Peeper by Loren D. Estleman

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

In this 1989 parody of the late Eighties hard-boiled detective novel, main character Ralph Poteet is a drunken, thieving, conniving sleaze of a PI. He’s not a sociopath like the protagonist in a Jim Thompson novel but he can’t help but make the wrong choices that only make the situation worse for himself and others. Through a combination of bad luck and sheer stupidity, he finds himself suspected of murder and arson.

The language is often pretty foul. The jokes are guy-oriented, which means the reader might feel coarse and crass in still finding them funny in our more enlightened era of 2023. If readers take the goings-on too seriously, they may feel sad, especially if they remember Detroit bleeding population and businesses in the Eighties.

But readers of a certain age will enjoy the references to Eighties pop culture such as Brooke Shields, Popeil’s Veg-O-Matic, and what I suspect is a fictitious long-playing album called “Slim Whitman Yodels Songs of Faith.” Readers like me who know SE Michigan and feel a sentimental feeling anyway will like the nod to the Uniroyal tire on eastbound 94 in Allen Park (no giant Presto Whip cans in Dearborn on Telegraph because they were removed in 1983 – an unhappy day indeed).

I’ve been reading Estleman for about 30 years and enjoyed the PI Amos Walker books in the 1990s. This book is a successful attempt to parody his own character. But he still manages to develop an original character and surprising twists and turns of plot. Unlike most comic mysteries, it does not feel too long by the end. Its incidents are darkly humorous but overall the hard-boiled genre is mocked for its pretentions and cynicism, especially in terms of its portraying the world as more unfair, uncaring, and corrupt than it really is.

The Doctor, the Hitman, and the Motorcycle Gang: The True Story of One of New Jersey’s Most Notorious Murder for Hire Plots by Annie McCormick

Review by jjares

New Jersey locals woke up to the news that one of their famous radio personalities had been murdered in her home. Vivacious April Kauffman, an advocate for veteran’s issues, was found dead on the floor of her bedroom, shot twice. However, this appalling crime took six years to unravel in court. This turned out to be one of New Jersey’s most notorious murder-for-hire cases. Before it was all over, a highly-regarded physician and a motorcycle gang were brought down for April’s death.
It takes a bit to get involved in this story. The author sets the stage by explaining April Kaufmann’s life and how she got to the point where someone decided she needed to die. In the beginning, it looked like there could not be a more unlikely murder victim. April had it all; she was widely known for her philanthropic activities. She didn’t just move mountains for veterans; she assisted anyone who asked her for help. Yet, on May 10, 2012, locals learned that this famous advocate for many causes was dead.
After a whirlwind courtship, Dr. James Kauffman and April married. April was so caught up in Jim’s story about his military service in Vietnam that she turned her radio program’s focus to veteran issues. However, after some time, April learned that Jim was never a green beret in the service; April was devastated.
Due to how Jim’s story affected her, she had lined up many activities to help veterans. She knew that when veterans found out that Jim’s story was a fraud, she would be smeared with the same lies. At about the same time, April found out that her husband ran a pill mill through his office, using a local unit of the national Pagan Motorcycle Gang.
The doctor was clever; the paperwork in the office showed that these were actual patients with real needs for pain medications. He gave the patients scripts for 120 OxyCodone narcotic prescriptions, which the motorcycle gang members resold for $20+ per pill. They made so much money that the doctor added a lab scam. When April started to notice, she told Jim she wanted a divorce. Jim told her she wasn’t getting half of his “empire.” He would kill  April’s daughter (from another marriage) if April didn’t drop the divorce idea immediately. Unfortunately, April didn’t understand the depth of Jim’s rage. Dr. Kauffman was also angry that people called him Mr. April.
Most of the book is about how April got justice; it took six years. Because the Pagan Motorcycle Gang is noted for their deep-seated animus against betraying each other, it was hard to crack their bond to get anyone to talk. Finally, it became known that the doctor offered $50,000 and unlimited OxyCodone prescriptions to murder his wife.
Many people will be aware of this story because of ABC’s 20/20 investigative program. The author of this book takes the time to give the backstory of the main characters involved. She also gives credit to Atlantic County Prosecutor Damon Tyner. He reignited the case once he was elected. This is a fascinating, multi-layered story about a tragedy in New Jersey.

The Haunted Monastery by Robert van Gulik

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Judge Dee is travelling back to his headquarters in Han-yuan with his three wives and his faithful assistant Tao Gan when sudden autumn storms compel the party to shelter in a Taoist monastery.

He is exhausted but eager to gather background information on the recent deaths of three young women in the monastery. However, as an official in a Confucian bureaucracy where observing etiquette is a big deal, he is forced to conduct hypocritically polite conversations, watch a mystery play and participate in a banquet of macrobiotic fare he can’t stomach.

Adding to the comedy is a poet who writes rude verses about the abbot and a vaudeville girl whose bear loves only her and is dangerously crabby with everybody else. In a funny scene with another entertainer woman, she asks Judge Dee for his advice on how to deal with Sapphic advances to which our judge gives advice more tolerant than we’d expect from a magistrate in the 670s.

More sobering, however, through a window, he sees a one-armed woman being assaulted by a soldier. And he notes an odd relationship among a young woman who wants to become a nun, her chaperone, and her brother. In a story that takes place in the course of only one night, Judge Dee is pitted against the most dangerous kind of crook: the smart guy who’s gone off the rails by thinking the rules don’t apply to him.

The perp is pretty easy to figure out in this story that depends mainly character and setting for its interest. I wonder, too, if Taoist monks in fact wore cowls, attended matins, or got promoted to be almoners and priors. At about 270 pages, the length is just right, with a fast last third of the mystery making up for the rather plodding first two-thirds.

Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

JUST ONE DAMNED THING AFTER ANOTHER by Jodi Taylor is the first in a long series; as I write this there are about 14 entries.  This start is a very fun time-travel fantasy, with a minimum of technical jargon and a maximum of action-filled trips into the past.

Dr. Madeline Maxwell (Max) an historian who’s more than a little prickly, not inclined to trust authority, but very smart,  is recruited by her old professor to interview at St. Mary’s which is dedicated to historical research. But as they walk through on the way to her interview, Mrs De Winter repeats to everyone they see that Max “hasn’t had the interview yet”. Max is understandably confused. Why would that be so important? Why does a historical research university have – wait, blast doors? What’s going on?

It turns out time travel is a real thing, and that’s what St Mary’s does. And it’s a secret, of course. It’s understood that you can’t change the past. History won’t let you – should someone attempt, even inadvertently, to make a change that affects the future, history will drop a convenient rock on you.  At any rate, you can’t make changes and you can’t bring anything back. (Right. They always say that.) But Max is in, she’s hooked, no one is getting her out of there. This is a dream come true and she will do anything to be part of it.

It’s very dangerous though, there’s a wall of  honor for the historicans who have lost their lives on missions. As the book opens, St Mary’s is pretty short on historians as there have been a number of deaths, oops…mishaps. Out of each new class, only about 40% graduate, but Max is determined she’s going to be there. As it turns out – of course – there is more danger behind St Mary’s walls than she knows. Not everyone wants it to succeed.

Taylor has done a wonderful job building this world, I can see it in my mind’s eye. It moves at a breakneck pace. Max is a very engaging protagonist and the book is told from her POV. Not all the characters feel completely 3D, but most are good. Don’t think too much about the time-travel paradoxes, that’s not the point here, and Taylor winks at them in passing. There’s time travel, and romance and love and betrayal, and blasters, and dinosaurs! Very entertaining and I have already put the next on my reading list.

Death by Water aka Appleby at Allington by Michael Innes

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1968 whodunnit is as light as a feather. It finds series hero Sir John Appleby in retirement from Scotland Yard. He and his sculptor wife Judith trade witty observations, as if Nick and Nora Charles had aged into not drinking anything stronger than sherry.

Sir John has an odd dinner with a new neighbor who presses him to examine the elaborate electrical system that ran a recent outdoor lightshow on the grounds of the estate. This is 1968, recall, when psychedelic lightshows were all the rage for both the cheery squares and tripping hippies. Besides, who doesn’t like pretty lights?

Anyway, in the operations center they discover a corpse. This, however, does not stop the operations center turned crime scene from being dismantled for a charity fete to be held on the same grounds the next day. Nothing stops the traditional village festival on the estate, after all, lest the meaning of “this green and sceptered isle” be lost forever.

The action focuses on the-pain-in-the-neck family of the owner and unfolding of startling incidents. The families are genially satirized as athletic parents who are philistines worried that their bookworm children will develop imaginations and independent ways of thought. Innes is a writer for unapologetically bookish people.

Readers that like Patricia Highsmith, Nicholas Blake, Cyril Hare, and Josephine Tey will like the intelligent, deftly written, and short mysteries of Michael Innes. New readers of Innes would do better to test the early ones such as Hamlet, Revenge!, Lament for a Maker or Stop Press; fans of Innes – hardcore readers – will like this lesser, late-career work regardless.

Witches in Red by Barb Hendee

Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

WITCHES IN RED is the second in the Mist-Torn Witches series by Barb Hendee. As in the first, there is a mystery to solve. I think a new reader could start with this one, as Hendee gives plenty of backstory to fill in about the sisters and how they got to where they are.

Sisters Celine and Amelie are settling in to their new home, the apocethery shop given them by Prince Anton.  Celine can see a person’s future by touching them, and Amelie can see their past. They solved the murders of several young women just a few months ago by using those talents, but they just want some peace and quiet. Such is not to be.

A messenger rides in from the prince’s father with an important request. In a remote forest, in his silver mines, soldiers are inexplicably turning into ravening wolf-monsters and slaughtering their fellow men. The Prince knows about the two seers and wants Anton to send them to solve this issue and get the silver mines back up and running. Or, he threatens, he’ll give the job to Anton’s brother, the wicked Prince Damek. Anton really, really wants to be dad’s chosen heir so of course he agrees. Celine and Amelie – especially Amelie – are not happy, but off they go along with Lt Jaromir and others of his men.

It’s a complicated scenario at the mine, with soldiers suddenly turning into monsters plus a comically evil officer in charge who’s effectively enslaved most of the mine workers and earned the contempt of his men.  Even though the workers don’t have the means to leave, they’re not about to head into the mines where they might be attacked at any moment. The soldiers now regard everyone with suspicion.

Celine and Amelie find that some of the mine workers are their own people, the gypsy-like Mondyalitko, and one of them has some special powers too. But the main focus is finding what’s happening to the soldiers.

Style-wise, this is much the same book as the last. There’s not much natural flow to Hendee’s writing and I think some of the descriptions are lifted verbatim out of the last book (I did not check, so that’s just my impression).  I felt her imagery was a little better though, I had a good mental picture of the surroundings and the characters.  The sisters remain easy to like with distinguishable strengths and weaknesses, and Lt Jaromir has both good and bad traits. Plus we learn something about Rurik.  I didn’t guess the murderer, although the motive became clear pretty quickly.  The action scenes are fine but once again, it all screeches to a stop when Amelie goes into a person’s past.  Mercedes’ story was long enough, but the part devoted to the murderer seemed to go on forever.  There is an undertone of romance here but the dynamics remain as they were in the first book.

This may be a series that’s better with a longer break between the books.  In fantasy, I’m looking for prose that makes me feel something and excites my imagination. So far Hendee is doing a lot of telling and very little showing.  I’m still interested enough in this world that I’ll look for book #3, and after that who knows.