A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham

Review by Pat D. (pat0814)

Chloe Davis, a psychologist, is the daughter of a serial killer, a man who killed six teen-aged girls and kept a piece of their jewelry as a memento before being apprehended and convicted. Chloe at 12 was the person who found, recognized and turned the information into the police. As the 20-year anniversary of his conviction approaches, two more teenage girls go missing.

Chloe is now engaged to Daniel Briggs, a man who seems to good to be true. Her brother, Cooper, expresses his reservations about Daniel to her as the reports of the current missing girls emerge. There are many rabbit holes to enter as the mystery of the disappearances continues – lots of surprising twists and turns.

Brewing Up a Storm by Emma Lathen

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1996 mystery is the second to the last of 23 novels starring Wall Street banker John Putnam Thatcher. In a tribute to common sense, the amateur sleuth thinks through the facts to identify who murdered an activist. Readers who enjoy clues presented in the classic “fair play” whodunnit will like this one.

After her divorce and with nothing to do, empty nester Madelaine Underwood founded NOBBY, No Beer Buying Youngsters. Its mission is to combat alcohol use by teenagers. It’s campaigning against Quax, a nonalcoholic beer sold on the Coke and Pepsi shelves. NOBBY claims drinking Quax will lead kids to drinking Kix, the real beer made by the same brewer.

Mrs. Underwood is a narcissist who feels entitled to center stage and has never worked in the ranks of an organization in her life. Messes she creates are for the little people to clean up. Lathen spends about a third of the book leading up to the crime, which may put out mystery fans like me who prefer the corpus delicti in chapter one. But I found the context entertaining and instructive. For instance, Lathen is plausible contrasting the true believers who volunteer in the advocacy group and the clear-eyed professionals that make it run smoothly.

Lathen was the pen name of a female writing team of an attorney and an economist. She had a bead on how people think and act, not just titans of Wall Street but also middle managers, technocrats, clerical staff and volunteers in grassroots organizations who are sincerely concerned about things like gateway beverages affecting themselves or their kids. The overall tone is taken from her series hero banker sleuth John Putnam Thatcher – that is, curious, discerning, bemused, and tolerant.

Written in the late 1990s, are these books dated? Sure, she knew the business world of her era and with three recessions since the early 2000s our landscape now is very different. But we can still enjoy the white-collar detective Thatcher and Lathen’s insights into organizational behavior, managerial style, and the psychology of anxiety, ambition, and conceit. Intelligent, literate, fun, highly recommended.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Review by Pat D. (pat0814)

Do not miss reading this book.  I was completely immersed in the plot and characters of this book from the beginning.  I rarely think that a book merits a five-star rating, but this is a true treasure.  I learned a lot about India and its politics as an adjunct to the lives of the characters.  There was no sermonizing, moralizing or self-pity; however, our limited understanding of the conditions under which they lived made their actions and reactions very real.  I found the writing to be tight and exactly right for the tone of the book – no spare sentiments that weren’t necessary to achieve the required insights.  The ending is superlative – it is the way the book had to end in order to complete our knowledge of the lives that were lived.  The utter despair is beyond comprehension for those of us who live with a sense of security.  It will be difficult to find a worthy successor now that I have finished this remarkable book.

5 Stars

The Windsingers by Megan Lindholm

Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

This is Megan Lindholm’s (aka Robin Hobb) second novel in the “Ki and Vandien Quartet”. The first in the series is Harpy’s Flight. You can read my review of that here. I’ve also seen this listed as the Windsingers series. You don’t need to have read the first one to catch the plot, although Ki’s motivation depends on something that happened in the first book. However, Lindholm provides enough backstory to tell the reader what happened.

As we begin, Ki and Vandien’s relationship seems to have skipped ahead since we left them in the last book.  Ki comes into an unfamiliar town with her horses and wagon and no money.  She’s looking for Vandien at their pre-arranged meeting place and finds him in an inn that is better suited for one of the other species on this world, but they’re fine with that. Vandien tells Ki about a deal he’s just made: There’s a seaside town where every year, at the lowest of low tides,  they contract with a teamster to search for and then haul out a treasure from a sunken Windsinger tower. The benefits are legendary, but there’s a catch – one of the Windsingers is going to be there, whipping up the weather against the teamster.  What Vandien doesn’t tell her is that he’s also been promised something very personal.

Ki listens to this with incredulity. How could he promise her team of horses without even asking her? This job has been around for years, it’s almost a joke amongst the teamsters because a) there probably isn’t any treasure and b) there’s no payment if you don’t succeed. All you get is food and lodging for your effort. How can Vandien never have heard of this? But he’s determined to go, she’s determined not to, and so they split up again. Ki says she’s off to get a real job and if she gets some cash, she might go there. But now Vandien has to find some kind of team, which is the funniest part of this book.

What neither of them realize is that they are being manipulated by the same evil wizard for his own ends.  Ki is tricked into assisting the wizard, and stubborn Vandien needs to find a way to the treasure.  What the treasure is, and who gets it in the end, Is surprising.

I liked seeing more of the various species in Lindholm’s world. You wonder where they all came from, and how they interact with each other. There’s a lot more magic being used this time around.  I didn’t care much for Ki’s story apart from Vandien, the quest was okay, but the Windsinger’s habitat was too surreal for my taste. I did like that Ki has to think more about what Vandien wants. I liked the characters in the town, but the wizard and the Windsingers not so much.

It’s a better novel than the first, and is also a complete story in itself so you’re not left with a cliffhanger.  But like the first, it is unsurprisingly no longer in print.

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Review by Pat D. (pat0814)

Shuggie Bain is abandoned at an early age by his father physically and his mother emotionally.  His father leaves the family due to his wife’s alcoholism, and Shuggie is mostly forgotten during his mother’s frequent alcoholic hazes.  He has an older half brother and half sister, who are a temporary constant until they, too, cannot bear their mother’s lack of interest in their well being and leave Shuggie alone with his mother.  The novel is set in Scotland in a community of abject poverty where miners’ families live after the mine has closed.  There is a pervasive desperation among those who remain, and alcohol is a constant companion, as is physical violence.

Shuggie fails to fit into the rough-and-tumble group of children.  He is visibly effeminate, and an easy target for the bullies at school and in the neighborhood.  A glimpse into Shuggie’s life is heartbreaking.

5 stars

The Birthday Murder by Lange Lewis

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

This 1945 mystery is the second of five that starred series hero Lieutenant Richard Tuck of the LA Homicide Squad and his faithful assistant E. Byron “Duck Butt” Froody.

A cozy with the elements of a police procedural, it is narrated from the third-person limited point of view of career woman Victoria Hime, who writes novels, plays, and scripts. She’s also the chief suspect since circumstantial evidence points to her as the poisoner of her husband Albert Hime, a producer of B movies. It doesn’t help Victoria that the kind of poison used was the same chemical used to kill a husband in one of her novels. Tuck and Froody, however, can identify no motive that would have driven Victoria to snuff her quiet easy-going husband. Plus, Victoria’s independence of mind and knowledge of people impress Tuck, who is a combination of hard-headed and soul-deep himself.

The persons of interest to be interviewed by Tuck are three. Bernice Saxe is Victoria’s childhood friend with a raft of marital problems of her own making. Plus, we know how complicated friendships, especially long-time ones, can be. Moira Hastings is an ambitious starlet, willing to slander Victoria as jealous and back-biting because Victoria said Moira was not mature or good enough for movie part. Sawn Hariss is Victoria’s first husband, showing up like a bad penny for the first time in ten years. His immature personality has failed to improve even after active participation in World War II, only glancingly referred to in the story.

There is cringe-worthy content related to race, class, and gender but it takes up only a fraction of the novel. And plenty of references to the intricacies of female friendships and the importance of clothes, shoes, jewels, and hats may be over the head of the male reader. But these issues are balanced by the excellent prose and the breezy wit of a confident writer. This was included by Barzun and Taylor in their list of 50 great mysteries. It was reprinted in paperback the early 1980s by Harper Perennial Mystery Library. Highly recommended.

Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff

Review by Melissa B. (dragoneyes)

I waited patiently for this one to come out. I watched as the publishing date changed a couple of times, pushing it out further, and still I waited. Finally, it released and soon after, I bought it. Then… I put it on my shelf. Oh, how I wanted to read it. The premise sounded so promising. Yet at 700+ pages, I couldn’t bring myself to read this one book when I could read 2-3 smaller ones in its place. Finally, more than a year later, I pulled it down, opened the cover, and fell in fully immersed. The journey was even better as there was beautifully done artwork scattered throughout.

The world in this book has been drowned in darkness. The days are dim with the sun barely showing, the nights are blacker than black. Vampires roam this world in search of humans for food and as slaves. They can come out in the day with its feeble light but are stronger in the nighttime. The vampires have also mated with the humans to create a hybrid. These hybrids have banded together to use the powers given to them by the bloodsuckers to destroy them. They call themselves silversaints and they are mankind’s last chance to take back this dark world.

Gabriel de Leon lives a simple life with a mother he loves, sisters he adores and a father that can’t stand him. Then one day, his sister is attacked by a vampire and his world starts to change forever. Finding out that his father is not his true father and the lies that he has been told, he is taken to the holy order train to be a silversaint. He finds that he does not have the special powers that his other brethren do so he trains twice as hard. Yet, the rules are too much for Gabriel and he finds that he does not agree with everything they teach. He is torn between being the warrior that he has trained for and the truth he feels in his heart. When he crosses the line, the order gives him no choice and banishes him.

The story unfolds as Gabriel, who at present time has been taken prisoner by the enemy, relives his tale to his captor. He tells of battles, of love, of betrayal. He talks of the Holy Grail and his quest to protect it. This tome is his tale and, boy, is it quite a tale. Not once did I get bored or feel the need to skim the pages. It held my attention from the first page to the last.

Now, a bit of a warning. There is a lot of violence in this book. It can be quite brutal with all of the slaying and such. It also has a ton of profanity. While cuss words do not really bother me in the least, I would have to say that this is the one and only problem I had with the book. The profanity was kind of funny in the beginning but then it started to wear on you. It was done so much that it ended up not being funny and caused massive eye rolling on my part. I think if it was toned down, at the moments when it could’ve really used them, it would’ve been more enjoyable. Instead it was just a constant in the book after you delved in a bit. Then, the last warning is that there is some sex scenes. Nothing overly graphic but they are there.

The vampire genre had gotten stale for me but this book renewed my faith that there are still good bloodsucking books out there. Excited to see that the second book should be coming out in 2024. Looking forward to getting my hands on it.