Good Bait is, I believe, my first John Harvey crime novel.  This was on my TBR and I don’t really remember adding it or why but when I saw it at the library I picked it up.  DCI Karen Shields is running a team investigating the death of a Moldovian boy and she is not even sure if she can find it on the map.  At the same time, DI Cordon is about to get enmeshed in a missing person case in Cornwall at the request of the mother of his former dog walker.  The story lines and detectives contrast really or stand in relief of one another rather than interconnect.   Very well plotted and paced mystery story lines here.

The novel has a big cast of rich characters and explores a large web of gang warfare, organized crime, with prostitution and trafficking featured prominently.  There are literary  and musical references, hence the title Good Bait, a well known Jazz number. A book written rich in detail.  I really enjoyed this one.

The Next to Die by Sophie Hannah, I will admit I picked this up thinking it was a stand alone not the 10th in a series.  However, I don’t think that can be the entire reason it didn’t work for me.  Half the plot seemed like things you’d see in a bad TV soap.  Charlie’s sister and the secret boyfriend, the way some of the character’s behaved, the killer was just tedious, the unfunny comedian, the strident feminist journalist, ho hum.  It was really a struggle to read this.

This was one of this month’s reads over at the English Kindle Mystery Club on Goodreads.  I will say that I waited and picked it up from the library rather than purchasing it mainly because the blurb really didn’t sound like my thing, I didn’t expect to like this.

Aiden Waits is a disgraced detective, caught breaking the rules one too many times and now he has been put into a corner where accepting the assignment of infiltrating a criminal organization undercover is really his only option.  Whilst on his undercover operation, an MP with a missing daughter decides to throw his weight around and say, “You know while you’re undercover with no back up in this incredibly dangerous situation could you just check on my runaway daughter who is hanging out with the gangsters?  You know, in your spare time.”  This sets up  the avalanche of tragic and dangerous events that follow.

This was really a great read.  I finished it in one sitting.  There are some really well drawn characters here.  The sense of place and the dismal nature of thug life along with the feelings of being entrapped within it are portrayed clearly.  There is a feeling of menace and inevitableness hanging over the story.  Aiden is a complex man and detective and it will be interesting to watch him over the course of further books. I am really happy this was picked by the club because it is not a book I would ever have picked on my own from the description!

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Super busy time of year for me, the end of the school year and all that so the last few days I fit in some reading but haven’t really reviewed.  So some short, reviews…

Death by Chocolate Lab is the first in a pet sitter cozy mystery series featuring sisters, one of whom is launching a pet sitting service and the other is a successful vet.  There are some charming animal characters, hint of perhaps a romantic interest, some family tension to further future subplots, and people from the town to serve as recurring characters.  Well written, an intriguing mystery with a lead character who serves to represent the many over educated- under employed of her generation.  I enjoyed this and will read more in the series.

Amanda Cadabra & the Hidey-hole Truth came highly recommended to me by several IRL friends, however they are all big Harry Potter fans and that is just not my thing.  I can completely see why Harry Potter fans would love this and would recommend it for them.

Mine is actually titled The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle .  Parts of this were well written and very engaging, I was pulled in at the start and  enjoyed reading it.  The entire world of Blackheath was well designed and immersive.  Then, when you get close to the end and the truths about Blackheath, Anna, and Aiden are revealed it just didn’t work at all for me.

Blood Sisters is a study of relationships built on guilt, lies, love, and secrets.  Alison, Kitty and Vanessa left for school one day and only one of them, Alison, went on to live a somewhat normal life.  Kitty was institutionalized and Vanessa died.  The book wends its way through the lies told or memories forgotten by Alison, Kitty, Crispin, Alison’s mother and others and the impact they have on final tragic events.  A good psychological read.

Crime in the School is a read for this month over a the Kindle English Mystery Club on Goodreads.  This is actually number 2 in the Detective Markham series.  I really enjoyed this, the tagline said “fiercely addictive crime thriller” and it wasn’t lying.  I didn’t want to put it down.  Detective Markham and his team of Noakes and young Burton develop a nice sense of loyalty and there is a chemistry among the members of the team.  The relationship between Markham and Olivia while rocky seems to be developing as best as it can amidst the chaos of multiple murders.

In this installment, Olivia is working at  school and one night when leaving after working late she almost falls over the corpse of a brutally murdered colleague.  Markham and his team are set to investigate even as forces are working against their investigation.  Nicely developed sense of menace in the setting and well drawn characters.  Even ones that don’t figure prominently seem to be given enough attention to be fleshed out.   Very good police procedural!

Scene of the Climb was an impulse purchase, a cozy mystery with an extreme sports theme.  No one would ever accuse me of having an interest in extreme sports.  It is set in the Pacific Northwest though and that did interest me.  Meg is a recent Journalism major graduate, at a time when most papers are closing down and cutting back and certainly not hiring.  So when a job at an extreme sports magazine becomes available, she may have exaggerated her athletic skills, just a tad.  Now she finds herself covering an extreme race and one of the front runners just went over a cliff face.  Determined to prove herself a real reporter in the likeness of her father, a well known figure in the field, Meg starts to investigate.  Although the theme was not really for me, this was very well written, the characters were interesting people with believable actions, the reality TV felt very current,  and the story had very good pacing.  I really enjoyed this.

Tippy Toe Murder is book 2 in the Lucy Stone Mystery Series.  Lucy is no longer working the phone lines because she is pregnant waiting to deliver another baby inbetween Little League practices, games, sewing ballet costumes, and ballet practices.  Meanwhile, much is afoot in town with a friend going missing mysteriously when out for a walk with her dog. Another friend is first  accused of theft and then when she tried to gather evidence to clear her name of the theft, she ends up being accused of murder.  Lucy perseveres through it all until a dramatic conclusion.

My daughter went to BEA and picked up a copy of The Tenant, shown here with the original cover, for free in exchange for a fair review.  She knows I am a fan of Nordic Noir so she immediately passed it to me to review.

The Tenant is the first in a series featuring Jeppe, a recently divorced and depressed, not necessarily in that order, police officer and his team including his frequent partner Anette, who more often than not gets on his nerves. The case they work on in this book is the first case he will be leading coming back from a leave of absence due to injury  his divorce.  A particularly brutal murder of a young woman living in what should have been a safe building.  The building also houses a small cafe business, an older man in another apartment, and the owner, an aspiring author, in yet another unit.  The murder investigations weaves its way through the lives of the people in the building, digging into their pasts, uncovering secrets and connections to the present.  Very good Nordic Noir, I look forward to reading more in this series.

The Midnight Witness by Sara Blaedel is the first in the Louise Rick series.  I really liked Sara Blaedel’s The Undertaker’s Daughter and so looked forward to reading this.  Louise Rick seems to be a realistic portrayal of a police officers life as she gets pulled about by the demands of her job and yet is also a human being with friends, like Camilla, and an ability to be affected by the plight of the victims and their families.  In this case, Louise is pulled in to one case, the murder of a young woman in public park and then into another, the murder of a journalist.   Plenty of red herrings to keep the reader engaged in trying to figure it all out along with Louise and Camilla.  Very good mystery read led by strong female characters.

I received a free digital copy of Clause & Effect from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

Clause & Effect is book 2 in the A Deadly Edits Mystery Series.  Mikki Lincoln is running a book editing service from her recently purchased home to supplement her retirement income and pay for the upkeep and repairs needed on the new house.  The house is somewhat of a homecoming for her as it is the house she spent her first 17 years in and by buying it and moving back she has managed to reconnect with some high school friends and enemies.    This installment opens with her being pulled into first an edit, then basically a rewrite of a play for the town’s historical society, little does Mikki know that opening up the play written by a missing playwright is going to involve her in another murder.   Interesting small town mystery plot with connections to an older crime, a fun read.  I enjoyed meeting Mikki and the friends she collected around her enough that I picked up the first in the series to read as well.

Crime & Punctuation is the first in the series.  I read this out of order so I already met some of the characters and was able to eliminate them as suspects right away, however I  still enjoyed the read and getting the background on Mikki and her introduction to the town.  In the first in this series, Mikki is trying to get her editing business off the ground and is happy to sign a local client, happy that is until the client ends up dead with Mikki’s business card on her person.  This leads to a murder investigation and finds Mikki tangling with some unsavory characters as she tries to find out what happened to her client.  The current murder has connections to old time gangster murders and there seems to be quite a few possible suspects at large.  Quick cozy read with a fun grammar theme.

I received a free digital copy of this title from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

The Spotted Dog is book 7 in the Corinna Chapman series, a series that I loved and in which book 6 was published all the way back in 2011, so I had all but lost hope of ever seeing another book in it.  I was really excited to see this on NetGalley and requested it right away.  Some of the same beloved features of the original books are still there,  Corinna is still her same plus sized, up at four in the morning, positive imaged self.  Still with her dashing romantic interest  and co-investigator, Daniel, and still, working with her young ex-addict assistant and living in her soap opera drama worthy building, which also houses her bakery business.

The comparisons to the original books however end there for me.   There is the introduction of an interesting new character, who is the basis of the mystery, “the spotted dog”, but he is not really fleshed out or given a chance to shine.  The rest of the book is some kind of take off on a Dan Brown-esque Da Vinci code book with other story lines involving confusions between stereotyped ethnic gangster groups.  A disappointing read in an otherwise excellent series.

I received free digital copies of these titles in exchange for fair reviews from NetGalley.

Molten Mud Murder, despite the alliterative title, is not a cozy mystery, more along the lines of a police procedural.  Alexa is an American Forensic Odontologist with a work visa, who finds herself between jobs in New Zealand.  She becomes attached to a police department investigating a murder involving a man being murdered and dumped in boiling mud.  The case needs to handled with cultural sensitivity as it involves trespasses onto protected Maori lands, the handling of remains, and the thefts of artifacts for the black market.  Alexa has issues of her own from her past but doesn’t allow them to stop her from immersing herself in solving the case.

Very nicely developed sense of place, and in many parts real  feelings of menace are allowed to develop as Alexa investigates or finds herself isolated or working alone.  The character of Alexa is well drawn and the pacing pulls the reader along through the story.  Well done mystery read.  I would think it would especially appeal to fans of  The Ruth Galloway Series by Elly Griffiths.   Due to be published September 3rd, 2019 by Poisoned Pen Press.

Murder by Minster is the first in a new series with a librarian protagonist, Kitt Hartley.  Kitt Hartley is confronted at work by DI Halloran with the news that her best friend’s ex-boyfriend, Owen is dead and her best friend is their suspect.  Kitt, armed with nothing more than years of reading mysteries and her experience doing research as a librarian is determined to clear Evie’s name.  There are plenty of red herrings, eccentric side characters, and extra dead bodies to keep the reader guessing up to the end of the story.  A very twisty tales for fans not to concerned about police procedures in their cozies.  To be published 1st of July 2019 by Quercus.

Yoga through the Year raises interesting seasonal based questions for one to ask about one’s yoga practice.  The goal being to ground your practice in each season giving it a timeliness.  Then, particular positions are given to use for that particular season.  For example, Winter to Spring included:

• Blossoming Hands
• Flower Arms
• Albatross Sequence
• Warrior 2
• Wide-Leg Standing Forward Bend Pose
• Lunge Pose
• Downward-Facing Dog
• Child’s Pose
• Bridge Pose
• Knees to Chest Pose
• Wide-Leg stretch
• Blossoming Hands

There is a great deal of description included and the sequencing and number of repetitions.  The book is encouraging the beginnings of a home yoga practice.

I found the questions it raised interesting, I personally have difficulty meditating and think it would be helpful to have questions to perhaps use as guides.  I did find that the fact that the text had no pictures to be a huge problem.  I am in no way a very experienced practitioner and would like to see pictures, even if only line drawings, of the poses I am attempting, rather than just written descriptions.  I would think that most beginning practitioners would expect illustrations of some kind in a guide.  To be published 8th of July 2019 by Llewellyn Publications.

  This is the first in the Secret, Book & Scone Society Series.  The setting of Miracle Springs hints as some slight magical realism that I have seen in others of Ellery Adams’ works.  The series centers primarily around bookshop owner and bibliophile Nora, but also includes other members of the society June, Estella, and Hester.  The four women each have painful secrets from their past, that have been holding them back from finding peace and friendship in their lives.

I really wanted to like this but I guessed Nora’s secret pretty early on and paired with some of her more judgmental behavior it was pretty unforgivable. The mystery involves real estate investing and fraud and of course murder.  There is a light romantic side plot.  Overall, this did work well for me.