Mystery Mavens Previous Book Selections
A Nail Through the Heart
by Tim Hallinan
Finding himself embracing domestic life in Bangkok in spite of his love for adventurous travel, writer Poke Rafferty has his world thrown into turmoil by a troubled homeless youth, a distraught woman's missing uncle, and a blackmailing thief.
The Actress
by Elizabeth Sims
Hired by a criminal defense attorney to work with a woman accused of killing her own daughter to make her more sympathetic to the jury, struggling actress Rita Farmer soon discovers that her efforts to uncover the truth about the crime could threaten her life, as well as that of her five-year-old son Petey. By the author of the Lambda Award-winning Lillian Byrd mysteries.
The Chicago Way
by Michael Harvey
A former Chicago cop and tough, street-smart private detective, Michael Kelly is hired by his former partner, John Gibbons, to solve an eight-year-old rape and battery case, a crime that is complicated by Gibbons's own murder, taking on the mob, a convicted killer, the Chicago mean streets, and double-crossing friends to seek justice.
Dark Places
by Gillian Flynn
After witnessing the murder of her mother and sisters, 7-year-old Libby Day testifies against her brother Ben, but twenty-five years later she tries to profit from her tragic history and admit that her story might not have been accurate.
If I am Missing or Dead by Janine Latus
A dual portrait of the author and her late sister, based on an "Essay of the Year" award-winning article, traces how both suffered from years of abuse at the hands of men before the author successfully escaped her own cycle of violence, a survival that was overshadowed by her sister's murder by a lover.
Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker
A private detective's investigation into the theft of a rare manuscript from a university library brings him face to face with clues to a young man's murder.
Blue Heaven by C.J. Box
Fleeing the killers whom they witnessed committing murder, twelve-year-old Annie and her younger brother William escape into the woods of northern Idaho, not knowing whom they can trust and pursued by the murderers and a group of dirty cops seeking to prevent the youngsters from revealing what they know. By the award-winning author of the Joe Pickett mysteries.
In the Woods by Tana French
Twenty years after witnessing the violent disappearances of two companions from their small Dublin suburb, detective Rob Ryan investigates a chillingly similar murder that takes place in the same wooded area, a case that forces him to piece together his traumatic memories.
The Lonely Silver Rain by John D. MacDonald
Keeping himself alive is something detective Travis McGee has always taken for granted -- until his search for a wealthy friend's missing yacht places him square in the center of the international cocaine trade. Following a trail that leads him from Miami's lavish penthouse suites to a remote village in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Travis finds himself the target of some of the most ruthless villains he"s ever met.
Grime and Punishment by Jill Churchill
Ramona wasn't much of a cleaning woman--some say she wouldn't know a dust bunny from a Doberman--but that's no reason to bump the old girl off, is it? Someone must think so: poor Ramona is found strangled to death with a vacuum chord. Jane Jeffry--mother of three, chairperson of more committees than you can shake a stick at, and part-time sleuth--sets out to find the killer and tie up the loose ends in this irresistible mystery. Grime and Punishment, winner of both Agatha and Macavity Awards for best first mystery book and nominated for an Anthony Award for the same honor, is the first in a series of seven books featuring Jane Jeffry.
Heat of the Moon by Sandra Parshall
Young veterinarian Rachel Goddard's world begins to crumble when a client rushes into the animal hospital with a basset hound struck by a car during a thunderstorm. The dog owner's terrified tot, drenched with rain, loses sight of her mother in the flurry of activity and screams, "Mommy! I want Mommy!" Instantly Rachel is hurled back in time to a day in her own childhood when her baby sister Michelle uttered the same cry while thunder crashed and rain poured down on them. The unearthed memory feels like a fragment from a nightmare, and Rachel doesn't understand its meaning or the anguish it stirs up in her.
Glass Keyby Dashiell Hammett
Ned Beaumont is a tall, thin, moustache-wearing, TB-ridden, drinking, gambling, hanger-on to the political boss of a corrupt Eastern city. Nevertheless, like every Hammett hero (and like Hammett himself), he has an unbreakable, if idiosyncratic moral code. Ned's boss wants to better himself with a thoroughbred senator's daughter; but does he want it badly enough to commit murder? If he's innocent, who wants him in the frame? Beaumont must find out.
Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith
1893 is a tough year in Montana, and any job is a good job. When Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer sign on at a secretive cattle ranch, theyre not expecting much more than hard work, bad pay, and a comfortable campfire around which to enjoy their favorite pastime: scouring Harpers Weekly for stories about the famous Sherlock Holmes.
Brat Farrarby Josephine Tey
Brat Farrar has been carefully coached to assume the identity of Patrick Ashby, heir to the Ashby fortune who disappeared when he was 13. Just when it seems that Brat will pull off the deception, he discovers the truth about Patrick's disappearance, a dark secret that threatens to tear apart the family and jeopardize Brat's carefully laid plans.
The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin
It is 1836. Europe is modernizing, and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the Sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind them? Only one intelligence agent can be trusted to find out: Yashim Lastname, a man both brilliant and near-invisible in this world. You see, Yashim is a eunuch.
He leads us into the palace's luxurious seraglios and Istanbul's teeming streets, and leans on the wisdom of a dyspeptic Polish ambassador, a transsexual dancer, and a Creole-born queen mother. And he introduces us to the Janissaries. For 400 years, they were the empire's elite soldiers, but they grew too powerful, and ten years ago, the Sultan had them crushed. Are the Janissaries staging a brutal comeback?
Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
In the debut crime novel from the Booker-winning author, a Dublin pathologist follows the corpse of a mysterious woman into the heart of a conspiracy among the city's high Catholic society. It's not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It's the living. One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse and concealing the cause of death. It turns out the body belonged to a young woman named Christine Falls. And as Quirke reluctantly presses on toward the true facts behind her death, he comes up against some insidious and very well-guarded secrets of Dublin's high Catholic society, among them members of his own family. Set in Dublin and Boston in the 1950s, the first novel in the Quirke series brings all the vividness and psychological insight of Booker Prize winner John Banville's fiction to a thrilling, atmospheric crime story. Quirke is a fascinating and subtly drawn hero, Christine Falls is a classic tale of suspense, and Benjamin Black's debut marks him as a true master of the form.
Cripple Creek by James Sallis
A year or so has passed since the events of Cypress Grove. Ex-policeman, ex-con, former therapist, Turner has become deputy sheriff in the small town within driving distance of Memphis, Tennessee, to which he had migrated in hopes of escaping his past and finding a measure of peace. His life is mending as he and Val Bjorn grow closer. And then a young man, arrested on a routine traffic stop with more than $200,000 in his trunk, is forcibly sprung from jail after Sheriff Don Lee is brutally assaulted. Throwing caution aside, Turner goes in pursuit to Memphis, unleashing ghosts he thought he had left behind, and endangering all that matters to him now.
RatKing by Michael Dibdin
In this masterpiece of psychological suspense, Italian Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen is dispatched to investigate the kidnapping of Ruggiero Miletti, a powerful Perugian industrialist. But nobody much wants Zen to succeed: not the local authorities, who view him as an interloper, and certainly not Miletti's children, who seem content to let the head of the family languish in the hands of his abductors -- if he's still alive.
annotations from amazon.com and goodreads.com
by Tim Hallinan
Finding himself embracing domestic life in Bangkok in spite of his love for adventurous travel, writer Poke Rafferty has his world thrown into turmoil by a troubled homeless youth, a distraught woman's missing uncle, and a blackmailing thief.
The Actress
by Elizabeth Sims
Hired by a criminal defense attorney to work with a woman accused of killing her own daughter to make her more sympathetic to the jury, struggling actress Rita Farmer soon discovers that her efforts to uncover the truth about the crime could threaten her life, as well as that of her five-year-old son Petey. By the author of the Lambda Award-winning Lillian Byrd mysteries.
The Chicago Way
by Michael Harvey
A former Chicago cop and tough, street-smart private detective, Michael Kelly is hired by his former partner, John Gibbons, to solve an eight-year-old rape and battery case, a crime that is complicated by Gibbons's own murder, taking on the mob, a convicted killer, the Chicago mean streets, and double-crossing friends to seek justice.
Dark Places
by Gillian Flynn
After witnessing the murder of her mother and sisters, 7-year-old Libby Day testifies against her brother Ben, but twenty-five years later she tries to profit from her tragic history and admit that her story might not have been accurate.
If I am Missing or Dead by Janine Latus
A dual portrait of the author and her late sister, based on an "Essay of the Year" award-winning article, traces how both suffered from years of abuse at the hands of men before the author successfully escaped her own cycle of violence, a survival that was overshadowed by her sister's murder by a lover.
Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker
A private detective's investigation into the theft of a rare manuscript from a university library brings him face to face with clues to a young man's murder.
Blue Heaven by C.J. Box
Fleeing the killers whom they witnessed committing murder, twelve-year-old Annie and her younger brother William escape into the woods of northern Idaho, not knowing whom they can trust and pursued by the murderers and a group of dirty cops seeking to prevent the youngsters from revealing what they know. By the award-winning author of the Joe Pickett mysteries.
In the Woods by Tana French
Twenty years after witnessing the violent disappearances of two companions from their small Dublin suburb, detective Rob Ryan investigates a chillingly similar murder that takes place in the same wooded area, a case that forces him to piece together his traumatic memories.
The Lonely Silver Rain by John D. MacDonald
Keeping himself alive is something detective Travis McGee has always taken for granted -- until his search for a wealthy friend's missing yacht places him square in the center of the international cocaine trade. Following a trail that leads him from Miami's lavish penthouse suites to a remote village in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Travis finds himself the target of some of the most ruthless villains he"s ever met.
Grime and Punishment by Jill Churchill
Ramona wasn't much of a cleaning woman--some say she wouldn't know a dust bunny from a Doberman--but that's no reason to bump the old girl off, is it? Someone must think so: poor Ramona is found strangled to death with a vacuum chord. Jane Jeffry--mother of three, chairperson of more committees than you can shake a stick at, and part-time sleuth--sets out to find the killer and tie up the loose ends in this irresistible mystery. Grime and Punishment, winner of both Agatha and Macavity Awards for best first mystery book and nominated for an Anthony Award for the same honor, is the first in a series of seven books featuring Jane Jeffry.
Heat of the Moon by Sandra Parshall
Young veterinarian Rachel Goddard's world begins to crumble when a client rushes into the animal hospital with a basset hound struck by a car during a thunderstorm. The dog owner's terrified tot, drenched with rain, loses sight of her mother in the flurry of activity and screams, "Mommy! I want Mommy!" Instantly Rachel is hurled back in time to a day in her own childhood when her baby sister Michelle uttered the same cry while thunder crashed and rain poured down on them. The unearthed memory feels like a fragment from a nightmare, and Rachel doesn't understand its meaning or the anguish it stirs up in her.
Glass Keyby Dashiell Hammett
Ned Beaumont is a tall, thin, moustache-wearing, TB-ridden, drinking, gambling, hanger-on to the political boss of a corrupt Eastern city. Nevertheless, like every Hammett hero (and like Hammett himself), he has an unbreakable, if idiosyncratic moral code. Ned's boss wants to better himself with a thoroughbred senator's daughter; but does he want it badly enough to commit murder? If he's innocent, who wants him in the frame? Beaumont must find out.
Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith
1893 is a tough year in Montana, and any job is a good job. When Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer sign on at a secretive cattle ranch, theyre not expecting much more than hard work, bad pay, and a comfortable campfire around which to enjoy their favorite pastime: scouring Harpers Weekly for stories about the famous Sherlock Holmes.
Brat Farrarby Josephine Tey
Brat Farrar has been carefully coached to assume the identity of Patrick Ashby, heir to the Ashby fortune who disappeared when he was 13. Just when it seems that Brat will pull off the deception, he discovers the truth about Patrick's disappearance, a dark secret that threatens to tear apart the family and jeopardize Brat's carefully laid plans.
The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin
It is 1836. Europe is modernizing, and the Ottoman Empire must follow suit. But just before the Sultan announces sweeping changes, a wave of murders threatens the fragile balance of power in his court. Who is behind them? Only one intelligence agent can be trusted to find out: Yashim Lastname, a man both brilliant and near-invisible in this world. You see, Yashim is a eunuch.
He leads us into the palace's luxurious seraglios and Istanbul's teeming streets, and leans on the wisdom of a dyspeptic Polish ambassador, a transsexual dancer, and a Creole-born queen mother. And he introduces us to the Janissaries. For 400 years, they were the empire's elite soldiers, but they grew too powerful, and ten years ago, the Sultan had them crushed. Are the Janissaries staging a brutal comeback?
Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
In the debut crime novel from the Booker-winning author, a Dublin pathologist follows the corpse of a mysterious woman into the heart of a conspiracy among the city's high Catholic society. It's not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It's the living. One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse and concealing the cause of death. It turns out the body belonged to a young woman named Christine Falls. And as Quirke reluctantly presses on toward the true facts behind her death, he comes up against some insidious and very well-guarded secrets of Dublin's high Catholic society, among them members of his own family. Set in Dublin and Boston in the 1950s, the first novel in the Quirke series brings all the vividness and psychological insight of Booker Prize winner John Banville's fiction to a thrilling, atmospheric crime story. Quirke is a fascinating and subtly drawn hero, Christine Falls is a classic tale of suspense, and Benjamin Black's debut marks him as a true master of the form.
Cripple Creek by James Sallis
A year or so has passed since the events of Cypress Grove. Ex-policeman, ex-con, former therapist, Turner has become deputy sheriff in the small town within driving distance of Memphis, Tennessee, to which he had migrated in hopes of escaping his past and finding a measure of peace. His life is mending as he and Val Bjorn grow closer. And then a young man, arrested on a routine traffic stop with more than $200,000 in his trunk, is forcibly sprung from jail after Sheriff Don Lee is brutally assaulted. Throwing caution aside, Turner goes in pursuit to Memphis, unleashing ghosts he thought he had left behind, and endangering all that matters to him now.
RatKing by Michael Dibdin
In this masterpiece of psychological suspense, Italian Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen is dispatched to investigate the kidnapping of Ruggiero Miletti, a powerful Perugian industrialist. But nobody much wants Zen to succeed: not the local authorities, who view him as an interloper, and certainly not Miletti's children, who seem content to let the head of the family languish in the hands of his abductors -- if he's still alive.
