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Fiction, Reviews

‘One Right Thing,’ by Matthew Iden

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One Right Thing

Another day, another Marty Singer book by Matthew Iden. I’m zipping through them pretty fast. I expect I’ll miss them when I’ve run out.

One Right Thing begins with a seemingly irrational act on the part of Marty Singer, retired Washington, D.C. cop and cancer survivor. He’s driving down a Virginia highway when he sees a billboard with a man’s picture on it. The message says that the man, J. D. Hope, was murdered, and offers a reward for clues. Marty turns his car around and heads to the town where the murder happened.

He’s not playing knight errant, righting wrongs from the back of a metaphorical white horse. Back when he was a detective, Marty helped convict J.D. Hope of a crime he probably didn’t commit. His partner planted evidence, and Marty suspected but let it pass. Hope was a career criminal, after all, and was bound to go to prison sooner or later. But he’s ashamed.

In the man’s town, Marty clashes with a strangely passive local police department as he uncovers a ring of crystal meth producers. J.D. Hope, he learns, was making an attempt at redemption when he died, and Marty has his own redemption to pursue.

One Right Thing is an excellent mystery, well written, with a solid moral center. Recommended. Cautions for language. The violence isn’t too extreme.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Blueblood,’ by Matthew Iden

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Blueblood

This is the second in the Marty Singer mystery series by Matthew Iden. I didn’t love Blueblood as much as the first book, A Reason to Live, but it gave full value for money.

Marty Singer, as you may recall from my previous review, is a retired Washington D.C. cop, going through chemotherapy for colon cancer. He has now semi-adopted a young woman who was involved in two of his cases, and she’s helping him open his heart to new experiences and attitudes. Though he’s physically weaker, his life is suddenly richer than it’s been in a long time.

In Blueblood, he’s approached by a police detective involved in an inter-departmental task force, investigating drug crimes in the various, often overlapping, jurisdictions around Washington. Several men have been tortured and murdered recently, and what the public doesn’t know is that they were all undercover police officers. He thinks that Marty, with his amateur status, might be able to turn something up without tipping off possible moles in the forces.

Marty starts talking to people, turning over evidence the police already have. What he ultimately discovers involves corruption, betrayal, and retribution from directions he never suspected.

This is a good detective procedural, with well-drawn characters. Also, author Iden knows how to turn a memorable phrase. My only disappointment is that there was less of the personal rebirth element than we found in the previous book. But that’s almost unavoidable in a series – no character can believably change profoundly again and again.

I liked Bluebloods, and recommend it. Cautions for language and some intense situations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘A Reason to Live,’ by Matthew Iden

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A Reason to Live

And what became clear to me in that infinite moment is that, ironically, a man with cancer has more options than one that doesn’t. Having already stared my own mortality in the face, I couldn’t really be threatened with death.

What a pleasure to find a new author to follow, and a new series to pick up! And the Kindle prices are reduced right now!

A Reason to Live by Matthew Iden is the story of Marty Singer (also the narrator), a detective for the Washington D.C. police department, retired. He didn’t retire willingly. He felt obligated leave the job to when he learned that he had colon cancer and was in for a course of chemotherapy. He’s middle-aged, divorced, and has no very close friends. Life seems bleak, hardly worth the trouble of fighting his disease.

Then he’s approached by a young graduate student named Amanda Lane. Marty remembers her, all too well, as the daughter of a woman who, years ago, was killed by a uniformed cop who was also a stalker. Marty worked hard to put the creep away, but somehow the case fell apart and the perpetrator walked. Numerous fingers pointed blame in every direction, and Marty came in for his share. He’s felt bad about it ever since.

Amanda has tried to put the past behind her, but now she’s convinced the killer has returned – for her. He used to leave cheap carnations when he showed up, and now she’s started getting the same floral gifts.

Marty doesn’t need an unauthorized private investigation in his life just now… and yet that’s exactly what he needs. Suddenly he has someone he cares about more than himself, something other than his own disease to think about, and a new reason to go on.

Well written, vividly characterized, A Reason to Live is an excellent mystery in the hard-boiled vein. Highly recommended. Cautions for language and mild sexual situations.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Glenlitton Murder,’ by E. Phillips Oppenheim

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The Glenlitton Mystery

E. Phillips Oppenheim has become a fallback author for me. An English writer who flourished in the 1930s, he wrote mysteries and thrillers a little more sophisticated (in my view) than comparable stuff of the period. I find his stories a little palid compared to the contemporary kind, but they keep my interest, and I can get them cheap for my Kindle.

The Glenlitton Murder is pretty standard Oppenheim. The main character is a member of the English nobility – Andrew, Marquis Glenlitton. When we meet him he’s hosting a party at Glenlitton, his country estate, introducing to his friends his new wife, Felice, who is half French and half Russian. During the evening, Felice retires to her bedchamber, claiming a headache. She sleeps, and is awakened by movement in her room, and a gunshot. A male guest, who has entered the room, is killed. The police quickly assume that the burglar must have killed the man. But Felice is not telling everything she knows…

No great pulse-pounder, The Glenlitton Murder is a serviceable mystery novel to pass the time. Felice is the old-fashioned kind of female character, kind of clinging and helpless by our standards. Theoretically that ought to please me, but even I found her a tad soppy.

Recommended for those who like the older approach to storytelling. Nothing objectionable here.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Locked In,’ by Jeff Shelby

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Locked In

Author Jeff Shelby has several mystery series going, but my favorite is his Noah Braddock series, featuring a surfer/private detective in San Diego. Noah defies all your (or at least my) presuppositions about surfers, being a thoughtful and highly ethical character.

A couple books ago, Noah killed the man who murdered his girlfriend, who was a San Diego cop. The last novel found him living incognito in Florida, surfing unfamiliar waves. But now his ethics have caught up with him, and the beginning of Locked In finds him heading back to San Diego with his friend Carter. He has decided he can’t live as a fugitive. He needs to face up to this.

He contacts his girlfriend’s old partner, who puts in a word with the District Attorney’s office. The DA, an imperious woman, offers him a deal – an “assault” is rumored to have happened at the University of San Diego, during a party involving the baseball team. He is to find out what he can about it. She will tell him nothing more. If he satisfies her with his answers, she’ll see that the charges against him are dropped (he killed a cop killer, after all). He agrees, with some discomfort, and steps into a world of lies, cover-ups, and self-serving deception, all the while mourning his lost love.

Noah Braddock is an excellent, sympathetic continuing character, and I enjoyed Locked In very much. Cautions for language and adult subject matter.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Assisted Murder,’ by Jeff Shelby

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I’m a fan of mystery writer Jeff Shelby, especially his Noah Braddock novels (of which I’ll be reviewing the latest tomorrow). He also writes a “cozy series” called the Moose River Mysteries. This is probably a good economic decision – “cozies” written for a female audience comprise, as far as I can see, more than half of the mystery market. I keep trying to cultivate a taste for this genre, but alas, no joy.

The Moose River series involves the Gardner-Savage (blended) family, Jake, Daisy, and four kids, who live in Moose River, Minnesota. But in Assisted Murder they fly to Florida, for Jake’s grandmother’s 100th birthday, and also to do Disney World. They encounter Grandmother Billie (grumpy) and Aunt Gloria (high-energy and ditzy), who both live in a retirement community. They also encounter several of their friends, who prove as driven by competition, lust, and jealousy as any assemblage of younger people. This is underlined when Aunt Gloria’s worst enemy is discovered murdered in her (Gloria’s) house, and the police make her their chief suspect.

I suspect that Assisted Murder would be a highly amusing read for members of its intended audience, with the cute, bickering kids and the not-so-cute, bickering geriatrics running amok in their various ways. Didn’t work for me, of course, but I have no objection to make for those who like this kind of thing. Pretty family-friendly.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Innocent,’ by Harlan Coben

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The Innocent, Harlan Coben

Olivia thought again about how the abused always take the path of self-destruction. They simply could not stop themselves. They take it no matter what the consequences, no matter what the danger. Or maybe, as in her case, they take it for the opposite reason – because no matter how much life has tried to beat them down, they cannot let go of hope.

Another Harlan Coben book in my current little Coben binge. I didn’t love this one, The Innocent, quite as much as I loved Caught, which I reviewed a couple inches down the page. But it’s still a superior book.

Matt Hunter is an ex-con who works as a paralegal. He served a sentence for manslaughter. He’s married to a beautiful woman, Olivia, and they’re deeply in love with each other. She’s just learned she’s pregnant.

And their life is a lie. Olivia isn’t who she says she is.

A nun in a nearby Catholic school is murdered in her room. Police find phone records linking her to Matt’s family. Olivia goes away on a “business trip,” and Matt gets a video on his cell phone, showing her in a bedroom with another man.

Matt sets about finding out the truth – and he refuses to believe Olivia has betrayed him.

The plot is convoluted. The characters are numerous and textured, sometimes surprising us as is Cobin’s style (and I like that). We visit the sordid world of “exotic” dancing, which is not pretty. But the conclusion moved me as much as that of any novel I’ve read in a while.

Recommended. Cautions for violence (but not explicit), sexual situations (also not explicit), and only mild profanity.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Caught,’ by Harlan Coben

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Walker turned away because he didn’t want to admit that maybe Stanton had a point. You make so many calls in life that you don’t want to make – and you want those calls to be easy. You want to put people in neat categories, make them monsters or angels, but it almost never works that way. You work in the gray and frankly that kinda sucks. The extremes are so much easier.

During my Long March through the educational institution, I find that I have fallen behind in my Harlan Coben reading. There was a brand new book (I reviewed that the other day), plus two more I hadn’t noticed. This was good news – it meant a reading feast of extremely high quality.

Caught is, I think, my favorite to date of all Coben’s novels. The main character is Wendy Tyne, a television news reporter. She’s a young widow, and the mother of a teenage son. She does a feature where she lures child predators through online contacts, and then exposes them on video. That was how she “caught” Dan Mercer – a youth counselor whom everyone respected, and many loved – including the kids he worked with. Even Dan’s ex-wife staunchly defends him.

Then he gets tied to the disappearance of a local teenaged girl, and clues start pointing in all kinds of directions, and Wendy discovers a long-ago crime coverup, and begins to question her own judgment. Then a threat appears to her own family.

Caught is a complex story with complex characters. Not for Coben the simple stereotypes a lesser writer would have offered. The best characters can make terrible mistakes, and the worst have moments of goodness. I was particularly pleased by Wendy’s father, who rides a motorcycle and belongs to the NRA and is a fine, loving, wise man.

Harlan Coben, as far as I can figure out, is Jewish. But the major theme of this book is forgiveness, and the way he handles the subject will be edifying to any Christian.

Highly recommended. The language is mild by thriller standards. There’s no on-screen sex, and the violence is minimal, though some crime descriptions can be harrowing.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Extreme Prey,’ by John Sandford

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He fit in the crowd like pea in a pod, he thought: the basic difference between Minnesotans and Iowans was a line on a map. Other than that, they were the same bunch, except, of course, for the physical and spiritual superiority of the Minnesota Gophers over the Iowa Hawkeyes, in all ways, and forever. Between the Hawks and the Badgers… they’d have to work that out themselves.

Another Prey book from John Sandford. Another good, entertaining story, and this time – I’m happy to report – a little lighter on the perversion and sadism.

As Extreme Prey begins, Lucas Davenport is working on remodeling his Wisconsin cabin, ogling his sexy carpenter. He’s unemployed for the moment (no great hardship for a multimillionaire), having quit his job with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Nevertheless, he still takes a call from the governor.

The governor is running for the presidential nomination (Democrat), and he’s worried about the safety of the front-runner in the race, Michaela Bowden, a former cabinet secretary. Messages he’s gotten from the lunatic fringe among his supporters have him suspicious that there’s an assassination plot aimed at Bowden. So he asks Lucas to liaise with her campaign and try to ferret out the plot, if one exists. Everybody’s in Iowa for the state fair this week, so that’s where Lucas heads in his big Mercedes SUV.

What follows is one of the more entertaining and thoughtful of the Prey stories. The plot centers around an eccentric band of rural activists, violent and crazy, but just like regular folks in alarming ways. I admired the way author Sandford defused the political implications of such a story by pretty much ignoring Republicans altogether, except for a few slighting asides. The very good and the very bad are all Democrats, and they too are not immune to criticism and satire.

As in all the Prey books, there’s plenty of low humor, and a lot of rough language. But the level of cruelty and gore is lower this time around. I enjoyed Extreme Prey a lot.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Fool Me Once,’ by Harlan Coben

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Wow. What a book. Harlan Coben is one of the best thriller writers around, but Fool Me Once is unlike anything he’s written before.

I might have been inclined to pass this one over, because it involves a woman in combat, a subject that troubles me. But I trust Coben, so I went ahead and read it, and I’m glad I did. You could make an argument that the story supports my views, but I doubt that’s what Coben had in mind. Whatever his intentions, he’s written a fine, taut, explosive story.

Maya Stern Burkett is a veteran helicopter pilot from the Middle East war. She was briefly famous when video of her killing civilians during a rescue mission was leaked by a whistleblower web site. That ended her military career. Now she’s an aviation instructor. Some people say that death follows her, and it seems as if it might be true. Her sister was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered while she was overseas, and now her husband, Joe Burkett, scion of a rich and powerful family and the father of her two-year-old daughter, has been murdered.

After the funeral, Maya’s sister-in-law gives her an unexpected gift – a nanny camera. Maya trusts her nanny, and doesn’t understand the gift, but she uses it… and one day she sees something that can’t possibly be real on its daily recording. Maya starts asking questions and begins to learn that very little in her world is what it seems to be. Her life, and her daughter’s, may be at stake.

Coben does a splendid job of describing the world of a soldier dealing with PTSD. And I don’t often say that a book’s ending shocks me, but this one did. It worked, though, and I won’t soon forget it.

Highly recommended. No sex, language fairly mild (as with all Coben’s books), and the violence isn’t overwhelming.