Meh.

OK, I guess that's not really a review, though that is pretty much how I felt after finishing this mystery/thriller. The premise sounded promising.  P.J is a psychologist at Rikers Island women's prison.  During a "wedding" that she approved between two inmates, one of the "brides" was killed.  P.J. is blamed, and fired as a result.

She thinks that her biggest problem is making her rent, until she gets a call from one of her former patients at the prison, who is sure that she saw the victim's husband, a known batterer and sociopath, at the prison the day of the murder.  When P.J. can't get the police to act on the word of a schizophrenic inmate, she decides to investigate on her own.  Chaos ensues...blah blah blah.

Here's the deal.  P.J. as the narrator is self-deprecating and funny-or at least, Kellman tries really really hard to make her that way.  Too hard, in fact.  The one-liners and sarcastic rejoinders (both internal and between characters) felt forced to me.  And I didn't really buy the story.  As an Alex Delaware fan from way back, I'm willing to go with the "mental health professional turned investigator", but in this case I couldn't really figure out P.J.'s motivation for getting involved, nor did I really believe the path her investigation took.

There were some things that worked in this book's favor.  P.J.'s relationship with her extremely successful deaf sister was interesting, as was her complicated relationship with her ex-husband, who just happened to be (you've probably guessed already) a district attorney.  And there was a sub-plot involving P.J. and her brother Jack that was sort of interesting on its own...at least, it was until it became completely predictable.  But Kellman did a decent job of doling out information in such a way that I kept reading until the (unsatisfying) end.  So, in the final analysis-not awful, not great.

Meh.

Subterranean, James Rollins

While is enjoy great literature, I am not averse to a romping action story.  And when I listen to audiobooks, which I only do when I drive or exercise, I need something that will keep me from being bored without taking attention away from what I am doing-especially when operating a 2000 pound piece of machinery at high speeds.  It is in this spirit that I downloaded my first James Rollins novel a couple of years ago.  Rollins is best known for his Sigma Force novels, where the dashing Commander Gray Pierce and his crack team of geniuses with black belts race around the globe averting catastrophes and solving historical mysteries.  They are basically The Da Vinci Code on steroids.  I've listened to a couple, and while I can't exactly speak to the accuracy of Rollins' historical or scientific research, the stories are plausible enough not to trigger my "yeah, right" meter.

I decided for my latest audiobook to download one of Rollins' stand-alone novels, called Subterranean.  The plot is like a mash-up of Jurrasic Park and Journey to the Center of the Earth, in that it had both human arrogance and greed,  and big, scary monsters from the past.  A team is sent below the surface of Antarctica to explore the remains of what appears to be a human settlement in caverns that have been recently discovered.  Also discovered-a solid diamond statue that has aroused the interest of scholars and businessmen alike.  The team includes an anthropologist, a geologist, an expert caver, a biologist, and a few Marines along for security.  What the team doesn't know is that the previous team that had been sent in to explore the series of tunnels and caverns had disappeared without a trace.  As they delve more deeply into the earth under the "uninhabited" continent, they discover fierce marsupial predators, unknown species of sharks, predatory snails as big as a basketball, a luminescent fungus that emits a powerful knock-out drug, and a tribe of intelligent marsupial "people" living in a village and growing a wheat-like plant...

Which is exactly where he lost me.  For about half the book, the plot, while incredible, did at least seem to have some basis in solid science...the semi-reptilian, marsupial predators did tweak my suspension of disbelief, but I went with it because humans running away from something trying to eat them is basically the basis of every monster-movie, ever.  But an entire race of beings, not human, developing human qualities and human-like behaviors and societal structures, despite having no contact with humans-sorry, nope, not gonna happen.  Had this novel been billed as fantasy, or had the setting been another planet, I could have gone there.  But not in a supposedly scientific thriller.  I did what I almost never do-I abandoned the story, choosing instead the download Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, which at least has the decency to call itself a fantasy novel.

So, if you're not bothered by scientific inconsistency and completely implausible storylines, then give this book a try.  But for myself, I'll stick with Rollins' historical mysteries, which for all I know may only sound well-researched, but which allow me to listen without rolling my eyes.

Eye Contact, Cammie McGovern

America seems to have an obsession with autism at the moment.  Every time you turn around there is another  special news segment, heart-warming story, video of someone with savant abilities, or slightly goofy sit-com character that either explicitly or implicitly is identified as having autism.  And really, while the effects of autism can be devastating for those living with it and their caregivers, it is a pretty fascinating condition.  Autism brings up all of the things that we don't understand about the brain, and the ways in which a brain affected by autism works can be as intriguing as it is impenetrable.

In Eye Contact, Cammie McGovern uses autism as the framework for a murder mystery.  A young girl is killed when she wandered from the school playground.  The only witness to the crime is another student, a boy with autism named Adam.  He doesn't speak for says after the murder, but his mother Cara is sure that he knows what happened.  She begins to work with him on expressing what he saw, and in the process discovers that the murder may have connections to her own life that she never expected.

The story goes back and forth between the present-day mystery and Cara's past.  We discover her tumultuous relationship with her best friend, and the relationship that led to Adam's conception.  The mystery did keep me guessing, but what really kept me engaged was the relationship between Cara and Adam, and the very authentic descriptions of living with autism.  McGovern has a son with autism herself, and her intimate knowledge of caring for a child with special needs made the story feel very real.  I was not 100% satisfied with the resolution of the mystery itself, but not so dissatisfied that I was disappointed in the book.  Overall this was a good popcorn book for my Christmas vacation!

Dead Wrong,by J.A. Jance, AKA Desert Popcorn

Imagine you are the sheriff of a large county in southern Arizona that is routinely understaffed and over-extended.  Now imagine that you are also almost nine months pregnant.  That is exactly Joanna Brady's life at he beginning of Dead Wrong.  When she and her team of detectives gets a call to a murder scene in the desert, she is surprised to find a man brutally beaten to death, missing is fingers.  The victim is an ex-con, who was paroled recently after serving over 20 years for allegedly killing his wife in a drunken black-out. Convicted, despite the fact that her body was never found.  In addition, one of her animal control officers is beaten and left for dead while investigating a couple of local thugs for running a dog fighting ring.  With her manpower shortage, Joanna has no choice but to keep working-but this turns out to be a relief, when her overbearing mother-in-law shows up unexpectedly to wait out the birth of her grandchild.  Joanna and her deputies will soon be facing the consequences of a decades old secret, one that puts Joanna and her unborn son at risk.  But being a sheriff is part of her now, and finding a way to balance her career and her family is a challenge.

It took me a little while to get into this book, but once I did it was hard to put it down.  The Joanna Brady series is one I have dipped in and out of over the years.  I haven't read all of them, but when I do pick one up I am never disappointed with the story.  Her character combines the traits of all great female crime fighters-inner strength plus common sense plus compassion and a deep sense of justice.  Not to mention she's kind of bad-ass when it comes to taking down the bad guys.  The plot is fairly intricate but pretty believable  which enough wiggle room in how it could play out to keep a person guessing until the end.  I figured out the broad strokes of the secret fairly early, but I still wasn't sure about the details prior to the big reveal.  As popcorn books go, I'd say Jance's books are pretty much a safe bet.

I'd Know You Anywhere, Laura Lippman

One of my favorite popcorn authors is Laura Lippman.  Her thrillers are smart and action-packed and always have an interesting psychological component.  But I'd Know You Anywhere falls short of the emotional impact that I have grown to expect from her books.

Eliza Bennet is a happily married mother of two.  After living in London for about a decade, her family has moved back to the US, to a quiet suburb of Baltimore.  But her idyllic family life in the present has a horrific past at its core.  Twenty years ago, when she was only 15 and called herself Elizabeth, Eliza was kidnapped and held for six weeks by a serial killer named Walter Bowman.  Known by some as the "one who survived", and by others as a possible accomplice to Bowman's killing spree, Eliza has worked hard to put her past behind her, changing her name, moving away from her family, and keeping herself out of the public eye.  Only her parents, sister, and husband know her story.  At least until Bowman, on death row and scheduled for execution in a few short weeks, reaches out to her, asking for contact.  Eliza, seeing a chance to get him to confess to the other murders he committed and give some families long-awaited comfort and justice, agrees to talk with him.  What she doesn't know is that he plans to try and use her to get his sentence commuted.

The story is told in chapters that alternate between the past and present, with certain sections of the book being told from the point of view of Walter Bowman.  The chapters that detail Eliza's imprisonment were surprisingly non-threatening.  Bowman made her travel with him, and even kidnapped another girl while she was with him, but I never got that feeling in my gut that I get when I read a really good thriller.  The chapters that detail the present day are even less emotionally satisfying.  I understood her feelings of guilt, and how she could question her own perceptions of something that happened to her when she was young and traumatized, but at times it felt like so much navel-gazing.  And the ending was way anti-climactic.  Let's just say that all the angst boils down to a rear-view mirror.  There was no real sense of menace, and given that one of the most violent character is locked up on death row for the entire novel, there is no real action either.  I'll not give up on Lippman, but this was not her best.

A Wicked Snow

America is fairly obsessed with the serial killer, both in the true crime sense and the fictional sense.  There are many infamous killers out there who have captured our imagination, but they are mostly men.  Female serial killers are a rare breed.  Of the ten most prolific female serial killers, only three were active in the 20th century.  Compare that to just the number of male serial killers that you can probably name off the top of your head and you can understand why female serial killers get the kind of attention they do.

Even though the group is small, Gregg Olsen knows a lot about them.  The best selling author of non-fiction books on female killers turned his attention to creating a fictional one in his first novel, A Wicked Snow.   Hannah Griffin-wife, mother, and CSI- has spent most of her life trying to forget her past, and the terrible night when it was discovered that her mother killed at least 17 men and buried them on her Christmas tree farm.  After that night, Claire Logan became synonymous with evil and greed and filicide (killing one's own children-you're welcome!).  Her mother disappeared that night, and many people believed she was dead.  But Hannah felt sure that her mother was alive, and when a package turns up at her office containing evidence from her mother's case, she begins a search that leads her to some surprising discoveries.

This is a masterful thriller.  Olsen does a really good job pacing the novel so that you are totally drawn into the mystery without being frustrated by the things you still don't know.  Hannah herself is a character that is easy to relate to, as are the other major characters.  Her motives and actions seem perfectly reasonable given the circumstances, and there is an emotional impact from the fact that she was directly related to the events behind the current story.  As popcorn books go, this one is very satisfying!

More Summer Popcorn: The Missing, Chris Mooney

My summer of popcorn books continues with another thriller, The Missing, by Chris Mooney.  The book begins with three friends-Darby, Stacey, and Melanie-high-school age girls, sneaking off into the woods to smoke and drink.  They had barely gotten their party on when they witness what they think is a murder.  They call the police, but when they show up both the man and the body are gone.  Several days later, Darby is at home alone when she hears noises downstairs.  Suddenly, a man with no face is chasing her through her house.  She escapes, but Melanie and Stacey are not so lucky.

Fast forward 15 years, and Darby is now a criminalist in Boston.  A young woman is kidnapped, and Darby is assigned to process the crime scene.  As she and the police investigate, with the help of the same FBI agent who worked Darby's own case, Darby begins to sense that there is some connection between the new case and hers.  But how is that possible, when the perpetrator of her attack was killed by police over a decade before?  As Darby is forced to revisit her own nightmare, she and her team race against time to find the missing girl.


I was completely sucked in by Mooney's writing in this book.  The narrative structure goes back and forth between Darby's perspective and the killer's, a man named Daniel Boyle.  This puts the reader in the position of knowing things that Darby doesn't, leading to more than a few moments when I wished I could somehow communicate with a fictional character and save her some trouble.  Mooney did a pretty good job writing as a psychopath-the chapters from Boyle's perspective were pretty chilling.  I did figure out one major twist, but there was another one that took me completely by surprise.  It would have been more satisfying had the twist actually contributed more to the story, but it didn't take away from it, so at least it was an unoffensive plot point.    All in all a quick, enjoyable read.

24 Hours, Greg Iles-Southern Fried Popcorn

It is probably every parent's worst nightmare, despite the fact that it almost never happens-stranger abduction.  As much as popular media would like us to think that a child is being snatched off the street every few seconds by some slathering monster, the fact is that most child abductions are perpetrated by someone the child knows.  But the same media culture that seems to revel in sensationalizing the tragic stories of abducted children has created within our society a deep-seated fear of the other, the dark stranger, the playground stalker.  It is that fear that is highlighted in Greg Iles 2000 release, 24 Hours.

Will Jennings is a successful doctor, a well-respected anesthesiologist who has been asked to speak at the Mississippi doctor's association convention.  A small plane pilot, Jennings decides to fly down to the conference in his small engine plane.  When  his wife, Karen, arrives home from the airport with their daughter Abby, Joe Hickey is waiting for them.  Joe, his mentally retarded cousin Huey, and his stripper-turned-wife Cheryl have a plan-spirit Abby out of the house, take Karen hostage, and contact Will to set up a ransom exchange.  The plan is supposed to take 24 hours, and if everyone cooperates, Will and Karen will be reunited with Abby once the money is changes hands.  But what Joe Hickey didn't know was that Abby has juvenile diabetes, and needs insulin shots at regular intervals. And what Will and Karen don't know, but soon discover, is that Hickey has a very personal reason for choosing their family for his fifth and final kidnapping plot.

I've been a fan of Iles' work since I read True Evil, so I was happy to pick this one up at the library book sale.  24 Hours is an earlier book, and it is obvious that Iles has become more skilled with his craft since he wrote it in 2000.  It's a little slow getting started, but it eventually picks up and becomes as exciting and action-packed as his other books.  It even has an "Of Mice and Men" vibe going.  The relationship between Joe and Huey reminded me a bit of Lennie and George-if George had been an evil mastermind, that is.  All of the family member's characters are well-developed as well, even five year old Abby.  While the final resolution of the kidnapping is more like a scene from a Bruce Willis action movie than something that could possibly really happen, it definitely kept me riveted until the very last page.  A good summer read for mystery/thriller lovers like me.

The Neighbor, Lisa Gardner

I realize that I am in the minority in this, but I have always been uncomfortable with the sex offender registry. In our justice system, the idea is that you do the crime and do your time, and then once your debt to society has been paid you are (almost) free to live your life as you see fit-hopefully in a law-abiding manner.  I understand that sex offenders, especially those that prey on children, are different.  Recidivism is very high, and true pedophiles have some defect in the wiring of their brain that makes them very hard to treat, even with intensive intervention.  That said, I'm not sure that the "one-size-fits-all" nature of the sex offender registry adequately addresses the difference between the 19 year old who has sex with his 15 year old girlfriend and the serial rapist or child molester.

This question, and the resulting issues around statutory rape and child sexual assault, are at the heart of Lisa Gardner's mystery The Neighbor.  Sandra and Jason Jones live a quiet, solitary life in the Boston neighborhood known as "Southie" with their daughter Ree. When Sandra disappears one night, leaving her four year old daughter alone in the house, Jason is fearful that the past they have worked so hard to put behind them is coming back to haunt them.  Sure that he is going to be arrested at any time, Jason tries to protect his daughter from the police and reporters, as well as from her maternal grandfather, with whom the couple has had no contact since their marriage, and who appears seeking custody of Ree after he sees news of his daughter's disappearance.  Jason and Sandra have a highly unusual marriage, and detectives quickly determine that Jason is hiding something, making him a likely suspect.  Meanwhile, they also have a pretty solid person of interest in the Jones' neighbor, a convicted sex offender who is on the sex offender registry.  But Jason appears to be trying harder to cover up evidence and keep his daughter away from questioning than find his wife, and Detective D.D. Warren feels like she is racing against time to find Sandra, before it is too late.

The novel is told alternately from the first person memories of Sandra, the first person experience of the sex offender neighbor, and in the third person narrative of D.D. Warren and Jason Jones.  Gardner takes her time doling out the dirty secrets of all of the characters, but in a way that draws you in rather than making you frustrated.  The most interesting thing about this book, though, is that I ended up rooting for the main characters, even after it became clear that they should not, on the surface, be sympathetic characters.  But that's where the subtleties of the effects of childhood abuse and sexual assault come in.  We as a society seem to be much more comfortable with black and white than with shades of gray.  Some of the things that the main characters do in this book are reprehensible, but Gardner presents it in such a way that while you can't condone, you can almost understand.  Not the abuse of children-the evil nature of that is never in question.  But the effects that is has on the children as they become adults, the way that it skews their mindset and their ability to have relationship, and the actions they may take as a result-those are harder to pass judgement on.

Pop Pop Poppity Pop: Eye of the Beholder, by David Ellis

Today's popcorn book entry is another mystery, thriller.  Eye of the Beholder by David Ellis begins with a murder spree, six young women killed by a seemingly deranged man, acting out the lyrics of an anti-woman hard rocker named Tyler Skye.  Here is the Booklist blurb:

Fifteen years ago, prosecutor Paul Riley made his mark by putting away Terry Burgos, who was inspired by song lyrics to kill six young women in the most gruesome of fashions. Now, a new series of killings bears a frightening similarity to the Burgos murders, and as the victim list keeps growing, Riley realizes the killer seems to be sending a personal message to him. In order to solve the new crimes, Riley, realizing that the connection to the Burgos case is very real, must confront his own past and the terrifying possibility that, 15 years ago, he might have made a terrible mistake.

As thrillers go this one was pretty good.  it kept me guessing from beginning to end, blending fairly predictable thriller plots (shady father, wild child teenager, wealthy people with dark secrets, schizophrenic serial killers) and  puts them together in ways that make them feel fresh and intriguing.  I must admit to being slightly annoyed with the "innocent man accused of a crime he didn't commit" thing, but it ends up a) not really being that and b) moving the plot along in unexpected ways.  There is a cast of interesting characters, including a troubled police detective (aren't they always?), and Riley's girlfriend, who happened to be the daughter of the governor.  In the end I didn't find the actual solution to the mystery that believable, but by then I didn't really care.  It has been a fun ride, and in the summer that's about all I'm looking for.

Popcorn Alert: Immoral, by Brian Freeman

Ah, summer...that magical time of year when a (not-so-young) woman's fancy turns to MURDER.  Well, at least this not-so-young woman.  Summer is the time when I catch up on all of those popcorn books I've been wanting to read-the ones that don't make me think so much but satisfy my need for pure reading escape.  This time, it was the book Immoral, by Brian Freeman.

At first glance, this book is just another formulaic mystery/thriller.  A young girl goes missing.  A hard-working but seriously flawed detective tries to figure out what happened to her.  John Stride is haunted by the disappearance of another girl the year before-a girl who was never found.  But that girl, Kerry McGrath, was a good girl with no secrets.  The victim of the most recent disappearance, Rachel Deese, was a wild child with a sordid sexual history and a sociopathic personality.  Nevertheless, the media is calling for an arrest, and despite not having a body, they have a perfect suspect in the creepy step-father.  Sounds fairly unoriginal as a plot goes, no?  But when the trial part of the book ended about two-thirds of the way through the book, I realized that in fact, something else entirely was going on.

Freeman does a good job of creating characters, and he draws you into not just the mystery itself but the lives of all of those involved.  I happen to be watching The Killing on Netflix right now, and I see similarities to the way the book and the show are structured.  Immoral is not just the procedural you might expect, but looks closely at how the case, and the missing girl, affect the police investigators, the parents, and the community.  The only thing that gave me a little bit of pause was the fact that Rachel was seen as a sexually precocious teen who may have "asked" for what happened to her.  But I think that Freeman gives enough background about her life and her evolution as a cruel, damaged person to counteract my gut-reaction feminism.  It was believable to me that she could, in fact, have been the instigator of her relationship with her step-father.  And since Freeman takes what you think you know and turns it on it's head in the last third of the book, that particular aspect ended up not being relevant anyway.  Good summer read for the mystery lover!

Popcorn Alert: Have You Been Naughty?

wow...ok, that title makes it sound like I am going to be reviewing that Fifty Shade of Gray that everyone is reading right now...let's rewind, shall we...

My summer vacation just started.  After a year full of students and grading and assessment and assessment and assessment (see a pattern here...) I have several weeks to recharge my batteries and renew my love of popcorn books.  For those of you who have not heard me describe popcorn books before, that's what I call books that are lacking in substance but oddly satisfying-just like popcorn.

My first popcorn read of the summer was Meg Gardiner's The Dirty Secret's Club.  Since mysteries and thriller are my favorite popcorn (consider them the cheddar/caramel mix of popcorn books), I was happy to delve into the world of Jo Beckett, Gardiner's latest character creation.  Jo is a forensic psychiatrist.  In other words, she is called in not to figure out how someone died, but rather why they died.  In cases of equivocal death (in other words, a death with no clear motive), it's her job to investigate the person's life and determine whether the death was an accident, suicide, or murder.

Her first case involved a series of apparent muder/suicides taking place in and around San Francisco.  A high-powered attorney was involved in a high-speed chase with police, ending in her car going over the side of a bridge and into the traffic speeding below.  Jo is called in by the police to determine why a successful woman who seemingly had it all would drive her car over a metaphorical cliff to her death, taking her passenger and three bystanders with her.  Jo soon discovers that the beautiful prosecutor was hiding a secret-in fact, that she belonged to a group of people who all had shameful secrets.  The Dirty Secrets Club arranged dares for people-dangerous acts that would either allow them to assuage their guilt over their secret, or let them feed their egos for the shameful, sometimes criminal things they had done.  Now it appeared that someone was targeting group members, and Jo needed to discover who was behind the murders in order to stop others from being killed.

There are no real surprises in the structure of the novel.  Female investigator plus tragic past plus complicated relationship with unapproachable/inappropriate man pretty much describes the work of many authors in this genre.  But I don't read popcorn books because I want to have to think-I read them for escapist enjoyment.  And this book provided that in spades.  Gardiner did a good job of pacing the action of the story so that I was engaged the whole time, and the characters are likable enough.  The plot description makes it sound like the reader will be dragged into some seedy underworld of sex and violence, but while the members of the Dirty Secret's Club do have terrible secrets in their past, Gardiner doesn't dwell on the specifics enough for you to come away feeling like you need a shower after.  I look forward to more installments in the life of Jo Beckett, with more psychological mysteries to solve.

Deep Pockets, Linda Barnes

Wilson Chaney, a Harvard professor, comes to Carlotta Carlyle for help finding a blackmailer.  Turns out that he had an affair with a student, who has since died in a fire.  He wants Carlotta to retrieve some letters that he wrote to her and protect his marriage and his reputation.  But as Carlotta starts tracking the victim, the last few weeks of the girl's life, and the probable blackmailer, she discovers there is much more at stake than one Harvard professor's reputation.  Wilson Chaney is working on a new drug for treating Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, one that shows the promise of help for millions of kids-and for lots of profits to whoever gets it to market first.

Barnes' character Carlotta Carlyle is one of my favorite female PIs.  Carlotta-private investigator, sometime cabby, and life-long Boston resident, shows a resiliency and independence that is common in the best written female lead characters.  With a new love interest in FBI agent Leon, her quirky roommate Roz, and her little "sister" Paolina, Carlotta has her hands full even without a troublesome client and someone trying to kill her.  Add former love interest and mob boss Sam Gianelli, and there is enough personal and professional intrigue going on to keep the reader interested for all 320 pages.  While the mystery itself is not as intricate as some (I did figure it out by about half-way thorough the book), it is an enjoyable popcorn book.

Live to Tell, Lisa Gardner

Lisa Gardner writes psychological thrillers that show some of the darkest places that the human mind can go.  Most of her novels, whether stand alone or part of her D.D. Warren series, explore the complicated relationships we often have with our parents, spouses, or children.  Live to Tell is no exception.  In this fast paced, fairly creepy thriller, D.D. Warren and her team are called in to investigate the apparent murder/suicide of a family of five.  However, there are things about the scene that don't add up, and it soon becomes apparent that what was staged to look like a family annihilation was in fact the cold-blooded murder of a happy couple and their children.  When another family is killed in a similar way, D.D. knows that they are looking for someone truly disturbed, who appears to be reenacting a family annihilation from the past.  Tying all of the victims together is a child psych unit for the most acute cases-children who have psychoses so severe that they are a real danger to themselves and their families.  Danielle Burton, one of the psychiatric nurses, was the lone survivor of a family annihilation herself, and soon D. D. come to believe that she may be the key to solving the whole  case.

A word to the wise-this book is not for the faint of heart.  The description of he troubled children and the things they are capable of was chilling.  As horrific as the crimes themselves were, reading about a little boy who is so cunning and violent that he lies in wait for his mother in order to follow through on his threat to kill her was worse.  But the setting of the locked children's psych ward was fascinating, and the mystery itself had enough twists and turns that there is more than the slightly creepy draw of the psychotic children.   This popcorn comes with a side of crazy, but it is an enjoyable ride nonetheless.

A Duty to the Dead-Popcorn from World War I

Take a soldier's dying wish, an independent battlefield nurse, a decades old secret, and a madman in an asylum, put them together into a deliciously engaging story, and you have A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd.

Here's what Goodreads has to say about the plot:

           England, 1916. Independent-minded Bess Crawford's upbringing is far different from that of the usual upper-middle-class British gentlewoman. Growing up in India, she learned the importance of responsibility, honor, and duty from her offi­cer father. At the outbreak of World War I, she followed in his footsteps and volunteered for the nursing corps, serving from the battlefields of France to the doomed hospital ship Britannic.
         On one voyage, Bess grows fond of the young, gravely wounded Lieutenant Arthur Graham. Something rests heavily on his conscience, and to give him a little peace as he dies, she promises to deliver a message to his brother. It is some months before she can carry out this duty, and when she's next in England, she herself is recovering from a wound.
        When Bess arrives at the Graham house in Kent, Jonathan Graham listens to his brother's last wishes with surprising indifference. Neither his mother nor his brother Timothy seems to think it has any significance. Unsettled by this, Bess is about to take her leave when sudden tragedy envelops her. She quickly discovers that fulfilling this duty to the dead has thrust her into a maelstrom of intrigue and murder that will endanger her own life and test her courage as not even war has.

I loved the character of Bess.  She was independent and strong-willed, traits I especially like in my heroines.  But what really made the book for me was the very British-ness of is all.  You've got the references to serving in India that always remind me of The Secret Garden, family estates, the whole upstairs/downstairs vibe, the country rectory, and the whole asylum thing.  Plus lots and lots of tea.  Todd brought a Victorian sensibility to the Edwardian era-change the war they are fighting and the reference to motor-cars and this book could have taken place 50 years earlier.

One of the things that drew me into the novel was the examination of the family dynamics that led to the tragic events that unfold.  So much of British upper class life was kept under wraps out of propriety's sake that figuring out exactly what is going on in any given family is a bit like opening one of those gifts within a gift-you know, where someone wraps a small box inside a larger box and so on-except usually what is discovered when you get to the final layer of these family dramas is not nearly as nice as a present.

This is the first of a new series by Todd with Bess as the main character, and I look forward to following her on many more mysteries.

Pop Pop Poppity Pop: A Plague of Secrets, John Lescroart

Summary, from Goodreads-

The first victim is Dylan Vogler, a charming ex-convict who manages the Bay Beans West coffee shop in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. When his body is found, inspectors discover that his knapsack is filled with high-grade marijuana. It soon becomes clear that San Francisco's A-list flocked to Bay Beans West not only for their caffeine fix.
But how much did Maya Townshend-the beautiful socialite niece of the city's mayor, and the absentee owner of the shop-know about what was going on inside her business? And how intimate had she really been with Dylan, her old college friend?
As another of Maya's acquaintances falls victim to murder, and as the names of the dead men's celebrity, political, and even law- enforcement customers come to light, tabloid-fueled controversy takes the investigation into the realms of conspiracy and cover-up. Prosecutors close in on Maya, who has a deep secret of her own-a secret she needs to protect at all costs during her very public trial, where not only her future but the entire political landscape of San Francisco hangs in the balance, hostage to an explosive secret that Dismas Hardy is privilege-bound to protect.

Dismas Hardy and the rest of the cast of characters from Lescroart's books are some of my favorites.  Lescroart does a decent job of making them into real people, and I care about what happens to them.  The mystery itself is fairly compelling, and there is enough misdirection to make it unlikely you'll figure out whodunnit early enough to ruin the rest of the book.  There was a bit more deus ex machina in this one than I usually care for-from the accident that took homicide detective Abe Glitsy's eye off the ball, to the last minute detail that reveals the true killer, it was a little less Hardy being brilliant (though he was) and a little more luck of the draw, but enjoyable nonetheless.  A good popcorn read, especially if you are following the series.  If you've never read Lescroart before, go back and start at the beginning of the Dismas Hardy series-you won't be disappointed!

Pop Pop Poppity Pop: Obedience by Will Lavender

A good popcorn book is one that is entertaining but easy...something that doesn't require a ton of cognitive energy but is still engaging.  Most mysteries and thrillers fall easily into this category for me-books that I read when my brain is already busy with meetings, paperwork, lesson plans, and grading.  Obedience by Will Lavender falls into this category, but just barely.  It's not exactly the "thinking man's" thriller, but it's convoluted storyline at times made me break a little sweat.

Given the complicated plot and the fact that I've only had half a cup of coffee so far this morning, I'll use the Goodreads summary:

When the students in Winchester University’s Logic and Reasoning 204 arrive for their first day of class, they are greeted not with a syllabus or texts, but with a startling assignment from Professor Williams: Find a hypothetical missing girl named Polly. If after being given a series of clues and details the class has not found her before the end of the term in six weeks, she will be murdered.

At first the students are as intrigued by the premise of their puzzle as they are wary of the strange and slightly creepy Professor Williams. But as they delve deeper into the mystery, they begin to wonder: Is the Polly story simply a logic exercise, designed to teach them rational thinking skills, or could it be something more sinister and dangerous?

The mystery soon takes over the lives of three students as they find disturbing connections between Polly and themselves. Characters that were supposedly fictitious begin to emerge in reality. Soon, the boundary between the classroom assignment and the real world becomes blurred—and the students wonder if it is their own lives they are being asked to save.

As first novels go, this one is fairly well written, especially for the genre.  The characters feel like real people, and the way that the mystery unfolds creates a pretty creepy, obsessive feeling in the reader (at least, in this reader).  Given the number of thrillers I've read it's hard to find a plot that really keeps me guessing, but I didn't have this one figured out til close to the end, and not because the author pulls one of those deus-ex-machina maneuvers that tick me off.  I actually thought several times while reading the book that it would make a good movie, the kind that people leave the theater shaking their heads over because they feel like they just went on a mindbending ride.  If you are looking for a not-too-mindless popcorn book, this is definitely a decent choice.

Precious Blood, Jonathan Hayes

Ah, the serial killer.  That sociopathic individual that gives Americans such a delicious thrill.  I'm not sure what it says about us as a people that we are so fascinated with sick, twisted, violent death, but given the number of books, movies, and true crime shows on the subject, we seem to have a never-ending curiosity.

I will admit to this morbid fascination in myself.  I like to think that my interest is as a result of my profound desire to understand the human mind, but I suspect there is a fair amount of of rubbernecker syndrome as well.  It's almost as though we (I) want to be shocked and horrified.  Well, if revulsion and horror is what you are looking for, then you could do worse than to pick up a copy of Jonathan Hayes book, Precious Blood.

The book centers around Dr. Edward Jenner, a former pathologist with the New York City police who had to retire after the daily horror of trying to identify 9-11 victims caused him to have a breakdown.  Now living off his savings, he agrees to take a job as an independent pathologist in the murder of the daughter of a friend-of-a-friend.  The murder scene is obviously staged, the victim nailed upside down on the wall.  Her roommate, Ana, managed to get away, but not before seeing the killer-and him seeing her.  Afraid for her safety, Jenner takes her in until his friend, Ana's uncle, could return.  It soon become apparent that this was not the first time this killer has struck, and they soon have new cases to investigate as well.  Jenner, while not having any real authority in the case, continues to investigate, his investigation gaining more urgency once he begins having feelings for Ana.

As thrillers go, this one was pretty good.  The killer's religious motivation is not exactly original, but it did have a different twist on the theme than most books.  Jenner's character is fairly well-developed, though his relationship with Ana does not really feel entirely authentic.  The final show-down is suspenseful, and the ending satisfying.  While there is nothing earth-shattering about Precious Blood, as popcorn books go it does its job admirably.

The Kellerman Whose Books I Am Still Reading

Faithful readers of this blog know that I have broken up with my long-time mystery/thriller favorite, Jonathan Kellerman.  You can read my Dear John (pun intended) letter here.  Lucky for the Kellerman family, they will not lose all of their income from my corner of the world.  Faye Kellerman, wife of Jonathan, is still writing fresh stories with all of the characters I love.

In Hangman, Kellerman brings us another story starting Rina (Lazarus) Decker and Pete Decker, Orthodox Jews and crime fighting team.  Well, not really a team, exactly-Rina is more logistical support than boots on the ground.  But together they have a chemistry that humanizes Decker and keeps him from being the stereotypical hard-boiled detective.  There's a lot going on in Hangman.  The main crime is the murder of one girl, and disappearance of another.  There is a second story line, which I found the more intriguing of the two, about Decker and hit man Chris Donnati.  Donnati and his wife are having marital problems, which rarely works out well for the non-homicidal maniac in the relationship.  When Donnati's wife disappears, Decker is sure that he killed her, and takes in Donnati's 15 year old son while he investigates.  During the investigation they stumble upon a serial killer-like a twofer deal.  Eventually Decker and his team solve all of the mysteries, but justice is not done-one of the killers flees and can't be tracked.  But it is a satisfying story nonetheless.

Kellerman's characters are interesting, the story is well-paced, and while the crimes and situations are not exactly believable, I didn't really care, because they were entertaining.  All in all a good popcorn book!

Whisper to the Blood, Dana Stabenow

"Inside Alaska’s biggest national park, around the town of Niniltna, a gold mining company has started buying up land. The residents of the Park are uneasy. “But gold is up to nine hundred dollars an ounce” is the refrain of Talia Macleod, the popular Alaskan skiing champ the company has hired to improve their relations with Alaskans and pave the way for the mine’s expansion. And she promises much-needed jobs to the locals.

But before she can make her way to every village in the area to present her case at town meetings and village breakfasts, there are two brutal murders, including that of a long-standing mine opponent. The investigation into those deaths falls to Trooper Jim Chopin and, as usual, he needs Kate to help him get to the heart of the matter.

Between those deaths and a series of attacks on snowmobilers up the Kanuyaq River, not to mention the still-open homicide of Park villain Louis Deem last year, part-time P.I. and newly elected chairman of the Niniltna Native Association Kate Shugak has her hands very much full."  (from bookbrowse.com-I'm cheating on my summaries today!)

If you haven't read Dana Stabenow's Kate Shugak series yet, I highly recommend them for popcorn reading.  The setting is really what makes the book.  Kate is an Aleut Indian, raised by her grandmother in the Park-a generic national park in Alaska, miles away from anywhere, full of Aleuts, Athabaskans, trappers, subsistence fishermen, hunters, miners, and the occasional shady character running from something-spouse, bank, or police.  The four Aunties who are the unofficial heart, soul, and law of the Park feel like something out of Greek mythology.  While many of the Park residents are on the dissolute side, for the most part everyone bands together to survive and make a productive life in what is one of the most difficult places to live on Earth. 

The Kate Shugak novels always have layers-the Park is 20,000,000 acres of space for people to hide things.  There is a lot going on below the surface.  Usually I like a complex storyline, but this one felt a little crowded.  Maybe it's the start of school and my grad school work taking up most of my cognitive energy, but I found myself losing storylines, which almost never happens.  Even at the very end, during the "big reveal", I had to go back and re-read to make sure I remembered who had done what to who. 

The characters were, as usual, spot on.  Kate's character is sort of that stereotypical loner-female-PI, but something about the setting and her lifestyle makes that feel fresh.  Stabenow can make this eccentric cast of characters feel real and believable.  Kate's relationship with Trooper Jim is one of those tumultuous "should we/shouldn't we/am I too damaged/can I trust someone" romances that drive me crazy.  Generally speaking if the two adults involved just shared more words and less sex there would be no reason for all the drama.  But, for the most part that was underplayed in this book except where it affected the storyline, which I appreciated.  Overall, I'd say this is not my favorite of Stabenow's books, but I would still recommend her and it to anyone looking for a good location-based mystery series.