The 18 authors of the stories in Murder by the Glass: Cocktail Mysteries were each asked to contribute a tale that contained, a glass, a murder, and a mystery. They produced a charming anthology that has something for everyone; each story with a different flavor much like the drinks in your favorite cocktail bar. Here are a few of my faves.
Betsy Ashton has given us Revenge on the Rocks—a tale of two sisters; one who meets her killer on social media and the other who plots an ingenious revenge.
Heather Weidner contributed Out of Commission—a story about Delanie Fitzgerald, the PI about whom she has written several novels. It also features the murder of someone’s sister, as well as dueling real estate agents.
Anthology editor Teresa Inge’s tale Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson is an excellent beach read set on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, about a cheating husband and the death of an heiress.
Maggie King’s story, How do you Mend a Broken Heart is a positively Hitchcockian tale of sweet revenge.
Unlike the drinks at your favorite bar, feel free to consume as many of these delightful stories at a sitting as you wish. However, you may find yourself feeling bad the next day when you realize that there are no more to be had.
Tana French is one of the best crime writers working today. Her prose is stunningly good, complex yet eminently readable. However, no one can write well enough to make a weak plot plausible. French’s scintillating prose was the only thing that led me to finish this very poorly plotted story. I knew the plot wasn’t going to work in the first 100 pages, and sadly, the next 500 bore out that conclusion. I expect the great length of the book was because the author used every artifice at her command to make the story work, but it just didn’t happen. Cassie Maddox is a former Dublin Murder Squad member and former undercover policewoman. When a woman who looks just like her is found murdered, Cassie goes undercover to find her killer. Not only was the vic Cassie’s double, she had also taken the same name that Cassie used as an undercover. Huh? Is your credulity strained yet? Just wait. Cassie goes to live with the victim’s roommates, a collection of oddball college students who live as a family in an old mansion in the outskirts of a rural village outside Dublin. She manages to convince four people who knew her doppelganger intimately that she is their roomie, successfully posing as a PhD student in English literature at Trinity College, even though she has only a BA. Her housemates are all English grad students too, yet do not see through her. Cassie wears a microphone the whole time and carries a revolver under her clothes, which nobody spots. She goes for an hour walk late each evening so she can sit in a tree and have long phone convos with her police colleagues. Her housemates suspect nothing. In the copy I read, it took 500 pages for the situation to come to a head. I frankly don’t see how any competent developmental editor would have allowed this. The ending was expected, lackluster and unbelievable. Tana French’s prose is always a joy, and is the only reason I gave this book as many as three stars. It’s a shame such great writing had to be wasted on such a poor story.
Michael Carter’s The Mathematical Murder of Innocence is an important book. It is based on an actual miscarriage of justice in which a woman who had to of her children die of SIDS was convicted of murder due to fallacious statistical evidence given at her trial. Carter uses his novel to demonstrate why such evidence is flawed, which is most definitely a public service. However, the novel has several failings. Perhaps the greatest one is the vehicle of a having a juror cross-examine an expert witness at trial. Despite the justifications given in the novel, this would never happen in reality. And it’s unnecessary. The protagonist could have easily been a defense attorney himself, or someone who was in the courtroom for another reason who heard the expert’s flawed testimony and went to the defense about it, or an expert witness hired by the defense to refute the prosecution’s witness. The other major flaw was the protracted nature of some of the courtroom arguments. While accurate, they tended to turn the book from a novel to a set of lecture notes or a textbook, robbing the story on much dramatic character. However, even with these flaws, the book is eminently worth reading as an example of how probabilistic arguments may be misapplied to affect public policy or even personal freedom.
S.W. O’Connell has provided us with a cracking tale of adventure, cross and double-cross and military history. The Patriot Spy chronicles the exploits of Lieutenant Jeremiah Creed, Irish immirant to Maryland, who takes up arms in defense of his nascent country, The United States of America. Set during the battle of Long Island in 1776, the novel follows Creed’s participation in the one of the greatest American defeats of the War. The battle scenes are impeccably researched and stunningly realistic, showing us that the horrors of war are by no means confined to modern times. O’Connell is a retired US Army intelligence officer, so it’s no wonder that he segues into intelligence gathering during the revolution, emphasizing its importance in keeping the overmatched rebel forces competitive. Historical figures such as Washington, British Generals Howe and Cornwallis, American Major Mordecai Gist and others are integrated seamlessly with O’Connell’s fictional characters. The novel ends with the British invasion of Manhattan, with the promise of more of Creed’s adventures to come in the next volume. The Patriot Spy is a fun, rollicking read, worth staying up far into the night for.
In Nine Elms, Robert Bryndza introduces us to Kate Marshall, criminology professor at a small college in the UK, and former police detective who left the force after catching a serial killer. Kate fell into serious drinking when she found out she was pregnant by the killer, but she had the child and got sober in AA, and is trying to start a new life. But then, an eerily familiar killing spree starts again… Kate and her academic assistant and investigative partner Tristan find themselves tracking the killer. The story has a lot of twists and turns and Kate and Tristan prove to be likeable characters you can root for. However, I docked the book a star because I thought the ending was a bit contrived and predictable. That doesn’t mean that I found Nine Elms a less than enjoyable read.
Three new volumes of the wildly successful MX Books of New Sherlock Holmes Stories will soon be released by MX Publishing. The release will comprise parts XXII, XXIII, and XXIV. With this release, the series has grown to over 500 new Holmes adventures by nearly 250 contributors from around the world. The theme is Some More Untold Tales, meaning adventures that were alluded to in the original stories by Sir Artur Conan Doyle, but that he never got around to writing. My new story, Another Case of Identity, will be found in Part XXIV.
The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories was first published in 2015. It was a huge three-book set featuring over sixty new traditional Holmes exploits, all set within the correct time period. It was wildly successful, sparking the demand for even more traditional Holmes adventures
Each volume in the latest release contains forwards by the noted Sherlockians Otto Penzler, Roger Johnson, Lizzy Butler, Steve Emecz, and David Marcum, as well as stories by the following contributors:
Part XXII: 1877-1887
S.F. Bennett, William Todd, Geri Schear, Susan Knight, David Marcum, Bob Bishop, Tracy J. Revels, Chris Chan, Richard Paolinelli, Derrick Belanger, Stephen Mason, Leslie Charteris and Denis Green, Tim Symonds, Liese Sherwood-Fabre, Ian Ableson, Chris Chan, Mark Mower, Robert Stapleton, Roger Riccard, Kevin P. Thornton, and Denis O. Smith , and a poem by Christopher James
Part XXIII: 1887-1894
Will Murray (2 stories), Tim Gambrell (2 stories), Craig Janacek, I.A. Watson, Jane Rubino, Paul Hiscock, Hugh Ashton, Mike Chinn, Shane Simmons, Dacre Stoker and Leverett Butts, David Marcum, Matthew J. Elliott, Paul D. Gilbert, Tracy J. Revels, Margaret Walsh, Arthur Hall, Barry Clay, Steven Philip Jones, Jan van Koningsveld, and Marcia Wilson, and a poem by John Linwood Grant
Part XXIV: 1895-1903
Marcia Wilson, Brenda Seabrooke, Stephen Herczeg, Tracy J. Revels, Kevin P. Thornton, Thomas A. Burns, Jr., Dick Gillman, Jayantika Ganguly, John Davis, DJ Tyrer, Harry DeMaio, Arthur Hall (2 stories), Susan Knight, David Marcum, Craig Stephen Copland (2 stories), Gayle Lange Puhl, John Lawrence, John Linwood Grant, and Paula Hammond, and a poem by Joseph W. Svec III
The series is particularly noteworthy because all of the stories are strictly canonical – there are no anachronisms, supernatural events, or other occurrences not justified by Doyle’s original stories. Any of the stories in these volumes could have appeared in the Strand Magazine. Holmes and Watson are portrayed as the Victorian gentlemen and heroes that they were; not as the caricatures so prominent in other modern depictions.
This series was conceived as a philanthropic project; all contributor royalties go to the Stepping Stones School for special needs children at Undershaw, one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s former homes in the UK. To date the project has raised nearly $70,000 for the school. The collection has had some very famous authors contribute to it, including Lee Child, Jonathan Kellerman, Lyndsay Faye, Bonnie MacBird and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
The link for the Kickstarter is below. Please follow it and reserve your copies now!
Soul Swallowers is the best fantasy novel I’ve read in a long time. It’s set in an area known as the Shattered Sea, and I call it literary fiction because it revolves around the lives of the inhabitants, noble and commoner alike. The people of the area practice a unique custom; when someone dies, their soul can be captured by a magical stone which can be swallowed by another person, so the swallowed soul lives on in the new host and is spared the tragedy of eternal wandering. I’m always leery of fantasy stories that rely on a gimmick, but the author integrates soul swallowing beautifully into the storyline; it doesn’t dominate the plot but augments it in a unique and interesting way. I call this story literary fiction because it deals with people’s lives, their joys and struggles, without relying on hackneyed fantasy tropes. Peach’s characters are well developed and multi-dimensional; the reader comes to know them intimately, perhaps illustrating the point that we are all of us one people, regardless of the environment in which we find ourselves. Slavery and bondage are also an important issues in Peach’s world, and the author relentlessly points out how such evil practices demean everyone, slave and owner alike. If I have one gripe, it’s that the story is unfinished, but Soul Swallowers is clearly labelled as Book 1, and I will certainly have no problem reading Book 2, or however many the author chooses to write in this fascinating setting.
The audible version of Revenge! has gotten it’s first review, by Kara.
Intense mystery/thriller with terrific narration
“Revenge! (Natalie McMasters Mysteries #2)” is an intense mystery/thriller. And when I use the word “intense” here, I mean “OMG the despicable evils that people are capable are the center of Natalie’s life”.
If you like thrillers with graphic descriptions of rape, torture, animal cruelty, arson and murder, you’re going to love this book. I considered book 1 intense, but the intensity was dialed up from 10 to 10,000 here, and it was for me, frankly, too intense. I enjoy graphic violence occasionally, but in sci-fi or paranormal contexts, where it rarely feels “real”. As the blurb for this book says, though, book 2 is “ripped from today’s headlines”, and the violence feels very very real.
Ok, trigger warnings etc are now done. The story is very realistic, and very well written. The narrator did an excellent job, once again.
MC Natalie is very likable, as is her girlfriend, later wife, Lupe, and many of the other characters, including her mom, uncle, the two PI’s working at 3M (Danny and former Detective Kidd), and her wonderful counselor, Rebecca. Even the street gang leader is presented as a surprisingly likable, and realistic, character who is capable of loyalty and something close to friendship, as well as unspeakable cruelty. Just by knowing Natalie, everyone she knows becomes targeted.
The evil characters aren’t as complex as Natalie’s friends and family. They’re evil.
Throughout the story, the pressures put on many people to do unthinkable things by people in positions of authority are heartbreakingly realistic. As I write this, thinking of police corruption in this book, the all-too-real story of a retired detective and his son being arrested months after they killed a black man…months during which police and the DA did nothing until a video became available…makes it clear that so many of the violent things in this book truly are drawn from today’s headlines.
“Revenge!” will make you uncomfortable, as does the news, but it’s like driving by an accident or walking near a crime scene….you just have to listen to Natalie’s story. The book ends on a minor cliffhanger – read the blurb for book 3 and you’ll understand. Also, while Natalie realized in book 1 that she loved Lupe far more than any man she’d dated, or even been engaged to, in book 2 we get several hints that she may be more fluid than lesbian. I was curious, and read the blurb for book 4. So for reviewers who are angry that a lesbian is expressing attraction to a man; in Natalie’s case this is not a lesbian being “fixed”, this is a woman who is passionate for people she loves and body parts aren’t a critical issue for her love.
I listen to very few thrillers because of the dark realism, but every now and then I like to try something different. While I’m glad I did, I realize that dark realism isn’t something I’ll listen to lots of, but for those who enjoy it – this is a terrific book with, as I said, excellent narration. 4* for “Revenge!”.
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
My rating and my review was not in anyway affected by my having been provided a review copy.
I still have promo codes for FREE copies of Revenge! and Stripper! Contact me and I send you one for each book.
