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A mystery, German style
Fittingly, Bob Moyer has sent from Germany a review of a mystery dealing with wartime Germany. Will Bob keep traveling the world, sending reviews to match his locales? Or will he return to North Carolina and join the rest of us in armchair journeys? Stay tuned. Meanwhile, enjoy this review. By Robert P. Moyer PRAGUE…
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Bess Crawford, on the battlefields of France
A few years back, Charles Todd, the mother-son writing team in Delaware and North Carolina, started a new mystery series. Their Inspector Ian Rutledge series was highly successful, but they hoped that first-person stories with a young woman protagonist might attract some readers who find novels centered on the brooding Rutledge – struggling with what…
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Y’all come back now, hear?
Once again, Bob Moyer and I have read the same book. I reviewed Margaret Maron’s latest for the Greensboro News & Record, and Bob is reviewing it for Briar Patch Books. I may have treated Maron’s book a tad more gently than Bob did, but we are in agreement that the new one is not…
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A quiet, thoughtful murder mystery
Bob Moyer travels a lot physically, and when he’s staying home, he travels through reading. Here he travels through literature to Sweden and reviews a book by one of that country’s leading writers of mysteries. By Robert Moyer INSPECTOR AND SILENCE. By Hakan Nesser. Pantheon. 287 pages. $24.95 Some things just don’t translate. Take, for instance,…
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Mrs. Murphy: No. 20
Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown have just graced us with the 20th anniversary Mrs. Murphy mystery. Since cats don’t usually live as long as humans do, I find myself worrying about Sneaky Pie’s advancing age. If this latest book is any indication, though, the cat is still on her writing game. And if…
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Of crime and the river
Ah, happiness. Hardly had I finished listening to Elizabeth George’s latest as an audio book when I started reading Deborah Crombie’s new mystery novel starring Scotland Yard’s Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James. Inevitably, because they are both women writers who live in America and write British police mystery/suspense fiction, George and Crombie are often compared.…
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Annapolis and beyond – a mystery
I’ve stayed on the Naval Academy parents’ e-mail list-serve even though my son graduated in 2010. I stay because I hope that occasionally I can help some parent of a current midshipman, plus I enjoy reliving (some of) the memories. My unwillingness to let go paid off recently when another parent gave a heads-up about…
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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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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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A tale of truffles and troubles
While Bob Moyer was in Germany recently, he reviewed another in Martin Walker’s series of “mysteries of the French Countryside.” Go figure. By Robert Moyer BLACK DIAMOND. A Mystery of the French Countryside. By Martin Walker. Alfred A. Knopf. 298 pages. $24.95. Peril has appeared on the horizon of St. Denis, where Bruno is chief…