Swan for the Money by Donna Andrews

Set in Caerphilly, Virginia, this is the 11^th is a series of books about Meg Langslow and her endlessly interesting and eccentric family. Each mystery somehow involves a type of (often exotic) bird in the plot. In the latest of this charming series, Meg deserts her blacksmithing business and Llama farm to help organize the prestigious annual rose show. With both her parents competing for the Black Swan award, the highest honor, and the show being hosted on the property on a thoroughly unpleasant member of the club, it is not a job she relishes.

The hostess of the event soon appears to be the obvious victim of jealous competitors and unhappy employees at her estate, but when the body is turned over it turns out to be someone else entirely. Suspects abound as do motives ranging from jealousy to rage over animal cruelty.

Reading about the intricate details involved in prepping flowers for a professional show was eye-opening to say the least. Tiny tools and perfect timing are all apparently critical, interesting that those very things could be critical to a murder as well.

Andrews has one at least one award for every book in this series and more than one for many. They are fun to read, informative, and often the mystery is hard to solve in advance. This particular book was a finalist for the Lefty Award and the 2008 Agatha Award for Best Novel. Andrews is a member of Sisters of Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and Private Investigators & Security Association. There are a total of 13 books in the series and I have only read about five, the rest are on my summer reading list.

"The Interrogation of Gabriel James" by Charlie Price

I know you aren't supposed to choose a book  by it's cover, but while browsing the YA shelves at a local book store, I found this title and liked the idea of a mystery. As some of our followers know, I am a high school librarian, I have seen that mysteries aren't currently the cool genre and I wanted to see what passes as mystery today.  The book is set in Billings, Montana where two killings have happened.  Gabriel  a local teen is sitting at the local police department in the interrogation room with two officers going through not only the event surrounding the actual crime, but what led up to it.  The book takes place over the course of that interrogation, but flips back and forth in time as the officers go through what happened. Filled with creepy innuendos that can only be described as disturbing, this book deals with racism largely about Native Americans, drugs, and other dark family secrets.  Gabriel finds out more than he bargains for including the indiscretions of his parents. Gabriel unwittingly over the interest of a girl, is drawn into the remnants of a former Hippie type commune with a checkered past.  Gabriel is stunned to find out who is doing the bidding of this former cult leader and the people whose agenda is no longer love but hate.  The back woods of Montana is a great back drop for the secrets. I don't want to be a spoiler.  The book has an extensive interview with the author and I found it a great way to get into his mind and why this particular story.  The questions are posed to intrigue the teen reader and enrich the story after the fact and it does.   If you follow the reviews on the book, you will find them greatly mixed.   The innuendo about incest is pretty creepy no matter what your age, but you may find kids drawn to the story through it's taboos.  Over all I think this is a good story and I would recommend to my older teen readers that want a psychological book with a crime thrown in for good measure.   My only criticism might have been a bit more forensics thrown in.   As a person who developed their love of mysteries as a teen, I think that a book based purely on the psychological angle might not have been enough to make a teen what to read more in the genre.  But  I  found Price a good author with a true understanding of teens and I would definitely order more of his books and place them on the shelves for my teen readers.

Murder at the PTA

Murder at the PTA by Laura Alden

First in a projected series, Murder at the PTA has believable characters and situations and a truly surprise ending. The story is set in upstate Wisconsin with many characters including the deceased principal very involved in sports.  Anyone who has seen the famous cheese heads on sports TBV knows how critical the rivalries are. I was taken by the comparison of PTA members, and Board of Education members. Beth Kennedy, new divorced mother of two small children and owner of a children’s bookstore, finds herself involved in solving the murder of an unpopular elementary school principal.  Even after the principal is dead, Alden succeeds in rounding out the woman’s character through interaction with other people and disillusioned relatives.  Beth is further hampered by an almost obnoxiously pushy friend who embroils her in dangerous situations through her mainly thoughtless blog.  Checking on details in northern Wisconsin requires a short six hour drive which thankfully happens before the snow falls. Beth comes to life in her deep connection to her children including giving in to the request for a dog, her interest in a new man, and her ideas for making the children’s school even better.

This book was easy to read although solving the mystery was not that easy.  Modern technology played an important part in the detective work which was quite interesting.  This book felt very modern day.

Laura Alden graduated from Eastern Michigan University with a BS in science.  She spent 25 years surveying and engineering. Those talents came into play in not only the proposed new construction of a school in the mystery but also some of the clues.  Two more books in the series have been published on in 2011 and another scheduled for a July 2012 publishing.  A fourth book is in the works.  I will definitely read more. 

Pineapple Grenade by Tim Dorsey

Pineapple Grenade is the latest offering of renowned author Tim Dorsey which is set in hot and steamy Miami, Florida.  Readers are introduced to the ongoing character Serge Storms who is a vigilante serial killer of sorts and his stoned out friend Coleman.  The 15^th in the series by Tim Dorsey, readers immediately get a feel for the quirkiness of the writing with the washing up of an artificial limb on the shore and a body that has been disposed in a forensically very interesting way (don't want to be a spoiler).  As Wendy and I set out to read stories in states where place was important as the characters, this book fit the bill.  I rambled the stacks in the mystery section of the bookstore and wound up with this book as the next in line of my journey. However, as an avid mystery reader, I am often choosing a book in the middle of the series. You can often pick up threads of the past in the first chapter or two that help you move through the book.  It’s those story bits that leads you back and connect the people to really motivate a reader new to your series.  This book provided none of that.  I began stark and new and clueless.

The lead character Serge seems to be an appealing enough guy with the bumbling stoned out sidekick Coleman.  I am unsure if I am supposed to like these people or finding their brand of vigilante killing something to care about.  The blurbs about Dorsey's books often include the word humor, so I was looking out for those moments.  Maybe I just didn't recognize humor when I saw it, but what do I know? Serge and Coleman insinuate themselves into a group that is protecting the dictator of a fictitious banana republic who is coming to Miami for a summit. Serge becomes a secret agent of sorts that helps the dubious factions and winds up playing mind games among the players.   They all wonder who Serge really is and who does he work for?  And as Serge goes along his merry way with Coleman in tow (who really does that much drugs), he kills a few people with what seems to be a familiar mantra…” I always leave a way out…” but in this book none of Serge’s victims survive.  I will say Serge is ingenious.  But Dorsey as an author lost me.   This reminds me that maybe this character is the love child of Dexter the serial killer and Carl Hiaasen type characters.  But I am really not sure I want to know more or revisit the previous 14 to find out how these characters came to be.  It’s obvious Dorsey has a huge following, but while I didn’t hate the book, I am likely not to read another unless I come across one at a library sale or swap table. Sorry Mr. Dorsey.

Twilight by Nancy Pickard

What could be more Massachusetts then walking trails, charitable foundations, tiffs between conservationists and businesses and particularly fall festivals on the common? The lengths to which human beings will go to assuage guilt and protect loved ones are common motivators for plots. In Twilight, Nancy Pickard combines these to make for a fast-reading mystery with believable and interesting characters.
The center of the controversy was God’s Highway, which immediately made me think of the Appalachian Trail. Three people had been killed in unexplained accidents where the trail intersected a main road. Families of victims wanted it closed or made safer and conservationists were willing to go to extreme and possibly illegal lengths to keep it open. A stop sign should have prevented these incidents but somehow it did not.
Heroine Jenny Cain plans a fall festival to get her newly organized foundation recognized and bring much needed revenue to her town. A small city commission stands in the way. All these issues are familiar to New Englanders. Pickard puts them all together to tell a story that is hard to put down. There are no murders here although it was tempting to think so while reading. What Pickard serves up is another modern day issue concerning health which should remain unnamed at this point. Pay attention to the behaviors of the main characters – there is a hint there.
Twilight marks the end of the Jenny Cain series nevertheless it has inspired me to read the series from the beginning and truthfully it did not feel like the conclusion.
Many mystery awards have been given to Nancy Pickard for her short stories and novels including an Anthony Award, a Macavity Award and nominated for an Edgar Award. She is a former reporter and editor and past president of Sisters in Crime.What could be more Massachusetts then walking trails, charitable foundations, tiffs between conservationists and businesses and particularly fall festivals on the common? The lengths to which human beings will go to assuage guilt and protect loved ones are common motivators for plots. In Twilight, Nancy Pickard combines these to make for a fast-reading mystery with believable and interesting characters.

The Poacher's Son by Paul Doiron

Set in rural Maine, this was a natural choice for my next trip through the mystery United States.  My parents and aunts and uncles are all from Maine and I grew up with most childhood trips and holidays spent there.  This story takes place in the rural northwest part of the state near the Canadian border that I knew nothing about.  The story is about game warden Mike Bowditch who is drawn into a murder that supposedly his father Jack, a local game poacher has committed.  Mike puts his career on the line to defend his father and often runs a foul of the law himself in trying to figure out who actually committed the murder of a local cop and another local man. Mike has grown up around a deep woods subculture of people who hunt not only for sport but to survive.  You find out that being a game warden is a tough job.  The position is basically a woods police force.  Bowditch is checking licenses and making sure drunks don't travel the waterways just to name a few mundane jobs.  In one scenario he had to kill a bear that had wandered into a home and the owner maimed trying to defend himself.  It's a gritty hard tack life for many of these people, but most would not change it.  An interesting side note is that there were Nazi prisoner camps in these deep woods during WWII.  At Seboomook, Maine a camp was developed for about 250 prisoners from Rommel's Afrika Korps.  Prisoners were put to work cutting trees and literally feeding in to the Maine paper industry.  This was a small back ground story to this book but as a first novel from Doiron, this fit nicely into my attempt to make a sense of place as important as the mystery itself.  You find yourself really seeing and understanding what this area of the state looks and feels like with this adjunct story.  This is a fast paced novel and Doiron kept you guessing with a variety of red herrings.  He develops his characters carefully and everyone has his/her purpose.  You follow Bowditch as he continues to try to find evidence of his dad's innocence even as you found out he's a hard life man with a problem with alcohol and women..  But largely Mike is the only person who thinks Dad didn't do the crime.  The conclusion is explosive and I won't spoil it for you.  I will admit I didn't see it coming but it's good and ties the plots nicely. . I highly recommend this great book and I look forward to reading his next book.  If you are a fan of authors like Craig Johnson, Joseph Heywood, or Nevada Barr and you like a character with guts and compassion and a love of the wilderness, this is your newest author.

The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter by Sharyn McCrumb

The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter by Sharyn McCrumb
As with all McCrumb’s novels, setting is off paramount importance. Just the name, “Dark Hollow”, Tennessee sets the mood for a haunting but regionally realistic murder. Mix an old woman with “site” into the future, an old man dying due to environmental pollution on a gigantic scale, with a newcomer preacher’s wife (he’s been called to the Mid-East), an understanding sheriff, vulnerable children and four brutal murders and the recipe results in a page turner in true McCrumb style. As always, McCrumb begins each chapter with an appropriate quote from Appalachian songs, poems, essays. All add to the sense of foreboding building to the climax of the story. Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter is one of nine ballad novels which combine legends, nature and modern day issues in a mystery at once believable and possible. McCrumb’s characters deserve mention for their reality. Lead characters are developed with great detail not only to attributes but to weaknesses as well. They grow, change, lie, sneak, are brave, scared, just generally cover the gamut of human experience.
This is not the first McCrumb novel I have read and is certainly not the last. In addition to a huge amount of fiction including, NASCAR Novels, Elizabeth MacPherson novels, Jay Omega novels, short stories and reams of contributions to anthologies and literary magazines, McCrumb is a prolific non-fiction writer provide amazing amounts of information of the Appalachian Mountain land and people of North Carolina and Tennessee. To see her long list of awards and complete list of writing, visit: http://www.sharynmccrumb.com/bio.html. Her books, including audio versions, are widely available nationwide at public libraries and at retailers such as independent books stores and online.
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