Poisoned Pen Press Online Reviews

Fwd: Review Complete: Crying Blood

2010-11-08T07:08:00.001-08:00

Dorte Jakobsen has just completed a review of Crying Blood.

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Summary

Full Review

Donis Casey, Crying Blood (2011)
Poisoned Pen Press

This American cosy mystery is the fifth in the Alafair Tucker series. I have not read any of the earlier books.

After a short prologue, the story begins in Oklahoma in 1915 when the farmer Shaw Tucker is hunting quail with his sons. Their dog runs off to pick up a bird but comes back with an old boot still with the foot inside. Shaw and his sons dig out the whole body only to discover it has been shot in the head.

From the beginning, there is a strong sense of place, the Wild West with Indians and snakes, log cabins and haints. Fathers and sons go hunting together while the female members of the family spend their evenings quilting.

Though the book is called an Alafair Tucker mystery, it might be more correct to call it a Tucker mystery as her husband and their older children contribute to the solution. After the discovery of the first body, a young Indian follows Shaw Tucker who apprehends the boy and ties him up in an outhouse until they can get the sheriff. Sadly, the boy is killed when Shaw´s back is turned leaving the Turners with an extra murder to solve. They assume it must be related to Irish Roane Hawkins and the Creek Indian Lucretia Goingback, the former owners of the plot where the skeleton was found. Lucretia´s first husband disappeared mysteriously, and the family was scattered. As the title suggests, there is also an element of revenge.

The characters are well-drawn and interesting though they seem to be a bit modern now and then. I am sure there have always been kind and patient parents around, but how many farmers in 1915 would think about whether their animals "met their ends in as humane a fashion as possible"?

On the whole this was a charming and entertaining mystery. Ghosts and superstition play a certain role for the environment and the atmosphere, but the solution of the crimes does not depend on anything supernatural. In spite of the PDF format, it was a fast read, and I wouldn´t mind meeting Alafair and Shaw Tucker again.

Reviewed on DJ´s krimiblog Nov 8th 2010: http://djskrimiblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/donis-casey-crying-blood-2011.html

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Fwd: Review Complete: Did Not Survive

2010-11-05T20:35:00.001-07:00

Pamela Kramer has just completed a review of Did Not Survive.

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Summary

Five stars-quite enjoyed it.

Full Review

Review posted on Examiner.com at http://www.examiner.com/book-in-national/did-not-survive-a-zoo-mystery-by-ann-littlewood-review

Did Not Survive by Ann Littlewood is a murder mystery set in a small zoo near Vancouver, Washington. The protagonist, Iris Oakley, a keeper at the zoo, is pregnant with her first child. In the first book, Night Kill, her husband was killed, and now she is living alone and trying to plan her future as a single mother.

In the first chapter, Iris arrives at the zoo early and hears the elephants trumpeting in distress. She enters the elephant barn and sees a man prostrate on the floor inside the elephant enclosure. Damrey, one of the elephants, is rocking the body with her foot and playing with the clothes with her trunk. The man does not survive.

How he was killed is only one of the many mysteries the reader will ponder. How did a dead tiger in the zoo van disappear--with with the zoo van? And where are the turtles going?

Not only are there many mysteries to solve, there are many characters in this mystery--and many of them are quirky. The veterinary tech who loves expensive jewelry and dresses stylishly (especially compared to the rest of the zoo employees in their uniforms), the new veterinarian who is definitely nervous about something, and the detective who refuses to take Iris's sleuthing seriously. There are also the characters protesting the zoo; they want the elephants moved to a sanctuary.

Once begun, the story is difficult to put down. The action is non-stop, the first person narrative believable, and the solution clever. Once the end was near, I realized that the clues had been carefully placed along the path for a discerning reader to follow. I did not follow the clues, but I enjoyed the ending nonetheless.

Ann Littlewood is a former zoo keeper and as such she has special insight into the difficulties that zoos, sanctuaries and wildlife preserves have in managing elephants. There are many points of view expressed in the novel--from those who believe zoos have the best chance of keeping these creatures safe and healthy to those who believe that the elephants should have a place with many acres to allow the elephants to roam freely.

On her website, the author provides cool links to elephant sites online (some of them controversial, she notes).

The mysteries are published by Poisoned Pen Press, a small, independent publisher of mysteries in Scottsdale, Arizona. There is also a bookstore in Scottsdale called the Poisoned Pen.

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Fwd: Review Complete: Double Prey

2010-11-05T20:16:00.001-07:00

Eric Welch has just completed a review of Double Prey.

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Summary

Full Review

There is something in us that seeks the mutual support and comfort of town where everyone knows everyone else, peoplehelp each other, and life is relatively simple in appearance. This isnot to say that bad things don't happen, but it's that quality, I think, that makes Steven Havill's Posadas Countypolice procedurals so appealing. You really like the characters, youwant to get to know them, and you wish they would pop over for dinnersome time. I've read about six of his books. While it's not necessary to read his stories in order, doing so doesprovide some context for the characters. His first seriesfollowed undersheriff Bill Gastner, as likable andcompetent a law enforcement officer one could ask for.

EstelleReyes-Guzman, now the undersheriff with Robert Torrez the sheriff, in Double Prey, is faced with multiple difficulties: aneighbor's boy, Butch, and her son, Francis, wereteasing a large rattlesnake with a Weed Whacker. The stringchopped up the snake's head, throwing a fang and venom intothe kid's eye. That required a medevac tripto Albuquerque while the next day, Butch's brother is foundin an arroyo, underneath his ATV having flown off the edge.Everything looks like a routine accident. But what was the olddust-encrusted handgun doing in the ATV's storage box? Andjust a day after having found the skeleton of a jaguar, a cat notseen in the area for years.

Havill writeswell, creates intriguing plots, and has created a family ofcharacters we really care about. I plan to read many more of hisbooks.

On Goodreads and Shelfari with connection to Facebook. Probably later on Amazon, haven't decided whether to post it there or not

http://www.shelfari.com/books/16939508/unknown

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8907469

Thanks for the book!

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Fwd: Review Complete: Negative Image

2010-11-05T19:59:00.001-07:00

Bernadette Bean has just completed a review of Negative Image.

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Summary

Full Review

This review was published at Reactions to Reading on 31 October 2010

http://reactionstoreading.com/2010/10/31/review-negative-image-by-vicki-delany/

In the fictional small town of Trafralgar in British Columbia a famous fashion photographer is murdered in his hotel room. At first the town's small police force requests the help of the Mounted Police for simple manpower reasons but when the wife of their lead investigator, John Winters, falls under suspicion they are forced to rely, seemingly mistakenly, on the impartiality of the outsiders.

I was very angry with John Winters for much of this book. His behaviour upon learning his wife Eliza was under suspicion for the murder was pretty poor, essentially he abandons the woman he has apparently loved for 25 years, and I mentally tut-tutted that I expected better of a man like him. This is not to say his behaviour was unrealistic, I suspect it would be a common response, but says a lot for the way Delany has grown her stock characters over the series that I was disappointed in Winters. I would also have liked to have seen things more from Eliza's point of view. We do learn a little about her days as a young fashion model when she had a relationship with the murder victim but it would have been nice to see more of her reacting to being under suspicion and having a her husband go AWOL rather than deal with the issue.

Molly Smith is growing into a nicely well-rounded character. Here Delany depicts the difficulty a young woman might face being in the police force. Not only is Molly subject to some pretty juvenile ribbing and even nastier innuendo about her sexual exploits (let's face it this could happen to any woman in any job) but she also comes under threat from a man she was responsible for jailing who has now been released. Although I'm sure male police officers experience threats and worse from criminals they've imprisoned, I suspect for a certain type of man it would be far worse to have been caught by a 'lowly' woman and that's what seems to play out here. Given that Molly is also undergoing some family trauma and experiencing some minor troubles with her fledgling relationship she's got a lot to handle in this book but works through it all credibly.

The plot itself, including the main mystery as well as a side thread about a series of robberies and a storyline dealing with Molly's father's illness, is very sound if not terribly surprising. As always with this series it is the mixture of crime solving and small town life that is appealing as both feed off each other. Although this book doesn't have quite the social conscience that attracted me to Valley of the Lost, the second book in the series, it is an above average small town police procedural with very engaging characters and a satisfying puzzle to solve. Another point in its favour is that you could easily read it without having read the previous books in the series which is something of a rarity these days and is to be applauded as there are only so many backlists a mystery fan can contemplate.

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Fwd: Review Complete: Crying Blood

2010-11-05T19:58:00.001-07:00

Christy Gibbon has just completed a review of Crying Blood.

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Summary

Full Review

Review posted on Goodreads on 10-31-2010.

http://apps.facebook.com/good_reads/book/show/8806430-crying-blood

Crying Blood begins with a simple hunting trip by a father, his brother and their sons. It then evolves into a great mystery. A skeleton, a ghost, a murder, and a manhunt! How does this everyday family in the early years of the 1900's in Oklahoma help solve the mystery? You are drawn into the lives of Shaw and Alafair Tucker and their large and extended family. The interaction between the family members is very well written. You feel as though this is a real family struggling to live and survive. Their reactions to the events they are drawn into are the same reactions I think you or I would have. I liked that the author gave us (and not the characters) the whole story of the mystery after the end of the book. It tied everything up in a neat little bow.

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Fwd: Review Complete: Roman Games

2010-11-05T19:57:00.001-07:00

Alexandria Poulain has just completed a review of Roman Games.

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Summary

Full Review

This review will appear on November 22, 2010 at
http://brazenbroadsbookbash.blogspot.com/

One of the emperor's main snitches is dead--murdered--and Domitian wants to know who to kill for the crime. While he may choose many men of the Senate who had served with Verpa to investigate the crime, he chooses Pliny The Younger to conduct the investigation, despite the fact that he's not a trained crime investigator but a vice prefect. Pliny is a man who has spent his adult life dealing with the law, but he's more of a probate lawyer than any policeman. But he's got a lot of people to suspect: Verpa was disliked by many, including his concubine, fellow senators, his slaves, and even his son, who like all Roman males from good families stood to inherit a fortune when his father died.

Roman Games, by Bruce MacBain, is an interesting story about life in Roman times. His descriptions make the reader feel like they can imagine being in Rome during the rule of Domitian. In addition, the story is full of well-written characters. Pliny transforms from a bookish man of the law to a man bent on finding the murderer and exposing the reasons for the crime. What he finds in his investigation is not only the motives for Verpa's murder but a conspiracy that stretches all the way to Domitian himself and involves senators, those closest to the emperor, and even the Vestal Virgins. Rome will forever change because of it.

MacBain weaves a tale that stretches from the lowly slaves who tend to every Roman need through the Senate to the seat of power in the Roman empire itself. A murder mystery/detective thriller at its heart, Roman Games has the added layer of life in Rome, which makes it unique and quite interesting.

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Fwd: Review Complete: A Pinchbeck Bride

2010-11-05T19:55:00.001-07:00

Perri Applegate has just completed a review of A Pinchbeck Bride.
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Summary

Full Review

Mark Winslow is a history buff, so when he is asked to serve on the board of trustees for Mingo House, he agrees. Mingo House is a time capsule of sorts that preserves the Victorian era. The last heir of the Mingo family donated the house and all of its contents to become a museum. Mark is assigned a young docent, Genevieve Courso, to orient him to the house and its treasures.
Mark likes the off-beat Genevieve and agrees to meet her at Mingo house before a trustees meeting. He discovers the corpse of Genevieve, dressed in Victorian finery and placed on display in the home's dining room. In death, Genevieve becomes a media sensation known as "the Victorian girl."
Mark finds himself investigating Genevieve's life in an attempt to solve her murder. Was she killed by another of the trustees, an unusual group? Was it a spurned lover, or the father of the child the coroner discoversshe was carrying? More murders occur, and the need to find the killer becomes more pressing.
This is a very enjoyable mystery. Lovers of Boston and of history will enjoy this book; however, homophobes should be aware that the narrator and several other primary characters are gay.
Reviewed on Library Thing http://www.librarything.com/work/10500908/book/65403671 and Gargoyle Reads blog http://gargoylereads.blogspot.com/2010/10/pinchbeck-bride-by-stephen-anable.html.

Fwd: Review Complete: Dogs Don't Lie

2010-11-05T19:51:00.001-07:00

Full Review

My review appeared today in the blog Two Little Cavaliers

Full text:

Dogs Don't Lie: A Pru Marlowe Pet Noir Mystery Review

Dogs Don't Lie: A Pru Marlowe Pet Noir Mystery,

by Clea Simon

Poisoned Pen Press, April 2011,

ISBN: 9781590588604 (hardcover), ISBN: 9781590588628 (trade paperback)

Pru Marlowe was nearly through her training as an animal behaviorist in New York City, when she fell ill and discovered that suddenly she could hear what animals were saying to her. She panicked and fled, with her thirteen-year-old tabby cat, Wallis, back to the safety and serenity of her small-town home in the Berkshires—Beauville, Massachusetts.

We meet Pru when she's been home for a while, and has a few dog-walking and dog-training clients, as well as serving as the behaviorist for the local shelter. One fine morning, she arrives at the home of one of her training clients to find that he's dead, with his throat ripped out, and his pit bull, who should have been in her crate until Pru arrived, is loose. To the unknowing eye, it looks as if the pit bull, Lily, killed her master—and that's the conclusion the police leap to.

But Pru knows there are some major problems with this theory. On training days, Charles didn't take Lily out of her crate until Pru arrived. Even if he were to do so for some reason, he never took Lily out of her crate without having her leash in hand, and her leash is not in evidence. Oh, and then there's the little detail that although she and Charles were working on trust issues with Lily, she is not even remotely aggressive. Charles bought her for $100 from a guy in a bar, and Pru knows from Lily that she used to belong to a dogfighter who abused her and then sold her because she wouldn't fight even well enough to be a bait dog. Of course, she can't share that last bit with the police.

So Pru has a problem. She knows Lily is innocent and is determined to save her, but she doesn't want the police to then look at the next-most-convenient suspect, herself. Pru starts investigating, with some help from her demanding, bossy, sarcastic cat, Wallis. Along the way, she learns about Charles's business dealings (he was a software developer, working on an instantaneous voice-translation program), and his handsome, charming business partner, Mack, who was raising money for the venture. She learns about his family—his aging mother, in the early stages of dementia and clinging to her independence, and his fiancée Delia. Delia seems completely warm and sincere when she's talking about Charles's excellent qualities, and yet strangely unlike a grieving lover. Also, her former boyfriend, Chris, seems to be back in her life, immediately after Charles's death.

Lily's too traumatized by what happened to tell her much, but she provides a few vital clues. Pru picks up more from the Animal Control officer's pet ferret, Frank, and one of her dog-walking clients, a bichon whose owner calls him Bitsy and who calls himself Growler, provides an important clue to Charles's character. A Persian name Floyd, a young orange kitten almost as traumatized as Lily, and even assorted humans contribute their bits of information.

Pru is an interesting character, still getting used to her unusual ability, a bit misanthropic, and not totally reconciled to small town life anymore, but still working to blend everything into a workable life. The animals are not overly idealized and they're all individuals, as much as the humans in the story. This is the first of a projected series, and I'll be looking forward to the next one.

Recommended.

Note: I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalleyhttp://netgalley.com/