So many great reads, and so little time, but here goes:
The Collaborator of Bethlehem, Matt Benyon Rees (HMH tp, $13.95). 1st Omar Yussef Sirhan mystery. 2008 New Blood Dagger Award, Finalist for both 2008 Macavity Award & Barry Award for Best First Novel. The power of Rees’ story, centered around teacher Omar Yussef of Bethlehem, makes contemporary Palestinian life in modern-day Israel with its internecine struggles of the children of Abraham almost comprehensible to American-me.
Among the Mad, Jacqueline Winspear (Feb. 2009 Holt hc, $25.95). 6th Maisie Dobbs mystery. The more things change, the more they stay the same…Winspear’s poignant and eerie story grabs and holds. Daisy plunges into a frantic search for a terrorist among the walking-wounded war veterans, many with what is now diagnosed as Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Snake Dreams, James D. Doss (St. Martin’s hc, $24.95). 13th Charlie Moon mystery. Exquisite humor under- girds Doss’ work about the daily balance aboriginals must find in a white culture: 7-foot-tall Ute tribal investigator Charlie Moon contemplates marriage with FBI Special Agent Lila McTeague, but his relationship with his demanding auntie (and shaman) Daisy Perika, who’s now guardian and teacher to Charlie’s 16-year-old niece, resonates throughout. Is there an ‘arsenic and old lace’ riff starting?
Another Man’s Moccasins, Craig Johnson (Viking hc, $24.95). 4th Walt Longmire mystery. Johnson uses split-time to reveal then-Vietnam deployed U.S. Marine Longmire’s and friend Henry Standing Bear’s histories as counterpoint to current time-Sheriff Longmire’s investigation of a young Vietnamese woman found murdered in Absaroka County, where the white culture overlays and, at times, clashes with the indigenous cultures. (A few signed copies are available.)
Wild Inferno, Sandi Ault (Berkley hc, $23.95). 2nd Jamaica Wild mystery. Ault sets BLM employee Jamaica in the midst of accurately described wildfires -- the miles-long walls of fast moving fires that annually hit U.S. western states -- burning on the Southern Ute Reservation where Puebloans will observe an 18-year celestial event, fire or no fire. Jamaica must weigh the conflicting demands of government agencies as she respectfully shields the Puebloans, races to solve murders, and finds her own life in jeopardy. (Two signed and numbered copies remain.)
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, Alexander McCall Smith (Anchor tp, $12.95). 8th Mma Precious Ramotswe mystery. Married life agrees with Precious and her husband in Botswana, but…assistant Mma Makutsi may leave the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Precious’ new husband yearns to try his hand at investigative work, and Precious herself must solve the tragic and suspicious deaths at the hospital in Mochudi. As always in this charming series, Precious resolves all with her trademark calm competence and compassion.
Blanche on the Lam, Barbara Neely (Penguin mm, 1992, $6.99). Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Strong and resilient Blanche, a forty-something black housekeeper who skillfully navigates a supposedly integrated America, solves a murder while hiding out from corrupt law enforcement. Neely’s insights about true power holders, the marginalized, and a fully-developed black society make fascinating reading. (Out-of-print, but ask us for used copies.)
Just Deceits: A Historical Courtroom Mystery, Michael Schein (Bennet & Hastings tpo, $17.95). First-time novelist Schein deftly and almost lyrically tackles infanticide and slavery, envy and jealousy, family and status, told in the midst the birth of the U.S. legal system. Schein, a local attorney and legal historian who sustains the suspense to the last pages, based his novel on his archival research of the actual 1793 Virginia criminal trial of powerful Randolph family members. (some signed copies available.)
The Pain Nurse, Jon Talton (April 2009, Poisoned Pen hc, $24.95). First in a new series, a Will Borders medical mystery set in Cincinnati. Talton’s vivid portrayal of spinal surgery and patient rehabilitation, all wrapped around a murder investigation by the flawed protagonist, was a painful and almost overwhelming read which accurately captured my mother’s recent 41-day hospital odyssey: absent doctors and overworked nurses, body smells and fluids, and the nightly, almost hallucinogenic insanity, found on many hospital floors. [Talton is a recent transplant to Seattle, and his columns on business news and economic issues are published in the Seattle Times.]
Cry Dance, Kirk Mitchell (Bantam, 1999 paperback, $7.50). 1st Emmett Quanah Parker & Anna Turnipseed mystery. A maelstrom of conflicting cultures, values, and legal jurisdictions that sweeps through a desert carved into three States is a devil’s playground which thrice-divorced and dedicated BIA Investigator Parker, (Comanche and white), reluctantly travels with FBI Special Agent Turnipseed (Modoc and Japanese-American). The trigger is a badly mangled body found on the Havasupai Reservation, the motive, like the narrative, is richly textured by Mitchell.
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