New Books and My Author's A - Z

We've had a fair bit of rain the past few days but today it's nice and sunny out. The Snowbird Aeronautical team is here for a few weeks. In fact they are currently flying around for their afternoon training session. Darn noisy things.. ;0)

Yangervis Solarte

Happy with the Blue Jays start so far this season. They were never over .500 last season and so far they are 6 wins, 4 losses. Some of the new players have been pleasant surprises; Solarte has a great, positive attitude, has played great defense and even hit well. Garcia looks like he's fitting right in as a starting pitcher. Now if only Grichuk will relax a bit and try to be more patient at the plate, well, who knows how he will do. On to Baltimore for the next series.

New Books

I stopped at Nearly New Books yesterday after going to the grocery store and found a few books, two by new authors for me.

1. The Diamond Hunters by Wilbur Smith.











"The Van Der Byl Diamond Company, willed by its founder to his son Benedict, daughter Tracey and estranged foster-child Johnny Lance, turns out to be a bequest not of love, but of hatred. For it is couched in such terms as to offer Benedict an instrument of destruction of his bitterest rival. 'Destroy Johnny' was the old man's implacable message to his son, and, obsessively jealous of his foster-brother, Benedict sets out in ruthless pursuit of this goal.

In a desperate bid to support Johnny, Tracey acquires for him the concession in the diamond-rich seabed round the coral islands of Thunderbolt and Suicide off the savage South West African coast, and Johnny throws all his resources into the construction of a vessel that will recover the stones from the ocean floor and repair his fortune at last. But Benedict, already involved in illegal diamond-dealing as a sideline, seizes this chance to attack his rival and, with a network of accomplices and some ingenious electronic tampering, plots to siphon off the diamonds. Johnny will not only be ruined by his liabilities, he will also be a laughing stock.

However, Benedict's obsessive jealousy is his undoing. He cannot resist stripping his rival of his beautiful but bitchy wife Ruby as well, and when he then discards her, she takes her revenge, precipitating a climax of murder and destruction that consumes Benedict at last."

b. Skeleton Hill by Peter Lovesey (Peter Diamond #10). 











"Battle & burial are built into the history of Lansdown Hill, so it is no great shock when part of a skeleton is unearthed there. But Peter Diamond, Bath's Head of CID, can't ignore the fresh corpse found close to Beckford's Tower. The hill becomes the setting for one of the most puzzling cases he has ever investigated."

c. Dead in the Water by Dana Stabenow (Kate Shugak #3). 











"Once, Kate Shugak was the star investigator of the Anchorage D.A, 's office. Now she's gone back to her Aleut roots in the far Alaska north- where her talent for detection makes her the toughest crime-tracker in that stark and mysterious land."

d. Mississippi Blood by Greg Iles (Penn Cage #6). 











"Shattered by grief and dreaming of vengeance, Penn Cage sees his family and his world collapsing around him. The woman he loves is gone, his principles have been irrevocably compromised, and his father, once a paragon of the community that Penn leads as mayor, is about to be tried for the murder of a former lover. Most terrifying of all, Dr. Cage seems bent on self-destruction. Despite Penn's experience as a prosecutor in major murder trials, his father has frozen him out of the trial preparations--preferring to risk dying in prison to revealing the truth of the crime to his son.

During forty years practicing medicine, Tom Cage made himself the most respected and beloved physician in Natchez, Mississippi. But this revered Southern figure has secrets known only to himself and a handful of others. Among them, Tom has a second son, the product of an 1960s affair with his devoted African American nurse, Viola Turner. It is Viola who has been murdered, and her bitter son--Penn's half-brother--who sets in motion the murder case against his father. The resulting investigation exhumes dangerous ghosts from Mississippi's violent past. In some way that Penn cannot fathom, Viola Turner was a nexus point between his father and the Double Eagles, a savage splinter cell of the KKK. More troubling still, the long-buried secrets shared by Dr. Cage and the former Klansmen may hold the key to the most devastating assassinations of the 1960s. The surviving Double Eagles will stop at nothing to keep their past crimes buried, and with the help of some of the most influential men in the state, they seek to ensure that Dr. Cage either takes the fall for them, or takes his secrets to an early grave

Unable to trust anyone around him--not even his own mother--Penn joins forces with Serenity Butler, a famous young black author who has come to Natchez to write about his father's case. Together, Penn and Serenity battle to crack the Double Eagles and discover the secret history of the Cage family and the South itself, a desperate move that risks the only thing they have left to gamble: their lives."

Bill's Authors A - Z

Cara Black

1. Cara Black. American writer Cara Black is best known for her Aimée Leduc mystery series, set in Paris. Since 1998 she has written 17 books in the series. I read the first book and must admit I was somewhat underwhelmed with it. I think the problem was that it seemed as though Black was trying too hard. I think there was enough promise that I'll try to find the 2nd book and see how the story telling and character development improves. I do have the 9th book in the series.

a. Murder in the Marais (#1).











"Aimée Leduc has always sworn she would stick to tech investigation—no criminal cases for her. Especially since her father, the late police detective, was killed in the line of duty. But when an elderly Jewish man approaches Aimée with a top-secret decoding job on behalf of a woman in his synagogue, Aimée unwittingly takes on more than she is expecting. She drops off her findings at her client’s house in the Marais, Paris’s historic Jewish quarter, and finds the woman strangled, a swastika carved on her forehead. With the help of her partner, René, Aimée sets out to solve this horrendous murder, but finds herself in an increasingly dangerous web of ancient secrets and buried war crimes."

b. Murder in the Latin Quarter (#9). 











"When a Haitian woman arrives at the Paris office of Leduc Detective and announces that she is P.I. Aimée Leduc’s sister, Aimée must dig into her father’s past to solve a murder.

A virtual orphan since her mother’s desertion and her father’s death, Aimée has always wanted a sister. She is thrilled.

Her partner, René, however, is wary of this stranger. Under French law, even an illegitimate child would be entitled to a portion of her father's estate: the detective agency and apartment that Aimée has inherited. He suspects a scam. But Aimée embraces her newfound sibling and soon finds herself involved in murky Haitian politics and international financial scandals leading to murder in the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank of the Seine, the old university district of Paris."

Cecil Day-Lewis (AKA Nicholas Blake)

2. Nicholas Blake. Cecil Day-Lewis (1904 - 1972) was once Poet-Laureate of United Kingdom and was the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis. To supplement his income as a poet he wrote detective novels under the name Nicholas Blake. He created Nigel Strangeways, an amateur, gentleman detective. I've read two of his novels and have one more waiting my attention. He wrote 16 Strangeways' novels and 4 non-series novels. Below are the 2 I've read and one on my bookshelf.

a. The Widow's Cruise (Strangeways #13).











"Nicholas Blake takes the reader with him on a summer cruise, where jealousy and hatred shimmer over the Greek columns, the sunny quiet waters, and the donkey rides - and Nigel Strangeways is called in to solve an extremely puzzling murder."

b. Head of a Traveler (Strangeways #9).








"Upon stopping by Plash Meadows to visit revered poet Robert Seaton, Nigel Strangeways is absolutely enamored: like something out of a fairy tale, a perfect Queen Anne house stands among sprawling lawns as smooth as green glass, and whimsical gardens overflowing with roses. And not so far off, a dark and winding wood…

While visiting with the Seatons, Nigel gets more than he bargained for. He learns about the contentious legacy of the family estate, stumbles upon a secret meeting, and at lunch, when table talk turns to murder and motive, Nigel leaves feeling a little uneasy…

Two months later, Nigel is summoned back to the Seaton’s in less pleasant circumstances. A headless corpse has been pulled from the river behind the house and no one can identify the victim… let alone the murderer.

As oppressive thunderstorms roll through the countryside and the mood in the house takes a turn, Nigel has only one lead, but it’s throwing up more questions than it answers. The corpse bears a striking resemblance to Robert Seaton’s long-missing brother… but he walked into the ocean ten years prior, never to be heard from again.

Bewitched by poet and property, will Nigel be able to put his admiration aside and get to the bottom of this case?'

c. A Tangled Web.

"Daisy Bland, a beautiful and naive young woman, falls in love with Hugo Chesterman, a charming burglar, but her testimony threatens to convict him of murder."

Nero Blanc

3. Nero Blanc. Husband and wife team Steve Zettler and Cordelia Frances Biddle write the Crossword mysteries under the name Nero Blanc. There are 12 books in the series. I've read and enjoyed the first book and have two more awaiting my perusal. The first was light and fun and reminded me of Lilian Jackson Braun's Cat Who.... mysteries.

a. The Crossword Murder (#1).











"The Crossword Murder is the first book in the Crossword Mysteries series by husband  wife team Cordelia Biddles & Steve Zettler, who write under the pseudonym Nero Blanc. I've had it for awhile and am glad that I finally read it.
PI Rosco Polycrates of Newcastle, Mass, is hired by the mother of Thompson Briephs to look into his death, as she thinks he was murdered. Briephs works as the crossword puzzle editor for the local paper and also leads a seamy life. As is quickly shown, he is being  blackmailed for something and this blackmailer might have been the murderer.
Polycrates, an ex-police investigator, looks into the death and trying to get a handle on this crossword business, asks for assistance from the editor of a rival paper, Annabella Graham. Together they continue the investigation, working through clues from a series of unpublished puzzles left by Briephs. Someone doesn't like their investigation and there are threats to Graham's life.
There is a developing relationship between Polycrates and Graham, one that they both resist, as she is married.
The investigation is interesting, the puzzle aspect a unique mystery technique. I liked both characters and how the story developed. It's definitely a cozy style mystery, reminding me somewhat of Lilian Jackson Braun's 'Cat Who... ' mysteries. Most enjoyable and a fun read. I'll keep on with this series. (3 stars)"

b. Two Down (#2).











"Jamaica Nevisson—or Cassandra Lovett, as she’s known to the adoring fans of her daytime soap—has vanished without a trace. She and her pal Genie Pepper went pleasure yachting off Nantucket, only to end up lost at sea. So far, only the charred hull of the boat has turned up. Called in by Pepper’s husband, Massachusetts detective Rosco Polycrates and crossword editor Belle Graham uncover a list of potential evildoers that reads like a who’s who of Hollywood vipers, including paparazzi stalker Reggie Flack, Jamaica’s longtime nemesis. But when Belle starts receiving cryptic crosswords, she believes the women are alive and in grave danger. Now she’s up against the clock as she races to unravel the messages before someone completes an across-the-board coup. Because with two down, that leaves only one more to go."

c. Wrapped Up in Crosswords (9). 

"Holiday jitters abound this season when crossword editor Belle Graham and her P.I. partner Rosco Polycrates must catch a criminal to restore peace on earth."

There you go, folks. See anything interesting? I'm off to watch Sunday night TV, Timeless, Instinct, Madam Secretary, The Unit, etc. Have a great week!!