This is the third Sean O’Brien novel by Tom Lowe that I’ve read, which tells me that I must like the books. Yet I see all kinds of flaws in them. So I guess the takeaway must be that, for me, Lowe is a natural storyteller with a genuine talent. But he could use some seasoning.

The Butterfly Forest opens, after some preliminaries, with hero Sean O’Brien, a former Miami detective with some kind of mysterious military background, observing a man stalking two women in a mall parking lot. He intervenes to save them from kidnapping, but the assailant gets away. Both women, mother and daughter, are quite attractive, and Sean (a widower) becomes their friend, even pondering asking the mother out. But the predator from the parking lot was not just a crime-of-opportunity pervert. He has the daughter, a student entomologist, in his sights because she saw something she doesn’t even know she saw.

Sean O’Brien is an interesting and engaging character – low-key and laid back, but capable of very efficient violence when it’s needed. Author Lowe has endowed him with a very appealing habitat, dividing his time between an old cabin on the edge of Ocala National Forest and the marina where he keeps his fishing boat, and where good and faithful friends live. He also keeps a pet dachshund, Max, whom he cares for with appealing devotion.

The weaknesses are in the writing. I thought the plotting was better this time than in at least one of the previous books, but I was troubled by repeated infelicities in the prose. People say things like “as you know” in conversation, which real people almost never say. And the exposition is sometimes just awful, as in “His physical periphery subtly spoke of a body language that was rough but understood.”

I blame our times, in a way. In the old days, a good storyteller like Lowe would have paid his dues in the pulp magazines, getting ruthlessly red-penciled by carnivorous editors at 3 cents a word. Then he’d have worked with an equally pitiless editor at a publishing house. But nowadays, publishing his own work, he’s missed professional boot camp, and has no one to tell him when he’s right and when he’s wrong.

And yet I’ve read all three novels. That’s got to mean something.

Another strange thing about the Sean O’Brien series is that the author openly appeals to the spiritual and supernatural. Sean himself says that he’s learned to value his gut feelings above the evidence, which seems strange by the standards of traditional mysteries. He sees visions too, from time to time. I’m not sure if I like this or not.

Moderately recommended. Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.

It’s always a pleasure to come across a well-written novel. But good writing doesn’t necessarily mean the reader will like the novel, and in We Are the Hanged Man I find a work of literature that not only leaves me, personally, cold, but repels me. Your liters per kilometer may vary.

Robert Jericho is a police detective in the small city of Wells, in England. At one time he was very famous as a London detective, but he didn’t enjoy that, and voluntarily retired to a quieter town to serve out his time until retirement. He suffers from profound, chronic depression, dating back to the unsolved disappearance of his wife, years ago. He is puzzled when he starts getting envelopes delivered to him, each one containing a Tarot card — “The Hanged Man.”

Meanwhile, his supervisor (who loathes him) has come up with a delicious plan to force him to resign. A TV reality show, “Britain’s Got Justice” is looking for a bona fide detective to serve as a judge, and she manages to get Jericho that post. So he is plunged into the passionately shallow world of television production, a world author Lindsay takes great pleasure in verbally drawing and quartering. Jericho’s congenital misanthropy is well justified in this environment, but that doesn’t make his discomfort less.

Then one of the contestants disappears. The program suddenly becomes deadly serious (though the production team doesn’t notice), and Jericho finds himself drawn into a personal struggle with a monster from his own past. Continue reading We Are the Hanged Man, by Douglas Lindsay →

St. Louis Cathedral is in a class by itself. Take away the ornate altar, and it could be a Protestant church built during the baroque. Despite all its popish flummery, plaster statues, and overreaching painted motifs, it is austere, chaste, a masterpiece of design and grace. If I were God, I’d stay there a lot.

Occasionally, when trolling among the books offered free for a day for Kindle, I run across a gem. So Small a Carnival, by John William Corrington, is one of those. Aside from being a mystery, it’s a New Orleans novel, almost a genre in itself. Author Corrington can take his place alongside Walker Percy, if not on equal terms, at least without embarrassment. This is a fascinating story with a tremendous sense of place. And possibly—I’m not sure—a subtextual Christian message. Or something.

Wes Colvin is a reporter for a New Orleans newspaper. He receives a mysterious phone call from a stranger who wants to meet him in a local restaurant and tell him a story. Instead, when Wes arrives with his friend Jésus (which Wes insists on pronouncing “Jesus”), he finds the place shot to pieces just a moment before, all customers and employees dead.

Including someone who meant a lot to Wes.

Composing a story about the massacre, Wes comes into contact with the powerful Lemoyne family and the beautiful Denise Lemoyne, granddaughter of one of the victims, with whom he falls suddenly and sharply in love. Poking into the swamp waters of Louisiana politics with the help of his cop friend, “Rat” Trapp, he begins to discover some very old and dangerous secrets.

I liked many things about So Small a Carnival. One is that it was a smart book. There are certain dumb things that mystery heroes tend to do, like walking into dangerous situations alone, that Wes is smart enough to avoid. Corrington manages to keep the tension up without resorting to such cheap tropes. The heart of the book is the question of whether history is “real” or not. I tend to disagree with what the characters conclude (and I found the final resolution difficult to wrap my mind around), but it may possibly be grace and forgiveness that are really in view here.

Highly recommended. Cautions for language, violence, and adult themes.

Here’s a first class historical mystery. Mark Dawson’s The Black Mile takes place against the dramatic backdrop of the London blitz in 1940. Things are chaotic enough in the city, and plenty of people are dying, without the Blackout Ripper running around murdering prostitutes.

Charlie Murphy is the youngest son of a highly honored, almost legendary, London police detective, now a highly ranking officer. We first meet him in a squad of bobbies trying to put down an anti-Italian riot. Completely out of his element and disoriented, he ends up running away. Back at the station, he observes the abuse of some Italian prisoners by other policemen, and reports them, leading to the dismissal of two of them. This earns the anger of his older brother Frank, their superior.

Frank is a hard man, but no villain. A World War I veteran with facial scars from mustard gas, he orders his teenage daughter to stop seeing her Italian boyfriend, and she responds by running away. For the rest of the story he searches the streets for her, remorseful and terrified that she might be the next victim.

There’s also a newspaper man, only moderately honest, who sees the Ripper story as his ticket back to the front page. He knows things the police don’t, but he’s not sharing.

The most fascinating thing about this story (which is not to say the drama is weak—this is a book fit to be made into a thriller movie) is the depth of the character depiction. These are the kind of people we all know—essentially decent but flawed in various ways, caring for each other but wounded in their pride.

The prose slips occasionally, in terms of word choice. I noticed two instances where author Dawson repeated the same descriptive metaphor twice.

But those are minor problems. All in all a gripping, fully rounded, well-told story, which I recommend.

Cautions for language, violence, and sexual situations.

I’m half ready to become a big fan of Lawrence De Maria just on the basis of having read Sound of Blood. The other half is ready to cast him into utter darkness for a couple mistakes that seemed to me bush league.

The story concerns Jake Scarne, a New York private eye with military and police experience. Jake is no Philip Marlowe, smoking a lonely cigarette in a seedy office. Jake recently moved into the big leagues. He has a nice office, a beautiful secretary, an expensive apartment, and a babe-magnet car. He’s approached by a wealthy man named Sheldon Shields, who believes his son Josh has been murdered. Josh was a reporter working on a story about a mysterious Australian business tycoon, Victor Ballantrae. Jake’s investigations lead him into a world of corruption, violence, and sex. They also introduce him to Alana Loeb, Ballantrae’s associate, a beautiful, seductive, dangerous, yet strangely sympathetic character. Continue reading Sound of Blood, by Lawrence De Maria →