Compendium of Mystery News 070822

Today's compendium of recently published mystery news articles:

• The Associated Press is reporting that Magdalen Nabb, author of the Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia mystery series, has died of a stroke in Florence, Italy. She was 60. Nabb also wrote stories for children and young adults. See also this profile of the author on the Telegraph.co.uk.

• Belinda Goldsmith interviews mystery writer Mary Daheim for Reuters. Mary Daheim says the best advice she received when she embarked on a writing career over 20 years ago was to not confuse her work with literature.

• Bill Keveney, writing for USA Today, says that television viewers love a good mystery, but with song? He reports on the upcoming CBS series Viva Laughlin. The CBS website calls the series (which is based on the BBC show Viva Blackpool) part drama, part thriller, part musical.

• Variety is reporting that James Patterson is entering the videogame business. Oberon Media has signed a deal with the author to produce numerous games with Patterson's brand name, most likely in the mystery or romance genres. Some will be based on Patterson's existing books, others on original stories.

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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Compendium of Mystery News 070821

Today's compendium of recently published mystery news articles:

• Laura Thompson writes in the Telegraph about Agatha Christie, a woman she says can be understood but not solved. Her book about the author, Agatha Christie: An English Mystery, will be published next month in the UK.

• Gaming Today provides some beautifully rendered screen shots for the upcoming PC game, Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun. This third installment of the series from The Adventure Company is scheduled for release in October 2007.

• Roberta Isleib, author of the Cassie Burdette golf mysteries, writes an essay in the latest series of Chicken Soup books, Chicken Soup for the Woman Golfer's Soul. (MBN Note: find all of Roberta Isleib's mysteries as well as many more sports-related mystery books at our partner website, Sports Mysteries.)

• Margaret Cannon reviews 5 recently published mysteries in her column on TheGlobeandMail.com.

• The Associated Press is reporting that J. K. Rowling has been spotted at cafes in Scotland working on a detective novel. (This information has been published on many websites; our link here is to FoxNews.com.)

• NPR begins a four-part series, Crime in the City, about crime novelists and the places they and their characters inhabit. First up: Donna Leon's Venice.

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Mysteries on TV: JAG and Dexter

Mystery television series being released this week on DVD:

JAG, Season 4, starred David James Elliot as Cmdr. Harmon "Harm" Rabb, a former Navy pilot turned lawyer for the Judge Advocate General (JAG). The series also starred Catherine Bell as Lt. Col. Sarah "Mac" MacKenzie.

The fourth season of JAG aired on CBS from September 1998 through May 1999. This DVD set includes all 24 episodes from this season on 6 disks.

Watch the opening credits (from season 2) on YouTube.com here.

Dexter, Season 1, starred Michael C. Hall as Dexter Morgan, a blood splatter expert for the Miami Police Department who also has a darker side: he locates and kills criminals that have escaped justice. The series is based on the crime thrillers Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

The first season of Dexter aired on HBO in the fall of 2006. This DVD set includes all 12 episodes from this season on 4 disks.

Watch the opening credits on YouTube.com here.

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

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Mystery Book Review: The Hellfire Conspiracy by Will Thomas

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, has written a review of The Hellfire Conspiracy by Will Thomas. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website. (MBN Note: Enter to win one of two copies of The Hellfire Conspiracy with bookplates signed by the author, generously provided by the publisher, that we are giving away this month on our Mystery Books Sweepstakes website.)

The Hellfire Conspiracy by Will Thomas
A Barker and Llewelyn Mystery

Simon & Schuster (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-406-54805-X (141654805X)
ISBN-13: 978-1-406-54805-8 (9781406548058)
Publication Date: July 2007
List Price: $24.00

Synopsis (from the publisher): When Barker and Llewelyn are hired to find a girl from the upper classes who has gone missing in the East End, they assume her kidnapping is the work of white slavers. But when they discover five girls have been murdered in Bethnal Green, taunting letters begin to arrive in Craig's Court from a killer calling himself Mr. Miacca.

Barker fears that Miacca might be part of the Hellfire Club, a group of powerful, hedonistic aristocrats performing Satanic rituals. He must track the fiend to his hideout, while Llewelyn confronts the man who put him in prison.

Review: Private enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his assistant Thomas Llewelyn take on assignment to find a missing upper class twelve year girl in The Hellfire Conspiracy, the fourth mystery in this series by Will Thomas.

The girl was abducted from the East End, a low class, seedy part of London. Barker and Llewelyn had heard that the white slavers were back who may have taken her to sell her to someone who would whisk her out of the country and concentrate their efforts there. During their intense search, however, they come upon knowledge that five other girls between the ages of eleven and fourteen had been found murdered and tossed in the river. They were nude, raped, their faces painted like some satanic ritual, and one finger cut off at the first knuckle. This was definitely not the work of the white slavers. They finally find the missing girl in the River Thames, nude, raped and strangled, with her face painted and one finger cut off at the knuckle. Though convinced the white slavers were not responsible for this crime, there are other sinister secret cults at work. Their search goes on in the darkest, most barbaric, desolate, and uncivilized parts of London. When another child, age eleven, disappears, Barker pledges to the parents that they will find her before she, too, is killed.

Though the crimes here are against children, the author doesn't dwell on the murders but instead focuses on the investigation by Barker and Llewelyn. When they discover who the malicious murderer is, Llewelyn professes surprise though Barker claims he knew it all along; most readers will as well.

Set in late 1880s London, the period and location details add a mysterious atmospheric layer to a well-paced plot. Despite the horrific nature of the crimes, The Hellfire Conspiracy is a pleasure to read.

Special thanks to Touchstone Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, for providing a copy of The Hellfire Conspiracy for this review.

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

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Mystery Godoku: Weekly Puzzle for August 20, 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 C E I L M N O P. A mystery with this laughing professional in the title won the 1971 Edgar Award for best novel (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!

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Mystery Book Review: Deadly Vintage by Elaine Flinn

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, has written a review of Deadly Vintage by Elaine Flinn. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

Deadly Vintage by Elaine Flinn
A Molly Doyle Mystery

Perseverance Press (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-880284-87-1 (1880284871)
ISBN-13: 978-1-880284-87-2 (9781880284872)
Publication Date: September 2007
List Price: $14.95

Synopsis (from the publisher): Life is sweet for Molly Doyle. Treasures Antiques, the Carmel shop she manages, is doing well. Her niece, Emma, continues to enrich her life, and her personal relationship with Randall, the chief of police, has reached an interesting plateau. Eager to branch out into interior decorations, Molly takes on a lucrative commission to refurbish the wine tasting rooms at Bello Lago, a prestigious family-owned winery in Carmel Valley. But Molly soon finds herself in the middle of the dysfunctional family’s squabbles when they end in murder - and she’s a prime suspect! Even worse, Emma’s future is at stake when a stranger walks into Treasures and …

Review: Carmel-by-the-Sea antiques shop owner Molly Doyle again assumes the role of amateur sleuth in Deadly Vintage, the cleverly plotted fourth mystery in this series by Elaine Flinn.

Molly is presented with an opportunity to showcase her talents when she's hired by Carla Jessop, the daughter of a local vineyard owner, to decorate a wine tasting room in a traditional Italian manner. Carla's husband, Todd, a former dot-com executive, is vehemently opposed and wants to modernize both the winery and its image. The conflict becomes public when, at a dinner attended by all three, Molly throws a glass of wine in Todd's face he accuses her of selling fake antiques. A few days later, when Todd is murdered with Molly standing nearby, she needs to work with her close friend, chief of police Kenneth Randall, to clear her name and restore her reputation.

Deadly Vintage is not a book one rushes through. It is leisurely paced and appropriately so; the murder, for example, doesn't take place until well into the second third of the story. The characters are richly drawn and the narrative is filled with interesting details about the antiques business and the community. Of particular note is Molly's relationship with her niece Emma, which is both special and sweet. The twists and turns in the plot are all credible within the context of the story, and the killer (if not necessarily the motive) comes as a complete surprise.

A minor annoyance is Flinn's use of the word "merch" in place of "merchandise" or "goods". Antiques dealers may indeed use the term as part of their vernacular, and Molly herself often uses it when speaking to friends and colleagues. But when "merch" is used in a descriptive paragraph it is jarring. "She set about adding the new merch into the inventory on the computer." Or "She frequently rearranged merch in the shop." In an otherwise exceptionally well written book it is conspicuously out of place.

Special thanks to Perseverance Press for providing a copy of Deadly Vintage for this review.

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

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Compendium of Mystery News 070817

Today's compendium of recently published mystery news articles:

• Janet Maslin in The New York Times reviews two new thrillers noting that their dust jacket covers (displayed to the right) are so generic that they don't convey how special the books are.

• More reviews of new mysteries (Hard Row by Margaret Maron and Beyond Reach by Karin Slaughter) in Oline H. Cogdill's column on Sun-Sentinel.com.

• Reuters is reporting that HarperCollins is making samples from 14 new book titles available for the iPhone, including the latest mystery by Faye Kellerman, The Burnt House.

• Bookseller.com writes that HarperCollins is relaunching the mysteries of Agatha Christie (again) this fall, with the first 12 "Masterpiece Editions" available in September with another 12 in October.

• The Anime Network has scheduled the premiere of a new mystery, Red Garden, for September 6th. See the trailer on the network's website. (Visit Mystery Anime for more information on anime mysteries available on DVD.)

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Mystery Bestsellers for August 17, 2007

A list of the top ten mystery hardcover bestsellers for the week ending August 17, 2007 has been posted on the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books website.

A quiet week: no new titles appear on the list this week, with just some minor shuffling at the top.

Displacing The Quickie by James Patterson at the top spot is The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke. This 16th mystery in the Dave Robicheaux series has been receiving rave reviews. For a list of all the books in this series, visit Mystery Authors: James Lee Burke. Also check out James Lee Burke's website where you can get more information about the author as well as read an excerpt from the book.

Rounding out the top five are The Secret Servant, the 7th Gabriel Allon thriller by Daniel Silva, The Burnt House, 16th in the Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series by Faye Kellerman, and Lean Mean Thirteen, the 13th (or 15th if you count the "between-the-numbers" books) in the Stephanie Plum mystery series by Janet Evanovich.

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News: Val McDermid Comments on Scotsman.com Article

In yesterday's compendium of mystery news, we listed an article on Scotsman.com reporting on events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

Val McDermid took the time to post a reply to that article that we think is important enough to reprint here (rather than leave it in the comments section where it might be overlooked).

Val McDermid wrote:

"For the record, I did not mention Ian Rankin by name at my Edinburgh Book Festival event with Denise Mina (who has been curiously written out of the record...) precisely because I wanted to address the issue of how women writing about violence is perceived rather than to make a personal attack on any individual. Nor did I refer to any of his books specifically. I did mention this particular title last year on a radio programme when I was debating the specific comment that Ian made, but I did not refer to it or any of his other books at the Edinburgh event, for the same reason. The remarks that I made -- which were echoed and expanded by Denise -- were in response to a question from the audience about women's experiences as crime writers.

"There is no feud between me and Ian. We have been good pals for a dozen years and are sufficiently grown up to be capable of not having identical views on every subject.

"For a more balanced view of the Edinburgh event, you might like to check out: http://living.scotsman.com/books.cfm?id=1288052007. Written by the same journalist who wrote the other piece..."

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Compendium of Mystery News 070815

Today's compendium of recently published mystery news articles:

• Simon Donohue writing for the Manchester Evening News talks to mystery author Peter Robinson about his latest book, Friend of the Devil, and why his mysteries haven't made the transition to television.

• David Robinson reports on Scotsman.com that a spat between Britain's two best-selling crime writers exploded into the open last night at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Val McDermid took exception to a remark made by Ian Rankin in an interview last year.

• David Gustafson of the StarTribune interviews a member of the Minnesota Crime Wave, a trio of Twin Cities-area mystery writers, about murder and mayhem in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

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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Mystery Book Review: Antler Dust by Mark Stevens

Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, has written a review of Antler Dust by Mark Stevens. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.

Antler Dust by Mark Stevens
Non-series

Paandaa Entertainment (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-9774188-1-2 (0977418812)
ISBN-13: 978-1-9774188-1-7 (9780977418817)
Publication Date: March 2007
List Price: $24.95

Synopsis (from the publisher): On the opening day of the hunting season in the Colorado Flat Tops wilderness, two men go missing. The first is a hunting guide. The second is an animal rights protestor who believes his creative suicide will galvanize the animal rights movement.

Hunting guide Allison Coil hears a distant rifle shot and sees just enough through the swirling snow to believe somebody knows something-and isn't coming forward. But what exactly did she see?

Outfitter George Grumley fends off the formal investigation and works to discourage the informal and persistent inquiries by Coil. Grumley knows no limits in the effort to protect his guide service, which caters to fat-cat clients. Who needs hunting regulations when technology can produce the quickest and most thrilling hunt that money can buy?

Dawn Ellenberg, lead dog of the animal rights group FATE - Fighting Animal Torture Everywhere - plots a public relations blitz behind the story of hunter who wipes off his camouflage face paint and joins their crusade. The public relations coup is too good to be true. FATE turns up the heat on the police in Glenwood Springs, who seem clueless in their attempts to solve the death of the protestor.

And Trudy Grumley, wife of the notorious outfitter, takes a few bold steps outside her comfort zone and takes a few tentative steps through the fog of a limiting disease. She begins a frightening ordeal that could-just maybe-lead to independence. Along the way, she befriends Coil and the pair chart a course to uncover the truth, no matter where that course leads.

Review: Mark Stevens’ debut thriller, Antler Dust, chronicles a few weeks in the lives of hunters and their guides. It is elk and deer hunting season in Colorado with hunters swarming to the Rocky Mountains to nail their big one. Two men are shot on that first day. Rocky Carnivitas, a guide, is deliberately killed for reasons known only the killer. Rocky is pulled away from the site of the shooting and put under a tree in the snow. Only one problem: from a distance, and through a heavy snowfall, new guide Allison Coil witnesses what she thinks is someone dragging an animal or a body through the heavy snow.

Then there is a suicidal hunter, Ray Stern, who believes if he were killed the animal rights people would have more fodder. His group, FATE (Fighting Animal Torture Everywhere), is on the ground protesting. Ray goes up into the mountain, wraps himself in deerskin, and waits for a hunter. When Dean Applegate sees what he thinks is a deer, he shoots and kills Ray. Frightened, Dean runs down the mountain and joins the protesters saying he could not take the killing of any more animals.

Allison tells the sheriff what she thinks she has seen, but when she gets no response from him, she tells the park ranger who is also skeptical. When Rocky does not return to the camp for four days, they begin to listen to her. The question becomes, why was Rocky killed and by whom?

But the answer is obvious. Antler Dust is a tiresome novel in that there is no mystery. Every time a person is hurt or killed the reader knows who did it and why. Much of the story is repetitive and it becomes apparent what is going to happen next. There is no thrill of the hunt, metaphorical or otherwise, in this book.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Antler Dust and to Breakthrough Promotions for providing a copy of the book for this review.

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

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Mysteries on TV: The Fugitive

Mystery television series being released this week on DVD:

The Fugitive, Season 1, Volume 1 starred David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble, a man wrongly accused of murdering his wife. Escaping custody, he eludes the authorities while searching for the real killer, a one-armed man he saw leaving his home.

The first season of The Fugitive aired on ABC in the fall of 1963. This DVD set includes the first 15 episodes from this season on 4 disks.

Watch the opening credits on YouTube.com here.

A theatrical film derived from the series, also titled The Fugitive, was released in 1993 and starred Harrison Ford as Dr. Richard Kimble.

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

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Mystery Godoku Puzzle for August 13, 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: E H I K L N S T U. He is the author of a trilogy of mysteries featuring the rabbinic sleuth Daniel Winter (last name only, 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!

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Mystery Book Review: Life Blood by Penny Rudolph

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

Life Blood by Penny Rudolph
A Rachel Chavez Mystery

Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59058-346-9 (1590583469)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-346-3 (9781590583463)
Publication Date: September 2007
List Price: $24.95

Synopsis (from the publisher): Rachel Chavez, a recovering alcoholic, owns and lives in an apartment on the top floor of a parking garage in downtown Los Angeles. She leases parking space and the use of the rooftop helicopter pad to nearby businesses. Tough but vulnerable, she is struggling to stay sober and keep her business afloat.

Rachel is horrified when she discovers two young Mexican boys locked in an apparently abandoned van in the garage. She rushes them to the emergency room. Doctors declare one dead on arrival. The other, dehydrated but alive, is admitted to the hospital. But when Rachel checks back the next day, the Medical Center has no record of either child.

Wary of the police because her own checkered past includes a DWI and arrest for drug possession, Rachel is obsessed with finding an explanation. Meanwhile, Hank, a workaholic water quality engineer, wants to marry her when his divorce is final. But now Rachel, enmeshed in her search for answers and her own Mexican roots, isn't certain marriage is for her.

When the hospital leases parking space in her garage for staff, she believes her life is finally on track. But instead it's just becoming more complicated ... and dangerous.

Review: Los Angeles parking garage owner Rachel Chavez finds herself involved in the activities of a mysterious hospital in Life Blood, the second entry in this series by Penny Rudolph.

Life Blood starts out with an intriguing premise. Rachel finds two children in an apparently abandoned van in her garage. Rushing them to the nearest hospital, she's informed that one is dead and the other alive in critical condition. Returning the next day to follow up on the one that survived, she's told there is no record of two children having ever been there the day before, dead or alive. When she continues to investigate on her own, she's accused of stealing a controlled substance from the hospital and arrested. Later, an attempt is made on her life. She's convinced that the two missing children are the key to understanding why someone wants, at a minimum, to see her in jail or worse, dead.

Following a strong opening, however, Life Blood rapidly loses its way. Part of the problem is in the shifting points of view that add no real value and have the unfortunate effect of specifically lessening any mystery associated with the hospital and its staff. In addition, there are oddly placed and completely irrelevant side stories dealing with Rachel's father. There are also attempts at injecting elements of a medical suspense thriller here and there but none are successful.

Rudolph challenges the reader of Life Blood with a couple of fundamental questions. Does the end result justify the means? Is there a greater good? There is never an easy answer to either one, but in the case as presented in this book, it should be an unequivocal and resounding no. It is shocking, therefore, that in the end Rachel not only calmly accepts the situation, but makes a seriously flawed decision that not only makes her complicit in the crimes being committed but a moral hypocrite as well.

It is rare that a book starts so promisingly yet ends so poorly. Life Blood is a disappointment in every sense of the word.

Special thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for providing an ARC of Life Blood 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.

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Compendium of Mystery News 070810

Today's compendium of recently published mystery news articles:

• FirstBook.org conducted a survey to which over 100,000 people answered the question, What got you hooked on reading? The number one response: the Nancy Drew series of mysteries.

• Speaking of Nancy Drew, Her Interactive has issued a press release announcing the launch of the company’s first TV DVD game, Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor.

• The Hollywood Reporter reports that Camryn Manheim, Leslie Hope and Kathy Baker have joined the cast of the CBS made-for-television movie Jesse Stone: Thin Ice, the fifth installment in the successful Tom Selleck franchise from Sony Pictures Television. The movies are based on the mystery series character created by Robert B. Parker.

• Otto Penzler's column this week in the New York Sun is an entertaining series of "Did you know ..." questions. A sample: Did you know that in Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man, which was the inspiration for a series of movies starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, the "thin man" refers to the murder victim?

• Variety is reporting that HBO has officially picked up the series True Blood based on the Southern Vampire series of mysteries by Charlaine Harris.

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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