Travelers book 11, now titled The Contract Killers, is off with the editor. After he has his say, I’ll tidy it up. Hoping for the best Travelers thriller ever.
Meanwhile, two items of interest.
First, the KD Thorne thrillers (eBook versions) are on sale February 11 through 15. Book one is free and books 2-4 are $.99 US. So if you haven’t read them and you want to check them out, now is your chance. Here’s the link to the series page:
Second, I read The Hot Spot by Charles Williams (Originally titled Hell Hath No Fury, 1953). A drifter’s plan to rob a bank in a small town goes sideways. Add a a femme fatale and a hardened adversary, and you have a classis noir, where the hero’s hopes and desires lead him into an intricate web of events where he’s in a constant struggle to outsmart his enemies and the cops.
Beautifully plotted, with an ending you won’t see coming. You’ll have to overlook the casual sexism of the early 1950s, but outside of that, this is an excellent read.
Hard at work on a new Travelers book. This outing finds them on the run from the Orange Hill Cartel, a mob crew they’ve cheated more than once.
Meanwhile, I’m always on the lookout for exciting thrillers or mysteries that maybe you haven’t read yet. This month is no exception.
First, Hell With the Lid Blown Off (Alafair Tucker Mysteries Book 7, 2014) by Donis Casey. This is an historical mystery, which takes place in rural Oklahoma shortly before World War One.
I was a little put off by the organization of this book (each of the sections is named for the focus character), but once I got going, it was hard to put down. Lots of local color about family and small-town life in the 1910s, and one of the best descriptions of a tornado I’ve ever read.
After a terrible storm pummels the area, one of Alafair’s sons finds a man buried in muck. Initially, everyone thinks he died in the storm, but a knife wound is discovered on the body. Lots of likely suspects and believable red herrings make for a fun read as Alafair and the local sheriff each try to solve the case.
Also read I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (2023). Bodie Kane, a 40-ish film professor and podcaster, returns to her prep school to teach in a short term, only to get caught up in reexamining the murder of one of her prep school classmates and the conviction of a school employee.
A beautifully complex murder mystery—Bodie’s reinterpretation of the relationships among her classmates and teachers and her reevaluation of her own behavior in the past and present make this book a real page turner that skillfully juggles several possible murder suspects. Named Best Book of 2023 by several newspapers. A high recommend.
As promised, there’s special eBook pricing from June 17 through June 21 to celebrate the launch of the new KD Thorne thriller, The Hidden Mine at Agua Dulce, which is only available on Amazon.
Here’s the blurb for The Hidden Mine at Agua Dulce:
The US government wants to keep it secret…
An undercover CIA agent traveling with an archeological team stumbles upon a deposit of the strategic metal hafnium in the ruins of an Inca temple in the Andes mountains. Essential to manufacturing nuclear reactor control rods—it’s every rogue state’s dream come true.
While the US State Department rushes to negotiate for control of the mine, word leaks out, and jihadis and black marketeers develop competing plans to seize the mine and sell the hafnium to bad players around the globe.
National Defense Agency operatives KD Thorne and Jeffery Blunt track these criminal groups from the US to Europe to South America, where they uncover the details of the conspiracy. Will they find a way to turn the tables on these groups and keep them from taking over the mine? Or will KD, Blunt, and their allies die in the Andes at Agua Dulce?
The Hidden Mine at Agua Dulce is a careening rollercoaster ride that will keep you turning pages. If you like hard-to-figure-out plot twists and non-stop action, you’ll love the fourth novel in the KD Thorne series.
…
So there you have it. Don’t miss your chance to catch up on KD’s adventures! Pick up your copies before Friday when prices go back up.
Finishing up the new KD Thorne book, where NDA agents KD Thorne and Jeffery Blunt are on the trail of jihadis and black marketeers who are trying to gain control of a newly discovered strategic metal before the US government cuts off their access. Hope to have it off to the editor shortly. In the meantime, here’re two crime books I read last month.
First off, The Snatch (Nameless Detective book 1, 1971) by Bill Pronzini. I’d heard of this series, but I’ve never read one. The nameless detective is hired to handle a kidnap payoff, but everything immediately goes sideways. Money taken, nine-year-old boy not returned, everyone connected to the family a suspect.
This is a classic noir detective procedural, with twists, turns, and surprises that all add up in the end. Lots of fun. If you like the old Chandler and Hammett books, this is your cup of tea.
Second, One-Shot Harry by Gary Phillips (2022). It’s 1963 in Los Angeles. Racial tension is high before Martin Luther King’s visit to the city. Harry Ingram, a Black man who is a freelance photojournalist and parttime process server, quickly finds himself on the bad side of white gangsters and the city’s power brokers as he digs into the puzzling death of his Korean War buddy, a white jazz trumpeter who hangs out in Black nightclubs.
Lots of local color about 1963 LA, plus the intricate dance of race relations during the civil rights movement, make for an explosive backdrop to this fast-moving, complex who-done-it. I’ll be checking out more of Phillips’ novels.
My new Travelers crime thriller, Grifters’ Hopscotch, came back from the editor yesterday, so I’ve got some tidying up to do.
In the meantime, two crime books I read last month.
As many of you know, I’m a big fan of the Parker crime thrillers, written by Donald Westlake using the name Richard Stark. And there’re still a few I haven’t read, so I picked up Nobody Runs Forever (Parker Novel 22). This time out, Parker gets involved in an armored car robbery where too many of the players want to trust the wrong people, which leads to the police being way too close when the robbery takes place.
Complex plotting that relies on the motivations and fears of the various characters creates a relentless steamroller of action. There’re only two more of these books (numbers 23 and 24), and I’ll be sorry when I’ve read the last of them.
I also read Anarchy of the Mice by Jeff Bond. This is a pulpy thriller that weds larger-than-life characters to our contemporary paranoias about technology, corporations, and government.
In it, anarchists are destroying society by undermining the computer technology that runs our lives. Our heroes—an ex-politician, an ex-Marine, and a divorced mom private eye—start investigating the anarchist group. Eventually they uncover a complex conspiracy involving immoral, power-hungry corporations. This kind of book could just be silly. Instead, clever plotting and careful character development make for a fun, fun read.
Making my final changes before I send my new Travelers crime thriller, Grifters’ Hopscotch, to the editor.
In the meantime, two crime books I read last month.
Read The Riviera Contract (Hayden Stone Thrillers, book 1: 2013) by Arthur Kerns. I usually take author biographies the include FBI or CIA type experience with a grain of salt. The ability to describe the right weapons or a particular inlet on an island does not necessarily translate into suspenseful plotting and an exciting read. But in this case, they do.
This is a 007 sort of romp, where the bureaucrats get in the way of the operatives and the men are a little bit too flirtatious, but Kerns makes it work. Hayden Stone is a retired FBI agent working as a contract player for the CIA. He’s carrying personal baggage in the form of a fresh divorce, and an old flame appears on the scene, and he’s not quite sure if he really wants to continue being an operative. But as the bodies pile up, and the case becomes more dangerous, he finds the will to do what has to be done. Lots of fun. (There is more than 1 book with this title, so be sure about the author.)
I also read The Cater Street Hangman (Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Series book 1: 1979) by Anne Perry. I knew about Perry’s series of Victorian mysteries featuring Inspector Pitt and his high-born wife, and I knew the series was a great success, but it didn’t really seem like my cup of tea. Then Anne Perry passed away and I heard an old interview with her on the radio. Turns out that when she was a teenager, she spent 5 years in prison for helping a friend murder the friend’s mother, which made me think: I’ve got to read one of her books. So I read the first one. I was very pleasantly surprised.
This book is a serious page-turner with lots of realistic detail of London in the late 1800’s, the relationships between and among the characters are compelling, and Perry keeps you guessing as to the identity of the murderer until the very end. Would read another of these.
Still making progress on my new Travelers crime thriller, Grifters’ Hopscotch, where the Travelers bounce through a series of misadventures until they finally turn the tables on their enemies.
Over the last month, I read two comedy crime books.
First off, Prizzi’s Honor (1982) by Richard Condon. I’d seen the movie starring Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner when it came out in 1985, and I always wondered how the book stacked up. Both the movie and book are satires of an Italian-American crime family with broadly sketched characters. The plot is essentially the same in the book and the movie.
Charley Partanna, hitman for the Prizzi’s, falls in love with Irene Walker, who turns out to be a contract hit woman. She has done something to upset the Prizzis, and they want her killed. At the same time, Charley has upset one of his bosses, and he wants him killed and hires Irene, not knowing Irene and Charley’s relationship.
Lots of plot twists and comedic action here as our heroes have to decide whether love or money is more important, though the opening is a little slow by today’s standards. This was a New York Times Notable Book back in the day.
Second, Hot Six (2000) by Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum book 6). Every type of fiction requires its own kind of suspension of disbelief. The issue is can you, as a reader, accept the suspension of disbelief that’s required by a particular fiction. For example, I can’t watch romcoms, because beautiful, young people who can’t get a date is just too unbelievable for me to accept.
Here, Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter. She seems to somehow be good at her job even though she makes absurd, comedic choices. The first couple of pages I thought I don’t know if this is for me, but soon I found myself accepting the world Evanovich creates in these books, and I had a fun, fun time following Stephanie as she deals with her quirky family, friends, and colleagues while she tries to figure out who killed the arms dealer’s son.
Still busy writing a new Travelers crime thriller, Grifters’ Hopscotch, where a blackmail leads to a safecracking which leads to an ambush, and on and on. You get the idea. Hope to finish it this spring.
Over the last month, I read two books you may be interested in.
First off, I read the first Donna Leon Commissario Burnetti mystery, Death at La Fenice (1992), which concerns the murder of a German opera conductor at an opera house in Venice. (I left a link to it last month.) I reviewed the fourth book in the series last month, and I’ve just got to say that this series is gold from the very first book. A solid police procedural with wonderful local color and complex detail. I was 85% through it before I figured out who did it, and even then I couldn’t put it down until the end. Always a pleasure to read a book that is truly diverting.
Not only that, but recently several eBooks from this series have been discounted, so if you check out Donna Leon’s books on your favorite book buying site, you’ll be able to download some of the series on the cheap. Here’s the Amazon link to the series as an example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09NN6WYDC
Second, I read The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. This is a sort of cozy (all violence off screen), which is usually not my thing, but this was a fun, fun read. It concerns four British seniors who live in a very fancy retirement community and have a club where they solve crimes. And what do you get when you set four retirees—a government agent, a nurse, a psychiatrist, and a union leader—hunting a murderer? A first-rate who-done-it. And before you reach the last page, you’ll be hoping to know a crew like this if you someday find yourself living in a retirement community.
Still finishing up the new KD Thorne thriller, The Hunt for the Ransomware Hackers. Here’s how the description is shaping up:
Ransomware attacks on hydroelectric dams in the US. The power grid disrupted. Downstream communities flooded. Who are these mystery hackers?
The hackers operate in cyberspace, their messages and the ransom money bouncing between countries until their trail disappears off the grid in Eastern Europe.
As National Defense Agency operative KD Thorne and her partner Jeffery Blunt track the hackers from dam to dam, the hackers create a web of misinformation to conceal their identities and hide their stolen money.
Can KD and Blunt cut through the subterfuge and lay a trap to catch the hackers before they rob their last target and disappear with the ransom cash?
Two books you might be interested in–
Recently read The Comedians by Graham Greene (1966). Haiti in the 1960s— the regime of Papa Doc Duvalier and his secret police, the Tontons Macoute. Picture Syria or North Korea today. Citizens being disappeared, government scams, grifters hoping to make their fortune–this novel reads like a thriller, as we follow a British hotelier through his involvement with con artists, patriots, and innocents. He hopes to make a living at his hotel and stay out of prison, but he just can’t seem to mind his own business as everyone around him has their own agenda—some for good and some for pure selfishness. And is he one of the good guys, more or less, or just another selfish grifter taking advantage of those around him? A serious read and well worth the effort.
Graham Greene’s Collected Novels Volume 5, which includes The Comedians, is $2.99 (US) on Amazon today.
Also read Bruno, Chief of Police, by Martin Walker (2008). This is the first of a series of mystery novels that take place in the (fictional, I think?) town of St. Denis in southern France. Bruno is a decorated military veteran who’s taken on the easy job of a small-town cop, only to have the murder of a local WW II war hero fall into his lap. The local color and the scene setting here are excellent, as well as Walker’s ability to capture modern issues such as conflict around immigration and tourism. And I bet you won’t be able to figure out who the murderer is until the very end. I’ll definitely be reading more of these.
Finally, if you’re an Elmore Leonard fan (which I am), his novel Raylan, featuring US Marshal Raylan Givens, is $1.99 (US) on Amazon today.
Still finishing up Murder at Mercy Creek, KD Thorne book 2. KD and Blunt have been sent to Mercy Creek, Iowa, to investigate the murder of an undercover FBI agent who was working on a corruption case that spans the Interstate 35 corridor.
Drug running, gun smuggling, and police corruption. A criminal cartel jealous of its turf. A local sheriff whose motives are hard to read. What could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile, two books of interest—
Read The Erasers by Alain Robbe-Grillet (English translation from French). This was an award-winning French novel written in 1952. It concerns a supposed murder being investigated by a special agent who doesn’t know that the victim survived the attempt and is in hiding. The writing is stylized, following the point of view of most of the characters at some point in the text. It’s a sort of “locked box,” where all the characters know bits of what happened, and the special agent has to try to piece together the truth. Has a surprising ending.
This is a cerebral book that requires a lot of focus because you have to keep track of and separate out the various points of view, but if you like to see how far the crime fiction form can be stretched, you might enjoy it.
Also read Song of the Lion (A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel). This is book 21 in the series, and the third written by Anne Hillerman, who took over the series from her father. I’ve read several of the earlier ones written by Tony Hillerman, but this is the first one of hers I’ve read.
As in all of these books, there’s lots of local color about Navajo Country (in the southwest US) and Native American ways and rituals. And the lead characters are as compelling as ever. This outing concerns a bombing that seems to be connected to a plan to build a controversial Grand Canyon resort, which environmentalists and various stakeholders oppose. Plenty of complications and a plot that’s hard to figure out until the very end. A fun read.
Finally, The Murder Run: The Travelers Book 6 will be discounted to $0.99 at the end of January. So if you haven’t read it yet, here’s your chance. I’ll send out a reminder when the exact days are set.
And The Gone Sister (Lee Callaway Book 2) by Thomas Fincham is free today. I’m picking up a copy.
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