Book Review - Death Never Sleeps by David Grace

Death Never Sleeps
David Grace
File Size: 609 KB
Print Length: 312 pages
Publisher: Wildside Press (June 20, 2013)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Language: English
ASIN: B00DJ7JH6O


This book opens with a real shocking scene when Homicide Detective James "Big Jim" Donegan and his partner, Chris Hunter, are called to a park where a body was found in a wood chipper. Chris can barely look at the woman, and I couldn't blame him. This was one crime scene I was not eager to visualize.

The dead woman turns out to be a prostitute who was strangled, and this discovery sends the detectives on a quest to find the killer. When a high school principal is found strangled and hanging from the school's flagpole a few weeks later, at first there seems to be no connection between the two murders. However, the investigation proves otherwise, and adds yet another murder to the mix, this one a cold case.

The two central characters in the story have all the grit it takes to be a cop, but they also have softer sides that make them almost like heroic knights who slay dragons and save damsels in distress.  Big Jim has been a mentor to Chris for many years, and continues to help the younger man learn how to be a better cop and a better man.

I enjoy reading police procedural mysteries, and on many levels this was a satisfying read. The cop behaviors and jargon was spot on, and the convoluted mystery was well done, with enough twists to keep me guessing.

The sub-plot, dealing with the relationship between the two men outside of the job, was also well done, and there was a particularly nice wrap up to that at the end of the story. I really can't say what that was without a major spoiler, so I will leave it to you, kind reader, to find out for yourself, should you get the book.

There were a few places where the main story, the focus on the investigation, got bogged down in back story. That was especially true when the reader was given a lot of detail about other detectives- even full scenes that were only barely connected to the main story. What the reader needed to know about these detectives and the cold case could have been summed up in a few paragraphs.

However, that was not enough of a problem to spoil the read. This was an entertaining story with some memorable characters.

David will be my guest this next Wednesday, so I hope you can come back and see what he has to say about how he picks the stories he writes.

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David Grace is the author of 14 novels, five collections of science fiction short stories, and two collections of crime short stories. He has had short fiction published in Analog Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. As a screenwriter, he has written eleven screenplays and shared story credit for the "Outer Limits’ Joyride" episode. An attorney, he is licensed to practice law in the State of California and before the Supreme Court of the United States.

Book Review: Kind of Blue by Miles Corwin

 Thanks to Carl Brookins for sharing another review with us...


Kind of Blue
by Miles Corwin
ISBN: 978-1-60809-007-5
From Oceanview Publishing
323 pages, November, 2010

A few years ago, this author wrote a couple of serious non-fiction books about the Los Angeles Police Department.  He spent a lot of time with cops in that city and wrote books that became best-sellers, The Killing Season and And Still We Rise.

Now he’s back with a powerful persistent novel that draws from the same source material. Kind of Blue is not your ordinary police procedural. It constantly reminds readers that the cops involved are no super beings, rising above the worst humanity can offer to save their city; nor are they all thugs, wife beaters, and abusers.  They are ordinary citizens, sometimes corrupt, sometimes honorable and brilliant, often prejudiced, but too often willing to make the supreme sacrifice for the citizens they serve. And, occasionally they violate the rights of criminals.

Corwin bends a keen and discerning eye on this stew of varying humanity to fashion a fascinating novel of human relations. Asher Levine, a dedicated, mostly honest cop, is one of LA’s best homicide detectives. But as the book opens, Levine is a former cop, having abruptly resigned after he was unable to protect a vital witness from being murdered. The death of Latisha Patton, never solved, devastates the detective and causes him to question his abilities, even though it is clear that apart from his dedication, he is a brilliant detective. 

A year passes and a decorated officer has died, murdered in his home and the special homicide squad needs Levine’s help solving the case. More to the point, certain key executives in the LAPD hierarchy need the case solved or at least put to rest. Levine has had that year to discover his resignation hurts him more than it does the LAPD. With clearance from the top cops, Levine is fast tracked back to the force and handed the case.

The problem, of course, is that Levine won’t just concentrate on the current case and thus all sorts of actions that need to be buried along with the ghost of Latisha Patton. Traces of other earlier activity begin to resurface as Ash Levine winds his way through labyrinthine police and social structures of the street until he comes to the shocking final solution.

The title is apt, a riff on a 50 year old Miles Davis studio piece, the cover fits the mood and the attitude of the novel. All the elements fit nicely and it was a pleasure to read this excellent book.


Carl Brookins
www.carlbrookins.com, www.agora2.blogspot.com
Case of the Greedy Lawyer, Devils Island,
Bloody Halls, more at Kindle & Smashwords!

Book Review: The Cruel Ever After by Ellen Hart

Thank you, Carl, for sharing yet another book review with us.....


The Cruel Ever After
by Ellen Hart
A Minotar (St. Martin’s Press)
2010 release. Hard cover, 320 pgs.
ISBN: 9780312624768

This, Hart’s nineteenth Jane Lawless mystery, is probably the darkest and most shocking of the series. The book is full of painful, difficult relationships and actions. The extensive cast of characters, many of whom fans   have met before, are almost all revealed to have seriously dangerous dark sides. And even when those troublesome and even illegal dimensions of their characters are  confronted by others in the book, they persist in their ways, ways that sometimes tread close to the abyss.

The shocks begin very early when Lawless’s former husband, a man she hasn’t seen for twenty years, appears in Minneapolis. Not only are we more than a little surprised to discover that Jane was married many years ago, she is upset by his appearance, supposedly ‘simply for old times sake.’  It becomes quickly apparent that Chester Garrity, one of the most facile liars and con men you’ll ever meet, has a specific personal agenda. Garrity is a user of anybody and everybody within reach. That he is such, should, it seems to
this reader, to be more apparent to Jane than appears to be the case.

That Garrity is also fairly incompetent also becomes obvious. Part of the tragedy is that his incompetence brings appalling harm to the people around him. Almost immediately plans go awry and spiral out of control. Murder results. Garrity demonstrates such a high level of impotence in the face of disaster that it is hard to believe he has managed to stay alive and out of prison for this long.

At roughly the same time that Garrity begins his ill-managed plan to sell antiquities of questionable provenance, a lethal cabal of shadowy vigilantes makes its presence known by murdering a popular gallery owner.

Is there a link here?  Of course there is, but readers will require almost infinite patience to figure out the links and resolve the tangle of threads and relationships. Patience is particularly important in the first half of
the book.  After that, with the background and setup in place, the action and the pace pick up.  Logic takes firm hold and as the complications and resolutions of the many plot lines become clearer, the author’s grip on her story becomes firmer. The second half of the novel, as revelation bangs in on top of revelation and explanations explode, is all vintage Hart, an excellent writer who is almost always in full command of her work.

There were times however, when I wanted to scream at Jane Lawless, and wondered who was really managing that usually incisive and clever mind.
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Carl Brookins
www.carlbrookins.com, www.agora2.blogspot.com
Devils Island, Bloody Halls, Reunion, Red Sky
more at Kindle, Smashwords & OmniLit!

Book Review: Death Pans Out by Ashna Graves

Thanks again to Carl Brookins for sharing  his book reviews.

Death Pans Out
by Ashna Graves
Hardcover, 288 pages,
from Poisoned Pen Press

Reporter Jeneva Leopold, faced with a life-altering decision, takes a leave of absence from her job to recover from surgery.  Breast cancer has claimed part of her body and she wants time to recover in relative peace.  Not just from the debilitating effects of the surgery itself,  but she wants to be in a place where she can think about her life and her existence. This is a novel about an unusual woman with an unusual plan to rehabilitate herself.

There are great stories surrounding the searches for precious metals from California, South America and the Yukon, as well as the production of gold from less well-known regions, and this one takes its cue from those stories. Fact or fiction, we are never quite sure, but here is a story which may well become a part of that so interesting body of literature.

Jeneva’s family has long owned an idle gold mine in the mountains of Southern Oregon, a harsh, vastly rural region of high deserts, mountains, isolated communities, wild animals and, legends.  One legend surrounds the
mysterious disappearance of Jeneva’s uncle, Mathew.  Mathew disappeared one night from the cabin at the mine almost twenty years before the story opens, and his mining partner has retreated into a silent years from which he may never emerge.

Jeneva takes a long leave of absence and moved to the cabin at the mine where she intends to spend several months of the summer physically and mentally recovering from her trauma.  Almost immediately, a parade of
compelling characters begins to invade her peaceful existence, from a weird self-styled “artifact hunter,” who insists that he always camps on Bureau of Forestry land and visits the area regularly, to a hearty sheriff who seems at times too good to be true, to a taciturn former model and beauty queen turned rancher, to assorted miners, a tall funeral director and other assorted characters.  They all make for some fascinating scenes and while the action is never of a high order, the rising tension and sense of danger to Jeneva and her friends, is well-handled.

I enjoyed the story, learned some things about governmental land management and local attitudes toward government, and found the ending quite a surprise.  If there are small problems with this debut novel, they stem from an experienced reporter acting entirely too trusting and naive to serve the story, and a couple of the rants are a little too long.  That said, I look forward to another adventure with Jeneva Leopold.

Carl Brookins
www.carlbrookins.com, www.agora2.blogspot.com
Case of the Greedy Lawyer, Devils Island,
Bloody Halls, more at Kindle & Smashwords!

Book Review: Bird Lives! by Bill Moody

Since I missed my usual Sunday review yesterday, I thought I would post one today.  Again, thanks to Carl Brookins for sending the reviews.

Bird Lives!
Author, Bill Moody
Publisher: Walker
ISBN: 0-8027-3327-1
pub. date: 1999
248 pages, hardcover

Another fine novel in the Evan Horn series.  A smoothly written psychological thriller.  it’s tight, fast-paced, and should greatly please fans of this type of novel.  It will also please fans of jazz music which today have nearly faded into oblivion.

We aren't talking about fusion jazz or the highly commercialized, big-venue stuff.  In fact, the practitioners of those kinds of highly commercialized music are the targets of a killer, the killer who forces piano player Evan
Horne to become a detective, on pain of more killings.  Horne is reluctant but he allows himself to be cajoled into taking on the assignment, first by Cooper, his detective friend, then by the FBI which cannot match Horne’s knowledge of jazz, a key element in the story.  Horne is really trying to make a comeback as a piano player after a serious injury.  Cops and Robbers is not a gig he wants to play right now.  The book is a compelling look inside the life of the performer who works the small clubs, as well as into the mind and psyche of a killer.

The title refers to Charlie "Bird" Parker, arguably one of the greatest saxophone players whoever lived. Moody evokes memories of a time when acoustic jazz was played in small smoky clubs all over the world to
audiences of deeply dedicated fans who were as obsessed with their music as hip-hoppers are today.  It was a time with roots from early Armstrong, from Coleman and Coltrane, when Brubeck and Joe Williams, Count Basie and singers like Chris Connor and Anita O'Day were on the charts.

But, whether the music and the artists draw you, or whether you like well-written crime fiction in any setting, here's a story that will draw you in and satisfy your need.  Moody is a knowledgeable master of his element.
I give this one a firm positive recommendation.

Carl Brookins
www.carlbrookins.com, www.agora2.blogspot.com
Case of the Greedy Lawyer, Devils Island,
Bloody Halls, more at Kindle & Smashwords!

Book Review - The Bone Chamber by Robin Burcell

Thanks to Carl Brookins for sharing another review.....



The Bone Chamber
By Robin Burcell
ISBN 9781590583753
HC from Poisoned Pen Press
2009, 378 pages

Feisty independent-minded FBI forensic artist Sydney Fitzpatrick is off on another case. This time she bouncing between Washington, DC, San Francisco and various Italian locations, and all the while she and her cohorts dodge international hit men. Burcell is a good writer and her varied law enforcement background gives her writing a level of authority lacking in some crime fiction.

The novel is a wide-ranging tale of intrigue, sanctioned and unsanctioned black ops, involving the CIA the FBI, and several other sometimes questionable agencies.  Here are active old and new world mafia figures, the Knights Templar, and several world governments. The story dredges up long-standing rumors, beliefs based on very sketchy and tenuous evidence, ancient legends and involves some vast and secretive organizations such as the Vatican, Freemasonry and maybe some left-over bits of the Tri-Lateral Commission.

Conspiracies within governments, especially those involving questionable banking institutions and practices are fruitful and always interesting. That is especially the case when the venal actions of important institutions from the distant past are held up to the unblinking gaze of modern research.

This novel, now available in paperback, has 'em all.  And that's part of the attraction of the book.

Burcell has linked in an essentially fanciful way, an incredible chain of real events that reach back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and possible implications in the modern era.  The novel proves that murder, corruption and cynical manipulation with the goal of great power and wealth are not the province of our times.

If the novel has flaws it is the multiplicity of threads that wind through the book, sometimes creating a Gordian's Knot of complexities. Nevertheless, "Bone Chamber" never completely loses its foundation in the
real world of plausible outcomes.  A tense and intriguing ride from start to finish.

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FTC Disclaimer: I have not profited in any way from this review, unless you count the fact that I didn't have to write anything but this disclaimer. As for Carl, you will have to check with him.
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Carl Brookins
www.carlbrookins.com, www.agora2.blogspot.com
Case of the Greedy Lawyer, Devils Island,
Bloody Halls, more at Kindle & Smashwords!