Believe Me

A Mystery/Thriller Roundup

Little Girl Lost by Wendy Corsi Staub (William Morrow, $7.99, 400 pages)

This classic two-story thread mystery/thriller that draws from events in 1968 and 1987 makes the most of what can happen when serious life choices are made. Author Staub combines smooth writing, some shocking violence and lurking evil to keep her readers’ attention.

Well recommended.

Bleak Harbor: A Novel by Bryan Gurley (Thomas & Mercer, $24.99, 395 pages)

It’s a terrifying kidnapping of an autistic teenager at the center of this tale. The location is a small seaside resort on the Atlantic Coast where the year round families are deeply entrenched. Most of these folks accept the public personas of the neighbors they’ve come to know over the years. Guess again, danger is lurking!

Highly recommended.  A stay up all night reading page-turner.

39 Winks: A Maggie O’Malley Mystery by Kathleen Valenti (Henery Press, $31.95, 296 pages)

A third-person narrator shocks the reader on the first page, a very gory first page. A cosmetic surgeon is found at the breakfast table, face down in a bowl of Life cereal. To make matters worse, he’s gluten-free.  Quirky characters and plenty of pop culture references make the story feel connected to “the real world.”

Well recommended.

Believe Me: A Novel by J P Delaney (Ballantine Books, $27.00, 352 pages)

You guessed it, another violent prologue and this one is a flashback. The author employs a unique form of dialogue that’s as if it is taken from a theatrical script. An undercover call girl, no pun intended, works for suspicious wives who want to catch their philandering husbands. The writing is beautiful with amazing timing that creates tension, anxiety and confusion; in other words, a true thriller.

Highly recommended.

Ruta Arellano

Review copies were provided by the publishers.

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Monster Mash

The Bone Yard: A Body Farm Novel by Jefferson Bass

“Just head, in a patch of ground between two huge branches of the live oak, stood three rows of knee-high crosses – four crosses in two of the rows, three in the other; eleven crosses in all…  Vickery eased the Jeep to a stop alongside the nearest row of crosses.   ‘Welcome to the Bone Yard,’ he announced.”

The most recent mystery/thriller from the writing duo of Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson, together known as Jefferson Bass, is not for the faint of heart.   The underlying message here is that human cruelty knows no limits.   This book picks up smoothly after the last one in the series, The Bone Thief.

This reviewer began absorbing the book as an Audible download to an iPod that was plugged into the dashboard of her trusty Mini Cooper.   The tale began innocuously, as do all the Body Farm novels.   The subtle, aw shucks anthropological introduction is followed by a second story line.   The first is set in the present day and the second is grounded in the Florida swamps of 40 years ago.

The current day story line revolves around a personal request from Angie St. Claire, a forensic analyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, to Dr. Bill Brockton – the main character of the Body Farm mysteries.   Angie’s sister has died in a questionable manner and Angie is determined to prove that it was murder.   Since Dr. Brockton’s summer hiatus from teaching at the University of Tennessee in the anthropology department has just begun, he is more than willing to travel to Florida to provide Angie with his forensic knowledge.

In the meantime, local law enforcement officials in Florida come into possession of two skulls that need to be identified.   Naturally, the task falls to Angie and Dr. Brockton and he, in turn, involves his expert staff to determine the ethnicity, age and gender of the skulls.   Along the way clues are revealed that lead to a boy’s reform school.   A separate narrative begins in the voice of a young boy who was interned at the reform school.

As the audio novel progressed, the shared themes of graphic descriptions of unimaginable violence made it clear that there might be some value in switching to a hard copy of the book tucked away safely at home.   Driving while listening to this sort of content is not conducive to safe driving!   The hard copy provided the welcome option of skipping the most horrific scenes of torture, in the guise of attitude adjustment, administered forty years prior to boys who were housed at the reform school sequestered in the woods of Florida.

Both story lines are filled with nagging suspicions and dedicated forensic work that incorporates many jurisdictions.   The reader might well hope that this level of cooperation exists in the real world on a widespread basis.   There are strong plugs for peace and civility from the team of Jefferson Bass.   Moreover, the good guys are very, very good and the villains are rotten to the core.

The tension and intrigue build to a quick paced race against time and evil.   The conclusion leaves plenty of opportunities for a future supply of the further exploits of Dr. Bill Brockton.   This is a real page turner!

Well recommended.

Ruta Arellano

A review copy was provided by the publisher.

Midnight Rambler

Trail of Blood by Lisa Black (William Morrow; $24.99; 400 pages)

Who knew that Cleveland, Ohio could be so interesting?   Lisa Black, a member of the National Academy of Forensic Sciences, proves that there’s more to Cleveland than the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame.   Her third Theresa MacLean book is not only set in this Midwestern city, it features some really gory murders that are based in fact.   Black’s main character is a forensic scientist who happens to belong to a family with a history of crime fighting all the way back to her grandfather.

When present day murders bear a striking similarity to Cleveland’s most horrific killing spree during the 1930s and 40s, the city police and coroner’s offices are summoned to cut short the present day nightmare.   Theresa and her cop cousin Frank are at the center of the action.   Yes, Theresa takes more than her share of risks; however, she also uses her instincts to get out of peril.   There are plenty of false leads and hints to keep the reader guessing right up to the end of the book.

There are several other mystery/thriller series written by expert authors that feature main characters with similar talents.   The most notable of these is the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell.   Black unfolds Trail of Blood as a more personal story with less ostentatious criminology and more good-old-fashioned shoe leather detecting than does Cornwell.   In addition, the story is actually told in two time frames, current day and 75 years ago.  

Black is excellent at keeping it real.   The mix of accurate historic details, a map up front in the beginning of the book and a detailed timeline of the original murders set this book apart from the rest of the pack.

Well recommended to fans of thriller novels that actually have more than gore to offer.

This review was written by Ruta Arellano.   A review copy was provided by the publisher.