a search party went out looking for them.
The searchers found an abandoned tent that was torn down, ripped apart from the inside, and covered with snow. Inside it, all the group's belongings and shoes had been left behind. Eventually every member was accounted for: every one of them was dead. What was strange was the manner of their deaths. The official report said that they all died from hypothermia, but three had fatal injuries consisting of major skull damage and chest fractures but possessed no external wounds. One woman was even found missing her tongue and forensic radiation tests showed high doses of radiation on their clothing.
So, really, it's the kind of event that is ripe for storytelling. Below is the trailer for the Blair Witch-style horror movie inspired by these events. What do you think, are you in?
Shadow People by James Swain is a supernatural urban fantasy and the follow-up to Dark Magic (available June 11, 2013).
What do you see when you turn out the lights during a séance? If you are Peter Warlock, a magician by day, a psychic by night, you see shadow people. Every Friday night, Peter and his group of psychic friends conduct a séance. In these séances, spirits transport him on a dark journey to a parallel world.
On one particular night, Peter sees a dark, faceless apparition. He then ventures to the dark side where he meets a man in a basement who has a handgun, a hunting knife, handcuffs, black hood, and chloroform. Doing what he always does to help him remember whom the spirits show him, he gives the man the nickname Dr. Death.
With a name like “Dr. Death,” your imagination might be inclined to conjure up your typical evil person in just about every supernatural horror film. Not this time. Dr. Death looks like your ordinary professor type.
