Fiction Review

Murder Crossed Her Mind is the fourth book in Stephen Spotswood’s Pentecost and Parker mystery series. Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed Spotswood to talk about his book. She said she thinks this is more a Nero Wolfe/Archie Goodwin adventure rather than a Sherlock Holmes/Dr. Watson book. You can check this out yourself by ordering a signed copy through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/3NhchOY

Here’s the summary of Murder Crossed Her Mind.

The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • The latest action-packed installment in the Nero Award–winning Pentecost & Parker Mystery series follows Lillian and Will tracking the suspicious disappearance of a woman who might have known too much. From the author of Fortune Favors the Dead and Murder Under Her Skin.

Vera Bodine, an elderly shut-in with an exceptional memory, has gone missing and famed detective Lillian Pentecost and her crackerjack assistant Willowjean “Will” Parker have been hired to track her down. But the New York City of 1947 can be a dangerous place, and there’s no shortage of people who might like to get ahold of what’s in Bodine’s head. 

Does her disappearance have to do with the high-profile law firm whose secrets she still keeps; the violent murder of a young woman, with which Bodine had lately become obsessed; or is it the work she did with the FBI hunting Nazi spies intent on wartime sabotage? Any and all are on the suspect list, including their client, Forest Whitsun, hotshot defense attorney and no friend to Pentecost and Parker. 

The clock is ticking to get Bodine back alive, but circumstances conspire to pull both investigators away from the case. Will is hot on the trail of a stickup team who are using her name—and maybe her gun—for their own ends. While Lillian again finds herself up against murder-obsessed millionaire Jessup Quincannon, who has discovered a secret from her past—something he plans to use to either rein the great detective in . . . or destroy her. 

To solve this mystery, and defeat their own personal demons, the pair will have to go nose-to-nose with murderous gangsters, make deals with conniving federal agents, confront Nazi spies, and bend their own ethical rules to the point of breaking. Before time runs out for everyone.

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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.

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If you’re a fan of Stephen Spotswood, or Nero Wolfe, you’ll want to watch the conversation.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen Bookstore, and author Douglas Preston have worked together for over thirty years, so they have stories to tell. Preston’s latest book is The Lost Tomb: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder. There are signed copies of the book available through the Webstore. https://tinyurl.com/2p924576

Here’s the description of The Lost Tomb.

Douglas Preston, the #1 bestselling author of The Lost City of the Monkey God, presents the jaw-dropping discovery of a vast Egyptian tomb containing dozens of sealed burial chambers, as well as recounting tales of pirate treasure, mysterious deaths, archaeological mysteries, and more… 

What’s it like to be the first to enter an Egyptian burial chamber that’s been sealed for thousands of years? Where might a blocked doorway or newly excavated corridor lead? And what might this stupendous tomb reveal about the most powerful pharaoh in Egyptian history? 

From the jungles of Honduras to macabre archaeological sites in the American Southwest, Douglas Preston’s journalistic explorations have taken him across the globe. He broke the story of an extraordinary mass grave of animals killed by the asteroid impact that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, he explored what lay hidden in the booby-trapped Money Pit on Oak Island, and he roamed the haunted hills of Italy in search of the Monster of Florence. When he hasn’t been co-authoring bestselling thrillers featuring FBI Agent Pendergast, Preston has been writing about some of the world’s strangest and most dramatic mysteries.

The Lost Tomb brings together an astonishing and compelling collection of true stories about buried treasure, enigmatic murders, lost tombs, bizarre crimes, and other fascinating tales of the past and present.

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Douglas Preston worked as a writer and editor for the American Museum of Natural History and taught writing at Princeton University. He has written for the New Yorker, Natural History, National Geographic, Harper’s, Smithsonian, and the Atlantic. The author of several acclaimed nonfiction books—including Lost City of the Monkey God, Cities of Gold and The Monster of Florence—Preston is also the coauthor with Lincoln Child of the bestselling series of novels featuring FBI agent Pendergast.

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Enjoy the conversation with Douglas Preston.

John Charles from The Poisoned Pen recently welcomed Sheila Roberts for a virtual author chat. Roberts is the author of The Twelve Months of Christmas, “a cozy Christmas romance novel”. You can order a copy of it through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/3Gsft6P

Here’s the description of The Twelve Months of Christmas.

Three women. Three terrible Christmases. Can they finally perfect the holiday by celebrating every month? 

From USA TODAY bestselling author Sheila Roberts comes a story of family, second chances and holiday do-overs, brimming with warmth and Christmas charm.

Sunny, Arianna and Molly are having three very different but equally terrible Christmases. Sunny is a newlywed with two new stepkids who want nothing to do with her; Arianna is newly divorced and hates having to send her daughter off to spend the holiday with her dad; for Molly, nothing is new, but her job at the post office is getting very, very old.

The whole Christmas season has been a bust all around. But Sunny and Arianna have a wild idea: What if they had a Christmas do-over in January? February? On Saint Patrick’s Day?

Christmas all year long—what could that look like? As these three determined women chase the perfect holiday through twelve months of cooking disasters, over-the-top festivity, and lots of laughter and tears, they’ll discover perfection is way overrated.

“When it comes to crafting feel-good stories that cleverly mix love and laughter, then skillfully wrap everything up with a bright holiday bow, Roberts is in a class by herself.”—Booklist

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Sheila Roberts lives in the Pacific Northwest. To date, she has seen over three million books sold both at home and abroad. Several of her books have been adapted for film by Hallmark, Lifetime, and GAF, including her holiday perennial, On Strike for Christmas, The Nine Lives of Christmas, with a sequel The Nine Kittens of Christmas, and most recently, Christmas on Candy Cane Lane. 

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Enjoy the chat with Sheila Roberts!

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed Val McDermid for a virtual event for the bookstore. Past Lying is the seventh in the series. Peters recommends the Karen Pirie series, Season 1, on BritBox, if you have the chance to watch it. You can order an unsigned edition of the U.S. edition, or a signed copy of the U.K. edition through the Webstore, although there aren’t a large number of the U.K. copies left. https://store.poisonedpen.com/browse/filter/t/Past%20Lying/k/keyword

Here’s the summary of Past Lying.

In this superb new addition to Val McDermid’s masterful crime series, DCI Karen Pirie returns in a propulsive thriller of deceit and vengeance, set against the disquiet of a global pandemic

Britain’s reigning “Queen of Crime” (The Scotsman), Val McDermid is the award-winning, internationally bestselling author of over thirty novels. The long-awaited seventh novel in the acclaimed series that has captivated audiences for twenty years, both on the page and now in the Edgar Award–nominated ITV/BritBox show, Past Lying is a full tilt novel of ego, retribution, deceit, and just how far one will go to settle the score.

It’s April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot—the streets all but empty, an hour’s outdoor exercise the maximum allowed—but a mere pandemic doesn’t mean crime takes a holiday. When a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie’s team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it’s game on again. At the center of it, a novel: two crime novelists facing off over a chessboard. But it quickly emerges that their real-life competition is drawing blood. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, and as Karen and her team attempt to disentangle fact from fiction, it becomes clear that their investigation is more complicated than they ever imagined.

A tense, atmospheric page-turner, Past Lying reaffirms McDermid as one of the most talented crime writers of her generation.

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Val McDermid’s bestselling novels have won the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year Award, and the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger and Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for outstanding achievement. She is also a multiple finalist for the Edgar Award, including for the Fact Crime nominee Forensics. She lives in Scotland. 

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Enjoy the conversation with Val McDermid.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, welcomed M.M. DeLuca to the bookstore. They talked about Durham, England, and Winnipeg, Canada before they talked about DeLuca’s latest book, The Night Side. You can order a copy through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/3Ruy7kQ

Here’s the description of The Night Side.

Twenty years of secrets. One deadly truth.

When Ruby Carlson was eighteen, she ran away from her home in Stoneybrook, Montana, and vowed she’d never return. Never return to life under the control of her manipulative mother, Ida, a self-styled medium and psychic scammer who made a career out of ruining people’s lives. Never return to the small town where enemies lurk at every turn.

But now, twenty years later, Ruby is back. Her mother is missing, presumed dead, and Ruby reluctantly returns to a home filled with chilling memories to settle Ida’s affairs. Did she really commit suicide by drowning, or is this another dark scheme? Ruby thought she knew everything about her mother, but finds herself unraveling a web of lies and secrets to reveal a story more twisted than anyone could have imagined . . .

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M.M. DeLuca spent her childhood in Durham, England. After studying at the University of London, Goldsmiths College, she moved to Winnipeg, Canada, where she worked as a teacher, then as a freelance writer. She is the author of four other gripping suspense novels: The Savage Instinct, The Secret Sister, The Perfect Family Man and Lilah.

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Enjoy the conversation.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed Lauren Nossett to talk about her latest novel, The Professor. Nossett said it’s a novel about student/faculty relationships. You can order a signed copy through the Webstore. https://bit.ly/3GoygzK

Here’s the description of The Professor.

“The Professor is a thoroughly gripping mystery about power, ambition, and the lengths we will go to in order to succeed. Pacey and full of tension, this one will stick with you long after THE END.” –New York Times and #1 International Bestselling author, Karin Slaughter

For fans of Tana French, The Professor investigates the darkest corners of academic life: ambition, lies, and obsession.

On a spring afternoon in Athens, Georgia, Ethan Haddock is discovered in his apartment, dead, apparently by his own hand. His fatality immediately garners media attention: not because his death reflects the troubling increase of depression and mental health issues among college students, but because the media has caught the whiff of a scandal. His professor, Dr. Verena Sobek, has been taken in for questioning, and there are rumors his death is the result of a bad romance. A Title IX investigation is opened, the professor is suspended, and social media crusaders and trolls alike are out for blood.

Marlitt Kaplan never investigated love affairs. A former detective turned research assistant, she misses the excitement of her old job, but most of all the friendship of her partner, Teddy. When her mother, a professor at the university and colleague of the accused professor, asks for her help, she finds herself in the impossible position of proving something didn’t happen. Without the credentials to interview suspects or access phone records, she will have to get closer to a victim’s life than ever before. And she quickly finds herself in his apartment, having dinner with his roommates, even sleeping in his bed. But is she too close to see the truth?

In her relentless pursuit to uncover the mystery behind Ethan’s death, Marlitt will be forced to confront the power structures ingrained in the classroom against the backdrop of a historic campus and an institution that sometimes fails its most vulnerable members.

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Lauren Nossett is a professor of German language and literature. Her scholarly work has appeared in journals and edited volumes. She attended the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop in 2015 and 2017. The Resemblance is her first novel. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Enjoy the conversation.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, welcomed debut author Charlotte Vassell to the bookstore. The two had a fun time discussing England, Oxford, Cambridge, and all things British. There are signed copies of her debut novel, The Other Half, available in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/47D2KKb

Here’s the description of The Other Half.

You know how they live. This is how they die…

A STUNNING DEBUT FROM YOUR NEXT FAVORITE MYSTERY WRITER • Rupert’s 30th birthday party is a black-tie dinner at the Kentish Town McDonald’s—catered with cocaine and expensive champagne. The morning after, his girlfriend Clemmie is found murdered on Hampstead Heath, a single stiletto heel jutting from under a bush.

“A perfectly modern whodunnit.” —Harlan Coben, #1 New York Times bestselling author of I Will Find You

Who killed Clemmie? Was it the blithe, sociopathic boyfriend? His impossibly wealthy godmother? The gallery owner with whom Clemmie was having an affair? Or was it the result of something else entirely?

All the party-goers have alibis. Naturally. This investigation is going to be about aristocrats and Classics degrees, Instagram influencers and whose father knows who.

Or is it ‘whom’? Detective Caius Beauchamp isn’t sure. He’s sharply dressed, smart, and thoroughly modern—he discovers Clemmie’s body on his early morning jog. As he searches for the dark truth beneath the luxurious life of these London socialites, a wall of staggering wealth and privilege threatens to shut down his investigation before it’s even begun. Can Caius peer through the tangled mess of connections in which the other half live—and die—before the case is wrenched from his hands? Bitingly funny, full of shocking twists, and all too familiar, The Other Half is a truly stunning debut.

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CHARLOTTE VASSELL is a British writer living near London. She studied history at the University of Liverpool and Art History at SOAS, University of London, before training as an actor. She has also worked in advertising, executive search, and as a purveyor of silk top hats.

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This is a fascinating conversation, involving so much we don’t think about in the U.S. Check it out.

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, recently welcomed Jeffery Deaver back to the bookstore. Isabella Maldonado was guest host for the event. Deaver appeared to talk about his latest Lincoln Rhyme novel, The Watchmaker’s Hand. There are signed copies available in the Webstore. https://bit.ly/3RkNMTn

Here’s the summary of The Watchmaker’s Hand.

The “most clever plotter on the planet”(Publishers Weekly) Jeffery Deaver returns in this twisty new thriller, as forensic criminalist Lincoln Rhyme and detective Amelia Sachs track a criminal with a bizarre and catastrophic m.o.—toppling the construction cranes in New York City.

When a New York City construction crane mysteriously collapses, causing mass destruction and injury, Rhyme and Sachs are on the case. A political group claims responsibility for the sabotage and threatens another attack in twenty-four hours, unless its demands are met. The clock is ticking.
    Then a clue reveals to Rhyme that his nemesis, known as the Watchmaker, has come to town to fulfill his promise of murdering the criminalist. Now Rhyme and Sachs have to dodge his brilliant scheme to destroy them both,  while racing against time to stop the construction site terrorists.
    With New York in a panic, Rhyme and his team must unravel a handful of plots as tightly wound as a timepiece—before more cranes fall, raining down death and destruction from above.

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Jeffery Deaver is the #1 international bestselling and award-winning author of more than forty novels, ninety short stories, and a nonfiction law book. His books are sold in 150 countries and translated into twenty-five languages. A former journalist, folk singer, and attorney, he was born outside of Chicago and has a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a law degree from Fordham University.

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Deaver and Maldonado both say it’s difficult to talk about his books. He did offer to read from The Watchmaker’s Hand.

Tim Dorsey’s trips to The Poisoned Pen were few and far between. It’s quite a distance from Dorsey’s beloved Florida to Arizona, and Dorsey didn’t like to fly. But, he made it to the bookstore in 2017 when Clownfish Blues was out. Barbara Peters, owner of The Pen, welcomed Dorsey.

Dorsey died this week at age 62. His stories of serial killer Serge Storms were a hit with readers, and he was especially popular throughout Florida. Here’s the article from the Tampa Bay Times. https://bit.ly/3uE8zIZ

It hurts to lose another author. Tim Dorsey, may he rest in peace.

Mike Lupica has continued Robert B. Parker’s Sunny Randall series and the Jesse Stone books. Now, he kicks off Robert B. Parker’s Broken Trust, the fifty-first book in the Spenser series. There are a few signed copies of Broken Trust still in The Poisoned Pen’s Webstore. https://bit.ly/3GjRdU8 Barbara Peters, owner of the bookstore, and Lupica both had stories to tell about Robert B. Parker.

Here’s the summary of Robert B. Parker’s Broken Trust.

Spenser investigates the past secrets of an elusive tech billionaire in this latest installment of Robert B. Parker’s beloved series, and the first written by celebrated writer Mike Lupica.

Andrew Crain has it all: a brilliant scientist and astute businessman, his groundbreaking work with lithium has made him one of the world’s richest men. He is universally adored and admired; that is, until Crain’s beautiful wife, Laura, comes to Spenser hoping that he can find out what skeletons lurk in her husband’s closet. Though Crain is a generous philanthropist and loving family man, she is concerned—he has recently become secretive, bordering on paranoid, and prone to violent outbursts. This is the opposite of the man she knew, and not only does his behavior put their marriage at risk, but also a lucrative company merger that would be life-changing for the Crains, their business partner, and everyone associated. Laura wants Spenser to find out what has gotten into her husband, before it’s too late.

As Spenser digs into the billionaire’s past, he realizes that the man may have done terrible things on his rise to the top—but he also may have had good reason to. There are no clear answers here, and quickly enough, what Spenser discovers will cause him to question his own views on morality—and place him in grave danger.

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Robert B. Parker was the author of seventy books, including the legendary Spenser detective series, the novels featuring Police Chief Jesse Stone, and the acclaimed Virgil Cole-Everett Hitch Westerns, as well as the Sunny Randall novels. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award and long considered the undisputed dean of American crime fiction, he died in January 2010. 

Mike Lupica is a prominent sports journalist and the New York Times-bestselling author of more than forty works of fiction and nonfiction. A longtime friend to Robert B. Parker, he was selected by the Parker estate to continue the Spenser and Jesse Stone series.

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Enjoy the conversation about Robert B. Parker and Spenser.