DOPE THIEF by Dennis Tafoya

Dennis Tafoya’s first novel, DOPE THIEF, published in 2009 is an excellent novel and more emotional of a book than I thought it would or could be. Ray, a young man of 30 who has spent time in “Juvie” and prison for much of his life, has found a way to get some money with his friend Manny by stealing from independent drug dealers. These mostly small-time dealers are unlikely to seek help from the police or the mob in getting back their money or drugs. Ray and Manny even have the DEA jackets to scare the dealers into submitting to them. This seems like a good deal for Ray and Manny until they find much more money and drugs than they expected from some hick drug dealers working out of a farm in northern Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

March 26, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Debut Novel, Mystery/Suspense, Noir

WHEN THE THRILL IS GONE by Walter Mosley

Walter Mosley has created a private eye with a unique take on the world in Leonid McGill, son of Tolstoy McGill and brother to Nikita. Leonid’s Father was a communist activist, a man for the worker, with a philosopher’s tongue. When the Thrill is Gone opens with Leonid having been estranged from his father for many years. However, Leonid often refers to his father’s adages to get him through life. And, like Dr. House, Leonid believes that everybody lies. “Almost everything you know or ever hear is a lie. Advertisements, politicians’ promises, children’s claims of accomplishments and innocence…your own memory.”

March 9, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Award Winning Author, Character Driven, Class - Race - Gender, Mystery/Suspense, New York City, Sleuths Series

HERESY by S. J. Parris

S. J. Parris’s HERESY opens in 1576. A young Dominican monk named Giordano Bruno, who has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, is caught by his superiors reading forbidden books. He flees Italy and the Inquisitor, and is subsequently excommunicated by the Catholic Church. Eventually, he becomes a philosopher and a Doctor of Theology and plans to write a book “that would undo all the certainties not only of the Roman church but of the whole Christian religion.”

March 3, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: Facing History, Mystery/Suspense, Time Period Fiction

INSTRUMENTS OF DARKNESS by Imogen Robertson

Imogen Robertson’s INSTRUMENTS OF DARKNESS is set in the village of Hartswood, West Sussex, at a time when the colonies were waging war against England. The male protagonist, the brusque Gabriel Crowther, is an eccentric and a recluse who has a wide-ranging knowledge of and interest in human anatomy. One day, a local woman, Mrs. Harriet Westerman of Caveley Park, pays him a visit and insists that his maid give him the following note: “I have found a body on my land. His throat has been cut.”

February 27, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Facing History, Gothic, Mystery/Suspense, Time Period Fiction, United Kingdom

HEARTSTONE by C.J. Sansom

In his latest Tudor mystery, HEARTSTONE, C. J. Sansom embroils his hero, lawyer and do-gooder Matthew Shardlake, in several intrigues that take him away from London for a large part of the novel. It is 1545, and the profligate King Henry VIII is squeezing his subjects dry in order to wage an expensive military campaign against France. The king has ordered English currency devalued, levied heavy taxes, conscripted every able-bodied Englishman, and even hired foreign mercenaries to wage war against the enemy.

February 27, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Facing History, Mystery/Suspense, Sleuths Series, Time Period Fiction, United Kingdom

BAD PENNY BLUES by Cathi Unsworth

I’d heard of Jack the Ripper and the Yorkshire Ripper, but before I read British author Cathi Unsworth’s crime novel, BAD PENNY BLUES, I’d never heard of Jack the Stripper. Jack the Stripper was the name given to a serial killer who operated in London during the 60s. His victims were young women–6 in all–whose bodies were found in 1964 and 1965. The crimes–also known as the Hammersmith Murders or the Hammersmith Nudes were never solved, but they had some features in common. The women were prostitutes and they died from strangulation. Some had teeth missing and some of the bodies bore traces of industrial paint. The police eventually connected these 6 murders with two other similar, earlier crimes. They acknowledged that the total murder toll might stretch back to include an unsolved murder committed in 1959, and that a dead woman found in 1963 was possibly yet another victim of the same killer.

February 19, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , , , ,  Â· Posted in: Mystery/Suspense, Real Event Fiction, Time Period Fiction