Fiction Review

Three Poisoned Pen Press authors were panelists at the recent 6th Annual Women in Intrigue Conference hosted by the Orange County Sisters in Crime in Costa Mesa, CA. If you’re looking for gift ideas, maybe you’ll want to check the Web Store for titles by Wendall Thomas, Mary Anna Evans, and Betty Webb. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Are you getting ready for the holidays? Here’s a note from Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen.

A Holiday Booknews

To make your holiday shopping easy — Thanksgiving is late this year and shortening up your time — I have listed    Free gift wrap, Poisoned Pen logo merchandise, a membership in our Mystery of the Month Club which can be customized for the recipient, books for holiday reading, gift book ideas, puzzles, books & beverage combos, Best American Writing 2019 in several fields, gift ideas spread over a wide range of subjects, and my annual roundup of new cookbooks, always winners. Here is the link to the Holiday Booknews   Don’t forget you can sign anyone up for our Enews which is free.

Readers love lists, and there are often lists of books toward the end of the year. Bookstores love lists because readers will often pick up books through the Web Store when they discover titles they might have missed. As you peruse a couple lists here, don’t forget the Web Store is available for your purchasing needs. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

CrimeReads just put together their list of “The 10 Best Crime Novels of the Decade”. https://crimereads.com/the-10-best-crime-novels-of-the-last-decade/ Those titles, with summaries, are interesting, but I found the attached list of “Notable Selections” even better. Don’t forget to browse those selections as well.

You’ll notice that CrimeReads did not include any books published in 2019, and they gave their reasons. However, Library Journal just released their list of Best Crime Fiction of 2019. In the United States, that magazine has a great deal of influence because libraries buy books based on the reviews in that journal. If you’re interested in this year’s crime fiction, check out the list from Library Journal. https://bit.ly/2QEWOvF

Then, don’t forget to check the Web Store! https://store.poisonedpen.com/

It might come as a surprise to some that Laurie R. King’s current Hot Book of the Week at The Poisoned Pen is not a Mary Russell mystery. Instead, Beginnings is a Kate Martinelli novel. And, King will be at The Poisoned Pen on Thursday, November 21 at 7 PM to talk about Martinelli and the book. You can order copies of Laurie R. King’s books, including a signed copy of Beginnings, through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2yDn27l

Here’s the summary of Beginnings.

INSPECTOR KATE MARTINELLI has worked the SFPD’s Homicide Detail for nearly thirty years. She knows all about how a cop builds a case bit by bit to create a clear story from the scattered pieces of evidence. Until the day her fifteen-year-old daughter, Nora, happens to ask about an aunt she’d never met. Kate’s kid sister died in the 1980s, a wild young woman who lost control of a car and hit a tree, end of story … except it isn’t. Because once Kate begins to look, seeking to reassure Nora that it was only a senseless accident and not the suicide a small town’s gossip made it, she starts to find pieces that don’t fit the picture. Holes in the evidence. Mismatched fragments that change the story Kate has told herself all these years-the story that for her, was the beginning of everything.

What did happen in Diamond Lake that night? Was it an accident, or a hushed-up suicide? Or was her sister’s death something darker yet?

As the end of the year approaches, there are all kinds of “Best of” lists. If you scanned Entertainment Weekly‘s lists of their Best of the Decade, you’ll come across their Book Trend of the Decade. According to Leah Greenblatt, it’s the Unreliable Narrator. Think about books such as Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Here’s the link to Greenblatt’s short article. https://bit.ly/2KygKN8

If you’re a fan of unreliable narrators, you might want to check out Emily Martin’s list for BookRiot, “50 Must-Read Books with Unreliable Narrators”. https://bit.ly/2CWg9jQ Now, check The Poisoned Pen’s Web Store for those must-read books. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Let’s kick off the week with talk of Sherlock Holmes and London, and all things Sherlockian. Bonnie MacBird, author of The Devil’s Due, was recently at The Poisoned Pen. She spent time in conversation with Barbara Peters, owner of the bookstore. You can order her Sherlock Holmes adventures, including a signed copy of The Devil’s Due, through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/33VYODL

Here’s the short blurb about The Devil’s Due.

After Art in the Blood and Unquiet Spirits, Holmes and Watson are back in the third of Bonnie MacBird’s critically acclaimed Sherlock Holmes Adventures, written in the tradition of Conan Doyle himself.

*****

Better than the blurb, here’s the chance to listen to the conversation.

This is probably preaching to the choir. If you’re reading this blog, you probably order a book occasionally from The Poisoned Pen. But, you might not have thought about why you’re helping out an author.

Nick Douglas wrote a piece recently for lifehacker.com. It’s called, “The Best Thing You Can Do to Support a New Book.” If you have a favorite author with a new book coming out, you might want to take a look at the article. https://bit.ly/2pkVKBS

And, don’t forget The Poisoned Pen’s Web Store when you’re thinking of your favorite authors. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, and Joseph Kanon, author of The Accomplice, have known each other for over twenty years. That always means a conversation will cover a lot of ground and a lot of history. You might want to order copies of Kanon’s books, including a signed copy of The Accomplice, through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/32jNjnG

Here’s the summary of The Accomplice.

“Gripping and authentic…Kanon’s imagination flourishes [and] the narrative propulsion is clear. A thoroughly satisfying piece of entertainment that extends a tentacle into some serious moral reflection.” —The New York Times Book Review

The “master of the genre” (The Washington Post) Joseph Kanon returns with a heart-pounding and intelligent espionage novel about a Nazi war criminal who was supposed to be dead, the rogue CIA agent on his trail, and the beautiful woman connected to them both.

Seventeen years after the fall of the Third Reich, Max Weill has never forgotten the atrocities he saw as a prisoner at Auschwitz—nor the face of Dr. Otto Schramm, a camp doctor who worked with Mengele on appalling experiments and who sent Max’s family to the gas chambers. As the war came to a close, Schramm was one of the many high-ranking former-Nazi officers who managed to escape Germany for new lives in South America, where leaders like Argentina’s Juan Perón gave them safe harbor and new identities. With his life nearing its end, Max asks his nephew Aaron Wiley—an American CIA desk analyst—to complete the task Max never could: to track down Otto in Argentina, capture him, and bring him back to Germany to stand trial.

Unable to deny Max, Aaron travels to Buenos Aires and discovers a city where Nazis thrive in plain sight, mingling with Argentine high society. He ingratiates himself with Otto’s alluring but wounded daughter, whom he’s convinced is hiding her father. Enlisting the help of a German newspaper reporter, an Israeli agent, and the obliging CIA station chief in Buenos Aires, he hunts for Otto—a complicated monster, unexpectedly human but still capable of murder if cornered. Unable to distinguish allies from enemies, Aaron will ultimately have to discover not only Otto, but the boundaries of his own personal morality, how far he is prepared to go to render justice.

“With his remarkable emotional precision and mastery of tone” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Joseph Kanon crafts another compelling and unputdownable thriller that will keep you breathlessly turning the pages.

*****

And, here’s your chance to hear that conversation between Joseph Kanon and Barbara Peters.

In The New Yorker, Nora Caplan-Bricker reviews a complex biography, discusses Harriet Vane from Dorothy L. Sayers’ mysteries, and talks about the current golden age of detective stories. You can read her article in the column, “Under Review”. https://bit.ly/2Oevtxr

Although Caplan-Bricker discusses several contemporary mysteries, there are two books in the article that you might want to check out in the Web Store. One is The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and Her Oxford Circle Remade the World for Women by Mo Moulton. https://bit.ly/2KlcsZ2

Here’s the summary of the book.

A group biography of renowned crime novelist Dorothy L. Sayers and the Oxford women who stood at the vanguard of equal rights

Dorothy L. Sayers is now famous for her Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane detective series, but she was equally well known during her life for an essay asking “Are Women Human?” Women’s rights were expanding rapidly during Sayers’s lifetime; she and her friends were some of the first women to receive degrees from Oxford. Yet, as historian Mo Moulton reveals, it was clear from the many professional and personal obstacles they faced that society was not ready to concede that women were indeed fully human.

Dubbing themselves the Mutual Admiration Society, Sayers and her classmates remained lifelong friends and collaborators as they fought for a truly democratic culture that acknowledged their equal humanity. A celebration of feminism and female friendship, The Mutual Admiration Society offers crucial insight into Dorothy L. Sayers and her world.

*****

The other book is one of Dorothy L. Sayers’ mysteries, Gaudy Night. Together with Moulton’s book, the two are the basis for the review. https://bit.ly/2NQHkTL

Here’s the story of Gaudy Night.

“Gaudy Night stands out even among Miss Sayers’s novels. And Miss Sayers has long stood in a class by herself.”—Times Literary Supplement (London)

Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night takes mystery writer Harriet Vane to Oxford University, Harriet’s alma mater, for a reunion, only to find herself the target of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats. Now available as a limited Olive Edition from Harper Perennial.

When Harriet attends her Oxford reunion, known as the Gaudy, the prim academic setting is haunted by a rash of bizarre pranks: scrawled obscenities, burnt effigies, and poison-pen letters, including one that says, “Ask your boyfriend with the title if he likes arsenic in his soup.” Some of the notes threaten murder; all are perfectly ghastly; yet in spite of their scurrilous nature, all are perfectly worded. And Harriet finds herself ensnared in a nightmare of romance and terror, with only the tiniest shreds of clues to challenge her powers of detection, and those of her paramour, the dashing private investigator Lord Peter Wimsey.

On Sunday, November 17 at 2 PM, author Paula Munier will appear at The Poisoned Pen, alongside authors Hank Early, Scott Graham, and Margaret Mizushima. John Valeri refers to Munier as “a triple threat”. In a recent review for Criminal Element, he says, ” In addition to serving as agent extraordinaire for a cadre of esteemed authors, she’s written five popular non-fiction titles, including three on the craft of writing—Plot Perfect, The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, and Writing with Quiet Hands. Last year, she entered the realm of crime fiction with A Borrowing of Bones; that title—which was both a USA Today bestseller and a nominee for the prestigious Mary Higgins Clark Award—launched a new series featuring former military police officer Mercy Karr and her bomb-sniffing dog, Elvis. Their saga continues with November’s Blind Search. ” You can read Valeri’s review of Blind Search here. https://bit.ly/372ONX9

Signed copies of Blind Search, along with copies of Munier’s other books, are available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/373HChB

Here’s the description of Blind Search.

Former Army MP Mercy Carr and her retired bomb-sniffing dog Elvis are back in Blind Search, the sequel to the page-turning, critically acclaimed A Borrowing of Bones

It’s October, hunting season in the Green Mountains—and the Vermont wilderness has never been more beautiful or more dangerous. Especially for nine-year-old Henry, who’s lost in the woods. Again. Only this time he sees something terrible. When a young woman is found shot through the heart with a fatal arrow, Mercy thinks that something is murder. But Henry, a math genius whose autism often silences him when he should speak up most, is not talking.

Now there’s a murderer hiding among the hunters in the forest—and Mercy and Elvis must team up with their crime-solving friends, game warden Troy Warner and search-and-rescue dog Susie Bear, to find the killer—before the killer finds Henry. When an early season blizzard hits the mountains, cutting them off from the rest of the world, the race is on to solve the crime, apprehend the murderer, and keep the boy safe until the snowplows get through.

Inspired by the true search-and-rescue case of an autistic boy who got lost in the Vermont wilderness, Paula Munier’s mystery is a compelling roller coaster ride through the worst of winter—and human nature.