Book Review - Assignment Nepal by J.S. Squires

Thanks to Carl Brookins for sharing another review with us.
 

Assignment:Nepal     
By J.S. Squires
ASIN: B005VFMK6Q
2011 E-book release from Echelon Press


Readers of this review should be aware that this press has published some of my crime fiction and I am acquainted with the publisher, though not with the two authors writing under a single pseudonym.

The protagonist is named Irene Adler. Not the woman who beat Sherlock Holmes at his own game, her modern namesake, a Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology at Boston University. Adler has a demi-cynical outlook on life and it turns out she supplements her income by playing poker; specifically Texas Holdem in the gambling parlors around the New England area. Irene Adler is a bright, smart, single woman, an endearing protagonist.

Her former adviser, a fellow faculty member, prevails on Ms. Adler to travel to Nepal to inquire into the life and times of a former fellow undergraduate student of Irene’s, a Margot Smith, who’s in Nepal doing research on one of that country’s goddesses, one Chwwaassa Dyo. The problem is that there appears to something awry with Margot and her physician husband and Adler is supposed to sort things out. What needs sorting turns out to be only part of the story. Irene agrees to go half-way around the world to see a woman she barely knows. From this most unlikely beginning, the plot drives poor Adler into one complexity after another.

Her assignment clearly has unstated dimensions about which neither we readers nor Irene Adler herself are clear. Now, Nepal is an exotic nation from which assaults on Mount Everest are mounted and the ubiquitous Sherpa play an important part, as do digital cameras, former Cold War adversaries, political unrest in the country, and a whole series of meddlesome individuals who seem to still show up on the fringes of the former English Empire.

The novel winds its way through a variety of conflicts among wanderers, a boorish American tourist couple, and murder and bomb blasts. At times the narrative suffers from a pedestrian pace and some lapses of editing discipline over the point of view. Still, the story is interesting, Irene is definitely a character to build a series around,  the exotic setting in and around Katmandu is, well, exotic, and a satisfactory conclusion is fashioned. I think four stars is too strong a rating, but the novel is more enjoyable than three stars would indicate. Sample the story and make your own judgment.

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Carl Brookins www.carlbrookins.com  BLOG:  http://agora2.blogspot.com  -BOOKS:  Case of the Great Train Robbery, Reunion, Red Sky

Book Review - Reunion by Carl Brookins

Reunion
Carl Brookins
ISBN: 978-1-59080-668-5
Echelon Press


This book straddles the fence between being a cozy and a hard-boiled tale. Jack Marston, former investigator for the U.S. Navy, is now director of student services at a small college in Minneapolis, so he doesn't consider himself a law-enforcement officer anymore, but he keeps getting pulled into investigations in this series that debuted with Bloody Halls.  In Reunion, Jack talks his girlfriend, Lori Jacobs, into attending her 20th class reunion in hopes of learning more about her, only to be thrust into another investigation when one of her former classmates is found murdered.

The lighter side of the story revolves around introducing the players and the reunion, which isn't a bad thing if your reading tastes lean more toward the cozy. In some places I also thought things happened a bit too easily in terms of finding out important information, but the interplay between characters was good enough to keep me connected to the story, and I did really enjoy the relationship between Jack Marston and Lori.

The tangle of underhanded business dealings from the past that connect to the current murders adds to the drama and suspense, and the reader is led down a few blind alleys until the final outcome.  I will say Brookins kept me guessing through most of the story and the tension did pick up toward the end. As Marston gets closer to solving a five-year-old murder, as well as finding out who is responsible for killing people at Lori's class reunion, the danger mounts for him and Lori.

In addition to writing and reviewing mysteries, Carl Brookins is an avid recreational sailor. With his wife and friends he has sailed in many locations across the world. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Private Eye Writers of America.
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FTC Disclaimer: The author sent me a copy of this book, just like he probably sent one to the New York Times in hopes of a review. That is the way it is done in the business. I am free to ignore the request for a review, the same as the guy from the New York Times. No money is slipped under any table and none of us get seriously rich by doing reviews. Was I influenced by the fact that Carl Brookins writes reviews that he lets me share here? Probably, but only because I find his writing good enough to share.