George V. Reilly

Review: What the Dead Know

Title: What the Dead Know
Author: Laura Lippman
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Publisher: Harper
Copyright: 2007
Pages: 369
Keywords: mystery
Reading period: 4-9 May, 2008

Thirty years ago, Heather and Sunny Bethany, 12 and 15, dis­ap­peared without trace from a Baltimore mall. A cold case, long forgotten by almost everyone. Now a woman, arrested after fleeing from the scene of an accident, blurts out that she's Heather Bethany.

Is she Heather? Or someone else? She knows so much about the case, yet there's something off about her and the police don't trust her. Where's she been? Where's Sunny? And why did she never come forward before?

We learn the truth by the end of the novel, continue.

Review: Dancing with the Virgins

Title: Dancing with the Virgins
Author: Stephen Booth
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½
Publisher: Pocket
Copyright: 2001
Pages: 528
Keywords: mystery
Reading period: 6-11 January, 2008

One woman has been mutilated and another murdered on the bleak moors of Derbyshire. Detective Constable Ben Cooper and Detective Sergeant Diane Fry in­ves­ti­gate.

The novel is at least as much about the tense re­la­tion­ship between Cooper and Fry as it is about the mystery itself. This is the second in a series of Cooper-Fry books. Cooper is a local boy, deeply rooted in the rural community, pleasant and trusting. Fry is a bitter loner, who trans­ferred in from a distant city. Quickly promoted over Cooper, she can't understand his easygoing nature.

The continue.

Review: The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker

Title: The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker
Author: Michael Jecks
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½
Publisher: Headline
Copyright: 2000
Pages: 331
Keywords: mystery, historical
Reading period: 20-22 December, 2007

Days before Christmas 1321, a glovemaker is murdered in the cathedral town of Exeter. Sir Baldwin and his friend, Simon Puttock, are asked to in­ves­ti­gate by the Dean of the Cathedral.

Jecks juggles a complex plot with a large cast of characters, and manages to keep them distinct and in­ter­est­ing, while describing the in­ter­sec­tion of cathedral and town life and Christmas rituals in medieval England.

Review: What Came Before He Shot Her

Title: What Came Before He Shot Her
Author: Elizabeth George
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½
Publisher: Harper
Copyright: 2006
Pages: 722
Keywords: fiction, mystery
Reading period: 11-17 November, 2007

In Elizabeth George's previous book, With No One As Witness, a senior police officer's pregnant wife is gunned down in London by a 12-year-old boy in an apparently random act. This book tells the story of how that shooting came to happen.

The three Campbell children are abandoned on their aunt's doorstep by their feckless grand­moth­er, months before the shooting. They are mixed-race children with deep-seated damage: their alcoholic father was killed in front of them a few years ago and their mother has long continue.

Review: The Monster of Florence

Title: The Monster of Florence
Author: Magdelen Nabb
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½
Publisher: Arrow
Copyright: 1996
Pages: 485
Keywords: mystery
Reading period: 22-27 October, 2007

Nabb's recurring character, Marshal Guarnaccia, is a non-com­mis­sioned officer in the cara­binieri, the Italian military-style police, who is stationed in Florence. Guarnaccia is a slow, dogged plodder and a wallflower, who is largely overlooked by those who encounter him, but who nonethe­less gets to the bottom of mysteries.

An old case, involving a series of double murders over a twenty-year period, has been reopened for political reasons. Several police officers, including the Marshal, have been seconded to a task force. The Marshal is troubled by what is clearly an attempt by continue.

Review: To the Power of Three

Title: To the Power of Three
Author: Laura Lippman
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½
Publisher: William Morrow
Copyright: 2005
Pages: 434
Keywords: mystery
Reading period: 16 September, 2007

Days before graduation, a shooting takes place in the girls' bathroom at a suburban Maryland high school. The popular, pretty Kat is dead; the athletic Josie was shot in the foot; and the drama star and shooter, Perri, is comatose after shooting herself in the head. The three girls had been in­sep­a­ra­ble since third grade, though Perri and Kat had fallen out the previous summer. What happened? What led Perri to such an act?

Lippman builds a compelling story, weaving together the aftermath and the events leading up to continue.

Review: Club Dead

Title: Club Dead (Sookie Stackhouse #3)
Author: Charlaine Harris
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ½
Publisher: Ace
Copyright: 2003
Pages: 258
Keywords: mystery, vampire, romance
Reading period: 15 September, 2007

Sequel to Living Dead in Dallas.

Sookie's vampire boyfriend, Bill, has gone missing and seems to have had an affair with another vampire. To get him back—and she's not sure she wants him back—she must go undercover among the vampire glitterati of Jackson, Mis­sis­sip­pi. She retrieves him eventually, but not without some physical battering, and emotional upheaval as she finds herself attracted to another vampire and a very nice werewolf.

En­ter­tain­ing, often funny, oc­ca­sion­al­ly touching. Harris offers an amusing and original ex­pla­na­tion for why Elvis continues to be continue.

Review: Death by Chick Lit

Title: Death by Chick Lit
Author: Lynn Harris
Rating: ★ ★ ★
Publisher: Berkley
Copyright: 2007
Pages: 242
Keywords: humor, mystery, chick lit
Reading period: 29 August, 2007

Lola Somerville, Brooklyn author, recently married to geek-hottie Doug (now there's a de­mo­graph­ic I can relate to), and best friend of hipster Annabel, starts tripping over bodies of chick lit writers. Someone is winnowing the chick lit best­sellers list and Lola feels compelled to find the killer.

This gentle parody is a cross between chick lit and Nancy Drew. Although happily married, Lola is as insecure and neurotic as ever. No longer worried about getting Mr. Perfect, she's more concerned about whether she's ready for a baby and whether her continue.

Review: Blown Away

Title: Blown Away
Author: G.M. Ford
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Publisher: Harper Collins
Copyright: 2006
Pages: 315
Keywords: mystery
Reading period: 28 August, 2007

Blown Away is the latest in Ford's series about Frank Corso, in­ves­tiga­tive reporter, best­selling author, and abrasive jerk. Corso is pressed by his publisher to look into a year-old case in Penn­syl­va­nia where a victim was sent into a bank with a bomb chained around his neck, then blown up in the parking lot when he was pinned down by the police. Corso's questions provoke a couple of assaults upon himself, and then the FBI drag him to Los Angeles, where a series of identical bank robberies is taking continue.

Review: The Art of Detection

Title: The Art of Detection
Author: Laurie R. King
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
Publisher: Bantam
Copyright: 2006
Pages: 495
Keywords: mystery
Reading period: 23-25 August, 2007

Laurie R. King is best known for two series of detective novels. One stars Kate Martinelli, an SFPD inspector living in present-day San Francisco with her lesbian partner, Lee, and their young daughter, Nora. The other is set in the 1920s and is written in the voice of Mary Russell, the young wife of the still-active sex­a­ge­nar­i­an, Sherlock Holmes.

Here, King ties both series together. Martinelli in­ves­ti­gates the murder of Philip Gilbert, the doyen of the local Sher­lock­ians, who recently came across a manuscript that seems to have been continue.

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