Category: Fiction Page 196 of 346

Pub Day Repost: Circle of the Moon by Faith Hunter: PsyLED Fights its Biggest and Most Dangerous Foe and Troubles from Within

On February 26, 2019

In Faith Hunter, Fiction, Jane Yellowrock/Soulwood, Urban Fantasy

Time to wrap up our Tour Stop for this book — I hope you’ve enjoyed it half as much as I have. I get a little long-winded below, sorry — but when I like a book as much as I did this one, it happens.

Circle of the Moon

by Faith Hunter
Series: Soulwood, #4

eARC, 400 pg.
ACE, 2019
Read: February 6 – 8, 2019

I’m going to have to talk about the events at the end of the previous book, Flame in the Dark, a little bit. If you haven’t read that — sorry. You may want to use the time you were about to spend on this post to purchase that/get it from your library instead.

So, with any of these Soulwood books there are three main threads to follow: 1. The PsyLED case(s) and storylines associated with the team; 2. The developments with God’s Cloud of Glory Church and Nell’s family; 3. Nell’s personal evolution as in independent woman and her supernatural development. These will all intertwine and effect each other — particularly the private lives of the PsyLED team and Nell’s own development. I want to touch on all these briefly to give you a good idea what to expect with this book.

Let’s start with God’s Cloud of Glory, which gets a lot less ink than we’re used to. But when they show up, it counts. It’s unclear how much of the church is really in favor of the changes occurring within it — it’s probably not as uniform as I’d been thinking. Which makes sense, any reformation is slow and complicated — and won’t be a straight line of progress, humans are messier than that. Whether this group will actually stumble into orthodoxy is hard to say, and it’ll definitely take years. We get to see a little of the pushback to the reforms here, but it’s nothing severe. I expect in a book or two, something will happen because of what we see in this book. The Vampire Tree on the Church’s land takes a different role in this book than we’ve grown accustomed to — and it’s probably the most important and intriguing development having to do with the Church in Circle of the Moon (possibly the most important in the book as a whole, too — time will tell).

We do learn some interesting things about Nell’s family and how they acted before Jane Yellowrock and the feds upended everything, too. I shouldn’t forget that…

As far as Nell goes, it’s been just a few weeks since she stopped being a tree and started being a human-ish person again. As you can see from the excerpt I posted earlier, things are going well for Nell and Occam, and things are moving quickly on the Mud coming to live with Nell front. But both are bringing their share of challenges for Nell. Her life is definitely not looking anything like what she’d envisioned and the changes aren’t easy for her — she mentions at one point her mixed feelings about coming into the twenty-first century. As much as she relishes some of these changes, none of them are easy.

Nell is forced to confront and re-evaluate her ideas about love, commitment, what it means to be in a romantic relationship. So much of her thinking is still that of a “churchwoman” as she’d put it. She knows other women, other men, don’t think of things in those terms and while she’s rejected her upbringing, she hasn’t yet replaced everything she wants to (she probably hasn’t even figured out everything she wants to change).Occam is the best person for her to be involved with right now (the cynic in me wants to say that he’s too perfect, but I like him too much to listen to my inner cynic) — his patience, kindness and understanding are what’s going to help her the most now.

I’m not gong to say anything else about Mud — but I’m a fan. I don’t think Hunter hit a false note with her character or any scene she was in. Mud’s a great character and knows exactly what she wants in this life (at least for now) and what she needs to do to get it. Primarily that involves manipulating and/or convincing her sister to do a few things — and Mud’s an expert at both of those.

As far a Nell and her powers go? Just wow. If you think the tree thing in the last book was revolutionary, just wait. There’s nothing as cataclysmic this time (thankfully — I’m not sure we readers could take it), but the implications of some of what Nell does in this book that aren’t yet known or seen, and the reverberations from them will be felt for a while.

So that brings us to PsyLED. Rick LaFleur wakes up in the middle of a very strange witch circle with no idea how he got there. He’d been called there somehow — as his cat. There’s a dead cat near and Nell picks up traces of vampires in the circle, too. Clearly, black magic is involved — but how and why, no one knows. It doesn’t take long before there are other circles being discovered — new and made in recent weeks. Rick and some of Ming’s vampires alike being called to them. Either of those happenings would be concerning — but the combination of them is mysterious and troubling. Also, why is Rick being called and nothing happening to the team’s other werecat? The questions and mysteries pile up quickly.

Some trouble in Knoxville law enforcement doesn’t help, either. Supernatural crimes/events — things like strange witch circles — aren’t being reported to PsyLED as they ought to be. The FBI and one particular agent (the witch that Nell met last time) are hovering on the fringes of the investigation in a way that speaks of more than mild curiosity. Changes and upheaval in the local vampire government — Ming of Glass is now a MOC, for example — feeds into some of the confusion.

It’s one of those situations where the more Nell and the team learn, the less they know. Everything points to big trouble, they just can’t figure out what kind of trouble — or even its source. Rick is going to have to explain a lot about things he’s previously been reluctant to discuss, for starters. And still, they may not figure out what kind of black magic is involved — and why — before it’s too late to save innocent/not-so-innocent lives.

This is the best PsyLED story this series has yet given us. Nell running off on her own isn’t going to crack this, solid procedure, a real team effort and some quick thinking (and a few lucky breaks) are the key to things working out. It’s probably the most exciting story, too. There’s a lot of action, there are more guns fired in this book by law enforcement than possibly in the first three books combined. Lainey and her magic, JoJo’s computer wizardry (legitimate and less than), Occam’s cat and trigger finger, Tandy’s abilities, plus Nell’s abilities (including offensive capabilities we haven’t previously seen) are going to have to work more in general and in combination with each other than they have in the series so far just to keep the team in the game — but for them to actually close this case and get some answers, they’re going to need extra help. I loved this part of the book and want to keep talking about it, but I’m going to hold back. I’ve often wondered if the team wasn’t wasting time in the past — not this time. Everything clicked for me with this story and I couldn’t be happier about the whole thing.

I’m pretty sure that I can’t say anything about the people behind the circles without ruining something. There’s some real evil afoot, I tell you what. There’s also a damaged soul (well, a few of them), some well-intentioned moves in the past that result in trauma and worse in the present, a mixture of aligned entities that don’t necessarily have the same ends in mind. You combine those things and you get a lot of damage, heartbreak, and death being dealt. Not only is this the best PsyLED story, it’s got the most compelling opponent(s) for the team yet.

I know that Rick has his detractors going back to early on in the Yellowrock books up until his involvement in this series. I haven’t checked as much as I should have to see if some of them have come around to him or not. I’ve never been as anti-Rick as others have been, but he’s never been a character I liked. As soon as he and Jane split, I would’ve been content to never think of him again — but Hunter had other ideas. I liked him in this role, but I’ve always preferred everyone else on the team (except Paka), and really hoped he’d be in the background for some time. Yeah, well, that’s absolutely not the case in this book. I won’t say that this book wholly rehabilitates the character for me — and I can’t imagine that the extreme anti-Rick contingent will be satisfied. But, I will say that it’ll be hard for people to not soften their opinion of him after this book. Hunter did a lot of good to his character in this book. For people who liked Rick and/or were positively-inclined toward him? You’re going to love this book.

Tandy does a couple of things in this book that intrigued me. Nell’s not the only paranormal on this team whose powers are developing in ways that may prove troubling. I wonder if it’s a coincidence that these two (and maybe others?) are changing, or if there’s another explanation — they’re changing each other, one is changing the other while they evolve themselves — or is there an outside party up to something? It’s also possible I’m reading too much into things.

This is largely an aside for people who are Yellowrock fans. Throughout this book, we brush up against Jane Yellowrock and what happened in Dark Queen, which seems to have happened while Nell was a tree (I think Dark Queen started about the same time as Flame in the Dark, but DQ ended a lot sooner than FitD), and Nell’s not really up on what’s going on with her friend yet. She knows a couple of the bullet points, but doesn’t really have the full picture. According to FaithHunter.net’s Reading Order, this novel actually happens after the next Jane Yellowrock novel. So, we’re about as confused as Nell is. Now, does this impact any of the interaction Nell, JoJo and the rest have with Jane, Alex or any of the vampires in Tennessee? No. But man, it makes me even more curious about what happens after Dark Queen — I didn’t think I could be more curious about that than I was, but man…this book has really intensified all that for me.

Okay, back to Circle of the Moon. I’ve given the first three books in the series 4 1/2 Stars each. I think this time I have to give in and toss that missing half star to the rating. The PsyLED story was great, we didn’t get bogged down in the Church/cult business too much, Mud just made me smile, and while I’m not comfortable with every choice Nell made in her personal and professional life (and a couple of the choices worry me long-term) — I like the fact that she’s making them. I can’t think of a single problem with this book, it satisfied every fan-impulse/desire I had, was a step up from previous installments in many ways, and told a solid and complete story that still drives the reader to want more. I can’t imagine a Hunter fan not liking this book — and it’s the kind of book that should get her some new readers, too.

Disclaimer: I received this eARC from Berkley Publishing Group via NetGalley in exchange for this post — thanks to both for this. My opinions remain my own and are the honest reactions of this particular reader.

—–

5 Stars

My thanks to Let’s Talk Promotions for the invitation to participate in this tour and the materials (including the book via NetGalley) they provided.

A Burdizzo For A Prince by Mark Rapacz: A Vengeance Tale with a Lot of Personality

By HCNewton

On February 26, 2019

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

A Burdizzo For A Prince

by Mark Rapacz

Kindle Edition, 332 pg.
Fahrenheit Press, 2017

Read: February 21 – 23, 2019

“Spit it out,” I said. I was hoping for an apology, or something. Not every day your best friend is pretty sure he wasn’t going to kill you, which means he was equally as sure he was going to–I think. Semantics were never my strong suit, but when speaking the language of death, these things matter.

J. J. was having a perfectly okay day–he was out getting some supplies for the week, walking around the small Midwestern town he was calling home, when his childhood best friend arrives without pomp or circumstance. This was not a happy reunion–the reason they hadn’t seen each other for years because J.J. was on the run from the Jersey crime family they both worked and killed for; and Jackie’s presence meant that J.J.’s hiding spot was blown and that Jackie had been sent to kill him. So much for that good day.

Not really a spoiler: Jackie doesn’t kill him, or the book would’ve been much shorter than it is. Instead, he aligns himself with his old friend and partner to survive. Almost immediately, it becomes clear that their former boss has expected Jackie to not follow through on things and sent in a ringer to clean up. It’s not long at all before J.J. has to abandon the home he’d made for himself, the life he was on the verge of building and a woman he might love (or not like terribly much–it’s one of those things), to voyage down the Mississippi with Jackie and a couple of allies.

Shortly after that, this stops being a story about a couple of hitmen trying to retire and becomes a tale of vengeance and blood. Lots of blood.

Rapacz has a dynamite style — it’s slick, it’s fast, it’s full of black humor. And despite some distaste I had for J.J. and his personal life and vocabulary, I really got into it. As Jules Winnfield reminds us, “Personality goes a long way,” and this novel has personality by the bucket.

Somewhere along the trek down the The Big Muddy, I think you can argue that Rapacz let his style run away with him and parts of the book become too much. At the same time, some of the best moments of the novel — not just stylistically, but plot and character-wise, are in the middle of this excess. So what do I know?

I didn’t end up liking it as much as I started off liking it — and that might be me, it might be Rapacz, maybe a bit of both. There were some real surprises, some moments of head scratching, and some great tension — and a fight scene or two that will burn themselves into your mind’s eye for at least a week. Which, given the fact that the title is about a castration device, is about what you should expect, right?

A Burdizzo For A Prince might not be your cup of tea — or you’ll love it — but you won’t forget this anytime soon.

—–

3 Stars

Fahrenbruary Repost: The Death Pictures by Simon Hall: A Solid Sequel featuring a Procedural and a Puzzle

By HCNewton

On February 25, 2019

In 2018 Indie-Fever Challenge, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

Man, I hope there are more of these on the way from Fahrenheit…fun books.
—

The Death Pictures

by Simon Hall
Series: The TV Detective, #2

Kindle Edition, 282 pg.
Fahrenheit Press, 2018
Read: July 10 – 11, 2018
So here we are a few months after the events of The TV Detective, and while Dan Groves, TV reporter, and DCI Adam Breen aren’t working together any more, their friendship has grown and both of the careers are improving from their collaboration. So when there’s a serial rapist on the loose — one who made a point of leaving a calling card at the crime scenes to get public attention — both of their bosses are interested in them renewing their partnership (even if no one ever gets to hear about his calling card).

Around the same time, there’s a famous artist dying of cancer who is using his impending death as a launching pad for a contest of sorts — it raises money for charity, and raises his public profile a bit, too (not that it needed much). Dan has been tapped by his producer and the artist’s wife to help with the final part of the contest, and to do his final interview — most to be aired upon his death. This is so far from the rape case that it seems odd to spend time on it — until the artist dies under mysterious circumstances. A murder inquiry into a celebrity’s death obviously gets the police’s and public’s attention — although it’s really seen as more of a distraction from protecting women who are prospective targets of the rapist by Adam and his team. For the most part at this point, Adam and Dan tackle the murder investigation and his team handle the rapes, and Dan pretty much only covers the case as a reporter (with an inside track, of course), but not as an investigator.

Arrests are made pretty early on in both cases — it’s in the aftermath of the murder investigation and the contest that the latter part of the novel focuses on. The puzzle’s solution is clever, but the reader can see it coming (we do have a little more information than all the characters), but that only adds to the sense of drama leading up to the Reveal. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Dan through this story — both his official work as a reporter or with the police and his unofficial personal obsession with the puzzle.

As for the rape story? I don’t mean to sound cold, but there was something very cookie-cutter about the motivation and perpetrator. Horrible, yes; disturbing, yes, but nothing that hasn’t been on Law & Order: SVU an estimated 3,709 times — I’m not saying badly written or boring, just something I’ve seen before. But when Adam gets him in the interview room and he starts laying out his defense? That was utterly chilling. As I write this, I imagine the accused’s approach is not completely novel in Crime Fiction, but man . . . the way that Hall depicts this guy? Chilling.

Dan’s frequent work on the contest is reminiscent of his search for the Ted Hughes Memorial in The TV Detective, but is obviously tied more closely to the plot of this novel. I don’t recall another series doing something like this in book after book — I hope Hall continues it.

There’s something that happened to Dan in the past that was alluded to in the previous book and is talked around a good deal here. We’re not going to get more details on that in Book 3 (I bet), but I expect to see it wreak havoc on Dan’s life and various relationships soon. Similarly, there’s something that happens in this book to Adam — that will possibly do worse pretty soon. Both of these guys are ticking psychological bombs.

I have one gripe: the formatting. There are occasional — maybe even rare — white space breaks between sections of the story, but by and large they are conspicuously absent. Which is problematic when the perspective changes from character to character — what’s worse is when the perspective change introduces an entirely new character and you don’t know how this new name connects with anything. It honestly only caused a real problem for me once, but was frequently annoying.

I should stress when your complaint about a book has to do with Kindle layout (who knows what the paperback looks like), there’s a lot that’s working pretty well.

The Death Pictures is a solidly entertaining mystery novel that recaptures a lot of the high points of its predecessor, but isn’t just a repeat of it. This series has legs, that’s obvious, and I look forward to returning to it to see what happens next.

—–

3.5 Stars

Fahrenbruary Repost: The TV Detective by Simon Hall: A Murder. A Reporter. A Police Detective. Maybe the beginning of a beautiful friendship

By HCNewton

On February 25, 2019

In 2018 First Reads Challenge, 2018 Indie-Fever Challenge, Book Tour, Fiction, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

Meet Dan Groves, a good reporter with a good dog. Which is enough reason to read the book, but there are others, too, as I was happy to discover.

The TV Detective

by Simon Hall
Series: The TV Detective, #1
Kindle Edition, 290 pg.
Fahrenheit Press, 2018
Read: May 16 – 17, 2018

The first interview with a witness.

Or, as Breen had put it, ‘Initially a witness, anyway.’

‘Meaning?’ Dan asked, as they walked down the stairs from the MIR.

‘It’s remarkable how quickly a witness can become a suspect in this business.’

All it needed was a musical sting to emphasise the drama of the detective’s words. Dan was beginning to suspect his new colleague was a frustrated actor. He certainly enjoyed a little theatre.

Dan deposited the thought safely in his mental bank. It might just be useful.

Carter Ross, I. M. Fletcher, Annie Seymour, and Jack McEvoy are my favorite reporters who happen to find themselves in the middle of criminal investigations (“find themselves” is typically code for throw themselves into, slip past the all the blockades surrounding, etc.) — I think Dan Groves has added himself to the list. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Dan Groves is a TV Reporter for Wessex Tonight, covering environmental news. With the Christmas holiday rapidly approaching, he’s forced to help cover the latest in a string of attacks on prostitutes. He and his cameraman/friend Nigel are found taking a less-than by-the-book approach to getting a colleague of the latest victim on camera (really, Nigel didn’t do anything — but he didn’t stop Dan, either). The story they aired was good, but their tactics were reported — between his editor’s need, his skill, and his editor’s fresh material for leverage — Dan’s taken off the Environment beat and made the program’s new crime reporter.

The problem is, he knows nothing about reporting on Crimes. And demonstrates it with a facepalm-worthy performance at his first crime scene (a murder, of course) after getting this assignment. So he pitches this idea to his editor, who in turn runs it by the local police. The police haven’t been looking good to the (and in the) press lately, Dan needs a crash course in detective work — so why doesn’t he shadow the investigation, giving the police some good coverage and PR while he learns on the job from the best around. DCI Breen — and (the underused) DS Suzanne Stewart — aren’t crazy about this idea, but they aren’t really in a position to argue with the brass, so they bring him on. Tolerating his presence largely at the beginning, but gradually finding ways to use him.

This is one of those cases that the police would probably be okay with not solving — at least most of the police. Edward Bray was in Real Estate — he owned many buildings, treated his tenants horribly and evicted them when he could find a way to make more money off of the land/building. He was heartless, notorious, and had an enemies list worthy of a, well, an unscrupulous land-owner. Yet, he also gave generously to a local hospice — so generously that many people had a reflexive notion to commend him while they suffered cognitive dissonance between his perceived nature as a shark, and his obvious and selfless good work with the hospice center. The list of suspects is long — former tenants, an employee, competitors he profited from and ruined, his own father — and the head of the hospice center who chafed under his authoritative hand.

So there’s the setup — a pretty good hook, I have to say. It’s an interesting pairing — Castle-ish, but not as goofy. I could totally buy this without suspending a whole lot of disbelief. The reactions of the other police officers help ground this. So who are the investigators?

First is Dan Groves — he seems to be a decent reporter, we’re told repeatedly that he has a history of looking out for the little guy in his news stories. He’s into the outdoors, hiking and whatnot. He’s very single and has been for some time — there’s a hint of something significant in his past that put him there, but we don’t get into that in this book. I’ve never read about a reporter not wanting the crime beat — it’s the most interesting, right? I just didn’t get his rationale for quite a while. But by the time we’ve heard about a few of his past stories, I guess I could see it (and have to admit that Environmental News sounds pretty dull, but wouldn’t have to be in the right hands). Lastly, Dan has a German Shepherd named Rutherford, who seems like a great dog. This speaks volumes for him.

DCI Adam Breen is your typical driven detective — stern, unbending (at first, anyway), not that crazy about the unusual staffing on his inquiry. He has a flair for the dramatic (as noted above — but it’s worse), seems to spend more time and money on clothing than most (somewhere, Jerry Edgar is fist pumping the idea that he’s not alone). We eventually get to know a little about him outside the job — and it seems to go well with the character we’ve met. He seems like the kind of detective most police departments could use more of. Breen will warm to Groves (and vice versa) and will find ways to use his strengths, as Groves finds ways to flex them.

DS Suzanne Stewart, on the other hand, is little more than a name and a presence. Hall needs to find a way to use her character in the future or drop her. This character is the biggest problem with the book. Not an insurmountable one, or one that greatly detracts from the book, but still. I get that Hall’s priority was establishing the relationship between Groves and Breen — and he nailed that. But he could’ve given us more of Stewart along the way. We could also use a little more development with Nigel and Dan’s editor, Lizzie — but I honestly didn’t notice how underused they were. Stewart stuck out to me.

Hall does a really good job of balancing the murder inquiry and dealing with the characters outside of the case — Breen off-duty, Dan’s blossoming personal life, another story or two that Dan works on. The suspects are well-developed and interesting — and there are times that you could totally buy all of them (well, maybe all but one) as the actual perpetrator. That’s really hard to pull off, many writers will start off with a long list of suspects and really only have one or two that you can believe being the killer after one conversation. They all have similar but individualized reasons to want Bray dead. Most of them also have strong alibis, because you don’t want this to be easy. The solution to the case is clever — and better yet, the way that Groves and Breen have to work together to get the solution proven is well executed.

Hall’s writing is confident and well-paced. He knows how to use characters and plot to strengthen each other. There are occasional turns of phrase that will really make the day of readers. I have a lot of “oh, that’s nice” notes throughout the book. This is a solid start to a series — the kind that makes me want to read more. I’m looking forward to finding out a little more about Dan’s history as well as seeing the relationship between he and DCI Breen grow and change (and be challenged, I assume). Good stuff.

—–

4 Stars

The Murder Quadrille by Fidelis Morgan: A Clever, Well-Plotted, Fiasco of Crime

By HCNewton

On February 25, 2019

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

The Murder Quadrille

by Fidelis Morgan

Kindle Edition, 461 pg.
Fahrenheit Press, 2016

Read: February 18 – 19, 2019

Halfway through the dinner party Sarah Beaumont decided that she would definitely leave Martin, her husband of ten years.

As the thought blossomed in her mind she blushed. Bowing her head to hide her flushed cheeks, she toyed with the peas on her plate, chasing one behind a piece of sautéed potato before stabbing it with her fork. To tell the truth, she wished she wasn’t there at all, sitting round the table with a bunch of jabbering strangers, one of whom was Martin.

That’s pretty much the high point of the book for Sarah and Martin. Come to think of it, things go downhill for pretty much everyone at the dinner party. Before the meal is even complete, the wheels come off and disaster ensues.

In addition to Sarah and her jerk of a husband, the dinner party is made up of Martin’s friend/lawyer and his girlfriend, Martin’s bank manager (probably Sarah’s, too, but Martin’s the only one he deals with), and their temporary neighbor — a crime writer from the States. Naturally, they spend the bulk of the meal discussing a missing — and presumed dead — librarian. We get to spend time with each of them as we watch things fall apart. I’m pretty sure almost anything I say beyond this point will be a spoiler, and I’ve written and re-written the next sentence a dozen times (and what will be posted will be none of those).

You know those episodes of Frasier where there’s a misunderstanding of some sort, and things start to go wrong, and then things snowball out of control until the last couple of minutes when it all seems to get worse as he explains everything? Yeah, I know, that’s like 47% of the episodes. So you know what I’m saying.

This is a lot like that — but instead of Frasier’s career, or Niles’ reputation, or the fate of Martin’s chair; we’re dealing with life, death, murder charges, police and decomposition rates.

It’s gripping, it’s funny, it’s chaotic, it’s a riot. Morgan’s got a great style, an interesting vocabulary, and a plot that will keep you guessing. I probably shouldn’t have said chaotic — this is a carefully choreographed dance, as flashy and exciting as the best contender at the Jackrabbit Slim’s Twist Contest (or something less fun, like Dancing with the Stars).

There’s one big string left dangling at the end — which drives me crazy. It’s really not important, but she did such a great job tieing up the rest of the loose strings so it’s presence is worse. But given as fun as the rest of the book is, it’s totally forgivable. This one is a treat, you should give it a read. And if you do, maybe you can do a better job of selling this outrageous novel than I can.

—–

3.5 Stars

August by Jim Lusby: This troubled cop mystery just didn’t work for me

By HCNewton

On February 25, 2019

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

Technically, I read is as part of Fahrenbruary, but think I’ll skip the tagging and linking for obvious reasons.
—

August

by Jim Lusby

Kindle Edition, 226 pg.
Fahrenheit Press, 2018
Read: February 19 – 20, 2019

It’s time for another round of, I don’t care enough about this to make too much effort, so here’s the Publisher’s blurb: (I’ve got to come up with a shorter name for that)

Detective Sergeant Jack Mason’s search for an escaped convict is derailed by the discovery of the bodies of three teenagers in the crypt of a deconsecrated church.

Initially the case looks to be straightforward – teenage drug experimentation gone wrong, ending in a tragic double murder and suicide.

Tragic but no great mystery.

Some hope. Much to Mason’s annoyance any chance of a quick resolution become a distant hope when evidence of occult rituals are uncovered at the murder scene.

Jack Mason has no choice but to follow the case wherever it leads. As a result he finds himself embroiled in the dark underside of modern Irish society where the establishment closes ranks to ignore the spectre of institutional child abuse, where organised crime gangs operate an increasingly violent drug trade, and where populist politicians build their reputations whipping up hysteria over immigration.

As the complicated case unfolds, deeply buried memories from Mason’s past begin to resurface causing the competing demands of the investigation and his increasingly chaotic personal life to become almost overwhelming.

If the first 60% or so of the book had been as good as the last 40 I’d probably be raving about August, but I just could not connect in any way with the story, Mason or the other characters until that point — and somewhere around there it felt like the book changed and became interested in the crime, and the way that Mason’s past, the city’s elite, the crime and various gangs intersected.

But before then we got this strange combination of a new partner — with a mysterious past that’s totally unexplained (but hey, he knows a lot about occult rituals in the area), a looming threat from the regional police bureaucracy, and Mason’s self-destructive (and very unbelievable) lifestyle dominating the narrative. Maybe, maybe all of this works for other readers, but to me it felt coming in media res without ever getting the context explained to me. There’s far too much about what happened in the book that I don’t understand for me to recommend the book.

But the last part of the book redeemed the effort, and I found it compelling, so I can’t completely give a bad review to this.

—–

2 1/2 Stars

Fahrenbruary Repost: Briefly Maiden by Jacqueline Chadwick

By HCNewton

On February 22, 2019

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

Briefly Maiden

by Jacqueline Chadwick
Series: Ali Dalglish, #2

Kindle Edition, 317 pg.
Fahrenheit Press, 2017
Read: November 30 – December 1, 2017

Vancouver Island’s Integrated Major Incident Squad has been called out again, and Ali Dalglish is brought along to consult — she’s official now, after the success of the case in In the Still, she got her credentials transferred to her new country. So she can help Inspector Rey Cuzzocrea with his profile of the murderer and get paid for it (which is probably useful after the recent disintegration of her marriage).

There’s a series of murders (not a serial killer, technically) in the perfectly pleasant little city of Cedar River (at least for most of the residents). They’re gruesome, clearly motivated by anger, with a sexual component. Ali and Cuzzocrea quickly note evidence of a pedophilia ring associated with the deaths. Which adds a level of complexity and tragedy to the crime — and makes it difficult to care much about the victims. While no one on the VIIMIS wants to help the killer with their campaign, they want to catch her(?) to help her recover from what they think must’ve happened to her(?). The obstacles standing in their way are not the typical or expected kind, and make this difficult case even more difficult.

As before, Ali is brilliant — not just when it comes to criminology, she’s just smart — she’s witty, she’s a font of trivia, and has a vocabulary that you just want to bask in (and borrow!). [Note: I’m not referring to her “blue”/”adult”/”4-letter” vocabulary, which is enough to put off some readers] Her emotional life is a mess, she’s in a slightly better place after the breakup of her marriage, but not that much. There’s some decent character growth at work here, too. She’s just such a great character I don’t think I can do her justice here.

It would have been very easy to make this a story about Ali, the brilliant psychologist helping out a bunch of cops who are fairly clueless (yet high-ranking and successful). But Chadwick doesn’t do that. The members of the Squad are capable — more than capable — and while they needed the perspective and expertise brought by Ali, there’s a good chance they’d have eventually put a lot of the pieces together on their own. For example, Superintendent Shaw would be easy to depict as a stuffed-shirt, unimaginative, by-the-book, and blind to anything that isn’t obvious — and most writers would depict him that way (I can’t help but think of Irwin Maurice Fletcher’s editor, Frank Jaffe, frequently when Shaw shows up) — but at one point he actually puts things together that no one else on the Squad did (most readers will be faster than him, but we have better information). Ali’s not blind to this either — yeah, she has an ego about her own expertise, but she is ready (if not always eager) to acknowledge when her teammates do good to work.

There were a few mis-steps, but when you’re doing so much right, you can afford a few of those. The one that I don’t understand is how little her friend/neighbor, Marlene, was used. Yes, her contribution was essential, but if Marlene had stayed home, Chadwick could’ve found another way to get those results. If you’re going to bring her along — use her. Her brief appearances were fun or pivotal, but there just weren’t enough.

I’ve spent some time over the last week trying to describe Chadwick’s writing style, because it’s so specific and so original. At one point, I decided that “aggressive” was the best adjective — it’s in-your-face, it grabs you by the scruff of your neck and shoves your nose into the text, daring you to even consider your Real Life responsibilities (family, eating, work, etc.) so it can smack the back of your head like Leroy Gibbs. But it’s also inviting, enticing, so you’re sucked in and love it — you want to wallow in the experience, desperate to find out what happens while not wanting to walk away from reading book for the foreseeable future. She’s entertaining and fun while writing about some of the most depraved and horrible things you’ve ever read — while never making the depravity or horror into anything other than evil and wrong.

Briefly Maiden is not a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts — but when the sum of its parts is so great, it can seem to be. If it was just Ali’s acerbic brilliance and skewed (skewering?) sensibilities pushing this story, it’d be something I’d tell you to read. Chadwick’s style is something to behold, no matter the subject. If it was just the heart-breaking and horrifying crime story, I’d give this a high commendation. If it was just for the inevitable but shocking conclusion, I’d say this was well worth your time and money. If it was just Ali’s vocabulary, you’d be smarter for having read it (I learned a few terms/words, and I bet you will, too). You put all that together, plus a few other points I should’ve made and didn’t (for whatever reason), and Briefly Maiden is one of the most effective (and affective) novels I’ve read this year. Stop reading this and go grab it — and In the Still, if you haven’t read that yet.

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5 Stars

Fahrenbruary Repost: In The Still by Jacqueline Chadwick

By HCNewton

On February 22, 2019

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

If Fahrenheit Press had done nothing other than bringing Ali Dalglish into my life, they’d rank amongst my favorite publishers. If there’s a female protagonist I like more than her, I can’t think of it (except that one lady whose name rhymes with Schmane Schmair).
—

In The Still

by Jacqueline Chadwick
Series: Ali Dalglish, #1

Kindle Edition, 422 pg.
Fahrenheit Press, 2017

Read: July 8 – 11, 2017

Maybe the easiest way to describe this book is to say that I had to stay up so late finishing — because there was no way I was putting it down — that I fell asleep the next night writing up a post about it.

When I’d just started this book, I tried to describe it to my wife and this is what I came up with (and still think it works): Imagine Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, but instead of a delightful novel about a genius architect with zero social skills who leaves her profession to raise her child in Seattle, where she has no friends, no life outside of her house and an antagonistic relationship with her neighbors; this is a delightful novel about a genius forensic psychologist with zero social skills who leaves her profession to raise her children in a small town in Vancouver, BC, where she has no friends, no life outside of her house and an antagonistic relationship with her neighbors — and there’s a serial killer.

Yeah, that’s glib and shallow — but it’s kinda true.

Ali Dalglish is our genius former psychologist, she’s enjoying an early morning cigarette when the woman she’s been annoyed by and has antagonized for months shows up at her back porch needing to use her phone. Marlene’s dog has just found a body on the beach, and she doesn’t carry a cell phone. Ali hands her the phone and takes off to try to secure the scene — a good move, as it turns out, because the local police aren’t up to it. They don’t even take her name and address, much less a statement, before they send her home. Ali has already seen enough to conclude that this was no accident or a death by natural causes. This was murder. But the only one that hears her is Marlene.

Neither woman is inspired to confidence by what they see from the local police, and although police with more experience in this sort of thing are on their way, the two decide to investigate the murder on their own. Probably not the wisest choice they could make, but it’s an entertaining one. After a quick glance at the victim, Ali puts together a pretty thorough profile of the killer, and she knows this isn’t his first kill. The two ladies play amateur sleuths, nosing around their suspect pool’s houses and setting up opportunities to observe them. The specialists agree with their suspect lists and profile — even if they take longer to compile them than Ali. They’re also able to confirm many of her theories. Which only emboldens Ali and Marlene to keep at it — even as they brush up against reckless and dangerous plans (although they have some very safe ones, too).

When the book starts, Ali and Marlene can’t stand each other; but events conspire to keep them together, and before either realize it, a friendship is forged — one that I love, the interplay between the two is just fantastic. There’s sort of a Felix/Oscar-vibe between the two, just intensified. Ali also strikes up a friendship/mutual admiration society with one of the investigators that will probably progress interestingly as it continues. In the shadow of the murder, Ali is able to get out of her house and integrate a little with her town in a way she hadn’t found possible before.

Now, there is a dark side to this novel, there is a serial killer running around, after all. Ali’s profile of him is on the mark, we never get as much detail about what makes him tick as other writers give — and I’m fine with that. I wouldn’t have minded a little more, but what we got was good enough. Chadwick stayed on the right side of exploitative writing about the victims and their deaths. We got enough to see that he was a monster, but there’s no relishing in the suffering. There’s one scene where a stranger accidentally finds his way into the dungeon the killer keeps his victims in. This is such a good scene, it’s so powerful and the details are just perfect. What happens to this poor guy, on the other hand . . . On the whole, there’s not much in this part of the novel that we haven’t seen before (really, aren’t most serial killer stories pretty similar?), but it’s the way that Chadwick tells the story that sets it apart from the rest and elevates it.

There’s a great red herring. Dealt with in a way that almost no one else in crime fiction does. The police pretty much know he’s a red herring, but they have to spend the time to investigate him so they can write him off. This was done so well — don’t get me wrong, I don’t enjoy that character, I really didn’t like reading one particular scene with him. But what he does to the overall plot was great — even once he stops being a red herring, he still has a pivotal role to play.

For a first novel, this is put together really well. I was worried in the first few pages, because it was overwritten in a really off-putting way — thankfully, I realized it was because we opened with the killer’s POV. I’m not sure why it is that so many fictional serial killers are written that way, but it works. There were moments where we weren’t reading his POV that Chadwick dipped her toe into overwriting, but it was never too much, and after a few chapters it went away (or I got used to it). That aside, the plotting is brisk, the characters are alive, the humor is real and unforced, the pacing is great — I really can’t say enough good things about it.

I don’t remember ever having as much fun, being so entertained by a serial killer story — not for a second did this become some sort of feel-good romp, don’t misunderstand me. The horror is real, the stakes are high, but there’s a humanity running through this that I just fell under the spell of. There are two more books in this series coming out in the next few months, and you can believe I’ll be jumping on them.

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4 1/2 Stars

Broken Dreams by Nick Quantrill: Meet Joe Geraghty, PI

By HCNewton

On February 22, 2019

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

Broken Dreams

by Nick Quantrill
Series: Joe Geraghty, #1

Kindle Edition, 236 pg.
Fahrenheit Press, 2018
Read: February 20 – 21, 2018

Wow. This is how you introduce a P.I. Joe Geraghty starts this book with the police looking at him for the murder of woman. There wasn’t a lot of reason for him to be suspected — I mean, sure, he’d spent a lot of time hanging out around her house lately and he has only the flimsiest of alibis for the time she was killed in her home. His defense is that his firm was investigating her on behalf of her employer, and that he was being mugged by some teenagers when she was killed. Although they hadn’t been looking into her for very long, Joe and his partner had already found enough to want to dig into her further — and now Joe’s even more interested in the case, if only to make sure he doesn’t get put in the frame if the police get desperate for an arrest.

Step one is completing their investigation of the woman and the situation at her employers. Step two is figuring out the husband’s involvement. And then there’s a dive into other possibilities. It’s not long before Joe is beat up, repeatedly. There’s some back and forth with the police — and a lot of the other mainstays of PI fiction. I’m not suggesting the book is unoriginal at all — Quantrill hits all the right notes, and the murder investigation goes just like it should. There are plenty of turns and revelations for Joe to deal with — all of which end up painting a picture that looks far different from anything expected by the reader or any character at the beginning of the novel.

At the same time, they are visited by a woman dying of cancer. Her daughter had vanished 10 years earlier and she wants to find her and try to patch things up while there’s still time. She doesn’t have a lot of money to spend, but it seems like the kind of case that could make the detectives feel better about things than their typical fare — so they take the case. There’s not a lot of danger or suspense involved with this one — it’s mostly interviewing people, catching a break or two and a lot of hope that they’re not looking for a corpse. The missing woman — and her family — hadn’t had a very nice or easy life, and Joe uncovers a lot of ugliness along the way. But there’s some hope, too.

Joe was an athlete who had a brush with success before being sidelined by an injury and having to start over without any real tools or options. His business partner/mentor pulled him away from that life and helped train and establish him as a PI — if only to take over the business. Don hovers in the background of the novel, coming out to give advice (not always taken) and help connect Joe with sources of information. Hopefully we see more of him in action in future novels. Recently, Don’s daughter, Sarah, has come on board mostly as office support — but has moved into some investigative roles, as well. She’s a single mom, and much more practical than Joe — she’s primarily involved in the search for the missing woman, and Joe and Don work both cases, with Joe doing the majority of the legwork (and receiving all the beatings and threatenings).

Because individuals in both cases are from the same part of town, there’s some overlap in the investigations — but this isn’t one of those books where seemingly unrelated cases are really tied together. The two do inform each other a little bit, however, and Quantrill weaves them together well. It’s not a fast-paced novel, but the writing is so smooth that it might as well be, it’s very easy to find that multiple chapters have gone by without you noticing the passage of time, and once this story gets its claws into you, it won’t let go. The murder case is complex without getting complicated, and the motives behind everyone’s actions make a whole lot of sense.

There’s a very Lincoln Perry/Joe Pritchard feel to the relationship between Joe and Don, for those that remember Michael Koryta’s debut series. It’s not the same series, but there’s a very similar feel to the dynamic between the veteran with all the connections and the younger, less experienced detective with a troubled and oft-misspent youth. Throwing Don’s daughter (and granddaughter) into the mix changes the dynamic, too. Watching these three interact is almost enough, if the cases they were working were uneventful, I’d probably stick around.

There’s something going on with Don that I’m a little uneasy about, and am very curious about seeing what Quantrill gives us in the next few books. As well as a looming romantic entanglement for JOe — that could be a very sweet story, or a giant disaster (possibly a combination of the two — I might be holding out hope for option 3). But mostly, I’m looking forward to seeing how the events of this novel affect Joe moving forward — I don’t see how they can’t.

While writing this, it occurred to me that most of the mystery novels I’ve read lately have featured at least one law enforcement officer, which is a pretty big change for me. A few years ago, I’d have to think long and hard to come up with a law enforcement protagonists. So getting into a new PI is a very pleasant change of pace. The fact that it’s a good PI novel is just icing on the cake. This was a great ride, and I can assure you that you’ll be seeing me talk about the next two novels in the series pretty soon, I really want to spend more time with these characters and I bet you will, too.

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4 Stars

A Few (more) Quick Questions With…Duncan MacMaster

By HCNewton

On February 21, 2019

In A Few Quick Questions With..., Duncan MacMaster, Kirby Baxter, Mystery/Detective Fiction/Crime Fiction/Thriller

So, a couple of days ago, I re-ran the first batch of answers that MacMaster was kind enough to give. He f̶o̶o̶l̶i̶s̶h̶l̶y̶ generously agreed to answer some more questions for Fahrenbruary, which enabled me to focus more on the Kirby Baxter books. Hope you enjoy his answers as much as I did. There is gold below, folks (maybe a little dross, too, but mostly gold)

Tell us about your background and road to publication.

Small town 80s kid, film school survivor, who spent an awfully long time doing crappy jobs and collecting rejection letter horror stories. I had written A Mint-Conditioned Corpse quite some time before it was published. Quite a few years in fact, and it was rejected by dozens of agents and publishers over those years. One publisher had said they liked it, but another book set at a comic convention hadn’t done well, so they were rejecting mine, even though it was a different genre.

For a long time it gathered digital dust in my computer’s files. Then I encountered Chris McVeigh and Fahrenheit Press on twitter. They started following me before I submitted to them, and then they participated in an open call on twitter for book pitches. I pitched them Mint, they and another publisher expressed interest. I sent a copy to both, and about a week later Chris emailed me, telling me that he was halfway through, and asked if I had any plans for a sequel. I said yes, and a day or so later he finished reading Mint and invited me to join the Fahrenheit family. Since then I’ve published two Kirby Baxter mysteries, Mint, and Video Killed the Radio Star, and a stand-alone thriller called Hack, all with Fahrenheit.

I’ve made no secret that I’ve become a giant Kirby Baxter fan — it took a whole 8% of the first book to make me one — where did Kirby come from?

Thanks for enjoying Baxter and his gang. As for his origins, it was mostly from frustration. I have a notebook in a box somewhere that contains a very rough outline for what was then called “Drawn To Death,” and it is a wildly different story. That version was more of a broad farce. In this version my lead character was a “comic book guy” stereotype. An overweight, obnoxious, socially awkward, all-together unpleasant character.

I looked it over, and it annoyed me. Because it was all just lame exaggerated situations and jokes built around that negative “comic book guy” stereotype. I didn’t want to build a book around negatives like that.

I then decided to start all over again from scratch. (Something I do quite often with projects) I decided to show that there’s more positives to geek culture than that guy you see on The Simpsons.

So I created Kirby Baxter.

I named Kirby Baxter in honour of Jack Kirby, and the Baxter Building from the Fantastic Four. I made him thin, geeky, charming, but in a slightly awkward way. Then I decided that he would need complete freedom of travel, so I made him accidentally rich. Then I realized that he needed some brawn to accompany his brain, as well as allies he could talk to, so I created Gustav, Molly, and then his pal Mitch. I also realized that it’s not easy for an amateur to butt in on a criminal investigation, so I made up Baxter’s status as a part-time “special consultant” for Interpol, which gives him some privileges, as well as many responsibilities.

The only thing I kept from that original outline was the setting of a comic convention, and “Dick Wilco” as the name of a reclusive comics legend who mentored Baxter.

Mitch is a very fun character (and I hope to see him again soon, hint, hint) — but I can easily see where he’d become “too much” and step over the line from “amusing comic relief” to “annoying secondary character” — how do you approach that kind of character? How do you keep him from becoming annoying?

Mitch acts as the Id to Baxter who is a very rational and sober character. Mitch blurts out the things Baxter will never say, make the mistakes Baxter would never make, and it’s a serious risk for someone like Mitch to go from being comic relief to a real pain in the butt.

One way to avoid that is to limit his appearances. Mitch is mentioned, but does not appear in Video Killed the Radio Star, but his role as the id of the story is taken up by a new character named Shelley Flugen. She’s a celebrity gossip blogger, and latches herself onto Baxter’s team in hopes of landing a big scoop.

While Shelley played a similar role to Mitch in her relationship with Baxter, she’s a very different person from Mitch. Where Mitch sees himself as a trickster, Shelley sees herself as a journalist and an investigator in her own right. Which leads to different situations and a totally different kind of comic relief.

Mitch will return, but it’s best to keep him in controlled doses.

I’ve often heard that writers, or artists in general, will forget hundreds of positive reviews but always remember the negative — what’s the worst thing that someone’s said about one of your books, and has it altered your approach to future books?

I’m not trying to brag, but I don’t really get many bad reviews. The worst thing that was said, was that someone described my book as “wordy.” Which is odd, because I tend to be pretty ruthless when it comes to cutting out needless words.

I try to avoid that sort of trollish negativity, because it’s just not worth it to let them run your life. If they don’t like you, or your work, they’re not your audience.

Last time, you said something about “a more experimental project examining male archetypes in crime fiction and the concept of the unreliable narrator.” Can you update us on that? Is there anything else your readers should be watching for?

My project about male archetypes and unreliable narrators is on the back burner right now, because when you write what I call a “puzzle box” story with multiple narrators, all contradicting each other, either by ignorance, or design, it can overwhelm you, and in this case another project jumped out and tackled me with incredible immediacy.

Right now I’m putting together a potential third Baxter novel that was inspired by recent documentaries that caused a lot of buzz on social media. This material is so ripe for satire, and for homicide. It was just too perfect for Baxter to pass up, and I have to act fast to capture that immediacy, that freshness. Strike while the iron is hot, so to speak.

As this Q&A is inspired by Fahrenbruary, I figure I should give you another opportunity to say something nice about your publisher and the culture around it. Or heck, go full punk and say something horrible about them.

The most horrible thing I could say about Fahrenheit is that not enough people buy Fahrenheit books. Seriously, they are a publisher who has something for everyone, the sort of diversity and variety you just won’t find with most of the big publishers.

Get out there and buy Fahrenheit books. Not just mine, but they’re a good way to start, but check out the whole catalogue. You will find something to love.

Was that punk enough for you?

Thanks for your time, Mr. MacMaster — and thanks for the great reads, I can’t wait to see what you have in store.