mystery

amateur sleuth 

2010: #83 – Baltimore Blues (Laura Lippman)

2 Comments

Until her paper, the BALTIMORE STAR, crashed and burned, Tess Monaghan was a damn good reporter who knew her hometown intimately–from historic Fort McHenry to the crumbling projects of Cherry Hill. Now gainfully unemployed at twenty-nine, she’s willing to take any freelance job to pay the rent–including a bit of unorthodox snooping for her rowing buddy, Darryl “Rock” Paxton.

In a city where someone is murdered almost everyday, attorney Michael Abramowitz’s death should be just another statistic. But the slain lawyer’s notoriety–and his noontime trysts with Rock’s fiancée–make the case front page news…and points to Rock as the likely murderer. But trying to prove her friend’s innocence could prove costly to Tess–and add her name to that infamous ever-growing list.

Read more
amateur sleuth journalism 

2010: #80 – Stalking Susan (Julie Kramer)

2 Comments

Inside the desperate world of TV news, a reporter discovers a serial killer is targeting women named Susan.

Riley Spartz is recovering from a heartbreaking, headline-making catastrophe of her own when a Minneapolis police source drops two homicide files in her lap. Both cold cases involve women named Susan strangled on the same day, one year apart. Riley sees a pattern between those murders and others pulled from old death records. As the deadly anniversary approaches, she stages a bold on-air stunt to draw the killer out and uncover a motive that will leave readers breathless.

Read more
cozy mystery 

2010: #78 – Catering to Nobody (Diane Mott Davidson)

1 Comment

Catering a wake is not Goldy’s idea of fun. Yet the Colorado caterer throws herself into preparing a savory feast including Poached Salmon and Strawberry Shortcake Buffet designed to soothe forty mourners. And her culinary efforts seem to be exactly what the doctor ordered…until her ex-father-in-law gynecologist Fritz Korman is struck down and Goldy is accused of adding poison to the menu. Now, with the Department of Health impounding her leftovers, her ex-husband proclaiming her guilt, and her business about to be shut down, Goldy knows she can’t wait for the police to serve up the answers. She’ll soon uncover more than one family skeleton and a veritable stew of unpalatable secrets–the kind that could make Goldy the main course in an unsavory killer’s next murder!

Read more
police procedural 

2010: #75 – Heat Lightning (John Sandford)

2 Comments

John Sandford’s introduction of Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigator Virgil Flowers was an immediate critical and popular success: “laser-sharp characters and a plot that’s fast and surprising” (Cleveland Plain Dealer); “an idiosyncratic, thoroughly ingratiating hero” (Booklist). Flowers is only in his late thirties, but he’s been around the block a few times, and he doesn’t think much can surprise him anymore. He’s wrong.

It’s a hot, humid summer night in Minnesota, and Flowers is in bed with one of his ex-wives (the second one, if you’re keeping count), when the phone rings. It’s Lucas Davenport. There’s a body in Stillwater—two shots to the head, found near a veteran’s memorial. And the victim has a lemon in his mouth.

Exactly like the body they found last week.

The more Flowers works the murders, the more convinced he is that someone’s keeping a list, and that the list could have a lot more names on it. If he could only find out what connects them all . . . and then he does, and he’s almost sorry he did.

Because if it’s true, then this whole thing leads down a lot more trails than he thought—and every one of them is booby-trapped.

Filled with the audacious plotting, rich characters, and brilliant suspense that have always made his books “compulsively readable” (Los Angeles Times), this is vintage Sandford.

Read more