DESPITE HERSELF--Review

 

Despite Herself

By Jessie Chandler

ISBN: 978-1-64247-673-6

A 2025 release from

Bella Books

 

Passion is a six-letter word. Passion is both a noun and a verb and, in this novel, expresses a wide range of feelings, incidents, activity and results. It will be interesting to discover how booksellers will categorize and shelve this excellent novel. Is it a mystery, a procedural, a romance, or is it a detailed, carefully laid out character study? In my view, the answer is yes.

Two strong women, one a police officer, the other a bar owner, both with troubled incidents in their pasts, encounter each other in the midst of murder, divorce, alcoholic indulgence and riotous humor.  Theo Zaccardo is the owner/operator of a Duluth bar called the Mashed Spud, an LGBTQ hangout. She’s quickly under suspicion as the probable killer of an obnoxious, trouble-making patron. Bec Harrison is a recovering divorcee from Detroit who has moved to Duluth to get away from her cheating spouse and all the scenes that reminds her of her failed romance. She’s a talented cop and that results in her hiring by Duluth PD.arrisonH

Harrison is assigned the murder at the Mashed Spud and her connection to Theo grows. The investigation and the gradual reveal of earlier difficulties in both women’s lives is carefully blended and logically produced. This is a well-written novel with many appropriate descriptive elements that will carry readers into the physical places and the even deeper emotional developments. A moving, engrossing, carefully-paced novel with surprising and well-set conclusions.

POSTMARKED CASTLE COVE--Review

 POSTMARKED CASTLE COVE

by Judy M. Kerr 

ISBN: 978-1-63304-075-5

Released by Launch Point Press, 2025 

MC McCall is an up-front on-duty experienced member of the US Postal  Service. She's also a recently recovering alcoholic. She's just finished a recovery program at a local clinic in Minnesota, faces regular AA meetings and two of her long-time Minneapolis pals. Not a happy camper. 

Her next assignment is a few hundred miles north to Castle Grove and a robbery at the local post office. McCall recognizes she's still in some ways on probation so she sets out to nail down this relatively minor crime. Readers of this troubling, intense crime novel will surely recognize that McCall is about to step onto a slippery slope and into an evil, dangerous and nasty situation that far outranks a simple robbery gone awry.

The author's language is precise and firm, often blunt, but always to the point. The characters come alive off the page and sometimes smack a reader in the face. The pace of the novel is relentless, even those character-explaining asides when McCall returns to home base in Saint Paul, interruptions in her pursuit of the postal robber.

Gradually, readers are introduced to that region of Minnesota called the North Shore which has a significant effect on the plot and on many of the characters that people this story. There are a lot of characters, but most are carefully detailed so as to be separately recognized by the reader.

Postal Inspector McCall is gradually drawn into crimes in Castle Cove which are the most evil and heinous imaginable. And while they are dealt with by this author in a way that makes the reading more palatable, that decision tends to slightly reduce the punch of the actions of some of the characters. Be that as it is, the novel follows McCall's struggle with her personal additions and the negative influence of the evil she confronts in thoughtful, careful ways that will engage the sympathetic and attentive reader.

 

 

 

MALICE --Review

MALICE

 by S.J.Smith 

ISBN: 979-8-9868495-3-6

 Paperback published by

 SightlinePress, Saint Paul, MN, 2025 

 Anyone with experience with officers of the law knows they come in a wide variety of humanity. Backgrounds are varied, although in most states, including Minnesota, police officers have a certain level of education. It affects their abilities in communicating with the public.

 In this novel, Pete Culnane, a Saint Paul detective, with partner Martin Tierney, are both well-educated, experienced detective who understand and use their language at a fairly high level. It affords them opportunities to interact cleanly and politely with victims, suspects and witnesses. In this, the author's tenth Culnane story, the lead detective is still on a return path from paternity leave. Now, as a new father, he has to deal wit the question of allotted and obligated time, for the job and for the family. He wants to spend as much time with his family as he can, but there is this murdered guy on a Saint Paul street curb. Fred Brooten is discovered shot to death on a cold and miserable early Spring day in St. Paul. He was shot to death and the forensic unit has noted, for the detective team that Brooten is flat on his face in the snow. He was shot as was his nearby truck. The detective trio, preserving their gentlemanly traits travel the city, following clues and ideas until they reach the identity of the killer of Brooten. 

 But then comes the other question. Why was he killed? The answer will surprise readers.

PANTHERS PLAY FOR KEEPS--review

Panthers Play For Keeps

By Clea Simon

ISBN: 9780590588703

2014 from Poisoned Pen Press 

Believe it or don’t, author Clea Simon makes a good case for animal—human communication in the English language. Or, probably in whatever receiver’s language this fine noir mystery translates to. The author, with care and talent, takes the reader to a place where we can easily believe Pru Marlowe has talents and abilities well beyond those of most ordinary humans. She is a dog-walker and a trainer for dogs slated to be companion dogs to humans with limited capabilities. These animals become pets, as many will know, but they are trained to a level of caring for their owners such that their humans are able to function in a complicated society. These animals, like guide dogs, with their ultimate owners, are psychically bonded and learn to communicate. Trainers, like Pru Marlowe, likewise develop communication channels with the animals and sometimes are faced with complicated crimes as in this excellent novel. Even with a large number of characters, the plot line is moved along at a ressonable pace with style and logic from brutal mysterious murder to a logical and thoughtful conclusion. The novel is written with style, thought, and care for the animal and human characters that is every bit as logical and emotional as that between human couples. Dogs and Cats have equivalent strong roles and undoubtedly are happy with the conclusion of the novel.

 

A BULLET APIECE -- Review

 

A Bullet Apiece
By John Joseph Ryan

ISBN: 9781943075010

A 2015 release from

Blank Slate Press 

The novel is a comfort read. That is, if you are an inveterate reader of crime fiction, you can be comforted knowing that every joke, every bon mot, just about every cliché of the genre finds its way into the pages of this book. The dialogue ain’t far off, either.

Ed Darvis is a St. Louis PI with a main-floor office in a seedy part of town. The period is sometime after the end of the second world war. Across the road-I suspect it’s a paved street-is a charter school of some kind and while Mr. Darvis is currently idle, he spends time smoking cigarettes, observing the kiddies and ogling the teachers. And some of the parents.

One day, a leggy, seductive woman who drives a late-model Caddy coupe bursts from the school door in what our astute PI deduces is intense fear, “radiating off her like heat waves.” She roars off in a cloud of exhaust leaving one of the teachers, clearly agitated, standing at the schoolroom door. What we have is clearly a case of child abduction. Enter PI Ed Darvis, cigarette dangling, loaded .38 in his belt, ready and willing to find the child and bed either comely teacher or luscious mother, not necessarily in that order.

The dialogue is snappy and often cute, the action is rousing and predictable and the plot becomes surprisingly tangled. Whether the whole thing is a tongue-in-cheek put-on or a serious attempt at a novel is for readers to determine. This reviewer is persuaded the author invested a considerable effort to produce this story and it has its moments.

THE RECRUIT--REVIEW

 This 2022 Netflix TV series is laughable. It is unrealistic. With zero prep a young inexperienced lawyer is sent undercover to Yemen. In real life he would have been dead before the flick reached its midpoint of the first episode. The script is bad. The direction is bad. The acting is marginal at best. Anyone watching would NOT be moved to join the CIA. Waste of time.

NEAR DEATH - REVIEW

 

Near Death

By Richard Wall 

ISBN:191246122

A 2020 release from

Burning Chair Ltd

 

A carefully crafted thriller of a crime novel. While the credibility of the novel requires substantial suspension of disbelief, the end result is eminently satisfying. A NYPD detective becomes embroiled in a devilish manipulation of the minds of authorities with the horrific repetition of the murder of a family in New York.

The killer confesses and is put to death in the Sing Sing electric char. The prison priest, a central character in the novel, is noticeably disturbed by his encounter with the convicted murderer. When the crimes are repeated, the pastor, has already left his position and his religious order and retreated to a small mountain village in South Carolina. Will the plea of a despicable murderer result in the return of the pastor to New York? What are the psychological implications of an apparently unbreakable link between pastor and the deceased killer?

These are some of the fascinating questions author Richard Wall addresses in this moving, emotional and very well plotted crime novel that moves between urban New York and rural South Carolina. The contrasting physical settings are effectively used by the author. The rising tension rises steadily as former pastor John Henry Beauregard, with help from a small cadre of friends and supporters, struggles to create and enact a winning position against a crafty, immoral Satanic killer. In the end, readers will decide for themselves the acceptability of the results. But in the meantime, readers will experience a well-designed and enthralling crime novel.