REVIEWS FROM SANDRA SEPPALA     

After a childhood of Nancy Drew, Sandy's adult passion for the mystery genre began in 1991. She was visiting a friend in Sri Lanka who gave her "A Is for Alibi" by Sue Grafton. She was hooked. A class at the Smithsonian called, "Sleuthing Spinsters and Dangerous Dames" only deepened her knowledge and love of mysteries. A graduate of Wayne State University and an English teacher in Kenya with the Peace Corps, Sandy spent 30 years as a technical writer and editor in the computer industry. In retirement, Sandy enjoys her circa 1880's home and gardens, living a block from the beach on Grand Traverse Bay, being active with several organizations, kayaking, hiking, knitting and reading. She spends many summer afternoons at the beach with her chair in the water and a mystery in hand. Contact her at her
 

BREAKDOWN         
A V. I. Warshawski Novel
SARA PARETSKY         
G. P. Putnam's Sons   January, 2012

Sara Paretsky's latest Private Investigator V. I. Warshawski crime novel, BREAKDOWN, starts in a cemetery with adolescent girls dancing under the moon and a body on a catafalque and ends with the funeral of a friend. In between, V. I. - Victoria Iphigenia, known to her friends as Vic - dashes around Chicago from mental hospitals, to television studios, to law offices, to suburbs to track down the killer and find out why.

Her search explores timely topics, including immigration, right-wing talk shows, Chicago politics, secret family histories, vampires, mental illnesses and institutions, and just plain murder.

Malina Foundation, with her friend Lottie on its board of directors, provides services for immigrants. It had started the Carmilla Book Club for adolescent girls, which is named after a popular vampire series called Carmilla, Queen of the Night. A group of the girls, including the granddaughter of a well-known refugee from Eastern Europe after WWII, sneak out one night to the Mount Moriah Cemetery. They want to become shape-shifters in a ceremony like in the book series. Unbeknownst to them, a murder has taken place and the girls find the victim's body, which is carefully arranged on a catafalque and stabbed through the heart, vampire-style. Is this a coincidence? Or was it planned? And why? Vic shepherds the girls away but the murder that night casts a wide net over many innocent - and not so innocent - lives in the coming days.

The Global Entertainment Networks (GEN) sponsors right-wing show host Wade Lawler, who spits vitriolic diatribes against the usual topics and people, but particularly against immigrants and the Malina Foundation. He particularly attacks Chaim Salanter, a Jewish refugee, and his liberal wife, who is running for Senate. The fact that their granddaughter was one of the girls in the cemetery doesn't escape his notice. But is there a connection?

Leydon Ashford is a college friend of Vic's, who is brilliant but afflicted with bipolar disorder. She appeals to Vic for help as she flies into a manic high, scribbling about the man on the catafalque and quoting "In death they were not divided" before she is mysteriously pushed over a gallery in the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Chapel and slips into a coma. Vic tracks her movements to a mental institution and some questionable activities. Was she pushed because of something or someone she found? How did that link to the murder in the cemetery?

As Vic investigates, one of the girls is kidnapped, another man is murdered, several thousand dollars changes hands that results in a new car and hollowed-out books, and the dead man is traced to someone in the Crawford, Mead law firm of her ex-husband Dick Yarborough. Is there a link that pieces together the puzzle?

Paretsky explores the breakdown of men, women, children, and families stretching from childhood to adulthood, the Ukraine in WWII to Chicago, and between siblings (but which ones?) that is caused by jealousy, hatred, and secrets.

BREAKDOWN marks the 30th anniversary of V. I. Warshawski's first appearance in the 1982 book, INDEMNITY ONLY. Its complicated plot with a backdrop of Chicago, familiar faces and new characters, topics that are timely and affect us all, and V.I. Warshawski on the trail of a killer, makes this book an exciting and rewarding mystery.

DEATH, ISLAND STYLE         
MAGGIE TOUSSAINT        
Five Star   February 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4328-2566-9

MaryBeth Cashour, heroine of Maggie Toussaint's new book, DEATH, ISLAND STYLE, was making a new life for herself in Georgia after her husband was killed in a mysterious auto accident. Her mother had also died keeping too many secrets from MaryBeth, including the terminal cancer that caused her death and the fact that MaryBeth was adopted.

Sandy Shores Island seemed like a nice place when MaryBeth stopped there on her drive south from Maryland in search of a new life. When she discovered a gift shop - Christmas by the Sea - for sale, she made the plunge and purchased it. She moved into her new home and became busy with the shop. MaryBeth settled down to heal and find renewal.

She made friends with Daisy Pearl and Peachy, the couple who owned Sweet Things, the bakery and ice cream shop next door to her shop, and who had raised twenty-three children. She had her hair cut by Gabby, the local barber. She found herself attracted to Russ, the pharmacist at Island Pharmacy. She gave craft classes to children. She walked the beach looking for seashells to transform into items to sell to tourists.

Her beach walk and shell search were interrupted one day when she spotted a body floating in the ocean. Little did she know that the dead man had been murdered and that she had a connection to him. It didn't take long for the police, Detectives Schorr and Monroe, to make the connection though. And that put MaryBeth high on their list of suspects. How was she going to prove them wrong?

MaryBeth's life gets turned upside down when she discovers FBI and mob connections, stolen property worth millions, and eye-popping revelations about her dead husband. With Inspectors Schorr and Monroe breathing down her neck, harassing phone calls at all hours, a home invasion that knocks her out, MaryBeth knew she had to get to the bottom of this soon.

Toussaint has created a cast of characters on this small Georgia coastal island that you'll want to visit and get to know. Readers are drawn into MaryBeth's search for a new life for herself while becoming part of the colorful community. They'll share her doubts and growing self-confidence as she learns how to run a business, welcomes a possible rival back to town, and makes lasting friends in the community.

But, most of all, mystery fans will be drawn into MaryBeth's search to solve the mystery of the floating dead man and how his death solves more than one mystery in MaryBeth's life.

POSTED APRIL 29, 2012

ELEGY FOR EDDIE           
A Maisie Dobbs Novel
JACQUELINE WINSPEAR         
HarperCollins Publishers   March, 2012

It's 1933 and in England there's an undercurrent of disquiet. World War I took its toll and took too many men, and now Herr Hitler has become Chancellor in Germany with a program that could bring more unrest and, perhaps, war.

Maisie Dobbs, herself plagued with memories of her service on the warfront, has too much on her mind with her business, family, and friends, to pay much attention to distant rumblings from the continent. But can she remain so aloof when the tentacles of them seem to encircle the periphery of her latest investigation?

A group of costermongers - men she's known since childhood - from Bookhams factory travel to meet with Maisie in London and ask her to investigate the seemingly death-by-accident of Eddie Petit at the factory. Eddie was especially beloved by the villagers, even though he was considered "slow", for his gentleness, his ability to memorize, and special understanding and love of horses. He was in high demand by people near and far, upper crust and lower, when their horses took sick. He also had an antagonist, Jimmy Merton, who had recently turned up in town and was again tormenting Eddie. The costermongers were very suspicious about how Eddie died.

Taking on this case puts Maisie on a circuitous path past a houseful of writers sponsored by her best friend's husband, a hanging man from the bridge over a river, a journalist sniffing around Mr. Otterburn, who is the owner of Bookhams and a close friend of Winston Churchill, widows and bereaving mothers, rape and airplanes - all somehow tangled up with the rise of that man Hitler.

Maisie also has to contend with taking responsibility for thugs giving Billy, her investigator assistant, a beating while he was on a case, which landed him in hospital, and the subsequent resentment of his wife. Plus, her love life with aristocrat James Compton, who has his own wartime demons, is giving her pause as to her future with him.

During the investigation, Maisie has to address moral and ethical issues. How is justice best delivered; an eye for an eye or the laws of the court? Making a profit without regard to working conditions and decent salaries for employees or making a profit and treating employees fairly? Is it right morally and ethically to support and follow a political leader for the common good despite human collateral costs and hidden government programs?

Maisie explores all avenues to find out the true cause of the death of 'gentle giant' Eddie and two other related deaths and, on the journey, makes some unexpected discoveries about the case, her friends and her own life.

When Jacqueline Winspear introduced Maisie Dobbs in her first book by the same name at the Malice Domestic convention in 2003, she won the Agatha Award for Best First novel. Born in Kent, England, she told the audience that she became interested in that 'period between the wars' because her grandfather was wounded and shell-shocked at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Since then, readers also have learned about the after-effects from WWI in England and have gained a new understanding through Maisie Dobbs, for how people can live their lives after having experienced the horrors of war.

Enter Maisie's world as she searches for the truth and struggles with moral and ethical dilemmas in ELEGY FOR EDDIE. You'll learn more than 'who killed Eddie.'

-Sandra Seppala

Other Maisie Dobbs novels (earliest to latest)
Maisie Dobbs
Birds of a Feather
Pardonable Lies
Messenger of Truth
An Incomplete Revenge
Among the Mad
The Mapping of Love and Death
A Lesson in Secrets

THE MURDER OF GONZAGO         
An Antonia Darcy and Major Payne Investigation
R. T. RAICHEV         
Soho Constable   April, 2012

Typical at a gathering of the English, whether at home or abroad, is the offering of a dramatic evening. Usually held in an English country house, this time family and friends are at La Sorciere, home of Roderick, the 12th Earl of Remnant. It is on Grenadine, his privately owned island in the Caribbean. Roderick has a young and beautiful wife and is a rather unpleasant character who enjoys humiliating his friends and family.

The group agree on "The Murder of Gonzago", which is the play-within-a-play in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Roderick plays the king, who is killed by poison put in his ear. The others play their parts as the drama unfolds. They each have their own eccentricities and, most importantly, reasons for making sure the play sticks to the plot and leaves a dead king in the end.

The story begins, "Three minutes passed before they realized he was dead...". With so many people with him who seemingly saw nothing, how could the Earl have died of anything but a heart attack? That's what they assume. That's what two doctors put their signatures to. That's why his body is cremated so quickly.

But wait, what about that ugly goat's head on the patio by the window? Wasn't his drug-addicted stepson outside? And whose giggle did his wife, Clarissa, hear when she and the doctors went to the bedroom to see the body? There also is some rumor about a gunshot. It is all very puzzling, but since everyone agrees that it is good riddance anyway, they all go back to their lives in England.

Gerard Fenwick is now the 13th Earl of Remnant. His wife, Felicity, opens a package addressed to Gerard and finds a videotape of the last scene of that fatal play - and proof that a heart attack definitely was not the cause of death. Step in amateur sleuth Hugh Payne. A friend, Lady Grylls, invites him to pay a visit to Felicity to see a magnificent Damascus chest... on the day the videotape arrives. The game is afoot.

Which person had the best motive for pulling off this murder? Was it his stepson, who probably needs money? Or was it his wife Clarissa, who seems unhappy in the marriage? Or Aunt Hortense, who hides a very deep and compelling secret? And who was this previously unknown and mysterious Peter Quin, who inherits a large sum of money from the Earl? Or is it someone else?

Hugh and his wife, Antonio Darcy, have to sort through the labyrinth of information including a Keppel Clasp scorpion ring, the eccentricities of the suspects, interviews at clubs and the dead Earl himself. He seemed to have an evil, cruel and diabolical character. Did his indiscretions catch up to him or did some well-planned scheme go awry?

R. T. Raichev pays tribute to the English mystery in his fast-paced, clever books. His characters are never dull and the repartee is impeccable and spot on. Readers had better bone up on literary and historical references so as not to miss the innuendoes and inferences that just might point to the solution of the crime.

That's one of the best things about mysteries. They are all tied up with questions answered at the end so you can close the cover well satisfied... and ready to read another one. You'll just have to read THE MURDER OF GONZAGO to find out whodunit... and why.