Becky's Books –

It took me awhile to get into this book but after I did I was hooked.  At first I really didn’t know what was going on.  By page 26 I was definitely interested and after page 63 I was going to finish asap. This was different.  It’s about what will happen if we find ourselves in a World War III – a nuclear war. 

Nuclear War: A Scenario
by Annie Jacobsen 
2024 / 376 pages
Read by the author 11h
Rating –  8.75 

Note that this is  “a scenario” and it’s nonfiction with appropriate sources noted along with extra information. The include many interviews and various kinds of papers.  It seems to be very thorough as far as I know.  

Page – 109
“An immediate consequence of a nuclear strike [would be] that democracy would be completely gone and military rule would take place.” Perry believes that if military rule is ever imposed on today’s America, “it would be almost impossible to undo military rule” in the United States.”

Page-145 
“Historian Lynn Eden… explains ‘Because the early fireball would be so hot, it would expand rapidly. By the time the fireball approached its maximum size it would be more than a mile in diameter.’ A mile-wide nuclear fireball is enough to entirely destroy the 750-acre Diablo Canyon facility. And because roughly half that diameter area includes ocean, the entire nuclear power plant has now cratered into the sea. Everything inside the fireball is obliterated.”

At first I though she really, really wanted to scare us with her research and her written word and, because she is also the narrator, her slow. breathy terrified voice.  There are lists of names and paragraphs of what computer scenarios show based on the math of predictions.  There’s lots of suspense-increasing repetition.  By the time I got to Chapter 3 I was exhausted and thought I might just skip the rest. It seemed to be all hype and no substance, a horror tale of “mass extermination.” 

 I WAS WRONG!!!!  By the time I got a few chapters into Part II,  maybe page 60?, I realized this was something different. 

I’d bought the Kindle version to go with the Audible and I was disappointed there was no “whisper-link,” but it turned out okay because this is what I did prior to the linked versions.  I used the Kindle to see spellings and photos and sources and so on.  There’s also an Index and an Acknowledgements.

After a Prologue and some history (Build-Up), the author gets to The Top Secret Plan Then the narrative starts a chronological telling starting in North Koreas and jumping from place to place all over the world. We are privy to discussion, preparations, the events and the aftermath, all in relation to the bombs . And then there are 9 History Lessons scattered throughout as 1 to 7 page insets. It’s a wild ride and a very good, informative read. 

I don’t know why I haven’t kept up with the Michael Stagg legal “thriller” series.  I started out in December 2020 with Lethal Defense, Book 1 and got through Book 3, Blind Conviction, in August of last year (2023). That’s not very fast and I guess I forgot to look back. That’s out of 7 now.  I gave them all very good ratings, an A or an A+.  They are kind of cozy legal mysteries – 

Just Plea 
by Michael Stagg
2022 / 
Read by George Newbern 
Rating – A+ / cozy legal mystery 
#4 in Nate Shepherd series

Just this week the 4 books I was missing went on sale for a VERY reasonable price. They don’t have any at my library.  And there’s a #8 being released in November!  (Legal thrillers are amongst my favorites.)  Oh I had to splurge.

Nate Shepherd is a semi-successful criminal attorney working in some fictional city in Ohio just across the line from Michigan.. He’s in his 30s, childless and widowed – lives alone.  Working in his office is Danny another young  attorney who does research for Nate, but has now opened his own specialty in estate planning and wills.   

The plot: a man has been arrested for a hit and run accident but Edgerton Fleece, the head of a large charitable organization, is adamant that he is completely innocent.  This is happening 2 months after the event when Nate finally hears about it when the Fleece comes to his office denying everything but they go to the hearing. Very shortly after that the charges are suddenly changed to “murder with intent” and Nate has to figure out why they were changed and devise some plan to counter the evidence the prosecution has come up with plus an additional twist that a very large sum of money is involved.

I love legal thrillers (did I say that already?) because I used to learn a lot from them but I usually know what Stagg is saying. Some things are new of course – there’s always something.  And Stagg’s novels have twisty and thought-provoking plots.  

Big Oops!   And Wow!   LOL! 

The Housemaid Is Watching 
by Freida McFadden
Read by Lauryn Allman 9h 46m
Rating: A / mystery-suspense-thriller-
(#3 in The Housemaid series)

I made what is probably a common mistake right now and got the brand- new-on-the-market (this week) 3rd book in Freida McFadden’s The Housemaid series. I’ve seen it advertised over the last couple months, but what I was actually looking for was the 3rd book in Nita Prose’s The Maid series (due out October 1).  

Both books are crime genre, possibly Young Adult ( ?),  and both involve at least 1 1st person.  Also of note, McFadden’s heroine is named Milly,  Prose’s heroine is Molly.  LOL!   There was a lot of blood in the Housemaid #3 Prologue which certainly could have been the opening for a Prose novel, (in fact, I think Prose’s Book #1 opened pretty bloody.

But even with all those similarities, this book I was holding could still be something else – huh?  So I was very confused as I started reading and I stayed that way until about Chapter 7 (?) when I did some checking.  

I finally figured out my mistake and I was like, “Okay fine – I’ve got the 3rd book in Freida McFadden’s “The Maid” series.  It seems okay and from what I’ve read in my checking, this was not a strictly “in order” series. I guess I’ll give it the full try. (I could have returned it as “ordered in error,” but…

After the bloody prologue, it starts out kind of cute and simple, but it slowly grows to end up in the “twisty suspense thriller” category and although to me it seemed flawed in some way, I truly enjoyed it after about 1/2 way.  Yes, it might appeal to YA,  but it also MIGHT NOT be an author I’ll be reading more of.  That said, it’s a suspense novel and the prolific McFadden knows how to jack up and twist the tension.   Bottom line, I gave it an A – lol.  

Milly is a 30-something woman married to Enzo and they have 2 grade school-age children. The backstory (Volumes I and II but reviewed here)  is that Milly served 10 years in prion for killing a man in order to save her best friend from a rapist. Now she’s out of prison and married many years to Enzo, an immigrant Italian hunk, and they just recently moved to their dream home. They are devoted parents.

But following the move Milly grows increasingly suspicious about different things; some are silly, some with good cause. Most are connected to the move.  There are episodes where Milly’s suspicions increase the tension with perfect pitch. She’s suspicious of other characters from a housekeeper to her son to her husband and even the neighbor,  Milly suspects people of lying, stealing, flirting, gossiping, etc. And then there are some almost extreme twists to the very end.

Enjoy –

“Spell the Month in Books” s is a linkup hosted on Reviews From the Stacks on the first Saturday of each month so I’m a wee bit late.

Our month is JUNE!  And history is the theme of the month. So I can do this – June has 4 only letters and I’m a history buff so I’ll get a couple of those. Ha!  

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte  (definitely historical fiction) 

Underworld by Don DeLillo  

(a favorite of all time book)

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich –  (more historical fiction with parts set in DC 1952 ‘
 

Enough by Casey Hutchinson – history-making events

After I’d pulled this down from my Audible library I discovered I’d read it some time ago – in 2012, to be exact. That’s more than a decade ago! I guess I wasn’t too thrilled then, because it only got a rating of 7.5.  This time it was much better – I think I took a dislike to the narration which I was able to tolerate this time although it is kind of overly dramatic. (I understand that the physical book is full of italics and headline-type fonts along with graphics/photos).  

Murder of the Century:
The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars
by Paul Collins 2011
Read by William Durfis 9h 43m 
Rating: 9 / True Crime 

This time I was kind of enchanted in a way.  It’s “True Crime” which I usually really enjoy and it’s historical true crime which I’ve grown to appreciate. I’m glad I know as much about the place and era as I do but am still curious about.  I like when the author takes time to highlight aspects of that background without it taking over the main tale.  Almost needless to say, there’s seldom a lot of tension in true crime because the mystery of it was usually resolved awhile back and the book is written that way. That said, there are always new to me details the author includes.  If I know too much about a crime story I won’t read the True Crime book.

When I got to Chapter 5 I recognized quite a lot from the Gaslight Murders series by Victoria Thompson.  They’re both set in New York at the turn of the 20th Century and Collins mentions a midwife who says she is licensed, but since that wasn’t required in NY, he doubts it.  Thompson’s protagonist, Sarah Brandt and her friend Detective Frank Malloy are not real friendly with the tabloids. Teddy Roosevelt is Police Commissioner, at least for a couple years prior to his national service.,  Joseph Pulitzer and Wm Randolph Hearst were in competition for most  powerful New York newspaper between 1895-98. Teddy Roosevelt was only police commissioner between 1895 and ’97 but made a lot of progressive changes.   There were dozens of papers and their reporters seemed to be acting as detectives more than the actual lowly paid NYPD. 

Collins focuses on the frenzy of what was called yellow journalism (ie yellow headlines)  and how reporters competed with the police for resolving the crime – the reporters even had badges of some kind and stories were followed by the sensationalist trials with their super-star lawyers which evoked as much or more excitement as the O.J. Simpson trial.  

Well, this book was much,  MUCH, better than I thought it would be.  Going into it and even up to half way through I had reservations about bothering to finish.  And then at some point there – 1/3 or 1/2 way it started twisting and getting better.   

The Drowning Woman 
by Robyn Harding 
2018 / 
Read by Brandy Wilkerson 9h 38m
Rating: A / mystery-suspense

Actually, I was tentatively giving this book a C- until I got to that half way though when a body is found and the tension is ratcheted up a notch because, well, who done it?  After that the twists keep coming.  I ended up giving it an A.  

The main problem I had with the first part was there was too much sex and “romance” including the SM kind. Nothing else was particularly good – it was all mediocre with the “romance” pushing it too close to the “oh yuck” line (which is where I would have quit).   

 There are lots of twists to the story and I only saw a few of them coming.  The writing never really rose above mediocre but it was the tension and suspense which overcame that.  The characters are drawn “well enough,” but always a shadow shy of really believable. What I really did not like was the romance but it was  a necessary part of the plot. Unfortunately it got it a bit graphic and more than necessary (imho – lol) and includes some SM parts which, no matter how minimal, are gross. I got past that stuff because abuse is abuse and it didn’t go on long.  Also the plot itself is pretty interesting and twisty and Harding does know how to crank up the suspense after which it got even more twisty.  (As long as there aren’t too many characters I love twists – fewer characters seems to add to the suspense.) 

On the downside again – some of the story is predictable and sometimes it even goes beyond believable.  I gave it an A but no +s.  

I read the first two of this series thinking I was getting the old John Grisham, but after 40 years he’s changed some and I doubt he wants to keep writing the same old thing so he’s branched out some in different directions – this leans towards humor in the beach and book sales scene but it’s still a legal mystery with some thriller parts.  

Camino Ghosts
by John Grisham 
2024
Read by Whoopie Goldberg 10h 17m 
Rating: A  / crime-  (cozy?) 
#3 in the Camino series 

The characters from the first two books are on hand with Mercer and Thomas  getting married at the beach.  Mercer is a writer and Bruce owns a local bookshop and dabbles in buying and selling books.  This really feels more like a cozy than a John Grisham thriller but ..  it works I think because of the setting, the characters and the writerly-oriented plot.  

Bruce has a story idea – based on a “true” (for this book) story concerning an island just off the coast between Florida and Georgia.  Haunted maybe?  They try to see if they can meet the woman who wrote a book many years ago ….  There have been many dead bodies in the past. It’s been abandoned (?).  

There’s a new character in this book Diana, who plays an almost leading role. She’s teh intern in Steve’s legal office – (non-profit environmental mission). I hope she stays –

This seems like a very gentle story about a young girl who lives on an island off Ireland, but be careful. 

Whale Fall
by Elizabeth O’Connor 
Read by Gwyneth Keyworth 3h 50m
May 1, 2024
Rating 10 / literary fiction 
(I should have read this along with the listen, just for the beauty.)  

Over the past few yeas I’ve developed an enjoyment for Irish stories and novellas. I’ve loved the novels forever,  Ulysses (Joyce, of course), but Milkman, by Anna Burns, too, for sure.  

This one is based on generally true idea – most of the islands off Wales have come on hard time and lost population over the past generations.  The story O’Connor tells is true to heart if not to dialogue.  The story of Whale Fall, later in the narrative, is especially touching. 

“Both blunt and exquisite . . . O’Connor’s excellent debut . . .  is an example of precisely observed writing that makes a character’s specific existence glimmer with verisimilitude.”—New York Times Book Review

When Jack Lee looks into and accepts the case of Jerome Washington, a Black man charged with murdering a prominent couple in their home in rural-ish Freeman, Virginia,  it attracts attention.  The year is 1968.  Local white men beat Jack up in his own office and a black female Civil Rights attorney shows up from Washington DC wanting a broader fight for Civil Rights.

 A Calamity of Souls 
by David Baldacci
2024 / 
Read by a cast 14h 28m 
Rating: C-  / legal who-done-it

David Baldacci is known for tales of suspense and legal thrillers. Long ago I read the Camel Club series but. I’ve passed on recent books because they seemed a bit gory. This one caught my eye because it was a stand-alone and the reader reviews seemed unusually good. My adult son is a regular reader of Baldacci novels.  

Sad to say, this is probably a much better book if it’s read than listened to because there are too many distractions in accent, emotionalism, voice quality and so on.  It became choppy with one reader (performer) reading the characters actual lines and another reading the “she said,” bit.

The plot is terrific, the characters nicely defined, the themes well developed.  I wasn’t quite able to tell about the writing because the “dramatization” overshadowed it.  (I’m old-fashioned, I don’t even want music in my audio books – I want the background and sound effects to sound like when I read the paper version – silent – lol!)

This might be a good young adult book – maybe ages 16-23 or so,  

Prologue –  Moscow – 2023:   Ivan Volkov Moscow – receives messages re spying in space and possible war – satellites have become dangerous in Russia’s war in Ukraine.  Ivan has lost his father and his son because Russia is now a bad place and very dangerous. He types a note revealing the plans for a satellite – or to sabotage US satellites .

Phantom Orbit
By David Ignatius
2024
Read by Eduardo Ballerini 9h 56m
Rating: A / sci-fi-spy 

Then the story turns to much earlier days when Ivan was getting his education and to when he met Edith Ryan,  a young American scientist. They met as foreign students in China.  This is after the USSR has fallen and gross capitalism has taken its place – it goes right up to when they’re bombing Ukraine.  Everyone suspects trickery and theft or worse as that’s quite often what happens. 

I enjoyed this. It’s pretty suspenseful and it keeps you guessing until the end, but I wouldn’t say it’s up to the level of “thriller.” I think I needed the little change of pace.  

I came up with The Boy in the Suitcase by Lena Kaaberbel which is also translated and an award winning mystery by an author I’ve never read.  (Yay!). 

The Boy in the Suitcase 
by Lena Kaaberbøl /Agnete Friis 
translated from Danish by Lena Kaaberbøl
2011 / 
Read by Katherine Kellgren 8h 40m
Rating – B+ / crime thriller – Scandi-Noir
(Book 1 in Nina Borg series) 

From the publisher: 
Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse, wife, and mother of two, is trying to live a quiet life. The last thing her husband wants is for her to go running off on another dangerous mission to help illegal refugees. But when Nina’s estranged friend, Karin, leaves her a key to a public locker in the Copenhagen train station, and begs her to take care of its contents, Nina gets suckered into her most dangerous case yet. 

Because inside the suitcase is a three-year-old boy: naked and drugged, but alive. Nina’s natural instinct is to rescue the boy, but she knows the situation is risky. Is the boy a victim of child trafficking? Can he be turned over to authorities, or will they only return him to whoever sold him? In an increasingly desperate trek across Denmark, Nina tries to figure out who the boy is, where he belongs, and who exactly is hunting him down. When Karin is discovered brutally murdered, Nina realizes that her life and the boy’s are in jeopardy, too.

***********

It was difficult for me to get into this thriller because unlike most 1st books in a crime series there isn’t much introductory material re the staples of a US series. That is we’re just dropped into a story, the continuing main characters and their overarching plot. In general, there are plenty of characters and they’re doing rather bizarre things – suspicious sometimes, other times stupid.  So, as rather typical of me, I got about half-way through and realized I was NOT taking this story seriously at all.  And it is serious, in spite of the preposterousness.   

So I started over and found the darkness – scandi-noir published in 2011, right on time. 
Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse in Denmark and the protagonist of this series,  has been asked by Karen, an old, untrustworthy and estranged friend to retrieve a suitcase/backpack from a locker in a train station.  She agrees and is also told to please take care of “it.”  Huh?

Well – surprise, Nina!  It’s a large suitcase with a small and very sleepy (drugged?) boy but otherwise he seems unharmed. It turns out he’s 3 years old boy and yes, has been drugged. Nina kind of panics out what she should do next, and so the fun begins, but then it turns real. Is this custody rights or one of those child trafficking cases where the victim is never found?  So now Nina goes to find her friend and there she is – dead in her home – apparently murdered. 

Meanwhile the boy’s mother is also frantic to get her baby back because it was not his father who picked him up! 

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/lene-kaaberbol/boy-suitcase/

This was my second reading of On Animals –  and it was better than I expected –  HUH? –  Well,  yeah –  I wasn’t terribly impressed the first time ‘round but toward the end on the second I got involved and laughed out loud more than once.  Good stuff.  

On Animals 
by Susan Orlean
2021/ 256 pages
Read by author 10h
Rating:  9  / “autobiography”?  
(both read and listened)

I suppose my favorite chapter was Farmville – the last chapter in the book.  I’m listening and reading and I finally came to appreciate the author’s voice. It gives it a personal touch. I think.  

I often read books a second time (not always!). It seems like I’m more relaxed and enjoy them more, get more meaning from them, – ??? – something.  

There are 15 essays total and I think a couple may have been published as excerpts. She odes write very, very well.  It’s not poetic, it’s more natural than that and she uses unusual metaphors and phrases which are spot on in describing something or someone. 

I think I’ve now become a real fan of Susan Orlean not just an occasional reader.  She’s 68 years old written 9 books.and adapted some into movies (Little Wing)  I’ve read  only 3. I’m more than willing to read her next one but I have a feeling she’ll be retiring soon.  Maybe not, many authors are or have been been centenarians.   

I kept expecting something about general animal rights or vegetarianism or gun control, but no – there’s no stirring around in controversial pots here although the articles do touch on the subjects.  It’s a fun book and great for relaxed reading. But I did learn something in each chapter.  Orlean doesn’t confine herself to the US – she goes to Morocco, Siberia, Iceland, a couple places in Africa, and maybe even elsewhere.  

I think maybe a theme in the book is the relationship between humans and those creatures we call animals without differentiating between wild and tame because there’s a whole range between dogs and tigers and there may not be a “line.”

I’m not amused.  I read Maisie Hobbs, the first book in this series, many years ago, enjoyed it okay and was curious. But  not enough to continue just then. Now a challenge has come along and I’m to read a book with “Lie,” Liar,” or “Lying” in the title. So guess what I found? I found #3 in that same series, Pardonable Lies, the third book.  

Pardonable Lies 
By Jacqueline Winespear 
2005
Read by Orlagh Cassidy 
Rating:  C- / historical romance – mystery/spy   
(#3 in the Maisie Dobbs Series)

Maisie is feeling a bit better after her devastating loss – he fiancé was all but killed in WWI.  He’s permanently crippled in mind and body, and vegging in a vets hospital. Maisie’s new detective agency (see book 1) is doing well enough and she has friends and connections in many places. It’s been 13 years!

The 14-year old Avril Jarvis was found alone but she was very bloody and it appeared she had just murdered someone.  She lands in jail where she won’t talk to anyone.  Child services contacts Maisie who totally identifies with Avril’s age,  predicament and state of mind – she also was left alone at a young age due to the war effort.

Maisie breaks through Avril’s silence promising to get help for her. In order to do this, Maisie trades her services as a detective for half price plus expenses in her search for Rafe Lawton, the son of a wealthy politician.  Rafe was reported dead in Europe after his plane was shot down in the war but his mother doesn’t believe that. so on her deathbed his mother made his father promise to fine him. – at least look earnestly.

There are several things I don’t like about this book and I won’t be reading more of the series.  

1. Masie is too emotional – she gets teary and sentimental quite a lot. This is an overtly “sad” book and I understand the gloom in Europe after WWI (see T.S Eliot) and the 1918 Flu, but this is 13 years later, 1930, no wonder they didn’t want to confront Hitler.

2. Relatedly, I prefer mysteries where detectives use “clues” and logic rather than “instincts.”  Imo, Maise has too many active instincts.

2. What’s with all the “occult” stuff?  –  Maisie gets communications from her now totally, physically and mentally, disabled “fiancé.” (He might be considered half in this world and half in the other.)  Is this ESP (Extra-Sensory Perception for younger than Boomers)?  Maisiei has lots of ESP moments. She’s just very empathic and available for it.

3. In this book, historical fiction apparently means fashion and menu items. Of course food and clothing have very interesting histories, but only recently has social history been taken to this extreme.  This is like Danielle Steel’s historical fiction.  (Romance masquerading as historical fiction.) I would add that spiritualism became very popular with Arthur Conan Doyle and many others being a huge proponents.  

 Go read The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (link to my raving review) for some fine historical fiction – 

Here’s a bit more about the spiritualism craze after WWI and the pandemic of 1819. It’s very interesting.  https://www.history.com/news/flu-pandemic-wwi-ouija-boards-spiritualism.

Close to Death as the title of Horowitz’s 5th book in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series series is a pun. The “close” referred to is a short, dead end street somewhat like a cut-de-sac in the US.  In this case the people who live there are quite well off financially and very good neighbors, not quite real buddies, who have known each other for many years.  

Close to Death 
by Anthony Horowitz
2024
Read by Rory Kinnear 9h 12m 
Rating 7+ / A+  literary crime 
#5 in Hawthorne and Horowitz series 

 Some time prior to the events in the novel one of the residents had a downturn in business and had to sell his home and move to a smaller (but still large) house . The new residents are nouveau riche of a very ugly variety. At one point, after this new resident and his family have annoyed the older residents quite a lot,  the new neighbor is found in his overly decorated home, dead.  It was neither an accident nor a suicide as he was shot with a cross-bow which landed right in his neck.  The crossbow is owned by one of the neighbors and just about everyone knows where it’s kept. Every adult in the community is a suspect.  

This is a new kind of crime novel for Horowitz who has written himself into the series book 1,  but in the prior books he’s been a very active 1st person. This time he’s writing quite a lot in 3rd person, telling Hawthorne’s story.  The case is an old one which Hawthorne has brought to him to write up.  This is their relationship. Hawthorne wants to be like the fictional detectives who have their names in print and their brilliance acknowledged.  He thinks of himself as a 21st century Sherlock Holmes.  In the first four books of the series, Horowitz does his best following Hawthorne around on various detective jobs and writing it up in the form of a novel (or is it true crime?) –  This time he has to piece it together without seeing the detection involved play out. 

But because Hawthorne has not told Horowitz how it ends,  who done it (!), it’s not easier. It might actually be harder to work from a blind like that. 

Every time I read the new book in this series I think it’s better than the prior books. That may be because I know the main characters so well now, and each book is so innovative. 

The characters are interesting and very nicely differentiated. The plot is layered, twisty and head scratching.  The writing is a joy to read – suspenseful without being nerve-wracking and often quite humorous.  Actually, the whole series reads like an homage to the Golden Age of Detective Novels like Agatha Christie’s or Dorothy Sayers’, between the World Wars.  These ware “who done its” of the very best kind. 

Per Kirkus Reviews: “Gloriously artificial, improbable, and ingenious. Fans of both versions of Horowitz will rejoice.” – Oh I do so totally agree.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/anthony-horowitz/close-to-death-2/

I’m not a big fan of James Patterson,  but when he co-authors a book with Maxine Paetro I turn into one. So I stay caught up on the Women’s Mystery Club series. until there’s nothing new for me there and I don’t care for James Patterson in other books. – with different co-authors or by himself. They tend to be too gritty for me and then the four main women characters  get love and families going. I’ll keep reading them until every characters is a grandparent – lol! 

The #1 Lawyer
James Patterson and Nancy Allen 
Read by Kevin Stillwell 13 h
Rating: B / legal thriller –  

I should have enjoyed this more than I did.  I love legal thrillers (or courtroom dramas) but either this just didn’t quite get there or I’m ready to move on? – No

I understand that Patterson writes the first one or two novels of a series and then finds someone he can work with to flesh them out.  He has so many ideas that I believe  his job is to write the outlines with some fill-in and then his co-author will finish it off.  I love Maxine Paetro but she’s the only one I can really enjoy and she and Patterson have been working like this for something like 5 years? –  I think so.  

In this book, Stafford Lee Penney, a criminal defense attorney from Biloxi Mississippi who hasn’t lost a case since law school, is defending a rich angry man who is charged with murder, but it doesn’t look good on him and Stafford Lee may lose this time.  Then he defends a woman who is still in law school herself and that snowballs to his own wife being murdered and Stafford Lee being arrested.  

I’ve been reading this popular mystery series for about 8 years going at the rate of about 1 book per year – lol!  This means I’’m working at catch-up but not really.  I’ve been reading “the next one” more often lately because my interest has been piqued  by the  historical material.  I was a history major in decades long past and I’e been a history buff ever since.  This series takes place in New York City at the height of the so-called “gilded” age where new immigrants, severe poverty, and ethnic gangs way outnumbered the almost obscenely rich.  

Murder in Chinatown 
by Victoria Thompson
2008 
Suzanne Toren 9h 10m
Rating A+ / historical who-done-it 
(# 9 in the Gaslight Murders series)

I’m really amazed at the research Victoria Thompson puts into the Gaslight Murder books.  Murder in Chinatown is only the 8th in the 27-book series and my interest was captured by the “Street Arabs” which Wikipedia gives a brief history of the term as well as a photograph.   

In this book, the 15-year old girl, Angel,  has been told by her parents that she will marry Charlie Wong,  someone she says is “old and ugly and doesn’t speak English!” She really does NOT want to marry Charlie Wong no matter how rich he is.  But Father’s word is law, so to Angel this looks like the end of any kind of life she wants.  Sohe runs away to her own secret lover and is subsequently murdered.  Many young Irish immigrant women married Chinese men when the Exclusion Act was enforced and this novel includes three such couples. 

 Our series protagonist and midwife by trade, Sarah Brandt, was helping Cora Lee give birth when she found out that Angel was missing.  She tells her police detective friend, Frank Malloy, but he thinks nothing of it. Until Angel turns up dead. This is New York and the Chinese and the Irish don’t get along in spite of the occasional intermarriages. 

Street Arabs in the Area of Mulberry Street is a black and white photograph taken by Danish American photographer Jacob Riis, probably in 1890. The designation of street arabs was given back then to homeless children. Riis took several pictures of these children, during the journalistic and photographic work that led to the publication of his landmark book How the Other Half Lives (1890), where they were published with the title of Street Arabs in Sleeping Quarters.^[1]

Sarah is originally from an upper class family, but when she was young she fell in love with and married a police officer who, only a couple years later, was killed in action. Since then she has lived on her own, doing “freelance” midwifery work throughout New York City. Serving the poor, she often arrives in families who are dealing with crime and/or other troubles and Frank has to help her. A couple times he has had to call on her for assistance.  

Unfortunately, in this story Angel is found a day later, dead in an alley. So Sarah Brandt ropes Frank Malloy into helping figure it out.  I really enjoyed all parts of this book – the characters are very likable without being smarmy, the plot is twisty with a bit more blood than the usual “cozy mystery,” and the history is very well researched. I love the googling involved. If something turns out to be true I give the author

One really good thing about this series is that it sticks to the history while telling a great mystery story with likable characters developing an overarching plot. All three elements are vital to a successful historical mystery series but are rarely done as well as they are here. 

Also, the reader, Suzanne Toren, does and incredible job and lucky for us readers keeps going through book #27 (April 2024).

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From Amazon:   https://tinyurl.com/5n79kamz
In Chinatown to deliver a baby, Sarah Brandt meets a group of women she might otherwise never have come across: Irish girls who, after alighting on Ellis Island alone, have married Chinese men in the same predicament. But with bigotry in New York from every side, their mixed-race children are often treated badly, by the Irish, the Chinese—even the police.
 
When the new mother’s half-Chinese, half-Irish, 15-year-old niece goes missing, Sarah knows that alerting the constables would prove futile. So she turns to Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy—and together they begin the search themselves. And after they find her, dead in an alley, Sarah and Malloy have ample suspects—from both sides of Canal Street.

 wasn’t going to do this but I started the third book in the Natchez Burning trilogy the same day I finished The Bone Tree, the second book. The narrative just flows from one to the next without a break although each book has its own trajectory and conclusion.  “Mississippi Blood is different. It’s got some river in it, delta soil, turpentine, asbestos, cotton poison. But there’s strength in it, too. Strength that’s been beat. but not broke,”  

Mississippi Blood
By Greg Iles
Read by Scott Brick, 28h 9m
Rating A+, suspense thriller with a bit of history
(Book 3 of the Natchez Burning trilogy)

“Mississippi blood is different. it’s got some river in it – Delta soil turpentine, aspetstos, cotton poison. But there’s strength in it too, strength that’s been beaten but not broke.”  (p. 83)

At the outset of this book Caitlin Masters, the newspspare reporter and Penn Cage’s fiancé is dead but Penn, the protagonist of the series,  his father, Tom Cage, a well-thought of doctor, is currently living at the prison outside of town while his mother, Peggy is in a nearby motel.  Penn’s 11-year old daughter is being carted for by Maya, but the whole family is in shock and grieving.  In other news, Viola Turner was murdered awhile back so Tome is in jail pending that trial.  As you read along the secrets of the family are revealed – Tom is in prison for murdering his lover.   Yah – it’s a twisty tale and  I haven’t even mentioned Lincoln or Viola or Walt or several other characters whose lives get entangled.

The theme is mainly race and old Civil War hostilities with the KKK being the original group with developed a branch or two in the 1940s and which were still thriving in the 1960s and even unto the 2000s.  These guys thought they were the worst of the bad-asses and had been quietly killing a lot of Black boys and dumping their bodies at a place called the Bone Tree.  

Iles has a new book in the series called “A Southern Man” which features the same characters in the same place only a couple decades later and although Iles is not one of my favorite writers I am looking forward to it but maybe not right away. It’ll be available on 5/28.