Tag: mystery

Book Review: There Is Only One Win Who Matters

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Win is a pretty good thriller written by Harlan Coben and features a character usually seen in the Myron Bolitar novels. Winston Horne Lockwood III gets to tell his own story here. He is the extremely wealthy, hedonistic financial consultant with a knack for avenging the misdeeds and abuses committed by others. He is charming, yet ruthless. He has few friends but has had many lovers.

Win is met by FBI agents who take him to an apartment which is occupied by a corpse. He does not know that dead man, but he does recognize a rare painting and a suitcase that were stolen from his family home a couple of decades previously. His cousin was also abducted and assaulted around that time, and the perpetrators were never found. Win starts his own investigation which brings him to a confrontation with family secrets and a notorious incident of domestic terrorism which is also connected to his missing heirlooms. He does have a hefty fortune to help him unearth these secrets, but he also has a unique disinterest in playing by the rules. Win’s search for long overdue justice gets the attention of those whose ruthlessness and desperation may cause him to face his own mortality in ways that may surprise even him.

Win is kind of an antihero one would hope to have in their corner in the most dangerous of times. It’s a pretty good mystery with q few unexpected twists. Win operates in a pretty fascinating level of society. I liked the way Coben threads two or three seemingly unrelated atrocities together.

Win’s almost constant crowing about his wealth and how much he enjoys the advantages is refreshing and terribly amusing.

Coben is a consistent and solid writing talent. Coben does expose a depth in Win that seems so rarely glimpsed when he is alongside Myron. I like Myron well enough, but I am glad that Coben resisted the temptation to include him in some kind of literary cameo.

I also think that writing this in first person was a good choice made by the author.

It’s a good read, and I wouldn’t mind another novel told from Win’s perspective.

The unending literary journey brings me to Louise Penny’s Still Life.

Book Review: A Forbidden Romance And An Even More Forbidden Murder

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

A Right to Die by Rex Stout is a mystery featuring Nero Wolfe and is apparently some attempt to address the civil rights movement going on when this novel was published in 1964.

A black man firsts visits Wolfe and his assistant, Archie Goodwin, to ask for help in looking into a white woman who has become engaged to his son. Wolfe and Paul Whipple had met once before, and that chance encounter made an impression on Whipple. When Wolfe decides to see what he could come up with, the young women is brutally murdered, and the young man is on the hook. Wolfe is convinced that Dunbar Whipple is innocent, and he has no shortage of suspects to investigate as he attempts to make sure that true justice prevails.

This isn’t one of the more memorable entries into the Nero Wolfe series, but it isn’t bad. The plot doesn’t get overshadowed by the cultural issues that serves as the backdrop. Wolfe’s lack of racial animosity seems more of a matter of practicality more than any real sympathy or sentiment.

There is still the familiar humor stemming from Archie and Wolfe sort of bickering, which is one of the draws for me to this series. This series is a somewhat unique because the narrator and assistant to the lead detective isn’t really in awe of his deductive abilities and is willing to give him a hard time when his ego seems to be getting a bit too inflated. Archie also has the street smarts and charm to gather the information Wolfe needs to hit upon the correct answer to these problems that come to their door.

Even if this particular novel failed to make an impression with me, the series as a whole is one that I would recommend for mystery readers with a sense of nostalgia. Rex Stout is dubbed as “the grand master of detection” on the cover. I don’t know about that, but it’s still pretty fun to indulge in the exploits of the brilliant, pompous Nero Wolfe, and his snarky, debonair assistant, Archie Goodwin.

In my next literary indulgence, the sidekick gets the spotlight. Windsor Horne Lockwood III is the ruthless, yet loyal friend to Harlan Coben’s creation, Myron Bolitar. This time, he has his own story to tell, simply entitled Win.

Book Review: Lew Archer Takes The Case

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

The Archer Files provided me with a welcome introduction to an author I had not read before. This is apparently the definitive collection of short stories by Ross MacDonald that feature his best-known private eye character, Lew Archer.

There are several stories and other material in this volume, so I don’t have the time and patience to analyze each entry. I will just merely recommend for any mystery fans to try this volume out.

There is a rather helpful and interesting biographical profile of Archer written by Tom Nolan, who edits and reviews crime fiction and apparently has done a thorough account of MacDonald in the past. I guess he is one of these experts in crime fiction. He seems to be a pretty good writer in his own right. I had no real issues with his introduction.

There are a dozen short stories that follow. Some are better than others, as one would expect, however none stand out as being really bad. Archer himself is pretty typical of other fictional, hard-boiled, protagonists of the era of the early Cold War days and the subsequent decades. He is does have a cool blend of toughness and intelligence. Archer is no slouch when it comes to his knowledge of literature and culture, but he’s certainly no push-over. He is a likable enough hero, and I will likely peruse a novel or two before long.

A somewhat more intriguing feature of this volume is a section known as the Case Notes. These are stories that MacDonald started and either just not finished or recycled the ideas into other works. It was interesting and a little annoying t the same time in that there were several stories that I was really wanting to know the resolution.

I am not sure that Ross MacDonald really broke much new ground in the genre at the time of his publications, but I can certainly see how he earned whatever acclaim he enjoyed during his lifetime. MacDonald died in 1983, and his real name was Kenneth Miller.

MacDonald certainly was not lacking in his writing talent. From what little research I did, it does seem that MacDonald has held in quite high esteem in the world of crime fiction, and as near as I can tell from my so far limited exposure to his works, that reverence from his peer seems pretty justified.

I am moving on to another highly regarded, long-standing crime writer who is still very much alive and quite prolific. It has been a couple of years, but I think it’s time to revisit Easy Rawlins as he gets himself into a bit more trouble with A Red Death by the formidable Walter Mosley.

Book Review: Myron Nets A Killer

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Drop Shot by Harlan Coben is a pretty engaging and straight-forward murder mystery featuring that sleuthing sports agent, Myron Bolitar. It was first published in 1996 and is the second novel in the series with Bolitar as the protagonist.

Bolitar is representing a rising star in the realm of professional tennis when another former player is gunned down just outside a stadium where an important match was being played. Bolitar had missed a recent message from this young woman named Valerie Simpson, who was wanting some assistance to return to competitive tennis. She is murdered with a few yards of where Myron was seated watching his client dominate the court alongside his mysterious and dangerous best friend, Windsor Horne Lockwood III, known as Win. Win is described by a belligerent police detective as a psycho yuppie. Win has no discernible conscience or sense of mercy when crossed. He is a financial guru and enjoys the finer things in life, but he is capable of the most brutal forms of vengeance when he or Myron is threatened.

Anyway, Bolitar finds himself drawn to the investigation of Valerie’s murder when he learns that he has a talent for investigation. He has a small but successful business as a sports agent, but he has an eclectic, small group of allies and a nose for trouble.

Bolitar is an interesting and likable protagonist, but Win is the most fascinating of sidekicks. Their friendship also seems unlikely in many ways, but sometimes relationships are like that.

Bolitar’s sense of integrity when representing his clients seems a little too good to be true, but I liked Coben’s optimism in his description. I hope there are sports agent who actually care about their clients’ well-being in real life.

The murder of Valerie Simpson seems to have some roots tied to another murder six years before that concerned the con of United States senator. Bolitar finds himself coming across mob bosses, a corrupt senator, and a troublesome detective in his pursuit of the truth.

Coben planted some pretty well thought out red herrings in the plot. Although it is fairly easy to tell how early this novel is in Coben’s now lengthy writing career, it is still quite engaging. There is little about Coben’s writing style that seems uncommon among his peers in this genre, but the novel is competently written and is enjoyable.

Coben has rightfully earned the success he enjoys. He does seem to give his readers a credible glimpse in the world of professional sports. I still have yet to figure out how the scoring in tennis actually works, but I do seem a little better understanding how the business side of that industry works.

I have yet to read this series in order, so I have to fill in some gaps on my own. I recently read a more recent Bolitar novel, so I am not quite following the progression of this guy’s life journey all that well.

Drop Shot may fall short of any real literary excellence, but it does accomplish the purpose of entertaining and keeping the audience in suspense quite effectively. It’s a pretty good mystery, and I will join Myron Bolitar on another unlikely investigation in the near future.

I can’t get enough of misdeeds and murder in my literary indulgences, so I am going to try out the works of a more classic crime writer that I have never read before. I am going to peruse The Archer Files, which is a collection of short stories written by Ross MacDonald and features his best-known creation, private eye Lew Archer. This anthology was compiled by MacDonald’s biographer, Tom Nolan, who also has what I am sure will be a fascinating essay and overview of Archer’s exploits.

Film Review: Something Wants To Take A Bite Out Of Sherlock Holmes

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire is a 2002 Sherlock Holmes film that is mediocre at best. Rodney Gibbons is the writer and director of this thing which originally aired on the Hallmark Channel of all places. Matt Frewer is cast as Sherlock Holmes alongside Kenneth Welsh as Dr. John Watson.’

Kathleen McAuliffe, Michel Perron, Joel Miller, Danny Blanco, and Norris Domingue are included in the cast.

It has been two years since the infamous Jack the Ripper terrorized Whitechapel district, and another round of strange murders have occurred in that same area. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are called in by an order of monks who believe that a vampire is stalking the streets. Holmes is adamant that there is nothing supernatural behind the killings in spite of appearances. Holmes is once again challenged to provide a rational explanation for something that seems to bizarre and otherworldly. He also has his agnosticism challenged as Watson begins to consider that a vampire is actually the culprit. Even if the vampire is real, he may still find Sherlock Holmes to be a very formidable foe.

There are some intriguing elements in this story. It has some potential, but it just seems a little trite and overdone. Some of these pastiche writers really focus a lot on Holmes facing something potentially supernatural when Arthur Conan Doyle just did not have that many stories like that.

Matt Frewer was a reasonable casting choice for the lead role, but he could have employed a little more subtlety in his performance. I did rather like Kenneth Welsh’s portrayal of Dr. Watson.

Not everything in this film was a failure. I just didn’t find Frewer’s portrayal of Holmes all that interesting. It just felt like it was by the numbers. Frewer physically looks quite a bit like how Doyle described Holmes in the original canon, so that did help.

There was also once again, as I have mentioned before in some of my previous critiques of Holmes pastiche stories, an element of the Scooby-Doo reveal toward the end.

I figure the reason that I had not seen this one before is because it was on the Hallmark Channel, which isn’t known for hard-hitting originality in their films.

It was not a terrible viewing experience, but it sure was not anything one should go out of their way for.

Book Review: Chief Inspector Gamache Finds The Devils Even In Paris

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny is an intriguing entry into her mystery series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, who would usually be investigating all manner of violent wrongdoings in Quebec. This time, murder strikes his family vacation in Paris, and Gamache finds that he is never really off duty, especially when the devils strike too close to home.

“Hell is empty, and all the devils are here” is a line from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and I think Penny has struck gold with the title of this particular thriller. She also been writing about Gamache and his family for a lot of years. Although this is my first indulgence with this series, I elected to jump in with one of the more recent installments, so the background is not immediately clear to me.

The trouble starts off when Gamache’s ninety-three-year-old godfather, Stephen Horowitz, is struck down in the street and is sent into a coma in front of the other family members. Gamache and his wife find a key to a ritzy hotel suite where they find a body. Apparently, Horowitz has been keeping some dangerous secrets over his many decades, and it’s unclear as if he is on the side of the angels or the devils. Gamache and his whole family, some of whom have moved to Paris from Quebec, face suspicion from the Parisian investigators. Gamache finds that there may be a deep corruption rotting the souls of those he should trust the most.

Penny is without question a talented writer, and she has created a very likable character that deserves to endure through several more novels.

Her description of Paris is quite compelling. I like the family dynamics even if Gamache has an unexplained estrangement with his son, which does actually get explained in this entry. Gamache is a tough dude, but he does have a unique sensitivity not often found in many crime fiction protagonists. I love his fierce loyalty to his family and his unwavering devotion to his son, Daniel, even when there is some reason to question his intentions.

I had a little trouble following the story because there were some flashback moments that were a little hard to follow at times. Specifically, the climax of the story was apparently not related sequentially.

I also had some trouble because much of the past capers were referenced, and I was missing some context, but that was probably more due to my erratic reading habits than any fault of Penny’s.

Anyway, this is a perfectly enjoyable thriller, although the reader would probably get more out of reading the series in order. I may not follow my own advice on that, but I can pretty much guarantee that this is not my last foray into the works of Louise Penny.

It has been a while, but I think it’s time to take a literary journey to Venice and check in on Commissario Guido Brunetti who has another murder to solve in Donna Leon’s Unto Us a Son Is Given.

Book Review: The Thursday Murder Club Reconvenes

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman is an amusing and effective second outing for the retirees Cooper Chase who have formed the Thursday Murder Club.

Elizabeth’s ex-husband emerges from her mysterious past on the run after being accused of stealing diamonds. Ibraham gets mugged. Ron and Joyce are there to lend their support as these two troubling events are the precursor to more murder and duplicity. The Thursday Murder Club, who meet once a week to discuss unsolved cases, get a crack at their second active case.

Elizabeth’s past kicks off the latest caper. Her charming, roguish ex-husband has turned up asking for her help to protect him from an irate mobster who believes him to have stolen a lot of diamonds worth an obscene amount of riches. The club’s police officer allies are after a vexing drug dealer, and an awkward romantic relationship is brewing.

Ibraham is understandably shaken by his attack, but he is still able to be of some help even if he is hesitant to leave the safety of his apartment.

Three bodies have turned up which galvanizes the club into searching for the purloined diamonds as a clever killer lurks within the retirement village.

Osman does another fine job of undermining any expectations or prejudices when it comes to the elderly. The four friends remain as quick-witted as ever. The friendship and support they offer each other is rather charming, even if they express some mild exasperation.

The reader gets a better idea of how efficient Elizabeth likely was in her prior occupation as a spy. The banter between her and Joyce often gets quite hilarious.

Ibraham is a former psychologist, so it’s interesting to find him struggling with fears and insecurities that were likely afflicting many of patients.

Elizabeth being a former spy does open up some interesting doors when it comes to plot. A series like this does lend itself to predictability, but Osman effectively avoids that criticism by delving into Elizabeth’s past a bit.

Osman has created a rather distinctive, charming series in which he challenges preconceptions of the elderly. This group of old people would be fun to hang out with.

In spite of the loads of humor throughout the novel, Osman does explore the tendency for many to underestimate older people who may still quite a bit of grit left in them. The friendship between the four main characters is at times a bit moving as well as amusing.

The case itself turns out to be pretty cleverly plotted with some pretty good twists. Elizabeth at some point realizes that the solution is simpler than she first thought. Although she is basically the leader of the club, all of the members get to shine a bit.

The strange choice of having some of the chapters presented as diary entries written by Joyce adds to the quirkiness of the series. It does work that the whole novel isn’t written entirely from her perspective, but the occasional account from her sort of adds to the charm.

Osman continues a rather implausible yet fun, so I am looking forward to catching up with the Thursday Murder Club when another case is added to the agenda.

Robert Galbraith is going to reveal a bit more of Cormoran Strike’s past in Career of Evil.

Book Review: Holmes, Marple & Poe Investigations Is Open For Business

~ Peter Kanelis ~ 1 Comment

James Patterson kicks off what appears to be a new series with a promising thriller entitled Holmes, Marple & Poe. Brian Sitts shares the writing credit as well. Although, this could mean that Sitts actually wrote it under Patterson’s banner. Anyway, the novel contains kind of a fun plot and characters that were rather intriguing as well as implausible.

Brennan Holmes, Margaret Marple, and Auguste Poe have emerged from some murky pasts and unite to form a high-class private investigation agency. Each member shares some familiar characteristics with their famous namesakes. Brennan Holmes has a similar scientific approach to Sherlock’s; however, he also has a very keen sense of smell that is often useful as well as overwhelming. Margaret Marple is considerably younger than Jane Marple, but she is able to encourage a bit of underestimation much like the famous spinster sleuth. Auguste Poe does have a vice that ended up killing his namesake, who isn’t a fictional character. He is also very knowledgeable about weapons and is very find of beautiful women, but he has demons that have yet to be laid to rest. There are a variety of cases that converge on the agency, including an apparent kidnapping and art heist. They also come across a perplexing serial murder case.

A NYPD detective starts her own investigation into the agency and finds the partners as enigmatic as the cases themselves.

I had some fun reading this one, probably because I am a sucker for most anything referencing Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. I am not a necessarily a Poe fan, but I appreciate the cultural impact he had on the literary landscape.

I enjoyed how Patterson and Sitts weave the stories around each other, and the reader gets to see how the trio copes with different cases. They trade off who takes the lead on each case, which is kind of cool. The sleekness of the operation as a whole is somewhat too fanciful to buy into, but I suspect that’s par for the course for a Patterson novel. It wasn’t so outlandish that I found it exasperating. I have not read many of Patterson’s works, and I am not likely to be one of his most rabid readers. I also am not really swearing him off, and I will likely dip back into his catalogue occasionally.

Patterson writes very short chapters. This one has 118 chapters stuffed into 359 pages. I am not a fan of these absurdly short chapters. I also don’t like really long chapter. I guess I just want a chapter length just right, whatever that would look like.

In spite of these minor annoyances, I still enjoyed the novel and will likely revisit this particular trio.

I enjoyed the introduction to this trio well enough, but the required suspension of disbelief was almost too demanding.

There were some pretty good plot twists throughout the story. Even though this is not exactly to be considered highbrow literature, I was impressed with the imagination displayed by the authors here.

This book seems to be a love letter of long-time mystery readers, and I wouldn’t mind another one.

The Thursday Murder Club catches another case in Richard Osman’s The Man Who Died Twice, so it seems like a good time to revisit Coopers Chase.

Book Review: Murder Of The Coldest Kind

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Snow is an unfortunately predictable murder mystery written by John Banville. The story takes place in Ireland during the year of 1957. A young detective named St. John Strafford is the protagonist investigating a gruesome murder of a Catholic priest.

Detective Inspector Strafford is understandably perturbed by the murder and mutilation of a priest in a manor owned by the influential Osborne family. The case takes an even stranger turn when his deputy disappears. Strafford is told that the priest was popular in the community, but some very dark secrets are unearthed, and the victim may not be as virtuous as one would hope.

It’s an interesting setting. I have an automatic affection for stories that take place in Ireland. I just had a hard time staying interested in the plot, and Strafford doesn’t really draw me in. He seems kind of boring, honestly.

The motive for the murder is something would easily expect considering that it’s a Catholic priest who is the target. He was castrated, so it’s not hard to guess why the killer took that extra step.

Banville does have a nice prose style. He isn’t a terrible writer, but this particular novel may have just been the wrong one to introduce me to him.

My efforts to read new authors sometimes misfires, and Banville just didn’t do it for me.

Time to move to an old favorite of mine in the world of fictional detectives with Robert B. Parker’s Broken Trust, which is actually written by Mike Lupica, who has continued the Spenser series since Mr. Parker has been deceased for some time now.

Book Review: A Wounded Sheriff In Hiding Catches A Case

~ Peter Kanelis ~ Leave a comment

Copper River is my first sampling of William Kent Krueger’s writing and is unlikely to be my last since I enjoyed this novel quite a bit.

Krueger has a protagonist named Cork O’Conner, a sheriff in Minnesota. O’Conner has apparently had quite a difficult time in the previous novels that I have yet to read. He starts off this story with a bullet in his leg and in hiding from a crime family who believe that he had killed one of their members. He ends up in Bodine, Michigan where he has a cousin that is able to meet some of his medical needs. The cousin, Jewell, is a widow with a young son, who is able to help with the bullet wound.

Cork’s investigative instincts awaken when a body is discovered in the river. A young girl has been murdered, and Cork needs some help when it appears that there is a conspiracy involving runaway teens. The killing doesn’t stop with one girl in the river. Cork has his own troubles and needs to get back to his wife and children, however he is not going to leave his cousin and her to face their threats without him.

Krueger is a pretty good writer and is not afraid to put his main character through the wringer. O’Conner is a typically pragmatic and likeable law enforcement officer. Of course, I am meeting this character in the middle of the series, but Krueger does a decent job of catching up the reader on events in the more recent novels without it seeming too clunky.

Apparently, Krueger also has some interest in Native American culture and history which he peppers in quite effectively.

Anyway, Krueger is a writer I am going to revisit in the not-too-distant future.

Next up, I haven’t read a Mickey Spillane novel in a while, but I do happen to have “Vengeance is Mine” in my stack of books on the dresser.