Seeking the Dead by Kate Ellis

Title: Seeking the Dead
Author: Kate Ellis
ISBN: 9780749909352, Piatkus Books, 2008
Genre: Police Procedural, #1 D.I. Joe Plantagenet mystery
Rating: A

First Line: Things that frighten the devil away.

I've been a fan of Kate Ellis and her D.S. Wesley Peterson mystery series from the very first book. I love her characterizations and the blending of an old mystery with a new one. When I learned that she had begun a second series featuring D.I. Joe Plantagenet set in North Yorkshire, you know I couldn't rest until I had a copy of Seeking the Dead in my hands!

As I began to read, it was obvious to me that the book was written by Kate Ellis. Her love of history and archaeology just can't be disguised. Seeking the Dead is set in "Eborby", and the more I read, the more I was convinced that Eborby was really the city of York. When I visited Ellis's website, I saw that my guess was correct.

Joe had heard that plague victims had been buried beneath these banks in the seventeenth century and he wondered whether the mothers would have let their children play there if they'd known. Probably. The past was the past.

Detective Inspector Joe Plantagenet has a new boss, Detective Chief Inspector Emily Thwaite, and they both have a very big problem: someone is binding and asphyxiating victims and leaving their nude bodies in isolated country churchyards. The ever-witty media has dubbed the killer "the Resurrection Man". On the surface the victims appear to have nothing in common except the manner of their deaths, but as Plantagenet continues to investigate, he begins to wonder if there isn't an occult connection. The clock is ticking while Thwaite and Plantagenet race to find the killer before there's another victim.

As I've said before, I've been a fan of Ellis's Peterson series from the get-go, so I was a bit surprised to realize that I was enjoying this new series even more. The characterizations seem even richer in Seeking the Dead. Plantagenet spent a year in the seminary, thinking to become a priest before he discovered that the priesthood was not his real vocation. He is an excellent listener, but doesn't divulge much of himself, so there's that air of mystery to pique a reader's interest in him. His boss, DCI Emily Thwaite is also well drawn, a woman in a difficult career position that's made even more stressful by events in her current investigation. Even when stressed, she can show more than a glint of humor:

"I had a gran like that." Emily smiled at the memory. "Expert on surveillance she was and all. I sometimes wonder whether MI5 have ever considered the effectiveness of the net curtain."

In this series, there isn't a resident archaeologist and a separate mystery involving the past, but Ellis uses the setting to such excellent effect that it is a character in itself, as when Plantagenet does some research for the case:

The city archives-- those that weren't housed in the history department at the university-- were housed on the second floor of the library, a red-brick product of Victorian civic pride built on the site of a medieval hospital whose undercroft still stood next door, all that remained above ground of a once vast complex. Twelfth-century confidence cheek by jowl with the nineteenth-century variety.

Although I had an inkling as to the identity of the killer, it didn't spoil my enjoyment of this book one jot. All the police work that went into solving the crimes, the characters, the setting... every element blended together into a truly pleasurable read. The next book in the series is Playing With Bones. I'm trying my best not to buy books, and after reading Seeking the Dead, I really feel the need for an intervention!

The Last Victim in Glen Ross by M. G. Kincaid

Title: The Last Victim in Glen Ross
Author: M.G. Kincaid
ISBN: 0743467566, Pocket Books, 2003
Genre: Police Procedural, #1 Seth Mornay mystery
Rating: B-

First Line: Conversations in the Macduff police office ceased the moment Detective Inspector Walter Byrne barreled through the plate-glass doors.

Two years ago Seth Mornay, ex-Royal Marine, returned home to start a new life as a Detective Sergeant in the Criminal Investigation Division of the Grampian police force. When the body of a woman is found in an old churchyard, it's up to Mornay and his partner, Constable Claire Gillespie, to solve the case despite the fact that their immediate supervisor seems to be throwing cogs into the works every chance he gets.

It took almost half this book before the pieces began to fall together and "percolate". In the beginning, Mornay is shown as being more interested in the number of women he can bed than he is in solving his cases. His career in the Royal Marines is mentioned several times but details are extremely sketchy, and the tired convention of the obstructive superior tends to bore me. Since I've never been impressed by detectives with overactive zippers, I was seriously thinking about sending this book along to the next reader unfinished. Mornay was supposed to be the Whiz Kid of the Grampian CID, but none of the evidence was supporting that claim.

Fortunately Kincaid managed to get Mornay on track. One or two details about his past in the military, Mornay's sudden abstinence, and the tie-in of an earlier case made The Last Victim in Glen Ross an involving and interesting read. My day was saved.

I have the next book in the series, Last Seen in Aberdeen, on my shelves, and I'll be picking it up sometime in future to read the further adventures of DS Mornay.

Terror on Tuesday by Ann Purser

Title: Terror on Tuesday
Author: Ann Purser
ISBN: 0425197530, Berkley Prime Crime, 2004
Genre: Amateur Sleuth, #2 Lois Meade mystery
Rating: B

First Line: "I used to carry a knife," Lois said conversationally, "when I was at school."

When I read the first book in the series, Murder on Monday, I found it to be lacking a bit in mystery, but I enjoyed the characters so much that I wanted to see where Purser went with them. I also wanted to see if Lois mopped herself into a corner. Having one cleaner constantly stumbling over corpses would be problematic-- just how many people would continue to hire her to clean their houses? I also wondered about Inspector Cowgill insisting on always meeting her in the same place. Lois lives in a small village. No matter how out-of-the-way the meeting place is, sooner or later everyone in the village is going to know what's going on. Purser dealt with both of my questions very well in this second book in the series.

Lois came into a bit of money at the end of Murder on Monday, and she and her family have moved to a different village and instead of a small council house, they now have a much larger one with plenty of room to spread out and still have a place for Lois to set up her own cleaning business. It's not long before she's interviewed applicants and has a crew working for her. One day she decides to take a short break in an old chapel and comes across a body dressed in a suit of armor. Once again, Inspector Cowgill has her searching for clues, and when the murderer almost kills her husband, Lois takes the investigation very seriously indeed.

I like the direction in which this series is going. Purser has an excellent cast of characters to work with, and having Lois run her own cleaning company means that she has more time for investigation and an entire crew of cleaners who can help her search for clues. The mystery didn't flag in this second book; although I guessed quite a bit of what was going on, I still didn't have all the plot threads tied and tidied by book's end.

This is a series that I'll be continuing on with, and I'd suggest it to anyone who prefers good characterization, amateur sleuths and cozy mysteries.

An English Murder by Louise Doughty

Title: An English Murder
Author: Louise Doughty
ISBN: 0440236878, Dell Publishing, 2001
Genre: Cozy Mystery, Amateur Sleuth
Rating: B+

First Line: It was four days before the bodies were discovered, by which time Mr. Cowper had begun to mottle.

I'm not quite sure what I expected when I began reading this book. A cozy little mystery involving an amateur sleuth in a picture postcard English village, I think.

I got a lot more than I bargained for.

Alison Akenside is the chief reporter for the Rutland Record. Unfortunately she lives in Nether Bowston, a village in which nothing ever happens. At the beginning of An English Murder, Alison is a compassionate young woman who wants her "big break" into the dailies of London. She feels sad when she realizes that she was in her garden tending her flowers while the bodies of her neighbors, Thomas and Edith Cowper, were lying in their home a few doors down.

Not only were the Cowpers murdered, but their teen aged daughter Gemma has gone missing, and Alison begins to think that this murder case is her ticket to London. If she can scoop everyone else, find Gemma and learn the identity of the murderer, she's a shoo-in for bigger and better things.

While Alison ponders how to win her brass ring, we learn about her background and that of the missing girl. We're also treated to a little history about Rutland, which in the 1970s had lost its county status and become a part of Leicestershire, only to regain it in the late 1990s:

It was mentioned in the Domesday Book, she discovered-- which seemed very fin de siecle-- although at that time it was little more than a ditch on the way to Northumbria. It was always being bequeathed to people-- queens, dukes, mistresses-- as if the county and its people were an expensive lapdog.

But as we're learning more about Rutland and as we're learning about Gemma and Alison, the tone of the book subtly begins to shift. Something nasty, unpleasant and psychologically unbalanced begins to stir in Nether Bowston, and An English Murder turns into Cozy Noir.

Some people may not like Doughty's book, thinking that the plot is insubstantial and meanders off into nothingness. I was delighted by the shift and the unexpected depth toward the end. I was so concerned with looking for the crocodiles on the sandbanks that I felt completely safe wading into the water...where Doughty grabbed me with one snap of her jaws.

I am now looking for other books by Louise Doughty. I want to see if she can lead me astray once more.

Cold Kill by David Lawrence

Title: Cold Kill
Author: David Lawrence
ISBN: 0312347413, Thomas Dunne Books, 2006
Genre: Police Procedural, #3 Stella Mooney mystery
Rating: B

First Line: The sky is darkening but not yet dark; it shows a vibrant, unbroken blue, so deep that if you stare at it long you might take it to be the onset of blindness....

It's Christmas season in London, and someone is going around taking a hammer to women, partially stripping them and then garroting them. Detective Sergeant Stella Mooney thinks Father Christmas may have appeared early when a creepy confessor, Robert Adrian Kimber, shows up at the station, knowing more about the latest killing than he should. Unfortunately, there is no concrete proof to link him to the crimes; he's just a serial killer wannabe. Stella has to let him go even though it's against her better judgment. And if she's not having enough trouble with this rash of killings, she's got trouble at home. John Delaney, her journalist lover, is using bits of her privileged information to help him with his own stories.

This is a mystery series I have enjoyed in the past. I liked the new wrinkles Lawrence puts in the serial killer oeuvre even though some of the resolution depended a bit too much on coincidence. No...I liked the plot-- what got up my nose this third time around was the character of Stella herself. She grew up in one of the roughest, most dangerous estates in London. She knows there are people living there who would just as soon kill you as look at you. What does she do? Repeatedly barge in after someone either solo or with just one other person. If she believes she's Super Woman, fine. But she shouldn't risk someone else's life due to her own personal notions of invincibility.

Her love life also grates on my nerves. She lived with a nice guy, but evidently the man was too nice because she became dissatisfied. Mr. Nice Guy headed to the States. She's taken up with a journalist now, and is completely surprised when he noses through her case notes and uses the gleanings to further some of the stories he's working on. She's dissatisfied again, and there's this really interesting sounding guy on the phone at Forensics.... Okay, Stella. Steer your own path, cut a swath through all the men in London. Just know that the wake's getting a bit high for me, and I'm going to row my little dinghy off into a different cove of mysteries.

Lawrence is excellent at portraying the seamier sections of London. When I read about the Harefield Estates my skin crawls and I want eyes in the back of my head. (300 Spartans to go in there with me would be fantastic as well.) I also enjoy Lawrence's gallows humor. The twists and turns of his plot in Cold Kill kept me guessing and kept me turning the pages. I simply had a very subjective reaction to the main character that was a carryover from the last book.

My subjective reaction isn't yours. Don't let me put you off this series because the writing is top notch!

Black Dog by Stephen Booth

Title: Black Dog
Author: Stephen Booth
ISBN: 0671786040, Pocket Books, 2001
Genre: Police Procedural, #1 Cooper & Fry mystery
Rating: B+

First Line: The sudden glare of colors beat painfully on the young woman's eyes as she burst from the back door of the cottage and hurled herself into the brightness.

Welcome to Edendale, a village in the Peak District of England. Edendale is home to Constable Ben Cooper, an officer with a bright future who nevertheless worries that he will never be able to fill the shoes of his father, a police sergeant who died in the line of duty in Ben's own precinct. Ben relies a great deal on intuition and leaps of logic in his work.

New to the Edendale Police is Diane Fry, a very ambitious young woman on the fast track to promotion. She relies on good, solid investigative work that follows the rules. She's aloof, prickly and more than a little tired of the fact that the people living there tell her nothing while they all treat Ben Cooper like a beloved son.

Not exactly the most promising start to any sort of partnership, is it?

Ben and Diane find themselves thrown together more often than not when 15-year-old Laura Vernon is found murdered. Like Diane, Laura and her parents are outsiders, outsiders that the villagers have never been very friendly toward. Booth has about the best description of how people think in an insular community, and it reminds me of why I no longer live in one:

Yes, you only really knew people when you knew everything about them. You needed to know it all-- from the exact moment they had been conceived in the long grass behind the village hall to the first word they had spoken, and the contents of their fifth-form school reports. You needed to know what size shoes they wore, how much money they owed the credit card company, when their bout of chicken pox had been, and which foot had the ingrowing toenail. You had to know who their first sexual encounter had been with, what brand of condom they had used, and whether the experience had been satisfactory. Now that was knowing somebody.

In a village that thinks that way, Diane Fry has her work cut out for her. Actually the entire police force has its work cut out for it because Harry Dickinson, the old man who found Laura's body, is a close-mouthed, cantankerous soul who knows more than he's telling. What is it that Harry knows? Why do none of the villagers like the Vernons? Why is Laura's father determined to pin his daughter's murder on the gardener he's just fired?

I found Booth's depiction of the Peak District very atmospheric...almost chilling. The plot was satisfyingly convoluted and had a very deliberate pace. In fact the pace of the story reminded me a great deal of Harry Dickinson, the old man with a lot to say but who wasn't going to say it until he was damned good and ready. While the plot marched on, I got to know Ben and Diane a bit better. Ben is the intuitive one, the one who has heavy family responsibilities, and he's also prone to bouts with the "black dog"-- slang for depression. Diane is the anti-social one. The one who knows how to dress, how to behave and what to say in order to be promoted, but one who wants to keep everyone at arm's length. Although I found all the prickliness tiresome at first, once Booth began telling us their back stories, I was willing to set that impatience aside and enjoy the story more.

Enjoy it I did. The setting, the plot, the deliberate pacing, and the characters all combined to make me not pay close attention to the clues Booth planted all along the way. When the murderer's identity was revealed, my reaction wasn't one of shock but one of "Well of course that's who it was!" Not only that, but by book's end I fully came to appreciate the title of the book. In Black Dog, Stephen Booth has laid the foundation for an excellent mystery series. I look forward to reading more.

The Picasso Scam by Stuart Pawson

Title: The Picasso Scam
Author: Stuart Pawson
ISBN: 0749083905, Allison & Busby, 2004
Genre: Police Procedural, #1 DI Charlie Priest mystery
Rating: A

First Line: Red was no longer my favourite colour.

With The Picasso Scam I once again found myself sampling a new-to-me series about which I've heard so many good things for years. If I intended having a tombstone, my epitaph would probably read "Here lies Cathy. She started 2,789 mystery series and finished 99 of them." On the surface that sounds rather bad, but I prefer to think that I've always got plenty to look forward to in my reading!

In this book I met Detective Inspector Charlie Priest of the Heckley nick (police station) in West Yorkshire. He's been an inspector for a record-breaking length of time because he can be somewhat unorthodox. (Not many police officers would chase a Rolls Royce down a country lane in their ancient, wheezing Cortina.)

A bit of sheep stealing leads Charlie to believe that a local businessman is involved in international art fraud, and once he realizes that doctored heroin also plays a part, there's nothing he won't do to bring the villains to justice.

One of the things I enjoyed so much in The Picasso Scam was Charlie himself. Being a detective inspector for so long has turned him into the fatherly eye of the Heckley nick:

Crime has no closed season, no bank holidays, no days off. We are busy round the clock. My job is to manage the troops, make sure the paperwork gets done properly and liaise in every direction at once. Meantime I like to get out on the streets as much as possible, which usually means in my own time. We all have our pet priorities, and mine, next to putting crooks behind bars, is looking after, developing and encouraging the lowly constables in my charge.

There is a feeling of family amongst the police officers in this book, which makes it different from most police procedurals I've read. These men have their quirks, but they all genuinely care for each other. This is a refreshing change from many similarly themed books which always seem to have a complete jerk in charge that everyone has to work around to get the job done.

There are also glimmers of humor in The Picasso Scam, as when Charlie meets a well-endowed receptionist and thinks, "Oh, to have the eyes of a chameleon, one to look here, the other to look there" or when he walks into a pub and observes "their pipe-smoke made the air so thick that the flies were hang-gliding." But along with the family spirit and humor, there is danger. Charlie is after a businessman with a shady past, and at first he doesn't realize to what lengths that person will go to stop the investigation.

Probably because he does spend so much time teaching the constables in his care, Charlie takes the time to explain to readers why his area of England is so rife with crime, and what happens when the police crack down on one area of crime, yet he never comes across as preachy.

Reading The Picasso Scam was a sort of lesson in crime given by an engaging copper who has his priorities straight. Charlie Priest is a man who observes much (he sits down for a chat with depressed secretaries and stops by the hospital to talk with a teenage drug user who's had a leg amputated), does much, and shares his knowledge and experience with others. It's the best way to survive, to enjoy the job, and to do that job well.

Bring on Charlie's next case! I'm looking forward to reading it.

In a Dark House by Deborah Crombie

Title: In a Dark House
Author: Deborah Crombie
ISBN: 9780060525262, Avon Mystery, 2006
Genre: Police Procedural, #10 Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James
Rating: A

First Line: It took no more than a match, nestled beneath the crumpled paper and foil crisp packets.

Detective Inspector Gemma James is having no luck in finding a missing child in her Notting Hill patch of London. An old Victorian warehouse owned by a politician goes up in smoke, and it's hard to believe how much crime is uncovered by the burning of one building.

The charred, unidentified body of a woman is found in the warehouse. In trying to give her a name, Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid learns there are four possibilities. Checking into each lead and every clue leads to a serial arsonist and another missing child, and it is this missing little girl upon whom Gemma focuses.

Crombie has written her most densely plotted novel yet, and it is a pleasure to watch a master weaver at work: having her characters track each missing woman back until they find the right one, introducing a dedicated firefighter who has a hunch about an arsonist that she cannot ignore, and letting her readers know that there is a child out there in the hands of a mentally unstable person. I've even left out several plot threads! Crombie never loses sight of any of those threads, and the result is a book that I did not want to put down.

When anyone asks me to recommend a favorite mystery series in which the plots are every bit as good as the characters, Crombie always comes to mind first. I love reading these books for their complex plots and for their recurring characters who develop and change as the series continues.

I have a tendency to read series rather slowly. If I read them back to back, I can tire of the writing style or become hyper-critical of characterization, pacing or plot. I picked up the first book in this series less than a year ago, and I'm almost completely caught up. Why so speedy with this one? Because it's a pleasure to see Crombie become more skilled with each book...and because my husband has gotten hooked on them, too. If any of you have wondered how well a Texan can write a series set in England, I'll tell you this: Denis, Lancashire born and bred, gives Crombie two enthusiastic thumbs up. He'll be just as disappointed as I when we're caught up and waiting for the next book in the series to appear!

The Blood Pit by Kate Ellis

Title: The Blood Pit
Author: Kate Ellis
ISBN: 9780749908812, Piatkus Books, 2008
Genre: Police Procedural, #12 DI Wesley Peterson mystery series
Rating: A

First Line: The small figure lay on the sand gulping in salty, seaweed-scented air as the twisted face descended slowly, closer and closer.

Bodies completely drained of blood are showing up on Detective Inspector Wesley Peterson's patch, and the only thing that links them together is the way in which they were killed. Wesley's archaeologist friend, Neil Watson, is working at a nearby medieval abbey and he begins getting disturbing anonymous letters. Is there a connection between Wesley's investigation and Neil's letters?

Who says you can't learn anything by reading mysteries? In this twelfth book in the series, Ellis filled me in on seyney houses as a part of the life of medieval monasteries. (Monks were periodically bled to prevent the "humors" in the body from becoming out of balance.) I remember the mention of these places in various books I've read, and Ellis filled in the details.

The mystery in The Blood Pit was circuitous and puzzling. Although I knew about halfway through whom the murderer was, I couldn't figure out why. The letters that Neil Watson received really upped the suspense factor, and I enjoyed his getting a beefier role in this book.

The characters in this series of mysteries have become almost as familiar as family to me, and this time around, Ellis shakes up the cast a bit. Between the mystery, the history and the characters, I always look forward to the latest Kate Ellis novel!

Lonely Hearts by John Harvey

Title: Lonely Hearts
Author: John Harvey
ISBN: 0380710064/ Avon Books, 1990
Genre: Police Procedural, #1 Charlie Resnick mystery
Rating: B+

First Line: She hadn't thought of him for a long time.

Ever since I started focusing on mysteries, I would see people praise John Harvey's Charlie Resnick series. Although I didn't do anything about it for a few years, I did file that praise away in one of my mental lumber rooms, and now I've read the first in the series to see if the praise was deserved. Even though it's only the first in the series, I think Lonely Hearts has set the stage for many hours of reading pleasure to come.

Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick is a bit battered and world weary. Divorced and overweight, a middle-aged lover of food, cats, and jazz, he takes all of his cases to heart, feeling compassion for the victims and rage for the perpetrators. One of his cases (involving child abuse) has gone to the courts, and Resnick finds himself with two murder victims. After investigating both, it turns out that their only tie is that both women had placed an ad in a local "Lonely Hearts" column. Will Resnick find the killer before any more women are found dead in Nottingham?

Although Lonely Hearts was written twenty years ago, it didn't feel dated, other than having more references to smoking and a lack of cell phones. Resnick is shown as not only having great compassion toward people but also great rage, as when he interviews a suspect he believes to be guilty. (Anyone watching me read this scene would tell you that I resemble the proverbial deer in the headlights. Whoa!) Having come fresh from reading Dog On It, it was nice to see that Resnick's cats (Dizzy, Miles, Pepper and Bud) didn't have a single thought to share with anyone. Their lives consisted of eating, twining around human feet and sleeping-- usually on top of Resnick's head or curled around his neck.

The characterizations in the book were very strong, and the identity of the killer I found particularly baffling. The only quibble I have with this book is that, once the possible killer is mentioned, the action begins to snowball, gaining more and more speed until the end, which felt very rushed. But that's a small complaint. With the cast of characters Harvey introduced me to in Lonely Hearts, I'm looking forward to making my way through this series and savoring each book.

Review-- Now May You Weep

Title: Now May You Weep
Author: Deborah Crombie
ISBN: 006052524X/ Avon Books, 2003
Genre: Mystery, #9 in the Kincaid & James series
Rating: B+

First Line: Wrapped in her warmest cloak and shawl, Livvy Urquhart paced the worn kitchen flags.

Denis started asking me how many books we had left in Crombie's excellent mystery series, so I knew it was time to read the next one. The man's not going to be satisfied until we're completely caught up and dancing around waiting for the next one!

In this ninth book of the series, Gemma needs time to recuperate from recent events, and her friend, Hazel Cavendish, persuades her to come along with her for a weekend cooking course at a bed and breakfast in the Highlands of Scotland. Gemma loves the scenery, and is enjoying herself until she learns that Hazel wanted to take the course as a cover for meeting an old lover. The "old lover" is Donald Brodie, the handsome owner of a local whiskey distillery. When Donald's body is found in a meadow close to the bed and breakfast, Hazel immediately becomes the prime suspect, and Gemma has to walk a fine line between finding the killer and keeping local DCI Alun Ross happy.

This book kept me slightly off balance because Duncan Kincaid has very little to do with the primary action, having his hands full with developments surrounding his son, Kit. Crombie is a master at making this couple so interesting that we care just as much about what is going on in their personal lives as we do the mystery. As in other books in the series, there is also an older plot thread running throughout, this time bringing in the element of whiskey distilling families in the area and long-standing feuds which can come between them.

All in all, vintage Crombie, and a very enjoyable addition to the series!

REVIEW: One Good Turn

Title: One Good Turn
Author: Kate Atkinson
ISBN: 97803161548401/ Little, Brown & Co., 2006
Mystery, #2 in the Jackson Brodie series
Rating: A

First Line: He was lost.

Jackson Brodie, the Case Histories detective who reopened three cold cases and wound up a millionaire, follows his actress girlfriend to Edinburgh where she is performing in a play during the Fringe Festival. While his girlfriend is rehearsing, Brodie manages to get in all sorts of trouble. Paul Bradley gets rear-ended in the street, and when he gets out of his car, the other driver takes a baseball bat to him. Walter Mittyesque writer Martin Canning saves Bradley's bacon by swinging his laptop case at the man trying to hit a home run. Not only is Brodie a witness to all this, so is Gloria Hatter, wife of Graham Hatter, the crooked millionaire property developer. Brodie walks away, convinced that there are plenty of other witnesses to the road rage, but he's soon dragged back in by police detective Louise Monroe. There is your cast of characters, and they each have their own story to tell. Two things that must be remembered are: (1) nothing is coincidental, and (2) everyone is involved.

Kate Atkinson is a genius at putting together the most unlikely set of characters and hanging a plot off them. Bits and pieces of her design sometimes fall through the cracks because of the shifting points of view, but it all comes together brilliantly. Her talent for characterization is wonderful:

She hauled herself out of bed and padded along the hall, where she opened the door to Archie's bedroom-- she just needed to be completely sure that the nightmare had been a nightmare. Both boys were sprawled in sleep, Archie in his bed, Hamish in a sleeping bag on the floor. The room stank of boys. Louise imagined a girl's room would smell of nail varnish, pencils, cheap candy sweets. Archie's room was essence of testosterone and feet. In the gloom, she could just make out the rise and fall of Archie's breathing. She didn't bother examining Hamish for signs of life, boys like him should be culled as far as she was concerned.

Atkinson gets so far inside the heads of her characters that I think I would recognize each one if I met them on the street. This "inside the head" method of characterization is one of the best ways to get me hooked, and to get me to care about these people who only exist on the printed page. More than once I found myself talking to a character who began to do something I thought was rather ill-advised.

If you love mysteries with intricate plots and quirky, fully-fleshed characters, you won't go wrong by giving Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books a try!

REVIEW: And Justice There is None

Title: And Justice There is None
Author: Deborah Crombie
ISBN: 0553579304/ Bantam Books, 2003
Mystery, #8 in the Kincaid & James series
Rating: A+

First Line: He ran, as so many others ran, the black anorak protecting him from the mist, the reflective patches on his trainers gleaming as he passed under the street lamps.

Big changes are in store for Gemma James. She's just been promoted to Detective Inspector, and her relationship with her former supervisor, Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, is on the fast track. When the beautiful young wife of a Portobello Road antiques dealer is murdered and her body found on the driveway of their Notting Hill home, the case lands right in Gemma's lap. Most seem to think that the woman's lover, who disappeared right after the murder, is the killer, but Gemma doesn't. Instead she focuses on the woman's husband. When the husband is also murdered, Gemma is thrown for a loop, but the investigation Kincaid is in charge of throws up a connection to her case, and this gives Gemma new leads.

The books in this series keep getting better and better. Crombie's plots have become complex and totally satisfying, giving readers enough twists and turns to keep them guessing from first page to last. What sets this series apart from so many others is that the characters are so fully fleshed, and their personal lives are every bit as important as the mystery. I've come to care for Duncan and Gemma as though they are real people, and I sink into each of Crombie's mysteries with a sigh of pleasure. Not only am I hooked on this series, my husband is, too. I had to hand over And Justice There is None as soon as I was finished, and now Denis's nose is buried in it!

REVIEW: A Bird in the Hand

Title: A Bird in the Hand
Author: Ann Cleeves
ISBN: 0449133494/ Fawcett, 1986
Cozy Mystery, #1 George and Molly Palmer-Jones
Protagonist(s): George and Molly Palmer-Jones, retired birdwatchers
Setting: mostly Norfolk, England in the mid-1980s
Rating: B+

First Line: It was a warm May evening, a Saturday, and a small boy was playing with a home-made model boat at the edge of a pool.

I've read the first two books in Cleeves' Shetland Quartet mystery series and loved them. I'm also a birdwatcher, and lately I seem to keep stumbling over birdwatcher-themed mysteries. When I learned that Cleeves had written just such a series, I couldn't rest until I'd tracked the first one down. Once again, Paperback Swap came through for me.

George and Molly Palmer-Jones are both retired; he from the Home Office, Molly from a career as a social worker. George traded in his Volvo for a Morris Minor van, and now he and Molly travel around the country in search of rare birds. George loves spending his time this way; Molly loves spending time with George. When Tom French, a rather well-known "twitcher" is found dead in Norfolk, a mutual acquaintance asks George to look into the murder. George and Molly find themselves traveling around England in search of clues--and sighting a few birds along the way.

Nowadays, it seems there are cozy mysteries with every theme known to humankind: knitting, scrapbooking, interior design, coffee, tea, chocolate, cats, dogs...you get the picture! The problem I've found with several of them is that knitting, tea, whatever, is just a gimmick to get a person to read the book. Once you get into the book, there's very little of the theme that captured your interest in the first place. Fortunately A Bird in the Hand is not one of these. I learned so much about birding in Britain, the slang that birding fanatics use, and some of the better areas for sighting rare birds, that I feel as though my IQ went up a notch or two. For once I found a segment of the British population that doesn't seem unable to travel more than ten miles from home. Just read this description of twitching-- the madness that comes over some people when they hear a rare bird has been sighted:

On the Friday night the news was received and passed along the grapevine with intense excitement. Anxious parents consulted timetables, packed up sandwiches and let schoolboy sons, rude and uncommunicative in their fear that the bird might have gone, spend their first night away from home. Students waited until pub closing time, walked through evening streets to motorway exits, and began to hitch-hike to Norfolk. Responsible family men cancelled family plans, filled their cars with students and schoolboys and drove across the country, revelling in the irresponsibility of the night-time drive, the madness and the expense of it all. That was the attraction of twitching: the escape from anxious parents, lectures and essays, work and families, the knowledge that, despite all the effort and the movement, in the morning the bird might have gone.

Although A Bird in the Hand was written in the 1980s, it didn't really seem dated, except for the lack of cell phones. (Cell phones must be a British birder's best friend in this day and age.) The plot moved along well, and as the pages turned, I saw how the characters of George and Molly were so well suited to each other. George, prickly and impatient in piecing together the clues, needed Molly's level head and calming influence more than once. This is a very good debut novel, and in it I can see the seeds of the wonderful Shetland Quartet that was to come.