My Brother’s Killer by D.M. Devine

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Though written in 1961, this English mystery uses to excellent effect the tried-and-true devices of whodunits during their Golden Age of the 1920s and 1930s. Think of Freeman Wills Crofts and his alibis, time-tables, and accounting for everybody’s movements. No wonder Agatha Christie highly praised this story.

The mystery is told in first-person by Simon, the brother of the victim Oliver Barnett. Both brothers are solicitors in their family practice. Simon can’t believe that, given his war record, Oliver could have taken his own life, as the crime scene seems to indicate. Both Simon and the Superintendent in charge of the investigation come to the conclusion it was murder. Instead playing the stock character of the thick flat-foot, Superintendent Garland, the lead detective, is as sharp as Simon.

Simon assembles a team to investigate murder. The narrative features the traditional plot twists and red herrings. As Simon and his mates peel the onion of Oliver’s life, however, it’s enough to make Simon cry to find out how many people would relish seeing Oliver roasting in his Eternal Just Deserts.

D. M. Devine (1920-1980), the Scottish author of 13 crime novels, was very popular in his time as a master of the classic detective story. This classic was re-released by Arcturus Publishing in 2012 as part of its program of re-issues of forgotten masterpieces.

The Far Sands by Andrew Garve

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This novel from 1960 is a thriller.

A British Foreign Office diplomat meets an attractive woman on vacation. Love blooms. They marry hastily. Dip meets the sister- and brother-in-law. Charming people. Newly Mrs. Diplomat and her sister are identical twins.

But in a shocking turn of events the brother-in-law is seemingly done to death by the sister-in-law. Evidence says she did it but Mrs. Dip can’t believe it and works to clear dead sis’s name. Mr. Dip is between a rock and a hard place: the clear evidence versus his bride’s determination and ingenuity. But they get a line on the possible murderer!

Garve wrote tight mysteries with not a word out of place, not a word wasted. Excellent novels to read while traveling.

Murder Times Six: The True Story of the Wells Gray Murders by Alan R Warren

Review by jjares

This story tells about the murder of three generations of a family in Wells Gray Park in Canada in the 1980s. It is well-researched and written engagingly. However, no words can whitewash the horrific murders of a pair of grandparents, parents, and two girls while camping. David Shearing shot the four adults because he wanted the two girls. The girls had gone to sleep in their tent while the adults were sitting around the campfire chatting.
When apprehended, David admitted to the killings (but the police knew he kept something back). For the six murders, David was sentenced to six concurrent terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for 25 years. After he admitted he was guilty in court (and nothing more could be done to him), David admitted to the horrific details of the girl’s last days. He did not kill the girls immediately but took them away and kept them alive for several days. During that time, he raped and then murdered the girls. They were eleven and thirteen years old.
To hide his crimes, David put the six bodies in one car and incinerated them. When the vehicle was found, the bodies had been cremated. There was only enough matter left to fill one baby’s coffin. Once David learned how vehemently British Columbians hated him, he changed his last name to his mother’s Ennis.
Then, this true crime book takes an unusual turn. David was only twenty-four at the time of the murders. This book highlights the Canadian prison system and some of its quirks. David was able to marry while in prison. He also has the right to conjugal visits of 72 hours (in a prison home). In 2008, David was first eligible for parole. When the community that the Johnsons and Bentleys came from discovered the possibility of parole, they gathered together and got about 10,000 signatures to protest it.
Unfortunately, the victim’s families must undergo a parole hearing every two years. So they come in force and give poignant victim statements to the Parole Board. One thing the author highlights (and readers rarely consider) is that the younger family members were victims too. Their parents were too afraid to allow them outside alone; they’d spent their lives afraid.
There is a previous book, THE SEVENTH SHADOW. It was written by the (now retired) Mounted Police Sgt. Michael Eastham. In that book, Eastham outlined the difficulties (using tracking dogs, helicopters, and an extensive workforce) the police had in capturing David Shearing. MURDER TIMES SIX summarizes Eastham’s information and then moves on.
The emphasis of this book (as well as Eastham’s) is that David Shearing Ennis should never be released. Eastham stated he was sure that if David were released, he would kill again.

Right on the Money by Emma Lathen

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Given the background of this 1993 mystery is a corporate merger, I couldn’t blame a reader thinking that reading this oldie would offer as much excitement as changing a duvet cover. In fact the author makes the merger the stuff of drama, with fatal flaws like pride and fear of the future bringing about tragedy.

In the 22nd mystery starring John Putnam Thatcher, the banker and amateur detective has to get the bottom of the murder of a loudmouth so ambitious for attention and promotions that an insurance adjustor expresses surprise that the vic made it as far as 32 years of age.

Aqua Supplies, Inc. (ASI) is too big, too bureaucratic, and too complacent to fire anybody and so not able to develop new kitchen appliances that female consumers may actually want to buy. So it fixes to merge – that is, gobble up whole without so much as a belch – with Ecker, a small family-owned and operated designer and maker of nifty percolators and such. Since the disability retirement of the Ecker heir, the main assets there are its ageing founder and its highly talented female CFO.

ASI assistant division manager Victor Hunnicut rolls his eyes at the kool-aid stand ways of Ecker. His skill set, he realizes, would not make him a candidate for running Ecker so he puts his ambition above the interests of his employer and makes plans to quash the merger plans. He fears that other middle managers will leapfrog over him, thus cutting him off from chances to shine for his superiors. While giving Ecker a get-acquainted tour, the hotshot intimates to Ken Nicholls that factions in both companies are duking it out over the merger plans. Ken Nicholls is a junior banking exec who’s often sent by hero John Putnam Thatcher to gather information.

After the tour, things start to get criminous. The quaint old mill that stored Ecker’s financial computers and files for research and development is torched by an arsonist. Go-getter Vic Hunnicut is murdered at the annual trade show.

Emma Lathen was the pen name of Mary Latsis (economic analyst) and Martha Hennissart (attorney). Both knew the worlds of business at all levels from clerks to CEOs, so they felt at home in a constantly changing business environment and the variety of personalities to be found in the private sector. Sure, the business environment has changed in the last 35 years, but human nature has not. For instance, as old-school feminists, they have acerbic fun satirizing businessmen who are buoyed up by secretaries but who attribute their success to their own intelligence and diligence.

A Second Chance by Jodi Taylor

Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

A SECOND CHANCE is third in the Chronicles of St Mary’s, all about time-traveling historians. You should start at the beginning – read my previous reviews of JUST ONE DAMNED THING AFTER ANOTHER and A SYMPHONY OF ECHOES.  The tone is shifting away from amusement; there’s more than one dark episode here although we still have some funny scenes as well as nice snarky dialogue.

As in the last book, the story proper begins with a trip into the past that’s supposed to be an easy in-and-out, but turns into a hair-raising life or death experience, but this is just an appetizer.

It’s off to Troy, the bit of history that Max has long dreamed of watching.  We know we’re going there thanks to the unnecessary prologue Taylor inserted (I don’t like them- others will disagree I’m sure). Troy will take up the better part of this story, what with the intial reconnoiter and then the team spending quite a while observing daily life. The pacing  is a little slower than I’ve seen in the other two books; Taylor spends  a while settling the team into Troy and describing the setting.  That’s fine, it gives us a chance to catch our breath and anticipate the chaos we know is coming. I quite liked the explanation of the Trojan Horse and how it was that Troy became so vulnerable.

However, now we come to a couple really big surprising events.   As a reader, I know there are many books left in the series, and with a good chunk of this book left to go, I had theories on where Taylor would go with it/them. I wasn’t right this time

After Troy it’s off to Agincourt. I remembered it from Henry V’s speech in Shakespeare’s play, but that’s all, and was curious enough to look up the real story. Just as in Troy, it’s got some grim scenes in it and ends in a startling way.  I really was not expecting that either.

In the first book we’re shown that History will not tolerate changes. If you do something to alter the past, History (and if you’ve read the previous books, you know who that is) will drop a rock on you or something equivalent in order to keep the timeline pure.  But that turned out to have some wiggle room, and now Taylor rips off the cover and throws it away. We are firmly into alternate timelines and anything can happen.  I am still on the fence about the two Muses, though, they are a bit too much deus ex machina for my liking.

As I mentioned, this book has less amusement factor than the first couple, but wow she really threw in some twists. I’m definitely intrigued to see what happens next. Taylor hasn’t really succeeded in getting me emotionally attached to the characters, even the main ones, but no matter, I’d still like to know how (or if) she’s going to resolve Max’s current problem.  I hate spoiling plots for myself, so I won’t look ahead.  Number 4, A TRAIL THROUGH TIME, is now on my reading list.

The Case of the Queenly Contestant by Erle Stanley Gardner

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Tall queenly suave Ellen has a sad story. Twenty years before in her California burg, Ellen won a beauty pageant at 18 and a chance for a screen test in the City of Angels. But she disappeared to have the baby of rich kid about town Harmon Haslett. She totally broke off relations with her own family due to shame of having a love child in the late Forties.

Ellen asks Mason about the law of privacy invasion because a newspaper in her hometown is thinking of running a “Whatever happened to…” kind of column on her doings and whereabouts after she seemed to have vanished in Tinseltown. For the sake of her son, Ellen does not want probes into a past better left in the past. Perry feels she is not forthcoming with all her concerns and she leaves his office with both lawyer and client dissatisfied.

Working on his own dime because he is attracted by a fight, Mason kicks over some rocks and finds himself surrounded by especially duplicitous people, such as Ellen’s indiscreet female friend, a bent cop turned PI, a sleazy lawyer, and a tough fixer man, not to mention, unfortunately, Ellen his own client. Added to the fog of mystery is the sudden disappearance and presumed death of rich Harmon Haslett, heel of a father but still a tycoon back in the burg. Gardner doesn’t tell us why Harmon’s yacht was sunk so readers are thus free and happy to assume it was attacked by a pod of killer whales off the Portuguese coast.

Hey, it happens.

Mason digs in and finds still more intrigue. He discovers that Ellen had her and Harmon’s son but left the child to be raised by that staple of fairy tales, a kindly childless older couple. They didn’t live a lonely hut in the woods. If they had, they would not have been recently killed in – you guessed it in one – a car crash and thus not available to back up Ellen’s story. Plus, in the wake of Harmon’s providing lunch for some orcas, a nurse, the “diabolically clever” Agnes Burlington, who attended at the time of the out-of-wedlock birth, wants to seize the chance to make money out of this potentially embarrassing information.

And we all know what happens to blackmailers in Perry Mason novels. Busted, charged, and jailed with no bail, prime suspect Ellen tells Mason not to argue the circumstantial evidence. Luckily for her, Mason disregards her instructions, and does challenge the reasonable inferences the evidence implies. With what result I need not reveal at this time and in this place.

Though I readily admit the Mason novels of the Sixties are a mixed bag, I recommend this one for its tight story, variety of players, and timely for 1969 theme of changing attitudes about single women having babies. Sure, Gardner has assumptions about the roles and attitudes of men and women that we would expect of somebody born in 1889. But at least he had sympathy for the long row women have to hoe in this world.

Drug Lord: The True Story of Pablo Acosta: The Life and Death of a Mexican Kingpin
by Terrence E. Poppa

Review by jjares

This is the true story of the drug kingpin of Mexico, Pablo Acosta. Terrence Poppa extensively interviewed the drug kingpin and many associates. As a result, a startling, disturbing expose of Mexican and American policies that don’t do enough to stem the drug tide emerges. Starting as a marijuana salesman, Pablo quickly added heroin. When the Columbian drug lords came calling with cocaine, Acosta allowed them to use his distribution system — for a fee. After a while, the Columbians got too powerful, and Acosta tried to kill them off.
Acosta saw himself as a Robin Hood for the poor of Mexico. He “loaned” money to the poor (people were proud and wanted to feel there was a chance they could repay the loan), built and repaired schools, built nursing homes for the elderly, paid for surgeries, and provided civic support for the poor areas in his region of northern Mexico. Acosta avered that the government should have been doing these good works, not a drug lord. Acosta saw himself as a benevolent Papa. However, he killed rivals, stole thousands of American cars, trucks, and airplanes yearly, and corrupted officials, the police, and soldiers.
One of the author’s most upsetting declarations is that in the 1970s and 1980s, the Mexican government (state, local, and federal) and the Mexican Army were all part of the drug business. They protected approved drug dealers (Pablo Acosta paid them $100,000 monthly to conduct his business). The government also planted, grew, and sold marijuana on its own. US agents got virtually no assistance across the border to stop drug shipments because the Mexicans were making too much money by turning a blind eye. The only reason the Mexican government killed Pablo Acosta is that he talked with journalists, telling the dirty secrets of the Mexican government and military.
As soon as Acosta was killed by Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni of the Mexican Federal Judicial Police, he was kicked upstairs (gotten rid of, so the corruption could continue). However, it later came out that Calderoni was actually acting for the PRI (Partido Revoucionario Institucional). Calderoni worked through orders of the PRI (more info below), so they could appear to be trying to stamp out organized crime. In reality, the PRI was the drug cartel. The author points out that the deeply ingrained corruption ceased when Vincente Fox became President of Mexico. However, the author states that before Mr. Fox, the crime went all the way to the President of Mexico.
One of the most surprising things I learned from this book is that the Acosta clan sampling the goods. That is one of the cardinal taboos in drug dealing — to imbibe in the product. Unfortunately, this seems to have created the conditions under which drug lords were taken down. After they became addicted, they became unreliable as drug dealers.
Please note that this is the 20th year update of the original version (1998). With a well-trained eye, the author offers an update on the drug scene since Pablo Acosta. Things have changed in the Mexican drug scene. Now, there are $ 30+ billion of drugs pouring into Mexico yearly. However, the government is no longer acting as a mafia leader, controlling organized crime for the benefit of the people in power. The PRI (Partido Revoucionario Institucional) is no longer controlling the government. Now, the highest levels of government are separate from the drug traffic. However, so much money is to be earned that when one drug lord crashes, several more are ready to take his place. Politicians, bureaucrats, and moneyed citizens are now running the drugs. They aim to do it quietly, with no fanfare.
It took decades for reform-based Mexicans to oust the PRI from the government. The author points out that the US must support the democratic Mexican government trying to remove drugs from their economy. It is an uphill battle.  This is an eye-opening book. I cannot recommend it too highly. The author tells his story in such an engaging way that the pages fly past.