The historical mystery is a challenging genre, calling for a lot of research, as well as a judicious balance between authenticity and audience sympathy (which can be difficult to sustain due to differences in societal attitudes).

Male heroes written by female authors are another kind of challenge. Lindsey Davis takes on both in her Marcus Didius Falco mysteries, set in the 1st Century Roman Empire.

My opinion, based on reading Last Act in Palmyra, is that she succeeds pretty well in the first challenge, not so well in the second. Continue reading Last Act in Palmyra, by Lindsey Davis →

Robert Crais, in my opinion, is getting to be a better and deeper novelist with each book.



Chasing Darkness is a departure from his recent novels in that he tones down the violence a bit. He’s been prone lately to having his main characters (private eye Elvis Cole and his associate Joe Pike) end up seriously wounded and hospitalized after a harrowing life-or-death battle, but this time it’s all about the mystery and the characters, with the final bloodletting somewhat less comprehensive. And I don’t think he loses anything by that.

The story begins in the Laurel Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles, during a wildfire evacuation. Policemen sent in to evacuate residents discover a dead man, an apparent suicide, sitting over a photo album containing photographs of female murder victims—photographs that could only have been taken before the police got to the scenes.

Suddenly Elvis Cole is the target of investigation by the police, and threats from one of the victims’ families. Because he worked for the dead man’s lawyer and helped get him acquitted on one of these murders.

Elvis doesn’t like being pushed, and he knows for a fact that the guy couldn’t have committed the murder. So he reopens his investigation. In this he is assisted (off the record) by his police detective friend Carol Starkey, and of course Joe Pike, the best guy in the world to have watching your back.

What he discovers is corruption, depravity and cover-up at the highest levels of city government. And then he gets a surprise, and the whole game changes.

I liked Chasing Darkness a lot. It’s a cerebral, tragic, character-driven story, concentrating on the costs of crime to those who care about the victims.

Recommended for grownups.

James Lee Burke is a superior mystery writer. He writes in the tradition of high craftsmanship and sensitivity that characterizes the best Southern literature. I found The Tin Roof Blowdown brilliant and moving.

And I probably won’t read any more by him.

But first, a synopsis.

The setting for The Tin Roof Blowdown is New Orleans and its environs, during and immediately following Hurricane Katrina. The conflict is set off by a group of young black men who steal a motorboat (thus dooming a number of trapped people to drowning), break into a rich man’s house, and discover a treasure trove of drugs, cash and diamonds. That same night one of them is killed and another paralyzed by a bullet fired by someone in the neighborhood. Suspicion falls on a neighbor, whose daughter (by a strange coincidence) was recently gang-raped by some of these same young men.

Although investigation of his death is technically a federal matter (under 1960s laws dealing with deprivation of civil rights by murder), the bulk of the investigation is elbowed off (due to heavy case loads) to Dave Robicheaux, a sheriff’s deputy in New Iberia Parish and hero of a number of mysteries by Burke. He is unofficially assisted in his investigation by his friend Clete Purcel, a former cop and present skip tracer. Continue reading The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke →

I like Randy Wayne White’s Doc Ford books, but I don’t love them. I think The Man Who Invented Florida is my favorite.

Marion “Doc” Ford is the hero of the series—a big, bespectacled marine biologist with a shadowy background in covert operations for the government. Periodically he finds himself investigating a mystery or carrying on his own private operation to rescue somebody. The Man Who Invented Florida, however, is barely a mystery at all. There is the puzzle of two government surveyors and a fishing show host who disappear in the Everglades, but it turns out (I hope this isn’t too much of a spoiler) to be less than meets the eye.

This book is, in fact, a farce. The real center of the narrative is Ford’s uncle Tucker Gatrell, the kind of man for whom the word “colorful” was coined. A former cowboy, fishing guide, gun runner and moonshiner, he’s devoted to his nephew, but his nephew hates his guts (for reasons that become dimly apparent toward the end). Tucker’s best friend is the Indian (don’t get riled; that’s what he calls himself) Joseph Egret. Joseph is the last of the Calusa, the original Florida Indians, to whom the Seminoles and Creeks are newcomers. As such he’s an outsider both among the Indians and the Whites. But he likes Tucker, because Tucker despises everybody all the same. Continue reading The Man Who Invented Florida, by Randy Wayne White →