Fiction Review

Dead in the Frame is the fifth book in the Pentecost and Parker series by Stephen Spotswood. Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed Spotswood for a virtual event. There are still signed copies of Dead in the Frame available in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4hOQnQm.

Here’s the description of Dead in the Frame.

The most dramatic installment yet in the Nero Award–winning Pentecost and Parker series, as Will scrambles to solve a shocking murder before Lillian takes the fall for the crime.

NEW YORK CITY, 1947: Wealthy financier and ghoulish connoisseur of crime, Jessup Quincannon, is dead, and famed detective Lillian Pentecost is under arrest for his murder. Means, motive, and a mountain of evidence leave everyone believing she’s guilty. Everyone, that is, except Willowjean “Will” Parker, who knows for a fact her boss is innocent. She just doesn’t know if she can prove it.

With Lillian locked away in the House of D—New York City’s infamous women’s prison—Will is left to root out the real killer. Was it a member of Quincannon’s murder-obsessed Black Museum Club? Maybe it was his jilted lover? Or his beautiful, certainly-sociopathic bodyguard? And what about the mob hit-man who just happened to disappear after the shots were fired? 

With the city barreling toward the trial of the century, each day brings fresh headlines and hints of long-buried scandals from Lillian’s past. Will is desperate to get her boss out from behind bars before her reputation is destroyed. Because the House of D is no kind place, especially for a woman with multiple sclerosis. Or one with so many enemies. Her health failing and being targeted by someone who wants her dead, Lillian needs to survive long enough to take the stand. 

With time running out on both sides of the prison walls, Will and Lillian must wager everything to uncover who put their thumb on the scales and a bullet in Quincannon’s head. Before Lady Justice brings her sword down, ending Pentecost and Parker’s adventures once and for all.

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STEPHEN SPOTSWOOD is an award-winning playwright, journalist, and educator. As a journalist, he has spent much of the last two decades writing about the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the struggles of wounded veterans. His dramatic work has been widely produced across the United States, and he is the winner of the 2021 Nero Award for best American mystery. He makes his home in Washington, DC with his wife, young adult author Jessica Spotswood.

Enjoy the conversation with Stephen Spotswood.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, loves Mike Lawson’s eighteenth Joe DeMarco thriller, Untouchable. Release date is March 7, but you can order signed copies through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4i5pVBS.

Author Dana Stabenow took time to review Untouchable.

A wholly original plot involving a US president who really should break his habit of doodling, a low level government employee who sees something she shouldn’t, an intelligence director who has way too much power and way too many yes men and women working for him, a good cop even if she is only a year in, an ex-Speaker who positively lusts after getting his job back, and Joe DeMarco, a fixer who cleans up Congressional messes. 

This isn’t one but DeMarco’s job is taking out the ex-Speaker’s dirty laundry and he does as he is bid, which is mostly finding people to ask questions of, which nearly gets him killed, not to mention the three other victims in his wake. (He really needs to learn how to spot a tail.) The action is non-stop and by the end DeMarco, the son of a mob hitman, channels his dead father to see justice done, or at least justice as it would be called by Teddy Roosevelt. 

Good characters with every elected government official confirming every suspicion you ever had about living and working in D.C. and a narrative that just won’t stop, including a last scene that Mickey Spillane, who famously said “The last line sells the next book” would have given an A+. Here’s a book you’ll stay up late to finish. You have been warned.

Dana

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Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, welcomed Mark Greaney and Jack Stewart for a recent event at the bookstore. Jack Stewart was host for Mark Greaney on release day for Midnight Black, the latest Gray Man novel. There are signed copies of Midnight Black available through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/3X8PEkP.

Here’s the summary of Midnight Black.

With his lover imprisoned in a Russian gulag, the Gray Man will stop at nothing to free her in this latest entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series.

A winter sunrise over the great plains of Russia is no cause for celebration. The temperature barely rises above zero, and the guards at Penal Colony IK22 are determined to take their misery out on the prisoners—chief among them, one Zoya Zakharova. Once a master spy for Russian foreign intelligence, then the partner and lover of the Gray Man, she has information the Kremlin wants, and they don’t care what they have to do to get it.

But if they think a thousand miles of frozen wasteland and the combined power of the Russian police state is enough to protect them, they don’t know the Gray Man. He’s coming, and no one’s safe.

Mark Greaney‘s research for the Gray Man novels, including The Chaos Agent, Burner, Sierra Six, Relentless, One Minute Out, Mission Critical, Agent in Place, Gunmetal Gray, Back Blast, Dead Eye, Ballistic, On Target, and The Gray Man, has taken him to more than thirty-five countries, and he has trained alongside military and law enforcement in the use of firearms, battlefield medicine, and close-range combative tactics. With Marine Lt. Col. Rip Rawlings, he wrote the New York Times bestseller Red Metal. He is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers Tom Clancy Support and Defend, Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect, Tom Clancy Commander in Chief, and Tom Clancy True Faith and Allegiance. With Tom Clancy, he coauthored Locked On, Threat Vector, and Command Authority.

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Enjoy the conversation with Mark Greaney.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen Bookstore, calls Jane Yang’s novel, The Lotus Shoes, “an excellent book”. After reading author Dana Stabenow’s review, you might want to order a copy through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4i72cRX.

Check out Stabenow’s review of The Lotus Shoes.

It’s China in the 1880s. Little Flower is a farmer’s daughter whose father has just died who is sold by her mother as a slave to serve Linjing, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy family.  Little Flower and Linjing are not destined to be friends. Little Flower is a genius at embroidery and much praised by Linjing’s mother, so naturally Linjing hates Little Flower and abuses her every chance she gets.

And that’s even before we get into the foot binding. Little Flower’s mother bound her feet to better her chances of making a good marriage. Linjing’s father is determined to embrace Western ways and has made Linjing a betrothal to a man whose family wishes him to leave his bride’s feet unbound.

“Linjing’s foot-binding ceremony should not go ahead.”
My grandmother slammed her teacup onto the table so hard that it cracked. “Do you wish to dishonor our ancestors? Golden lilies are the hallmark of every well-bred girl. No genteel mother-in-law will have a girl with big feet.”
“I have secured a betrothal for Linjing.”
“What’s wrong with the prospective groom?”

Linjing of course takes her dismay out on Little Flower by having Little Flower’s feet unbound, a process as awful and painful as the binding was in the first place.

And it goes downhill from there. Linjing’s family falls apart and she is shipped off to the Chinese equivalent of a convent, which might have proved a humbling experience for anyone else but not for Linjing. She insists that Little Flower come with her, she destroys Little Flower’s chance at marriage, she won’t free her when her indenture is over, she causes Little Flower’s hand to be broken with a wooden mallet, and in a supreme act of malice she damn near gets her killed when the man they both love choses Little Flower over her.

I don’t entirely buy Linjing’s near-deathbed conversion (Little Flower’s near-deathbed, please note) but this book is an all too realistic look at the lot of women in China before the empire fell, and it is not pretty, not at all. Wives were property, their only power coming from their sons, but only if they succeeded in producing one. If they didn’t…

In the end Little Flower and Linjing escape from their lives to something approaching better ones, but this book made me think a lot about Mao. Maybe there had to be a Mao to shake Chinese culture free of a such a past. Recommended, but be warned that this novel will leave you shaken and grieving for all those little girls who had no choice in what happened to their bodies or their lives.

Dana

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It was fascinating to hear Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, discuss The Queens of Crime with Marie Benedict. There was a conversation about The Detection Club, and cocktails, and the authors who were the Queens of Crime. You can order signed copies of the book in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4h0bWMV.

Here is the summary of The Queens of Crime.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Mystery of Mrs. Christie—a thrilling story of the five greatest women writers of the Golden Age of Mystery and their bid to solve a real-life murder.

London, 1930. The five greatest women crime writers have banded together to form a secret society with a single goal: to show they are no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens by their male counterparts in the legendary Detection Club. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group includes Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They call themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Solve an actual murder, that of a young woman found strangled in a park in France who may have connections leading to the highest levels of the British establishment.

May Daniels, a young English nurse on an excursion to France with her friend, seemed to vanish into thin air as they prepared to board a ferry home. Months later, her body is found in the nearby woods. The murder has all the hallmarks of a locked room mystery for which these authors are famous: how did her killer manage to sneak her body out of a crowded train station without anyone noticing? If, as the police believe, the cause of death is manual strangulation, why is there is an extraordinary amount of blood at the crime scene? What is the meaning of a heartbreaking secret letter seeming to implicate an unnamed paramour? Determined to solve the highly publicized murder, the Queens of Crime embark on their own investigation, discovering they’re stronger together. But soon the killer targets Dorothy Sayers herself, threatening to expose a dark secret in her past that she would do anything to keep hidden.

Inspired by a true story in Sayers’ own life, New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict brings to life the lengths to which five talented women writers will go to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of letters as they unpuzzle a mystery torn from the pages of their own novels.

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MARIE BENEDICT is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Queens of Crime, The Mitford Affair, Her Hidden Genius, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, The Only Woman in the Room, Lady Clementine, Carnegie’s Maid, The Other Einstein, and with Victoria Christopher Murray, the Good Morning America Book Club pick The Personal Librarian and the Target Book of the Year The First Ladies. All have been translated into multiple languages, and many have been selected for the Barnes & Noble Book Club, Target Book Club, Costco Book Club, Indie Next List, and LibraryReads List. She lives in Pittsburgh with her family.

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Enjoy the conversation with Marie Benedict.

Patrick Millikin from The Poisoned Pen has been waiting to talk about To Save the Man with John Sayles. The novel deals with the Wounded Knee Massacre and the Carlisle Indian School. There are signed copies of the book still available in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4hGb8ha

Here is the description of To Save the Man.

In the vein of Never Let Me Go and Killers of the Flower Moon, one of America’s greatest storytellers sheds light on an American tragedy: the Wounded Knee Massacre, and the ‘cultural genocide’ experienced by the Native American children at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School . . .

In September of 1890, the academic year begins at the Carlisle School, a military-style boarding school for Indians in Pennsylvania, founded and run by Captain Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt considers himself a champion of Native Americans. His motto, “To save the man, we must kill the Indian,” is severely enforced in both classroom and dormitory: Speak only English, forget your own language and customs, learn to be white.

As the young students navigate surviving the school, they begin to hear rumors of a “ghost dance” amongst the tribes of the west—a ceremonial dance aimed at restoring the Native People to power, and running the invaders off their land. As the hope and promise of the ghost dance sweeps across the Great Plains, cynical newspapers seize upon the story to whip up panic among local whites. The US government responds by deploying troops onto lands that had been granted to the Indians. It is an act that seems certain to end in slaughter.

As news of these developments reaches Carlisle, each student, no matter what their tribe, must make a choice: to follow the white man’s path, or be true to their own way of life . . .

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John Sayles is an American independent film director, screenwriter, actor, and novelist. He has twice been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, for Passion Fish (1992) and Lone Star (1996). He has written eight novels, the most recent being Yellow Earth (2020) and JAMIE MACGILLIVRAY: The Renegade’s Journey (2023), which was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice.

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You’ll want to watch Patrick Millikin’s conversation with John Sayles.

Award-winning reviewer Oline Cogdill recently reviewed John McMahon’s Head Cases, the first in a new series. There are still a couple signed copies available in The Poisoned Pen’s Webstore. https://bit.ly/40U9VN9. And, once you’ve read Cogdill’s review from the South Florida Sun Sentinel, youl’ll want to watch the conversation from The Poisoned Pen.

John McMahon’s new novel, “Head Cases,” launches a new series. (Nathaniel Chadwick/Courtesy)

Book review: ‘Head Cases’ launches new series about brainy FBI agents

‘Head Cases’ by John McMahon. Minotaur, 352 pages, $28

An elite, cerebral FBI team that mainly relies on its collective intellect but doesn’t shy away from action launches what should be a stellar new series from Edgar nominee John McMahon.

“Head Cases” balances fully fleshed-out, quirky characters with McMahon’s fine eye for details about the inner workings of investigations coupled with methodical plotting.
Privately, these five investigators call themselves the Head Cases because, as one character says, they “mostly live in their heads.” Publicly, they are known as the FBI’s Patterns and Recognition team — PAR — that utilizes each individual’s skills. The lead investigator is Gardner Camden, a savant with an eidetic memory and a love of puzzles.

The team’s latest case is tracking a vigilante who targets serial killers. The vigilante’s first victim was a killer Gardner had hunted years before who was believed to have died in a fire seven years ago. Apparently not. The team learns the now deceased killer had been living under the radar in Texas. PAR members believe the killer may be receiving inside information as more murders occur.

The case takes the team from its base in Jacksonville to Miami to Texas and other sites. While Gardner is the main focus of “Head Cases,” McMahon makes sure that each character takes center stage. Joanne Harris earned her nickname, “The Shooter,” as “the pride of the 2012 Olympic shooting team.” Cassie Pardo is “The Analyst,” with exceptional math skills. Frank Roberts, “The Boss,” is old-school FBI while “The Rookie” is Richie Brancato whose entry on the team mystifies the others.

The tight-knit investigators respect each other’s skills and care about their colleagues’ welfare and personal lives, without being intrusive. Rumors that PAR may be dissolved brings them closer but doesn’t affect their devotion to their investigation. McMahon’s precise storytelling in “Head Cases” should assure many adventures with this intelligent team.

Behind the plot: While many thrillers and mysteries are optioned for television or film, John McMahon’s “Head Cases” may be one of the rare exceptions to make it to the screen as it currently is in development with Warner Bros. TV for a streaming series on HBO Max. “Head Cases” is McMahon’s fourth novel. His first novel “The Good Detective” was nominated for the Edgar and ITW Thriller awards.

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You can also watch John McMahon’s event at The Poisoned Pen with bookstore owner Barbara Peters.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed Gregg Hurwitz, author of the Orphan X series. The latest book is Nemesis. There are signed copies of the book available in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/41djQO1.

Here’s the description of Nemesis.

No greater friend. No deadlier enemy.

The explosive new novel in the New York Times bestselling Orphan X series is flipping the acclaimed series on its head. Find out why series superfans and new readers alike are calling it a “knockout” (firstCLUE).

Evan Smoak is a highly trained former government assassin who has survived for years by keeping his circle to a few trusted confidants and a strict code he calls “The Ten Commandments.” But when Evan suddenly finds himself at odds with his oldest friend, all the rules he lives by shatter—and the consequences are murderous.

Tommy Stojack might be Evan’s best friend in the world. He’s a gifted gunsmith who has created much of Evan’s own weapons and combat gear. But now, he has apparently crossed one of Evan’s hardest lines and their argument explodes into open warfare. Now Evan has no choice but to track and face down his only friend.

In the meantime, Tommy has left town in order to honor his own promise to help a dead friend’s son. While Tommy is fighting to save the son with everything he’s got, Evan arrives with vengeance in mind.

But as deadly as the former Orphan X is, there is an even more dangerous threat about to arrive on the scene. The only question left is will any of them get out alive.

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GREGG HURWITZ is the author of the New York Times bestselling Orphan X novels. Critically acclaimed, his novels have been international bestsellers, graced top ten lists, and have been published in thirty-two languages. Additionally, he’s sold scripts to many of the major studios, and written, developed, and produced television for various networks. Hurwitz lives in Los Angeles.

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You’ll want to enjoy the conversation with Gregg Hurwitz. But, if you don’t have much time, at least check out the beginning of the video to see Hurwitz’ jacket.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, welcomed Steve Berry for a virtual event. Berry brings back his series hero, Cotton Malone, in The Medici Return. There are still a few signed copies of the book available through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/42UbUTd.

Here’s the description of The Medici Return.

From celebrated New York Times bestselling author Steve Berry comes the latest installment in his wildly popular Cotton Malone series—now in development as a streaming series. The Medici Return takes Cotton to Italy to solve a five hundred year-old mystery.  

Cotton Malone is on the hunt for a forgotten 16th century Pledge of Christ—a sworn promise made by Pope Julius II that evidences a monetary debt owed by the Vatican, still valid after five centuries—now worth in the trillions of dollars.  But collecting that debt centers around what happened to the famed Medici of Florence—a family that history says died out, without heirs, centuries ago. 

Who will become the next prime minister of Italy, and who will be the next pope? Finding answers proves difficult until Cotton realizes that everything hinges on when, and if, the Medici return.

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Steve Berry is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of nineteen Cotton Malone novels, five stand-alone thrillers, two Luke Daniels adventures, and several works of short fiction. He has over twenty-six million books in print, translated into forty-one languages. With his wife, Elizabeth, he is the founder of History Matters, an organization dedicated to historical preservation. He serves as an emeritus member of the Smithsonian Libraries Advisory Board and was a founding member of International Thriller Writers, formerly serving as its co-president.

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Enjoy the conversation with Steve Berry.

Book critic Oline Cogdill recently reviewed James L’Etoile’s River of Lies for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, and shared the review with us. You can find signed copies through The Poisoned Pen’s Webstore. https://bit.ly/4jXvlR1

Book review: Homeless camps burn and politics simmers in ‘River of Lies’

‘River of Lies’ by James L’Etoile. Oceanview Publishing, 384 pages, $18.99 

The politics of homelessness — from those who resent housing for the displaced in their neighborhood to developers who see that land as prime real estate — flows throughout “River of Lies,” the second novel in James L’Etoile’s new series about Sacramento police Detective Emily Hunter.

L’Etoile delivers a tightly packed police procedural with a strong current of believable action balanced by a close look at the personal lives of his characters.

Several homeless camps stretch out throughout Sacramento, a controversial situation throughout the city as residents complain about them. But lately arsonists have attacked three camps within a two-week period, destroying the meager possessions of the homeless, “the city’s forgotten shadows.”

The attacks have been exacerbated with many homeless physically attacked. Two men are murdered following arson at a major camp near the river that has more than 200 residents. But the victims are not the homeless — one is the former anti-homeless mayor, the other a social worker.

The investigation falls to Emily and her partner, Javier Medina, both of whom are immediately suspicious of who is behind the fires. The city orders the camp debris cleared, ruining the crime scene, then developers swoop in.

L’Etoile’s attention to the detectives’ personal lives adds context to “River of Lies.” As the police detectives continue their investigation, Emily is drawn to the plight of 8-year-old Willow, whose mother was injured during the attack by the arsonists. Emily also is dealing with trying to keep her mother safe as her mental health declines. The handsome Javier’s problem with his mother is different — she’s always trying to fix him up with a new woman; this time she might be right.

“River of Lies” takes readers through various Sacramento neighborhoods, focusing on the wealthy and the ordinary residents who make up the city. L’Etoile’s 2024 novel “Face of Greed” introduced Emily and her squad; this series should be around for quite a while.