A cozy, A Police Procedural, and a Nordic Noir, all different takes on the mystery genre.  Of the three Borkmann’s Point was my favorite.  I like the detective Chief Inspector Van Veeteren and his methodical, painstaking ways.  In this mystery, he is on the tail end of his vacation and is asked to ivestigate a pair of murders in which the weapon is an ax.  Beate Moerk is also an interesting character, a highly ambitious policewoman who sees the murders as means to advancement and works doggedly to track down the clues.  There are flashes from the killers point of view and I did have an inkling of who the killer was before the reveal, but it was just a feeling nothing certain.  This is the second in the Van Veeteren series and I will definitely read more.

Cat on the Edge has been on my TBR list for a while.  I normally like cat themed mysteries, such as Ali Brandon’s, Miranda James’s and  Lillian Jackson Braun’s.  This was more to the paranormal side that I could handle.  Lillian Jackson Braun’s “the cat who…” series gives hints to the cats abnormal intelligence (ability to read, give clues, etc), but it is done with a light touch and is not overwhelming.  This book, the first Joe Grey Mystery, is into paranormal from the very beginning.  Talking cats, people who turn from animals into cats, and psychopaths who can sense them.  It was too much for me, but paranormal fans will probably like it because it was well written, the personalities of the characters were engaging, and  it was well paced.

The Rocksburg Railroad Murders is set in Pennsylvania, not too terribly far from where I live.  The setting and the action in the ethnic neighborhoods is very realistic.  The characters, the local bars, and the attitudes towards and from the Italien Americans are very accurate to my experiences.  The murder case is interesting but there really is not much of a mystery as right from the beginning, Mario Balzic, has the idea of who was guilty and it was just  a matter of putting the evidence together.  I think that I didn’t enjoy this one that much because there was not much of an escape factor, which I look for in books.  The setting and characters are too familiar and so realisticaly drawn that it in some ways bored me, much as real life can at times.  The tedium of life is so clearly protrayed here that I feel like it is well written to be able to evoke that sense, but it just made the actual book a drag to read at times.