What if You Just Can't Wait

So for the past several weeks we have been tempting and tantalizing readers with exciting new books soon to be published. These will be on the market shelves soon.

But it's a little bit like having a package sitting under the tree with a tag warning not to be opened until Christmas. What if we need something to read now? My way of coping includes a little pile of seasonal reads that are just the thing to put me into a festive spirit.

There are a few things that you can enjoy throughout the holiday season that help make up for the hustle of the holiday preparations and cut off the feelings of bah humbug that can creep up on the over-stressed.

One of my favorite––but slightly guilty––pleasures is eggnog. Every year, we wait for our favorite dairy to put out their version of smooth, creamy, sweet frothy goodness. This may not be on your diet, but there is a literary substitute and that is the heart-warming holiday stories written by Debbie Macomber. Macomber is an extremely prolific New York Times best-selling author whose novels embrace the best things in life: home, family, community and friendship laced with a soupçon of romance.

This year's offerings include Mr. Miracle. It's about an impractical relationship. Intrepid, headstrong Addie Folsom left home to follow a rainbow to a pot of gold in Montana. Like most pots of this sort, it was a mirage and Addie struggled to make a living without letting anyone at home realize how bad things had gotten.

When her father died, she thought she would come back to Tacoma, Washington to spend Christmas with her mom and to restart her college education. Like many plans, this one goes awry and fate has a double whammy in mind for Addie. Not only is her mother going on a longed-for cruise, but her next-door neighbor, Erich, has been in an accident that has broken both his arms––and some of his spirit. This is a disaster in many ways; I know someone this happened to.

As it happened, Erich had been a pest of a boy with a slightly malicious streak, and Addie would have rather have dealt him a backhand than lent him one. Now he is merely a curmudgeon who feels that Scrooge got a bum rap. But Addie has an angel on her side.

Voilá, all the ingredients for a heart-warming tale of the kind Macomber excels at. I have enjoyed her books in the past but my take on this one is––bah, humbug.

Maybe you like your eggnog with a jolt. Consider breaking out one of Anne Perry's annual Christmas treats. She includes betrayal, greed and murder with the warming of the cockles in the heart. This year, her tale takes place in a New York City that is still young, sparkling and full of life in 1904, but also still hiding menace around the corners. In A New York Christmas, Thomas Pitt's daughter, Jemima, is traveling with a friend across the north Atlantic. Her friend, Delphinia, is getting married in NYC to a scion of a fabulously rich and aristocratic family.

The snake in this particular garden is a Delphinia's mother, Maria, who mysteriously disappeared many years ago. For some very obscure reason, the family expects Maria to jump up like a jack-in-the-box and ruin the festivities. We have to leave it to Jemima with the help of a handsome New York cop to make things calm and bright.

Both of these writers have produced scads of these holiday stories, so if in either case one is not enough, there's plenty of backup to get you in the mood.

Fruitcake is another favorite that is mostly seen at this time of year. It is loved, hated or ignored and put aside until it hardens into a grand doorstop. I do get a kick out of those recipes calling for the freshest of ingredients. Is there such a thing as fresh dried and candied fruit? One important feature of all fruitcakes is the variety of textures and flavors.

The best literary comparison to this culinary extravaganza is Otto Penzler's collections of mystery stories. Penzler, who looks a little like Santa himself, is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, and each year for about 17 years, Penzler asked leading crime writers to pen an original Christmas story. These stories were reproduced in pamphlet form and given to the customers of the bookstore as a Christmas present. The stories were collected in Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop.

Some of the authors included are Lisa Atkinson, Lawrence Block, Mary Higgins Clark, and Ed McBain. The stories range from humorous to pure detection, and the anthology covers all aspects of the festive season. There are unscrupulous Santas, poisonous puddings, and deadly deeds, which combine to make luscious yuletide terror––just like fruitcake. I admit I really loved my mom's fruitcake, which was highly anticipated every year. That could have been because it had been doused in Cognac for weeks.

Penzler has a second collection that includes 60 of his all-time favorite Christmas crime stories. There are mysteries from Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson and Thomas Hardy, written long ago, and some written a century later by modern writers like Sara Paretsky. It is The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. These are keeper books and they join Naughty: Nine Tales of Christmas Crime by Steve Hockensmith, in my Christmas reading basket year after year.

I have never had the opportunity to skim along the snow on a sleigh ride. The closest thing I ever came to it was in Chris Grabenstein's Slay Ride. It's about a young man, Scott Wilkinson, who hops into a car-service Lincoln expecting an enjoyable dash through the snow. But, in minutes, he's far from laughing, because his chauffeur drives like a maniac with menace on his mind. Scott gets home safely, but he opens Pandora's box when he decides to complain. He has no idea what events he has just set in motion because of his bell ringing. This story introduced Christopher Miller, aka "Saint Chris," an FBI legend, and he returns in another ride from Grabenstein in Hell for the Holidays.

Lastly, references to angels pop up a lot at this time of year. "Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings" is how that memorable Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life ends. To get another perspective on angels you should try Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel. None other than the archangel Raziel has come to earth seeking a small child who needs a wish granted.

Little Joshua Barker desperately needs a holiday miracle. It's not that that he dying of cancer, or that he has a miserable life or even that he has lost his dog. It's worse. He had seen someone whack Santa Claus with a shovel and his wish is that Santa come back from the dead.

Raziel has lost his touch in the good works department, and before he's done, he has caused more than enough Christmas chaos and hilarity. This might be hard to forgive. Will he lose his wings? I was laughing enough that I had to dry my eyes to find out.

Many of my favorite authors have books that take place in December and occasionally incorporate the seasonal holidays. The best lists around of Christmas crime literature can be found on the blog Mystery Fanfare starting here: Christmas mysteries: Authors A-D

Books and Summertime

Our State Fair is a great State Fair. It's opening tomorrow and there is something for everyone to enjoy. From concerts to 4H exhibits and temptations of all kinds. The kids all like the rides, but adults prefer the attractions of the midway. Pick your favorite: Skee-Ball, Whack-a-Mole, the carousel, Ferris wheel or even cardboard horse races––and maybe sharp-shooting for suckers.

If you can't make it to your state fair, I found a selection of books that will amuse and entertain in a similar summer fun fashion.

A good place to start is with The White Magic Five and Dime by Steve Hockensmith, with Lisa Falco (Midnight Ink/Llewellyn, July 8, 2014). When Alanis McLachlan gets a phone call from her mother's lawyer, her first reaction is to choke on her Coke, because she knew her mother either wanted money or she was dead. The latter was the case and it appeared that Barbra Harper was killed in a botched burglary scenario. Alanis had shed all the tears she ever would for her mother, whom she had not seen or heard from in 20 years.

Almost from the time she could walk, Alanis was used as an accomplice in her mother's con games. When she got old enough she left that life forever, disgusted with the peripatetic lifestyle that was always fraught with danger. Now, she finds her mother has left her the most recent sting scheme, a shop in Berdache, Arizona. Apparently there are "vortexes" around Sedona, and there are some less powerful ones around Berdache, but still enough to support a half dozen occult bookstores and New Age crystal shops. One of these is the White Magic Five and Dime.

Alanis has no doubt that her mother was as slick and crooked as ever, but since, along with the bookstore, she has been given an apartment and a sum of ill-gotten gains, she decides to stay awhile, run the business and try to find out who killed her mother. Another surprise is that Barbra also left a somewhat mysterious young girl inhabiting the apartment.

This is a captivating story that really kept me engrossed, as I followed and laughed at Alanis's attempts to learn enough about Tarot cards so that she can fake her way into her client's confidences, hoping she can find out some of her mother's secrets.

Once I began this book I didn't put it down until I was finished. It was pure fun from beginning to end. You might be more familiar with Steve Hockensmith from his Holmes on the Range series and short stories that feature cowboys Old Red and Big Red Amlingmeyer who follow the steps of their literary hero Sherlock Holmes as they use his methods of observation and deduction to solve mysteries in the wild west. Hockensmith has a great sense of humor and a charismatic way of telling a story, so I wanted to read more of his work. This led me to the genre of monster mashups.

The great number of authors who have been monsterized flabbergasted me. The list goes from Dickens to Shakespeare to Mark Twain and Tolstoy. My first choice was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Quirk Books, 2009), by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains" is how the story begins. This is an edition of the classic in which the Bennet family of five sisters who live at Longbourn estate spend their days and nights practicing and using the deadly arts, as learned in the Orient, against an invasion of Zombies. Forget about looking for husbands, these girls are much admired zombie assassins.

The main plot of Austen's original remains intact, but there are a few tweaks, especially as regards certain characters in the book who come to different––but more satisfying––ends.

This book was hilarious at times, but my main complaint is that the mythology of zombies was vague. There were mentions of a strange plague, but it was never clear how the strange events began, nor how the condition was disseminated. The zombies were pulling themselves out of the ground in various stages of decay, from newly disgusting to ancient remains. Aside from the fact that these creatures were looking for brains, it was never clear just what behavior could be expected from the wanderers––and this was odd, because these events had been going on for decades.

Steve Hockensmith wrote a prequel, as well as a sequel, to PaPaZ. Both of these are based loosely on the Jane Austen novel. The first, Dawn of the Dreadfuls: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Quirk Books, 2010) takes place when Elizabeth Bennet is just 17 years old. Things had been quiet in Meryton for some time, and everyone was taken aback when a corpse began to rise at his own funeral. Mr. Oscar Bennet had been instrumental in quelling the first insurgence of the living dead, euphemistically referred to as "the troubles," and he began a rigorous training program to turn his daughters into fierce warriors.

One of the best ways to put a period to the existence of a Zombie was to whack it on the head so to sever the connection from brain to body. This reminded me of the summer arcade game of Whack-a-Mole.

Hockensmith's take on the mythology of Zombieism is more detailed and explicit, and we learn that the bite of a zombie causes the strange plague to spread. The only recourse to this is to hack off the offending body parts, which did result in some bizarre residual humans. In the end, the mechanics of who is called to the peculiar situation is still unclear, leaving it a mystery as to why entire cemeteries empty, as their inhabitants reclaim an existence above the grass.

In Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After (Quirk Books, 2011), Hockensmith picks up the story several years after the marriage of Elizabeth Bennet to Fitzwilliam Darcy. Elizabeth is in a race to discover a cure for the strange malady before she has to behead her husband. It is fortunate that the troubles remain restricted to England. Thank heaven for island nations.

If your idea of fun is testing your own mental agility, then grab Chris Grabenstein's Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library (Yearling, June 2014) and settle in for a good time. It has been 12 years since Ohio's Alexandriaville Public Library was torn down. At one time, Mr. Luigi Lemoncello, the son of immigrants, spent many happy hours in a library, wanting to learn about his new country. He is now a brilliant gazillionaire who earned his money by creating fantastical board games and electronic games loved by children and families everywhere.

So he is responsible for the creation of a wonderful new facility, filled to the brim with books, computers, holographic history lessons, and a magical ceiling made up of nine individual video screens that can operate together or individually, giving the impression of the brilliance of Times Square; a Wonder Dome, indeed.

To celebrate the opening of the new library, Mr. Lemoncello conceived of an event that would bring in lots of attention. Twelve 12-year-olds were going to be selected to enjoy an overnight lock-in, with food, prizes and games.

Kyle Keeley isn't big on books, but he is a whiz on board games as well computer games, so he was excited to be chosen, along with some of his friends. What they find after the doors have been closed and locked is that they are to be part of a great game, the object of which is to find a way out of the library without going out the front door. There are also rules debarring them from escaping from windows, what few there are, and fire doors.

The clues they have on hand are that everything they need to know is on their library cards, and that the library itself contains everything the players need to complete their plans. Kyle teams up with a few friends and the game is afoot.

This book was exciting and lots of fun because the readers have to put their own thinking caps on to solve the riddles, rebuses and value suggestions. Readers will find out if indeed they are smarter than an average seventh grader. The dénouement of this story leads to a mysterious surprise and a challenge. Go for it!

To warm you up, here's a rebus which is a clue to how one feels at the end of a day at the state fair.

And this may be what interests you tomorrow:

A Horse Race

As I watched Oxbow run away with the Preakness Stakes on Saturday afternoon, I mused how my reading resembles a horse race. I pick up several books at once and rank them on their pedigree, which includes past novels by the same author, recommendations from online friends, and finally what they look like. I often put my money on a flashy outsider and occasionally regret my choice. I read a bit from each of them and then pick one to settle into and the race is on. If my attention wanders, I fall on one of the others in the pack.

Oxbow at the Preakness

Sometimes the first one grabs me and it is a leader from start to finish just like Oxbow in Baltimore.

One such winner was Chris Grabenstein's latest, Free Fall, which was first out of the gate. The story opens in early June at a beach resort on the coast of New Jersey, which is getting itself together after superstorm Sandy. Sea Haven, home to its police department's dynamic duo John Ceepak and his partner Danny Boyle, has taken eight months to pull back from the brink.

Danny, who once thought of Sandy only as one of his favorite Bruce Springsteen songs, has had a few other things torn asunder. After a mayoral election, Danny found himself gifted with a new partner, Sal Santucci, who thinks of nothing but food, and Danny has found himself the "Keeper of The Code" of police conduct.

There is nothing worse for policemen in small towns than to be called to a scene of a fight to hear an old friend disclaim, "I didn’t do anything!" On this particular occasion, the friend, Christine, was a close friend of Danny's late, greatly-lamented love. This turns out to be a she-said/she-said situation, but before long, Christine is embroiled in a worst-case scenario involving murder.

After this battered seaside vacationland reclaimed some of its amusement rides from the surf, one of the rides has been transformed with new lights, sound effects, paint job and a new operator: Joe Ceepak, John's father, who has ridden into town to harass his son and former wife. The ride's name is the Free Fall. Freefall rides have three distinct parts: a ride to the top of a tall tower, a momentary suspension and then a downward plunge.

The ride is actually a metaphor for the mystery. The story gathers momentum, as John Ceepak and Boyle are reunited to investigate the murder, while simultaneously try to keep the reins on old Joe Ceepak. Joe's ex-wife has come into some money. Joe feels he is entitled to some of this legacy and is willing to go to extreme lengths to accomplish this––even kill someone, if he can stay off the sauce long enough. Ceepak the younger has his hands full.

But nothing is going to stop the inevitable free fall, because events are moving along like a force of nature and Danny is called upon to use all his skills to prevent disaster. The story crosses the finish line with intensity.

Sometimes, one of my reading choices tends to get stuck in the middle of the pack and gets a lot of dirt on its face. Somewhat like Orb actually. Orb came to the Preakness with a great track record, having won the Run for the Roses a few weeks ago. Similarly, Charlaine Harris has a tremendous record with several very successful series under her belt. Dead Ever After is the last of the Sookie Stackhouse series and, as such, came with tremendous expectations. Some fans also follow the TV series, True Blood, and they have their own set of expectations.

In Dead Ever After, Sookie is coming off a great battle involving many supernatural forces, at the end of which she had to make a crucial decision about whom to protect. Her final choice is not a popular one; many think she backed the wrong horse, and the story begins with Sookie down in the dumps because she seems to have alienated her vampire husband Eric, her partner Sam, and her witch friend Amelia.

When an ex-friend Arlene comes around to Sookie's workplace, Merlotte's, asking for a job, she gets turned down flat, but before the next day dawns Arlene is dead and Sookie is suspected of murder. In this finale, all of the people and creatures Sookie has helped in the past are spurred on to help her clear her name.

One of the main themes of the series is the jockeying for position in the race for Sookie's heart by several suitors. Eric, Sam, Alcide, Quinn and Bill have all been in the running at one time or another and if my odds-on favorite seems to lag behind, I can't use that as a criticism of the work. The main hurdle for me was a dark-horse evil power that has entered the field to keep Sookie from going the distance. I am not sure why I could swallow the vampire idea and then cavil at other influences, but I did. Go figure.

At the wire, all the loose ends were reined in but I was saddled with a bit of sorrow over the demise of a great series.

Then there are those books that seem to start slowly, like Secretariat used to do, and I go back to them several times before they get into their stride and surpass all others in the pack. Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin was like this.

Slow out of the starting gate, the story ambles along as two men are introduced. One is Larry, the son of a white small landowner in rural Chabot, Mississippi, who spends his childhood trying to be a help to his father. Larry's father rejects him most of the time, so Larry loses himself in books and horror stories. As an adult, he is a shunned outcast because he is presumed to be responsible for the disappearance of a girl he had his only date with.

Secretariat at Belmont

Silas is a transplant from Chicago, coming back to this small southern town with his African-American mother to a place that was familiar to her. They are dirt poor, but Silas finds a way to be successful in school because of his athletic ability. Later on, he returns to Chabot as a constable and he is remembered fondly by his sobriquet "32." Silas has not seen Larry in years, and makes no attempt to meet him until now, when he calls in a professional capacity. Now, another girl is missing.

"Scary" Larry is slowly atrophying from lack of human interaction, so when an intruder shoots him he is ready to die. Silas doesn't want to come a cropper in this case, because he wonders if he had been unfair to Larry when he was too busy to answer urgent phone calls.

Once, though, these boys were friends, albeit secretly. In this time and in this place, comradeship between the races was verboten. Silas was the one boy who really knew Larry, but now he lives with decisions he made long ago.

This is a story that does not have a predictable outcome. It is filled with flawed characters who seem to be surrounded with sadness. But then the plot picks up speed and once Franklin delves into this duo's shared history and shared secrets, the novel catches fire and down the stretch it goes. Filled with lyrical prose that is almost poetic made reading this book a memorable experience.

Note: I could not have written these reviews without the help of sports metaphors.

Book Review of Chris Grabenstein's Fun House

Fun House by Chris Grabenstein

I have been eagerly awaiting this book and sat down to read it as soon as it came in the mail. I thought one of the nicest things I could do was to share it with you. We have had a damp, cold April, and the first week of May has been the way Dickens describes March: "Summer in the sun but winter in the shade." Unfortunately, we have not had much of any sun. This is the perfect time to read a Chris Grabenstein book and imagine summer just a little bit closer than it is.

Have you ever been to a funhouse? It is what Danny Boyle calls a participatory amusement. Danny is my favorite philosopher––camouflaged as a policeman––in fiction today. He and John Ceepak, the ex-Marine recently home from Iraq, are two of the Sea Haven, New Jersey, Police Department’s finest. Danny explains that it is not because people are subconsciously afraid to walk through Mick Jagger lips that nobody builds those rickety funhouse things any more. It is because people today like to sit in cars, after they have driven in cars to get where they are going.

The most famous "funhouse" in Sea Haven these days isn't at a carnival. It's on a rather seedy Halibut Street, where a reality TV show called Fun House is filming. The show resembles a mix of Jersey Shore and Big Brother––and maybe, as it turns out, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. The summer began with 10 young men and women in their twenties who love living la vida loca, spending their time high on alcohol and amour, and trying to outlast each other through exciting, drunken competitions required by the show. The last one of the housemates staggering wins a cool quarter mil. The denizens of this funhouse live by the credo that anything done is best done while out of control and best described by bleepity bleep. Naturally, the show is very popular.

The reader joins the fun during the Brewskee Ball competition, which is taking place at the Coin Castle. Skeeball is a common seaside attention on many boardwalk arcades that affords a lot of fun for a small amount of money; still a favorite of my own, I must admit. The player bowls a small ball up an alley in an attempt to hop it in to a set of rings for points, which win the player coupons redeemable for––wait for it––tiny little prizes worth a few pennies!

John Ceepak and his wife Rita are out enjoying a nice late summer evening when the four of the Fun House group are competing at Brewskee Ball and begin making themselves known to all. Paulie “The Thing,” who has made himself famous by calling himself after a horror creature and constantly flashing his awesome pecs, begins to lose to Mike Tomasino, a fella with rototiller sharp hair. An altercation ensues and the girls fan the flames. Jenny Mortadella (who has actually changed her name, apparently not realizing it means baloney) and Soozy K are there more in the cheerleader capacity.

When blood begins to flow and balls fly, Ceepak enters the fray and is memorialized on YouTube, the natural outcome of which is that the producers want him on the show.

The mayor of Sea Haven––with dollar signs in his eyes––is all for the idea, and when Danny Boyle, Ceepak's partner, suggests there is a reason for the behavior at the Coin Palace, they both see a deeper purpose for being around this group. They have hopes that it will help them solve another crime from the past. Before much can be accomplished though, Paulie “The Thing” is found brutally murdered in a Knock ’Em Down booth. To both the cops' dismay, despite the almost 24/7 camera coverage of the TV personalities for the Fun House show, Paulie had managed to elude the cameras. The in-house video cameras were supposed to be on a generator for power purposes, but it was mysteriously down and so there was no footage, and the camera crew missed him sneaking away as well.

Before long, there are death threats aimed at another of the remaining cast members. Motives are swirling all around. The ratings are skyrocketing, the careers of some are circling the drain while others' ambitions seem to be catching fire. Then rumors start coming out of the woodwork. This is New Jersey with Atlantic City and its gambling dens just around the corner; big money is involved in many ways.

John Ceepak is taking it one step at a time. Danny Boyle, on the other hand, is the kind of guy––as he puts it––who would rather land on a square with a chute or ladder so he can skip some of the boring moves. Maybe it is the combination of two such different personalities that works so well. In any case, when in doubt, whatever the situation––emotional, critical or just plain nostalgic––both of these guys fall back on Eastern philosophy. Eastern coast that is, as elucidated by the "Boss," Bruce Springsteen.

It is a bit too early to go to the nearest boardwalk, but when I slipped into Fun House I had what my children used to call, ungrammatically, "a really fun time." The pace was rapid, but if you read too fast you might miss some of the dryly-humorous comments that toboggan out of Danny’s mouth, guaranteed to crack you up and make you want to read the book over again to make sure nothing slid by.

What I really like about this series is that the plots are original, even when reflecting pop culture. The location is not unusual, but it is presented in an extraordinary fashion and if you have ever been "down the shore" as it is said in some parts, you feel like you are back there on vacation. The characters are complex, and if morose, not for more than a few hours.

From the Boss:

"Oh, the price you pay, oh, the price you pay

Now you can’t walk away from the price you pay"

Some of Danny’s words of wisdom––priceless!

One Is Not Enough

It’s not been published in a medical journal as far as I know, but I have been given to understand that one way of predicting whether one has a potential for addiction is by the Oreo test. You are safe enough if you can stop after eating one. This is one test I am sorry to say I have failed gloriously many times. Call me an Oreo addict. It doesn’t matter if they are the classic, the double stuff, the berry flavored or even the football shaped; they are welcome on my plate. I am confident that I am one of many, because the Oreo is celebrating its 100th birthday this year.

One other thing that I am addicted to is the murder mystery. Stories told about exotic locations, intrepid protagonists, are all tasty to me, but I do still appreciate home-grown classics as well. These days, I read a great many series and of these, there are a few that once begun trigger my addictive personality and I can't stop until I have finished them all.

Two that I will discuss are like the fine, chocolatey, crispy, but firm Oreo cookie outsides and one that I consider the sweet creamy center. When I first read The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson I was hooked by the first bite:

"There's nothing like a dead body to make you feel, well, removed. I guess the big city boys, cataloguing forty or fifty homicides a year get used to it but I never have. There is a religion worthy of this rite of passage, of taking that final step of being a vertical creature instead of a horizontal one. Yesterday you were just some nobody; today you're the honored dead with bread bags rubber banded over your hands. I secure what’s left of my dwindling confidence with the false confidence of the living, the deceitful wit of the eight-foot tall and bulletproof. Yea verily though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will live forever. If I don't, I sure won't become an unattended dead in the state of Wyoming with sheep sh*t all over me."

Sheriff Walt Longmire has been on the job for many years, and when he is first called to the scene of the crime he is positive that he is on the way to the great sheepicide he has been long awaiting. Instead, he finds the body of a young man who had been killed with a single shot through the back. Weapons experts determine that the weapon was most likely a very special rifle known as a Sharps rifle.

The history of the dead young man––one Cody Pritchard who, as Longmire puts it, departed for the far country from which no traveler ever born returns––is that he was no angel. Among other things, three years prior to his murder he was involved in a brutal gang rape of a young Cheyenne maiden who was afflicted with fetal alcohol syndrome.

The history of the Sharps rifle is that it was designed by Christian Sharps and adopted by the military in 1874 because it could kill a horse stone dead at 600 yards. It was used at Harpers Ferry, and by the Indians as well, as a buffalo rifle. Sharps shooter = sharpshooter.  It was the Sharps rifles that put the icing on the cake at Little Big Horn. There were few of these rifles around, and you needed to be a marksman to shoot this rifle cleanly. The list of people who owned one was short.

Within days, two of the other young men out of the three remaining involved in the rape case were found dead, killed by Sharps. Walt Longmire and his Deputy, Victoria Moretti, a Philadelphia transplant with a mouth worse than a sailor, are fighting the weather of the high plains of Wyoming, as well as fears that more deaths will happen before the killer is caught.

And that was a great and enticing beginning to the rest of the Craig Johnson series, which goes from strength to strength. There are now eight books in this award-winning series, the latest of which is As the Crow Flies, due out in May.

Slightly darker, but oh, so satisfying, is Martin Limón's series revolving around the exploits of a military duo in South Korea. After their introduction in Jade Lady Burning, I was anxious to read Slicky Boys.

George Sueño and his partner, Ernie Bascom, are both grateful to the army. What for? For George it is because he has a real life, money coming in, and has a job to do. He and Ernie are CID investigators for the 8th United States Army in Seoul, South Korea. They wear suits and do important work, something George never thought he would do growing up in East Los Angeles. Ernie's Chicago youth also left much to be desired.

Itaewon

After work, these two friends and partners spend their free time in Itaewon, a seedy part of town filled with bars and businesswomen. On this occasion, they do a favor for one of the girls they met and it results in the death of a British soldier. It turned out that he was a little shady, and as the CID investigators they need to find his murderer before they themselves are in hot water for perhaps leading him to his death.

Part of the investigation reveals connections to a widespread systematic thievery of the American enclaves. After the devastation of the Korean War 20 years before, people were desperate and starving. In the middle of these wastelands were American military settlements surrounded by barbed wire, and these were the only places with food, clothing and shelter. The people would barter with the GIs for the wealth they held, be it so small as a used bar of soap. Others were more aggressive, using thievery. "Slick boys" is what the GIs called them, and the South Koreans softened it to "slicky boys." Many were exactly that, boys of six to 10 years old. They would slip through the wire and take anything that could fit in their pockets.

8th Army PX

In George Sueño's time, they were very organized and he was going to find out just how much. What he found impressed him, because there was a certain honor to the way the losses to the American compounds were always kept just below what the US Government allotted for. No greed was permitted. In this way, they also hid from investigations.

As Sueño's investigation proceeds, he feels that he is becoming wrapped in the tentacles of a giant squid. There are more brutal murders and the partners find far-reaching fingers in the pie, such as the North Koreans, the South Korean police, the South Korean and the US Navies. The case is dragging them down to the depths of evil.  On the surface, at least part of the problem is the loss of military secrets.

Sueño has to lower himself to abide by the dictates of common thieves, but this did not really bother him. He was from East LA and he had been fighting his way up from the bottom all his life. His strength in his relations with the South Koreans is that he is one of the few who bothered to learn the language, to learn about the culture and to understand the desperate circumstances that force people into certain ways of life.

Martin Limón takes us to a South Korea that is fascinating, exciting and complex. He uses a bit of the history of the people he writes about to make us appreciate an Asian culture that has suffered for the last centuries. The seventh and, so far, the last in this series is Mr. Kill, published in 2011.

Some of us take off the outsides of the Oreo, lick them and put them aside for later. Then spend a sweet time with the creamy middle. My grandson is one of these. It is such fun to watch his ritual. My appreciation of this sugar jolt can be compared to the sensation I have when reading the Chris Grabenstein series that takes place on the Jersey shore where people go to escape.

In Tilt–A-Whirl, we are introduced to appealing partners John Ceepak, an Iraq war veteran and his sidekick, young Danny Boyle, who narrates the story.

“Some guys have a code they live by, some guys don't.
John Ceepak? He has a code.
Me? No code. Not unless you count my zip code or something."

So says Danny Boyle, a Sea Haven 2.5. That is to say a part-time summer cop in a tourist town on the Jersey shore called Sea Haven. He is a hometown boy who likes the job because of the cop cap, which he believes attracts the babes.

Ceepak, on the other hand, just finished a 13-year stint with the army, where he was in the military police. Before the army, he studied criminology. Before that, he was an Eagle Scout. Before that, Boyle figures he was one helluva hall monitor in kindergarten. He is a cop 24/7. One thing they have in common is The Boss, Bruce Springsteen.

Every morning, they meet at 7:30 at the Pancake Palace to discuss the plans for the day. It begins as a girl runs down the boardwalk covered with blood. The murder victim found on the Tilt-A-Whirl ride is Reginald Hart, a wealthy real estate tycoon also known as Reginald Hartless because of the lowdown tactics he has used in the past to drive tenants out of buildings.

Ceepak's code is simple. He will not tell a lie, or steal, or cheat, or tolerate those who do. It is an honor code. It is something Danny Boyle is learning to live by as well. He is having to grow up this summer and it is about time. As the story unfolds, we learn a little about what makes John Ceepak the man he is, and the Tilt-A-Whirl murder stretches his sense of honor to the limits.

Chris Grabenstein has a wonderful way with words. From the moment the story begins, you are on a wild, exhilarating ride, with the wind in your face, the tang of salt air mingling with the smell of popcorn and the sound of laughter in the background. Grabenstein paints distinct visuals that remain with you long after the book is finished. There is one description of a chase of a wild-haired man through a working car wash that made me laugh like a hyena. So many of his descriptions keep such a big smile on your face that this dead seriousness of the crime and the criminality of what goes on in Sea Haven and elsewhere is lightened a bit.

In this series, which is followed by Mad Mouse––also the name of a ride at an amusement park––there is a lot of amusement. But there is plenty of seriousness as well, always lightened by Bruce Springsteen quotes chosen appropriately for the moment. At the end of Tilt-A-Whirl, when John and Danny have to pick their spirits up, Danny is reminded of the song Springsteen wrote for the New York City firefighters after 9/11, the ones who went into the fire because they knew it was the right thing to do.

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

Danny decides to work on his code as well.

The seventh and latest of the group is Fun House, due out in May. Meanwhile, I have to dip into my spring yellow-centered Oreos, because I am salivating already.