THE FRUMIOUS BANDERSNATCH - Ex

Ed McBain – 53^th book in 87^th precinct series

Bison Records' self-styled impresario Barney Loomis runs into a snag in his effort to catapult his newest performer, Tamar Valparaiso, to stardom. As Tamar is lip-synching the provocative video of her first album

aboard a rented yacht, two men in Saddam Hussein and Yasir Arafat masks snatch

her before a stunned…

Set in 1908 Cairo, Captain Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt (head of Cairo’s CID, focused on political, not police, matters), investigates the attempted

murder of prominent politician and philanderer Nuri Pasha. Ostensibly the

target of…

Set in a rogue- and scalawag-ridden Victorian London, 16-year-old Sally Lockhart has no time for the usual trials of adolescence: her father has been murdered, and she needs to find out how and why. But everywhere she turns, she

encounters new scoundrels and secrets. Why do the mere words "seven

blessings" cause one man to keel over and die at their utterance? Who…

When Sean Donovan, cousin to Sheriff Susan Wren, goes to interview Wakely Fromm, who's been in a wheelchair since fighting a forest fire 20 years earlier with his best friend Jack Garrett, governor of Kansas who wants to be

President; he finds Fromm dead in his bathroom, shot in the head, apparently by

his own hand.

Normally I find a plot with…

The East Bay Mystery Readers' Group -

3 February 2004 Meeting Recap

Doug Pearce, of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, leaves his small town at the request of Edna, an exotic older woman who knew his black-sheep

uncle, Russell Pearce. It seems that Russell was murdered in 1948, apparently

while trying to smuggle an outrageously big red diamond out of Singapore.

Beginning in Casablanca and continuing…

PRETTY DEAD – VG

Gerry Boyle – 7^th in series

When reporter Jack McMorrow’s significant other, social service worker Roxanne Masterson, investigates allegations of physical abuse concerning the young daughter of Boston

bluebloods David and Maddie Connelly, Jack senses a shot at a story. There a

beautiful young staff member steals the show, then winds up…

THE DAMASCENED BLADE – EX

Barbara Cleverly – 3^rd in series (UK release)

On a break from his policing duties, Joe Sandilands is visiting his old army friend, James Lindsay, commander of the British army's front line fort at Gor Khatri on the Afghan border. An uneasy peace is in

operation, but into this situation is injected an ill-assorted group of

visitors to the fort.

Although it helps…

PHOENIX - EX

John Connor – 1^st book (UK

release)

DC Karen Sharpe has a past, one of which not even she seems to have full. When her ex drug squad colleague and his informer are found shot on the moors the safe bet is that a mid league

drug dealer had the hit arranged but Sharpe senses otherwise and, realizing she

could be part of the mystery, embarks on an attempt to solve the…

THE ADVENTURESS (original title – “Good Morning, Irene”) – G+

Carol Nelson Douglas – 2^nd in series

Diva/detective Irene Adler and her bridegroom, handsome barrister Godfrey Norton, are honeymooning in Paris when they become embroiled in an investigation: a drowned sailor's body has been

recovered from the Seine, and on…

DO OR DIE – G+

Barbara Fradkin – 1^st in series

When a popular university student from a wealthy family is found stabbed to death in an academic library, tenacious police inspector Michael Green is called in. As he sifts through the evidence, several suspects emerge. Was the

killing a crime of passion and revenge or a…

AGENTS OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS (Fantasy) – G+

Simon R Green – 2^nd in series

A quest for the Unholy Grail-the goblet from which Judas drank at the Last Supper-takes private eye John Taylor deep into the secret, magical heart of London, called the Nightside, where…

LIFE BLOOD – G

Carolyn Llewellyn – Standalone

The inheritor of a Cotswolds cottage, children's book illustrator and writer Jo Treleven flies with her infant son to visit her property and becomes involved in a fifty-year-old murder that took place…

DIVIDED IN DEATH – VG

J.D. Robb – 18^th in series

When sent pictures they are lovers, Roark Industries’ security expert Reva Ewing goes to confront her husband and her best friend only to find them murdered. Roark asks his wife Lieutenant Eve Dallas of the

NYPSD to take the primary lead on the case. When she arrives on the scene, she

sees strange anomalies and thinks Reva was set up to take the fall, but doesn’t

stop…

POLITICAL SUICIDE – VG

Alan Russell – Standalone

Political Suicide features private investigator Will Travis, a different kind of "hotel detective". With his near photographic memory, Travis evaluates restaurants and hotels, reporting on service issues

and employee theft or neglect to his clients. During one of these evaluations

he witnesses a man slipping something into his woman companion's drink. Travis

rescues the woman,…

SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES - G

Sheldon Siegel – 2^nd in series

Attorney Mike Daley and Rosie, his ex-wife and law partner, are hired to defend Skipper Gates, the San Francisco DA. Skipper is an unlikable political type who is accused of murdering a male prostitute with

whom he spent the night. Not only will this scandal potentially ruin Skipper's

career, but he could conceivable be sent to Death Row if a jury finds…

MONKEEWRENCH – EX

P.J. Tracy – 1^st book

An unpopular, troublemaking old couple are brutally murdered in a small Wisconsin town church. While Wisconsin Sheriff Michael Halloran and Deputy Bonar Carlson are working to

solve their case, in the Minnesotan Twin cities, Detectives Leo Magozzi and

Gino Rolseth, are dealing with a serial killer is copying a computer game where

20 murders happen. The games’ designers, a…

The East Bay Mystery Readers' Group -

6 January Meeting Recap

THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN (non-mystery) – Good+

Mitch Albom – 8^th book

Eddie is a wounded war veteran, an old man who has lived, in his mind, an uninspired life. His job is fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. On his 83rd birthday, a tragic accident…

THE AFFAIR OF THE 39 CUFFLINKS – VG

James Anderson – 3^rd in series

Alderley, the 17th-century country house of the Earl of Burford, provides the setting for Anderson's

third 1930s madcap mystery (after The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg…