Fiction Review

Janet Evanovich’s Now or Never is the Hot Book of the Week at The Poisoned Pen Bookstore. Did you know you can order the backlist of the Stephanie Plum series through the Webstore? https://tinyurl.com/n5tcuvmx. And, of course, you can order a copy of Now or Never. https://tinyurl.com/mr9vyk29.

In case you missed it, here’s the summary of Now or Never.

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The latest Stephanie Plum novel from #1New York Times bestseller and “the most popular mystery writer alive” (The New York Times) Janet Evanovich.

She said yes to Morelli. She said yes to Ranger. Now Stephanie Plum has two fiancés and no idea what to do about it. But the way things are going, she might not live long enough to marry anyone.

While Stephanie stalls for time, she buries herself in her work as a bounty hunter, tracking down an unusually varied assortment of fugitives from justice. There’s Eugene Fleck, a seemingly sweet online influencer who might also be YouTube star Robin Hoodie, masked hero to the homeless, who hijacks delivery trucks and distributes their contents to the needy. She’s also on the trail of Bruno Jug, a wealthy and connected man in the wholesale produce business who is rumored to traffic young girls alongside lettuce and tomatoes. Most terrifying of all is Zoran—a laundromat manager by day and self-proclaimed vampire by night with a taste for the blood of pretty girls. When he shows up on Stephanie’s doorstep, it’s not for the meatloaf dinner.

With timely assists from her stalwart supporters Lula, Connie, and Grandma Mazur, Stephanie uses every trick in the book to reel in these men. But only she can decide what to do about the two men she actually loves. She can’t hold Ranger and Morelli at bay for long, and she’s keeping a secret from them that is the biggest bombshell of all. Now or never, she’s got to make the decision of a lifetime.

Dana Stabenow’s fourth book in her Eye of Isis series, Abduction of a Slave, will be released Jan. 28. You can pre-order it now from the Webstore. https://tinyurl.com/yne6568b. The Pen’s copies come with exclusive bookmarks and stickers.

Stabenow was kind enough to share her recent blog post with us. Check it out.

[*I was going to title this post “Puuuurrrrrrty,” but I caught myself in time.]

Yep, the finished copy is now in my hands, another stellar production by Head of Zeus. (And incidentally, who are those guys? I want names and photos and maybe addresses, too, so I can declare my undying devotion to each and every one of them who had a hand in making my book look this good.)

From the first Isis novel HoZ asked me to chose images of Ancient Egypt for the cover art, and at my request HoZ has used that same image as a line break symbol. For Abduction of a Slave it’s Montu, the Egyptian god of war (one of them, anyway).

Which I naturally think is the coolest thing ever. So of course I jumped right on my Zazzle store to see if they make stickers. They do and I did, of all four images from all four Eye of Isis novels. From left in the image below, the Wedjat Eye from Death of an Eye, Seshat the god of scribes from Disappearance of a Scribe, the scarab from Theft of an Idol, and Montu from Abduction of a Slave.

hese stickers will make their way into copies of the novels (Eye stickers in copies of Death of an Eye, etc) sold by the Poisoned Pen at the launch of Abduction of a Slave on January 25th, a live and virtual event. See you there, one way or another!

The PP books are the only ones that will have the stickers in them.

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Dana Stabenow will appear at The Poisoned Pen, in person and virtually, on Saturday, Jan. 25 at 5 PM to discuss her series. Pre-order a copy of Abduction of a Slave. Stabenow will be signing copies on Saturday.

Did you miss these titles? You can still order copies, although the books won’t arrive until 2025. Order them now through the Webstore. Deb Lewis from The Poisoned Pen Bookstore reviewed all these books that were published in October or November.

Pony Confidential by Christina Lynch (Berkley, Nov)

Is there anything more special than the love between a girl and her pony? Follow the incredible journey as Pony, separated from his grown mistress, Penny, sets out to find her and clear her name when she is wrongfully charged with murder. Do ponies talk? Yep. Do ponies manipulate their owners? You betcha. Do you want a pony on your side? After reading this you will! Funny, fierce, heartwarming and totally original. https://tinyurl.com/yc66k4xw

Tooth and Claw by Craig Johnson (Viking, Nov) 

The perfect stocking stuffer for any Criag Johnson fan, this short novel fills in the chronological  gap for young Walt and Henry after they have returned from fighting in Vietnam and before they become our favorite sheriff and bar owner in Wyoming. The Alaskan cold and a corrupt oil company is no match for these two. https://tinyurl.com/4n5daz7m.

Karla’s Choice A John leCarre Novel (Viking, Oct) 

Harkaway captures his late father’s voice, giving us one more time with fan favorite characters master spy George Smiley and his Soviet counterpart, Karla. An unexpected delight for long-time fans of the series or a shorter treat for newbies wanting to read about spycraft as a skill, soaked in 1960’s atmosphere. https://tinyurl.com/h9spdbb9.

Into The Uncut Grass by Trevor Noah (One World, Oct) 

Beloved comedian and author of BORN A CRIME delights us all with a gorgeously illustrated fable that follows a boy’s journey into the uncut grass to discover the secrets of sharing and compromise. A perfect holiday gift to read to the grands! https://tinyurl.com/25b2wy36.

Framed by John Grisham and Jim McClosky (Doubleday, Oct)

Bestselling author John Grisham has delivered a powerful work of nonfiction, his first in many years. Co-written with the founder of nonprofit Centurion Ministries, it outlines 10 cases that will shock you: 10 Americans who were innocent but found guilty. A powerful look at the courts and systems that are decked against the wrongly found guilty, this call to arms is written in Grisham style, and is a fascinating and disturbing read. https://tinyurl.com/3wmhmpr8

Like Mother, Like Mother by Susan Rieger (Random House, Nov) 

This novel blurs the line between reality and fiction in a way that will have you stopping and Googling at the end of each chapter: did that really happen? Are these characters real or fiction? Follow the lives of three very different generations as these powerful, witty and wonderful women live, love and lie. Was Zelda committed to an asylum or did she run away and leave her kids with her abusive husband? How do you mother when you have no mother of your own? Be prepared to fall in love with the sparkling dialogue and bigger than life characters here. https://tinyurl.com/56pz846y

Kim Bussing s a debut author from Arizona. She’ll introduce her first book, Cinderella and the Beast (or, Beauty and the Glass Slipper) at The Poisoned Pen on Friday, Jan. 17 at 5 PM. It’s designed for children ages 8-12. Her book is the first in a brand-new series that turns our favorite classic fairytales on their head. The series is called The Princess Swap. You can order a copy of Cinderella and the Beast through the Webstore. https://tinyurl.com/2wye26z3.

Here’s the summary of Cinderella and the Beast.

What would happen if Cinderella found herself in the beast’s castle, and Beauty woke up in some evil stepmother’s home? Fairy tales meet Freaky Friday in this series, where there’s a magical mix-up for every princess!

*The magical first edition paperback of Cinderella and the Beast (or, Beauty and the Glass Slipper) will feature dual-toned sprayed edges!*

Ella’s spent her life dreaming about adventure, but it’s hard to have adventures when you’re stuck with a stepfamily who treat you like a servant. When she unexpectedly wakes up in a land far, far away, she’s thrilled at the chance to embark on an epic quest. That is, until she finds herself trapped once more—this time in the castle of a dangerous beast.

Belle, meanwhile, has plans. Her family’s trading company is on the brink of ruin, and to save it, she’s going to enter—and win—a royal competition in the prince’s honor. But when she unexpectedly winds up in a cellar with a wicked stepfamily who have their own plans to keep her from the competition . . . things get complicated.

Happily-ever-after couldn’t feel farther away. Can Ella escape the beast’s clutches? And can Belle get rid of this stepfamily in time for the competition?

For other Princess Swaps, don’t miss Snow White and the Dragon (or, Sleeping Beauty and the Seven Dwarfs)!

Yesterday, we discussed The British Library Crime Classics. Today, author Dana Stabenow reviews another book in that loosely connected series. As I said, you can check out the various titles through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/3ZSUMLJ. If you read Stabenow’s review of The Spoilt Kill: A Staffordshire Mystery by Mary Kelly, you might want a copy. https://bit.ly/3BuXBcx. It’s always interesting to read Martin Edwards’ introduction to The British Library Crime Classics, and he wrote one for this book.

Here’s Stabenow’s review of The Spoilt Kill.

Mary Kelly’s The Spoilt Kill beat out John le Carre’s Call for the Dead for the Gold Dagger Award in 1961, and now I know why. This book is exquisitely written, with a totally character-driven plot in a fully realized workplace setting (a commercial pottery). The detective is undercover on a case of industrial espionage and the pottery’s accountant is found murdered by, well, let’s just say by clay.

But this is one of those books that is about far more than its mystery. I’ll excerpt one sample for you.

“…But you heard what Dart said. “You have to have these things.” Have to. Obligation. England the great mercantile nation, rolling in prosperity, measures poverty against a new list of basic possessions. And it’s no longer a pity to be poor, a misfortune, it’s a disgrace, a stigma, a reflection on your character, a condition you daren’t permit to be seen, like syphilis. Perhaps I exaggerate.”

No, he doesn’t. Who says we need that enormous TV, that flashy car, that McMansion? That is a passage that could have been written today and be just as true now as it was then. The sheer pettiness of the motive for the espionage rings horribly true.

Be aware, this is not a light-hearted read and there is no HEA, but on a level of craft it reads as well as le Carre himself ever did. I especially recommend it to my writing friends.

N.B.: I will say this and no more in criticism [SPOILER]:

Nicholson is meant to have been disappointed in love at the end, but my feeling is he really dodged a bullet there.

Jane and the Final Mystery is Stephanie Barron’s last mystery featuring Jane Austen as an amateur sleuth. You can check out the Webstore for that book and others in the series. Here’s the link to Stephanie Barron’s page if you’re looking for the books. https://bit.ly/3ZGk8ei.

Dana Stabenow recently reviewed Jane and the Final Mystery.

Being the fifteenth and final Jane Austen mystery by Stephanie Barron. A friend’s son, William Heathcote, enrolled at Winchester College and handicapped by a severe stammer, has been unjustly persecuted by person or persons unknown, up to and including being charged with a murder he did not commit.

Jane, laid low by what will be her final illness, nevertheless succumbs to the entreaties of her nephew Edward who is a friend of William’s and journeys from Chawton to Winchester to unravel this tangle, clear William’s name, and bring the true murderer to justice.

Which of course she does, for she is Jane. I will be forever grateful to Barron for flying in the face of reality and ending the series on a hopeful note.

It is not the London physician I had hoped to consult, when the prospect of a legacy remained to me; but it is something, indeed, to have a man of science back me.
Who knows, after all, what the future may hold?

In an alternate universe Jane lives on.

In the meantime, I now want to go back and reread all fifteen of Jane’s adventures, beginning with Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, where Jane and we first meet that Gentleman Rogue, Harold Trowbridge. My favorites include Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron where in interviewing Lord Byron Jane has a tiger by the tail, Jane and the Waterloo Map where Jane investigates a body in a library (I so loved writing that line), and Jane and the Year Without a Summer, where we see the last of the Hero, aka Raphael West.

But they’re all great reads, graced with Barron’s gift of being able to channel Jane’s personality and stile [sic, that’s how they spelled it then], her ability to interpolate lines from all of Jane’s works into the narrative she has created here, and the positive genius she displayed in creating a crime fiction series with Jane Austen as the detective in the first place. But who better? No one has ever been more adept at seeing right through the imperfections and conceits we all share, even if none of Jane’s commit murder to cover them up.

There’s some exciting news about Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti book series. Once you’ve checked it out, you might want to get a head start on reading the books. Her current book, A Refiner’s Fire, and many of the earlier books, are available through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/4iCOiYQ.

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Check out the news from “Deadline”, written by Nellie Andrews earlier this week.

“Julian Fellowes To Adapt Detective Brunetti Books As TV Series In Works At 20th Television From Late Producer Ileen Maisel”

You can find the entire article here. https://bit.ly/3Dn5aCq.

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And, Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen Bookstore, hosted Donna Leon a few months ago. You can still watch that conversation on The Poisoned Pen’s YouTube Channel.

Marcia Clark was the most recent guest author at The Poisoned Pen. She’s the last guest author of 2024, so you might want to catch her discussion of her latest book, a nonfiction book called Trial by Ambush. There are still a few signed copies available through the Webstore, but it’s too late to get them before the holidays. If you want a copy, you need to know you’ll get it in 2025. https://bit.ly/41y4moG.

Here’s the summary of Trial by Ambush.

In this dramatic true account about the power of sensationalized crime, one woman’s case is exposed for its sexism, flagrant disregard for the truth, and, ultimately, the dangers posed by an unbridled prosecution.

Unwanted and neglected from birth, Barbara Graham had to overcome the odds just to survive. Her beauty was both a blessing and a curse—offering her too many options of all the wrong kind. Her innate sensitivity left her vulnerable to the harsh realities of the street, where she was left to fend for herself before she reached double digits. Her record of petty crimes spoke to a life that constantly teetered on the brink of disaster.

But in 1953, a catastrophic twist of fate would catapult her out of obscurity and into the headlines.

When a robbery spiraled out of control and escalated into a brutal murder, Barbara became the centerpiece of a media circus. Her beauty enraptured the press, and they were quick to portray her as a villainous femme fatale despite abundant evidence to the contrary—a fiction the prosecution eagerly promoted.

The frenzy of public interest and willful distortion paved a treacherous path for Barbara Graham. In Trial by Ambush, author and criminal lawyer Marcia Clark investigates the case exposing the fallacies in the demonizing picture they painted and the critical evidence that was never revealed.

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California native Marcia Clark is the author of Final Judgment, Snap Judgment, Moral Defense, and Blood Defense, all part of the Samantha Brinkman series. A practicing criminal lawyer since 1979, Clark joined the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office in 1981, where she served as prosecutor for the trials of Robert John Bardo, convicted of killing actress Rebecca Schaeffer, and, most notably, O. J. Simpson. The bestselling Without a Doubt, which she cowrote, chronicles her work on the Simpson trial. Clark has been a frequent commentator on a variety of shows and networks, including Today, Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, and MSNBC, as well as a legal correspondent for Entertainment Tonight.

Follow Marcia on X at @thatmarciaclark.

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Enjoy the conversation with Marcia Clark.

James R. Benn has nineteen Billy Boyle World War II mysteries, and you can find the current one, along with the backlist through The Poisoned Pen’s Webstore. https://bit.ly/41CsiHv. Dana Stabenow recently reviewed the latest in the series, The Phantom Patrol. There are signed copies still in stock. You might want to consider copies for yourself or a loved one with planned arrival after the holidays.

Here’s Stabenow’s review of The Phantom Patrol.

Six months after D-Day, Captain Billy Boyle, Eisenhower’s special agent, is in Paris laying a trap for a group called the Syndicat made up of deserters from everyone’s armies who are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down (which is most everything in the aftermath of the invasion and the liberation of France et al) and selling it for profit.

Except…maybe that isn’t all that is going on, and where Billy’s concerned it usually isn’t. All the usual suspects, Kaz, Mike, Harding, Uncle Ike himself are present and accounted for, along with new characters including J.D. Salinger, at present an agent for the Army’s Office of Special Intelligence

“Hey, Captain Boyle,” Salinger said. “I wish you hadn’t plugged that guy. We could have interrogated him.”
“There was a lot of shooting,” I said. “I thought asking nicely wouldn’t be very effective.”

and a delightfully extended cameo appearance by Major David Niven*, inadvertently seconded from General Montgomery’s staff.

“What the hell! Has Monty sent reinforcements?” asked a GI taking cover in the doorway.
“For this little dustup? I doubt you need our help, Private,” Niven said. “How long as it been going on?”
“Since dawn, sir,” he said. “Say, ain’t you…?”
“Yes, I am. Basil Rathbone, at your service. Now, where can I find your intelligence section?”

Billy is under fire for most of the narrative and the sound of bullets singing past his ears is a great motivator to discover just what the hell is going on, how it relates to his investigation of art thefts, and who the real target is. Naturally, no one at a command level including his boss, Major Harding, believes him when he figures it out and he is left to stop the perps himself, with only Kaz and some, ah, volunteers as backup.

I scrambled to my feet, fear sending me flying forward in one, two, three great strides before I dove and hit the ground. The explosion was a loud pop as the igniter charges went off and released the burning phosphorus at white-hot temperatures. I jumped up and ran as soon as I realized the truck had absorbed the hit from the Willie Peter, which normally would have spread nearly twenty yeards in every direction. I don’t know what went wrong, but I was glad I’d gotten out quickly.

As you will be, because this battle ain’t half over yet. This is perhaps Benn’s best fight scene in all 19 books (although, Sicily and Billy going up against the Panzer division is a close second). His investigation takes Billy and gang to the front lines at the very beginning of the Battle of the Bulge, where Benn does not stint on the horrors of war. The slaughter of US soldiers in the act of surrendering is hard to read, as is the death of [spoiler], whom I liked entirely too well to see the end of, dammit.

I consider myself fairly well read on the events of World War II but Benn always finds something I never heard of. Here it is the Einheit Stielau commando unit, the Nazi force that fielded English-speaking soldiers dressed in American uniforms to spread confusion and fear among the Allied ranks while killing as many of them as possible, whose mission the author turns distinctly to his plot’s advantage.

I really liked Benn’s last Billy Boyle novel, Proud Sorrows, which is a WWII country house murder removed from the scene of battle. The Phantom Patrol may be Benn’s best book set in war. But you should read them all, starting with Billy Boyle, and do not miss the acknowledgements pages in the backs of all the novels. I mean, he doesn’t really have to make much up.

*If you have yet to read David Niven’s two autobiographies, The Moon’s a Balloon and Bring on the Empty Horses, allow me to urge you to do so. They are hands down the best Hollywood biographies you’ll ever read, and I’m guessing by far the most honest.

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