Tag: mystery

Blurb Book Review: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

A snowed-in ski resort, a body, and a tense family reunion; all the elements for a locked room mystery.

Ernest is the narrator who promises to play fair and assures the reader that he’s quite reliable. Everyone in his family has killed someone and the overachievers have killed more than once. But they aren’t the Mansons and they’re not psychopaths, just people who are at the wrong place at the wrong time, Ernest assures the reader.

Up on a mountain in the middle of a snowstorm, the family has come together to welcome Michael back from his stint in prison for, you guessed it, murder. A body shows up just before Michael arrives and the hunt for the murderer is on. Ernest recounts the events and points out important bits to the reader as well as immediately dispelling suspicion where necessary. A storm moves in and bodies start piling up.

This novel references Agatha Christie and Ronald Knox’s “10 Commandments of Detective Fiction” from 1929 quite a lot and does seem to be an homage to that style of mystery. The clues are all laid out, even pointed out by the narrator, and assembled into a picture by the end. All loose ends are tied up nicely as well.

I felt like this novel would have been better if I’d read it all in one sitting. There were a lot of characters to keep track of and a lot of clues scattered about, so each time I picked the book up I had to remind myself of what was going on. The narrative voice was delightfully consistent throughout, Ernest’s personality came through in every word.

Blurb Book Review: The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

This is the second novel in the Thursday Murder Club series. I enjoyed it well enough.

The Thursday Murder Club is up to their antics again. This time there’s diamonds, mafia, and an ex-husband spy involved. Elizabeth, the leader of the club, receives a visit from her ex-husband, who’s asking for her help. He stole some diamonds and is now in trouble with the mafia. When he turns up dead, Elizabeth must untangle the mystery with the help of her four closest friends and a whole host of secondary characters.

The novel is a reasonably quick and light read. It occurred to me quite late on that the book is mostly telling rather than showing, but it’s effective here with all the characters.

As a sequel, it didn’t disappoint. The characters are still interesting and there’s a bit of growth for some of them.

Blurb Book Review: Zero Days by Ruth Ware (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

This author is really good at writing exhausted characters, this novel is no different.

Jack is a pen tester – penetration tester; someone who breaks into a facility at the request of the owner/CEO – and is caught just as she’s leaving her latest job. After explaining everything to the police, going back to retrieve her car, then driving home, she arrives to find her husband has been murdered at his desk. At first she’s questioned as a grieving spouse, but much too quickly, the evidence points to Jack ordering a hit on him.

The moment she realizes she’s a suspect she leaves the police station to try to find evidence of who actually killed her husband. In the process, she injures herself badly enough to cause an infection. Now she has to race against time to find the evidence before the infection takes over, all while dodging CCTV cameras and not using anything to digitally ping her location.

The novel is paced exceptionally well. As a reader I felt Jack’s exhaustion and desperation to find the killer. All the crumbs are in place for the reader to follow and figure out who was responsible for the death, and Jack not figuring it out quickly enough is believable because of the high-stress situation, lack of food, and growing infection.

My only nitpick is that a fair bit of information is repeated unnecessarily in the last quarter of the book. By the fourth mention of not having any bandages left, I was frustrated and wanted to tell the author to trust the reader to remember. That and other repetitive bits made the last few chapters a bit tedious. Otherwise, this novel is just as engrossing as the author’s previous work.

Blurb Book Review: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

This novel was one of the rare cases where I remembered why I’d put it on hold at the library. Usually I just open the book and start reading to see how fast I can pick up on the plot. For this one, I knew it was because the protagonist lived in a retirement village. I don’t run into many books where the main characters are older, perhaps my own fault for not seeking them out.

In this novel, Joyce gets invited to attend the Thursday Murder Club, where three other people discuss old, unsolved cases. Just as Joyce joins, a man is murdered. Now they have a fresh case to examine.

The storytelling was delightfully light. The author uses several characters’ points of view, including two detectives, each a different chapter. Joyce’s diary entries are sprinkled in between these short chapters, which is an interesting way of getting her point of view.

As the novel progresses, another man is murdered and an extra body is found in a grave. I thought things would get confusing but the author did a wonderful job in keeping everything tidy.

My only complaint was that for a mystery to be successful, the reader must have all the clues at hand and be able to come to the same conclusion as the characters. In this novel, the ending chapters revealed everything and tied up all the loose ends, but I doubt I’d have been able to know who the killers were based on the information given.

Still, this is a light read with quirky characters. I’ve already put the sequel on hold but there’s a lineup of people ahead of me.

Blurb Book Review: Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Image by Goodreads.com

Lydia is a translator for a Logi, an alien species that has an embassy on Earth. The Logi communicate telepathically and only a small selection of humans can understand them. Lydia enjoys her job and has a good rapport with Fitz, her Logi employer, although translating for too long will give the effect of drunkenness in her. One night, after overdoing it with translating, Fitz is found dead in his study. Lydia lives in his residence and was the only one home. Too bad she can’t remember what happened, or even if she was the one who killed him.

The author does an excellent job of keeping the reader firmly implanted in the world. These Logi aliens are commonplace and accepted by most humans, which is reflected well in how Lydia interacts with Fitz and her social media. The world doesn’t feel too far into our future, which is a feat in and of itself. Glasses supply a constant feed of social media and recording the world around the wearer and scrolls offer another kind of access to the internet, social media, and recording yourself. Everyone is constantly being watched and potentially recorded and Lydia dealt with this in a way that felt believable.

The author also uses language to keep the reader firmly entrenched in the narrative. Words like ‘idee’, ‘veearr’, ‘ayaie’, and ‘enpeecees’ are used just like the acronyms are now and it makes sense that these acronyms would become words in the future.

The novel was engaging enough, but it’s a mystery that I doubt can be solved by the reader until the last bit of the book. The clue of how Lydia knows who the killer is doesn’t make sense to the reader until Lydia explains it at the end. Other than that, the book takes some odd twists and turns, which I found entertaining enough to consider seeking out the author’s other novels.

Blurb Book Review: The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover taken from Google.com

I’d seen the miniseries before I read the book so I had some idea of what to expect. Still, I was pleasantly surprised.

The primary character is Harper, a man who’s down on his luck in the early 1930s. He steals a coat with a key in the pocket and is inexplicably drawn to a shuttered, ramshackle house in Chicago. Inside, the house is luxurious, except for the body on the staircase. He can see the beauty because he has the key.

The secondary character is Kirby, a woman who is brutally attacked while walking her dog. Her attacker is Harper, who met her when she was a little girl, then again about two decades later.

An unexpected character is the House. It has a kind of interdimensional travel ability for the person with the key. Harper can think up a time, open the front door, and walk out into that time period. The House also calls to Harper to complete a circle of killings and leave a memento from a different time, and different murder, on the fresh body.

But what happens when the circle is complete? Harper desperately wants to know, he’s driven to completing the killings to ease the House’s invasion of his mind. But Kirby lives through her attempted murder, thus leaving the circle incomplete.

The author did a fabulous job in worldbuilding. Each time period felt wonderfully authentic. Even Harper’s reaction to the future was believable. Also, the author did a great job in completing the narrative circle and tying up loose ends. The body on the staircase is explained, eventually, and the ending brings the reader back to the beginning.

Where the author failed, though, is in solving the murders. The reader knows Harper committed the crimes but Kirby and a detective don’t ever find out what’s going on. Kirby almost does. She has an inkling that seems too farfetched to be real and is almost given the payoff of understanding and knowing how it all ties together, but not quite. So while the main story is tied up, the character’s searching is left open, which was frustrating.

Overall, the book is worth reading even after watching the series.

Blurb Book Review: Sign Here by Claudia Lux (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Image from Goodreads.com

Peyote Trip makes deals for Hell and has discovered a loophole: if you can make five deals with your own genetic line, you get a second chance at life on Earth. The problem is, you slowly start to forget your life while you’re in Hell.

The novel has three storylines: Peyote’s attempt to get the fifth deal to make a Complete Set, Calamity Ganon’s past and how she’s trying to fight against God’s army, and Mickey Harrison; a teenager who has a brand new very best friend Ruth.

The novel has a lot of potential. It’s darkly funny in spots, the depiction of Hell – with pens that don’t work, constant car alarms going off randomly, and only serving Jägermeister in bars – is amusing and different, and the coming-of-age storyline of Mickey is relatable. But the novel didn’t feel very cohesive.

The story jumped around between the three plotlines in thankfully short chapters and everything tied up neatly in the end, but it felt clumsily executed. Calamity’s character in particular felt disjointed and, quite frankly, unnecessary. If her character was cut right out there would have been more room to explore Peyote’s character and how he’s related to Mickey, rather than rush-explain it at the end.

The narrative voice was interesting though. I did enjoy the flow and descriptive phrases. That’s pretty much what kept me reading. That, and solving the mystery in Mickey’s family of which brother killed a girl seventeen years prior.

Overall, this was an entertaining read, light and funny in places, touching in others. I’d read something else by the author simply for the narrative voice.

Blurb Book Review: The Fields by Erin Young (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Image from Goodreads.com

Corn, politics, and cannibalism: this book has them all.

Bodies are found in a sleepy county, bodies with bites taken out of them. Riley Fisher, newly promoted to head of investigations, granddaughter of the previous Sheriff, is tasked with solving the murders. The first body is her childhood friend, Chloe.

Riley wades through her own personal Hell of remembering why she left Black Hawk County while navigating other officers’ resentment for being passed over for promotion as she gathers evidence to solve her old friend’s murder. Along the way, she stumbles on a political coverup right smack dab in the middle of election campaigns.

I never guessed the ending of the book. I thought I had it, I thought I knew where it was going when niacin deficiency was mentioned, but the novel took a turn I didn’t anticipate. Once I finished the novel I could see all the clues, which just made the revelation that much better. The author was skillful in withholding tiny tidbits until the very end without making the story feel full of holes or contrived.

This is the first book in a planned series focusing on Riley. I’d read the next one, mostly to see if the author can pull off another murder mystery with the same flair.

Blurb Book Review: And There He Kept Her by Joshua Moehling (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment

Cover image from Goodreads.com

This debut novel is tightly written, so much so that I’ll keep my eye out for more books by the author.

Two teenagers go missing in the small town of Sandy Lake, one of them is Sheriff Ben Packard’s cousin’s daughter. Packard is new to town, having moved from the big city to start anew after the death of his boyfriend, and has history in Sandy Lake. Long ago, his brother Nick went missing while his family was there during summer vacation.

Emmett Burr caught the teens breaking into his house and took action. His own life is dreadful; a failed marriage, chronic pain, and bad health. He had dreams of having a girl who would do his bidding like Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie and took steps to make that happen.

The story alternates points of view, giving the reader the opportunity to be fully immersed in both characters. This helped keep the tension nice and tight, which never wavered. There were no sagging spots in the plot, no extraneous details, no red herrings.

I especially enjoyed the descriptions of each character as they were introduced. Each one was vivid and interesting. If a fair amount of time had passed, the author made sure to remind the reader of who the character was and/or the relationship of that character to the current ones on the page.

The disappearance of Nick was never answered, which bothered me a bit. There’s a hint as to who was involved and a nugget of mystery surrounding the evidence, likely to be foreshadowing for the next book in the series.

Other than that tiny nitpick, I enjoyed this novel immensely. Highly recommend to people who like small town mysteries with interesting characters.

Blurb Book Review: The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd (spoilers ahead)

~ Robin James ~ Leave a comment
Image from Goodreads.com

It’s been a while since I finished a book. I’ve been busy planning for my first ever vacation and that’s taken up most of my brain power. I did finish this one, though.

When maps are made, the cartographer will often add a town that doesn’t exist as a way of copyrighting the map. These tows, in real life, are called Paper Towns and sometimes a town will sprout up in that location. In this novel, extra rooms or towns are called ‘phantom settlements’ and they can only be accessed by viewing the map as you go to the location.

I thought that was a really cool concept. Rooms that don’t exist unless you have the map? Fantastic! But the book’s focus was heavily romantic rather than magical realism. So heavily romantic that I think the book should be shelved under romance, not mystery.

The constant hand-wringing of the main character, Nell, got really annoying really fast. Sure, she had a relationship with another character, Felix, and when they were both fired from New York Public Library their relationship ended….but could there be more? Could they be together again? Could they ever love again? If you like romance, you’d appreciate this far more than I did. I just wanted to get on with the story about magic rooms.

In addition to my irk about romance, the author overused several phrases to the point where I was rolling my eyes by the end. You don’t need to tell me the ‘lion statues flanked the stone steps’ more than once. I can remember where the lion statues were once I’ve been told. I don’t need to hear about how Nell was so tiny that she drowned in her oversize cardigan more than once. Please use a different method of describing her, thank you. But for romance, this fits I guess.

The plot was a bit weak. Nell finds a bunch of maps in a dusty storage area of NYPL and brings them to her father, who heads the department. He pitches a fit over them. She fights him on them. Felix backs her up. Her dad has them both fired and shunned in the industry.

That seemed over the top. I mean, wouldn’t the father find a better way of dealing with these maps – one of which holds the secret to a missing town – than making a big stink about it? His insistence that it’s worthless only makes Nell investigate the map.

We find out later that Nell’s mom was in that magic town when all the maps to it burned. She died as a result. And since you can’t go to the town without the map, it was lost forever. The group of friends mapping the place out all go their separate ways and live their lives.

But then Nell investigates and discovers not all the maps were lost. One of them was in that bunch she found at NYPL.

I felt like the book took a long time to get where it was going. A lot of stuff could have been edited out as it was just repetitious. The climax was interesting but not particularly shocking.

Again, if you like romance, this might be an interesting mystery/romance for you. For me, I just wanted more action and focus on magic rooms and towns.