The Christmas and New Year holiday season
is an excellent time to settle down with a good book. As this is my last Murder
Is Everywhere blog of 2015, I wanted to leave you with a holiday reading list.
And as my fellow bloggers here are a fairly modest bunch, I respectfully offer
their latest titles as being well worth your consideration.
In early 20th century British East Africa,
there are rules for the British and rules for the Africans. Vera McIntosh, the
daughter of Scottish missionaries, doesn't feel she belongs to either group;
having grown up in Africa, she is not interested in being the well-bred
Scottish woman her mother would like her to be. More than anything she dreams
of seeing again the handsome police officer she's danced with. But more grisly
circumstances bring Justin Tolliver to her family's home.
The body of Vera's uncle, Dr. Josiah
Pennyman, is found with a tribesman’s spear in his back. Tolliver, an
idealistic Assistant District Superintendent of Police, is assigned to the
case. He first focuses on Gichinga Mbura, a Kikuyu medicine man who has been
known to hatefully condemn Pennyman because Pennyman’s cures are increasingly
preferred over his. But the spear belonged to the Maasai tribe, not Kikuyu, and
it's doubtful Mbura would have used it to kill his enemy. Tolliver's superior
wants him to arrest the medicine man and be done with it, but Tolliver pleads
that he have the chance to prove the man's guilt. With the help of Kwai Libazo,
a tribal lieutenant, Tolliver discovers that others had reasons to hate
Pennyman as well, and the list of suspects grows.
This is a romantic and engaging mystery
that captures the beauty and the danger of the African wild and the
complexities of imposing a culture on a foreign land.
The fifteenth title in the Aimée Leduc
mystery series.
Paris, April 1999: Aimée Leduc has her work
cut out for her—running her detective agency and fighting off sleep deprivation
as she tries to be a good single mother to her new bébé. The last thing
she has time for now is to take on a personal investigation for a poor manouche
(Gypsy) boy. But he insists his dying mother has an important secret she needs
to tell Aimée, something to do with Aimée’s father’s unsolved murder a decade
ago. How can she say no?
The dying woman’s secret is even more
dangerous than her son realized. When Aimée arrives at the hospital, the boy’s
mother has disappeared. She was far too sick to leave on her own—she must have
been abducted. What does she know that’s so important it’s worth killing for?
And will Aimée be able to find her before it’s too late and the medication
keeping her alive runs out?
Although
Leighton Gage, one of the founders of this blog, passed away in 2013, his books
continue to live on. The latest, published in 2014, was THE WAYS OF EVIL MEN,
the seventh Chief Inspector Mario Silva investigation.
The Awana tribe, who live in the remote
Amazon jungle in the Brazilian state of Pará, have dwindled to only 41
members—and now 39 of them have dropped dead of what looks like poison. The
neighboring white townsfolk don’t seem to be mourning the genocide much—in
fact, the only person who seems to care at all is Jade Calmon, the official
tribal relations agent assigned to the area. She wants justice for the two
survivors, a father and his 8-year-old son. But racism is deeply entrenched and
no one is going to help her get to the truth.
Unfortunately, this is far from the first
time the Brazilian federal police have had a tribal genocide to investigate.
Chief Inspector Mario Silva and his team are sent in from Brasilia to try to
solve the increasingly complex case just as a local white man is discovered
murdered. Someone has done their best to frame the surviving Awana man, and the
town is about to erupt.
A William
Wisting mystery
For four months Viggo Hansen's body has
been sitting, undiscovered in front of his television, close to the home of
Chief Inspector William Wisting. Has Norwegian society become so coarsened that
no one cares? Wisting's journalist daughter, Line, wants to know. Wisting
suspects a serial killer is at work, but for how long and across how many
countries? When the CIA finally gets involved the stakes rise and tensions
mount, until the final deadly race against time with Line's life at stake.
Travel to the Indian subcontinent with a
new collection of Sujata Massey’s suspenseful historical fiction. This
book includes four works described below:
OUTNUMBERED AT OXFORD. When Perveen Mistry
leaves Bombay to study law at St. Hilda’s College in 1919 Oxford, England, she
hopes to escape her troubled past and become a pioneering woman lawyer. Then an
elderly don tasks her with locating an Indian servant who may have stolen an
invaluable mathematics proof. Perveen is caught in a case that threatens her
ladylike reputation—and her life.
THE AYAH’S TALE. Menakshi Dutt, a teenaged
nanny in 1920s Bengal, is a beloved caregiver of three lonely British children,
but suffers from the cruelty of their bored mother. Will Menakshi ever fulfill
her own dreams without betraying the children?
INDIA GRAY. Kamala Lewes, a
recently-married Bengali woman, travels to Assam during World War II to
volunteer at a military hospital. There she discovers some patients with ties
to the Indian independence movement. How far can she go to help them without
betraying her British husband and the Allies?
BITTER TEA. Shazia is fifteen and trapped
in a remote village in Pakistan overtaken by religious fundamentalists. Her
school has been closed, and women have lost freedom of movement. But when Shazia
learns a friend faces danger from the invaders, she decides to act.
Four unforgettable heroines in one book
rich with history, culture and intrigue.
The latest in the Anderson and Costello
series
Past crimes cause new murder in this tense
and twisting psychological thriller A few days before the summer solstice a
92-year-old woman is found burned to death in her home. On the same day, a
man's mutilated corpse is discovered in a field, his arms ripped from their
sockets, a Tarot card depicting The Fool inserted in his mouth. When the victim
is identified as someone for whom the police have been looking for almost a
year, detectives Anderson and Costello find themselves caught up in a case
where nothing is as it seems. Was the dead man really responsible for three
child murders? And what is the connection with the death of the elderly woman?
The investigation leads to the tranquil shores of Loch Lomond where Anderson
and Costello will finally uncover the shocking truth.
A Detective Kubu mystery
Faced with the violent death of his own father,
even Assistant Superintendent David ‘Kubu’ Bengu, Botswana CID's
keenest mind, is baffled. Who would kill such a frail old man? The picture
becomes even murkier with the apparent suicide of a government official. Are
Chinese mine-owners involved? And what role does the US Embassy have to play?
Set amidst the dark beauty of modern Botswana, A Death
in the Family is a thrilling insight into a world of riots,
corruption and greed, as a complex series of murders presents the
opera-loving, wine connoisseur detective with his most challenging
case yet. When grief-stricken Kubu defies orders to try to bring the
killers to justice, startling and chilling links emerge, spanning the globe and
setting a sequence of shocking events in motion. Will Kubu catch the killers in
time … and find justice for his father?
A Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis mystery
In ancient times, Delphi stood at the
center of the world, a mountainous, verdant home to the gods, where kings and
warriors journeyed to learn of their fates from its Oracle, and disobeyed its
preaching at their peril.
In modern day Delphi, a young Athens émigré
seeks to re-build his life in anonymity among its pastoral, rolling hills and
endless olive groves. But the man's dark past is too celebrated, and his
assassin skills are too much in demand for his fate to be left to his own
hands.
When he's given no choice but to serve the
ruthless aims of an international criminal mastermind, he agrees, but on his
terms. His methods bring unexpected death to a member of one of Greece's most
prominent and feared political families, and draws Chief Inspector Andreas
Kaldis into the eye of a political and media firestorm threatening to bring
down the nation's government.
It is a gripping, fast-paced story played
out against a backdrop of World Heritage Sites, an annual global
trillion-dollar legitimate alcoholic beverage industry preyed upon by
counterfeiters of the industries' most celebrated brands, and political
infighting among Greek revolutionaries, movers and shakers. Kaldis and his team
soon find themselves battling purveyors of life-threatening adulterated booze,
struggling to bring a cold-blooded killer to justice, and laboring to outthink
a political chess-master determined to destroy Kaldis' ailing boss, Greece's
Minister of Public Order—all without turning themselves and their families into
deadly targets.
The latest entry in the thrilling 16th
century Japanese mystery series, featuring ninja detective Hiro Hattori and
Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo
August 1565: When a rival artisan turns up
dead outside Ginjiro’s brewery, and all the evidence implicates the brewer,
master ninja Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo must find the
killer before the magistrate executes Ginjiro and seizes the brewery, leaving
his wife and daughter destitute. A missing merchant, a vicious debt collector,
and a female moneylender join Ginjiro and the victim’s spendthrift son on the
suspect list. But with Kyoto on alert in the wake of the shogun’s recent death,
a rival shinobi on the prowl, and samurai threatening Hiro and Father Mateo at
every turn, Ginjiro’s life is not the only one in danger.
Will Hiro and Father Mateo unravel the
clues in time to save Ginjiro’s life, or will the shadows gathering over Kyoto
consume the detectives as well as the brewer?
Zoë Sharp – FOX FIVE: a Charlie Fox short
story collection
As for me, I’m working on new books as we
speak, but for a limited time you can get the FOX FIVE anthology (or should
that be e-thology?) of stories all featuring ex-Special Forces soldier turned
self-defence expert and bodyguard, Charlie Fox, and all absolutely
FREE.
Four of the stories have been published
elsewhere in highly-praised anthologies and prestigious outlets such as Ellery
Queen Mystery Magazine. The final story was written specially for this anthology.
In 'A Bridge Too Far', we meet Charlie
before she’s become a professional in the world of close protection. When she
agrees to hang out with the local Dangerous Sports Club, she has no idea it
will soon live up to its name.
'Postcards From Another Country' has
Charlie guarding the ultra-rich Dempsey family against attempted assassination
− no matter where the danger lies.
A finalist for the CWA Short Story Dagger,
'Served Cold' puts another tough woman centre stage − the mysterious Layla,
with betrayal in her past and murder in her heart.
'Off Duty' finds Charlie taking time away
from close protection after injury. She still finds trouble, even in an
out-of-season health spa in the Catskill Mountains.
'Truth And Lies' is a 11,500-word tale in
which Charlie has to single-handedly extract a news team from a rapidly
escalating war zone.
Also included: Excerpt from KILLER
INSTINCT: Charlie Fox book one, Meet Charlie Fox, Meet Zoë Sharp, info on the
other books in the Charlie Fox series.
Bonus material includes an excerpt from
KILLER INSTINCT and a taster of each of the ten books in the Charlie Fox series
to date.
This week’s Word of the Week is facetiae, which means both pornographic literature,
and humorous or witty sayings. It first came into use in the 16th
century, from the Latin plural of facetia 'jest', from facetus
'witty'.
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