HOME BODY (Amateur Sleuth/Reporter) – VG

Gerry Boyle – 8th in series

Berkeley Prime Crimes, 2004 – Hardcover

When reporter Jack McMorrow rescues Rocky, a young runaway boy, from been beaten by a gang of street kids, he has no idea it will lead to rescuing the boy many times, being suspected of being a pedophile, becoming

involved in the secret’s of the boy’s family and both Jack and his wife Roxanne

having their lives at…

SNOBBERY WITH VIOLENCE (Edwardian Cozy) – G

Marion Chesney (aka M.C. Beaton) – 2nd in series

St. Martin’s Minotaur Mysteries, 2004 - Paperback

Captain Harry Catheart is hired by the father of Lady Rose Summer to investigate the man courting his daughter. After it’s discovered the man is a complete bounder and Rose ends her first season in disgrace, she is sent off to attend a

party at Telby Castle along with other young women…

GRAVE UNDERTAKING (Amateur Sleuth/Former Policeman) – VG

Mark de Castrique – 2nd in series

Poisoned Pen Press, 2004 – Hardcover

Former policeman Barry Clayton now manages the family funeral parlor, in a small North Carolina town, for his father with Alzheimer’s. But when he oversees the moving of a grave

and finds an extra body with a bullet hole in it’s head, a gun by it’s feet and

the photograph of Barry’s girlfriend in…

TEN BIG ONES (Amateur Sleuth/Humor) –G+

Janet Evanovich – 10th in series

St. Martin’s Press, 2004 – Hardcover

When Stephanie witnesses a store robbery, having yet another car blown up, and can identify the perpetrator, she finds herself the target for a local gang who place a contract on her life.

The plot is pretty thin and it’s not the best of the series, but the delightful characters and…

DEAD MEN RISE UP NEVER (Unlicensed Investigator) – Okay

Ron Faust – 1st in series

Dell, 2004 – Paperback

Former CID investigator and current law student Dan Shaw agrees to find the currently missing heir to a very large fortune. Instead, he finds a cabin cruiser containing a dead goat, and underwater, seven anatomically correct inflatable mannequins

and a female corpse.

The plot was suspenseful—man…

A REGIMENTAL MURDER (Regency-Period Mystery) – VG

Ashley Gardner – 2nd in series

Berkeley Prime Crime, 2004 – Paperback

Retired cavalry officer Captain Gabriel Lacey, rescues a beautiful woman from the seeming intention of suicide. In turn, Lydia Weston, widow of Colonel Weston of the 43rd Light Dragoons who had confessed to killing a fellow officer

and had “accidentally” died before his trial, asks Lacey to find the…

MASK OF NIGHT (A Shakespearean Murder Mystery) – VG

Philip Gooden – 5th in series

Constable – London, 2004 – Hardcover

With the coming of Lent, the impending death of Queen Elizabeth and increasing deaths from the Plague, the acting company, The Chamberlain’s Men, has traveled to Oxford

where it has been commissioned by Dr. Hugh Fern to stage a private

performance of Romeo and Juliet. However, when the body of Dr. Fern…

CAUGHT STEALING (Amateur Sleuth) – G+

Charlie Huston – 1st book

Ballantine Books, 2004 – Hardcover

Bartender Hank Thompson agrees to look after his neighbor’s cat, Bud, for a few days and, as a result, is beaten so badly he loses a kidney. He is chased, beaten, tortured,

and friends murdered by a pair of Russians, a red-headed Asian, two brothers,

and a dirty cop all because of a key found in the bottom of Bud’s…

FALSE LIGHT (Suspense) – G-

Caroline Llewellyn – Standalone

Scribner, 1996 – Hardcover

Victorian spiritualist Marianna Hobhouse is the subject of research by Dana Morrow. While at an auction where Dana meets Daniel Finn, son of Quentin Finn, both photographers

who now live in the house, Kerreck Du, once owned by Marianna and her husband,

famous photographer Henry. Dana receives

an invitation to the house to further her…

FACELESS KILLERS (Swedish Police Procedural)- G+

Henning Mankell – 7th in series

Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. English Translation, 2003 – Trade Paperback

Police Inspector Kurt Wallander is called to the scene of a particularly violent attack of an elderly couple on a small farm. The husband is dead but the wife, found with a noose around her neck, utters the work “foreign” before dying. Wallander becomes obsessed with solving…

BAD BUSINESS (Private investigator) – G+

Robert B. Parker – 31st Spenser

G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2004 – Hardcover

Spenser is hired by Marlene Crowley to find out whether her husband, an executive with Kinergy, is cheating on her. But when he finds Marlene is being watched by a fellow PI hired by her husband, and the woman with whom Marlene’s husband is

having an affair, is being watched by a third investigator, Spenser decides…

SHACKLES (Private Investigator) – EX

Bill Pronzini – 17th in “Nameless” series

St. Martin’s Press, 1988 – Hardcover

Imagine leaving your girlfriend’s apartment a few days before Christmas, being forced into a car, handcuffed, chloroformed and awake shackled with a leg iron attached to a wall in an isolated mountain cabin with

13 week’s provisions and told you are being left to die there. This is the situation in which…

OPEN AND SHUT (Legal Thriller) – G

David Rosenfelt – 1st book

Mysterious Press/Warner Books, 2002 – Hardcover

His father, a retired district attorney, asks without an explanation New Jersey Attorney Andy Carpenter to take on the appeals case of death row inmate Willie Miller, whom he had prosecuted. Andy’s father dies a few days later and

leaves an inheritance of over $22 million, about which Andy had never

known. When he…

THE MURDER STONE (Gothic Suspense)- VG

Charles Todd – Standalone

Bantam, 2003 – Hardcover

Their grandfather, Francis Hatton, raised Francesca Hatton and her four male cousins, all orphaned at an early age. Each of the cousins has been killed in the Great War, and now Francisca is alone to grieve the death of her beloved

grandfather, whom she thought she knew.

But at the reading of his will, she reads a…

LIVE BAIT (Police Procedural) – VG

P.J. Tracy – 2nd in series

G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2004 – Hardcover

When elderly, well-loved Morey Gilbert is murdered, Milwaukee Dets. Leo Magozzi and Gino Rolseth are called to investigate a sad, but basic murder. However, when other

elderly people in the same neighborhood and with a common history are also

murdered, it’s clear there more going on than first seemed.…

MAISIE DOBBS (Historical Novel/Mystery) – Okay

Jacqueline Winspear – 1st book

Penguin Books, 2003 – Trade Paperback

Set in England between 1910 and 1929 is the story of Maisie who goes from being the daughter of a fruit-and-vegetable man, to the in-between maid of wealthy aristocrats where she receives special tutoring, on

to college and then serving as a Nurse in France during WWI and, finally,

setting up an investigative…