REVIEWS FROM JOHN A. BROUSSARD

John's e-mail address is:
broupome@hawaii.rr.com
He has been writing and selling fiction, including novels and short stories, for several years.

Eleven of John's books are now available in Kindle editions via Amazon.com.  Click on John's name below to view selections.     

PARIAH         
DAVE ZELTSERMAN         
Serpent's Tail Trade PBO 10/09

Eight years provides a lot of time for planning - and brooding - especially when it's time spent in prison. Kyle Nevin looked forward to his release with one reason uppermost in his mind - what he would do to his former employer, crime boss Red Mahoney who had sent him out on a bank heist and then alerted the FBI beforehand as to what was coming off. Even while finalizing his plans for what he will do to Mahoney when he finds out where he's hiding, Nevin still has much else to catch up on. There's booze and women. He also has to look up his brother Danny. That former partner in crime is reluctantly persuaded to go along with ways of financing the search for the missing Mahoney. Still filled with rage, Nevin inevitably engages in mayhem with anyone who gives him the least excuse to do so, and he leaves the beaten and bruised victims - occasionally corpses - in his wake. And, then, a kidnapping scheme he had worked out with Danny goes awry. Arrested and brought to trial, he's found not guilty, but only because the FBI bungles the case. His search for Mahoney is renewed, and an unexpected windfall provides the needed cash for the hunt. PARIAH is a suspense novel at its very best with a protagonist who is far, far over on the other side of the law. Zeltserman has outdone himself with this depiction of a near-psychopathic personality that is driven by its own strange set of moral principles. The portrayal rings too true. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

                                                                                       - John A. Broussard

THE NINTH DAUGHTER         
BARBARA HAMILTON         
Berkley Prime Crime PBO 9/09

The waning days of 1773 were dismal ones in Boston, not only because of the looming New England winter, but also because of ever-increasing hostility between the openly rebellious colony and its occupying British troops. But Abigail Adams has more to worry about than her husband John's involvement with the Patriots, or the care of her household and four young children. A close friend and neighbor of hers, Rebecca Malvern, has disappeared under horrifying circumstances: the mutilated body of a woman is found in her house. Now the search is on, with the authorities looking for the murderer and suspecting the defiant townsmen -- even John Adams himself -- while Abigail is desperately trying to find Rebecca. Soon she discovers that other women have been killed under similar circumstances, adding to her anxiety about what may have happened to her missing friend. THE NINTH DAUGHTER is a historical crime novel about a serial killer who profits from troublous times. The British law enforcers are under constant harassment from the Patriots who, in turn, fear the investigation because of what it might reveal about their own plans. Hamilton has deftly captured the atmosphere of colonial Boston - a world of smallpox, outhouses, dung-filled roads, stray animals, and god-fearing preachers proclaiming the damnation of those not predestined to be saved.

                                                                                        - John A. Broussard

DOOM WITH A VIEW         
VICTORIA LAURIE         
Obsidian PBO 9/09

When the going gets tough, the FBI gets going - by hiring a psychic. Abby Cooper seems to have all the talent needed to help an extraordinarily inept agency find out what happened to three missing college students. She has paranormal radar which clues her in to the nether world. It contains an "intuitive filter" which facilitates her mind-reading abilities while projecting signals alternately to her left side and right side to keep her on the correct supernatural tract. Among other communications with the dead, she has a knack for telling from a photograph whether or not someone has passed along to the great beyond. And, of course, she is adept at foretelling the future. One wonders why she hasn't made herself a multibillionaire in the commodities market. Be that as it may, she and her sidekick Candice Fusco, a very down-to-earth private eye, constitute an unbeatable team. Unfortunately, the FBI puts Brice Harrison, a completely skeptical agent, in charge of the pair, and from then on it's Abby and Candice uncovering the clues, while Agent Harrison stumbles along behind, desperately throwing obstacles into the path of these successful sleuths. DOOM WITH A VIEW is a paranormal mystery brought into the twenty-first century, with Abby's talents -- phrased in current cybernetic terms -- playing a significant role in resolving the enigma of the missing students. Laurie has come up with a novel which the worshippers of woo-woo will delight in, while it regales the average reader with the operations of a heavy-handed, politics-ridden and bungling bureaucratic agency.

                                                                                       - John A. Broussard

DEAD MAN TALKING         
CASEY DANIELS         
Berkley Prime Crime PBO 10/09

Abandon all disbelief, ye who read this novel. The first words tell it all: "The ghosts were waiting for me"...  and they were. Pepper Martin has The Gift, which allows her to communicate with the dead, and they show up in droves to ask her help. The usual ones she assists are those who have been murdered and who want her to run down the killer. This time, it's a bit different. The ghost of Jefferson Lamar wants her to find the person who killed a young girl a generation ago and framed him for the murder. He admits to having many possible enemies who would have been only too happy to see him convicted of the crime, since his earthly job had been that of warden at the nearby state prison. Figuring that ghosts don't lie, Pepper takes up the challenge. But she has a full-time job to handle in the meantime. Appropriately, she's working on a restoration project in a dilapidated and vandalized Ohio cemetery, and has been given a crew of felons to assist in the work. There's also a challenge in the offing. A group of society matrons are doing improvement work in a separate part of the same cemetery, and the entire project has become a TV show - "Cemetery Survivors". It's a race to see which of the two teams will be the winner in this several-part PBS series. DEAD MAN TALKING has flashes of humor along with the ghostly intrusions, bickering among the cemetery workers, and the rocky relationship between Pepper and her police detective lover. Daniels takes full advantage of the woo-woo genre's "anything goes" nature. Ghosts can be as untrustworthy as their earthly counterparts and, in a world where anything can happen, frequent coincidences really need no explanation. Fans of ghost stories will be entranced by these pages.

                                                                                       -John A. Broussard

FINAL APPROACH         
RACHEL BRADY         
Poisoned Pen Press October, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59058-655-6

IN THE GUISE OF MERCY         
WENDY HORNSBY         
Perseverance Press Trade PBO 9/09
ISBN: 978-1-56474-482-1

Young  Jesús Ramón -- slum dweller, drug user, police snitch -- vanishes from his usual Los Angeles haunts. Had he not last been seen getting out of Detective Mike Flint's police car, little note would have been made of this. Suspected of having something to do with  Ramón disappearance, Flint is investigated, and though he's exonerated, the experience plagues him up to the time of his death some ten years later. His widow, Maggie MacGowen, finds her husband's extensive notes on the case and feels obliged, in order to clear his name, to find out just what happened to the missing boy. Since Mike was widely known and well liked by both city and county police officers, she is offered and given lots of help from those quarters. Being a TV documentary producer, she decides to do a life of Mike Flint, centering on his dogged determination to solve the mystery of the missing Ramón . Her connection to the police and to television opens doors for her as she interviews junkies, convicts, the homeless and many others who might have some information about the event at the core of the story. IN THE GUISE OF MERCY is a tense police procedural; one which isn't easy to put aside. There is a satisfying ring of authenticity to Hornsby's description of how law enforcement works, especially in the form it takes in L.A.'s slums. The author also gives the reader an intriguing insight into the making of a TV documentary. A rapid pace, believable characters and a rather different kind of ending add up to a fascinating novel. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

                                                                                        - John A. Broussard

THE YARD DOG         
SHELDON RUSSELL         
Minotaur Books  September, 2009

The waning years of World War II herald a resounding defeat for Germany, but there are still problems back in the U.S. which are in great need of attention. A major one is the tens of thousands of German war prisoners in various camps scattered across the country. Oklahoma's Alva facility houses some of the most confirmed Nazis, and railroad detective Hook Runyon thinks they may somehow be involved in the death of a local homeless man who frequented the railroad yards. Over the objections of his boss, who just wants to close the case, Runyon continues his investigation. This leads to the nearby POW camp, which houses men who were on work detail at the yard when the death occurred. He soon realizes, however, that someone very much wants to put a stop to his efforts. In the course of his sleuthing he picks up some unusual allies. One is the local moonshiner, currently working as an assistant cook at the camp. The other is a PhD who is conducting a re-education program for the inmates. It becomes evident that the railroad is a key element in the case, since something illicit is coming into the camp under the guise of ordinary supplies. THE YARD DOG depicts the world of black marketing, war fever and the persisting remnants of the Great Depression that afflict the American Midwest in the mid-Forties. Russell is at his best with rapid-fire dialog and the portrayal of interesting characters.

                                                                                       - John A. Broussard

THE SILENT SPIRIT         
MARGARET COEL         
Berkley Prime Crime  September, 2009

RED TO BLACK         
ALEX DRYDEN         
Ecco/HarperCollins September, 2009

The tattered ideology of Communism has now been replaced by a new idolatry: greed. But the KGB lingers on in Russia under a new name. The organization's aims may be different, but its methods remain pretty much the same. In the midst of this updated version of the Cold War, two politically minor figures play major roles. Anne, a Russian army colonel, is actually a spy; British trade representative Finn is too. Their orders? To learn as much about each other as possible, report the information back to their respective superiors, and do all they can to make their opposite number defect. The results of their efforts are inevitable. They fall in love. Anne cannot make up her mind; should she leave her country, career and her past life behind to live with her lover? Finn, on the other hand, does make up his mind. There's something going on in Europe -- an enormous flow of Russian money to hidden accounts -- and he's determined to find out what's going on. He persists even after his superiors tell him to stand down, and they drop him from the agency when he fails to do so. From there, RED TO BLACK becomes a story of international intrigue, and knowing who to trust and who not to trust becomes the game for all sides. Dryden is less concerned with harrowing pursuit, capture and escape than with exploring international financial transactions in mind-numbing detail. This, mingled as it is with the unorthodox romance between two spies living on the edge of their own destruction, makes for a very different kind of espionage novel.

                                                                                       - John A. Broussard

HIGH CRIMES ON THE MAGICAL PLANE          
KRIS NERI         
Red Coyote Press Trade PBO 10/09
ISBN: 978-0-9766733-5-5

For a fraudulent psychic to make a comfortable living, there's no place like Los Angeles. But Samantha Brennan wants more than that... at least enough income to move to Sedona, Arizona, the Cloud-Cuckoo Land for others like herself. Then, suddenly, opportunity smiles upon her. On her way to see one of her clients, she is almost run over by four characters dressed as clowns speeding away from the apartment building where world-famous star Molly Claire is staying. Suspecting that they may have posed a threat to Claire, Samantha manages to get into the star's apartment, only to find the actress missing and a dead man in the closet. Slipping carefully out of the building, she goes immediately to FBI headquarters, where she claims her paranormal powers have revealed that Molly Claire has been abducted. Surprisingly, Agent Annabelle Haggerty believes her. Even more astonishingly, Haggerty turns out to be a genuine psychic. From then on, the sky's the limit. The pages of HIGH CRIMES ON THE MAGICAL PLANE become replete with fairies, gnomes, brownies, banshees, leprechauns and other denizens of various magical planes. Gods and goddesses abound, especially the Celtic variety, as well as covens of witches. No holds are barred. Shape shifting, teletransportation, telekinesis, levitation, drifting through walls, clairvoyance, palmistry, invisibility, auras, mind reading, the ability to speak to and understand wild dolphins - if it's paranormal, it's here. This novel reads like a demented spoof of the woo-woo genre, and Kris's plot hurtles on to a satisfactory conclusion as the two protagonists, along with the FBI, the LAPD, a host of other psychics who've been lurking in the background, and a few stray creatures from the nether world pool their resources to solve the mystery of the missing movie star, as well as some related impending attacks on the city.

                                                                                       - John A. Broussard

DIVINE JUSTICE        
DAVID BALDACCI         
Vision pb 9/09

Oliver Stone (aka John Carr, John Michaels, Ben Thomas and Anthony Butcher) is one of many hired killers working for the CIA. He decides to go into voluntary retirement, though that's not an option for someone who knows what he does about the Agency's policies. Before fleeing from the nation's capital, however, he applies his talents to two top officials who had ordered the killing of one of his friends. Then, barely making it to rural Virginia, he finds himself in the town of Divine, which has problems of its own. Unexplained deaths, thinly disguised as accidents or suicides, have recently occurred, and more are underway. Stone is soon unwittingly drawn into the local troubles, while his former employer now has a trained stalker on his trail. Meanwhile, some of his friends are trying to find him before the Feds do, as are several of the town's residents who aren't too happy about his probing into town affairs. Baldacci packs these pages with everything the most confirmed suspense enthusiast could ask for: explosions, torture, shootings, knifings, poisonings - all with plenty of resulting bodies - plus the requisite car chases, cliffhangers, rampant drug trade, an arm of government which specializes in brutality and thrives on secrecy, and a protagonist who is astonishingly susceptible to ambushes, yet somehow manages to survive incredible and more or less regular beatings. DIVINE JUSTICE will have fans of action thrillers overwhelmed, while anyone concerned with the real world will hope that these pages do not reflect it.

                                                                                        - John A. Broussard

THE VIOLET HOUR         
DANIEL JUDSON         
Minotaur Books October, 2009

Beginning with a botched but bloody assassination attempt by a female "hit man", THE VIOLET HOUR wends its way to an ending that leaves the reader wondering if there was a typo in the title, which perhaps should have been "The Violent Hour" .  Young Cal Rakowski's life is progressing along pleasantly enough as a mechanic in a remote upstate New York auto shop, whose lackadaisical boss provides him with living quarters over the garage. The unpleasantness begins when a woman friend seeks refuge from her violence-prone husband. Cal allows her to stay in a back bedroom, hopes for the best, and continues working on cars. When fellow worker Lebell fails to show up when he was supposed to, Cal goes to his house... only to find the place trashed and bloody. A call to 911 brings the police, the FBI and lots of trouble. Lebell is a wanted man, and Cal is the obvious way to find him -- though he in fact has no idea of his whereabouts. The world seems to be falling apart around him, as Cal realizes he has a violent and angry husband looking for his missing wife and getting closer and closer to her hiding place, the police searching for Lebell and using Cal as bait, an FBI agent who may well have ulterior motives looking for the same man, a skilled assassin and professional torturer who may also be convinced that Cal knows where Lebell is hiding, and an auto-shop owner who is acting more and more strangely. Judson manages to stitch together the gore of the story into a suspense-filled thriller that should satisfy the most jaded readers of the genre.

                                                                                       - John A. Broussard

DEATH MESSAGE         
MARK BILLINGHAM         
Harper  October, 2009

Convicted of a murder he'd been framed for, and about to be released after a long prison term, Marcus Brooks is informed that his girl friend and their young son have been murdered. He vows revenge. Detective Inspector Tom Thorne is the first to hear about it, when the image of a dead man appears on his cell-phone screen. More photos follow, as Brooks works his way through the drug gang he holds responsible for the destruction of his family. Then he moves on to the ones who had set him up for the murder. As point man in the investigation, Thorne becomes frantic and pushes to the edge of the law while the bodies of Brooks's victims pile up, and as the detective attempts to find out if bent cops had in fact been behind the original crime. Meanwhile, the pressures of his job raise havoc with his love life. DEATH MESSAGE is a police procedural brought into the cyber age. Rapidly developing electronic technology more and more facilitates criminal activities, but it also provides the police with investigative tools that were only dreamt of a couple of generations ago. Billingham has come up with a novel heavily laden with acronyms and London police argot, which will be a challenge to the American reader, but which also gives this fast-moving story a special aura of authenticity. The dialog is sharp. The characters are real. The plot is fascinating. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

                                                                                       - John A. Broussard

SERPENT IN THE THORNS         
JERI WESTERSON         
Minotaur Books  October, 2009

This is no ordinary homicide. The victim is a French courier transfixed by an arrow and left to die in the garret bedroom of two women scullions in an obscure London tavern. The feeble-minded member of the pair turns to Crispin Guest for help, all the while insisting that she in fact did the killing. Crispin, a knight disgraced because of a plot against King Richard, is known locally as a tracker: something of an amateur sleuth. He shows up at the site of the killing to find not only a dead Frenchman but also the reason for the man's visit to England - the crown of Christ, sent by the French King to Richard II so he can remove the thorn of his choice and then return the relic to France. Crispin hopes to discover the true killer and to use the crown to recover his knighthood, but encounters nothing but trouble. He also uncovers a plot to kill the king and, unfortunately, becomes the major suspect. SERPENT IN THE THORNS is a 14th Century thriller, with a hero who seems destined to be tortured, repeatedly wounded, betrayed by his "friends" and just generally bruised and beaten as he seeks to regain his knighthood, lands and former status. Westerson has caught the spirit of the age with plots and counterplots, as well as the sights, sounds and smells of that age's seamier London neighborhoods.

                                                                                       - John A. Broussard

DEAD MAN'S SHARE         
YASMINA KHADRA         
The Toby Press Trade PBO 10/09
ISBN: 978-1-59264-269-4

When a serial killer is released from an asylum per order of several important government figures, something is seriously wrong, even by the most corrupt of Algerian standards. Superintendent Brahim Llob, an honest policeman swimming in a sea of sharks, is aghast. He predicts the worst... and it happens. When the killer goes back to his vocation and is in turn killed by the police, the story should have ended there, but it doesn't. The gun recovered at the crime scene belonged to one of Brahim's lieutenant's, whose fingerprints are on it. From there -- despite warnings to desist -- the superintendent embarks on a mission to clear his fellow officer's name. In so doing, he stumbles across a plot which goes back over forty years to Algeria's successful struggle for independence. DEAD MAN'S SHARE is a political novel directed more at uncovering the rampant corruption, lawlessness, and despair left behind by that country's colonial occupiers than with the killing Brahim seeks to understand and resolve. The author has woven a plot so complex, so tangled with the destiny of a nation still ravaged by former masters and exploited by their successors, that there is little hope for the reader to unravel its many threads. Khadra ends the novel on a note which leaves behind an insightful but terrifying portrait of what a Muslim country suffers as a result of foreign occupation... long after the occupiers have departed.

                                                                                       - John A. Broussard

LOOT THE MOON         
MARK ARSENAULT         
Minotaur Books  October, 2009

The hitchhikers seem innocent enough, but it's only when his car is hijacked that Stu realizes the pair are an armed gunman and a hostage - one being forced to drive while the other sits in back holding a gun to Stu's head. What follows is a fatal car crash -- one occupant dead, one seriously injured, and the third with minor cuts and bruises. According to the police, a burglar had broken into the home of Judge Gilbert Harmony, and the burglary had gone awry, leaving the judge dead of a bullet wound, the college-age son kidnapped, and Stu the unwitting and unwilling provider of a getaway car for the thief... who died in the crash. But the judge's friend and attorney, Martin Smothers, is convinced the scenario is wrong. The burglar had never before committed armed robbery. Nothing had been stolen, not even obviously expensive diamond earrings lying out in the open. Smothers enlists the aid of former investigative reporter Billy Povich to probe into the case. It very soon emerges that a local gang boss had threatened Harmony's life, and doesn't hesitate to exercise violent physical force to prevent any further investigation. LOOT THE MOON is replete with mysteries beyond that of the homicide. The judge had a secret life. The burglar had already broken into one of the judge's homes and had taken nothing on that occasion, either. And the judge's will contains strange bequests. The plot has problems, but Arsenault is a master at maintaining suspense, at portraying sympathetic human relationships, and at providing an ending which should come as a complete surprise.

                                                                                       - John A. Broussard

MANY AND MANY A YEAR AGO         
SELÇUK ALTUN         
Telegram Trade PBO 9/09

THE GIGOLO MURDER        
MEHMET MURAT SUMER         
Penguin Books Trade PBO 9/09

Rejection by someone who has been close to you can be a supreme tragedy. For our unnamed narrator, the abrupt departure of his lover leads to weeks of depression. Not even his club, consisting mainly of transvestites eagerly awaiting customers, can pry him out of his apartment. Only his friend Pompon is finally able to lure him back to the night life of Istanbul, and the clincher is the fascinating murder of a noted gigolo (referring, in this book, to a homosexual prostitute). The protagonist can't resist prying into the case, using his computer skills to delve into the dead man's background... and comes across the names of prominent citizens, and implied blackmail. Given its setting and the nature of most of its characters, many of whose genders are never really clear, THE GIGOLO MURDER is understandably replete with bed-hopping, and the dispensing with that bit of furniture when it happens to be unavailable. The narrator is himself a cross dresser and promiscuous homosexual who manages, with the help of his Thai boxing skills, to survive a variety of dangerous encounters. Sumer does offer something different here, and the translation seems to reflect what was undoubtedly vibrant writing in its original Turkish, along with some of its wry humor. Readers unfamiliar with Turkish will frequently have to consult the long list of characters and the accompanying glossary at the beginning of the novel. The effort will be worth it, as this intriguing novel wends its way to a complicated though very traditional ending.

                                                                                       - John A. Broussard

THE ROOK         
STEVEN JAMES         
Onyx PBO 12/09

A torture chamber, fully equipped for producing snuff films. A psychopathic serial killer, incapable of feeling pain - and feeling bad about it. A terror weapon the Department of Defense has contracted for. A series of random fires in abandoned structures. A rogue ex-navy SEAL who is a specialist in committing arson. This is where FBI agent Patrick Bowers, who has a photographic memory, is called in to help solve the fire mysteries. He very soon discovers a common thread running though all of the above - including a master criminal who calls himself Shade, who is pulling that thread and who delights in taunting the authorities. The action takes place in San Diego, where a research company is working on the military weapon, but all is not going well with the project. Pressure from the DOD is throwing plans off schedule, and the CEO's anxiety level is rapidly rising. THE ROOK is a thriller in an ultra-modern setting, with marked psychological overtones, as each of the major characters is driven by recurrent memories of events in their pasts. James specializes in hairsbreadth escapes, complex sub-plots and extraordinary characterizations. Add to that a truly amazing flair for producing surprises. The book ends with an unabashed set-up for a sequel starring many of the same actors.

                                                                                             - John A. Broussard

THE MURDERED HOUSE          
PIERRE MAGNAN         
Minotaur Books  November, 2009

The time is 1896. The place is a village hidden away in the foothills of the Provence Alps. The scene is a massacre. The dead: a grandfather, father, nursing mother and two young children. The sole survivor: three-week old Seraphim Monge. The perpetrators: three Herzegovinians who can't even speak French. Justice quickly follows, and the criminals are guillotined. The baby is sent off to an orphanage, where he grows into a handsome young man just in time for the horror of World War One. Surprisingly, he survives the bloody conflict relatively unscathed. But when he returns home he hears for the first time how his family had been wiped out, and this has a far more profound effect upon him than his years in the trenches. In a rage and to wipe out image of the tragedy, he destroys the old home, a piece at a time, discovering in the process promissory notes for large sums of money owed to his father by three prominent and respected businessmen in the community. That, and his growing certainty that the Herzegovinians were actually innocent of the crime, sets him off on a mission to kill the three men. But someone is beating him to it. THE MURDERED HOUSE is an eerie tale of a village's secrets that begin to surface as a result of this young man's quest for revenge. Magnan delights in adding elaborate twists to the plot, and this strange story arrives at an even stranger conclusion. The translation is well done, the action is swift and usually unforeseen, and the protagonist emerges as a fitting figure in this story that borders on the surreal.

                                                                                            - John A. Broussard

TRAGEDY AT TWO         
ANN PURSER         
Berkley Prime Crime December, 2009

Long Farnden is a quiet English village which is yearly enlivened by a gypsy caravan that settles into a nearby field for a few days. The owner of the patch, Alf Smith, allows them to stay there despite his wife Edwina's disapproval. When local resident Rob Wilkins is found beaten to death on a nearby road, feelings against the gypsies run high. Inevitably, Lois Meade becomes involved, partly because she has helped the local police in solving other crimes, but mainly because Rob had been her daughter Josie's live-in boyfriend. As it turns out, there are many other undercurrents in Farnden. Illegal drugs circulate among some of the younger set. A member of the town council, Sam Stratford, is carrying on an affair with Edwina Smith. Teenager Mark Brown is suspected of setting fires at the Gypsy camp, an act which forces the group to move on much earlier than planned. With the approval of Hunter Cowgill, head of the local police, Lois forges ahead in her attempt to find out who the killer is and what, if anything, some of the other local happenings have to do with the homicide. TRAGEDY AT TWO is a typical cozy set in the homeland of the genre, with the slight difference that this story's characters are working class. Purser captures the small village atmosphere and provides some hours of pleasant reading, especially for anyone who is an Agatha Christie enthusiast.

                                                                                          - John A. Broussard

STUFF TO SPY FOR         
DON BRUNS         
Oceanview Publishing  November, 2009

THE MIRROR AND THE MASK         
ELLEN HART         
Minotaur Books November, 2009

Expect the unexpected, because the unexpected is exactly what you'll repeatedly encounter in THE MIRROR AND THE MASK. The beginning is prosaic enough. Annie Archer, now in her thirties, sets off to find stepfather John Archer, who had left the eighteen-year-old Annie behind when her mother died. Why he left is obscure. Why she wants to find him is even more of a mystery. Searching for him in Minneapolis, where she heard he'd been spotted, Annie takes a job with restaurateur Jane Lawless while she continues her search. With Jane's help, she finds that John Archer has become Jack Bowman, a respected and successful businessman, now married, with two other stepchildren. But all is not going well in that family, as Jack's wife Susan, infatuated with another man, decides to pursue "divorce by murder". Before she can carry out her plan, however, she herself is killed, and suspects abound. Not surprisingly, Jack is number one on the list, but Susan's unstable son and teen-age daughter are also being investigated, as are her lover and his wife. Hart's writing sparkles, and her characterizations of these troubled people are flawless. Memorable figures emerge from the pages, especially Annie, her father, and Jane Lawless, who plays a prominent role in unraveling the various mysteries -- the identity of Susan's killer being but one of many questions to be answered. The plot is believable, the people are real, the setting is convincing... and frightening. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

                                                                                               - John A. Broussard

ALL THE WRONG MOVES         
MERLINE LOVELACE         
Berkley Prime Crime PBO 11/09

It used to be that an old man walking an equally old dog would find the body. Not so in this very up-to-date murder mystery. Here, an Ergonomic Exoskeletal Extension stumbles across not one, but two corpses. Lieutenant Samantha Spade happens to be wearing this 21st Century enhancement of her senses, strength and speed on a test run in a desolate part of the Southwest. When the Border Patrol, FBI and sundry other government agencies show up at the scene, it becomes evident that the murdered men are not illegal immigrants. Both are known criminals; one of them an internationally famous gunrunner. From there on it becomes a jockeying among the various forces to find the killer, with Samantha repeatedly warned not to become involved - warnings she repeatedly ignores as she goes right on with her own private investigating. ALL THE WRONG MOVES brings international intrigue to Texas, with the Fort Bliss Army Base as a setting, and a vast array of acronyms to lend an appropriate ambience to the story. Lovelace sprinkles this fast-paced suspense novel with a budding romance -- Samantha and the Border Patrol agent in charge of the investigation -- and a glimpse into the world of developing weapons in this age where technology reigns supreme.

                                                                                          - John A. Broussard

MERRY, MERRY GHOST         
CAROLYN HART         
William Morrow & Company  November, 2009

Marley is not the only ghost to show up at Christmas time. But Bailey Ruth Raeburn's rendezvous with the living takes place in Adelaide, Oklahoma rather than London. Her "adven-mission," as the Heavenly bureaucracy refers to her assignment, is to provide protection for four-and-a-half-year-old Keith Pritchard, who has been abandoned on the doorstep of Susan Pritchard's luxurious mansion with a note attached to him saying he's her grandson. Estranged from his mother, Mitch Pritchard, who had died some years before, had married and fathered a child that Susan had never learned of. Seriously ill with a failing heart, she is surrounded by in-laws, many of them counting the days till they will reap the benefits from her death. But Keith, now her only living blood relative, has become a threat to the erstwhile heirs, as Susan is about to revise her will. So Bailey Ruth, using her ghostly wiles, watches closely over her young charge, only to find that someone has struck a different target. Before she can change her will, Susan is murdered! Despite that grim development, MERRY, MERRY GHOST is a light-hearted woo-woo, with a protagonist who can appear or vanish at will, but who is expected to follow certain heavenly ordained principles which would hamper her sleuthing... if she were not as prone to ignore them as to follow them. Hart has managed to do something here that most supernaturally-oriented mysteries fail to accomplish. In her novel, that orientation is a core element, and not merely  décor added for fans of the genre. The result is an entertaining cozy with a crucial other-worldly twist.

                                                                                             - John A. Broussard

MY OWN WORST ENEMY         
BRANDON HEBERT         
Five Star  December, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-50414-827-9

A year-and-a-day in prison gives a convict a lot of time to reflect, and Jack Murray has thought it all out. Much as he'd like to receive his share of the loot that his more fortunate fellow burglar, Rudy Maxa, managed to get away with, it just makes more sense for him to clean up his act and go straight. The boss of his former gang, who regards him as a son, gives him his blessing, along with a legitimate job as manager of one of his night clubs. In this new position, Murray gets off to both a good and a bad start. The good one is beautiful dancer Miranda Mendoza, who takes a shine to him. The bad one is local gunrunner Tiras Williams, who has stumbled across Rudy Maxa and a six-figure cache that the former burglar had managed to win during a lucky gambling spree. Murray's world spirals into wild complexity when he learns that his new girlfriend is really an FBI agent, and when Williams forces him into negotiating the trade-off of a large stock of guns to terrorists. MY OWN WORST ENEMY is far more complex than that, involving various other criminal activities that keep the local FBI agents constantly on the run. Hebert provides the reader with plenty of suspense and manages to pull these various strings together into a coherent pattern, as his protagonist comes to terms with his own past and the very different career of the woman he has become involved with.

                                                                                             - John A. Broussard

EARTHWAY        
AIMÉE & DAVID THURLO          
Forge Books  November, 2009

When a bomb packed with nails is discovered in a crowded school auditorium, only heroic measures can prevent disaster, and Special Investigator Ella Clah of the Navajo Police turns out to be the hero. Even so, a fellow officer suffers serious injury, and Clah swears she's going to find the perpetrator. Why was the bomb planted in the first place? It seems to have been directed toward the scheduled speaker, Reverend Ford Tome. Or was it an act of terrorism, aimed at stopping the completion of a nuclear power plant on the Reservation? Suspects range from activists who oppose the facility, to figures from Tome's shadowy past in the FBI, and the local police are fully occupied in running all of them down in this sparsely populated corner of the Southwest. EARTHWAY is an unusual crime novel, partly because of its setting in Navajo country, but more because of what's missing. Violent scenes are few and far between and, until the last few pages, there are no bodies. Nor is there any sex - gratuitous or otherwise - since Tome and Clah, though strongly attracted to each other, maintain a chaste relationship. Even obscene language, virtually a mandatory component of most police lingo, never makes an appearance in these pages. There's a lot of shooting, as might be expected in a part of the country where bearing arms is routine, but the shooters seem singularly incapable of hitting their targets. All in all, the Thurlos have come up with an interesting variety of police procedural that will take the reader on a suspenseful ramble over the arid New Mexico landscape, with nary a car chase to be found.

                                                                                             - John A. Broussard

MR. MONK IN TROUBLE         
LEE GOLDBERG         
Obsidian  December, 2009

He's Holmes brought up to date, with quirks that read like excerpts from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, an admiring amanuensis all his own and a truly amazing propensity for becoming involved in murder investigations. In this novel, Adrian Monk is at his mystery-solving best when he and his sidekick, Natalie Teeger, go off to the town of Trouble to find out who killed museum security guard and ex-San Francisco police officer Manny Feikema. Not content to merely finger the current murderer, Monk probes into the unsolved mystery of a local train robbery and the past sleuthing of an 19th century gold assayer who shared many of Monk's idiosyncrasies, including the family name. In the best Conan Doyle tradition, our hero inevitably jumps to correct conclusions based upon the flimsiest of evidence, astonishes his contemporaries with his brilliant deductions and runs down a passel of criminals in this town left over from gold-rush days. MR. MONK IN TROUBLE will delight his fans with a setting for yet another episode in the TV series. Goldberg excels in his manipulation of the absurd, with the obsessive-compulsive Monk taking time out from his talents for pursuing criminals to indulge in his favorite addiction -- wiping tire skid marks from the pavement.

                                                                                             - John A. Broussard

THE FLEET STREET MURDERS         
CHARLES FINCH         
Minotaur Books  November, 2009

THE GOOD SON         
RUSSEL D. McLEAN         
Minotaur Books  December, 2009

The nature of private investigation is such that its practitioners can expect to get strange requests. At first sight this one doesn't seem that far out. James Robertson is willing to pay J. McNee to find out more about his younger brother Daniel, who recently committed suicide shortly after returning home to Dundee, Scotland, after a long absence. About the only information McNee has to go on is that Daniel had been working at a club in London. A bit of sleuthing flushes out a woman who calls herself only "Kat" and who claims to have been Daniel's lover. All she wants is to talk to his brother. The meeting takes place, and shortly afterwards McNee's client insists that he now knows all he needs to know. The story would end there, except that the next day Kat is found brutally murdered. Now McNee can't let go, and his further investigating uncovers far more than he'd bargained for, including a large sum of money that Daniel had stolen from his gangster boss. THE GOOD SON is a melding of McNee's own background, which includes constant wrestling with guilt over the car accident in which his wife died, and the strange love/hate relationship between the brothers James and Daniel. Mclean vividly describes his protagonist's extraordinary difficulties in maintaining meaningful relationships following his wife's death -- an incident which profoundly affects his behavior as he encounters threats to his own life.

                                                                                           - John A. Broussard

LUCK OF THE DRAW         
ANTHONY J. CARDIERI         
Minotaur Books  December, 2009

This is a very different kind of serial killer. He kills every day. He specializes in home invasions. He murders everyone in the house, including men, women and children - even babies in their cradles - with bullets to their faces. He leaves the same message - "Better luck next time" - on one of the corpses at each crime scene, and that's virtually the only clue he does leave. There are no witnesses, up until nearly the last of the series, and all the signs point to a professional who is reveling in his homicidal lunacy as the number of corpses goes well up into the double digits. NYPD Detective Deke Durgess is point man in the investigation and is partnered up in the pursuit with FBI Agent Kurt Joseph. LUCK OF THE DRAW is a police procedural with special emphasis on the weeding out of suspects, with all the tedious and repetitive interviews that this involves. Cardieri leaves little to the reader's imagination as he describes several of the mass killings and their impact on the two investigating officers. This is a novel which will have a special appeal to fans of this genre who don't mind a good deal of blood and guts.

                                                                                            - John A. Broussard

THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER         
AIFRIC CAMPBELL         
Serpent's Tale PBO 11/09
ISBN: 978-1-84668-7334

Even if a psychoanalyst becomes highly skeptical of the value of his profession, he may yet be convinced that talk therapy has some value. Jay Hamilton classifies himself among the skeptics, but continues his trade as an American transplanted to London. He now leads a double life, however, using his patients as sources of information and inspiration for fictional accounts of tragic lives, written under the pseudonym of J. Merritt. His latest and most promising case for his purposes is a woman who desperately wants a baby, and who is fascinated with a friend's young child -- to the point of becoming deeply depressed. Having tapped her for as much story material as he needs, he forces her to confront the thought that she wants the friend's baby for herself. The result is that she never returns for her next session, but instead disappears with the child. Meanwhile, Hamilton is confronting some of his own past, including the fact that his much older brother Robert had been his mother's avowed favorite. Robert had been a very successful mathematician and musician who in the seventies, in the hostile atmosphere of Los Angeles, had adopted a promiscuous gay lifestyle - which leads to his death. THE SEMANTICS OF MURDER is a psychological mystery with in-depth exploration of an analyst's psyche, mainly through introspection and flashbacks to his early childhood, focusing on the peculiar triangle relationship of Jay, his mother and his brother. Aifric is a master of metaphor, an expert at the extended simile. Her language is ideally suited to the character of a jaded cynic who is greatly bothered by the elements that have shaped his personality. Her depictions of the analytic sessions her protagonist conducts are painfully revealing; the jumble of emotions he expresses about himself and his relationship to others are even more so. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

                                                                                             - John A. Broussard

DEVILS ISLAND         
CARL BROOKINS        
Echelon Press Trade PBO 12/09
ISBN: 978-1-59080-643-2

It's business first. Much as Michael Tanner loves his wife, Mary Whitney, a meeting with an important potential client for his public relations firm is going to delay their vacation. So she insists on going on ahead of him. A Lake Superior boat charter is waiting for them, but Michael knows that, as an experienced yacht owner in her own right, she can manage well enough alone. The problem is that she has a jealous ex-husband who Michael and Mary both suspect tried to kill her earlier. Having barely arrived at dockside, a new problem arises to mar Mary's holiday. The lake is being plagued by smugglers, and the Coast Guard asks her to call in any suspicious activity she may spot while cruising around. She enters a cell phone dead zone, however, and Michael becomes increasingly worried, while still trying to meet his business obligations. DEVILS ISLAND is a mystery which should be dedicated to sailing enthusiasts, detailed as it is about all things relating to the sport. If the first half of the book is slow paced, the action picks up - to say the least - as Mary runs into a confrontation that will call upon all of her nautical skills and survival instincts if she is to come out of it alive.

                                                                                          - John A. Broussard