Crooked Street: A Joanna Piercy police procedural (A Joanna Piercy Mystery)

Jadon Glover, the perfect Husband, did not return home one night.  His wife Eve, calls the police, but too often errant Husbands have run off or had one drink too many, so, the Police are not very concerned. He is a financial Manager with Johnston and Pickles the Officers are told... but when they start digging- he doesn’t work there! Nothing is known of his background or Parents. In short, he is as beige as the background in his perfect life. But then things start to unravel.

The Detective in charge of the case is a second wife.  D.I. Joanna Piercy and her Husband have no children together and his job is as stressful as hers.  They are struggling with the need to move...she to accept his Parents.  The death of a child in her Husbands job is heartrending to him and at one point he says, “he wishes he had something to come home to cuddle and love.” The bulk of our story though is the police work, fitted into a detailed investigation, which leads to a gritty, forensic find.

Priscilla Masters builds the mystery slowly. The layers are interwoven in her chapters... question by question and with a variety of clues. The comprehensive descriptions  threaded within the plot reveal a vendetta against the main character that she ties up successfully.  I sat reading until very late at night and I suspect you will too.

Strangers in Company by Jane Aiken Hodge

Jane Aiken Hodge was one of a series of Writers which included Mary Stewart, and Victoria Holt that wrote gothic suspense.  I devoured her books like “Maulever Hall” and “Watch the Wall, My Darling.”  When I came across a Book of Hodge’s I had not read I was delighted.  This is another Suspense that builds gradually and insidiously.  We don’t know who or what.. until the end.

Marian is hired to accompany Stella as they travel through the Greek Isles.  The Tour throws a group of Strangers together and then accidents begin to happen. Who can Marian trust?  She becomes worried for both herself and Stella.  To complicate matters Marian has become attracted to a classics Professor. This is a nice little mystery and just the type I am partial to.  Read it on a rainy night and let the tension build with each page.  Jane Aiken Hodge is good at that.

"Throughout her career, she wrote books set in what she called the borderland–that line between mystery and romance novel. In her last novels, her mysteries became thrillers. This invisible line–this borderland–made her “gothic romantic suspense” voice unique." (Wray, "Kiss And Thrill," Jan.22)

Judgement of Murder by C. S. Challinor

My Review:

Rex Graves is an Advocate at the English Court when the daughter of Lord Gordon Murgatroyd asks for his help. He is reluctant at first. Sentencing was  heavy-handed at Court by Lord Murgatroyd and behind his back he was referred to as Judge Murder. Many people respected him but even more hated him.  Now the old Judge has died but but was it a natural death or was it murder? 

Then things are missing from the house.  Odd things.  First  a stamp collection is gone according to the daughter but is she lying or really on the trail of something? Later... a latex fingertip, a pink slide are all found in the bedroom and examined for finger prints but the evidence is slight so the clues are building.

Ten years earlier a girl had been kidnapped and murdered on her way home from school.  But had the man convicted really been guilty?  And what did the second kidnapping of a teenager have to do with the Judge?

Rex and his friend Adrian pursue people and clues from London to Canterbury. They pour over events and interview witnesses. Bringing the right person to justice will depend on detail, luck and determination.

C.S. Challinor writes in the style of an English cozy.  She leads us on a trail... laced with red herrings galore. In many ways, the jailbirds tended to be the stronger characters, along with the dark descriptions of their past lives.  I love English Mysteries, so it was fun guessing how this would end. The pace is slow but with plenty of twists to keep you reading.


[A] winner . . . A must for cozy fans.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Satisfying . . . Smooth prose will keep cozy fans turning the pages.”—Publishers Weekly

“Will delight all cozy and Agatha Christie fans. C.S. creates devilishly complex characters keeping the reader on edge until the final page.”—Suspense Magazine

Code Breaker and Spy...

 Maggie Hope is assigned to MI5 on a manhunt for a killer who is recreating Jack the Ripper. But this time the girls are SOE Trainees who have come into London for an interview. Several of them were trained by Maggie and that makes it personal. As the body count rises so does the tension in each page.

The grey of London penetrates our main story set in fog and war, built around an evil, sadistic predator who loves torturing and killing women at a time when England is fighting for its very survival. The Book opens with a chilly night scene. An elderly ARP Warden is walking the streets to find any chink of light that might lead the enemy toward a point to bomb. She comes across a young woman neatly laid out but is struck in horror as she sees the organs cut from her body.

The landscape of London, burnt out and shelled, during a blackout is beautifully recreated and the chill is enough to make your teeth chatter. There is a wonderful intertwining of SOE Agents and a second story about Maggie's half-sister who is in a German Camp and has been tortured to the point of death. She is on the run after being picked up for deliverance. There is also help in the form of the Queen of England who owes our heroine a favor. Several characters are revisited from former Books but this story will stand alone.

Susan Elia MacNeal is a New York Times best selling Author who won the Barry Award and was nominated for the Edgar among others.  She does a wonderful job in her descriptions of the characters, with all their failings and death defying bravery, during the harsh times of War. One in which Women took on many of the roles including working in the SOE.  I found the book fascinating and I read it in one sitting. I could not put it down until I finished the last page.

A Memory of Muskets by Kathleen Ernst.

Kathleen Ernst writes a multi-layered story of different members of a family, over a hundred years apart, and those they are connected to in love and work. There are two mysteries occurring in the book.

Chloe Ellefson is a Curator at Old World Wisconsin planning a big Civil War event. She is a professional at work, while mentoring and working with staff, despite her Boss being a pain. At least her love life was fine until she felt bad energy about the Cabin that her boyfriend wants to make into her private space. Roelke had bought the family farm and Chloe is slowly moving her things in... as she finds out things about his Ancestors who built it. Things she may not want to tell him. But while she debates all this... they find the body of a reenactor and death suddenly seems very close. Add to that the shooting of another and all kinds of strange things start happening.

The Book is strong on the language and flavor of reenacting as it is also on the daily workings of a historic site. The Staff who work with collections, as well as events, are well developed. Ernst builds strength into the personalities and types of people who love history and participate in these type of recreation events. The Book moves slow but layers the different time frames well.

But to me the heart of the book is the love story set right before the Civil War. I found the German settlers, who entered this country at a time of Civil War, making life and death decisions about themselves... fascinating. Their loyalties gave a slant to history I had never thought about. Marriage was often built on practical reasons alone... not love. I found the ancestor research by Chloe added a lot of emotion to the story and had a strong mystery of its own.


   

Author Cindy Brown and her new book,"Oliver Twisted."

Author Cindy Brown

Agatha Award Nominated Series.

"I should have known Uncle Bob would be the one to blow our cover."

Olive... er, Ivy, or uh Nancy is hired by her P.I. Uncle to help him catch a gang of thieves while undercover on the S.S. David Copperfield. She is enticed by her finances and by the chance to play Nancy in the musical version of Oliver Twist, all while sailing to Hawaii. Her contract forgot to mention aerial duties that left her dangling forty feet above the stage in which there would be no mat. Nor did she expect to find a dead body her first day at sea. All in a day's work for this fast paced mystery.


From the very first page this Author hooks you into a very witty, compact mystery. The Dickens references are a joy as are the thieves and murderous characters. Sail on S.S. David Copperfield... in the meantime this is a perfect read for both theater lovers and mystery buffs. I highly recommend.

About the Author:

Cindy Brown has been a theater geek (musician, actor, director, producer, and playwright) since her first professional gig at age 14. Now a full-time writer, she’s lucky enough to have garnered an Agatha Award nomination for best debut novel (MACDEATH), a scholarship to the Squaw Valley Writers Workshop, and several awards for her fiction, playwriting and screenwriting work.

Though Cindy and her husband now live in Portland, Oregon, she made her home in Phoenix, Arizona, for more than 25 years and knows all the good places to hide dead bodies in both cities.

Interview With Author Sheila Dalton

                                                                     
Author Sheila Dalton was born in London, England and emigrated to Canada when she was six. She began writing early in life and when she found a talent for English, she "went for it." In High School she won a prize from the Daughters of the British Empire and was lucky enough to win another prize in a playwriting competition at the University of Toronto in Canada.






Hello Sheila! Tell us a little about your novel, Stolen.

Stolen is the story of a young woman, Lizbet Warren, who comes home to find her village ravaged, and her parents abducted by Barbary Corsairs. She sets off for London with the only other survivor of the raid, Elinor, from the Workhouse for Abandoned and Unwanted Children. As women alone, they are both in  danger.

In what way?

In all the usual ways, but complicated by the situation in Britain at that time. My novel begins in 1633. The population of England had doubled from 1520 to 1630. There simply was not enough work or food to go round; consequently, there was a huge increase in poverty and vagrancy. Slums were spreading in the cities and, in some areas, as much as half the population lived on or below the poverty line. At the same time, British colonies in the Caribbean and North America were in desperate need of labourers. This combination of factors meant that any person perceived as a beggar, vagrant or petty criminal was in real danger of being transported across the sea as an indentured servant - a position as bad as, or even worse than, slavery. Slaves were a life investment; bonded servants were not as valuable, and were treated accordingly. Many died in transit; many more died of their labours once they arrived.  As women alone, Lizbet and Elinor were prime targets for transport.

How does your main character, Lizbet, survive?

With great difficulty! She is soon separated from Elinor, picked up as a vagrant, thrown into the New Prison, and sentenced to a public whipping. What saves her is intervention by a Frenchman, a privateer for the English monarch. He is a rather strange character who not only desires Lizbet, but intends to keep her under lock and key.  She is later taken captive by a British pirate, who sails her to the court of the Moroccan sultan, where she believes her mother has been taken.

There seem to be a lot of references to captivity and slavery of various kinds in your book.

That’s true. Slavery was endemic to the times. During the seventeenth century, the Barbary pirates carried off many European Christians and sold them as slaves. The women sometimes ended up in the harems of the wealthy - a fair woman was seen as treasure to them; the men often helped build the temples and palaces of Morocco. Meanwhile, the trade in slaves from Africa was growing apace, though white indentured servants (not enslaved Africans) comprised the main source of labour in the tobacco fields for the entire century.

What prompted you to write Stolen?

I had visited both Morocco and Devon, had seen the dungeons where the white slaves were kept in Meknes, and the caves and coves where the British pirates operated in Newton Abbot. I was intrigued by the idea of how a young woman would survive after losing those she loved in a pirate raid. I wanted to tell the story of someone who had to fight against the prejudices and attitudes of the time to find her own way.

Stolen is available as an ebook or print for the Kindle, Nook, Kobo and iTunes. On sale today at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Sheila-Dalton-ebook/dp/B00SXBLCTQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1423444988&sr=1-1&keywords=stolen+dalton

	Kobo-ebooks-Stolen Devon, England 1633: Lisbet Warren's parents are captured by Barbary Corsairs and carried off to the slave markets in Morocco. https://store.kobobooks.com/en-CA/ebook/stolen-70

Read a sample or download Stolen by Sheila Dalton with iBooks

.https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/stolen/id962804120?mt=11

Sheila Dalton
Author of The Girl in the Box, Trial by Fire, Doggerel, and others.
http://www.sheila-anne-dalton.com