Suppose you deeply love your half-sister, Desiree, someone you’ve grown up with and been close to for most of your twenty-eight years. But two years ago you despaired about her self-destructive lifestyle and cut off all contact. Less painful,…
Category: Mysteries Etc
Review: Sheehan’s Dog by Les Roberts
Les Roberts’s latest hard-boiled crime novel introduces Brock Sheehan. Sheehan sits on his houseboat in a Lake Erie marina ten years after retiring as a persuader for the Irish organization on the west side of Cleveland. He drinks Bushmill’s Black…
Review: By Way of Sorrow by Robyn Gigl
By Way of Sorrow by Robyn Gigl My rating: 4 of 5 stars Erin McCabe and Duane “Swish” Swisher, criminal defense attorneys, are asked to defend a Black transgender woman accused of murder. Erin is a white transgender woman, and…
Review: Preacher Turned Cop
Only The Holy Remain by Alverne Ball My rating: 5 of 5 stars This thriller takes us to the streets of Chicago that author Alverne Ball knows well. It introduces Detective Frank Calhoun, currently on psychiatric leave. Calhoun, a sometime…
Review: Crime, Guilt and Identity
Blind Faith by Alicia Beckman Leslie Budewitz, writing as Alicia Beckman, presents her second non-cozy novel, a gripping story whose characters struggle with moral and religious issues and the challenges of their personal histories. Lindsay Keller is a lawyer whose…
“Once You Go This Far” review
Once You Go This Far by Kristen Lepionka My rating: 5 of 5 stars This complex and intriguing mystery is the fourth to feature Roxanne Weary, the Columbus, Ohio PI. Rebecca Newsome, in her fifties or early sixties, is found…
The Dark Hours: Bosch Backs up Ballard in New Connelly Mystery/Police Procedural
I’ve read all but a few of Connelly’s mysteries, and I just scarfed down the newest, The Dark Hours, the fourth in the Renée Ballard series. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all four, but was disappointed that Connelly pulled Bosch into the…
Review: “Bitter Medicine” by Sara Paretsky
This is the 4th novel in the V. I. “Vic” Watshawski, P. I., series, an interesting story of murder and medicine, set in 1985 or ’86. The central issue is, who killed Dr. Malcolm Tregiere, the assistant at the women’s…
Murder at the Roadhouse
Junior Watson was good-looking. Not movie-star-Humphry-Bogart good looking but GQ Magazine-fashion-model good-looking. He was pleased with his looks. No. He was proud of his looks. Narcissus had nothing on him. It wasn’t just his face. He was blessed with…
Chef Nathan
Chef Nathan and Evil King Paprika the First A Children’s Story (That Adults Might Like Too) Dedicated to Nathan, Natalie, Cathy and David, remembering Astor Avenue and Germany Once upon a time many years ago, in 1973, there was…