Mystery Book Review: How to Lose a Job by Becky A. Bartness

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, is publishing a new review of How to Lose a Job by Becky A. Bartness. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

How to Lose a Job by Becky A. Bartness
A Kate Williams Mystery

iUniverse (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-595-49709-8 (0595497098)
ISBN-13: 978-0-595-49709-6 (9780595497096)
Publication Date: February 2009
List Price: $21.95

Review: Kate Williams so much enjoyed her time in Arizona (the setting for the first mystery in this series) that she decides to move there, quitting her high-stress job in Chicago for a presumably more tranquil routine in How to Lose a Job, the second mystery in this series by Becky A. Bartness.

After working 14 years as a successful criminal law attorney, Kate accepts a position with the Maricopa County (Phoenix) Attorney's Office. It doesn't pay nearly as well, but the quality of life is better. Getting settled in means reviewing current cases before the county, and what she sees is puzzling. Cases that should have been classified as misdemeanors are entered as felonies. Cases that should have been dismissed for lack of evidence are still active. As Kate and her assistants delve deeper, she runs the risk of antagonizing her supervisor, Stan Rantwist, a religious fanatic with his own agenda: ridding the county of sin and using a "higher authority" as both his spiritual and legal guide. Kate enlists the help of the deputy sheriff, and together they discover an extensive drug trafficking ring that may have links to the County Attorney's Office. But can Kate sort all this out before she's given her walking papers and loses her new job ... or worse?

How to Lose a Job is filled with delightfully quirky characters, especially Kate's assistants, the heavily tattooed and pieced MJ and the obsessive/compulsive clean freak Sam. Kate, herself, is quick and witty, and her new dog Ralph always brightens the narrative whenever he's present. The story is light and breezy, and fits well with the characters and setting. How to Lose a Job is an entertaining mystery and makes for a pleasant way to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of How to Lose a Job and to Becky A. Bartness for providing a copy of the book for this review.

Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved

If you are interested in purchasing How to Lose a Job from Amazon.com, please click the button to the right.

Synopsis (from the publisher): After working fourteen years as a successful criminal law attorney in Chicago, Kate Williams leaves her job looking for a more stress-free lifestyle. A recent vacation at an Arizona dude ranch entices her to the state, and she accepts a position as a deputy county attorney in Phoenix.

Within weeks of beginning her new position, Kate realizes that the Maricopa County Attorney's Office is not the employee haven she'd hoped it would be. Not only does her supervisor, County Attorney Stan Rantwist, claim he receives his orders from a higher power, but his sneaky assistant Alan White seems to have made it his life's work to spy on Kate's professional and personal activities. Worst of all, it looks like something illegal may be going on in the office. Kate enlists the help of her oddball assistants-the tattooed and pierced MJ Polowski and the germaphobic Marcus John Martinez-O'Reilly Ramirez, otherwise known as Sam-to help her investigate a series of grossly overcharged criminal cases.

When investigation of the improper charges leads Kate and her crew to the discovery of more serious, widespread corruption Kate faces the difficult decision of who to trust. Can she be sure that the handsome Deputy Sheriff Bryan Turner is on her side when he offers to assist? One misstep and it could be more than her career at stake.

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Games of Mystery: Women's Murder Club in Games of Passion, New for Nintendo DS

Games of Mystery, your source for mystery-themed electronic and board games, parties for kids and adults, and getaway vacations including murder mystery weekends, is pleased to announce the availability of a new mystery game for the Nintendo DS. More mystery games for this platforms are available on our recently updated Games of Mystery: Nintendo DS webpage.

Women's Murder Club: Games of Passion is the first game in this franchise based on the bestselling mysteries by James Patterson to be available for the Nintendo DS. Two titles are also available for Windows PCs, with a third scheduled for release later this month.

In Women’s Murder Club: Games of Passion, players step into the investigative shoes of the Women’s Murder Club members, Lindsay, Claire and Cindy, where they investigate a string of seemingly unrelated murders as they unfold. Beautiful women go missing and turn up dead around every corner, and the clues point to the least likely of suspects.

With engrossing, story-driven gameplay and thought-provoking mini-games, Women’s Murder Club: Games of Passion lets players immerse themselves in a classic Patterson mystery as they examine locations for clues, and interrogate witnesses and suspects alike. A distinct mix of hidden object and puzzle gameplay, Women’s Murder Club: Games of Passion lets players become a part of the Women’s Murder Club. Additionally, a unique DSi feature allows fans to create their own mystery by utilizing the DSi camera!

Women's Murder Club: Games of Passion is currently scheduled for release for the Nintendo DS on September 15th, 2009, and is available to pre-order.

Watch a game trailer for Women's Murder Club: Games of Passion below:

Don't forget to visit Games of Mystery for all types of mysterious fun!

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Mystery Author Lyn Hamilton Dies

The CBC is reporting that mystery author Lyn Hamilton has died of cancer. She was just 65.

Hamilton was the author of the Lara McClintoch archaeological mysteries, a series she started when she was 50. Lara McClintoch is a Toronto antiques dealer who solves murders while traveling the world.

Hamilton was twice nominated for an Arthus Ellis Award, for her debut mystery The Xibalba Murders and for the 8th book in her series, The Magyar Venus. The 4th book in the series, The Celtic Riddle, was the basis for a 2003 Murder, She Wrote movie starring Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher.

In 2008, Hamilton wrote on her website that The Chinese Alchemist would be the final book in her archaeological series. She added that "my plans are to retire from the mystery business, although I reserve the right to change my mind. Last fall, I had the pleasure of teaching mystery and suspense writing at the University of Toronto's School for Continuing Studies' Creative Writing Program. Lara, I believe, is renovating a casita in a little town north of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. So far not a single body has been uncovered."

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BBC Orders Two Additional Series of Crime Drama New Tricks

One of the most popular crime dramas in the UK is one we've never heard of, but one we're looking forward to learning more about!

Broadcast is reporting that BBC has ordered two additional series of New Tricks. The 7th series of 8 episodes is expected to air in 2010, with the 8th in 2011. The most recent series aired during the summer of 2008.

New Tricks stars Amanda Redman as Detective Superintendent Sandra Pullman, who leads the office of the Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad (UCOS), which is made up of retired police officers who have been recruited to reinvestigate unsolved crimes.

New Tricks began as a single episode that aired in March 2003. It was so popular that BBC ordered an additional 6 episodes, which subsequently aired during the spring of 2004. These 7 episodes came out on DVD last month (something else we missed) as New Tricks Series One.

The description off the DVD reads, A motley crew of retired police officers re-opens troublesome cases that were never laid to rest. From the discovery of a new motive in the killing of a college lecturer, to the tracing of a missing child, the team finds a way through the detail that eluded the original officers. But they are finding a surprising incidence of cover-up and conspiracy in their new investigations. Are their superiors about to close ranks? Or is someone feeding them particular files? Either way, the suspicion that they are being manipulated is high -- and the team is determined to get to the bottom of it. These old dogs won't roll over too easily.

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Mystery Book Review: Drawn in Blood by Andrea Kane

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, is publishing a new review of Drawn in Blood by Andrea Kane. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

Drawn in Blood by Andrea Kane
A Sloane Burbank Mystery

William Morrow (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-06-123680-2 (0061236802)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-123680-8 (9780061236808)
Publication Date: September 2009
List Price: $24.99

Review: Drawn in Blood by Andrea Kane marks the return of attorney and former Federal agent Sloane Burbank and her lover, FBI Special Agent Derek Parker. And her current case is personal: her parent's apartment has been broken into and a valuable painting stolen.

Sloane's father, Matthew, and four good friends from college are highly respected art dealers, buying and selling notable paintings and becoming wealthy in the process. After a Monet hanging in her parent's apartment is taken, Matthew's convinced the incident isn't about stealing art, but leaving a message. He reveals an incident to Sloane (as both a father and a client) that happened over a decade ago in Hong Kong, where he and his friends witnessed a murder during the theft of a painting. And they could identify the killer. At the time they, unwisely, agreed to keep silent and forget about it. Now it looks like the past is turning into the present. The FBI is involved in the theft of the Monet and will certainly want to know the details of what happened 10 years ago. But Sloane, in her capacity as her father's lawyer, cannot tell them. She also wants to prevent Derek from being assigned to the case, believing it will damage their relationship. But then Matthew's friends and associates are killed, one by one, and Matthew knows he's next on the list. What personal and professional compromises must Sloane make to save her father?

Kane packs a lot of action and adventure into Drawn in Blood. The highly profitable transaction in forged artwork is only one of the subplots here that also include the organization of Albanian and Chinese gangs dealing in other illicit trades. Retaliation and revenge, and truth and justice, are key elements too. But the heart of the story, as it were, is the relationships between Sloane and her father, and between Sloane and Derek. It's sensitively and thoughtfully handled, especially within the midst of an exciting suspense thriller.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Drawn in Blood and to Book Trends for providing an ARC of the book for this review.

If you are interested in purchasing Drawn in Blood from Amazon.com, please click the button to the right. Drawn in Blood (Kindle edition) is also available. Learn more about the Kindle, Amazon's Wireless Reading Device.

Synopsis (from the publisher): Former FBI Special Agent Sloane Burbank has seen her share of danger. She's faced down a serial killer and survived life-threatening injuries ... but she never expected that danger to invade the lives of her family.

Then her mother is viciously attacked in the posh Manhattan apartment her parents share and it quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary robbery. The thieves were too clever, too knowledgeable, and so obviously after something of her father's. But what could a respected art dealer have done to merit such violence? When a mysterious message is left for him, Sloane knows her father's in over his head. Determined to find out the truth, Sloane discovers a deadly secret buried in his past that has made him the target of a power-hungry mobster with a lethal agenda and nothing to lose.

Sloane is desperate to save her father, but to do so she must hold on to secrets of her own—especially from FBI Special Agent Derek Parker, the man she has grown to love deeply. She knows she must tell him everything, but how can she betray her father's confidence? Can a couple who's faced so much survive this ultimate test of trust? Will they survive at all?

As the decades-old secret claims the lives of her father's oldest friends and the killer closes in on him, Sloane finds herself in foreign territory: alone, facing escalating personal danger, and hunting a moving target in a world where memories are long and loyalties are drawn in blood.

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Mystery Book Review: The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, is publishing a new review of The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
Non-series

Anchor Books (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 0-307-38867-0 (0307388670)
ISBN-13: 978-0-307-38867-4 (9780307388674)
Publication Date: August 2009
List Price: $15.00

Review: Andrew Davidson's debut novel, The Gargoyle, will likely elicit strong reactions from readers, some of whom will love it, others not so much. Impossible to categorize, it's best described as cross-genre, a paranormal psychological romantic thriller, but unique in its own way.

The narrator is an unnamed man living in an unnamed city (though for many reasons, Los Angeles comes to mind when reading it). He's been in a horrific car accident of his own doing—he was high on cocaine and drunk on bourbon at the time—resulting in severe burns over most of his body. He survives, but just barely. He proceeds to address the reader directly, initially relating in alternating passages, his life story, his recovery from the accident, and his plans to kill himself once he leaves the hospital. A strange woman then comes to visit him, Marianne Engel, who tells him they were together in a previous life, in medieval Germany, and their lives today are eerily similar to what they were in the 13th century. Of course he doesn't believe her, but the over months of his recovery he's attracted to her, and comes to accept, even embrace, her story, even if he doesn't think it to be true.

There's a sense here that The Gargoyle was not written by a single author, but by a number of people in some sort of non-linear fashion, as if they were given an outline of a scene and asked to fill in the details without knowing what the movie was about. Some are writing the narrator's past, some the present. Some take the role of the narrator's intellect, others write Marianne's past and present lives. Still more write tales that occur in other times and places. All these stories, many of which are stylistically different from each other, are then interweaved with little attempt to add logical transitions, relationships, or cohesion. Then there are the numerous platitudes, some of which are groan-worthy: "Your skin was the emblem of your identity, the image that you presented to the world. But it was never who you really are. Being burned doesn't make you any less—or more—human. It only makes you burnt." A long way of saying, "beauty is only skin deep".

The Gargoyle really can't be said to be good or bad, it simply is. Like some modern art, many will find it brilliant, insightful, introspective, provocative; others will say it's just a black dot on a white background.

Special thanks to Random House for providing a trade paperback edition of The Gargoyle for this review.

If you are interested in purchasing The Gargoyle from Amazon.com, please click the button to the right. The Gargoyle (Kindle edition) is also available. Learn more about the Kindle, Amazon's Wireless Reading Device.

Synopsis (from the publisher): The narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life. As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul.

A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love. He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.

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Games of Mystery: Steve the Sheriff in The Case of the Missing Thing, New at Big Fish Games

Games of Mystery, your source for mystery-themed electronic and board games, parties for kids and adults, and mystery getaway vacations, is pleased to announce the availability of a new mystery game from Big Fish Games released today. You can find out more about these games by visiting our Mystery Games: Big Fish Download Games page or by clicking on the links provided below.

Download →

Steve the Sheriff is back in an all new case in Neptuneville. The Mona Medusa is missing and it's up to you to help Steve the Sheriff track down the thief. Use your hidden object skills to scour a multitude of screens. Find key objects within the scene to solve fun adventure-style puzzles. Follow Steve and his lovable family in this entertaining seque to the original Steve the Sheriff.

Also available: Steve the Sheriff 2 Strategy Guide and a Steve the Sheriff 2 Game Walkthrough.

Steve the Sheriff 2: the Case of the Missing Thing, a Big Fish Game Club Exclusive, may be downloaded and purchased for $6.99 with a Big Fish Game Club membership. A demonstration version (152.29 MB) may be downloaded and played for free for one hour.

Watch a preview video below:

Other popular games on our download Big Fish Mystery Games page include several Agatha Christie and Nancy Drew games, games in the Mystery Case Files series and in particular the latest, Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst, Adventure Chronicles: The Search for Lost Treasure, Enlightenus, Cate West: The Vanishing Files, Return to Mysterious Island 2: Mina's Fate, and Nick Chase: A Detective Story.

Read our new game reviews by Ms. Terri: Nancy Drew Dossier: Lights, Camera, Curses! (Review), The Hardy Boys: The Perfect Crime (Review), Enlightenus (Review), and Nick Chase: A Detective Story (Review).

Big Fish Games: Bestsellers

Big Fish Games: New releases

And don't forget to visit Games of Mystery for all kinds of mysterious fun!

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Mystery Bestsellers for September 11, 2009

A list of the top 15 mystery hardcover bestsellers for the week ending September 11, 2009 has been posted on the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books website.

A fairly quiet late summer week on the mystery bestseller list this week with no new titles entering the top 15. But that will all change next week when Dan Brown's third Robert Langdon thriller, The Lost Symbol, is in bookstores next Tuesday.

The top four mystery bestsellers this week are shown below:

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.

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BBC to Adapt Kate Atkinson's First Novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Broadcast is reporting crime novelist Kate Atkinson's debut novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, is being adapted as a 4-episode series for BBC with an expected broadcast date in 2010.

Winner of Whitbread Book of the Year award as well as the Whitbread 1st Novel Award in 1995, Behind the Scenes at the Museum is not a mystery or thriller, but a family saga that chronicles a century of life as four generations of Yorkshire women move through two World Wars, coronations, secrets, heartbreak, and happiness, all seen through the eyes of an inimitable narrator named Ruby Lennox.

Kate Atkinson is the author of the Jackson Brodie mystery series.

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Mystery Book Review: Trust Me by Jeff Abbott

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, is publishing a new review of Trust Me by Jeff Abbott. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

Trust Me by Jeff Abbott
Non-series

Dutton (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-525-95121-0 (0525951210)
ISBN-13: 978-0-525-95121-6 (9780525951216)
Publication Date: July 2009
List Price: $25.95

Review: Jeff Abbott's stand-alone novel Trust Me is a fairly routine "chase" thriller that presents an intriguing supposition but never fully realizes its potential.

The person being chased is Luke Dantry, the 24-year-old stepson of a think tank analyst, who's working on a project he refers to as Night Road, a plan to identify potential terrorists using online social networks. He's kidnapped at gunpoint from his home town of Austin and forced to drive to Houston, where he witnesses his abductor kill a homeless man. Luke's chasers are pretty much everyone else in the book, and include the authorities, who captured the murder on a security camera and assume Luke was in on it. At first, Luke simply wants to be free, but he quickly realizes that he's not sure who to trust, especially after his stepfather refuses to discuss a ransom demand for his release. Luke manages to escape, and turns to the only people who he believes can help him: the anonymous would-be terrorists that make up the Night Road, with whom he's developed a mutually trusting relationship online.

Trust Me starts quickly, with a pace that doesn't let up for the first 100 pages or so. But then the story begins to get a bit repetitive and doesn't develop much beyond this: Luke finds himself in yet another precarious situation, and he needs to devise yet another clever way to get out of it all the while learning a bit more about the people chasing him, and who, if any, can be trusted.

Luke, as the principal character, is portrayed as smart and resourceful, but also impulsive, naive and gullible, an interesting combination that works within the context of the plot and helps keep the reader's interest from waning too much. But the other characters are given mostly formulaic personalities and traits, their actions (and intents) predictable.

Effective thrillers have to, or at least should, possess some baseline level of credibility to be enjoyable, where people do, or don't do, something for a reason. It doesn't necessarily have to be a reasonable reason, but it should exist. And this is where Trust Me generally misses the mark. A question frequently asked by the characters in the book is a relevant one: What is Hellfire? But there's a related question that isn't asked, nor answered: Why Hellfire? This latter question is, arguably, more important to the premise of the story than what it is, yet it's never addressed in any meaningful way. The Night Road is described as, “So many people, all with their own agenda, their own skills, their own cause, trading their brilliance and their resources, ready to strike against the far wider world. An army, hidden in the shadows, and waging a war that would change the world. … A scary, and a beautiful creature, a beast of justice, was being born.” But to what end? For what purpose? For whose justice? In other words, why? Similarly, there's the $50 million that is introduced in the first chapter and which drives much of the action here, yet it, too, isn't fully explained as to why assuming control of it, this particular and not some other $50 million, is so important to so many of the characters. To embarrass the source of the money? To shut down Hellfire? Simple greed or revenge? It's all these unanswered "whys" that prevent this otherwise thoughtful and well-written novel from being a better thriller.

Special thanks to Goldberg McDuffie Communications for providing a copy of Trust Me for this review.

Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved

If you are interested in purchasing Trust Me from Amazon.com, please click the button to the right.

Synopsis (from the publisher): Luke Dantry tells people he has a job on the cutting edge of the war on terror-only he knows it's nowhere near as adrenaline-filled as he makes it sound. Luke's nightly task working for his stepfather's Washington think tank: Go undercover from the anonymous safety of his computer and infiltrate Web-based, home-grown terrorist networks, cataloging the screen names and details of a motley collection of rage-filled, mentally suspect, and mostly impotent loners he comes to call the Black Road. Now and then he encounters someone who may have the capability to make good on his threats, but Luke figures that the vast majority of his targets are simply frustrated malcontents using the Internet as an empty soapbox.

When Luke is kidnapped at gunpoint, without warning, and left for dead in an isolated cabin deep in the woods, he realizes it must be related to his work, and that the Black Road is far more organized than he thought-and much closer to home than he could have ever imagined. After a daring escape, with both the terrorist group and their enemies on his heels, he must quickly assemble a complex puzzle of convoluted histories and motives, where the final pieces extend deep into his own past-and where Luke himself may hold the key to stopping the Black Road before their spectacular plans come to horrible fruition.

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