‘The Hat’ by Babette Hughes

Published by Sun Stone Press, 2010.
ISBN: 978-00-86534-784-7

This novel opens with the killing of Ben Gold in Cleveland, 1932.  We’re then taken back two years, to meet Kate Brady, humiliated by her drunken mother, and unable to escape into her scholarship place at University because the Depression has wiped out her bakery job.  Then she meets the charming Ben Gold, who wants to take her out of there...

Kate is a vividly-imagined character.  She narrates the novel, and we’re caught up in sympathy with her straight away, willing her to escape even as we – older and wiser than the naive teenager she is - are saying, ‘Don’t do it!’  Her gradual discovery of Ben’s real empire is convincingly done, and her involvement in it chilling.  The background of jazz, speak-easies, the Depression, rich and poor, corruption and gang warfare, is convincingly evoked.  This is a novel, centring on Kate’s gradual awakening, rather than a gangster story or a thriller, but the atmosphere was well done, and the ending keeps you reading to the last page. 

An unusual and compellingly told story of a young woman who marries in haste.

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Reviewer: Marsali Taylor

Babette Hughes, author of The Red Scar, The Hat and Lost and Found, and co-author of Why College Students Fail, is a Huff Post columnist; published in the Saturday Review; been Contributing Editor of Cleveland Magazine; a twice-weekly columnist for the Cleveland Press; and has published articles and book reviews in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Sunday Magazine. She has also written, produced and appeared in television documentaries and news and feature stories for Cleveland television stations WKYC-NBC and WNBK-UHF. In addition to her writing career she has been National Director of Women's Political Action for Hubert Humphrey in his 1972 Presidential campaign, as well as founder and President of Discover Yourself, Inc., a motivation and self realization program for women. She has also been Director of Public Relations for Revco D.S., Inc. in Twinsburg, Ohio, and Account Executive with Frazier Associates, in Washington, DC. She and her husband live in Austin, Texas, and are the parents and step-parents of eight children. She is presently working on the final novel in the Kate Brady series, The Necklace.

http://babettehughes.com/

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  Marsali also does a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

‘The Killing 11’ by David Hewson

Published by Macmillan
17 January 2013.
ISBN: 978-1447208426

Sarah Lund of the Danish police is recalled to Copenhagen from her exile in Gedser.  A new and nasty serial killer is loose, and his motivation seems linked to an alleged atrocity committed by a Danish officer in Helmand province.  It’s a scandal that Thomas Buch, newly-appointed Minister of Justice, isn’t going to ignore ...

This was an excellent read.  I really enjoyed the mixture of detection and current affaird.  Lund is a feisty heroine whose guilt over the shooting of her former partner was convincingly handled, and her sidekick Strange is an interesting character.  I never saw the TV series, but had no difficulty in visualising and remembering the many characters in the police, in politics or in the army world.  The dialogue, as you’d expect, was tautly written, and the book flipped quickly between scenes, so that all the strands of a complex story were kept in play.

A fast-moving thriller which will recreate the world of the TV show for those who want to return to it, and give those who missed it a new detective to follow.

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Reviewer: Marsali Taylor

David Hewson was born in Yorkshire in 1953 and left school at the age of seventeen to work as a cub reporter on one of the smallest evening newspapers in the country in Scarborough. Eight years later he was a staff reporter on The Times in London, covering news, business and latterly working as arts correspondent. He worked on the launch of the Independent and was a weekly columnist for the Sunday Times for a decade before giving up journalism entirely in 2005 to focus on writing fiction. His novels have been translated into a wide range of languages, from Italian to Japanese, and his debut work, Semana Santa, set in Holy Week Spain, was filmed with Mira Sorvino and Olivier Martinez. Semana Santa won the WH Smith Fresh Talent award for one of the best debut novels of the year in 1996.and was later made into a movie starring Mira Sorvino. Four standalone works followed before A Season for the Dead, the first in a series set in Italy. He has featured regularly on the speaker lists of leading international book events, including the Melbourne and Ottawa writers' festivals, the Harrogate Crime Festival, Thrillerfest, Bouchercon and Left Coast Crime. He has taught at writing schools around the world and is a regular faculty member for the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference in Corte Madera, California, where he has worked alongside writers such as Martin Cruz Smith and Michael Connelly.

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  Marsali also does a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

‘An Act of Kindness’ by Barbara Nadel

Published by Quercus,
10 April 2014.
ISBN: 978-0-85738-780-6 (Paperback)

Abdullah Khan, a young solicitor, and his newly-pregnant wife, Nasreen, have bought and are renovating a near-derelict house in London’s East End. Nasreen befriends John, a homeless ex-soldier traumatised by his experiences in Afghanistan, whom she finds living in their wildly overgrown garden but dares not tell Abdullah. But when John is found dead in the nearby old Jewish cemetery Nasreen fears that Abdullah, with his ultra-traditional Islamic values, may have found about John and may have been responsible for his death. So she consults the Arnold Detective Agency, run by ex-policeman Lee Arnold and the widowed Mumtaz Hakim, knowing that as a Muslim woman Mumtaz will be sympathetic. Nasreen, using as a pretext a curious little canister with an old photograph which she has found in the house, asks Mumtaz to look into the house’s history, hopes to find out more about Abdullah’s own background and family about which he is extremely reticent, strangely so for someone from the South Asian community, and about his employers. Another investigation that Mumtaz is undertaking is for Ayesha Mirza (herself white but married to an Asian) who fears that her sister Wendy is being drawn into prostitution by her rackrenting landlords, Sean and Marty Rogers, violent and vicious thugs who run a prostitution racket. But Mumtaz herself has problems: Naz Sheikh who killed Mumtaz’s husband is still persecuting her with financial extortion and threats of violence against her and her daughters. So Mumtaz, who knows rather more about her husband’s death than she ever told the police, is in dire economic straits, and Lee, guessing this, would like to assist.  Meanwhile Lee has been asked by former (but still scary) gangster Brian Green, an ‘uber-Brit, half-man, half bulldog, all malice’, to establish whether or not his young wife is unfaithful. And Lee’s former colleague and occasional bed-partner, DI Vi Collins, is investigating John’s death and the skeleton found with him. And she, like Lee, would dearly like to put an end to the Rogers’ activities.

This second instalment of the Hakim and Arnold series is just as vivid and compelling as the first, although, with its depiction of the violence and cruelty of the organised crime gangs who coerce women into the sex trade and the underlying decades-old criminality of the East End, rather darker in tone. The several story strands, reaching from the present-day into the horrors of the Holocaust, are expertly knotted together, some of which will plainly re-emerge in future Hakim and Lee novels. Lee, with his West Ham supporting mynah bird, is a real Londoner, East End born and bred, sharp-witted yet sympathetic, and Mumtaz, troubled yet caring, are characters I would like to see more of. please.

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Reviewer: Radmila May

Barbara Nadel’s previous Hakim and Arnold story: A Private Business. She has also published 14 titles in the Inspector Ikmen series (set in Istanbul), and 4 in the Hancock series (set in wartime London).

Barbara Nadel was born in the East End of London. She rained as an actress, and used to work in mental health services. She now writes full time and has been a visitor to Turkey for over twenty years. She received the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger for her novel Deadly Web.

www.barbara-nadel.com

‘What the Cat Saw’ by Carolyn Hart

Published by Berkley Prime Time, New York,
12 December 2013.
ISBN: 978-0-425-25228-4

I have to confess to a strong resistance to murder mysteries in which an animal plays a key role in the investigation, so I approached this one with a certain amount of trepidation. But I took a deep breath, suspended disbelief a little further than usual, and before long I was not only convinced but absorbed in the unfolding narrative.

The cat does play a key role, but only insofar as it opens the protagonist’s eyes to one vital clue that no one else has picked up. My natural scepticism was assuaged by the lead character’s own dubiousness over whether she was following the cat’s eye view or her own instincts, and enough other evidence piled up to ensure that the solving of the mystery didn’t rely too heavily on feline observation.

In a nutshell: investigative journalist Nela Farley, out of work and emotionally raw after her fiancé’s death in Afghanistan, temporarily takes over her sister’s job at a charitable foundation. She stays at the apartment of its late CEO, who died recently in an accident – and finds that the CEO’s cat, which she has agreed to care for, saw something which could suggest foul play. Nela’s suspicions are further raised by a break-in at the apartment and her discovery of a valuable necklace hidden there, and the plot thickens further when she discovers that the charitable foundation has other problems, and is not a comfortable place to be. Soon she is under suspicion herself, but thanks to the clearsightedness of Steve Flynn, the editor of the local newspaper and nursing emotional issues of his own, she soon finds herself on the right side of the investigation.

Cat’s eye view aside (and on balance it does add an extra dimension, though the narrative could be made to work perfectly well without it), What the Cat Saw is a well-crafted mystery with plenty of skilful misdirection, and a colourful cast of characters, even the most minor of whom is sharply drawn. The beautiful headquarters and internal politics of the charitable form an excellent and vividly portrayed background, and the budding romance between Nela and Steve is handled subtly.

Carolyn Hart is a prolific author, well-known in the USA but  unfamiliar to me. It’s always good to find new names to look out for, and better still to be proved wrong when the first taste of an author’s work doesn’t seem to be entirely appealing at the outset. Hart clearly knows her craft; lovers of cosy mysteries will find much to enjoy in her work. Despite my early reservations, I certainly did.

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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Carolyn Hart is a native of Oklahoma City, a Phi Beta Kappa journalism graduate of the University of Oklahoma, and a former president of Sisters in Crime. She taught professional writing in the University of Oklahoma School of Journalism from 1982-85. She is the author of 49 mysteries, winner of three Agatha Awards for Best Novel, two Anthonys and two Macavitys. She is also a member of Authors Guild, Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, the International Crime Writers Association, the International Thrillers Association, and the American Crime Writers League.

http://www.carolynhart.com

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.

‘Secrets of the Dead’ by Michael Fowler

 Published by Caffeine Nights Publishing,
9 Sep 2013.
ISBN: 978-1907565588

When a retired detective phoned one of Barnwall’s crime team to say that he knew who’d killed Lucy Blake-Hall, thirty years ago, there wasn’t any immediate action - until he was found smothered, with a key in his stomach... 

Never mind the readers, all crime writers should rush straight out and get a copy of this book.  You want the correct procedure for an interview ... what actually happens in an autopsy ... how a major incident is really conducted ... it’s all here, and as Fowler is a retired CID officer, it’s straight from the horse’s mouth.  That gives the book an authentic feel – you really are taken into the heart of how an investigation happens.  Someone said, at Bloody Scotland, that most PP authors cut down the number of characters; Fowler didn’t do this, so you got the sense of the huge number of people involved, but you also got to know and like the key characters: D S Hunter Kerr, his sidekick DC Grace Marshall and their team. 

The plot is clever, linking in all the apparently random elements, although I felt it should have been more tense.  All the same, it was a good read, and I enjoyed the Yorkshire background and speech.  The book was divided into ‘days’: First day of the Investigation, etc, and this helped keep track of what was going on.

A stunningly authentic PP, with good characters and a well worked-out plot.

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Reviewer: Marsali Taylor

Michael Fowler  has always written stories.  In his teenage years he into horror, and science fiction, and then at the age of fifteen  he discovered the 87th Precinct books by Ed McBain.  This became a turning point in his chosen genre, both to read as well as write. He joined the police and began jotting down his experiences, crafting incidents  in which he had been involved  into storylines.  As his career developed so did his plots, especially when he became a detective. In 1993 Wharnecliffe Press offered him his first contract for a series of nostalgic stories about growing up in his home town of Mexborough. Legacy of our Backings and the follow-up book, No More Kick-Can and Cobbles'were a success. In 2006 he retired from the police following 32 years service.  With no more distractions he began the journey of writing that crime novel he had always promised himself he would do.

http://www.mjfowler.co.uk

 

Marsali Taylor grew up near Edinburgh, and came to Shetland as a newly-qualified teacher. She is currently a part-time teacher on Shetland's scenic west side, living with her husband and two Shetland ponies. Marsali is a qualified STGA tourist-guide who is fascinated by history, and has published plays in Shetland's distinctive dialect, as well as a history of women's suffrage in Shetland. She's also a keen sailor who enjoys exploring in her own 8m yacht, and an active member of her local drama group.  Marsali also does a regular monthly column for the Mystery People e-zine.

‘Writers Block’ by Judith Flanders

Published by Allison & Busby,
March 2014.
ISBN: 978-0-7490-1523-7

This book was a delight from start to finish.  And it didn’t take me long to finish, as I just sat and read it ignoring all other demands. 

Sam Clair is a middle-aged, middlingly successful editor. And starting at 8.30 on a Monday morning Sam takes us on roller-coaster ride through the world of publishing.  Whilst the story centres around the disappearance of the author of a tell-all book on the murder of a fashion designer, whom Sam has just signed, causing all hell to break loose, the joy of the book is the witty style and the take on the life of an editor. I loved the dilemma of the latest book received from one of their star authors, which they all hated. Breda had delivered a chick-lit novel! And the interesting outcome -  most amusing.

Aided by her assistant Miranda, Sam attempts to fend off her mother, Inspector Field, and the press.

With some fascinating characters this is a marvellous caper novel.  Most highly recommended.

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Reviewer: Lizzie Hayes

This is Judith’s debut book.

Judith Flanders  was born in London, England, in 1959. She moved to Montreal, Canada, when she was two, and spent her childhood there, apart from a year in Israel in 1972, where she signally failed to master Hebrew. After university, Judith returned to London and worked in publishing for various publishing houses for nearly twenty years. She has written several books about the Victorians, including A Circle of Sisters which was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and The Victorian House which was shortlisted for the British Book Awards History Book of the Year. She also writes about the arts, and is a regular contributor to publications including the Spectator, Wall Street Journal, Sunday Telegraph, TLS and theartsdeask.com.

www.judithflanders.co.uk

‘North of Boston’ by Elizabeth Elo

Published by Headline,
2 January 2014.
ISBN: 978-1-4722-0633-6

North of Boston is It’s a substantial read, dark and almost devoid of humour, with so much going on in the background that by the end you may feel, as I did, that you know more about the perfume-making and deep-sea fishing industries than you ever realized you needed to, and dabbled in a bit of illegal hunting on the side. And that’s before the US Navy start to investigate an unusual and potentially useful physical ability. Not to mention the Russian poetry...

But none of the above is done in a bad way; it all fits together surprisingly well, contributing not only to the rich and varied tapestry of the protagonist’s life but also to the development of the well- rounded cast of characters who people this slice of it.

To set the scene: Pirio Kasparov, heiress to a small perfume empire, has had a miraculous escape from a horrendous collision at sea, which killed her friend; she survived four hours in icy water, attracting the interest of the US Navy. She is driven by her pushy Russian father to consider the possibility that it wasn’t an accident, and makes several more astonishing escapes as she investigates.

Also involved are her dead friend’s alcoholic partner and their borderline-Asperger’s son, a sparky old lady with early Alzheimer’s, a campaigning journalist and a whole raft of seamen and hobby fishermen. And the Navy, of course.

It’s not a book to be read in a couple of sittings, though it may keep you up beyond your bedtime once the plot starts to rev up for the climax. The narrative has a number of strands which are only peripherally related to the main storyline; that, and the extraordinary cast of fascinating characters (my favourite was Noah, aged ten and wise well beyond his years) are what makes it a cut above the average crime novel.

Don’t be put off by the first-person, present-tense narration. This isn’t an author trying to disguise an arty literary novel as crime fiction in order to attract more readers, and it’s done with a light hand so that a few pages in you almost stop noticing. It’s a good story, with a lot going on: not the easiest read, but a satisfying one in which the bad guy gets his comeuppance. Though if you care about the environment you may be a tad frustrated by one all-too-realistic aspect of the ending.

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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Elizabeth Elo  grew up in Boston and went to Brown University.  She worked as an editor, an advertising copywriter, a high-tech project manager, and a halfway house counselor before getting a PhD in American Literature at Brandeis University.  Since then, she’s taught writing in the Boston area.  She lived next to the ocean for many years and now resides in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years, and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives on the edge of rural Derbyshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.

‘Art of Deception’ by A J Cross

Published by Orion Fiction, 

31 October 2013.   

ISBN: 978-1-4091-4271-3

The central character of Art of Deception is Dr Kate Hanson, a forensic psychologist who juggles a busy lifestyle as a divorced woman caring for her twelve-year-old daughter Maisie; a university lecturer; and a member of Birmingham Police's Unsolved Crimes Unit.

The body of a young man who went missing twenty years ago is discovered under the floorboards of a deserted lake house in Woodgate Country Park, an area that is notorious for drug dealers and sexual offenders. The dead boy is identified as Nathan Troy, a nineteen-year-old art student. As Kate and her colleagues investigate Nathan's death, fears arise that the body had been discovered and the damaged floor relaid. Another teenage boy has gone missing and there is good reason to fear he has come to harm. Has Nathan's killer murdered again after twenty years? And, if so, has the murderer been dormant for that length of time or are there other victims in the Country Park?

Everyone that Kate questions about Nathan offers her a different viewpoint of the young man. Was he the decent, caring, moral person that his parents describe? Or was he a drug user, out for what he can get, as some of his contemporaries claim? Where did Nathan disappear to on the day he was supposed to accompany his father to London to show him some art galleries? Was that the day he died, despite a witness who claimed to have seen him some days later?

Kate has many questions about Nathan's life and death and instinct tells her that the answers can be found in the art department, where she discovers more contradictions, corruption and many dysfunctional relationships that have been festering for decades. As more deaths occur, fear mounts for the safety of other young people whom the police find themselves unable to protect, and Kate realises that her own life and reputation are in danger.

Art of Deception is a well written, intriguing book that maintains the tension and interest throughout, despite the large cast of characters and the complex nature of the crimes. Kate and her police colleagues are likeable individuals, who form a good working team, and the relationships between them are especially well drawn, encompassing both disagreements about approach and procedure and the underlying affection and respect they feel for each other. However, I did wish that Kate (who spends a lot of time warning her daughter about staying safe) was not quite so ready to frequently put herself in harm's way

The underlying themes of perception and deception are carried through the book, subtly and consistently, until it reaches a logical and satisfying conclusion. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would definitely recommend it.

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Reviewer: Carol Westron

A J Cross is a Forensic Psychologist and frequent court-appointed expert witness. She obtained her Masters Degree and PhD at the University of Birmingham, the latter relating to children as witnesses within the criminal court system.  Anne's professional experience has included consultancy work for the Probation Service in her home city. Anne currently lives in Birmingham with her jazz-musician husband. 

Carol Westron is a successful short story writer and a Creative Writing teacher.  She is the moderator for the cosy/historical crime panel, The Deadly Dames.  Her crime novels are set both in contemporary and Victorian times.  The Terminal Velocity of Cats is the first in her Scene of Crimes novels, published July 2013

http://www.carolwestron.com/

‘The Gods of Guilt’ by Michael Connelly

Published by Orion,
21 November 2013.
ISBN: 978-1-4091-3434-3

The Gods of Guilt is the fifth outing for Michael Connellys’s hero, Mickey Haller, ‘The Lincoln Lawyer’, half-brother of Connelly’s other hero, Harry Bosche.
            

Mentored by veteran David ‘Legal’ Segal’, a lawyer willing to use any dubious tactic to win a case, and supported by his house team, Mickey becomes involved in the death of a prostitute, Gisselle Dallinger, whom he has successfully represented in the past.
             

Accused of murder is her pimp, Andre Lacusse, who claims his innocence throughout the proceedings.
              

The scene is thus set for a roller coaster ride through the California justice system whereupon Mickey gets caught up with a drugs cartel, corrupt DEA officers and law enforcement personnel who Are determined to convict Mickey’s client by any method, even if it means subverting the law.
               

With the death of his driver, Earl, and serious injuries to himself in a hit and run, Mickey is forced to evaluate his past life, especially with reference to his teenage daughter and the deaths of previous clients.
               

As the trial pregresses, the chips begin to fall Mickey’s way and the author skilfully builds up the tension between the prosecutor judge and jury – the ‘gods of guilt’.    
               

Hi-tech gadgetry plays a part throughout the proceedings of a well-crafted and fast-paced thriller. Another best-seller in the offing for this master storyteller.

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Reviewer: Ron Ellis 

Michael Connelly  was born in Philadelphia, PA on July 21, 1956. He moved to Florida with his family when he was 12 years old. Michael decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing — a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews. After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat.  In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written. After three years on the crime beat in L.A., Connelly began writing his first novel to feature LAPD Detective Hieronymus Bosch. The novel, The Black Echo based in part on a true crime that had occurred in Los Angeles, was published in 1992 and won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by the Mystery Writers of America.  Fifty million copies of Connelly’s books have sold worldwide and he has been translated into thirty-nine foreign languages. Michael lives with his family in Florida.

http://www.michaelconnelly.com/

Ron Ellis. Writer, Broadcaster and Photographer, Ron is the author of the popular series of crime novels set on Merseyside featuring Liverpool radio D.J./Private Eye, Johnny Ace.
He also writes the D.C.I. Glass mystery series. As well as his fiction titles, Ron has written 'Southport Faces' a social history of the town seen through the eyes of 48 of its best-known residents. His 'Journal of a Coffin Dodger', the hilarious adventures of an 84 year old playboy, has been serialised on BBC Radio and poems from his collection of poetry, 'Last of the Lake Poets', have won several nationwide competitions. During the 1980's, he conducted over 192 interviews with friends and relatives of John Lennon for Albert Goldman's biography, 'The Lives of John Lennon'.
Ron writes the football reports for the Southport Champion and is also their theatre and arts reviewer as well as being a regular contributor to magazines such as Lancashire Life.
He runs his own publishing company, Nirvana Books.

‘Death of Yesterday’ by M.C. Beaton

Published by Constable & Robinson Crime (UK) 21^st February 2014. ISBN: 978-1780331034. Grand Central Publishing (USA). 25 February  2014. ISBN: 978-1-4555-0475-6

Contrary to the old adage, familiarity breeds contentment.  After all, a series that has been around since 1985 must have something going for it.  And the Hamish Macbeth novels certainly do:  The small-town Scottish police sergeant himself and his uncanny insights and uncommon and unorthodox manner; a cast of characters that repeatedly stays on form; plots that follow a pattern but are different from one another; Macbeth's eternal hard times from his superiors; his forlorn love life; his pets, a wild cat and a dog; and a lightheartedness that is easy to take and read.

The latest entry has the death of a woman haunting Macbeth although her arrogance originally annoyed him when she reported a possible date drug rape.  This gives the author the chance to subject Macbeth and other police officers to a type of omerta in the small northern Scottish village where the crime took place.  So, no witnesses.  How to solve the mystery?  By plain hard work.

This is the 29th Hamish Macbeth mystery.  It is replete with a flavour of good single-malt scotch, as usual.  And just as important, the author describes the bleak economy in northern Scotland, lack of jobs, employees fearful of being fired from the only employer in town, and
the general social milieu of small-town snobbishness.  Recommended.
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Reviewer: Gloria Feit.

M.C. Beaton was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1936 and started her first job as a bookseller in charge of the fiction department in John Smith & Sons Ltd. While bookselling, by chance, she got an offer from the Scottish Daily Mail to review variety shows and quickly rose to be their theatre critic. She left Smith’s to join Scottish Field magazine as a secretary in the advertising department, without any shorthand or typing, but quickly got the job of fashion editor instead.  She then moved to the Scottish Daily Express where she reported mostly on crime. This was followed by a move to Fleet Street to the Daily Express where she became chief woman reporter. After marrying Harry Scott Gibbons and having a son, Charles, Marion went to the United States where Harry had been offered the job of editor of the Oyster Bay Guardian. When that didn’t work out, they went to Virginia and Marion worked as a waitress in a greasy spoon on the Jefferson Davies in Alexandria while Harry washed the dishes. Both then got jobs on Rupert Murdoch’s new tabloid, The Star, and moved to New York. Anxious to spend more time at home with her small son, Marion, urged by her husband, started to write Regency romances. After she had written over 100 of them under her maiden name of Marion Chesney and getting fed up with 1811 to 1820, she began to write detectives stories. On a trip from the States to Sutherland on holiday, a course at a fishing school inspired the first Hamish Macbeth story. They returned to Britain and bought a croft house and croft in Sutherland where Harry reared a flock of black sheep. But Charles was at school, in London so when he finished and both tired of the long commute to the north of Scotland, they moved to the Cotswolds where Agatha Raisin was created.

Ted and Gloria Feit live in Long Beach, NY, a few miles outside New York City.  For 26 years, Gloria was the manager of a medium-sized litigation firm in lower Manhattan. Her husband, Ted, is an attorney and former stock analyst, publicist and writer/editor for, over the years, several daily, weekly and monthly publications.  Having always been avid mystery readers, and since they're now retired, they're able to indulge that passion.  Their reviews appear online as well as in three print publications in the UK and US.  On a more personal note: both having been widowed, Gloria and Ted have five children and nine grandchildren between them.