STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG by Kate Atkinson

Kate Atkinson has written a number of novels that feature ex-cop turned PI Jackson Brodie: CASE HISTORIES, ONE GOOD TURN, WHEN WILL THERE BE GOOD NEWS?, and now the fourth novel, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG. I had read a total of zero novels in the series when I picked up Atkinson’s latest. This is a novel that can be read as a stand-alone, and although there were threads to the other stories, Atkinson’s novel is so very well-written, it’s not essential to begin with the first novel in the series.

STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG is ostensibly a crime novel, but to try and slot this excellent tale into such a neat and ultimately limiting definition is a mistake. While crimes take place, the emphasis is on the crimes that slip silently into simple everyday living: cruelty, casual violence, lying and possibly most importantly–failing to take a moral stand.

March 21, 2011 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: 2011 Favorites, Noir, Reading Guide, Sleuths Series, Theme driven, United Kingdom, y Award Winning Author

THE DARK VINEYARD by Martin Walker

The first time readers met this village lawman was in Bruno, Chief of Police. He was something of a French version of Andy Taylor of Mayberry: as a matter of course he didn’t carry a gun, he sometimes upheld the spirit of community well-being rather than enforce the letter of the law, and he dealt with the villagers with a natural but unadvertised psychology instead of simply compelling obedience. He was also single and had a history of discreetly dating a number of women. He was the only local police officer, having no Barney Fife at his side, but when crimes of greater significance than a parking ticket arose he had to collaborate with his immediate boss, the town mayor, and with wider French enforcement agencies, including the national police. He, unlike Sheriff Andy, had a bit of a repertoire in the cooking department and was especially famous in the tiny Périgord commune for whipping up heavenly truffle omelettes. Bruno, whose actual but never used name was Benoît, was deeply content to remain in Saint-Denis, although as a highly decorated former soldier who had traded in one uniform for another, his services would have been eagerly accepted by the Police Nationale in Paris itself.

December 29, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Â· Posted in: France, Sleuths Series

EVERY BITTER THING by Leighton Gage

In Leighton Gage’s EVERY BITTER THING, Chief Inspector Mario Silva of Brazil’s Federal Police is called in when Juan Rivas, the son of Venezuelan foreign minister Jorge Rivas, is found shot and brutally beaten. This “would be a killing with political implications, the kind of case he hated above all others.” When Silva finds out that Rivas is not the only victim–the national database shows that four other men were slain in exactly the same manner–his next step is to figure out why these particular people were targeted. Knowing the motive, Mario hopes, will quickly lead to a suspect.

December 6, 2010 · Judi Clark · 2 Comments
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Brazil, Class - Race - Gender, Sleuths Series, World Lit

THE SHADOW WOMAN by Ake Edwardson

Sweden’s youngest ever chief inspector, at thirty-seven years old, cuts his vacation short when one of his team – a black, Swedish-born woman – has her jaw broken at the annual Gothenburg party, an outdoor late-summer festival at which nativist thugs get drunk and run amok, often in motorcycle gangs.

November 27, 2010 · Judi Clark · One Comment
Tags: , ,  Â· Posted in: Sleuths Series, Sweden, Swedish Crime Writer, Translated, World Lit, y Award Winning Author

PAYING BACK JACK by Christopher G. Moore

Having succeeded so spectacularly in his last case that he’s forced to hightail it out of Bangkok for a spell, PI Vincent Calvino begins his tenth adventure contemplating an expensive case of scotch and the view from his hotel suite in the seaside tourist destination of Pattaya.

Having also saved his satisfied new client from a drive-by assassination, Calvino is anticipating the juicy steak that’s next on his agenda when a beautiful woman falls past his balcony to her death. Calvino is so deeply implicated in her murder that it takes his friend Colonel Pratt to extricate him.

November 21, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Sleuths Series, Thailand-Bangkok

SKELETON HILL by Peter Lovesey

History professor Rupert Hope takes a time-out from his role as a dead Cavalier in an annual reenactment of a 1643 battle with the Roundheads on Lansdown Hill, and unearths a human femur. Excited by the find – certain it’s part of a centuries-dead soldier – Hope keeps digging. Until someone stops him.

Shortly after Hope is reported missing, a woman walks into Supt. Peter Diamond’s Bath station and turns in a suspiciously human looking bone her dog found.

October 30, 2010 · Judi Clark · No Comments
Tags: ,  Â· Posted in: Sleuths Series, United Kingdom, y Award Winning Author