13 Steps Down by Ruth Rendell

Protagonist: Mix Cellini
Setting: Notting Hill, London
Rating: 4.8
In this psychological thriller, Rendell gives us Mix Cellini, a troubled young man who is obsessed with a beautiful model, Nerissa Nash, to the point of becoming a stalker. He's also obsessed with Reginald Christie, a serial killer from the 1940s and '50s. He reads all he can about the notorious doctor and, one late night, even believes he sees Christie's ghost outside his flat. Cellini is also deeply superstitious, especially when it comes to the number 13, which also happens to be the number of steps leading to his flat, the attic room of an old ramshackle Victorian. Cellini's landlady, Gwendolen Chawcer, is an elderly spinster who spends her days and nights immersed in books and who has her own obsession, a doctor she once had a "relationship" with -- even if it was 50 years ago and the relationship didn't extend beyond tea and cakes at her house. Then there is the beautiful Nerissa, who has fallen in love with her family's neighbor, a young man she doesn't even know that well and who doesn't seem to notice her. As the novel progresses, Cellini becomes even more and more unhinged. As a reader, you know it'll all end badly -- but we don't know how or why. It's a story that unwinds slowly, continuing to surprise us, even on the last page.

Devil's Trill by Gerald Elias

Protagonist: Daniel Jacobus
Setting: Berkshires and New York City
Rating: 3.7
At the Grimsley Competition for young violinists at Carnegie Hall, a rare and valuable Stradivarius violin is stolen, even though it had been in a locked room and guarded by two security guards. Daniel Jacobus, a blind, reclusive and crotchety former violinist who now teaches, is a suspect -- he dislikes the competition and the group that hosts it, the Musical Arts Project Group. As he tries to help solve the theft -- with Nathaniel Williams, the investigator for the company that had insured the violin, and Yumi Shinagawa, a 19-year-old student fresh from Japan -- a MAP member is murdered, and Jacobus is a suspect in the murder, as well. The story is written by someone who has been a violinist, composer, conductor and teacher -- so there's much insight into the world of music, and the fierce competition that is sometimes seen. And Jacobus, for unlikable as he can be, is a compelling protagonist. For a debut novel, Devil's Trill is good. But there are still some annoying quirks. For example, the author tries to be too cutesy with puns. It's not just one character who loves musical puns -- but just about every character. After awhile, it grates, and actually lowers the enjoyment of what otherwise is a good mystery.

Trivia: The Devil's Trill is indeed a real-life sonata, by Giuseppe Tartini. There are various versions on YouTube -- all the more enjoyable for having read the book. Here's one performed by Elias himself.

Talking About Detective Fiction by P.D. James

P.D. James, one of the greats of modern mystery novels, give a concise history of the detective genre (mostly British) in this slim volume, and you can tell she knows her stuff, from Wilkie Collin's "The Moonstone" to contemporary crime fiction such as Ian Rankin's Rebus series. While others have written histories of mysteries, with James we get her viewpoint -- and she's certainly not shy about expressing her own opinions.

Of Agatha Christie, she writes that "perhaps her greatest strength was that she never overstepped the limits of her talent" -- but she's also generous to Christie, saying she produced mysteries of "extraordinarily imaginative cunning" and writing that Christie brilliantly broke the rules, as in "The Mousetrap" and "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd." Describing Golden Age mysteries, James writes that readers like them because "Whatever our secret terrors, we are not the body on the library floor. And in the end, by the grace of Poirot's little grey cells, all will be well -- except of course with the murderer, but he deserves all that's coming to him. All the mysteries will be explained, all the problems solved and peace and order will return to that mythical village which, despite its above-average homicide rate, never really loses its tranquillity or its innocence."

This is a fast read -- a couple of hours. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in British mysteries and definitely for fans of P.D. James.

The Second Midnight by Andrew Taylor

Protagonists: Hugh Kendall and Michael Stanhope-Smith
Setting: London and Prague, WW II
Rating: 5.0

This is a spy, yet not a spy, story. In 1939, before the war, a minor spy is killed in Prague. Agent Michael Stanhope-Smith sends businessman Alfred Kendall as a courier, but the situation becomes more complicated, and Kendall ends up leaving his young son, Hugh, in Prague, as a promise that he'll return. But he never does, as Prague is taken over by the Nazis. Hugh does what he needs to survive, ending up, finally, as a gardener for a good-hearted German officer and his family. He lives above the stables where, every night, he experiences two midnights -- there are two clocks that chime the midnight hour, but one is slower than the other. Hugh falls in love with the German's daughter, Magda, but is hated by the son, Heinz. As the war ends, he must try to make his way back to England as the family flees. The books spans from 1939 to 1963, and in a way is an epic, the story of the Kendalls, as well as Stanhope-Smith, whose life becomes intertwined with the family.

This is very loosely part of the Blaines trilogy, but Blaines himself only has a very small part (a few pages) in this book. As Andrew Taylor says on his website: "This is a trilogy only in an informal and retrospective sense. The links between the books are unobtrusive and developed almost without my noticing. These are espionage novels, but with a difference - the private lives of the spies and their families are more important than their public actions. Indeed, the former tend to influence the latter, often in unexpected ways."

As always in Taylor's books, the characterization is excellent and the book is well worth reading.

Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross

Protagonist: Joan Anglicus
Setting: Ingelheim, Frankland, and Vatican City, Dark Ages
Rating: 4.4
The author takes the sketchiest of legends -- that for two years a woman disguised as a man sat on the papal throne -- and fleshes out a full novel of what it would have been like to have lived such a life. Born in A.D. 814 to an English canon and a Saxon woman, Joan grows up with a desire to study, fueled by an older brother. Although only her brothers are allowed to study, her father grudging consents to letting her brother's tutor also teach Joan. Impressed by her bright mind, the tutor arranges for her to continue at a palace school -- the only girl there. As Joan grows into womanhood, she falls in love with the knight Gerold. But she is soon parted from him after a Viking attack kills most of the villagers. She escapes, disguised as a man, and enters a monastery, where she learns the art of healing. Forced to flee there, as well, before her gender is uncovered, she ends up at the Vatican as the pope's personal physician. It's here that her life intersects again with Gerold -- at the moment that she's offered the papacy herself.

While Cross makes a good argument that a female pope could have existed, she also notes that the work is entirely fictional. In a conversation with our book club, Cross said she wrote Joan not as a woman of great faith, but as a woman who had only one option to fulfill her desire to learn -- to live her life as a man. The book has now been made into a movie, although it is still waiting for a U.S. distributor to pick it up. Whether one believes that a female pope existed or not, this book vividly portrays what life must have been like in the Dark Ages, especially for a woman like Joan.

Dorothy Sayers and a January challenge

As part of a reading challenge for January (read books with numbers in the title), I picked up two Dorothy L. Sayers books I've been meaning to read for several years now. My favorite Sayers books are those with Harriet Vane in them, but I still enjoyed these two. One of the Golden Age era dames, Sayers is till much loved, for the wit and humanity her novels bring. These two, for the most part, are very much in the vein of puzzle books:


Five Red Herrings
Protagonist: Lord Peter Wimsey
Setting: Galloway, Scotland
Rating: 4.2
An unlikable painter is killed, and his murder made to look like an accident. But Wimsey detects right away it is murder. There are six fellow painters who had reason to kill him -- and most of them don't have a good alibi. Working with local police, Wimsey figures out who the five red herrings are -- and who the killer is. There were many names to keep track of (I had to keep a cheat sheet) and much of the plot revolved around train schedules (I didn't even try to keep track of those!). In the end, the vital clue is a pretty simple one, although Wimsey's solution also needs to make sense of those train tables.

The Nine Tailors
Protagonist: Lord Peter Wimsey
Setting: East Anglia, England
Rating: 5.0
One of Sayers' most renowned works, The Nine Tailors is not about nine people who mend clothes, but about church bells -- the title signifying the nine teller strokes that mark the passing of a man. Wimsey, in addition to solving crimes, has practiced change-ringing. So a few months after enjoying the hospitality of the Rev. Venables, rector of Fenchurch St. Paul, and helping with an all-night bell toiling, Wimsey receives a call for help from the minister -- someone has buried the body of a stranger in the parish graveyard. An emerald necklace stolen years ago and never recovered also comes into play. Sayers draws a beautiful portrait of a country church in the fens with her descriptions of bell toiling (See here for a quick YouTube explanation) and of a country life that revolves around the church: "The congregation streamed out from the porch, their lanterns and torches flitting away into the whirling storm like sparks tossed from a bonfire." This is one of Sayers' best regarded novels, and for good reason: the ending is still one of the best written in crime fiction.

Best 2009 Reads

It's that time of the year: when we begin to reflect on the past year. For reviewers and other readers, that means their best reads of the year. Janet Rudolph has an impressive collection of best mystery lists at her blog. Of course, these lists often serve to remind us of the many books we did not get around to reading! But, given that constraint, I offer my own list of books I most enjoyed reading this year (some were published this year, but not all). They are:

Shatter, Michael Robotham
A Rule Against Murder, Louise Penny
The Brutal Telling, Louise Penny
A Darker Domain, Val McDermid
Echoes From the Dead, Johan Theorin
The Shanghai Moon, S.J. Rozan
Bleeding Heart Square, Andrew Taylor
The Last Refuge, Chris Knopf
River of Darkness, Rennie Airth
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley
The Coroner’s Lunch, Colin Cotterill

With best wishes for many good reads in 2010!

The Shanghai Moon by S.J. Rozan

Protagonists: Lydia Chin and Bill Smith
Setting: New York City
Rating: 5.0

It is very rare that I fall in love with a story on the first page. Yet The Shanghai Moon pulled me in immediately, spinning a yarn that was as alluring as the Shanghai Moon itself -- a legendary piece of jewelry at the center of the story. Private eye Lydia Chin is hired to help track stolen jewels dating back to World War II, when Jews fleeing the Nazis went to Shanghai. The story is told in flashback through a series of letters from the jewels' original owner, Rosalie Gilder, and by her surviving family. But someone is not telling the truth, and even after being fired from the case, Chin, with partner Bill Smith, can't let go.

Now, mysteries with jewels are nothing new (Wilkie Collin's The Moonstone is considered the first detective novel). But Rozan spins her story around two independent women -- Rosalie, a young woman sent alone to Shanghai with her younger brother (and this part is based on the very-real Jewish settlement in Shanghai during World War II) and Lydia, whose ringtone is the theme to "Wonder Woman" but who is also very rooted in the Chinese traditions. Set in New York City, Rozan very much brings the sights, smells and yes, even tastes, of Chinatown to life.

The Shanghai Moon is part of an award-winning series, but this novel can be read on its own (in fact, I haven't read any of the other novels -- yet -- and had no trouble following the characters). It's been seven years since Rozan has written a Chin/Smith novel. All I can say is, welcome back!

A Darker Domain by Val McDermid

Protagonist: Det. Insp. Karen Pirie
Setting: Fife, Scotland
Rating: 4.7

In 1984, a miner goes missing during a strike. His family believes that he's joined strikebreakers in another part of Scotland. But, more than 20 years later, Mick Prentice's daughter is trying to find him -- and she can't. Her son needs a bone marrow transplant to survive, and her father is the last hope for a match. Seemingly unrelated, a year later, Catriona MacLennan Grant, daughter of a powerful businessman, and her baby son are kidnapped. Catriona is killed, but the baby disappears. Now, a journalist vacationing in Italy has found a clue that may lead to the kidnappers. Both cold cases land in DI Pirie's lap, and both, unsurprisingly, are related. McDermid does a wonderful job of switching back and forth not only between time and place, but also between characters. Pirie is so well-drawn, in fact, that it's a shame this is a standalone novel, and not a series. The book is gripping, and moves at a quick pace. I would have given it a perfect rating except that some of the revelations were easy to figure out. Still, even when I thought I had it all figured out, McDermid had a few more curveballs to throw.

Bleeding Heart Square by Andrew Taylor

Protagonists: Lydia Langstone and Rory Wentwood
Setting: Bleeding Heart Square, London, 1934
Rating: 5.0

Lydia Langstone is an upper-class woman used to the finer things. But when her husband strikes her, she leaves her comfortable life to share a gritty apartment with her estranged father in the somewhat seedy Bleeding Heart Square. Rory Wentwood, a journalist who has spent years in India and is now unemployed, also finds himself renting an apartment there. The legend of the square has it that the devil, disguised during a party, danced away with a lady, leaving her body on the square, her bleeding heart on the cobblestones. Now, someone is sending apartment owner Serridge hearts and skulls. Could it have something to do with Miss Penhow, the middle-aged spinster who owned the apartments before she fell in love with Serridge? Miss Penhow mysteriously disappeared a few years ago, and now Rory, acting on behalf of his one-time fiancee Fenella, is trying to find out what happened. Lydia soon becomes involved in the mystery, as well.

While Bleeding Heart Square is most assuredly a mystery, Taylor's books are so much more, this one being a Dicksensian tour of the have's and have not's, of a politically-torn England pre-World War II and of the options open to women at that time. Taylor is a master of the atmospheric, and he paints bleakness beautifully. I've read some criticism that the book moves too slowly, but that is what I like about Taylor -- he writes psychological suspense like no one else. He pulls you into the characters' stories so completely and then -- surprise -- wraps up the mystery you almost forgot about.

Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley

Protagonist: Gus Carpenter
Setting: Starvation Lake, Michigan
Rating: 4.5

In this debut novel, journalist Gus Carpenter returns to his hometown in northern Michigan, having been fired from a large Detroit newspaper. Now he's working for a small daily that fills the pages with light-hearted features. That's until police find a snowmobile that belonged to the town's legendary hockey coach in Starvation Lake, miles from where he disappeared years ago. Suddenly, Gus and rookie reporter Joanie are on to a big story. Warning: There's a lot of hockey in this novel -- Gus is forever remembered by townspeople as the goalie who lost the team their state ice-hockey championship and he still plays in an adult league. The amount of hockey detail does bog the book down sometimes. Still, there's a very good mystery here, great characters and wonderful descriptions of the snowy small town of Starvation Lake. This is a stellar debut and I look forward to more from Gruley.

Second books

Lately, I've been experiencing second book-itis, and it is not a good thing. I love, love, love the first book -- recommend it to other book lovers, even. Then a funny thing happens. The author comes out with a second book, which I snatch up. Only to be bitterly disappointed. Just the opposite happens, I dislike the second book intensenly. I first noticed this with Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind (loved it) and The Angel's Game (really disliked it).


This month it has happened twice. Years ago, I read and loved Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife. So when she published her second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, I looked forward to another great story. Symmetry is a gothic novel (one of my favorite genres), replete with a scary cemetery, ghost and two sets of twins. When Elspeth Noblin dies, she leaves her London apartment to her twin sister's own twin daughters, Valentina and Julia, with the stipulation that the American-raised girls live in the apartment for a year, an apartment that borders the real Highgate Cemetery. The story is one of obsessive love, in effect the opposite of the first novel, which was more of a pure love story.

The other books are The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larrson, a gripping mystery that had me up in the wee hours of the morning reading, and The Girl Who Played With Fire, which (you guessed it) I didn't like. Both books are set in Sweden and feature journalist Mikael Blomkvist and computer hacker/investigator Lisbeth Salander. The first book featured Blomkvist primarily and revolved around a closed community-type of mystery. In the second of a trilogy, Salander is front and center in a more thriller-type of novel. The problem: I didn't really ever like Salander, the plot rambled too much and there were so many characters that I had trouble keeping track of who was who. So, for me, another book in the dislike column.

Has this ever happened to you? I'd love to hear other people's experience. Do we love the first book too much to ever like anything else by the author?

A Deadly Month

As part of a challenge for 4 Mystery Addicts, my online book discussion group, I concentrated this month on books that had "die, dead(ly) or death" in the title. What I found were some gems, including:

Mourn Not Your Dead by Deborah Crombie. Scotland Yard Supt. Duncan Kincaid and Sgt. Gemma James are called to investigate the death of Alastair Gilbert, a top-ranking police official who was widely disliked, both within the force and in his village. This, of course, makes for lots of suspects. Much of this series, so far, revolves around the growing relationship between Kincaid and James. Generally, I would recommend reading a series on its own, but this book could be read as a standalone. It's the fourth in the series, and much stronger than the three that came before.


Death of a Perfect Mother by Robert Barnard. Two sons are planning their mother's murder -- but she's killed the day before they
can put their plan into place. Again, we have a victim who is highly reviled in the village, so anyone could have done it. I expected this one to be light, knowing Barnard's touch with humor. However, the humor here is very dark. A good book, but not one I would recommend to those who haven't read Barnard before.


Dead as a Dodo by Jane Langton. After Barnard's dark, dark humor, I needed this. I had never heard of Langton; I had gotten her book for free and it might have stayed in storage if not for the October challenge. Now I must look for the rest in this series. Visiting Harvard Professor Homer Kelly and his wife are in Oxford, where they start to sleuth after a murder at a college museum of science. The plot involves some specimens of Darwin and the book throws in a dash of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (much of that book is said to be influenced by the author's days in Oxford). The book is full of whimsy, as well as serious scientific and theological debate. Somehow, Langton pulls it all together.


Dead Run by P.J. Tracy. Somehow the women of Monkeewrench and Wisconsin deputy Sharon Mueller end up in the ghost town of Four Corners, Wisconsin, where the entire town has been killed by nerve gas, set off by homegrown militiamen. More of a thriller, which I'm not usually into, but this book had me hooked.


Death Will Help You Leave Him by Elizabeth Zelvin (see review and interview below).

Interview with Elizabeth Zelvin

Elizabeth Zelvin has written Death Will Get You Sober, followed by Death Will Help You Leave Him, out this month (see review below). She talks a bit about her latest book:

Q. First, thanks for agreeing to answer my questions. I want to start off with the protagonist, Bruce Kohler, who narrates the books. Many mystery writers have protagonists who struggle with alcoholism, but you have one who is a recovering alcoholic. Why did you approach the character from this point?

A. Apart from being a writer for my whole life and loving mysteries, my primary reason for writing these books was and is that I have something to say about recovery, which is a remarkable process of transformation that takes great courage and honesty on the part of those who recover. The first book, Death Will Get You Sober, is dedicated to them.

Q. You are a psychotherapist in addition to being a writer. How much do you draw upon your experiences for the books while still maintaining client confidences?

A. Besides being a psychotherapist, I spent fifteen years working in and then directing alcoholism treatment programs. My private practice, both in a conventional therapy office (more than fifteen years) and now as an online therapist (almost ten years), has included many clients who have been affected by addictions, codependency, and compulsive behaviors such as eating disorders and compulsive spending, either in themselves or people they love, as well as adult children of alcoholics, sexual abuse survivors, and survivors of other kinds of family dysfunction. My characters are fictional. I would never write about a real particular client. But a lot of recovering people have written to say how much they appreciate my getting it right. Recovery is my briar patch—if you remember Brer Rabbit, that’s the place where I feel most at home.

Q. In Death Will Help You Leave Him, you also write about co-dependency and bad relationships. Why write about these issues in a mystery book?

A. I have worked with a lot of couples—those who just need a little fine-tuning and those whose marriage or committed relationship is a war zone — as well as people whose capacity for intimacy has been damaged by domestic violence and sexual trauma. And they say that 96 percent of Americans are codependent. It’s not a genuine statistic, but it makes a point about how our culture encourages us to seek our identity and self-worth outside ourselves. Too often, codependents turn to abusive, addicted, or unavailable partners, the very people who can’t meet their needs. In fact, I’m more of an “expert” in codependency than in addictions: I’ve been writing and lecturing about it professionally for more than twenty years. Bad relationships are universal — almost everybody has had at least one, and I hope that draws them to Death Will Help You Leave Him. As for writing about relationships, isn’t that what novels are all about? And therapy, and poetry, and songs, my other creative areas. The mystery is the sturdy coathanger on which I hang my characters and their relationships. I love a character-driven mystery — my own or someone else’s — and to me, relationships are the most interesting thing in the world.

Q. Your books have true laugh-out loud moments. Where does the humor come from, especially when dealing with issues of addiction?

A. The humor is built into recovery. There’s a lot of laughter in AA meetings. It comes from the perspective of people who look honestly and thoroughly at their past behavior and have a sense of humor about how royally they screwed up. I tried to show some of that in the fictional AA meetings in the books. I’m so glad you laughed out loud. I think my books are hilarious, myself. And Bruce’s wisecracking voice is one of those gifts from the Muse or a Higher Power or whatever you want to call it. I have nothing to do with it except to be a channel.

Q. The first things that one notices about your books are the titles, of course. They are longer than the norm and a bit off the wall, with a touch of humor. Can you tell me how you came up with the titles? Was it a marketing idea?

A. On the contrary. When I started, all I knew was that I wanted to write a mystery about recovery, and that the title was Death Will Get You Sober. In fact, I told so many people about it that it’s a miracle I ever wrote the book. Once Bruce gets sober, the first thing he has to deal with is relationships. And I wanted the murder to involve an abusive relationship, so Death Will Help You Leave Him was the right title. I didn’t even know it would be the boyfriend who got killed. I had some cases in mind where the codependent girlfriend minimized the danger and then got killed — but when I sat down to write it, it didn’t come out that way. Until the publisher accepted my title, I was very nervous, because by that time I had come up with a string of Death Will titles, each one with that twist of making what death does sound positive, and each associated with an addictive or compulsive disorder I could write about. I knew publishers often change titles, and I would have been sunk if they hadn’t gone for mine.

Q. It seems you’ve gotten a lot of positive reaction, beginning with your first book. Have you gotten any unexpected or strange reactions from your books?

A. A few people, including agents, editors, and reviewers as well as readers, have found my novels dark and depressing. I’m not exactly surprised, but I suspect they’re missing the humor — and even more important, the hope — because they bring their own experiences with alcoholism or addiction to what they read. For example, someone whose spouse or parent died of alcoholism without ever finding recovery — and who has not sought help for his or her own pain — might have trouble connecting with the tone, which is lighthearted in spite of the serious issues I write about.

Q. How has the experience of writing mysteries been different from your other writing: the nonfiction and the poetry?

A. I’ve written several mystery short stories in addition to the novels, and I’ve found writing novels very different from the shorter forms I’ve done: the stories, poetry, songs (which are quite different from the poems in language, meter, and tone, though they may cover the same subjects), and a variety of nonfiction pieces including my blog posts on Poe’s Deadly Daughters — which make me feel like a journalist and are great fun to do — and professional articles and chapters, which also use a very different language. Writing a novel is the hardest kind of writing for me. For every day when the words flow, there are several when I’m slogging along with grim determination, finding it hard to believe I’ll ever make my way to the end, no less be able to fix the bad parts and make the good parts hang together. Writing itself comes easy to me. Storytelling, especially the complex story a mystery novel tells, is a challenge.

Q. You have two strong books in the series. Can you tell us a bit about your next Kohler book?

A. In the next one, Bruce and his friends Barbara and Jimmy take shares in a lethal clean and sober group house in the Hamptons. I had a lot of fun doing the research: picking strawberries, fishing for blues from a small boat, and talking with the local cops — who told me group houses are illegal in the Hamptons.

Q. Are you going to continue with the Kohler series, or do you have ideas for other mystery books?

A. I hope I can keep the series going. If I can’t, the idea that’s knocking loudest on the inside of my brain is a young adult novel. The protagonist already exists, in a historical short story that will appear some time in 2010 in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. A couple of other characters and a story line are rattling around in my head. My protagonist is a young Marrano sailor on Columbus’s first voyage. He couldn’t be more different from Bruce, but he has his own distinctive voice. I think a strong voice is one of those gifts you can’t possibly refuse when it comes to you.

Q. Who are your favorite mystery authors, and what book are you reading now?

A. I love character-driven traditional mysteries with depth and complexity. Unlike Bruce, most of their protagonists are cops or PIs, often women, but they are my role models. Among my favorites are Margaret Maron, Marcia Muller, Nevada Barr, Dana Stabenow, Julie Smith, Reginald Hill, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, and Janet Neel, whose first mystery, Death’s Bright Angel, is one of my all-time favorites. And if I can claim a couple of eminent foremothers, they’d be Dorothy L. Sayers and Josephine Tey.

Right now, I’m taking a break from mystery and rereading all of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander novels, in anticipation of reading the new one that’s just come out. What brilliant books, and on so many levels. I’ve read them all several times before, but I’m going slowly this time—and bringing my added experiences as a writer — and I marvel at how she manages a huge canvas of time, place, memorable characters, accurate and minutely observed detail — from battles to sex to domestic concerns — and an immense sweep of satisfying plot, conflict, and action. She’s a great storyteller who’s also a marvelous writer.

Death Will Help You Leave Him by Elizabeth Zelvin

Protagonist: Bruce Kohler
Setting: New York City
Rating: 4.5

There’s always been a long tradition of detectives with alcohol and other substance abuse issues (even Sherlock Holmes!), but Zelvin serves up something completely different: an amateur sleuth who is a recovering alcoholic.

In her second Kohler book (the first was Death Will Get You Sober), Bruce Kohler gets swept up in a murder investigation, pulled in by friends Jimmy (also a recovering alcoholic) and Jimmy’s girlfriend Barbara, an addictions counselor. One of Barbara’s clients, Luz, is suspected by police of killing her boyfriend, the married Frankie, a one-time drug dealer. The foursome team up to find the real killer. Their first stop: the wake at the funeral home, a scene so funny it’s worth the price of the book alone. From there, it’s subways and taxis across Manhattan and Brooklyn, and a few other escapades.

The book does have its dark side. While the first book dealt with alcoholism, this one turns the focus on unhealthy relationships. Even Kohler struggles with this, yo-yoing back and forth whenever he gets a call from his ex-wife, who is bipolar, unmedicated and in an abusive relationship. Some scenes are so wrenching you want to reach out and slap the ex – or Bruce himself.

Zelvin is a psychotherapist, so she knows what she writes about. But her ability to bring us both tragedy and humor, sometimes in the same sentence, shows she’s a talented writer as well. Zelvin already has a third book in the works. Will I be reading it? Oh yes, you can say I’ve become a bit addicted to the series.

The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny

Protagonist: Chief Insp. Armand Gamache
Setting: Three Pines, Canada
Rating: 4.7

Three Pines must be the most pleasant place to live – with its cozy bistro, its bakery and used book store, tight-knit friends and wonderful views. Perfect, except for the murders. After yet another one in Three Pines, even the residents notice, joking: “Every Quebec village has a vocation. Some make cheese, some wine, some pots. We produce bodies.”

With that out of the way early in the book, we readers suspend disbelief and continue on with the story: a man who lived as a hermit deep in the woods has been murdered. Even stranger, his body has been found in the bistro owned by Gabri and Olivier. And even stranger than that, the hermit’s log cabin was filled with treasures: tapestries, first edition books, a priceless violin.

Who would want to kill this man? Could it have been the new owners of the Hadley House, who have turned the old, haunted house into a beautiful new hotel and spa (and whose property holds the log cabin)? Could it have been someone in the Czech community, since the hermit was thought to be Czech? Or even someone closer to home?

While all of Penny’s books are beautifully written and take us to this heart-wrenchingly lovely town, this book also has an undercurrent of fear and suspicion running through it. And it is heart-wrenching in a way not expected. As usual in a Penny book, we still have questions unanswered in the end. And maybe even a seed of doubt.

This is the fifth in the Gamache series. Up to now, I’ve rated all her books near-perfect. This one slips a few points for two reasons: her previous book (A Rule Against Murder) was perfection. Comparing the two, this one falls short. Second, much of the book is repetitive – series readers already know a lot about the village and the characters. While the characters have always made the books come alive, here they detract from the mysteries – because much of what we’re told has already been revealed in earlier books. But those are small quibbles in a series that has become my favorite.

This is a series that needs to be read in order, and it is:
Still Life
A Fatal Grace
The Cruelest Month
A Rule Against Murder
The Brutal Telling

Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason

Protagonist: Insp. Erlendur
Setting: Reykjavik, Iceland
Rating: 4.5

The fifth in the Erlendur series to be translated into English, this book opens with the murder of a young Thai boy – stabbed and left to die in the snow. His half-brother, meanwhile, is missing. A straight police procedural, the novel delves into anti-immigrant feelings in Iceland. Indridason also introduces another case into the novel: a missing woman, newly married. And the boy’s death also unveils part of Erlendur’s past: as a boy, he and brother were stuck in his blizzard. While Erlendur was saved, his brother was never found. While his brother's death is always close to his thoughts during this investigation, Erlendur is loath to speak about it to his children – who are very interested in their father’s past.

Scandinavian novels have a reputation of being bleak. Arctic Chill doesn’t disappoint in that regard. The prose, stripped down and spare, adds to this – there is no sense of warmth, even when the cases are solved. Arctic Chill isn’t the best book in the series – Jar City and Silence of the Grave were far better – but this is still a very good book.

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

Setting: England, 1348
Protagonist: Camelot
Rating: 4.8
(Audiobook narrated by Maxwell Caulfield)

As the black plague sweeps across Medieval England, a band of travelers thrown together by circumstance sets out toward the north, trying to escape the pestilence. They do escape the plague, but not death, as they are killed, one by one. But by whom – or what?

This is a mystery wrapped in the supernatural. The travelers love to tell stories, especially of witches, vampires and werewolves – and at one point believe they are being hunted by a wolf. What they don’t tell are their own stories – each person carries a secret, hence the “liars” of the novel’s title. Led (and narrated) by Camelot, an old, hideously scarred peddler of religious relics, the band includes a Venetian musician and his apprentice, an albino child who reads runes, a magician who travels with a merbaby (not quite grown mermaid), a young couple expecting their first child, a midwife and healer, and a man who claims to be half-swan, and has a wing in place of one arm.

This is a book to be savored; it is not a light read, by any means. The constant rain, the travelers’ troubles and the superstitions of the era weigh the novel down. It is, however, educational – the author’s notes at the end give you an idea of the research done. And it does keep you engrossed to the very end, where one last twist awaits.

The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill

Protagonist: Dr. Siri Paiboun
Setting: People's Democratic Republic of Laos, 1976
Rating: 5.0

Dr. Siri is set to retire, should retire, deserves retirement. At 72, he’s given years of service to the Communist cause. But his superiors need a national coroner – “from each according to ability, to each according to need,” a top government official lectures Siri – and so the doctor reluctantly becomes a coroner, learning from dusty books. Well, it turns out Siri has a knack for this. First, a government official’s wife is brought to his morgue, ostensibly a natural death, but Siri suspects not. Then two Vietnamese men are found drowned, possibly tortured, a finding that could endanger international relations. And Siri is flown to a northern army base in the jungle where commanders have mysteriously been dying.

The first in this series has plenty to keep you riveted. But what’s really special about this book is the witty writing and richly drawn characters. Oh, and the good doctor also sees dead people – those who come to him in his morgue also come to him in visions.

Every once in a while comes a book that surprises you because it is so unlike anything else in the genre you've read -- The Coroner's Lunch is that book. The rest in the series (which you can be sure I'll be reading) are:

Thirty-Three Teeth
Disco For the Departed
Anarchy and Old Dogs
Curse of the Pogo Stick
The Merry Misogynist

In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff

Protagonist: Det. Simon Ziele
Setting: New York City and upstate Dobson, 1905
Rating: 3.7

In the Shadow of Gotham won St. Martin’s Minotaur First Crime Novel Award last year, and comes with great promise: an atmospheric novel set just after the turn of the century, when psychology was beginning to delve into the criminal mind.

Amid all this, we meet Ziele, who has transferred to a small upstate town from New York City after his fiancée dies in the General Slocum ferry disaster. But this quiet existence is not to last. A young woman is brutally murdered and the crime sends him back to the city to investigate. There, a noted Columbia University criminologist, Alistair Sinclair, believes that a patient he has been treating, Michael Fromley, is behind the murder. But Fromley has disappeared. So Ziele, with the help of Sinclair and those in his office, sets out to find Fromley, who always seems to be two steps ahead of them – as if he had inside knowledge of the investigation itself.

The book gets high marks for atmosphere and historical detail – I felt I was right there with the characters. And the characters are very engaging, especially Ziele, who despite his tragedy is not mired in melancholy. But when it came to the plot itself, which is critical in a mystery, of course, the book fell short. Much of the time is spent chasing shadows around Gotham. There is a nice twist in the story, but it comes too soon in the book, and the rest of the story drags after that. The ending, when it comes, is anticlimatic.

Yet given all that, I’m still curious about Pintoff’s next book (she reportedly has at least two more planned in the series). I like the characters and the time period, and am interested in seeing what happens next -- both to the characters and to Pintoff, as a writer. The series has promise.