Do androids dream of electric detectives?

Made to Kill, by Adam Christopher (L.A. Trilogy, Book 1; Tor Books, November 3, 2015)

In this alternative version of 1965 Los Angeles, the great experiment of doing menial jobs with "machine men" is over. Raymond Electromatic, a whole new model of machine man, rolled off the line just when the government shut down the experiment and all its products. Now Raymond is the world's last––and only––robot.

Raymond and his wisecracking computer partner, Ada, are the creations of scientist Dr.Thornton, who sets up Ada as the back-office brains and Raymond as the front-office muscle in the Electromatic Detective Agency. Once Thornton has passed on, their prime directive is to make money. Ada has figured out that murder for hire is a lot more lucrative than private detection, so now Ray's real job is hit-robot.

But here's the thing. Even though Ray was top of the line for his time, that doesn't mean he and Ada are all that advanced in some ways. When I say Ada is the back-office brains, I mean her hardware takes up nearly all the space in the back office. Ray's hard-wired with lots of fundamental knowledge, but his short-term memory runs on a tape that he has to give back to Ada every night for her to add to her racks of day-memory tapes. He starts each day with a clean tape and no memory of what he did the day before.

Ray's memory limitation is no problem for a hit-robot who's supposed to do an in-and-out kill on the occasional evening, but it's a drawback for a private detective. Still, Ray takes on a new case when that classic plot device of hardboiled fiction, the damsel in distress, walks through the agency's frosted-glass door. This dame offers Ray a big bag of gold bars if he'll eliminate Hollywood actor Charles David, no questions asked.

Ray's a bit of a movie buff, so he's interested in a case that takes him into Hollywood. What he didn't bargain for is finding a weird sort of cult among the movie world's upper crust. This group seems to be planning something really big; something involving Russians. And even though this is an alternative 1965, Russians are just as ominous as they were in our 1965.

Adam Christopher's goal here seems to be to write a Raymond Chandler novel with a robot protagonist. (I doubt it's coincidence that the robot protagonist and Chandler have the same first name.) And he does it fairly well. The hardboiled dialog is there, and Ray's deadpan wit makes him a believable mechanical Marlowe.

Compared to Chandler, though, this is more lightweight fare, a quick, fun read. And it's best to treat it that way and not think too much about the fact that most of the time there's not a compelling reason in the way the story is presented to have Ray be a robot at all. Or that there are way too many sentences including the words "I frowned on the inside" or someone "made a sound like" a cement mixer, a beehive, steam engine brakes, a cat pawing at a mouse inside an air vent, two rocks going for a joyride in a clothes washer, a garbage truck grinding its gears, a sewing machine on overdrive, a clutch slipping and at least a couple of dozen other things. I also would have liked to see more development of the alternative world of 1965, other than just a couple of tantalizing glimpses.

Still, I had fun reading the story, despite its significant drawbacks. The tone is funny with an edge, I grew fond of Ray and the time zipped by as I read. One other thing I should mention; though this is billed as the first in a trilogy, it stands on its own, so there is none of that cliffhanger stuff that makes me want to throw a book against the wall.

Note: I received a free advance review copy of the book. Versions of this review may appear on Amazon, BookLikes and other reviewing sites under my usernames there.

Camp Out with These Books

Conveniently for my daughter, she's rarely home when I want to throttle her. I'm getting ready for a camping trip with friends, so I pulled out our five-person tent. Except it's not our five-person tent. I've never seen this tent before in my life. The last time I saw our tent is when I handed it to my daughter, who took it to a weekend music festival, the kind where there are thousands of tents being taken down on the last day, and your daughter brings back a tent that's not nearly as large or as nice as the one she and her friends originally set off with in her car.

That particular tent may be jinxed. On the way home after purchasing it, I asked my two then-small kids not to tell their dad how expensive it was. It was erected in the living room, and the three of us were looking at it proudly when Hubby/Daddy got home. "Wow, that's a really nice tent. I bet it was pricey, like a hundred bucks," he said. "Yeah, something like that," I smiled. "No, Mommy, it was $xxx.xx," advised our daughter, the overly truthful, little Miss Know-It-All. "Hey, Mommy told us not to tell Daddy how much it cost," scolded her big brother, who liked nothing more than correcting her. Luckily, Hubby/Daddy has a sense of humor, and he just laughed.

Thinking about our jinxed tent today, I hope the people now camping with it are not plagued by blizzards or high winds, since the tent's bad-weather cover remains in our garage. The instructions are there, too. Let me know if you're the (un)lucky person in possession of the tent that formerly belonged to us, and I'll tell you how to set it up. For everyone else, I'll stick to suggesting books you'd be lucky to have for reading in your tent.

After you've doused yourself with mosquito repellent, pitched camp away from the poison oak, and secured your food out of the bears' reach, take refuge in the mean streets of Los Angeles with black homicide detective Elouise ("Lou") Norton in Rachel Howzell Hall's Land of Shadows (Forge, June 2014). Lou's current case involves the death of 17-year-old Monique Darson in a gentrifying development, but Lou sees similarities to her own older sister Tori's unsolved disappearance 25 years earlier. As her investigation proceeds and grows more dangerous, Lou becomes convinced that solving Monique's murder will also close Tori's cold case. Her superiors aren't so sure.

Rachel Howzell Hall
(Getty Images)

Most of the book is narrated by Lou. It's a pleasure to follow Lou as she recalls days leading up to Tori's vanishing and its aftermath, and she deals with her new partner from Colorado, Colin Taggert, who dresses like he's "going to a bar mitzvah at the Ponderosa" and does a bites-his-lip-and-smiles thing when he surveys the attractive Lou. Lou rolls her eyes, although her marriage to Greg, in Japan on business, is wilting. How many "Sorry, Baby" Porsche Cayenne SUVs does a woman want from her cheating husband? Lou is sassy, smart, and tough; writer Hall knows Los Angeles inside out, and she has keen insight into human nature and complex family relationships. This is a great start to a new series. Don't worry about the looming "Z" for Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone: meet the LAPD's Lou Norton.

Okay, I love Lou, and I look forward to seeing more of her in the future, but one should spend only so much time with law enforcement while camping. After all, isn't the point of spending a few nights hanging out with wild animals in the forest to escape civilization? Let's plot a murder (ineptly, it's the funnest way) with Buddy Sandifer, a used-car dealer in the Midwest and father of a teenage son heavily into sex manuals, who wants his wife dead so he can marry his buxom blonde mistress, Laverne, in Sneaky People. This terrific black comic noir, set in the '30s, is written by Thomas Berger, who also wrote the picaresque novel, Little Big Man, which starred Dustin Hoffman when it was adapted for the screen.

When you've had your fill of gazing at the stars and eating s'mores around the fire, light the tent lantern and crawl into your sleeping bag with a book. Now, the book must be absolutely riveting to keep your mind off how incredibly claustrophobic it all is. Think about it: you are lying not only inside a small tent, you are encased in a narrow bag. But don't think about it too much. If the enclosed space is getting to you, and you're in danger of bursting into shrieks and running amok through the camp, you might find it helpful to stuff cotton between each of your toes so they don't touch each other while you're in your sleeping bag. (I have no idea if this actually works because it just occurred to me; however, doesn't the theory behind this suggestion seem sound to you?)

My specific book recommendation depends on the phase of the moon. If there's a full moon, don't just howl at it––read Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Please don't tell me you don't like science fiction. There are certain books even non-sci fi lovers should enjoy, and this is one of them. In it, indentured lunar colony members produce wheat for consumption on Earth. It's 2075 when some of them, aided by a computer named Mike, decide to stage a revolution.

The word "revolution" reminds me of the French (Happy Bastille Day!), which reminds me of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. (Trust me, I am working my way toward a point.) If there's not a full moon, but an inky sky glittering with constellations, I suggest you read Alfred Bester's darkly comic oddball tale, The Stars My Destination. You'll see the parallels to Dumas' 1844 adventure masterpiece as Gulliver ("Gully") Foyle, Mechanic's Mate 3rd Class and only man alive on the wrecked and marooned spaceship Nomad, vows revenge against the owners and crew of the Vorga, a passing space vessel that ignores his distress signals. It's a furious, obsessional murderous pursuit through time and space that should distract you from the confinement of your tent and sleeping bag.

I would be grossly irresponsible if I didn't close with a post-apocalyptic horror thriller for your nighttime read. M. R. Carey's The Girl with All the Gifts (Orbit/Hachette, June 2014) is that––and an on-the-road (à la Cormac McCarthy's The Road) and coming-of-age novel, too. Its heroine is a 10-year-old named Melanie, whom Dr. Caldwell calls "our little genius." Melanie lives alone in her cell in a cellblock full of other children. There are no windows, and the children have no memories of any other existence. Five days a week, Sgt. Parks trains a gun on them while they seat themselves in wheelchairs, are strapped in, and are wheeled into a classroom for lessons. Melanie loves her teacher, Miss Justineau, and hopes when she grows up, she can move to Beacon, the closest city in that part of England. Soon thereafter, events take a turn that puts Melanie, Miss Justineau, Sgt. Parks, Pvt. Gallagher, and Dr. Caldwell on the road to Beacon. That's all I want to divulge about the plot and characters.

M. R. Carey

Despite its flaws (clichéd characters and plot elements and an over-long 403 pages), I enjoyed this book for its creepy atmosphere, intricate plotting, examination of our world and a dystopian future, the relationships between the characters, and the chance to see Melanie come into her own. Pandora, who opened a box and gave her gifts to the world, would have enjoyed it, too. When the owls start hooting, pull out Carey's novel, and dig in.

Happy camping and reading, everybody.

Firecrackers for the Fourth of July

Do I need to remind you this Friday is the Fourth of July? Many of us Americans will be celebrating our country's birthday by hitting the road for a three-day weekend. Packing a terrific book is crucial, and do I have a few sure-fire reads for you!

Let's begin with the trip itself. We'll assume you're traveling with an adult companion. To pass the time, you could jointly tackle one of those impossible British cryptic crossword puzzles. If that attempt fizzles, and your conversation falters, fuel it with a controversy. Note I said "fuel," not "use flamethrower." Keep in mind that topics such as "your no-good cousin, the one we have to keep bailing out of jail" or "your rotten taste in men that always gets you in trouble" could ruin the trip before you reach the destination. A better choice for a delectable bone of contention is provided by Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, edited by Joe Levy and published by Wenner Books in 2005. Where would you rank albums by Elvis Presley, the Stones, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry?

Maybe you and your travel mate would rather sing songs instead of merely talk about them (hopefully, you're belting out lyrics in your car and not on my Southwest flight to Portland, Oregon). Take along Reading Lyrics, edited by Robert Gottlieb and Robert Kimball. It covers more than 1,000 lyrics, by more than 100 American and British song writers, from 1900 to 1975. It's a book you can use once you reach your destination, too. Hand it to your significant other while you slip into the shower. He or she can sit braced against the shower door and feed you lyrics. The two of you can warble a duet à la Natalie Cole and her father, Nat King Cole, with "Unforgettable."

Alternatively, loll in the tub with mai tais and accompany lyrics from the musical South Pacific with rhythmic splashing and drumming toes. Create some personal fireworks and then towel off to "People Will Say We're in Love" from the Broadway hit Oklahoma!. Or, commemorate American independence with a bathtub reenactment of the Boston Tea Party (Twinings English Breakfast tea would be ideal here) and a spirited rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner." (Note: This last suggestion is open to suitable modification. If you're an American in the tub with a Brit, this scenario will work well; if your tub mate is French, pay tribute to Lafayette, the aristocratic French general who fought on the Americans' side in the Revolutionary War, with beaucoup toasts of champagne. If you're sharing the tub with a fellow American of the opposite political party, display patriotism as currently practiced in the United States by trying to drown each other.)

If you're alone in the tub, there's no better place to begin Terry Hayes's I Am Pilgrim (Emily Bestler Books/Atria, May 27, 2014), which opens with a brilliant forensics expert, whom we come to know as Scott Murdoch (aka the Pilgrim), prowling around a squalid Manhattan hotel room, while an unidentifiable young woman lies in a bathtub full of acid. She appears to be the victim of a perfect, albeit gruesome, murder, but the roles she, the killer, and NYPD homicide detective Ben Bradley play in the multi-layered plot will only fully be revealed much later in this book of 600+ pages.

Meanwhile, we weave in and out of a jumble of Scott's troubled memories of people and places, piecing together his relationship with his folks, his recruitment into espionage by the Division, and his duties as a federal agent policing American spies in Europe and Asia before 9/11. Scott has barely taken early retirement when he is asked to investigate evidence of a terrorist plot found in Afghanistan. There is plenty of foreshadowing, but we readers are already following the separate story thread of a determined jihadi, codenamed "the Saracen," as he witnesses his father's beheading in Saudi Arabia, moves with his stricken mother and sisters to Bahrain, and forms the belief that the way to strike back at Saudi rulers is through their enablers in the West. It's a fascinating to and fro, watching Saracen's unfolding plot and Pilgrim's attempts to identify and stop him.

By the time we reach the ticking-clock finale, we've visited many locations, watched ingenious maneuvering and deductions, and met a host of complex characters. We may not be rooting for Saracen, but we understand him. The book could have used some trimming, and there are some exceedingly grisly scenes. But this first in an anticipated trilogy by Hayes, a movie screenwriter and producer of Payback and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, is a highly entertaining espionage thriller I was reluctant to put down.

Speaking of highly entertaining, let me tell you about Lenny Kleinfeld's wild and witty Some Dead Genius (Niaux-Noir Books, May 30, 2014), which forced me to repeatedly put the book down, squeeze my eyes shut, clamp my lips closed, and re-route laughter through my nose out of courtesy to other people on the train.

This hardboiled black comedy involves a series of artists' murders investigated by the pair of smart, but cynical Chicago cops we first met in Shooters & Chasers (see review here): Mark Bergman, a 35-year-old hunk who goes through women like a dolphin goes through waves, and John "Doonie" Dunegan, a happily married family man. In Some Dead Genius, which can be read as a standalone, they're joined by a cast of colorful characters that includes mobsters, artists, politicians, and journalists. The book is R-rated for violence, sex, and language. Its structure allows a reader to tag along with the criminals, one of whom is so racked with guilt, I had to root for him; as well as watch Doonie and Mark chase the clues (I rooted for them, too). Chicago locations are put to good use; at one point, the cops pursue the killers through the Art Institute in an extended cinematic scene that could have been choreographed by Quentin Tarantino, had he channeled the Marx Brothers.

I've been a Kleinfeld fan since the late Leighton Gage raved about him after judging books for the Best First Novel Edgar. Kleinfeld's fast-paced books are likely to appeal to fans of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, but it's difficult to convey the high energy and originality of the prose without a sample, so here you go:

Tesca [a "semi-simian" loan shark] grabbed Dale's ear and dragged the squealing art dealer past forlorn walls pimpled with empty picture hooks, up a short set of stairs to a sleeping loft. Only thing in it was an air mattress, lost inside the imprint left by a king-size bed; Dale's furniture had marched out the door months ago. Tesca kicked the air mattress out of the way as he strode to the closet, with Dale's ear and what was attached to it lurching after him.

Some Dead Genius would make a very fun vacation companion this weekend.

I'll be back on Thursday to tell you about a few more good weekend reads: Josh Malerman's Bird Box and Adam Brookes's Night Heron.

Note: I received a free advance review copy of Some Dead Genius from the author.

They Should Have Listened to My Mother

Today is Mother's Day, and all week, I've been thinking about my mom. She was warm and smart and an incredibly good sport. She had a jones for cleanliness that was somehow never exhausted. ("A little soap and water never killed anybody." "I can't believe you can sleep in this filth!" "I didn't ask who put it there, I said, 'Pick it up!'") Despite daily setbacks, she never gave up on advising her five kids how to stay out of trouble or how to treat people. ("How many times do I have to tell you?") When we misbehaved, it wasn't because we didn't know better. I wonder if some crime fiction characters would have benefitted from her guidance.

Unlike some lawbreakers, professional robber and occasional killer Crissa Stone is capable of cutting her losses and walking away if there's serious trouble. ("I don't care who started it, I said STOP!") She's careful about the jobs she takes, and she doesn't kill when she doesn't have to. Mom would be appalled by Crissa's occupation ("Who taught you THAT? You didn't learn that in this house!"), but she would applaud Crissa's attention to detail, resourcefulness, and toughness, as well as her love for her young daughter and loyalty to Wayne, her lover and mentor (we won't tell Mom he's in a Texas prison). Her goal is admirable: a big enough score to get herself out of the crime business, reunited with her daughter, and Wayne out on parole.

Frank and Marquis, this is not my mom!

In Wallace Stroby's third series book, Shoot the Woman First (Minotaur, 2013), Crissa hooks up with a couple of guys she's worked with before, Charlie Glass and Larry Black, and Charlie's cousin Cordell, to snatch a duffle bag of drug money from Cordell's boss, Marquis Johnson, a criminal kingpin in Detroit. ("Where are you going, and who are you going with? Do I know them?") Events take a very bad turn. Crissa heads to Florida, to turn over Black's share of the loot to his family. This is not the straightforward handover Crissa might have hoped for ("Life isn't fair"), but I wouldn't have expected anything easy, given my experience with writer Stroby.

Stroby reminds me a bit of Elmore Leonard. His lyrical writing, characterization, and spot-on dialogue can put a spit polish on any old plot vehicle, but his plot never drives like it's old. This one careens like a bat out of hell, thanks to Frank Burke, an ex-cop with nothing left to lose, who talks Johnson into hiring him to recover his money. ("You can't find it? Well, if you'd put things where they belonged, you wouldn't have this problem.") Watching Frank methodically tracking down Crissa, whose sense of responsibility makes her linger in Florida, reminded me of that relentless semi driver after Dennis Weaver in Steven Spielberg's 1971 movie, Duel. A heckuvan original heroine, a villain out of your nightmares, and a pedal-to-the-metal look at good vs. evil and the role of fate in our lives. Whoa, Mama.

Let's let Mom have a crack at Paul Thomas's Death on Demand (Bitter Lemon, 2013). Four men get together six years ago for their annual boys' weekend. Two of them have soured marriages. A third, Christopher, complains that he can't just look in the phone book for a hit man to deal with his wife. ("If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.") Three months later, Joyce dies in a hit-and-run accident, the first of a string of fatalities in Auckland, New Zealand, that runs to the present day. ("Always wear clean underwear in case you get in an accident.") Two weeks ago, Christopher is diagnosed with a fatal illness. Now, Maori DS Tito Ihaka, exiled to the boonies from Auckland Central, is brought back to re-open the investigation that got him into trouble in the first place. ("I will always love you. No matter what.")

Ihaka is "unkempt, overweight, intemperate, unruly, unorthodox and profane." In other words, he's a maverick like Ian Rankin's John Rebus. ("So what if John's mom let him do it? If John's mom let him jump off a cliff, would you want me to let you do it too?") Ihaka is also an absolute whiz at solving cases, much to the appreciation of enigmatic Auckland District Commander Finbar McGrail and DS Johan Van Roon, Ihaka's protégé and only cop friend. It rankles DI Tony "Boy" Charlton and DS Ron "Igor" Firkitt, because they hate Ihaka. There is prejudice against Maoris and and elbowing for position in the Auckland force. Like Rebus, Ihaka has a practical attitude about maintaining productive relationships with certain criminals and dispensing informal justice to those whom the law doesn't reach. ("You must think rules are made to be broken.") Women find him very attractive.

This was my first Ihaka book, and I really enjoyed it. There are plenty of unusual characters, in addition to the complicated Ihaka, and their relationships and dialogue are very well done. The unspooling of this multilayered tale has an unpredictable rhythm, in that just when you think things are clearing up, Ihaka grabs hold of another thread, and you realize you were wrong. This book, the fourth in the series, can be read out of order, but I'll definitely be looking for the three earlier books: Dirty Laundry, Inside Dope, and Guerilla Season.

Whether you're a mother yourself or remembering your own mother today, I hope your Mother's Day is a wonderful one.

The Wayback Machine: Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep

Those of us of a certain age (nope, even older than that) can remember rushing home from school in the afternoons to watch The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, starring an intrepid flying squirrel and his moose sidekick. It had a regular feature called Peabody's Improbable History. Peabody, the genius dog, had invented the Wayback Machine, and he and his boy, Sherman, would dial in a year and travel back in time, helping to unscramble history that had somehow gone awry. Today we will borrow the Wayback Machine to visit 1939 and the release of Raymond Chandler's first Philip Marlowe novel.

Chandler with Taki, his editorial assistant and critic

Raymond Thornton Chandler, widely considered one of the most influential writers of twentieth-century noir, was a bit of an accidental author. When he lost his job as an oil company executive in 1932, during the Great Depression, he started writing short stories for The Black Mask pulp magazine to support his family. In 1939, he cannibalized elements of several of his short stories and reworked them into his first full-length novel, The Big Sleep.

The setup, briefly, is this: Dying millionaire, General Sternwood, father of two beautiful out-of-control daughters Vivian and Carmen, calls in PI Marlowe to deal with a blackmailer. It is not the first time he has been forced to pay blackmail on behalf of Carmen. Previously a man named Joe Brody had "sold" pornographic pictures of the luscious 20-year-old to her father. That time, Vivian's husband, Sean Regan, had handled the transaction. But Sean has inexplicably vanished, so the General must grudgingly turn to an outsider for help.

I have seen and enjoyed the classic movie version, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, several times, but had never read the book. It is an entirely pleasurable experience. A lot of the dialog and descriptions that fly by too fast in the movie are wickedly funny and well worth lingering over in the book.

As Marlowe is leaving the mansion, the butler stops him to say that the older daughter, Vivian, wants to see him. He finds her in a huge suite, reclining on a chaise and drinking. She doesn't offer him a drink––or even a chair––before trying to pump him about why her father hired him.

"I don't see what there is to be cagey about," she snapped. "And I don't like your manners."

"I'm not crazy about yours," I said. "I didn't ask to see you. You sent for me. I don't mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me."

Then, as now, there were decency and marketing restrictions in Hollywood that required changes to Chandler's story and characters. The effect here was to make the movie even more confusing and ambiguous than the book. In one case, even the murderer was changed! While the rewrite hung together well enough, it weakened the story considerably.

One character considerably toned down in the movie was the disturbed and disturbing sex kitten, Carmen, played by the young fresh-faced Martha Vickers. I had to disagree with Marlowe in his assessment at one point: "She was a dope. To me, that's all she would ever be, a dope." He would learn better later. Chandler's Carmen is one of the more memorable and genuinely creepy fictional characters I have encountered.

After the success of this first novel, Chandler never went back into industry. He would go on to write seven more Marlowe novels, the last completed by author Robert Parker long after his death. Most have stood the test of time quite well, and several were made into movies––The Big Sleep twice.

Writers for the 1946 screenplay of The Big Sleep included Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner William Faulkner, and Leigh Brackett, a science fiction writer whose haunting and elegiac Skaith trilogy, about biologically modified races on a planet under a dying sun, is a standout in the genre. The 1946 movie is very good––a classic, in fact. But if you haven't yet read the book, you're missing out on a whole new dimension of Raymond Chandler and his tough-talking, chivalrous Philip Marlowe. This is one of those very rare instances where the book and the movie enhance and enrich each other.

Breaking the Law for Labor Day

Pumpkin spice latte season begins

It's Labor Day. Kudos to the folks who decided the best way to celebrate American workers is to give them the day off. It's summer sales or a last trip to the lake. Tomorrow we say goodbye to beach reads and hello to books for fireside reading.

In honor of Labor Day, I've assembled some books whose characters work hard at breaking or upholding the law and flouting all sorts of workplace rules. These books will help you transition from the porch swing to the living room's upholstered chair.

Don't turn up your nose when you see "On Her Majesty's Supernatural Secret Service" on the cover of Australian Daniel O'Malley's The Rook (2012, Little, Brown and Co.). Don't you like Men in Black and Doctor Who?

The book begins when a woman wakes up on a London park bench. She's bloody and bruised and has no memory. Surrounding her are twitching corpses wearing latex gloves. In her pocket are several letters addressed to "You," one of which begins "The body you are wearing used to be mine." From the letters she learns the following: her name is Myfanwy (sounds like Tiffany) Thomas, she wrote the letters to herself because she suspected she was in danger and she's high up (a rook) in the Checquy Group, a secret agency that guards unsuspecting Britain from supernatural forces. Oh, yeah, and an unknown someone at work is trying to kill her. (This is counter to American workplace laws but the Checquy Group is a British agency so perhaps murder is allowed––if attempted politely.)

The Rook, first in a new series called the Checquy Files, is an entertaining hybrid of thriller, Monty Python's Flying Circus, X-Files and The Bourne Identity.

Now I've got movies and TV shows on the brain in addition to books. If you took Don Winslow's Savages and crossed it with a relentless chase movie, such as No Country for Old Men or Jaws (if a land shark rather than an ocean-going shark were pursued), you'd get James Carlos Blake's The Rules of Wolfe: A Border Noir (July 2013, Mysterious Press), sequel to last year's Country of the Bad Wolfes.

That book describes a Texas family's gunrunning and smuggling operations history but now we move to the present to find Eddie Gato Wolfe too impatient to earn the college degree necessary to join the family business. He heads south and winds up with a security job for a violent Mexican drug cartel run by La Navaja. Breaking a universal workplace rule, Eddie goes to bed with Miranda, the girlfriend of his employer's brother, El Segundo. Making it worse, when El Segundo discovers them, Eddie kills him. It's time for Eddie and Miranda to hotfoot it outta there into the Sonoran desert with La Navaja's men panting after them. The only question is which will kill them first: the desert or the chasers. Very vivid writing.

Kevin Egan's debut, Midnight (Forge, July 2), reads like Scott Smith or Cornell Woolrich reworked the movie 9 to 5.

In that movie, a lot of wild scrambling takes place at Consolidated Companies. In Midnight, New Year's Eve provokes scrambling in the courthouse offices of Manhattan Judge Alvin Canter. That's because Canter died of a heart attack in the morning of December 31st. Had he died after midnight, paychecks for law clerk Tom Carroway and secretary Carol Scilingo would have continued, because an administrative rule dictates they will serve out the remainder of the calendar year. Naturally, both of them really need the money. All they need to do is conceal the judge's death until the following day.

A desire to stay employed by getting around a quirky rule leads to excruciating desperation as one thing after another goes wrong. Beautiful use of courthouse setting. Riveting isn't a strong enough word.

Lost Girls

The Gray and Guilty Sea by
Jack Nolte and Scott William Carter

What happens to tough guys when they retire? Garrison Gage was a smart-mouthed FBI-trained P.I. in the Big Apple, one of the best and most successful in the business. After a very high profile mob case that he worked with the FBI left his wife dead and him permanently crippled, Gage, still on the right side of 50, lost his taste for the city and the business and moved as far away from both as he could. In the small town of Barnacle Bluffs on the rocky coast of Oregon, he has lived anonymously––almost as a recluse––for the last five years, bitterly nursing his grief and self-loathing. He has no phone, no television, no computer; preferring to get his news late from the few newspapers that he takes, or from his housekeeper. The only friend from his past that he has stayed in touch with is retired FBI agent Alex Cortez, happily puttering in his nearby used bookstore.

Gage found the girl one winter evening when he was walking on the beach with his cane, cursing his infirmity. She looked to be no older than 20, and was wearing only a t-shirt and black lace panties. Her eyes stared blindly at the sunset and her limbs were tangled in seaweed. She hadn't been dead very long, but she had been banged up a bit and there were abrasions on her wrists and ankles. Around one ankle a ring of dolphins had been tattooed.

Despite widespread police appeals for information, the girl remains unidentified and the misanthropic Gage, whose wife Janet had been drowned by the thugs who crippled him, finds himself haunted, and unwillingly becomes involved in the investigation. Carmen Hornbridge, editor and factotum of the local newspaper, helps in his research. As the town becomes aware of  his investigations, he comes home one night to find the chilling message "THER AR OTHER GRLS" carefully spelled out in pebbles on his porch.

A sub-theme of this story involves Gage's  housekeeper, Mattie, who is dying of inoperable cancer. Her only living relative is her granddaughter Zoe, a 16-year-old who can match Gage in rudeness. Mattie says, "Don't mind Zoe. She's not really that rude. She tells me she acts that way 'cause she's a nihilist. I don't know what that is exactly but I figure it's like having the cramps all the time." Anyone who has raised a daughter through that age can sympathize! Zoe wants Mattie to sign documents emancipating her, but Mattie wants Gage to assume guardianship of the girl. Gage, who has no children and never wanted any, is as appalled as Zoe at the request.

This was a good, tightly-written procedural with amusing and credible dialogue. It reminded me of a John D. MacDonald novel, except that Garrison Gage is a darker and more complex (and much ruder) character than MacDonald's Travis McGee. All of the major characters were well developed and believable, and Gage's reluctant re-engagement with life is as much a part of the story as the mystery. There is some mildly steamy sex, and the ability of the reclusive protagonist to withstand numerous incidents of being beaten up and drugged raised my eyebrows a bit. Nonetheless, I immediately ordered the sequel, A Desperate Place for Dying, and hope that the author will make a series of the fedora-wearing, cane-wielding, misanthropic Gage.

Clare Prentice seems as far from a lost girl as you can get in Martha Powers's Conspiracy of Silence. At 27, she has it made. She has a good job with a Chicago literary magazine and is engaged to the politically ambitious scion of a prominent wealthy family. When her doctor happily reports her nodules as benign––Clare's mother had died of cancer just a year ago––and suggests that she might want to look up the health history of her birth parents, Clare's entire world goes askew. No one had ever told her that she was adopted, and her mother's papers didn't indicate it. (Apparently in some states a new––false!––birth certificate can be issued when a child is adopted.) The only slender clue to her parentage may be the class ring included among her mother Rose's jewelry. None of the information she has, including her mother's birthdate, turn out to be accurate. Neither she nor her mother appear to have ever existed!

Five months later, following her only clue, she drives into the town of Grand Rapids in northern Minnesota. She had broken her engagement to Bruce almost with relief after some cutting remarks from his mother about potential dirty secrets in her background affecting his future; so Clare focused on her research and the interview she had scheduled with a reclusive local Pulitzer Prize winner. The lakeside cottage she rented from an aunt of her best friend, Gail, is charming, and Ruth, the aunt, is fortuitously the head librarian in town.

Pulitzer winner Nate Hanssen, sweetened by his friendship with her editor, grudgingly schedules an interview, but Clare's personal research is not going as well. Someone does not want old events stirred up and is prepared to do whatever is necessary to keep the secret of the old murder that she discovers, and in which she may have been involved. Her memory of long-ago events that led to a great miscarriage of justice emerge slowly, mostly through nightmares. A dog that has befriended her is beaten and injured, and there are several other apparent accidents to people who had information to share with her about her parents.

This was a nice, light, fast-moving cozy, a good summer afternoon read, although Clare's tendency to get lightheaded and faint under extreme stress got a little annoying. While I had easily guessed part of the dénouement, the identity of the killer still came as a surprise. By the way, Waldo the dog is recovering nicely and thanks you for asking.