January Reading Round-Up

 

Today (Monday) is one of those days when it would seem everyone is beating a path to our door. While I'm waiting on various people to show up, what better time to share some of the books I've read?  Once again, these are shorter reviews. I've included links to Amazon US in the titles in case you'd like to learn more. 

 

Let's get started!

 

 

Against the Grain by Peter Lovesey

Review copy courtesy of Net Galley.

384 pages

Rating: A

 

My Thoughts: This finale of Lovesey's long-running series was a satisfying conclusion. Faced with a holiday in the country that he doesn't want, Peter Diamond tries everything in the book (including his elderly cat) to avoid going. Resistance is futile. Once there, he finds himself experiencing all sorts of country life as well as using a bit of what he calls the "Columbo Method of Detection" to help out a former colleague.

 

I was in just the right mood for this humorous excursion in the country to solve a nicely twisted mystery.

 
 

Tooth and Claw by Craig Johnson

208 pages

Rating: A+

 

My Thoughts: A prequel to the Walt Longmire series, this was one of my Best Reads of 2024. Walt and his best friend, Henry Standing Bear, have returned from military service in Vietnam. Working for an oil company in the bitter cold of an Alaskan winter, they find themselves facing a ferocious polar bear, and the creature seems hell-bent on their destruction.

 

Tooth and Claw is a rip-roaring pageturner. Although Johnson has often thought of "thrillers as mysteries with lobotomies," he sure knows how to write one (minus the surgical procedure)! There's a feeling of dislocation for both Walt and Henry now that they're back in the U.S.  Johnson has his usual solid cast of characters as well as a blizzard where they and other members of the oil company crew have to take shelter on a ghost ship. If that's not enough to make the hair stand up on the back of your neck, there's that polar bear. The creature would make anyone's blood run cold. It's terrifying, it's supernatural... and while it scared the pudding out of me, I still felt sorry for it. Now that's a combination of emotions that's almost impossible to pull off, but Johnson does it with aplomb.

A Flower in the Desert by Walter Satterthwait

336 pages

Rating: B+

My Thoughts: I first came to Walter Satterthwait's writing through Miss Lizzie, his historical mystery featuring Lizzie Borden. Soon thereafter, I found his Joshua Croft private investigator series set in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A Flower in the Desert is the third book.

The mystery about a movie star wanting to hire Croft to find his missing wife and daughter is solid. Joshua Croft reminds me of Todd Borg's Owen McKenna in that he, too, is willing to be in a relationship on the woman's terms, even if those terms are contrary to his own desires. Croft has an irreverent sense of humor that often gets him into difficulty (asking an extremely difficult motel clerk, "Were you ever in the Wehrmacht?")

The mysteries are good, the characters are good, and Satterthwait's poetic descriptions of Santa Fe and the surrounding area bring the landscape to life. The next book in the series is waiting for me patiently.

Red, Green or Murder by Steven F. Havill

283 pages

Rating: B+

 

My Thoughts: Steven Havill's long-running Posadas County series never disappoints. He brings a fictional county in southwestern New Mexico to life with a phenomenal cast headed by former Sheriff Bill Gastner. 

 

Gastner is now a livestock inspector. On the Torrance Ranch, he's counting a small herd of cattle and thinking ahead to lunch in town with an old friend. But a breeze kicks up, a horse spooks, and he's taking a badly injured cowboy in the back of his SUV to meet an ambulance. He's barely back in town when Undersheriff Estelle Reyes-Guzman asks for his help in investigating an unattended death. Gastner's friend had gone ahead and eaten lunch... and died of an apparent heart attack. But something's not right.

 

To make matters even worse, the herd of cattle Gastner counted is wandering down the highway with no sign of the cowpuncher or his boss's $40,000 truck and livestock trailer. 

The mysteries concerning the theft of the vehicles and the death of Gastner's friend are fast-paced and absorbing. That's nothing new for this series. And neither is the fact that Havill is a master at creating and nurturing a cast of characters that grows and changes. Insomniac Gastner is older, has health problems, and his role in the series has changed, but he's gathered around him people like Estelle Reyes-Guzman who have become his extended family. Their lives have been woven seamlessly into this series that deserves to be much better known than it is.

~

Have I caught up with my reviews? Nope. That just means that you'll be hearing from me again, doesn't it? Next week, I hope to tell you a bit about some of the books I'm looking forward to-- there's a bunch! I'd also like to put together a link round-up. We shall see. If everything goes to plan, Denis and I will be going to the Phoenix Zoo, so there will be photos from that to share as well. I just may have to blog more frequently, eh?

At Ease With the Dead by Walter Satterthwait

 

First Line: Normally a Santa Fe summer is one of the blessings of the Weather Gods.

 

While out fishing, private investigator Joshua Croft saves elderly Navajo Daniel Begay from a trio of abusive rednecks. Never expecting to see him again, he's very surprised when Begay shows up in his office and wants to hire him. The case is unusual, and it isn't going to be easy. Begay wants Croft to recover the bones of Ganado, a Navajo warrior... and those bones have been missing since 1925.

Ganado's skeleton was stolen by an oil prospector on sacred Navajo land. Less than a month later, the prospector was killed, and the bones haven't been seen since. 

Making it perfectly clear that he probably won't be successful, Croft takes on a case which he believes to be hopeless but relatively harmless. He couldn't be more wrong. The deeper he digs, the more danger he puts himself and others in. From El Paso to the Navajo Nation, Croft's investigation puts him solidly in the sights of someone who thinks nothing of killing to keep long-buried secrets.

~

A few years back, I stumbled across a mystery, Miss Lizzie, in which Satterthwait made Lizzie Borden one half of a detective duo. I loved the story, and I loved Satterthwait's poetic writing style. I went looking for more written by him and came across his first Joshua Croft mystery, Wall of Glass. Since the series is set in Santa Fe and I'd fallen in love with the place after a visit, I read it and knew I'd be back for more. I really enjoy Satterthwait's descriptions of the New Mexican landscape, how he develops his characters, and his stories.

Croft works for (and loves) wheelchair-bound Rita Mondragon, an intelligent, beautiful, and stubborn woman who states, "I'll leave this house when I can walk out of it." Croft feels she's making a mistake, but he's willing to accept Rita on her own terms. 

The mystery in At Ease With the Dead (the title taken from a quote by Geronimo) is filled with danger, archaeology, oil prospecting, and humor. It's a "buddy movie" in which Croft often finds himself paired with the elderly Navajo, Daniel Begay. The old man has so many tricks up his sleeve that one day Croft looks at him and asks, "Are you really Batman?" This pairing provides much-needed levity in what could have been a very dark story.

Croft has a smart-alecky wit that I really appreciate. Satterthwait has developed a strong cast of characters, and he certainly knows how to construct a mystery that keeps readers guessing as well as bringing his setting to life. He also has the knack of including sentences that can make you stop and think. "Guilt is sometimes a secret sort of self-esteem" or "If you see the world as an organism, a single entity, which of course it is, then you can't help but see the human race as a kind of virus on its surface, actively engaged in  killing off the host."

Story, setting, language, characters, Satterthwait's Joshua Croft is an often thought-provoking mystery series that I will certainly be returning to.

At Ease With the Dead by Walter Satterthwait

eISBN: 9781453251287

Open Road Integrated Media © 2012

Originally published 1991.

eBook, 248 pages

 

Private Investigator, #2 Joshua Croft mystery

Rating: B+

Source: Purchased from Amazon.

Wall of Glass by Walter Satterthwait

First Line: It was a Friday in mid-April, warm and clear and spectacularly sunny, and a blizzard was due by midnight.

Ever since visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico a couple of years ago, I've found myself wanting to read more mysteries set there. When I came across the first in the Joshua Croft series, Wall of Glass, I remembered enjoying a book he'd written about Lizzie Borden, so I had to give this book a try. I'm glad I did.

We don't learn much about Croft's backstory in this book. He's a private investigator working for the Mondragon Agency owned by wheelchair-bound Rita Mondragon. He's approached by a cowboy who wants Croft to fence a stolen necklace worth $100,000. Croft turns him down, and the cowboy is found dead the next day. The insurance company now wants the Mondragon Agency to find the necklace.

This involves Croft digging through the backgrounds of the dead cowboy, his associates, and the rich family from whom the necklace was stolen. Of course, he finds skeletons in every closet he pokes his nose into with the requisite danger heightening at every turn.

This is a strong mystery with plenty of misdirection, and I certainly did enjoy its New Mexico setting. I also liked Joshua Croft's voice and his sense of humor. I'll definitely be reading more of this series. Now would also be a good time to give a shout-out to Open Road Integrated Media for bringing back so many older, well-written books which certainly deserve a new lease on life.

Wall of Glass by Walter Satterthwait

eISBN: 9781453251256

Open Road Integrated Media © 2012

Originally published 1987.

eBook, 254 pages

Private Investigator, #1 Joshua Croft mystery

Rating: B+

Source: Purchased from Amazon.

Miss Lizzie by Walter Satterthwait

First Line: The days were longer then, in that long-ago summer at the shore, and the air was softer, and the sunlight more golden as it winked and wobbled off a bluer sea.

It is 1921 and Prohibition has just begun. Thirteen-year-old Amanda Burton is staying with her father, stepmother and older brother in a house along the Massachusetts coast.

Amanda finds out their next-door neighbor is the notorious Lizzie Borden, the woman who was acquitted of taking a hatchet and cutting her father and stepmother to pieces. Amanda meets Lizzie, and they become friends-- meeting almost every day so Lizzie can teach the young girl card tricks.

Amanda and her brother loathe their stepmother, and when Amanda wakes up on the hottest day of the summer to find the woman hacked to bits in a bedroom in their house, suspicion falls squarely on the shoulders of neighbor Lizzie. Amanda doesn't believe that Lizzie did it (she doesn't believe Lizzie killed her parents either), and with Miss Lizzie taking the initiative to hire both a lawyer and a Pinkerton detective, the unlikely pair sets out to find the real killer. Their investigation uncovers a nest of secrets. All they have to do is find the guardian who's willing to kill to keep his--or her-- secrets hidden.

Satterthwait's writing style captured me from the first paragraph, and another scene set in the fog actually had the hair standing on the back of my neck. The story is told by a much older Amanda who seems very nostalgic for the innocence she had during those days. As the story progresses and suspicion shifts from one person to another, the reader can easily begin to doubt all the characters-- even Amanda herself.

Satterthwait's poetic style brings the era to life in a swiftly moving plot that shifts nimbly through the fog of secrets and suspicions until the reader is deliciously lost. Amanda and Miss Lizzie are now one of my favorite detective duos, and I have more of the author's books on their way to my doorstep.

Miss Lizzie by Walter Satterthwait

ISBN: 9780312034009

St. Martin's Press  ©1989

Hardcover, 342 pages

Genre: Historical Mystery

Rating: A

Source: Paperback Swap