Dana Reed continues to blend her talent for horror with thrilling mystery in Unholy Alliance, published by ArcheBooks Publishing, copyright 2003.     Here we have a novel that begins with definitions of an extremely unsettling  subject that many may find severely disgusting, yet they must admit it does exist.  Dana Reed also gives a quote from Abraham Lincoln, dated September 6th of 1846.  The sinister killer of thi...

Mary Higgins Clark continues her masterful works of murderous suspense in You Belong to Me, published by Simon & Schuster, copyright 1998.   It is a regularly used inscription on the inside of many rings that are given to girlfriends, lovers, wives, and mistresses to show the dedication that we have to one another.  In this novel of mystery and murder, Mary Higgins Clark takes that slogan that applies to many romantic situati...

Sue Henry highlights her latest heroine, Maxine “Maxie” McNab, in The Tooth of Time, published by Penguin Books LTD, copyright 2006.   Having spent most of her life in Homer, Alaska and having lost her first husband, Joe Flanagan, to a fishing accident and her second husband Daniel McNab to cancer, Maxine McNab buys herself a thirty-foot Winnebago motor home, loads up her miniature dachshund Stretch, and heads out to se...

Robert Crais’ detective protagonist, Elvis Cole, continues his career as a private investigator in The Monkey’s Raincoat, published by Bantam Books, copyright 1987.   The setting in this Robert Crais novel is Hollywood in the late 1980s, when Kareem was still playing for the Lakers and Vietnam Veterans were everywhere.  Elvis Cole is a vet and when he came back stateside he started a business with another survivor of ...

Famed author Paco Ignacio Taibo II has produced another thrilling tale of murder, intrigue, and corruption in Some Clouds, published by Penguin Group, copyright 1992.   On a peaceful day on the coast Hector sits in the shade of a palm tree that he has been contemplating while he sips his beer and tries to forget the events that he was caught up in just months ago.  Hector Balascoaran Shayne had been to engineering school but the ...

George Pelecanos brings political intrigue and brutal underworld crime together in The Cut, published by Little, Brown and Company, copyright 2011.   This George Pelecanos novel is very inventive but sticks to the bare facts of the relationship between Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.  Apart from being two for the major cities where our government was founded they also rival each other in many ways.  The politicians and lawyers...

Renowned mystery author Carol Higgins Clark’s detective heroine Regan Reilly appears once again in Popped, published by Pocket Books, copyright 2004.   One of the subjects that Carol Higgins Clark focuses on is the adventure of ballooning which is to my amazement a safer method of travel than cars, trains, buses, or even airplanes.  The landings can be fairly rough, bouncing off the ground in a wicker basket for ten minutes...

David Fulmer assembles an intricate plot of mystery and corruption in Roaring Twenties Atlanta in The Dying Crapshooter’s Blues, published by Harcourt Books, copyright 2007.   In the 1920s Atlanta, Georgia had a large reputation for having the finest of gambling halls and brothels that anyone could ask for.  If you were to go to Central Avenue and Decatur St. you could find any vice that would please you.  This is where Jo...

M.C. Beaton’s Scottish detective protagonist Hamish Macbeth returns in Death of a Scriptwriter, published by Mysterious Press, copyright 1998.   This continuation of the Hamish Macbeth series introduces us to Patricia Martyn-Broyd who has for many years been known as one of Scotland’s most favored detective novelists.  In the last decade, however sales of her books have fallen off almost completely so when she is appr...

Noted crime novelist Denise Mina departs from her usual mystery series to bring us a new crimes and new characters in The Long Drop, published by Little, Brown and Company, copyright 2017. William Watt is accused of murder.  This is just not the type of killing that happens in Glasgow all that often.  The victims happen to be Watt’s wife, his daughter, and his sister-in-law Nettie Brown.  He and his brother John own one of the ...