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Lynley, lies and secrets
Elizabeth George is one of a handful of women whom, as I’ve said more than once, I’d like to BE. She’s an American who’s made a grand success of writing British police/suspense novels. That means she gets to spend lots of time in England doing research and write it off as a business expense. As…
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Different landscape, same allegory
Bob Moyer reviews James Lee Burke’s latest offering, featuring Dave Robichaux, evil and fools. By Robert Moyer FEAST DAY OF FOOLS. By James Lee Burke. Simon and Schuster. 463 pages. $26.99 In a James Lee Burke novel, the landscape always comes alive. The Louisiana bayous where Deputy Sheriff Dave Robichaux parlays justice reek of the evil…
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Wexford is still Wexford
I’ll be tidying up from 2011 for a while. Somehow, life intervened, and I got behind with reviews toward the end of the year. Here’s a review of a book that Bob Moyer read during his trip to Germany, a review that somehow did not get posted in a timely fashion. But hey, the book’s…
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H Is for Happy New Year
When it comes to mysteries, I usually like cozy, village-type mysteries better than ones featuring hard-boiled detectives and on-page violence. But there are exceptions. I enjoyed Sue Grafton’s series starring P.I. Kinsey Millhone way back when she was working through the early letters of the alphabet. Then somehow I lost touch with Kinsey around “M”…
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Not really a Christmas book – but who cares?
This book arrived at the same time as several Christmas-themed volumes, so naturally I thought it was another holiday story. After all, its title is Twelve Drummers Drumming. So I put it on the stack right under Anne Perry’s annual Christmas mystery. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the action takes place in the…
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Back to the beginning
Bob Moyer has kindly sent me an early Christmas present: a new review for Briar Patch Books. I’m most grateful, as always. By Robert Moyer THE AFFAIR. By Lee Child. Delacorte Press. 405 pages. $28. REACHER: THE PREQUEL. How about REACHER BEFORE HE WAS REACHER? Whatever you call it, this adventure is proto-Reacher. Lee Child takes…
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Need Christmas spirit? Read (or listen to) this book
Talk about getting into the Christmas spirit: In the past couple of weeks, I’ve read two enjoyable novels in which a murder is committed at Christmastime in a large English country house where lots of people (i.e., suspects) are snowbound. Save from those details I’ve just listed, the two books could hardly be more different.…
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Christmas reading arrives
For nine years now, Anne Perry has been writing a short novel for Christmas, drawing on her expert knowledge of Victorian England, as well as some of her familiar characters. For Perry’s many fans, the arrival of her latest holiday book is as much a herald of the season as the parade, the bell ringers…
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Rita Mae rides again
The prolific author Rita Mae Brown now gives us a new book in her “canine mystery series” each fall, to tide us over while we wait for the new book in her Mrs. Murphy mystery series (feline and canine) to arrive in spring. By Linda Brinson MURDER UNLEASHED. By Rita Mae Brown. Ballantine Books. 267…
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Madam India Black, at it again
If you enjoy reading fiction set in Victorian England, then give this India Black series a try. Dickens, of course, showed the chasm between rich and poor, and focused his literary light on the dark side of London inhabited by thieves and worse. Today, Anne Perry, in her two mystery series, does an eye-opening job…