When I heard the news of Robert B. Parker’s passing, I was heartbroken. I have been reading his Spenser novels for ages and the thought there would be no more of them — too much to contemplate. Sixkill is the 39th Spenser novel and, according to the book jacket, “the last Spenser novel Parker completed.” Now, that doesn’t sound very…final. It sounds like there might be some unfinished stuff out there. I am not completely opposed to another author carrying the mantle, as long as we don’t lose any of the snappy dialogue and hooligan philosophy of the original.

In Sixkill, Spenser is older and wiser and without his usual back-up, Hawk, who is off in Central Asia. We start off with a visit from our old friend, Martin Quirk, who wants Spenser to look into a murder. A particularly nasty piece of work named Jumbo Nelson is shooting a movie in Boston and has apparently murdered a young woman he hooked up with. At least, she died in his bed, the coroner isn’t quite sure of what, and he claims to have been barely sober enough to notice she was dead when he came back from taking a leak. Like I said, nasty fella. As much as everyone wants to put him away, Quirk isn’t sure, and Spenser trusts Quirk’s instincts.

The novel introduces a new character that I think would have had some staying power. Zebulon Sixkill (and what an awesome name that is!) is a Native American college drop-out, former college football star, now a bodyguard for Jumbo Nelson. He’s got a drinking problem (not the sort of thing that is helped by hanging out with celebrities) and he ends up working with Spenser. Actually, what Spenser does is more like mentoring — he helps the kid get sober, gets him back in shape, gets him a job at the gym. Gets him back to a place where he might be able to make something of his life. He’s an interesting young man and, like a lot of other tough guys from previous Spenser novels, could definitely become a recurring character. Sadly, we won’t get to read what Parker might have had in mind.

Sixkill is one of the better Spenser novels I’ve read recently. There were a couple of books where I thought it might be time for Spenser and Susan to retire to a little cabin in the Catskills or something, but there is plenty of snappy dialogue, cool new characters, and an engaging mystery to solve. It was a real pleasure to read, which makes the fact that it is the one that was completely Parker’s all the more melancholy. This is an author and a series that I will truly miss, but I am glad that he goes out on such a high note.

My copy of Sixkill came from my personal library.

To be honest, when I started Other People’s Money by Justin Cartwright, I wasn’t sure that I was going to love it. The book came to me through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program, and when I got the notice I was getting it, I couldn’t remember requesting it. It was a little slow going at first, but the story really draws you in. These aren’t always very likable people, but you find yourself interested in them and wondering how things will turn out for them. Eventually, I found I did not want to put it down.

Sir Harry Trevelyan-Tubal has been the head of Tubal & Co., a small privately-owned bank in England, for decades. The bank is in trouble. His son, Julian, was suckered in, like so many financiers, and now the bank is sunk deep in worthless mortgages and complex financial instruments that he barely understands. His father always said he wanted to run a bank, not a casino, but his son gambled and lost. Now Julian will need some fancy footwork — and shady dealing — to keep the bank solvent.

A stroke has left Harry weakened, unable to write, unable to speak clearly. His wife, Fleur, is absent — she can’t bear to see him this way. He is cared for by his longtime secretary, Estelle, who is secretly in love with him:

“But when Harry’s first wife, Eleanor, killed herself she had foolishly hoped that he might turn to her, Estelle. It was like something from Jane Austen: the plain governess who hopes her good qualities will win through with the master in the end. But he was arranging for Fleur, the twenty-five-year-old actress, to be cast in a play he was financing.”

The complication in all of this is playwright Artair MacLeod, Fleur’s ex-husband. When they divorced, he was given a grant — a quarterly stipend and a stern admonition to stay away from Fleur. That has worked well for MacLeod, until the money dries up. He’s a character, one of my favorites, cobbling together a living out in the sticks from grants and speaking arrangements and children’s theater productions of Thomas the Tank Engine. When the checks stop coming, MacLeod takes action.

I loved the writing in this book — it pulled me in and kept me reading. I loved his descriptions of people and places:

“He couldn’t wait to come back to Cornwall, where you could take a lungful of air which had travelled undisturbed from Nova Scotia, rather than one which had passed through the lungs of twenty wheezing cockneys on its way to yours.”

The descriptions of the villa at Antibes, with its turtle doves and umbrella pines, its hushed servants and the view of the Mediterranean — vivid and enticing. (Well, maybe not the servants, but definitely the turtle doves.) It’s a peek inside a family that is shackled in many ways by its ridiculous wealth, by all the unwritten rules of their status and its obligations. They operate on a different plane than the people around them; it both insulates and isolates them.

You see the trainwreck coming, but there is no getting out of the way. I was particularly impressed with the wrap-up; I hate a book with a bad ending. Here, the storylines are wrapped up nicely, but not too tightly. Even in the train’s path, people manage to salvage bits of their lives; some of them are even happy. All in all, a lovely, satisfying read.

My copy of Other People’s Money was provided by the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program free of charge.

Anyone who reads here regularly will know that I love mysteries. One of the keys to a good mystery series is that it should be accessible — if I haven’t read anything of yours before, I should be able to walk into the series, no matter which book I choose. So when I learned that Black Thunder was the 13th Ella Clah novel, I was a little cautious. The great thing about the book is that without ever reading any of the previous books,  I was able to enjoy Ella’s adventures and not feel at all lost.

Black Thunder takes place on the Navajo reservation (“the Rez”) in New Mexico. One of the most interesting things about the book is the setting and the restrictions it places on Clah’s police work. How can you discuss the suspects in a case when the Navajos avoid using a person’s name? How do you interrogate someone when you have to wait in your car to be invited to their door? It’s a very different way of dealing with people and it was fascinating to see the way that Clah and the other detectives adapted their methods.

The reservation police have discovered a serial killer’s dumping grounds — four bodies, buried close together, all with the same, execution-style cause of death. The bodies need to be identified, commonalities determined, friends and enemies interviews, and they need to do it quickly. From what the coroner has determined, the killer strikes once a year, and it’s nearly that time…

Here’s another difficulty for the tribal police: Navajos do not like to deal with the dead. Which, of course, makes things difficult when you are investigating a murder or trying to perform an autopsy.

“The chindi, the evil in a man, was said to remain earthbound waiting for a chance to create problems for the living. Contact with the dead, or their possessions, was a sure way to summon it to you, so avoidance was the usual strategy.”

The mystery builds slowly, which I like. I hate a story where the killer is obvious while the police are oblivious. Who wants to read about police who aren’t smart enough to catch the crooks? There are some good twists and turns and some subplots to keep you reading along. The only issue I had is that everyone seemed to get along really well. I don’t know that much about actual police work, but it seems likely that the FBI, county police and tribal police would butt heads at some point — jurisdictional issues, policy issues, general posturing. Here, everyone seems to be able to put their ego aside and work together and when does that ever happen in real life? Still, it’s a minor squabble. It’s a very pleasant, readable mystery and I wouldn’t mind at all picking up more in the series.

My copy of Black Thunder was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge. For more on the Ella Clah mysteries, check out the Thurlo’s website.

Well, I have found my new detective obsession. I love good detective fiction and I love my handsome detectives, but I am an equal opportunity fan and Keye Street is my new best girl. The Stranger You Seek by Amanda Kyle Williams is a debut novel with great promise. The characters are terrific and the mystery is compelling — I put the book down half-way through to check Amazon and see if I could pre-order the next book. Sadly, I can’t, but I will be pestering her publisher for a review copy.

Keye Street is a terrific character. She’s a private detective with a sordid past, living in Atlanta, Georgia. She’s Chinese; she was adopted by the Streets when she was just a toddler. She didn’t come from a great background:

“I wasn’t emotionally devastated by the fact that they’d given me up. They did it because they were incapable of caring for a child. I mean, with the prostitution and stripping and drugs and all, they were really busy. I guess I was a little pissed that I’d grown up on cheese grits and gravy…but generally I have been incredibly blessed by their handing over their child.”

She’s also got a lot of baggage. She’s an alcoholic and her drinking destroyed her career at the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. She’ll never officially work in law enforcement again, and with that background she does not make a compelling expert witness. Still, she has carved out a niche for herself in Atlanta, doing background checks, serving subpoenas, and chasing down bail jumpers.  She does tend to gravitate to some odd work:

“I’d been a licensed Bail Recover Agent since leaving the Bureau. It bought the groceries while I built my private investigating business, and it still supplemented by income nicely. My shrink, Dr. Shetty, says it’s a power thing, that I have a brutal case of penis envy. What can I say? I like strapping on a big Glock now and then.”

In The Stranger You Seek, Keye gets caught up in the case of a serial killer. The killer is taunting police, writing letters to the media, and perhaps targeting those involved in the investigation. There are some real scares, some interesting twists, and a story you can really get wrapped up in. I was left with a few questions, but all in all this was a great read.

My copy of The Stranger You Seek was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

I was very excited to receive this collection of stories. This is the third Ellen Datlow collection I’ve read, the second that I’ve reviewed, and I think she does a great job of choosing really interesting stories that all play to a theme. Blood and Other Cravings isn’t your typical book about vampires. These aren’t necessarily creatures that suck your blood and hate garlic, but they are creatures who steal something essential from you. They draw something — energy, will, love, vitality — from you and leave your diminished. They aren’t terribly happy stories, not surprisingly. Two of them were so cruel that I found them deeply disturbing. But all in all, this is a very good collection.

It’s always tough to review a book of short stories. Where do you begin? What if you love some stories and hate others? This is pretty easy review, though: most of the stories were quite good. I didn’t love the collection as much as I did Naked City, but I think that is partly because of the subject matter. Talking about something that sucks the life out of you — even if we’re not talking about your blood — is not cheery. But the stories aren’t all doom and gloom, they just aren’t as funny as in some of the other collections.

I particularly enjoyed “X for Demetrious” by Stephen Duffy. It is based on the true story of a man who was found dead in his apartment, surrounded by lines of salt, bottles of…waste, and cloves of garlic. It is a distressing look at a mind that is caving in on itself. I was also thrilled to see a story from Kathe Koja — I reviewed her novel Under the Poppy last year and loved it. “Toujours” is not a vampire story, but it is a story about losing the thing that sustains you, having it taken away from you. It fits right in, in its own way.

I also really enjoyed “Blood Yesterday, Blood Tomorrow” by Richard Bowes. I could easily understand the appeal of the mementos of “Myrna’s Place” and other, similar establishments, the feeling that you knew a little something that the world at large did not know. I have always found there is nothing quite as enticing as being in the inner circle, knowing the secret stuff that others can’t guess at — very, very alluring. And if you can profit from that, why not?

There were two stories that I found very disturbing. These were stories of cruelty that haunted me for a bit, a look at being the vampire that was not at all appealing. The first was “Mrs. Jones” by Carol Emshwiller. A lonely woman makes a discovery that lets her get something she desperately wants and also gives her a mean little triumph over her equally lonely sister. But what she is willing to do to get it! It brought out all my protective instincts. The second story was “Mulberry Boys” by Margo Lanagan. It’s a little difficult in the beginning, purposely so, to sort out exactly what is going on, but once you do…shiver. Again, you can’t help but feel a deep sympathy for the poor fellow, with his gentle protests. I found it much more distressing than the stories of more forthright violence.

Overall, this is an excellent collection. There are stories that look at the theme from a variety of angles. There’s a bit of humor (“The Baskerville Midgets” by Reggie Oliver) and a couple of good scares.

My copy of Blood and Other Cravings was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

I was really looking forward to reading this book! From the minute it arrived, it sat on the shelf, in the To Be Read pile, and whispered to me every time I walked by. You could tell by the cover that it was going to be racy. There was also the subtitle, “A Novel of Sex & Violence”, to give you a clue. And the publisher — Hard Case Crime. Doesn’t that just sound like it’s going to be a great book? And Lawrence Block’s Getting Off did not disappoint.

This is a novel about a female serial killer, but a woman so interesting that sometimes you forget just what she is. She picks up men in bars, takes them home and has sex with them, then she drugs them and kills them. She takes their money, their credit cards, whatever she needs to pay her bills. When she gets bored, she moves on — new city, new neighborhood, new name. She’s been doing some version of that since she left home (and believe me, her leaving home was a story in itself).

Katherine (at least that’s how she starts out) is a woman on a mission. She has decided that she needs to kill every man she’s ever had sex with. Now for some of us — most of us, I would guess — that’s not a really long list, at least not compared to Katherine’s. There are probably hundreds of men on her list, but since she kills most of them, it’s not too daunting. If only she could find them all…

Okay, this is not a book to leave around for the kiddies to read. There are parts that are downright raunchy. (I consider that a plus.) Of course, if you didn’t figure that out from the cover, this is probably not warning enough. Katherine is a very disturbed person, but yet, I almost found myself rooting for her. (In one situation, I was definitely on Team Katherine, although I think she was Missie by then.) And then, just as you’re almost enjoying her exploits, she does something horrible. Something that you can’t overlook. And you’re a little disgusted with yourself for forgetting that she’s a vicious, disturbed serial killer. How can you not love a book you get that caught up in?

The ending…I wondered where Block was going with this one. I didn’t exactly think he has written himself into a corner, but I was sorting through possible scenarios and not coming up with much. It managed to surprised me and I love the way things wrapped up. I’ve come across a lot of books that are great right up to the last chapter, then they fizzle. This delivered a very interesting ending.

This book was originally written under the name Jill Emerson. According to Jill’s webpage, she hasn’t had a book out since 1975! It’s a surprising assortment from a male author, and worth checking out. (If you scroll to the bottom of her webpage, there are links and descriptions of the other novels.)

My copy of Getting Off was an Advance Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

You start out feeling very sorry for Lucian Glass. He’s late picking up his girlfriend; she ends up dead. He meets with an important witness; he gets bashed over the head and the witness ends up dead. He has nightmares, compulsions, crippling headaches. But what if it is all his fault? What if this is all related to his past…his past lives.

In The Hypnotist, Lucian Glass is a member of the FBI’s Art Crime Team. He is caught up in the case of Malachi Samuels, a renowned reincarnationist who is searching for Memory Tools, artifacts which may finally prove that reincarnation exists and help us access our past lives.

It’s a complicated plot, with much of it is centered in New York, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There are stolen paintings, artwork with shady origins, espionage and an assortment of plots and subplots, designed to keep a reader guessing. There’s a Matisse, a statue of a Greek god, and a Trojan horse. Throw in some startling coincidences, some past-life drama and a little romance, and you’ve got a pretty entertaining mystery.

I was a little confused in the beginning of the book; there is a lot of talk about Memory Tools, but no real explanation of what they are. I’m not sure if this was explained in Rose’s earlier novels on reincarnation (The Reincarnationist and The Memorist), but even Google didn’t give me much information. But that’s a fairly small complaint. A little reading and I was pretty sure I knew what it was we were hunting for (although I admit that I have no idea how a “pot of fragrant wax” is going to help).

This is an excellent book for those who like their mysteries with twisty plots. The action comes at you from all directions and time periods. I found it very easy to sit down and lose myself in the tangled storylines.

A few weeks ago, M.J. Rose was a guest on my website and she told a great story about a little girl named Veronica, a visit to the Met, and how they inspired this book. It is definitely worth checking out.

My copy of The Hypnotist is an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

In a sense, The Woodcutter is a fairy tale. Not a cute Disney fairy tale, but one of those old Grimm Brothers’ tales, with heartbreak and revenge and bad folks meeting nasty ends. Even while parts of the story have a very modern feel, there are still ties to its more mythic underpinnings. I really enjoyed that part of the story.

Wolf Hadda is a successful businessman who describes his life as a fairy tale. His father was a woodcutter, the groundskeeper for a castle, and he grew up in a cabin in the woods. He fell in love with the daughter of the castle’s owner and eventually won her hand. But everything changes when he is accused of a shocking crime and gets swept up in accusations and investigations. In typical Wolf fashion, he doesn’t wait for the wheels of justice to grind him up. In a bid for freedom (more stubborn than desperate), there is an horrific accident that leaves Wolf crippled, disfigured, and near death. He wakes up to a world in which his friends have deserted him, his wife is divorcing him and he has been all but convicted of child pornography. His fairy tale is over.

Years later, he agrees to see the prison psychiatrist, Alva (from the Swedish for “elf”) to talk about his conviction. Their talks lead to acceptance and recognition of his crimes and, eventually, to parole. That’e when the fun begins.

The most interesting part of the book for me was Wolf’s prison interviews with Alva. The reader, of course, begins by assuming that Wolf is innocent; Alva is convinced he is guilty. Everything he says is proof of denial, every aspect of his childhood lays the groundwork for his future perversions. She takes nothing at face value. It was both fascinating and frustrating to me as a reader — you want to shout at Alva that she is being unfair to Wolf, but, of course, her reactions are perfectly normal for someone working with convicts — I’m sure most of her patients insist that they are innocent.

Wolf takes up residence in his old family home, adjacent to the grounds of the castle where his in-laws still live. The rustic cabin, the isolation, the disgust of his neighbors — it would be a very difficult existence for most men, but Wolf seems to thrive. After all, he is a man with a purpose…

This is really a terrific story. Some of it requires some suspension of disbelief, especially in the later chapters, but it is a modern-day crime mystery set against a fairy-tale backdrop of castles and woods and cliffs. Wolf is a fascinating character and I was not at all surprised that Alva became somewhat obsessed with him; it would be easy enough to do. The differences between Wolf’s family and that of his “princess”, Imogen, are startling and play an important role in the story, both the modern plot and the myth behind it. It’s a thick book — 500+ pages — but the story draws you in and keeps you turning pages throughout. Definitely worth the reading time and effort.

My copy of The Woodcutter was an advanced reader copy, provided free of charge.

Well, the title is a little longer than that, but you get the general idea.

Fabulous Finds: How Expert Appraiser Lee Drexler Sold Wall Street’s Charging Bull, Found Hidden Treasures and Mingled with the Rich & Famous is a quick little read (under 200 pages) about art appraisal — determining the value of all sorts of art objects for insurance, estate and sale purposes. She has visited the homes of the rich and famous, of hoarders and eccentrics, and looked at all of their stuff. This is high up on my list of very cool jobs.

It’s a challenging job, putting a price tag on artwork and collectibles. How do you put a price on a one-of-a-kind object, like the Wall Street Bull?* What do you compare to Prince’s guitar to get a comparable price? Interesting questions — but mostly I want to walk around people’s houses and look at their stuff.

For the most part, I enjoyed Fabulous Finds. Drexler has some great stories — not surprising, considering what she does. I love the idea of getting up close and personal with pieces of great art. My favorite was the story of a collector client who scores an amazing find at a church tag sale — I dream of something like that! And how about finding a masterpiece behind a bird cage?

There were a couple of things that bothered me. First, Drexler occasionally defines words for the reader — I hate that! Now, if they are obscure art terms, you might assume that readers find them unfamiliar, but you can still find a way to make them plain without putting a definition in parentheses. When you do that with a fairly common word, like monochromatic, you’re likely to insult your readers.

The other thing that bothered me was the name-dropping — there wasn’t enough of it! If you’re going to name names in the good stories, like Candace Bergen fixing you a cup of tea, then I think you need to come clean on the bad guys as well. Who begrudged you a few slices of lettuce? It’s not fair to deliver only half the goods.

Folks who enjoy Antiques Roadshow and similar shows will enjoy Fabulous Finds: How Expert Appraiser Lee Drexler Sold Wall Street’s Charging Bull, Found Hidden Treasures and Mingled with the Rich & Famous. It’s got some fun stories, a few tips for would-be art collectors, and some interesting background on appraising. My copy was an Advanced Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

*I posted a short interview with Lee Drexler and I mentioned the Wall Street Bull. Did you know the Bull has a Twitter account? And guess who got a direct message from him!

It’s Christmas Eve and Vera Coffey is on the run. What she brings to the little town of American Rapids is certainly not holiday cheer. She has something with her, and the people following her will do anything to get it back.

In Pitch Dark, Steven Sidor sets an extremely creepy stage. A small town in the middle of nowhere, a blizzard, and the eve of a holiday, when no one expects bad things to happen. These are nice people — Vera, Adam, Wyatt, Opal and Max — and they have no idea what’s coming for them. Vera had a fight with her boyfriend and ran. She meets Adam on the road, heading home to see his parents for Christmas. Wyatt and Opal’s life together has already been scarred by violence; they thought running the Rendezvous Motel would give them the peace and quiet they wanted.

Pitch Dark is a quick read — mainly because you want to get through it and see what happens. The tension builds as bits and pieces of the story are revealed. There are old stories, truth and fiction, and there are connections you don’t immediately see. There is organization and method behind this, a terrible, dark intelligence. It sounds crazy at first, like the visions Opal has been having, but sometimes even crazy stories have a bit of truth in them.

This is certainly not a Christmas story, no matter when it’s set; it’s probably better suited to Halloween. It was easy to get caught up in the story, to start to worry about the characters and whether they’ll be okay, and to wonder about the mystery and the madman at the heart of the story.

Steven Sidor is the author of three dark thrillers Skin River, Bone Factory, and The Mirror’s Edge. Check out StevenSidor.com for more info on his earlier books and for a special prequel, A Chunk of Hell, available for free on his website.

My copy of Pitch Dark was an Advanced Reader Copy provided free of charge by the publisher.