Compendium of Mystery News 070807

Today's compendium of recently published mystery news articles:

• Richard Lipez reviews several new mysteries set in foreign lands for the WashingtonPost.com.

• LA Times staff writer Scott Timberg reports on the mysterious life of author Douglas Anne Munson, a hard-boiled Los Angeles writer who once seemed like one of the city's bright new lights, but whose career, like a lot of noir novels, just gets murkier and more confusing the closer you look.

• Kate Lavin, writing for ContraCostaTimes.com, talks to mystery author Diana Abu-Jaber who credits her move to Miami, at least in part, for inspiring her latest novel, Origin.

• Margaret Cannon offers her opinion on recently published mysteries in her regular column for The Globe and Mail.

• Brenda Moore, writing for MontereyHerald.com, interviews author Bill Bryan, whose debut novel Keep It Real was recently reviewed by Mysterious Reviews.

• Books editor Chauncey Mabe profiles author Daniel Silva on Sun-Sentinel.com.

Please visit the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books where we are committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Mysteries on TV: The Dresden Files

Mystery television series being released this week on DVD:

The Dresden Files, Season 1 stars Paul Blackthorne as private investigator Harry Dresden, the only wizard that advertises in the Chicago yellow pages. The series is based on the bestselling mystery books written by Jim Butcher.

The Dresden Files was originally developed for a theatrical release, but was reworked as a weekly series. It debuted on the Sci-Fi channel just 7 months ago in January, 2007. More information can be found on The Dresden Files website on SciFi.com.

This DVD set includes all 11 episodes from the 1st season on 3 disks.

Visit the Mysteries on TV website to discover more television mystery series currently available on DVD.

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Mystery Book Review: You Should Have Died on Monday by Frankie Y. Bailey

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, has written a review of You Should Have Died on Monday by Frankie Y. Bailey. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

You Should Have Died on Monday by Frankie Y. Bailey
A Lizzie Stuart Mystery

Overmountain Press (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-57072-319-2 (1570723192)
ISBN-13: 978-1-57072-319-3 (9781570723193)
Publication Date: April 2007
List Price: $9.95

Synopsis (from the publisher): African American university professor and crime historian Lizzie Stuart comes face-to-face with her long lost mother, Becca. Following threads from her earlier cases, Lizzie uses her keen investigative abilities to research her own family's past and uncovers a web of murder and mayhem centered around her mother. As the pursuit of Becca runs from the gangster-led Chicago of the 1960s to modern, pre-Katrina New Orleans, Lizzie rattles the wrong people, jeopardizng her interracial relationship with homicide detective John Quinn while putting her own life in danger. Ultimately, Lizzie learns that some things are better left buried in the past.

Review: Professor Lizzie Stuart of the Virginia Institute for the Study of Southern Crime and Culture is determined to locate her long missing mother Becca in You Should Have Died on Monday, the fourth mystery in this series by Frankie Y. Bailey.

It was the winter of 1969 and Chicago was a frightful place to be. The mob was still very much in evidence, the Black Panthers were becoming more powerful, and the Puerto Rican Young Lords were making themselves known. Though there were racial tensions all over the city, there were clubs specializing in the "blues” where anyone and everyone came to hear the music. On one unusually cold night men in a speeding car opened fire on Reuben James, his lady love Becca, and another man, TJ. Reuben pushed Becca to safety and TJ survived, but Reuben was killed instantly. No one was ever convicted of this criminal act. Sometime later mob boss Nick Mancini was killed in his office, stabbed with a pair of pruning shears. One man, Robert Montgomery, who was also in love with Becca and believing she had committed the crime, confessed and was sent to prison for 35 years. Under an assumed name, Becca quietly disappeared. Now, 39 years later Lizzie Stuart, the daughter Becca abandoned just 5 days after her birth, wants to find out about her heritage and embarks on a search for her mother.

In Chicago, Lizzie discovers her mother was involved with the Black Panthers and did, in fact, have an affair with Nick Mancini before fleeing to North Carolina where she married, subsequently moving to New Orleans where she opened a restaurant. Lizzie finally meets up with her mother at the same time as the dead crime boss's son who's out for revenge. Not at all what Lizzie was hoping to find.

The title, You Should Have Died on Monday, comes from an old southern blues song and fits perfectly with this story of rejected love, jealousy, and murder. Though not a mystery per se, this compelling tale of one woman's journey to uncover her past is a pleasure to read.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of You Should Have Died on Monday and to Breakthrough Promotions for providing a copy of the book for this review.

Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.

For more mystery book reviews visit Mysterious Reviews, a partner with the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books which is committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Mystery Godoku: Weekly Puzzle for August 06, 2007

A new Mystery Godoku Puzzle has been created by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books and is available on our website.

Godoku is similar to Sudoku, but uses letters instead of numbers. To give you a headstart, we provide you a mystery clue to fill in a complete row or column (if you choose to use it!).

This week's letters and mystery clue: C E H I M R S T Y. This science is in the title of the first Dr. David Hunter mystery by Simon Beckett. (9 letters).

New! We now have our puzzles in PDF format for easier printing. Print this week's puzzle here.

Previous puzzles are stored in the Mystery Godoku Archives.

Enjoy the weekly Mystery Godoku Puzzle from the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, and Thanks for visiting our website!

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Mystery Book Review: Punishment and Sacrifice by John Reid

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, has written a review of Punishment and Sacrifice by John Reid. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

Punishment and Sacrifice by John Reid
Non-series

Lulu.com (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-4303-1440-0 (1430314400)
ISBN-13: 978-1-7303-1440-0 (9781730314400)
Publication Date: May 2007
List Price: $25.95

Synopsis (from the publisher): The children we abuse today could become the monsters of tomorrow. This is the story of child abuse and the nightmare it can create both in the present and the future. It parallels and distorts what is madness and what is sanity until the line becomes blurred beyond recognition. Dr. Jack Barker: respected psychologist, loving father, responsible neighbor, serial killer? Under his mask of sanity he is driven to commit his monstrous acts in a game of cat and mouse and justifies it all by the wrongs that are done to him in the present and were perpetrated on him in his childhood. Mike Swanson: broken recovering alcoholic police detective who has seen too many atrocities human beings can do to each other. Will he be able to stop the monster in this case or be consumed by his own demons from his past. When these two worlds collide in a cataclysmic explosion, the battle will not only be over who will survive but how to live with the nightmarish truth that ties each together in the bondage of the past.

Review: John Reid's debut novel, Punishment and Sacrifice, a lurid tale of good versus evil, is such a muddled mess that by the end of the book its core message is all but lost.

There are only two characters that get any real attention or development in the book: Jack Barker, a psychologist specializing in family practice who has a sideline of killing children that, under what is purported to be flawed judicial system, have not sufficiently paid for their crimes and then, for good measure, killing their parents as well; and Mike Swanson, a detective who is a recovering alcoholic and assigned to desk duty but gets involved investigating the crimes committed by Jack Barker. There is no suspense generated by the flat narrative, the crimes are told in such a dispassionate manner that they hardly seem shocking, and the revelation that Barker and Swanson are brothers is foreshadowed in the first few chapters.

Child abuse is an abhorrent crime and clearly Reid is trying to relate a story illustrating the potential long-term consequences of abusing a child. But the link between cause and effect is never cogently made, and when Barker takes on an apprentice in Billy Winfield, a boy he blackmails into working with him, the book descends into the absurd. "Doctor Jack Barker had, in a sense (sic) created a monster in Billy Winfield and soon the monster would destroy its creator for it's (sic) own survival and future."

In addition to its subject matter, many readers are likely to be put off by how poorly written the book is. "Their" is used as the contraction for "they are", "your" for "you are", and, as evidenced in the above quoted passage, "it's" for "its" (and vice versa). Punctuation is haphazard, quotation marks are used incorrectly, and long strings of commas seem intended to substitute for ellipses. The occasional error can and should be overlooked, but there is scarcely a page in Punishment and Sacrifice without some obvious syntactic problem. It's hard to take an author seriously when they don't take their craft seriously.

Special thanks to John Reid for providing a copy of Punishment and Sacrifice for this review.

Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.

For more mystery book reviews visit Mysterious Reviews, a partner with the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books which is committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Compendium of Mystery News 070804

Today's compendium of recently published mystery news articles:

• Adventure Gamers reviews the new PC game Dead Reefs where you play as detective Amadey Finvinerro, a stoic Johnny Depp look-alike with a walking stick. (MBN Note: For information on more mystery games for the PC, visit Games of Mystery.)

• David Thomas goes undercover at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival for The Telegraph.

• Variety is reporting that Universal Pictures has acquired the rights to a seven-book series of thrillers by Daniel Silva, the most recent of which, The Secret Servant, is a current mystery bestseller.

Please visit the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books where we are committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Mystery Bestsellers for August 03, 2007

A list of the top ten mystery hardcover bestsellers for the week ending August 03, 2007 has been posted on the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books website.

Only one new mystery title appears on the bestseller list this week: Beyond Reach, the 6th mystery in the Grant County (Georgia) series by Karin Slaughter. Sara Linton—resident medical examiner/pediatrician in Grant County—has plenty of hardship to deal with, including defending herself in a heartbreaking malpractice suit. So when her husband, Police chief Jeffery Tolliver, learns that his friend and coworker detective Lena Adams has been arrested for murder and needs Sara’s help, she is not sure she can handle the pressure of it all. But soon Sara an Jeffery are sitting through evidence, peeling back the layers of a mystery that grows darker by the day—until an intricate web of betrayal and vengeance begins to unravel. And suddenly the lives of Sara, Lena, and Jeffery are hanging by the slenderest of threads. Publishers Weekly gives Beyond Reach a starred review, calling it "bone-chilling" and adds, "Expertly shifting back and forth in both time and point of view, Slaughter builds the suspense to a perfect crescendo, connecting every loose plot strand in a devastating and unforgettable climax."

Please visit the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books where we are committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Mystery Book Review: The Ever-Running Man by Marcia Muller

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, has written a review of The Ever-Running Man by Marcia Muller. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

The Ever-Running Man by Marcia Muller
A Sharon McCone Mystery

Warner Books (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-446-58242-5 (0446582425)
ISBN-13: 978-0-446-58242-1 (9780446582421)
Publication Date: July 2007
List Price: $24.99

Synopsis (from the publisher): Sharon McCone is hired by her husband's security firm to track down "the ever-running man," a shadowy figure who has been leaving explosive devices at their various offices. She doesn't have to search for long. When McCone narrowly escapes an explosion at the security firm's San Francisco offices, she catches a glimpse of his retreating figure. The ever-running man is dangerously close--and anyone connected to the firm seems to be within his deadly range. To complicate matters, McCone is forced to question her intensely private husband, Hy, about his involvement in some of the firm's dark secrets. The history of corruption may jeopardize their marriage, but uncovering the secrets of the firm may be the only way she can save her husband's life, and her own.

Review: Mixing her personal and professional lives leads to complications for private investigator Sharon McCone in The Ever-Running Man, the 25th mystery in this long-running series by Marcia Muller.

The Ever-Running Man is comprised of two storylines, neither of which seems fully developed, that have been cobbled together to create one of the more disappointing entries in this series. The first of these, a tale of mistaken identity, is basically used as a red herring to the second, a tale of a vendetta.

McCone's husband, Hy Ripensky, is a partner in an ultra-secretive security firm with two other men with whom he had worked years earlier transporting goods throughout the Middle East and southeast Asia. The firm's offices have been the target of bombing attempts, and McCone has been hired to look into the matter. When one of the partners is killed, the authorities initially believe there is a connection to the bombings, but McCone thinks otherwise. Her staff discovers someone else with the same name as the dead partner and a connection between them, and she sets out to prove that the murder was independent of the bombings. The major problem with this scenario is that it is purported to be a case of stolen identity, yet no evidence is presented to indicate how the man whose name was "stolen" was ever harmed in any way or suffered any material or personal loss. As written, the murder victim adopted another man's name in the past and they led completely separate lives. Half of the book is devoted to this investigation which seems intended primarily to serve as filler for, or a diversion to, the mystery of the man who has been seen running from the scene of several of the bombings.

The bombings investigation is to some extent more interesting, though no more credible. Here, McCone suspects something in her husband's past may be motivating the bomber. The author, who has created such a wonderfully complex and richly drawn character in Sharon McCone, one that has grown and evolved during the series, convincingly relates the personal turmoil McCone faces during her investigation. But there are all sorts of plot points that just don't seem to fit. For a company obsessed with security, it's never made clear how the culprit managed to locate the firm's safe house (where McCone just happened to be staying) to place a bomb. For someone with a vendetta against the partners, using explosive devices seems particularly impersonal, rather impractical, and somewhat arbitrary. Why not target the partners directly? The use of bombs seems to be a convenient literary approach for adding sensational elements to mask an otherwise weak plot.

Fans of the series will want to read The Ever-Running Man for the ongoing development of series lead Sharon McCone who is truly among the best characters created in mystery fiction. Those readers looking for an intriguing investigation that showcases McCone's skills are better off picking up one of the earlier books.

Special thanks to Grand Central Publishing for providing an ARC of The Ever-Running Man for this review.

Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.

For more mystery book reviews visit Mysterious Reviews, a partner with the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books which is committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Compendium of Mystery News 070802

Today's compendium of recently published mystery news articles:

• Jem Bloomfeld writes a very insightful article about the whodunit for the California Literary Review. (An excerpt: "Completely insane killers and meaningless crime have no place in the classic whodunit: murder needs to be explained, usually by reference to simple human desires such as money, love and revenge. The reason cannot be too good, however, or the reader might sympathize with the killer, tipping the moral balancing act which these novels perform. Murders ... must be the result of understandable, but reprehensible, action."

• On the NYSun.com, Otto Penzler reviews the television mystery series Foyle's War which he calls "perhaps the best pure detective program since the early years of Columbo." (MBN Note: We agree, and are currently watching episodes from the 4th and most recent season. Mysteries on TV has the first four seasons of Foyle's War available for purchase on DVD.)

Please visit the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books where we are committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Mystery Book Review: Blood and Circuses by Kerry Greenwood

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, has written a review of Blood and Circuses by Kerry Greenwood. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

Blood and Circuses by Kerry Greenwood
A Phryne Fisher Mystery

Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59058-235-7 (1590582357)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-235-0 (9781580582350)
Publication Date: July 2007
List Price: $24.95

Synopsis (from the publisher): Phryne Fisher is bored. Life appears to be too easy, too perfect. Her household is ordered, her love life is pleasant, the weather is fine. And then a man from her past arrives at the door. It is Alan Lee from the carnival. Alan and his friends want her to investigate strange happenings at Farrell's Circus, where animals have been poisoned and ropes sabotaged. Mr. Christopher has been found with his throat cut in Mrs. Witherspoon's irreproachable boarding house and Miss Parkes, an ex-performer, is charged with his murder.

Phryne must go undercover deeper than ever to solve the circus' malaise. She must abandon her name, her title, her protection, her comfort-even her clothes. She must fall off a horse twice a day until she can stay on. She must sleep in a girl's tent and dine on mutton stew. And she must find some allies.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne, the young and fresh-faced policeman Tommy Harris has to solve his own mysteries with the help of the foul-spoken harridan Lizard Elsie, or Miss Parkes will certainly hang. Can Phyrne uncover the truth without losing her life?

Review: Kerry Greenwood's delightful private detective from the 1920s, Phryne Fisher, sets out to solve a crime at the circus in Blood and Circuses, the 6th mystery in this series.

One lazy Sunday afternoon, Phryne is visited by some old friends, all of whom are performers with the Farrell Circus and Carnival. They explain to her that someone is raising havoc at the circus. The commotion goes from a small fire to assaults on the owner and performers and finally, to murder. In order for Phryne to help her friends, she must leave her home, disguise herself, change her name, learn the vernacular of the circus, and figure out what type of performer she can be. She’ll need tattered and torn clothes and costumes, a real sacrifice for the ever fashionable Phryne. But she agrees to the challenge and sets off for the Farrell Circus that very night using the name of Fern. Under the direction of another rider, Fern (Phryne) quickly learns to do acrobatic tricks on a bareback horse. The rules of the circus were strict, but Phryne, as is her wont, seems to break each and every one. She talks and listens to anyone who would talk to her, and those who wouldn’t she quietly eavesdrops on their conversations. She finds out there are no secrets in the circus; everyone seems to know something about somebody else. Mr. Farrell had sold half interest in the circus to a Mr. Jones, and that was when the malaise began. Phyrne finds out the code word for the trouble is "exit", but she doesn't know what is means, or who is involved. Thinking that she's getting too close, Mr. Jones has her bound and gagged and thrown into the hungry lion’s cage hoping she would be killed.

Blood and Circuses is one of the better, and certainly one of the more thrilling, mysteries in this series. There's the colorful backdrop of the circus and carnival and an array of many performers, from clowns to gypsies to dwarves, and, of course, exotic animals to liven things up. And in the end, though she doesn't actually solve the case, Phryne does get her man!

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Blood and Circuses and to Poisoned Pen Press for providing an ARC of the book for this review.

Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.

For more mystery book reviews visit Mysterious Reviews, a partner with the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books which is committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Mystery Book Review: A Nail Through the Heart by Timothy Hallinan

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, has written a review of A Nail Through the Heart by Timothy Hallinan. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

A Nail Through the Heart by Timothy Hallinan
A Poke Rafferty Mystery

Wm. Morrow (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-06-125580-7 (0061255807)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-125580-9 (9780061255809)
Publication Date: June 2007
List Price: $24.95

Synopsis (from the publisher): Travel writer Poke Rafferty is good at looking for trouble—so good he makes his living writing offbeat travel guides for the young and terminally bored. His Looking for Trouble series is for travelers obsessed with the unusual: how to beat official foreign-exchange rates; how to spot fake amber or counterfeit money; how much to bribe a cop; how to identify a transvestite before it's too late; and how to know, within an hour of arriving in a strange city, where to find the best bars, the best clubs, the best food, the best clothes, and the dodgiest entertainment at the best prices.

Then Rafferty falls in love with Rose, an ex–Patpong Road bar girl, and he badly wants to be a part of her new life. Both Rose and Bangkok itself have stolen his heart. To complete his new family, Rafferty is in the process of adopting a wary eight-year-old street orphan when trouble comes looking for him.

First he takes in another orphan, a troubled and terrifying street urchin nicknamed Superman. Then he agrees to find a distraught woman's missing uncle, a task that seems simple enough given the uncle's predilections for just the kind of shadowy places Rafferty knows well. Finally, in a moment of weakness, he accepts an old woman's generous payment in exchange for locating a blackmailing thief. Soon, these three seemingly disparate events begin to overlap, pulling Rafferty deeper into dark, unfamiliar terrain, and he begins to realize that some people guard unspeakable secrets that don't always show on their faces—and that all this time he's been gliding across the surface of a culture he doesn't understand.

Review: Timothy Hallinan introduces travel writer and sometime investigator Poke Rafferty, a man living on the edge but looking for stability in his life in Bangkok, in A Nail Through the Heart.

Rafferty is hired by the niece of an Australian man who has disappeared from his home in Bangkok. The man's live-in housekeeper, who has also disappeared, used to work for a wealthy woman who is feared by the police and public alike. While visiting the woman during the course of his investigation, she changes the subject and suddenly offers him a large sum of money to find a man who recently stole something from her. Rafferty needs the cash: he's in the process of adopting a little girl and the money will go a long ways towards paying for her schooling. But then Rafferty learns that these two missing person investigations are related, and he's drawn into a world of evil that not only threatens his life, but that of the family he loves.

Hallinan deftly handles the horrifying aspects of his story, torture by the Khmer Rough in the late 1970s and modern-day child pornography, by relating how Rafferty feels and reacts while minimizing explicit details. At times, A Nail Through the Heart is exceedingly difficult to read, not for the lack of well-written prose, but for its subject matter. The intertwining investigations are sufficiently complicated to keep the reader's attention without being overly complex. There are a few points that don't ring quite true, (why, for example, did the old woman keep something that could expose her past in a safe buried in her lawn when she could have destroyed the contents years earlier, or if she wouldn't destroy it, why not keep it in a more secure location in her house?), but they don't interfere with the overall story. The conclusion of the book is surprisingly pragmatic and somewhat open-ended.

A Nail Through the Heart is a terrific opening chapter to this new series, one that has the potential to captivate readers for a long time to come.

Special thanks to FSB Associates for providing a copy of A Nail Through the Heart for this review.

Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.

For more mystery book reviews visit Mysterious Reviews, a partner with the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books which is committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Mysteries on TV: Hawaii Five-O

Mystery television series being released this week on DVD:

Hawaii Five-O Season 2 starred Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett, the head of an elite Hawaii state police unit. The series was filmed entirely in Hawaii. (Cast note: Jack Lord was the only actor to appear in all episodes of the series and the only original cast member to appear in the final episode.)

The series ran for 12 seasons on CBS from September 1968 through April 1980.

This DVD set includes all 25 episodes from the 2nd season on 6 disks.

Watch the opening sequence on YouTube here. Be there. Aloha!

Visit the Mysteries on TV website to discover more television mystery series currently available on DVD.

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Compendium of Mystery News 070731

Today's compendium of recently published mystery news articles:

• Jane Henderson on STLToday.com interviews Daniel Silva, whose latest thriller The Secret Servant was published this week.

• Richard Schickel reviews The Secret Servant on LATimes.com.

• Halle Ephron reviews several new mysteries on Boston.com including Killer Weekend of which she writes, "Ridley Pearson writes thrillers, the kind that try to yank you to the edge of your seat and keep you there."

• Martha Woodroof talks about mystery author James Lee Burke on NPR (audio).

Please visit the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books where we are committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Mystery Godoku: Weekly Puzzle for July 30, 2007

A new Mystery Godoku Puzzle has been created by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books and is available on our website.

Godoku is similar to Sudoku, but uses letters instead of numbers. To give you a headstart, we provide you a mystery clue to fill in a complete row or column (if you choose to use it!).

This week's letters and mystery clue: A E G I L N R S U. Lisa Miscione writes the Ridley Jones mysteries under this pen name. (9 letters).

New! We now have our puzzles in PDF format for easier printing. Print this week's puzzle here.

Previous puzzles are stored in the Mystery Godoku Archives.

Enjoy the weekly Mystery Godoku Puzzle from the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, and Thanks for visiting our website!

Return to Mystery Books News ...

Mystery Book Review: The Gold of Thrace by Aileen G. Baron

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, has written a review of The Gold of Thrace by Aileen G. Baron. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

The Gold of Thrace by Aileen G. Baron
A Tamar Saticoy Mystery

Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59058-430-9 (1590584309)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-430-9 (9781590584309)
Publication Date: July 2007
List Price: $24.95

Synopsis (from the publisher): When the first member of the staff at a Turkish excavation is murdered and a mosaic floor disappears overnight from her site, archaeologist Tamar Saticoy plunges into a shady world of the antiquities trade in the quest to discover who is responsible for the theft of important artifacts.

Tamar traces the mosaic floor to Basel, Switzerland, where the captivating prince of antiquities dealers, Gilberto Dela Barcolo, and his enigmatic friend, Enzio Egidio, charm her. Soon she finds herself enmeshed in a tangle of deceit, theft, and forgery.

Battling smoke and mirrors, she discovers that no one is who they seem. Two more members of the excavation staff are killed: her venal colleague Chatham, who has discovered a hoard of Thracian gold in Bulgaria, and Orman who--like Tamar--is following the trail of the stolen mosaic.

Unless she can crack this case, Tamar herself may become the next target for murder.

Review: Tamar Saticoy and a team of archaeologists visit Turkey in The Gold of Thrace, a mystery by Aileen G. Baron, author of the Lily Sampson series.

On an archaeological dig in Tepe Hagarken, Tamar, Binali Gul, Orman Celibi, and Andrew Chatham unearth a spectacular mosaic floor, one which they feel would be perfect for the entrance of their museum in New York. Before they can ready it for shipment, however, it is stolen and completely removed from the site. Soon thereafter, Binali Gul is stabbed to death becoming an unsolved murder. Next, Andrew Chatham decides to leave inasmuch as the mosaic is gone. He boards a train and encounters a man and woman who need his help. They have the gold of Thrace in their possession, know who he is, and want him to get the best price for the gold. When he leaves to do their bidding, he is killed, and the gold is stolen. Orman Celici thought he had traced the mosaic to The Hague, Netherlands, but not only did he not find it, he was killed by one of the thieves who had originally stolen it. Tamar, quite logically, follows the money. She goes to Switzerland where she meets the king of antiquity dealers, Gilberto Dela Burcolo, and his mysterious friend Enzio Egidio. These men take Tamar into places of fraud, thievery and murder. The people she must deal with may not be who they say they are. Three of Tamar’s friends are already dead. Will the thieves go after and find Tamar next? Will her new friends help her find the mosaic and keep her safe? Are these friends really friends?

Baron's knowledge of archaeology and history add an authentic touch to this complicated story of people that are or are not who they claim to be, and antiquities and artifacts that may or may not be what them seem to be. There are many twists and turns that keep the reader interested, if only to see how it all is connected. But despite the intriguing plot, in the end, it's a bit disappointing. The conclusion is not very satisfactory and several plot threads remain unresolved. If The Gold of Thrace is the first in a new series, possibly their resolution will serve as an introduction to the next book.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of The Gold of Thrace and to Poisoned Pen Press for providing an ARC of the book for this review.

Review Copyright © 2007 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved.

For more mystery book reviews visit Mysterious Reviews, a partner with the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books which is committed to providing readers and collectors of mystery books with the best and most current information about their favorite authors, titles, and series.

Return to Mystery Books News ...