True Crime: The Monster of Florence, by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi

The darker side of Tuscany
The Monster of Florence is co-authored by an Italian journalist and an American novelist. Accordingly, this serial killer saga is told in two sections, the first with a focus on the activities of Mario Spezi, and the second, those of Douglas Preston. Spezzi is arguably the Italian expert on the [...]

It’s a Mystery: Breakheart Hill, by Thomas Cook

First love
Breakheart Hill, narrated by a now middle aged man, is the story of his first love. Ben Wade falls hard for the new girl in town, Kelli Troy, but is too shy to assert himself to her. Ben’s best friend counsels him to make a move, but to no avail. Kelli [...]

It’s a Mystery: The Pale Blue Eye, by Louis Bayard

Blue eyed girl
As 2009 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, it’s fitting that the interests of several novelists have turned to him. Louis Bayard chose to depict Poe in a little known segment of his life, his tenure as a cadet at West Point. The mystery revolves around the [...]

It’s a Mystery: The Book of Lies, by Brad Meltzer

Ultimate villain vs ultimate hero

We all know the Superman stories, but most of us don’t realize that they were created back in the ’30’s by a teenager, Jerry Siegal, who had just lost his father to murder. Thriller writer Brad Meltzer has been fascinated by this footnote to history, and in The Book of [...]

It’s a Mystery: Fractured, by Karin Slaughter

Every parent’s nightmare
Fractured, a story about a murder/kidnapping/sex abuse case, is a police procedural concerned primarily with the relationship between the two detectives assigned to the horrific crime. Will Trent, a loner who was raised in an orphanage with the father of one of the victims. Faith Mitchell, the 30-something mother of a college [...]

Thriller: Rusty Nail, by J. A. Konrath

Rusty Nail is my first foray into the world of  Lt. Jack (short for Jaqueline) Daniels, a forty-something police detective who cares about her job. She recently nabbed the uber-sadistic Gingerbread Man serial killer, but some recent developments are giving Jack a sense of deja-vu. Someone is delivering horrific snuff videos to her door, complete [...]

Thriller: Hush, By Anne Frazier

Madonna murderer
Author Anne Frazier has another persona, that of romance writer Theresa Weir, who produced such novels as Some Kind of Magic in the ’90’s.  If Hush is a fair example, her more recent venture into the crime/suspense genre  be considered a mixed success. Frazier has introduced a variation on the character of killer who [...]

Thriller: Paranoia, by Joseph Finder

Is it paranoia if they’re really out to get you?
Corporate espionage is not one of my areas of interest, but this audio book was a gift, so I listened. I have to say, right off, that Finder knows how to write suspense. Adam is a likable protagonist, a young guy entrapped by his [...]

Literary Fiction: Innocent Blood, by P.D. James

A failure of love
Written in 1980, Innocent Blood is the first of P.D. James’s few stand alone novels. No detectives here, and more secrets than mysteries. Philippa Palfrey is the spoiled adopted child of a wealthy, emotionally barren couple. Although she was eight years old at the time she was taken in, Philippa [...]

It’s a Mystery: A Likeness in Stone, by Julia Wallis Martin

Water and stone
A twenty year old cold case heats up quickly when a recreational diver discovers the victim’s skeleton, in the closet of a submerged house in a geographically isolated reservoir. The detective who reluctantly closed the case, DCI Driver, knows who killed the victim, but failed at the time to turn up sufficient [...]