On a page at the beginning of the book, there is a quote from Sir Thomas Browne (Urn Burial),  a seventeenth century physician.  “The certainty of death is attended with uncertainties, in time, manner, places.”  London has been terrified by the discovery of the bodies, brutally murdered and then set on fire.  The newspapers have dubbed the assailant “Burning Man” and the name as much as the his actions have resulted in a collective hysteria.  Kelly Staples accepts a ride from a man after leaving a bar.  As soon as she enters the car, she realizes that she should not have done so and imagination takes over.  When Kelly becomes convinced he is the Burning Man, she attacks first and nearly kills him.

Detective Constable Maeve Kerrigan is awakened in the small hours of the morning to join her team at the hospital where the Kelly and her victim are being treated, Kelly for shock and the man for life-threatening stab wounds.  As the only woman on the team, it is up to Maeve to talk to Kelly, to get the details of the attack.  Kelly is all too eager to talk and as she talks Maeve realizes that it will be Kelly who is charged.  Her attack on the man who offered her the ride was unprovoked.  He is definitely not the Burning Man.  

Before Maeve and the team leave the hospital, they learn that while they were with Kelly, the body of another victim has been found.  “She was wearing what looked like the remains of an expensive dress.The dress had been black, long-sleeved, cut diagonally across the neckline and high on one thigh ( she wore no coat, though it had been a cold night.)  The fabric was folded and twisted into a rose at the waist that had stubbornly refused to burn.  It was a miracle of design and tailoring that would have flattered the slender figure in life….”   Like the other victims, the body hadn’t burned completely.  Next of kin would be spared  having to give a visual identification.`A DNA match is made.  Rebecca Haworth had been in a car that had been stopped by police, a small amount of drugs found in the car.  She lived in a new apartment building and she worked for a public relations firm.

Maeve and her partner, Sam Prosser, arrive at Rebecca’s apartment to find her best friend, Louise North, cleaning the apartment.  Louise is a solicitor with a prestigious firm but she and Rebecca had been best friends since they met at Oxford and Louise had made a habit of clearing up after Rebecca.  Louise had come to the apartment because she hadn’t been able to reach Rebecca for a few weeks and she was worried that something had happened to her.  Louise is devastated by the news of Rebecca’s death.

Gil Maddick had been Rebecca’s boyfriend; she had recently ended the relationship.  Although her parents are still alive, Rebecca carried a substantial life insurance policy with Gil as the beneficiary.

As far as the police and press are concerned, Rebecca Haworth is the fifth victim of the Burning Man but Maeve isn’t convinced.  There are a few things at the scene, a few things about the body, that suggest that there is another killer.  Maeve’s boss, Superintendent Godly, isn’t convinced but there is something about Maeve’s argument that leads him to allow her to follow her own line of thinking as long as she kept in mind that she is still part of the larger team.

The author presents the story in two voices; most of the book consists of alternating chapters told from the perspective of either Maeve or Louise.  Maeve keeps the reader aware of the police investigation, of the things she learns about the real Rebecca, a woman different from the one described by her parents.  From Louise, we learn that Rebecca is the woman on which she based her emerging adult persona.  Louise was quiet, Rebecca’s shadow.  Louise learned about clothes and the deportment of the well-educated and the well-heeled from the gregarious Rebecca.  Louise tells us that Rebecca wasn’t too good to be true; she was just as good as people knew her to be.  The well-loved and loving daughter of moderately wealthy parents, Rebecca was warm and generous and Louise loved her, too..

As the story moves forward, the identity of the person who killed Rebecca becomes apparent but I didn’t care.  It didn’t spoil the book because the author is a master of character development.  Rebecca, Louise, Rebecca’s parents, boyfriends present and past, Maeve, Superintendent Godly, and Detective Constable Rob Langton are fully drawn and such complete personalities that there is no chance that the reader will confuse one with another.  THE BURNING is a character driven novel that tells an engrossing story.  I read it in a day because I kept wanting to know more and I knew the author would not disappoint.

In describing with such careful detail the dress Rebecca is wearing when her body is found, the reader learns within a few pages that Jane Casey doesn’t squander words.  Instead, she expends  them to create images as fully realized as if  they had been done in oils on canvas.  And she doesn’t let us forget the Burning Man either.

Paul ADAM                              PAGANINI’S GHOST

Jussi ADLER-OLSEN              THE KEEPER OF LOST CAUSES (MERCY)

Rennie AIRTH                        JOHN MADDEN AND THE STORIES BETWEEN THE WARS

Annamaria ALFIERI              CITY OF SILVER

James ANDERSON                THE AFFAIR OF THE 39 CUFFLINKS

Robert ANDREWS                  MURDER series

Simon BAATZ                       FOR THE THRILL OF IT ALL

Brett BATTLES                      THE CLEANER

Brunonia BARRY                    LACE READER

Dan BAUM                               NINE LIVES

James BENN      A MORTAL TERROR

Mark BILLINGHAM       BLOODLINE

Benjamin BLACK    CHRISTINE FALLS/THE SILVER SWAN    THE LEMUR

ELEGY FOR APRIL     A DEATH IN SUMMER

Cara BLACK           MURDER IN PASSY, MURDER IN THE PALAIS ROYAL, MURDER IN THE  MARAIS   MURDER AT THE LANTERNE ROUGE

J. Carson BLACK  THE SHOP

Sara BLAEDEL          CALL ME PRINCESS

Anna BLUNDY          VODKA NEAT

S. J. BOLTON            NOW YOU SEE ME

Alan BRADLEY                      THE WEED THAT STRINGS THE HANGMAN’S BAG

D C BROD                    GETTING LUCKY

Grace BROPHY                      THE LAST ENEMY

Ruth BRANDON                     CARAVAGGIO’S ANGEL

Marshall BROWNE                THE WOODEN LEG OF INSPECTOR ANDERS

Alison BRUCE                         THE SIREN       

Alison BRUCE                         THE CALLING

John BURDETT                      VULTURE PEAK

Alafair BURKE                      LONG GONE

Andrea CAMILLERI             THE TRACK OF SAND                    THE SHAPE OF WATER     THE SALVO MONTALBANO SERIES           THE POTTER’S FIELD

David CARKEET                    FROM AWAY

Jane CASEY                          THE BURNING

John CAULFIELD                  IN ALL MY SAD DREAMING

Paul CHARLES                       FAMILY LIFE

James CHURCH                 BAMBOO AND BLOOD, THE MAN WITH THE BALTIC STARE

Ann CLEEVES                   THE CROW TRAP

Miles CORWIN                  KIND OF BLUE

Colin COTTERILL              KILLED AT THE WHIM OF A HAT       SLASH AND BURN

Catherine  COULTER         SPLIT SECOND

Deborah CROMBIE              NO MARK UPON HER

Charles CUMMING        THE TRINITY SIX

Arne DAHL             MISTERIOSO

Vicki DELANY      NEGATIVE IMAGE

Bruce DESILVA ROGUE ISLAND

Gary DISHER                        BLOOD MOON

Richard DOETSCH             HALF-PAST DAWN

James  DOSS                         THE DEAD MAN’S TALE     COFFIN MAN

Patricia DUNCKLER THE STRANGE CASE OF THE COMPOSER & HIS JUDGE

Michael Allen DYMMOCH       THE MAN WHO UNDERSTOOD CATS

The weather looks to be lovely; I hope everyone achieves some renewal.

Blog returns Tuesday, May 29.

The lists, for the most part, do not include reviews by other people.  They will be on a separate list and there will be other pages devoted to all the other posts that were not reviews.

So, the pages shown on the home page banner list the authors and have links to the reviews.  I hope the reviews will encourage readers to look for these books.

GETTING LUCKY is about getting Lucky but it is also the story of the American Dream – home ownership. Robyn Guthrie is a 40 year-old single woman who has a successful career as a free-lance reporter and writer for a number of newspapers and magazines. Robyn finds herself with the rather disconcerting task of finishing an investigative report on a housing development when the original reporter is killed in a hit-and-run accident.

The housing development is a key part of the story. Cedar Ridge is a planned “green” community, an area that will use the energy it produces. There is a lot riding on the success of Cider Ridge. Within commuting distance of Chicago, the town of Fowler stands to become a thriving area of young families. On the surface, Clair’s death is an accident but Robyn isn’t the only one to think it out of character for Clair to be walking her dog late at night on a deserted road without sidewalks. Was Clair meeting a source? Robyn and Clair had walked each other’s dogs on occasion so Robyn knew Clair was no where near her usual route.Scoop is uninjured but even the best dogs can’t reveal details. when the police determine that Clair wasn’t the victim of an accident but a deliberate act, Cedar Ridge acquires a new importance.

When Robyn meets Lucky Leoni she has no doubt that Cedar Ridge is going to be unlucky for someone.

Cider Ridge is one look at home ownership. Robyn’s mother offers another look. Mrs. Guthrie is in her 80′s and is living in an assisted living facility as her dementia increases. She decides that it is time for Robyn to join her in the purchase of a house in which they can live together more or less happily.

As Robyn works her way through Clair’s notes, she realizes Clair may have been killed because she knew more than she thought she did. Robyn wants to answer the questions that made Clair too dangerous to live.

I got lucky when I discovered D C Brod. There is humor and a good story wrapped in very good writing.

But the two, an unlikely pair to be partners (he’s a by-the-book
careerist, she a holier-than-thou seeker of justice), start to
investigate despite warnings from higher-ups to slough off.  As they
continue, despite the pressures, they learn of possible conspiracies
among cops, and even that possibly the victim was framed.  Additional
murders compound the confusion.

This is a different kind of police procedural, albeit a step-by-step
description of how a case progresses.  Instead of seeking perpetrators
outside, they have to look inside.  And a final twist never
anticipated (by this reader, at least) adds irony to the efforts.  An
interesting couple, Corbin and Bentibi, and they make another
appearance in a sequel, “The Cold Room,” which is next on the list for
this reviewer.

SHOOTERS & CHASERS by Lenny Kleinfeld has everything one would want in a thriller. The shooters are (sort of) identified right at the beginning. The chasers, Chicago Homicide detectives Mark Bergman and John Dunegan enter the scene soon after. The shooters are sociopaths and the chasers are the kind of characters that I want to meet again.

The book opens in August, 2002 with Meelo Garcia prowling restlessly in a motel room. He can’t leave because Oscar told him he can’t.

In the second chapter, Naguib Darwahab, a Chicago cabbie originally from Cairo, picks up famed architect Wilson Willets. As Willets is walking toward his house, he is killed by a mugger. Darwahab risks his life by scratching the mugger down his left arm but the murderer runs off and there is nothing that can be done to help Willets.

From that point the books takes off, introducing a cast of characters that is large but who are so distinct that the reader has no problem keeping everyone straight. The plot moves from street crime to the very richest of the rich in Los Angeles and a contest sponsored by the Los Angeles Fine Arts Museum. Along the way there are other murders, a mysterious Englishman, assassins, a public defender who suggests that the murder has elements of the Kennedy assassination,  Oscar, and two police forces, Chicago and Los Angeles, that are not made to look crooked or inept. And…the book is funny. Kleinfeld writes wonderful dialogue even when the dialogue is interior. I don’t know how many times I had to stop reading and laugh.

This is a book that will appeal to just about anyone who likes mysteries and thrillers.   SHOOTER & CHASERS is a wonderful way to spend a day.

Andreas Kaldis knows why he has been appointed chief of police in Mykonos.  “…his departure from Athens – was exceptionally good news to certain powerful people.  His aggressive investigation into a series of murders over control of the Athenian drug trade had worried them.  Promoting him out of Athens – and out of the investigation – was a political masterstroke that even Andreas could appreciate.  It hurt no one and made everyone happy.  Everyone except Andreas.”  His new job is to keep the people of Mykonos happy so that they in turn can keep the tourists happy.  That is the business of Mykonos and now it is the business of Andreas Kaldis.  He has been promoted into oblivion.

Unfortunately for all concerned, a few weeks after his arrival, a worker in one of Mykonos’ many old churches moves a stone slab and finds a body, the body of a tall young woman, her head shaved and her body laid out in a manner that can only be described as ritualistic.  What makes it worse is that she is lying on top of other bones; the last body officially buried under the slab had been interred sixty years earlier.  These bones are far more recent.

Andreas is joined in the investigation by Tassos Stamatos, the chief homicide investigator for the islands.  Both men know immediately that there will be more bodies, that they are dealing with a serial killer.  Female tourists, killed over as many as twenty years, is a frightening prospect.  How could women be warned without panicking everyone on the island?  The situation becomes infinitely more complicated from the viewpoint of Andreas and Tassos when Annika Vanden Haag is reported missing.  Half Dutch and half Greek, she is the niece of Greece’s deputy minister of Public Order, the office in charge of all police.

Jeffrey Siger allows the reader to into the mind of the killer, to view his insanity.  To the killer, the women are tributes to the gods.  “He had first used prayer to survive his daily moments of childhood terror, later he developed other, more efficient means for coping with his past.  He still  practiced both as his tributes could attest to, had any remained alive….He knew just what to say to gain their trust and bring his foreign tributes down into his world among the foreign gods….”  Sacrifices to the gods had long been done on the islands and he models his tributes on the marble figurines of elongated, naked females, completely smooth, which were created and then destroyed, sacrificed in place of humans.  He knew the gods required so much more of him.  Stone replacements couldn’t garner their protection.  His gods needed real women.  Nothing less could protect and bless him.  He had to thank the gods and pay tribute to the saints of neglected churches and in so doing he would be invincible against his own demons.

Siger brings the story to a close in a manner that is satisfying to the reader, especially if the reader has been paying attention. Yet he does so in a manner that I don’t remember any other author using; it is clever and closes the circle of the story.  More importantly, Siger brilliantly uses religious insanity to create the methods and means of murder without being in anyway disrespectful of the customs of the Greek Orthodox Church.  Not an easy task but one he executes flawlessly.

Book description of DUBLIN DEAD:

“Irish detective Mike Mulcahy returns in this suspenseful follow-up to the highly acclaimed international bestseller The Priest—and now he’s hot on the trail of an international drugs gang.One year later, DI Mike Mulcahy is exactly where he wants to be, coordinating international intelligence for Ireland’s National Drugs Unit. But with the economy in meltdown and his department facing tough cutbacks, his dream job is in jeopardy. Then Mulcahy spots a possible link between the murder of a Dublin gangster in Spain and a massive shipment of cocaine abandoned off the south coast of Ireland. Could this be the break he’s been praying for? Meanwhile, reporter Siobhan Fallon is still recovering from her ordeal at the hands of a sadistic killer. Work is her only refuge, and while she’s an emotional basket case, her nose for a story is as sharp as ever. When a suicide turns out to have a bizarre missing-person’s angle, she’s convinced there is something darker to it. But with a vital piece of evidence beyond her grasp, she has to turn to Mulcahy for help. Mulcahy and Fallon have no idea what deadly ground they’re setting out on together, or that their journey will lead them on a twisted trail of terror to the rocky shores and windswept hills of West Cork and a blood-drenched showdown with a remorseless killer.”

I took the easy way out in reviewing this book because it isn’t easy to describe.  It is the second book in the series featuring Detective Inspector Mike Mulcahy and reporter Siobhan Fallon.  The first book, THE PRIEST, is outstanding.  DUBLIN DEAD is as good but not as showy.  The first book grabs the reader at the first line.  The second takes much longer to hit its stride.  When it does, it becomes a worthy successor to the first.

Mulcahy is the director of an international drug’s unit.  The book begins with the death of a drug dealer in Spain.  In England, the body of  Cormac Horgan, a millionaire real estate agent, is pulled from a river.  His death is ruled a suicide, one of many among the movers and shakers in the financial world.  Siobhan goes to County Cork to attend Horgan’s funeral to see who of interest might be there.  She is approached by a woman who identifies herself as the mother of Gemma Kearney, Horgan’s girlfriend.  Siobhan has researched Horgan’s life intensively but has found no indication of a woman in his life.  Mrs. Kearney tells her that Gemma and Horgan met when studying to be accountants,  They were good friends and recently were spending a lot of time together.  But Mrs. Kearney hadn’t heard from Gemma in three weeks.  The police aren’t interested but Siobhan is.