London, 1867 Patrice McDonough skillfully weaves historical events into her mysteries, a case in point being the Regent’s Park skating disaster. On 15 January 1867, “40 people died after the ice broke on the lake in London’s Regent’s Park pitching about 200 people into icy water up to 12 ft (3.7 m) deep,” h/t Wikipedia.…
Killers of a Certain Age was published in September 2022. Here’s the sequel. Was it worth the wait? Emphatically yes. Here’s how I first introduced the ladies killers. Meet Billie Webster, Mary Alice Tuttle, Helen Randolph, and Natalie Schuyler—fierce women who comprise a unique female squad of assassins in Deanna Raybourn’s new thriller Killers of…
When reading shifts from comfort to essential, police procedurals and detective stories satisfy a visceral desire to comprehend the inexplicable. Open Season, Jonathan Kellerman’s 40th Alex Delaware novel, meets that moment. Psychologist Delaware and his “partner,” homicide detective Milo Sturgis have been solving cases for a long while: Alex is the outside consultant and Milo…
The Jesse Stone novels, part of the Robert B. Parker oeuvre, have a new writer. Meet Chris Farnsworth, the author of Buried Secrets, the thirteenth Jesse Stone novel. Farnsworth, a successful author of crime and thriller novels, follows in the footsteps of Michael Brandman, Reed Farrel Coleman, and Mike Lupica. It’s uncanny how each writer…
London 1947. An Excellent Thing in a Woman, the 7th Sparks and Bainbridge mystery, earns the ultimate accolade—it is unputdownable. Miss Iris Sparks and Mrs. Gwen Bainbridge’s recent adventure, Murder at the White Palace, ended on a critical cliffhanger. It’s not that the owners of the Right Sort Marriage Bureau are not adept and experienced…
The Lord Julian Mysteries are addictive, unusual, and enjoyable. Consider the protagonists in most mystery series: their character and circumstances are established when we meet them, i.e., their personal challenges are not often a continuing theme of a mystery series. Lord Julian Caldicott is the younger brother of a duke, heir to Arthur Caldicott, Duke…
Welcome back former San Diego detective Rick “Chase” Chasen. Chase is an inveterate hiker and Anglophile. In the first Walk Through England Mystery, A Deadly Walk in Devon, Chase and his longtime friend Billie Mondreau joined a disparate group of keen hikers who were interested in exploring Devon’s picturesque byways. Still mourning the death of…
What a treat for fans of thrillers that showcase women who are frighteningly competent lethal weapons. If you’ve enjoyed Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age and/or Cindy Dees’s Second Shot, A Serial Killer’s Guide to Marriage is right up your alley. Like the quartet of female assassins in Killers of a Certain Age, Hazel…
Leave No Trace and its predecessor, In the Blink of an Eye, are “inventive thrillers,” a description that barely encompasses the unusualness of Team Kat and Lock. Meet Detective Chief Superintendent Kat Frank of the Leek Wootton Police Department in Warwickshire, England. Leave No Trace opens with Kat verbally briefing her boss, Chief Constable McLeish,…
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?” In the twilight of every year, these poignant words, written by Scots poet Robert Burns in 1788, come to the fore. What does this sentiment have to do with Robert B. Parker’s mysteries? Parker didn’t just write about Spenser, the iconic, unforgettable Boston detective: he…
