Category: Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller Page 54 of 154

Born in a Burial Gown

by M. W. Craven
Series: Avison Fluke, #1

Paperback, 331 pg.
Constable, 2020 (revised and updated edition)

Read: March 12-16, 2021

Find out how the victim lived and you’ll find out how they died.

Here We Go Again

You may be asking yourself, is this just another instance of The Irresponsible Reader raving about a book by M. W. Craven? Yup. This is the fourth novel that I’ve read (of the five published to date), and I’m not sure there’s another acceptable response to his books.

What’s Born in a Burial Gown About?

I have no idea if that sentiment about how the victim lived would be shared by actual detectives, but it works pretty well for Detective Inspector Avison Fluke and his team—which is why Fluke keeps repeating it.

In this particular case, a homeless drug-addict sees someone burying a golf bag at the construction site that he’s using as a temporary shelter. He leaves a note for the construction manager and bugs out. When Fluke and the other police arrive, they find a woman in a golf bag, buried in a way that will soon be covered by the construction. If it hadn’t been for the unexpected witness, no one would even know there’d been a body left there.

What’s worse, she has no identification on her. Then during the autopsy, it’s discovered that she’s had major cosmetic surgery to the extent that it’s impossible to know what she really looked like. So, no ID, no reliable way to describe her to anyone who knows her, nothing to tie her to a residence or employer. Before the team can really figure out who killed her, they have to figure out who she was. Put in the terms of Fluke’s motto—they have to find out how she lived to find out who she was so they can find out how she died. No easy task.

Throw in mounting pressures from some of the things in Fluke’s life—and you have a ticking time clock on this beyond the need to close the case quickly. And almost everything they learn about this woman makes the rest of the investigation more difficult.

Meet Avison Fluke

Some detectives tried to keep things impersonal so they could maintain objectivity. For Fluke, it was the opposite. He worked at his best when he made a personal connection with the victim.

She’d been tossed away like garbage, he thought. He could feel the anger building in his stomach.

I assumed going in that I was going to like Fluke, but you never know, do you? Often a new character from an author you love just doesn’t work. But on page 16, Fluke gets a belligerent and grumbling construction manager to stop his ranting and help out by lying to him and saying they could be out of his hair and let construction resume in “maybe an hour.” Right then, I knew that I was going to like this guy.

Like your typical Detective Protagonist, Fluke has issues. Not that long ago, he was undergoing aggressive treatment for a rare form of cancer, which has taken its toll on his health and vigor. Still, he’s back to work (for his own sanity, if nothing else), even if he had to cut a corner or two to get there. The city is on the verge of kicking him out of his freshly-built house because he cut a corner to get it built. He and his Detective Chief Inspector don’t get along and don’t seem to respect each other much. Professional Standards are sniffing around him. Oh, and early on in this book, his girlfriend dumps him.

Okay, that last one isn’t an issue, it’s a blessing, really.

So, what’s on the plus side? He’s smart. He’s determined. He has a team of loyal detectives—whose skills are frequently underestimated. Fluke’s approach to interviewing suspects is pretty interesting, and I wonder how well it works in reality. As a fictional character, Craven has taken all of what I’ve enumerated, a few things I forgot to list, mixed it together, and uses it to fuel his deeply personal need to find the killer—to take that connection that he made and dodge all the obstacles that are thrown at him so he can find a target for that anger. He’s just fun to read, too. Something about the chemical reaction that Craven produces from the mixture of these elements just makes Fluke an entertaining character.

Also, he has heterochromia. Which is an odd thing to give a character. If this were SF or Fantasy, you could pretend that’s a sign of X ability. Or in a visual medium, I could see doing something like that to make an impression. But in print, I’m not sure I see the point, it doesn’t seem to be all that helpful in creating a character. Craven gets some interesting use out of it, so what do I know?

And We Shouldn’t Forget Fluke’s Team

Like any good procedural, the investigative team is vital to get right. Craven does that for sure. There’s DS Towler, Fluke’s right-hand man and close friend—he’s a little on the wild and violent side, but seems to be careful about that and uses it safely. There’s the computer expert who’s on an UK/China exchange program—brilliant and has a very strange hobby. Also, the Ph.D. student working on forensic entomology—who is vital to making a couple of early deductions (you don’t introduce a forensic entomologist and not make them pivotal). And several more, and you get an efficient and effective team—great for police work, and just quirky enough to be great for entertainment.

Throw in Fluke’s doctor and a few other people in his personal life and…it’s a perfectly winning cast.

So, what did I think about Born in a Burial Gown?

‘She was born in a burial gown,’ he said.

He didn’t expand and Fluke didn’t need him to. He was right. It was a term he’d heard once or twice in the Marines, referring to who seemed to have a death wish. Someone who relished doing the things other people were terrified of. They were the first through the door and the last one to take cover. They appeared fearless, even reckless. And maybe they were.

Born in a burial gown seems to apply to many of the characters in this novel, not just the victim. Fluke, certainly; the killer, too; at least one of the suspects seems to fit the bill, too—even Fluke’s task force, collectively speaking, seems to fit this. This quotation comes pretty late in the novel, but once I read it, the ways that this applies to so made the book’s title resonate, and helped me think about the characters and some of their actions.

In case there was much confusion after the first paragraph. I just loved this book. The prose just sings, the novel’s well-paced and cleverly put together. The characters (major and minor), the killer, the motive, the victim, the reveals (both in the way they were handled and what was revealed), the fairly satisfying (by design) ending, the sweet and then very satisfying denouement—and anything else I didn’t mention—it’s all just as good as you could hope for.

I’m clearly just a raving Craven fanboy at this point, so let me just leave it like this—go buy this. Go buy anything you see his name on—you won’t be disappointed. Born in a Burial Gown is my favorite read of the year*, and I bet it’ll rank pretty high for everyone who reads it.

* So far, anyway, it’s early enough in the year that I figure a few new upcoming releases—including Craven’s—will make a case for that spot.

One last note—if you happen to have a contact in the US publishing industry, get him a deal over here, so I don’t have to pay so much for shipping, will you?

5 Stars

Burying the Newspaper Man by Curtis Ippolito: A Young Police Officer’s Past Comes Back to Haunt Him

By HCNewton

On March 16, 2021

In Book Tour, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

Burying The Newspaper Man

by Curtis Ippolito

eARC, 244 pg.
Red Dog Press, 2021

Read: March 10-11, 2021

What’s Burying The Newspaper Man About?

I’m going to lean heavily on the Publisher’s Description here, because this is one of those books that I’m afraid to say anything about. “This is a book about a police officer who finds something that disturbs him. This officer used to be a child and things happened. Now he has to deal with his life.” Just doesn’t sound all that interesting, right?

Marcus Kemp is a beat cop in San Diego who has a knack for discovering stolen cars. The book opens with him discovering his fortieth of the year—a record-setting pace that should crush his previous record. It’s a fairly upbeat opening that should make anyone worried—in this car he discovers a dead body. Decades ago, when he was growing up in Texas, the man in the car trunk repeatedly sexually abused Marcus.

Marcus knows he should inform the detectives who come to the scene that he knows who the victim is, that there’s a tie between them—and that he can possibly point at a motive for the killing. But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he starts an off-the-books investigation of his own into finding the killer. Not to bring the killer to justice, but to help him avoid arrest.

He ends up lying to his lieutenant, abuses his office, breaks I don’t know how many laws (he loses count, too)—putting his career and his freedom at risk—for the opportunity to aid and abet this man’s killer.

A Matter of Focus

In a book that ostensibly is about a cop hunting a murderer, the novel isn’t all that interested in the killer. It’s primarily interested in one of the cops hunting for the killer. The emphasis is on both what happened to Marcus as a child and how he’s dealing with it in the shadow of his abuser’s killer. We get a long look at the events leading up to the abuse—Marcus’s already troubled home life, his friends, and then choices that put him in repeated contact with the abuser.

The other emphasis is what Marcus goes through after finding the body. In the intervening years, he’d stopped thinking about the abuse. But once he recognized the body, he can’t stop thinking about it. He begins to see how so many of his choices are made because of the abuse, what it’s done to the way he thinks, the way he acts, and his relationships now.

This isn’t to say that Marcus’s hunt for the killer is unimportant, but it’s of tertiary importance at best. Thanks to a lucky break or two—scratch that, thanks to Marcus taking advantage of a lucky break or two, it’s a fairly uncomplicated hunt. But that’s the only thing lacking complication in the novel. As Marcus isn’t officially investigating or looking for an arrest, he doesn’t have to adhere to a typical protocol (even the curtailed protocol we let fictional heroes get away with). It’s striking how little we learn about the killer throughout the novel. It’s not a typical choice, but it works really well in these circumstances.

So, what did I think about Burying The Newspaper Man?

This isn’t at all what I expected from the novel. It’s richer, it’s deeper, and better realized than I expected (whether or not that’s fair, it’s true). Yes, there’s a lot of psychological trauma and depictions of Marcus’ trying to cope—but there’s some great action, too.

Aside from that, there are some great descriptions of life in San Diego—you can feel the atmosphere around the beach, in Marcus’s neighborhood. Ippolito gave us enough local character to ground the action—and a little extra, too. There’s even a nice flashback to a San Diego Comic-Con to further establish the setting and show us a non-professional side of Marcus beyond the abuse survivor.

I fear Ippolito rushed through the denouement, it could’ve easily lasted 3-4x as long as it did while holding the audience’s attention. But that’s not the style of Burying the Newspaper Man. Ippolito isn’t about answering all our questions, he focuses on what he thinks is most important, and if you agree with him, all the better.

There are enough “atypical Crime Fiction” elements to this book to appeal to readers that don’t usually touch Crime Fiction. There are enough “typical Crime Fiction” elements to appeal to die-hard fans of the genre. It’s the former that adds depth to this novel that you’re not used to, but that serves to make this more emotionally satisfying, and possibly genre-expanding.

Whichever camp you fall into—Crime Fiction reader or not, I recommend this novel to you—ignore the genre and just enjoy something well done.

4 Stars

My thanks to Red Dog Press for the invitation to participate in this tour and the materials (including a copy of the novella) provided.

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: Burying the Newspaper Man by Curtis Ippolito

By HCNewton

On March 16, 2021

In Book Tour, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

I’m very pleased to welcome the Book Tour for Burying the Newspaper Man by Curtis Ippolito on the novel’s release day. Check back next hour for my take on the novel, but for now, let’s start by learning a little about this book, and then you can go buy a copy, okay?

Book Details:

Book Title: Burying the Newspaper Man by Curtis Ippolito
Publisher: Red Dog Press
Release date: March 16, 2021
Format: Hardcover/Paperback/Ebook
Length: 244 pages

Book Blurb:

A dead body. A dark past. An ordinary man with everything to lose.

Marcus Kemp is a regular beat cop living a normal life in San Diego, California. Until the day he makes a shocking discovery: a dead body in the trunk of a stolen car. Worse, the victim turns out to be the man who abused him as a child.

Marcus instinctively wants to help the killer get away with murder and, disregarding his police oath, will stop at nothing to make it happen. With both his job and freedom in jeopardy, his investigation leads him to an unexpected killer, and Marcus is soon faced with an impossible decision.

Can he finally bury the past before it drags him under?

About the Author:

Curtis Ippolito lives in San Diego, California, with his wife. He is a communications writer for a nonprofit biological research facility. He has previously been a writer in the health care industry and is a former newspaper reporter. Follow him on Twitter @curtis9980.

Purchase Links:

Amazon ~ Red Dog Shop: Paperback ~ Red Dog Shop: Limited Edition Hardcover

My thanks to Red Dog Press for the invitation to participate in this tour and the materials (including a copy of the novel) provided.

The Treadstone Resurrection by Joshua Hood: A Fast Popcorn Thriller Delivers the Action

By HCNewton

On March 12, 2021

In Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

The Treadstone Resurrection

by Joshua Hood
Series: Treadstone, #1

Hardcover, 375 pg.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2020

Read: March 9, 2021

The bullet wound to his shoulder ached like someone was hammering nails through his skin.

Hayes had been here before, wounded, alone, and on the run. Wanting to quit, but unable to, thanks to the mind job the Treadstone docs had done on him. Survival: It was the only thing that mattered.

And revenge the voice reminded him.

What’s The Treadstone Resurrection About?

Not too long ago, Adam Hayes left the black-ops program, Treadstone, and invented a new life for himself as a contractor in Washington. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, but for several reasons, it was the thing he had to do.

But out of the blue, an old friend and colleague sends him an email containing four pictures. The subject line of the email reads “By the time you get this I’ll be dead.” Which, you’ve got to admit, will get your attention. Not only has his friend been killed, but a group of men have tried to kill Hayes twice (and almost succeeded both times).

It turns out that the men who killed his friend found the email and traveled from Venezuala to Washington to keep Hayes from doing anything with the information. It’s safe to say that they underestimated who they were going up against. It’s not every day that operatives find themselves trying to take out someone like a Treadstone assassin.

A combination of training, reflexes, and good friends make survival something he can accomplish. But revenge will take allies old and new; a trip to South America and back; and embracing everything he fought so hard to leave behind.

So, what did I think about The Treadstone Resurrection?

Okay, it takes very little time to have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen in this book—you know that Hayes is going to get his revenge and stop whatever plot his pal told him about. The questions are: how many and which of his allies will survive, how many bad guys will Hayes take out, and which one will be the hardest to kill?* It’s all about execution at this point.

* I was surprised by the answers to 1 and 3, by the way.

And Hood’s execution was pretty good. Without realizing it, I raced through this book in about half the time I’d scheduled for it (and I honestly didn’t realize how quickly I was reading). There’s not a wasted word, the prose is smooth, the action is fast, the pacing is tight, the ammo is plentiful—you just find the pages melting away.

The characterization is pretty thin—but it’s enough. You get enough of an idea about who Adam Hayes is and what makes him tick to work, but not much more. Ditto for the main bad guys. But that’s not what this book is about—it’s about escapist thrills. And it delivers that.

Suspend your disbelief (might be easier to just lock your disbelief in a small room somewhere), sit back, and enjoy.

3 Stars

Cover Blown by Ian Robinson: DI Nash’s Professional Worlds Collide

By HCNewton

On March 10, 2021

In Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

Cover Blown

by Ian Robinson
Series: DI Nash and DS Moretti, #2

Kindle Edition, 185 pg.
The Book Folks, 2021

Read: February 24-25, 2021

What’s Cover Blown About?

Fresh off the events of Latent Damage DI Nash’s team dives into a new murder case. Two women have been murdered in clearly connected events, sadly, that’s the only thing that seems to connect them (well, that and they’re cat owners, but does that count?). Nash and Moretti are quickly stymied by the strange circumstances around the cases.

Meanwhile, Nash is helping out an undercover unit on the side. She’s as disciplined as possible with this, keeping her priority on the homicides, but she occasionally has to step away, leaving Moretti to direct the team’s efforts. At some point (and I’m only saying this because it’s in the publisher’s description), evidence is uncovered that indicates DI Nash had been in communication with both victims.

A Thought About DI Nash

I like Nash—watching her juggle the murder cases and the undercover operation is something you don’t get to see often in procedurals (particularly from someone of her rank). We haven’t (so far) gotten too deep with her and what makes her tick—but I like what we’ve seen so far, she’s an interesting character. Which is all I’m looking for—an interesting and compelling character.

That said, I wouldn’t want her as a boss. She’s mercurial, she seems to manage primarily through threats, and while she’ll come through or her team when the chips are down, it’d be good to see her do that before I got to that stage (she’s also better at looking out for them with outsiders than among themselves).

Basically, I like reading about her but wouldn’t want to work for/with her. There’s part of me that hopes she grows into a better manager as the series progresses—but I also enjoy seeing someone successful and flawed.

So, what did I think about Cover Blown?

While this is the Nash and Moretti series, in the first book, there was a definite emphasis on Moretti. This book focused on Nash—I really hope this balancing act continues (think Lydia Chin/Bill Smith books by S. J. Rozan, but in the third person), it’s a good way to tell the duo’s story (and the team’s) without the perspective becoming stale or allowing one character to take over.

The dialogue issues I had in the first book were either absent or so rare in this installment that they never bugged me—and that goes for some of the other stumbles I thought were made in Latent Damage—it feels like Robinson’s more comfortable in this new voice, this new world, and that’s good news for the reader.

The procedural element of this novel is one of the strengths, the sheer effort involved in making the slightest progress in a murder inquiry is something to behold. With these books, Robinson is blending the murder team, the work of those who handle informants, and an undercover unit, which is another layer of difficulty to portray well, and Robinson nails that. I can’t remember if I talked much about it in the post about the last book, but this team spends a lot of time and effort on avenues that don’t ultimately lead where they want to go. I love seeing that—particularly (and I expect realistically) when they end up turning up other criminal activity.

Good characters, fascinating cases, a couple of exciting moments, and an all-around entertaining novel. I’d encourage you to grab hop on to this series here at the beginning—this is a keeper.

4 Stars

Latent Damage by Ian Robinson: A Compelling Series Debut

By HCNewton

On March 10, 2021

In Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

Latent Damage

by Ian Robinson
Series: DI Nash and DS Moretti, #1

Kindle Edition, 199 pg.
The Book Folks, 2021

Read: February 16-17, 2021

What’s Latent Damage About?

Being awakened at 5 in the morning on a Saturday morning to come to a crime scene is not what DS Nick Moretti had planned. He’s got a vacation—sorry, holiday—coming up in a couple of weeks, and a homicide investigation could derail that. All part of the fun in the Met’s Homicide and Serious Crime Command.

When he arrives at the crime scene, Moretti discovers that the victim is a Muslim man whose throat was cut just across the street from his mosque. Automatically, the assumption is this is some sort of right-wing group acting out Anti-Muslim sentiment.

Moretti’s DI, Pip Nash spent some time in an undercover unit and still has a lot of contacts there—she’s able to use some of them to help once they get a direction to look in, but first they need to get a motive and some suspects.

While they’re still struggling to get some momentum for the investigation, another body shows up—with his throat cut in a similar fashion—this time, however, it’s an Anglican priest who was the victim.

Now, the team has two members of religious communities murdered in December—this is a PR nightmare in the making for the Met. Will these detectives and the rest of their team be able to stop the killer before another corpse shows up?

DI Nash and DS Moretti

DI Pip Nash is career-oriented, by the book type. She knows what she wants out of members of her team and isn’t afraid to demand it. Her background with the UC team adds a fun twist to things, and watching both the informants’ team and the UC team work with the homicide team is a nice change of pace—I’m used to seeing one of these entities at work, watching them cooperate (to whatever degree) is a great way to start a series.

DS Nick Moretti is less career-oriented (it seems), he’s definitely less by the book (he’s lucky if his alarm gets set in the morning). But he seems to do a good job of rallying the troops and putting the pieces of the murder together. His personal life is in an interesting state (although he has one, and it doesn’t seem that Nash does), and seems like it will prove fertile ground for drama in the future.

I’ve seen versions of both of these characters in books here and there—rarely as a team sharing the name of the series. I think watching their dynamic grow and develop over the next few books will prove just as interesting (maybe more so) than the crimes they investigate.

A Couple of Misgivings

So much of the dialogue in this book was awkward—some was even painful. The characters were trying to joke around or banter and it came off as stilted or excessively wordy—and it’s just off-putting. There were also a few instances of “I’m going to explain my job duties as I carry them out, despite the fact that everyone I’m talking to already knows this is my job.” The latter happens a lot with procedurals, so it’s easy to shrug off (even if these were some egregious examples). The former, however, is another matter. These are supposed to be friends or at least close colleagues, banter should feel natural. I’m going to chalk this up to Robigins just getting used to this world, and (if you count the works under his pen name) this is at least his fifth novel, and the first that I know of where practically every character wasn’t lying to everyone they talk to—it’s possible he doesn’t know how to write for people who aren’t deceiving.

So, what did I think about Latent Damage?

One thing that I’ve always really enjoyed about a good police procedural is the procedure. Watching a team go through the steps, grinding away to get the desired result is a pleasure. Sure, the procedure is dramatized, and usually only bears a passing resemblance to reality. But you can generally get a feel for what authors skew toward authenticity (few of these would be U.S.-based procedurals). And that’s pretty much what Robinson gives us—naturally, that’s helped by his years of actual experience. As such, there are investigative paths that go nowhere, and some that lead to unexpected places—and the amount of effort that goes into making small progress is a great realistic touch.

Yes, the ultimate reveals about the way the killer went about things seems a bit on the outlandish side*—but the way the team came up with his identity wasn’t. Nor was his motive, which seemed very grounded in reality.

* not unforgivably so, I’m not reading True Crime here, I don’t want a dramatized police blotter.

This is a solid, entertaining novel with a few stumbles along the way. But I’m recommending it, and am planning on coming back for at least a couple of more installments in this new series. Nash and Moretti are both the kind of characters you could build a series around, put them together and you’ve got a great foundation; the procedural element was well done, and the ending was as satisfying as you could ask for. Also, under his pen name, Robinson has crafted some of the best Crime Writing of the last few years—this series is going to improve, I know it (and even if it stayed at the same level, it’d still be worth coming back for).

3 Stars

COVER REVEAL: Dead in the Water (Stonebridge #2) by Chris McDonald

By HCNewton

On March 1, 2021

In Book Tour, Chris McDonald/Frost, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, The Stonebridge Mysteries

Welcome to The Irresponsible Reader’s part in the Cover Reveal for Chris McDonald’s Dead in the Water! If it doesn’t grab your attention, you should get your eyes checked. But before we get to the cover down below, but before the picture, I’ve got a few words to share about the book.

Book Blurb

The Stonebridge Regatta is looming. The town’s annual face-off against neighbouring Meadowfield is usually a weekend filled with sunshine, laughter and camaraderie.

This year is different.

A week before the race, the body of Stonebridge team captain Matthew Henderson is found dead in the water. The police file his passing as a tragic accident however, his grieving widow disagrees and suspects foul play is involved. She enlists the help of Adam and Colin, the town’s amateur (self-proclaimed) private detectives to unearth the truth.

Did Matthew simply slip and fall into the water, or is there more to his death below the surface?

Date of publication: March 27, 2021

About the Author

Originally hailing from the north coast of Northern Ireland and now residing in South Manchester, Chris McDonald has always been a reader. At primary school, The Hardy Boys inspired his love of adventure before his reading world was opened up by Chuck Palahniuk and the gritty world of crime. A Wash of Black is his first attempt at writing a book. He came up with the initial idea whilst feeding his baby in the middle of the night, which may not be the best thing to admit, considering the content. He is a fan of 5-a-side football, heavy metal and dogs. Whispers in the Dark is the second installment in the DI Erika Piper series, and Chris is currently working on his latest series, The Stonebridge Mysteries, published by Red Dog Press in 2021.

And now…

The Cover

Dead in the Water
The cover designers at Red Dog have done it again.

Again, this book comes out on March 27th, but you can pre-order this now at: Red Dog Press or Amazon (but you should absolutely order from Red Dog directly, the Bezos retirement fund is big enough, help out the publisher).

My thanks to Red Dog Press for the invitation to participate in this reveal and the materials they provided.

The Friday 56 for 2/26/21: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

By HCNewton

On February 26, 2021

In Currently Reading, News/Misc., Quotations, The Friday 56, The Thursday Murder Club

This is a weekly bloghop hosted by Freda’s Voice

RULES:
The Friday 56 Grab a book, any book.
Turn to Page 56 or 56% on your ereader. If you have to improvise, that is okay.
Find a snippet, short and sweet.
Post it

from page 56 of:
The Thursday Murder Club

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

DCI Chris Hudson has been given a file on Tony Curran so thick it makes a pleasing thud if you drop it on a desk. Which is what he has just done.

Chris takes a swig of Diet Coke. He sometimes worries he is addicted to it. He had once read a headline about Diet Coke that was so worrying he had chosen not to read the article.

He opens the file. Most of Tony Curran’s dealings with Kent Police were from before Chris’s time in Fairhaven. Charges for assault in his twenties, minor drug convictions, dangerous driving, dangerous dog, possession of an illegal weapon. A tax disc misdemeanor. Public urination.

Then comes the real story.

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman: Well, I Know What I Want My Retirement to Look Like

By HCNewton

On February 24, 2021

In Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller, The Thursday Murder Club

The Thursday Murder Club

by Richard Osman
Series: Thursday Murder Club, #1

Hardcover, 351 pg.
Pamela Dorman Books, 2020

Read: February 22-23, 2021
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

“So, we were all witnesses to a murder,” says Elizabeth. “Which, needless to say, is wonderful.”

What’s The Thursday Murder Club About?

Britain’s first seventh “Luxury Retirement Village,” Coopers Chase is built on the remains of a Roman Catholic convent. On Thursdays, the Jigsaw Room is booked for “Japanese Opera: A Discussion,” during the two-hour slot between Art History and Conversational French. This isn’t actually what happens then, but it’s a great way to dissuade people from dropping in.

What actually happens is that a group of four residents get together to look over cold cases and see if they can make any progress with them. One of the group’s founders was a detective in the Kent Police, and it’s her cases they started going through. When necessary, or when the opportunity presented itself, they’d bring in various experts to consult. Shortly before the book opens, they’d had a change in membership, the former detective’s health had put her in the hospital ward, and when they’d asked a retired nurse for some input, she’d been curious enough to attend the meetings.

At that point, the roster consisted of a socialist activist of some renown, a retired therapist, and a well…we’re never told precisely what Elizabeth did, but The Official Secrets Act and a lot of foreign travel was involved.

Then one of the owners of Coopers Chase, the man who did the actual building, is murdered. Suddenly, they’re not that worried about cold cases, when they have a current case to help the police with (whether the police want/need their help isn’t a consideration).

How the Story is Told

Primarily, the book is told from a variety of third-person perspectives—focusing on most of the Club, a police constable, a Detective Chief Inspector, and others involved in Coopers Chase. It’s a great way to tell this story, you get to know all the characters, see everything going on, and get a real feel for this world. But what makes this better—what helps the reader get into this world, is the retired nurse, Joyce. As she gets into the Club as a whole, and especially as she becomes friends with Elizabeth (in less charitable moments, you might say she’s becoming Elizabeth’s sidekick—and I’m not certain Joyce would mind that), she starts keeping an electronic diary, and Osmund will insert an entry between chapters as a way of breaking up the text and helping the reader to focus on certain elements of the third-person narration.

Through this diary we see her joy in finding something to do, in making friends, in pursuing a romance, in skirting trouble with the police. It’s not really clear how involved Joyce was in the overall Coopers Chase community until this case, but this gives her a spark and opens new worlds and possibilities for her, and it’s heart-warming (at least) to read the progression of this. I will say, in bed with limited light, the typeface that is used for her diary entries (at least in the American Hardcover) wasn’t that easy for me to read—but it was absolutely worth the effort.

Initially, that’s all I wanted to talk about, but I realized the other way to interpret “how” could use some discussion. Osman writes with warmth, gentle humor, heart, and charm. Joyce’s diaries are delightful and the this-person narration is close to that, too. This is a book of dark things—murder, secrets, depravity, scandal, declining health, dementia, grief, loneliness, and death are everywhere. But there’s also community, friendship, and hope—and those latter three so characterize the book that the darkness seems surmountable and something you can be carried through because of the warmth and community. It’s hard to pull that off while being honest about the human condition—but Osman pulls it off with aplomb.

A Pond’s Worth of Red Herrings

I don’t remember the last time I read a mystery novel so full of red herrings—in terms of clues or viable suspects. I loved that—sure, some were easy to spot as being a red herring. But more than once I had to admit to myself that Osman had fooled me.

I love a smart mystery, one that makes me think, one that tricks me (without cheating too much), one that surprises me—and that’s exactly what we get here.

So Many Confessions

Part Two of the novel is called, “Everyone Here Has a Story to Tell,” and man, is that descriptive. There are, by the time all is said and done, several criminals in this book—and some people who aren’t criminals, yet carry a terrible weight of guilt (both deserved and not). And we get all of their stories—sometimes through the narration, but largely from their own dialogue. Secrets are laid bare—primarily for the Club and the reader, but some for a larger audience. Not all of them help anyone get closer to the killer (killers?)—but they all help tell the story.

Some confess because they’ve been waiting for the opportunity (as well as dreading it), some because they’ve been forced into it, some because it just doesn’t matter anymore. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter why they do it, only that they do.

So, what did I think about The Thursday Murder Club?

It is this kind of thing that keeps me reading Crime Fiction—as much as I might read police procedurals and PI (or PI adjacent) novels by the handful, you give me a clever assortment of characters doing interesting things and getting results from a combination of work and smarts and I’m in hog heaven.

A moment ago, I mentioned the title of Part Two. Part One is called, “Meet New People and Try New Things.” For Joyce and Donna (the Police Constable), that’s plainly what this book holds—Donna’s first homicide case and something that puts a spring in Joyce’s step and a twinkle in her eye. But it’s actually true for just about all the characters, and who doesn’t like the idea of a group of septuagenarians (give or take a couple of years) having new experiences to try?

On the off-chance my mother reads this in the next couple of days, I’m going to spoil her birthday and tell her that this is going to be waiting for her on her e-reader. I mention this publicly to illustrate how much I like this book—while I still had over one hundred pages to go, I was already planning on getting it for her (unless the ending was a mess).

A smart mystery, told well, with characters that are just as smart and well-told. I can’t think of a thing about this novel I didn’t like—it was touching, amusing, honest about the circumstances that these characters found themselves in, but life-affirming, too. There’s a lot of profundity mixed in with the amusement—and a clever mystery, to boot! This is not one to pass up.

5 Stars

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.

Pub Day Repost: Smoke by Joe Ide: What Happens When Isaiah Quintabe Leaves LA?

By HCNewton

On February 23, 2021

In Fiction, IQ/Isaiah Quintabe, Joe Ide, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

Smoke

by Joe Ide
Series: IQ</a, #5

eARC, 336 pg.
Mulholland Books, 2021

Read: February 8-12, 2021
Grab a copy from your local indie bookstore!

Not that any of the previous IQ novels have been cookie cutters of the rest, but this really feels less like an IQ novel than I was ready for. In fact, it felt* like this was more of a Juanell Dodson novel for most of it. When Isaiah left town at the end of Hi Five, he left his friends behind. But their problems didn’t leave with him, they all have to step up and take care of things now without him. But the way they go about taking care of these problems is heavily influenced by Isaiah—he might not be playing an active role in most of the storylines in this book, but this is still his book.

* Yes, I said “felt like,” I could be wrong. This isn’t the kind of blog where you’re going to find me doing word counts to prove things like this.

The LA Stories

Grace is trying to get over Isaiah and focus on her art. She’s got a show coming up and needs to get some more paintings ready—that’s all that matters.

But while she and Isaiah know they’re over—most people don’t (and some of those who do know, believe it’s temporary). When someone that Isaiah helped put away gets back to town and is looking for a little payback, he only hears that Grace is Isaiah’s girl. Which puts her right in the cross-hairs.

Deronda’s life is going great—she’s getting some media attention for her success (which is only serving to build that success), her food trucks are doing great, and her son is fantastic (just ask Deronda, she’ll tell you). But then someone comes along to help himself to a share of that success and uses Janeel as his tool. Deronda goes nuclear and tries everything she can think of to stop this.

Grace tries to help—and gets one of Isaiah’s former clients involved, too. And even Dodson gets in on it. There’s nothing about what they try or the solutions they come up with that Isaiah would have done. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’d have seen some of the problems with her theories and stopped Deronda before she tried to act on them. But for fear of repeating myself, without Isaiah’s influence on the three of them, none of them would’ve tried anything like they did.

Cherise has had enough of Dodson’s bouncing around from opportunity to opportunity, trying to make some money, but with no stability. He needs to grow up and get a real job, and to help with that, she’s arranged for an internship at a local advertising agency. Dodson isn’t interested at all in this, but she’s not negotiating.

So he shows up for the first day, and something clicks. He thinks about the way Isaiah had approached goals in his life and applies it in his way to this situation. It wasn’t quite a “What Would Isaiah Do?” thing, more of a “How Would Isaiah Do This?”

Now there is zero percent of the Dodson storyline that is Crime Fiction. It’s about character development, character growth—it’s a transition point for Dodson. Yet this is my favorite part of this Crime Novel. Because it’s Dodson going through all this. Also, as Dodson pops up in their storylines to help Grace and Deronda, he gets plenty of Crime Fiction action.

There’s a fun part of this storyline where Dodson, who started as Isaiah’s Dr. John Watson, now becomes an Eliza Doolittle figure. Cherise’s mother, Gloria, who tries to equip him into someone who could make it in the Corporate World. On the one hand, I felt bad for poor Dodson—this wasn’t easy for him—but man, it was funny. We also got Dodson’s commentary on Pop Music and TV—which is not to be missed.

The LA stories interweave, Grace helps Dodson, Dodson helps Grace, Dodson chips in with Deronda…and so on. IQ is mentioned, he’s talked about and he even converses with some of them—but not about the challenges they’re dealing with (and vice versa) in this novel. He’s as removed from their stories as possible. Yet, without him, without his influence in their lives—none of this would’ve happened. So it absolutely was still part of an IQ novel, even if it was for all intents and purposes IQ free.

Isaiah’s Story

Isaiah’s trying to be IQ-free, too. He’s pulled up stakes to get away from the enemies he made in Hi-Five, and away from everything else, too. He’s decided he wants a new life. He wants nothing to do with the violence, the depravity, the danger that has so characterized the last few years of his life.

Which, of course, means that despite his best efforts—and really by dumb chance—he’s brought into a hunt for a serial killer by one of the least likely, least credible people we’ve encountered in this series.

While I did say this felt like Dodson’s book most of the time, at one point the Isaiah/Serial Killer story took over—and we see heroism and depravity on display (not quite in equal parts, but we get an excess of both). As much as Isaiah has said he wants away from this life—when the chips are down, he finds a way to try to stop another murder, at great risk to himself.

The final confrontation can be seen as darkly comic or as intensely human and maybe even realistic to an extent you don’t usually see. There’s a visceral desperation to it—everyone involved seems to believe on some level that they’re doomed, but they press on anyway. It’s harrowing really.

So, what did I think about Smoke?

This really feels like a transition novel—probably for the series as a whole, and definitely for all these characters. In a book or two, it’ll be easier to see (not that it’s difficult now) exactly what role this is going to play in things, but choices are made, steps are taken that insure wherever Isaiah ends up, he’s going to be a different man than he was in Hi-Five, ditto for everyone else. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing where Dodson is. Hopefully, he’s still going in the direction he started to move in here.

But that’s for 2023. What about the 2021 novel? While Ide seemed to be writing with an eye to the 2022 and 2023 novels, he also produces a fine read in Smoke. There are a lot of balls in the air, a lot of Point of View characters (those we know and those we only meet here). There are blasts from the past and new characters that we could be seeing in the future.

And while we get some very strong resolution to just about everything in the novel, there’s a cliffhanger at the end that makes it difficult for me to say most of what I want to say. It’s a complete novel, this isn’t just a book that you read so that you have to read the next. But I tell you what, when you finish you want that next IQ novel now.

I think it says a lot about the kind of world that Ide has created that his main character can only show up in 50±% of a novel/its stories and the novel to still be as strong as any of the others. The series isn’t about Isaiah (and other characters) now. It’s about Isaiah, Grace, Dodson, and Deronda—and their families, no matter what the series is called. I love that evolution, that development.

I think existing fans will find their enthusiasm for this series rewarded. I think new readers are going to want to grab the earlier novels to fill in how the characters got to where they are. Either way, people who pick up Smoke are in for a treat.

Disclaimer: I received this eARC from Mulholland Books via NetGalley in exchange for this post—thanks to both for this.

4 Stars

This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, opinions are my own.