Title:        Noble Lies
Author:  Charles Benoit
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
ISBN: 978-1590584507
Price: $24.95

 RECOMMENDATION: GOOD READ

 
Reviewed by Theodore Feit

Premise and Originality: 8 out of 10 
Characterization:   8 out of 10 
Dialogue:   8 out of 10
Storyline:   8 out of 10

 
After various adventures in a number of other parts of the world, including having served as a Marine during Desert Storm, Mark Rohr finds himself working as a bouncer in a Thai bar when he is fired for overzealously performing his duties.  But the bar’s owner and bartender, a long-time friend, steers him onto a job assisting a woman who is looking for her brother a year after the tsunami.

The client offers him $500 a week and a $5,000 bonus if he finds the brother, who Mark believes was either lost to the giant wave or doesn’t want to be found.  The quest is complicated by a top gangster who also has a vested interest in finding the brother.  And the race is on along the pirate-infested waters of Thailand and Malaysia.  It is an exciting chase, filled with graphic descriptions of th e devastation brought on by the tsunami, as well as the poverty and corruption in the country.

This novel is the third featuring globe-trotting Rohr, ranging from Singapore and the Raffles Hotel to Casablanca and Cairo, then to India and elsewhere.  In each, he introduces a number of surprises, and Noble Lies is no exception.  This reader c ould not even begin to anticipate how he would bring the novel to such a conclusion.
 

Author:  Penny Rudolph
 Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
 ISBN: 978-1590583463
 Price: $24.95

RECOMMENDATION: GOOD READ

 
Reviewed by Gloria Feit

Rachel Chavez, the protagonist in this new novel by Penny Rudolph, is unusual in at least one respect:  she runs a parking garage she has inherited from her grandfather in downtown LA, one that does not cater to the public but leases space to nearby businesses.  One night she finds a locked van in the garage , inside of which are two young Mexican boys, both unconscious.  When Rachel drives them to the emergency room of a local hospital, she is told that one of the boys is dead and the other severely dehydrated.  When she returns the next day to see how the boy is, she is told there is no record of either boy ever having been there.

Rachel is not the kind of woman to let this rest, and is determined to find out how the boys, or their records, could have simply disappeared.  She wonders if their being Mexican enters into the equation.

Her personal life is in problematical shape, with her ambivalence toward the man to whom she has recently become engaged [being engaged isn’t the problem, but getting married is], trying to get information from her less-than-forthcoming father about her Mexican heritage, and the prospect of losing a major tenant at the garage.  The latter problem is unexpectedly solved when the same local hospital signs a contract to lease over one hundred spaces for its employees as well as use of the helipad located on the roof, in what is seemingly coincidental timing.

The characters in the book are all too human – Rachel is a recovering alcoholic, her father a habitual gambler, with all the attendant problems to which that addiction gives rise.  Rachel’s friends are also very interesting creations: one is a street person, an elderly woman who for some reason has a cell phone, the other the head of a cleaning service who knows—or can find out— much of what there is to know in the neighborhood.  The author has given us a believable, well-plotted mystery peopled with fascinating characters, including a couple of red herrings.  Suspenseful and thoroughly enjoyable, the book is recommended.

Life Blood
By Penny Rudolph
Poisoned Pen Press
September 2007
ISBN: 978-1-59058-346-3
Hardcover, $24.95, 326 pp.
Reviewed by Gloria Feit

Title:  Raven Black
 Author:  Ann Cleeves
 Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
 
ISBN: 9780312359669
 Price: $24.95
 

RECOMMENDATION: EXCELLENT READ

 
Reviewed by Theodore Feit

Premise and Originality: 9 out of 10
Characterization:   9 out of 10
Dialogue:   9 out of 10
Storyline:   9 out of 10
 
Inspector Jimmy Perez makes his debut in this thriller.  He is a quiet, hardworking, introspective detective who transferred to a remote hamlet in the Shetland Islands, off the coast of mainland Scotland, because he felt overwhelmed and washed out in his former post, and looked forward to a restful assignment.  Instead, he finds himself in the midst of a high profile murder.  A beautiful 16-year-old girl is found stra ngled on the moor. And all fingers point to a half-witted man, Magnus Tait, who is believed to have been responsible for the disappearance and presumed murder of a young girl eight years earlier, although no proof was found and no charges filed.  A high-powered team is brought in from the mainland to conduct the investigation.

Perez and the lead detective pursue working the case with an open mind, amassing background on the latest victim, but eventually arrest the unfortunate Tait.  Neither detective is satisfied, but they are at a loss as to how to proceed.  Both persist, however, and Perez finally unlocks the secrets leading to a solution of both murders and possibly to a third that could be prevented if he acts in time.

All during the case, Perez is haunted by his need to make a decision whether to continue as a policeman, or return to his boyhood home and take his place in the family structure, eventually to inherit his father’s job.  He wavers back and forth, coming to no conclusion.  The descriptions of life on the Shetlands and its bleak geography are graphic, even overwhelming, the writing and observations pithy.  Human emotions are recorded with intensity.  It’s a great read, and recommended.

Title: Mothering Mother

A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir
Publisher Kunati Books 
Author: Carol D. O’Dell

ISBN-13: 9781601640031
208 pages, hardcover
$19.95 

Recommendation: MUST READ! 

 

Told in snippets and real-time journals, this is a book that will make almost any mother-loving reader cry. The style is immediate, chatty, and irresistible, the read fast and the book almost impossible to put down. You feel like you know these people. They’re old friends. And this is what will make you want to cry. But you’ll at least be served up an equal dose of laughs. I know it’s not polite, but I just could help laughing at “Mom’s” antics, even when we shouldn’t be laughing. You see, Carol’s mother had Alzheimer’s and Carol’s family brought mom home to live with teenage daughters and family. The scenes are just non-stop hilarity, except when they’re heart-wrenchingly sad. You can’t help but laugh when Carol’s mother stops traffic. You’re not supposed to find her memory lapses funny, but you just find yourself smiling, then laughing. Carol shows us all how to deal with a difficult situation—with equal measures of compassion, laughs and tears. This is one you won’t be able to soon forget.

Title bang BANG
Publisher Kunati Books 

Price $ 19.95
ISBN-13 978-1-60164-000-0
ISBN-10 1601640005

Recommendation MUST READ 

 

Review by Art Tirrell

In Lynn Hoffman’s delicious Bang BANG, what you see is literally what you get. Hoffman’s style is so immediate, so descriptive, the theatre of the mind blazes with images. It’s like watching through the lens of some 16 megapixel digital camera as life clicks off four frames a second.

The cast of characters is special. I love Paula – who wouldn’t – but the rest are wonderfully vivid too. Here’s Manny Cardoso introducing himself:
“…I have become, thanks to a set of circumstances and predilections too bizarre to mention, a man whose ruling passions and personal madness have been stripped away. With the core of my craziness gone, a great deal else is gone too. I find myself almost completely without lusts and cravings.
It would not be too much to say that I barely have preferences. I have a few consistencies, almost enough to give me what may be thought of as a personality, but my most compelling characteristic right now is my almost total emptiness; a blankness that’s not like the desolation of winter but closer to the expectant vacancy of early spring.”

Throw in Harvey Lichtman, the “Urban Ranger”, assistant counsel to the city council whose hobby is malicious gossip and low stakes blackmail; Caterer Connie Battaglia, “…lean and spare, long black hair on skinny shoulders, grace in her spidery arms.”; and Lawyer Daniel Farber, admiring Paula from a distance, and you have the ingredients for a rather special experience. Which brings us to the food. Three words: off the planet. Hoffman’s encyclopedic knowledge and appreciation of food and its accompaniments shines so brightly the rest just had to be extra special too, or be eclipsed. Fortunately for all of us, it is.

Bang BANG is a winner. Be sure not to miss it.

Title Looking Good Dead
 
Author Peter James
Publisher Carroll and Graf
ISBN 0-7867-1880-3
Price $26.95
 

RECOMMENDATION: EXCELLENT READ

 
Reviewed by Gloria Feit
 
The reader is irritatingly [but necessarily] reminded at this outset of this novel of the ubiquity of electronics in our world – incessant cellphone chattering, texting, laptops.  Some of the uglier abilities are made all too clear when Tom Bryce discovers that a CD left behind by a passenger on the train with him, which he picked up with the best of intentions to try to return to its owner, holds what appears to be a snuff film, depicting the brutal stabbing death of a beautiful young woman as she is in the act of undressing. A horrified Bryce is soon warned, through e-mail, not to pursue what he has seen, nor to contact the police, on threat of dire consequences to himself and his family.
 
The action in Looking Good Dead begins the day after the resolution of the crime depicted in Dead Simple, this author’s excellent first book in the Detective Superintendent Roy Grace series.  Grace is immediately plunged into a new murder investigation when a woman’s dismembered torso is discovered where it had been dumped in farmland in a suburb of Brighton, England.  Is it the same woman Tom had earlier witnessed being murdered?  The reader isn’t told [well, not for a while, anyway.]
 
Grace’s thoughts are, of course, still preoccupied with his wife who has been missing without a trace for nearly nine years, and wondering if she is alive or dead, while trying to move on with his life and risk new romantic entanglements, something he has till now resisted [for the most part].  At the same time trying to solve his newest murder case.  As in the earlier novel but in a relatively small way, Grace’s tentative belief in the occult comes into play.
 
The author raises the question: “Do we all have a hidden dark side?”  The suspense in intense, the writing is wonderful – I loved the author’s descriptions, e.g., a tie is described as looking ‘like it had been designed by a colour-blind chimpanzee on crack’ [although I must admit I’m still trying to figure out the hue of eyes described as ‘the colour of sunlight on ice’], and his invoking of one of my favorite lines ever, from Conan Doyle: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’  Looking Good Dead is a wonderful follow-up to a terrific first novel.  [Caveat: Don’t read the flyleaf – Spoiler contained therein.]
 

Title The Alibi Man

Author Tami Hoag
Publisher Bantam
ISBN-10 0553802011
ISBN-13 9780553802016
Price $26.00
 

RECOMMENDATION: EXCELLENT READ

 
Reviewed by Theodore Feit
 
Premise and Originality: 9 out of 10
Characterization:   9 out of 10
Dialogue:   9 out of 10
Storyline:   9 out of 10
 
 
The Alibi Club consists of a group of rich, spoiled polo-playing Palm Beach-ites who
provide cover stories for each other for their transgressions.  One of them is the ex-
fiancée of Elena Estes, against whom she testified in a rape-assault trial years before,
in which her foster father, a rich powerful defense attorney representing the defendant
in the case, made a monkey out of her in securing an acquittal.
 
Against this backdrop, Elena discovers the alligator-mutilated body of Irina, a co-worker at the horse farm at which both were working.  Elena is recovering from two traumatic experiences: first, the death of her partner, when she was a narcotics detective, blame for which is cast upon her; second, a near fatal “accident” in which she was dragged for some distance under a drug dealer’s SUV, skinning and maiming her.  She takes the death of Irina, a vivacious, young, fun-loving Russian immigrant, personally and begins investigating.
 
Complicating the plot is the fact that the lead detective is someone with whom Elena just ended a love relationship.  The lead suspect is the ex-fiancé whom Elena dubs the Alibi Man.  Adding to the plot complexity is a Russian Mafia boss, claiming to be Irina’s uncle, who seeks revenge, and Elena’s foster father, who once again represents the ex-fiancé.
 
A suspenseful tale, with a surprise ending, the author once again has constructed a hard-hitting story with interesting characters and a thrilling plot.  The descriptions of Palm Beach society, the lives of the privileged few, contrasted with the simple life of horse caregivers, and Elena’s efforts to lead a quiet life versus her past and present, create a telling portrait.

Reviewed by Theodore Feit

Title Ladykiller
Author Lawrence Light and Meredith Anthony
Publisher Oceanview Publishing
ISBN 1933515058
Price $23.95
 

RECOMMENDATION: GOOD READ

 
Premise and Originality: 7 out of 10
Characterization:   8 out of 10
Dialogue:   8 out of 10
Storyline:   7 out of 10
 
A bizarre serial killer who stalks the streets of New York in 1991 shooting victims in the right eye terrorizes the city.  The victims are women, except for a male social worker from a West Side office treating disturbed people.  The killer leaves no clues, and the police are stumped.  The pressure mounts and detective Dave Dillon is convinced the murders relate back to the social agency.
 
The husband-and-wife team that wrote this thriller has constructed a title that is eerie, with a twist at the end that blows the mind.  The description of pre-Disney 42nd Street and some of its denizens are insightful and colorful.
  

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Magazine Links

• Kunati Books
• Deadly Prose Magazine, the “authority in fiction.”
• Wise Tarot Magazine
• The Last Trobuadour, a novel described as “brilliance…genuinely innovative… the tarot characters are inspired…” Booklist

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