#Edelweiss

Review of Fool’s Paradise by Mike Lupica – a Jesse Stone novel

A great first outing for Mike Lupica in Jesse Stone’s world… I’m often not a huge fan of follow-on books in series whose original author has died, but I very much liked Fool’s Paradise, Mike Lupica’s first crack at a title in Robert B Parker’s Jesse Stone series.  Lupica has also previously written two titles

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Review of Fools Die on Friday by Erle Stanley Gardner – e-book version coming soon

Kind of like cotton candy: lots of fun with no deeper meaning… Aside from the rather macabre origins of the title (we’re told in the author’s note up front that executions in California are on Fridays), Fools Die on Friday is another light, quick read in Erle Stanley Gardner’s Bertha Cool/Donald Lam series.  To be

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A review of The Turquoise Shop by Frances Crane – recently published

A fun mystery, with a bit of 1940s awkwardness… The Turquoise Shop is the first in Frances Crane’s Patrick and Jean Abbott series, set in a fictional New Mexico artists’ colony, Santa Maria, which has some notable similarities to the town of Taos, where Crane lived.  The book was written in the 1940s, and unfortunately

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A review of Ruby Fever by Ilona Andrews – coming soon

A great finish, but hopefully not the end… The husband-and-wife authors who make up Ilona Andrews have written a satisfying and very enjoyable finish to the second storyline in their Hidden Legacy world.     And although by this point, readers are pretty sure that the middle Baylor sister, Catalina, is going to end up with her

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A review of Castle in the Air by Donald E Westlake

Light and fluffy and fun, although with zero nutritional value… Castle in the Air, first published in 1980, is one of Donald E Westlake’s caper books – a light-hearted and over-the-top adventure that may remind readers of the movie version of The Pink Panther, or maybe the movie version of Hopscotch.   And, given that it

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Review of The Butcher of Casablanca by Abdelilah Hamdouchi

Set in Morocco… I’m always interested in mysteries set in unusual (to me, at least) locations, and Morocco certainly is that.  So I was excited to receive a review copy of The Butcher of Casablanca, and I enjoyed it, although it had some issues.  To start with the good, author Abdelilah Hamdouchi does a very

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Review of Family Business by SJ Rozan – recently published

SJ Rozan’s latest Lydia Chin/Bill Smith title, Family Business, is a wonderful look at New York’s Chinatown, full of atmosphere and a strong sense of place.   But it also addresses some complicated topics, starting on a small scale with Lydia’s own family dynamics, including her unstated “don’t ask/don’t tell” bargain with her very Chinese mother

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Review of The Sleeping Car Murders by Sébastien Japrisot – coming soon

If I hadn’t already known I was reading an English translation of a French murder mystery, I would have figured it out anyway by the fourth paragraph of The Sleeping Car Murders.  That’s the paragraph where Pierre, the railroad employee whose job it is to check over the just-arrived Phocéen train, and thus the man

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