• African American Literature,  America,  Book Reviews,  FICTION,  Mystery

    Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley *** (of 4)

    July 12, 2024

    Joe King Oliver is, no, was, a NYC cop. He was sent to Rikers after being framed for molesting a perp. Now, a dozen years later, still suffering flashbacks and PTSD from his time in the hole, he is trying to put his life back together. He is working as a private investigator when a client asks him to take on the case of a cop-killer on death row. Cop-killers don’t get let off, especially those who admit to doing the shooting. Except, the man on death row is an African American who worked hard to lift up NYC’s most down and out. Now calling himself A Free Man (formerly Leonard Compton), A Free Man ran up against a crooked ring of police who were extorting junkies and prostitutes. The cops hunted down our do-gooders associates and came after A Free Man, guns blazing.

    Joe Oliver now has two cases involving unknown crooked cops: A Free Man and his own hunt for the guys who framed him. He prowls the streets of the city expounding the philosophy of a well-read, self-taught, working class Black man making him one of the most interesting characters to ever interrogate the line between right and wrong. Race and class are given the attention they deserve. New Yorkers, who are honest with themselves, are always measuring and assessing. At times the circuities of Oliver’s attempts to uncover the bad cops who framed him and the bad cops that went after A Free Man are too tangled to follow, but stick with Oliver. His observational skills about life in the city, and about life in general, are magnificent.

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  • Book Reviews,  FICTION,  History,  India/Pakistan/Afghanistan,  Mystery

    Murder in Old Bombay by Nev March *** (of 4)

    June 10, 2024

    It is 1892. India is a British colony and Indians, at least upper class Indians, aspire to move up the British hierarchy. Two young women in the wealthy Framji family fall to their deaths from the university clock tower. The official ruling is suicide, but Captain Jim Agnihotri, recovering from a battle injuries suffered as a Dragoon fighting in Afghanistan cannot abide the ruling. He suspects murder.Captain Jim is hired by the Framji family to investigate.

    Captain Jim provides us with an insider’s view of British colonization, Indian opposition to British rule, and Victorian longing (think incessant pining for Lady Diana Framji, daughter of the patriarch, who is devilishly alluring, but above his station in life). Murder in Old Bombay burrows into the trains, villages, markets, and homes of turn-of-the-century India making the book a worthwhile adventure.

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  • America,  Book Reviews,  FICTION,  Mystery

    The Golden Gate by Amy Chua *** (of 4)

    March 25, 2024

    Detective Al Sullivan’s first big murder case erupts when former presidential candidate Walter Wilkinson (modeled on FDR’s 1940 opponent Wendell Wilkie) is shot in his room in the swanky Claremont Hotel. Wilkinson may or may not have been canoodling with one of the three desirable daughters of the wealthy Bainbridge family.

    While the Bay Area press goes wild for the story, Wilkinson digs deep into the questionable alibis of the Bainbridge sisters. On the upside of this noir, World War II era novel, are the attention to race and class as Al Sullivan (Mexican, Jewish and other ethnicities) fights his way upward through California’s stratified society. Sullivan is joined by the most interesting character in the book, his feistily independent niece, Miriam. The mystery is complicated, but aside from Al and Miriam, not all of the characters are as well developed.

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  • Asia,  Book Reviews,  FICTION,  History,  India/Pakistan/Afghanistan,  Mystery

    A Disappearance in Fiji *** (of 4)

    January 26, 2024

    Sargent Akal Singh has been banished to desk duty in Fiji. The year is 1915 and Britain rules its colonies with guile, brutality, and economic mastery. Singh, the educated son of an Indian villager figures his one way out and upward is to become a policeman. Sikhs are respected by the British, and expected to fulfill that role. He is sent to Hong Kong, but after a professional misstep lands in Fiji.

    Befriended by a native Fijian on the police force and a compassionate English doctor, but overseen by a condescending British officer, Singh is sent to wrap up a case of a missing Indian “coolie” woman. Wealthy British plantation owners imported hundreds of indentured Indians to work sugarcane fields without pay. Living conditions for Indian laborers, we learn in great detail, are miserable, and British overseers mete out punishments and abuse without fear of accountability or retribution. A missing Indian woman should be meaningless, but Akal Singh, and his friends, are so conscientious and likable that we root for their success while learning about colonialism in very personal ways.

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  • Book Reviews,  FICTION,  Humor,  Mystery

    The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman *** (of 4)

    October 27, 2023

    In this fourth installation of the Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman’s four 80-year-old residents (plus or minus, but who can keep track at that age when there new aches to fend off and fresh gossip to keep abreast of) of Cooper’s Chase senior living center find themselves engaged in a drug smuggling scheme.

    As the book opens, another senior citizen, still working as the proprietor of a nearby antiques shop, is murdered. And also a newcomer to Cooper’s Chase has succumbed to on-line romance fraud. In the first case it becomes quickly apparent that the murder is instigated by a drug deal gone wrong and in the second it is going to take some persuasion to convince Mervin that continuing to send money to Tatiana in Moldova is not likely to bring the author of carefully crafted love letters, and accompanying generic Internet photos, to England anytime soon.

    True to the best of crime fiction, Osman’s mysteries are compelling, but the real joy is what is learned in the surrounding milieu. In this case, it is Richard Osman’s kind and poignant descriptions of the four octogenarian friends that remind us that entrance to a senior living center is not a death sentence. On the contrary we are given ample opportunity to observe lives well lived even as the participants know their remaining days are limited. Maybe their lives are so rich precisely because they know. A lesson for all of us.

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  • Book Reviews,  FICTION,  Mystery

    The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith

    September 21, 2023

    On the plus side there are very few writers who can match JK Rowling’s (writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith) ability to capture personality, dialogue, and character. In this, the sixth in the series of crime novels involving private detectives Robin Ellicott and Cormoran Strike, Rowling takes on the viciousness, malignancy, and unbridled misogyny of internet communities that spiral downward into the Dark Web.

    What begins as a quirky YouTube cartoon grows in popularity among an on-line fandom. Only the fandom becomes so opinionated about the direction, and Directors, that the power of the fans overtakes the show itself. The anonymity of the internet allows people to form relationships they might not in real life, but it also permits abusers to mislead, harass, intimidate, and threaten. All of that secrecy and privacy makes for a compelling mystery when one of the directors is murdered. In a cemetery!

    On the downside, as happened in the Harry Potter series, Rowling’s editors were unable to push back. The number of potential suspects is so large that it is likely the only way to keep them all straight is to be staring at Rowling’s diagrams pasted across her walls. Likewise, the number of pages has grown to an overwhelming 1,462. The book should have been tighter.

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  • Audio Book,  Book Reviews,  FICTION,  FOUR STARS ****,  Mystery,  Travel

    Only to Sleep by Lawrence Osborne **** (of 4)

    August 2, 2023

    In 1939, Raymond Chandler wroteThe Big Sleep featuring, Private Investigator Philip Marlowe. Marlowe was the original world weary, cynical PI: hard drinking, self-mocking, and a womanizer. He wore a fedora and could only have existed on a black and white screen played by Humphrey Bogart. In Only to Sleep, it is now 1988 and Marlowe is called out of retirement to traipse across Mexico for an insurance company that thinks one of its clients has just duped them out of a couple of million dollars.

    Marlowe takes the job because he’s bored and wants one more run at his old job. Only his knees and arthritis are bothering him and he’s old enough that the appeal of femmes fatales is more instinctual than physical. Osborne’s Marlowe is a deep philosopher with insights about human nature, decadal changes in Mexico, loneliness, landscape, and growing old. He is also funny and difficult and Osborne’s joy at turning out this novel is infectious. The audiobook is excellent.

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  • Book Reviews,  Europe,  FICTION,  History,  Mystery

    The Poison Machine *** (of 4)

    July 18, 2023

    Some authors of historical fiction (see Geraldine Brooks) are so caught up by their research that plot and characters are afterthoughts or cliches applied to hold together what really ought to be nonfiction. Robert J. Lloyd, in contrast, paints 1679 England, and in this caper, France, too, with effortless ease. Homing in on a mysterious murder of the Queen’s dwarf, the author sets Robert Hooke and his assistant Harry Hunt on the investigatory trail. They are a perfect duo, because Hooke was, in real life, one of the first scientists of modern history. He and Hunt use the scientific method and are slowly breaking the shackles of one thousand years of church indoctrination.

    Roiling in the background are deadly conflicts between Anglicans and Papists. Isaac Newton makes a guest appearance as do other scientists of the day while poor Harry, in love with Hooke’s niece, Grace, has to uncover the mystery of the murder while learning to stand on his own two feet. The plot is preposterous and believable at the same time and local color is imparted so seemlessly that the somewhat complex question of how the dwarf met his demise is not that important.

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  • Audio Book,  Book Reviews,  FICTION,  FOUR STARS ****,  Humor,  Mystery

    The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman **** (of 4)

    May 5, 2023

    This is the third installation of an investigation by four elderly Brits living in Cooper’s Chase retirement community. The four are all a little stiffer, a little harder of hearing, and a trifle more likely to forget where they put down their reading glasses, but they remain just as full of verve and curiosity as ever. They are grateful, too, for their camaraderie and their weekly gatherings dedicated to investigating unsolved crimes. All of which is to say that the characters are so warmly presented and so lovable that Osman’s books would be worth reading even if his mysteries were only mediocre.

    Fortunately, his mysteries are equal parts intricate and intriguing. The case under the careful scrutiny of the Thursday Murder Club is Bethany Waites’ untimely murder. Waites was a young investigative reporter closing in on the criminals running a huge money laundering scheme, when lured from her home one evening, she never returns. Her empty car is located the next day at the edge of a cliff over which her body must have been tossed, only the body never emerges from the sea, the laundered money is never located, and the Thursday Murder Club cannot let it go.

    It is as rewarding for us as readers to be reuninted with Ron, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Elizabeth as it must be for them to see one another in the Cooper’s Chase dining room.

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  • Europe,  FICTION,  Mystery

    The Word is Murder by Antony Horowitz *** (of 4)

    March 12, 2023

    Antony Horowitz – a prolific writer of mysteries for adults, children, and television – definitely had fun writing this one. He cast himself as one of two main characters; the other is a taciturn, deeply-intuitive, non-communicative, sharply intelligent, ex-dectective, called Hawthorne. Together, Horowitz writing himself as Dr. Watson to Hawthorne’s Sherlock Holmes, they dig about in the case of a woman who arranges her own funeral and is then found strangled to death six hours later. Horowitz’s description of himself falls in the category of auto-fiction, meaning a majority of events and relationships he uses to characterize his life are quite accurate (and the point at which he invents things about himself is unknowable). Nonetheless, Horowitz is a master of misdirection, red herrings, and reliable characterizations. Hawthorne is a terrific detective insofar as he always seems capable of seeing the larger picture, but keeps his cards so close to his chest that as readers we think we know what cards he is holding, but for the most part see nothing until he lays them on the table.

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