Briar Patch Books

Tag: Mystery

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Lay it on, MacBob

    Oh Bob, Bob!  Wherefore are thou Bob? I’d be tempted to say there’s something rotten in the state of Bob Moyer’s book reviews, but he obviously had a lot of fun writing this one. And after all, the play’s the thing right? Plus, there may be method in the madness. By Robert Moyer STAGESTRUCK. By…

  • A chase with a twist

    In advance of his homecoming from his European junket, Bob Moyer has been sending book reviews.  I’ll have to reward him with more books when he arrives stateside. By Robert Moyer THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS. By Bill Loehfelm. Farrar Straus Giroux. 322 pages. $26. By page 43, both the bar maid Maureen and the reader…

  • Of crime and the river

    Whenever a new Anne Perry Victorian novel arrives, I know I am about to be immersed in another place and time, a place that is sometimes heartbreaking and grim, but always fascinating. Perry out-Dickens Dickens in exposing the social ills and inequities of the Victorian age in England. And she makes you eager to read,…