White Mischief The Murder of Lord Erroll - A True Story of Aristocracy, Alcohol and Adultery

 

This true story was first published in 1982 and made into a movie in 1987. The story is about the unsolved murder of Lord Erroll in 1941 in Kenya. At the time, it was well known that the area of Happy Valley in Kenya was a most decadent place to spend time, one of lavish parties where usual societal limitations were flaunted. Essentially, it was a place of refuse for the ultra rich members of the British aristocracy who were often castoffs from the staid life expected of those living in the homeland. Alcohol and other drugs were the order of the day, and this type of lifestyle existed from the beginning of the 20th century until the murder of Lord Erroll and the start of WWII. 

The first part of the book was essentially a tale of the widespread debauchery, who was having sex with whom, who was divorcing whom, who was remarrying, who was getting drunker than others, who was using cocaine and morphine, etc. Josslyn Hay, the 22nd Earl of Erroll, was 39 years old at the time his murder, and he had been among the most outrageous of who were living their lives in Happy Valley. He was only interested in having sex with married women, and there were many who chose to share his bed with him. Diana Caldwell, a most beautiful woman, was married to Delves Broughton, an exceedingly wealthy man. This was the second marriage for both, and Diana was already known to being willing to sleep with lots of different men, both during her first marriage and after her divorce. Broughton seemed to be willing to tolerate her indiscretions, at least until she fell in love with the Earl, a most handsome and charismatic character.

To make a long and complex story shorter, Late one night, the Earl was shot in the head, and all evidence suggested in was Boughton that had done the deed. There was a trial, and the defendant's attorney, an expert in ballistics, convinced the jury that Boughton could not have pulled the trigger. (This really sounds like the OJ Simpson trial of that era.) No one else was ever charged with the crime. However, the murder and trial were sensational and were covered in worldwide news.

I ran across this book as I was searching for stories about East Africa. The murder and trial, as well as the hedonistic lifestyle in Happy Valley were all mentioned in at least three of the nonfiction books that I have already reviewed. I did not find this book to be particularly good. Rather, it read like a cheap soap opera, and then I began scanning pages rather than reading them carefully. I do not recommend it.

No Picnic on Mount Kenya

 No Picnic on Mount Kenya by Felice Benuzzi, was first published in English in 1946 and in Italian in 1947. This is a true adventure that is ranked as one history’s greatest real adventures, and it is listed in the Adventure Library. It is subtitled “The Story of Three POWs Escape to Adventure,” and “A Daring Escape, A Perilous Climb.” This book grabbed my interest from the very beginning.

 

This is a mountaineering story took place in 1943 in the unlikely location of a POW camp in Kenya. During World War II, the Italians were aligned with the Axis powers and had occupied Ethiopia in 1936 until they were defeated by the Allied forces in 1941. Many Italians were captured and the some were warehoused in Kenya. Benuzzi was one of the Italian captives and he described the mind-killing boredom of life in a POW camp, and while he was staring at Mt. Kenya which was sometimes visible from the camp, he came up with the idea of climbing the 17,000 foot mountain. However, he had no personal mountaineering experienced, was undernourished, and had no mountaineering equipment. Fearful of his dream being found out, he carefully chose two men who could help him achieve this goal and keep his secret. Preparations took months to find suitable climbing tools and to gather enough food to carry with them. It was not the author’s goal to actually leave the camp forever, but rather to climb the mountain and then sneak back into the camp.

 

The camp itself was not difficult to escape, and one of the chief deterrents to the prisoners was the African wildlife, especially the lions and rhinos who were notorious for attacking and killing humans. The man eating lions were especially known for such acts and it was reported that they killed hundreds of Indian laborers who had been imported to help Kenya build a railroad from Mombasa to Lake Victoria at the edge of Uganda. The land itself was a deterrent and then these three Italian men had no weapons other than the ice axes they fashioned from other tools to which they had access.

 

Benuzzi wrote a good story about the adventure itself, but also about the interactions between the three man team. They were nearly killed at many times during the trip from various hazards, and the mountain itself was particularly hazardous. They were very unprepared for all aspects of this adventure. By the time they got down the mountain after a successful climb, they were frozen and emaciated, but they were able to get safely back into the camp where they received minimal punishment from their captors.

 

The book concluded with an epilogue that gave the history of prior attempts to climb Mt. Kenya, the first successful one occurring in 1899. I thoroughly enjoyed this book which I stumbled upon while looking for more books about East Africa. It gets my strong recommendation.

 

 

Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass by Karen Blixen (pen name Isak Dinesen)

 Out of Africa was written by Karen Blixen, pen name Isak Dinesen, and it was originally published in 1937, by which time the author had already left the African continent. (It was made into a 1985 movie starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. The movie won seven Oscars including best picture.) This is an epic story of Blixen’s life in colonial Kenya. She wrote about the details of her social interactions with the Kiyuku people, the Masai, the Somalis, and others. Meanwhile, she dealt with the widelife, life as a coffee farmer, the harsh droughts and locusts swarms, and her eventual need to sell the farm and move back to her homeland of Denmark. She watched the enormous herds of animals become decimated by sportsmen and poachers, and she herself transformed from being a shooter to being a conservationist. Her incredible details of her social engagements really brings her life there into a rich focus.

 I once had an incredible professor, Dr. Desmond Bittinger, who was a contemporary of Blixen, although he was living in Nigeria during the 30s. His stories are incredibly consistent with Blixen’s writing. They had incredible adventures at a time when there were few white men about. Although it was not an intended focus of the book, one can see the problematic results of England’s colonial rule.

 

This book is often published with Blixen’s book Shadows on the Grass. This book is essentially a sequel to Out of Africa and it was written not long before her death in 1962. She had obviously loved her time in Africa and she regretted having to leave, but her stories in this second book described how her thoughts and feelings about her time there had matured.

 

As I continue my effort to read as much about Africa as I can before my planned trip there in 9/25, I certainly agree that this book belonged on my reading list. Now, 40 years later, I’ll have to find the movie of which I have many clear memories of having seen it in 1985, which was not so long after my first trip to that continent.

 

I chose to consume these two books in audioformat. It was a 17-hour effort, and I judge that time to have been very well spent.

Love, Life, and Elephants, An African Love Story

 Now, I’ve really gone off our usual path of thrillers and murder mysteries. Although there are lots of deaths in this story, that is hardly the main theme of the book, but I’ll briefly mention some of those untimely deaths in this review. Over the course of my life, I’ve really read few love stories, but this is one of those, a love story about East Africa, especially Kenya. The book is also the man that the author loved, David Seldrick, and the wild animals, she and David loved. Love, Life, and Elephants, An African Love Story by Dame Daphne Seldrick is also her autobiography. She migrated from South Africa to Kenya, particularly the spectacular Tsavo National Park which she and David Seldrick established. Her husband essentially worked as a game warden who also worked to control the poachers who were decimating the African animals, mostly the elephants and rhinos. 

She raised two children in the game park and David was beloved by many including the Masai and Kikuyu, as well as the many dignitaries and travelers who learned of the Seldrick’s conservation efforts. The book is also a story of the history of Kenya from the development of the railroad to Uganda at the turn of the 20^th century. It was the process of building the railroad that hundreds of works were caught and eaten by lions. When one unusually successful maneater were finally hunted and killed, it measured 9 ½ feet in length. As the park was developed for tourism, it was also being raided for the rhino horns and elephant tusks. The slaughter of those animals severely impacted the size of the herds of the animals, and the Seldricks worked to create an orphanage to help save those babies that were left behind. They created an orphanage in Nairobi which is now a thriving operation, and I plan to visit it in the very near future.

 

I must confess that since my first visit to Africa at the age of 21, I too have had a love for East Africa. My visit to Tanzania and the Ngorongoro Crater coincided with the moment that I declared my intention to go to medical school. The travel and that decision were linked, and now I get to go back again. Although an unusual book by the standard of this book blog, I am pretty sure you’ll love this story.

Happy Valley, The Story of the English in Kenya

 Happy Valley, The Story of the English in Kenya by Nicholas Best is the first book in my admitted walkabout from the usual thriller/murder/mystery/espionage books that we usually review. I may be off the usual reporting for much of the time in the next few months as I prepare for a trip to Africa.

 

Nicholas Best, who was born in Kenya in 1948, provided a nonfiction account of the history of East Africa, focusing primarily on the English who settled in Kenya. He noted that Vasco De Gama, the Portuguese sailor who was the first to round Cape of Good Hope and continue into the Indian Ocean, landed in Mombasa in 1498. The coastal area of East Africa became one with significant sea traffic as the result of trade routes and the slave trade. The Englishman Joseph Thomson, an explorer, is known to have gotten to Lake Victoria in 1882 after crossing the dangerous Masai territory. Best wrote about the development of English society in Kenya, and his focus was primarily on the building of a railway from Mombasa to Uganda, the mysterious death of Lord Erroll, and the Mau Mau revolution in the 1950s. He continued to the end of the colonial era and the temporary chaos that ensued until the country became a stable and productive economy.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this well-written history. It was a good place to start my study of the history of that part of the world.

The Bright Freight of Memory

 The Bright Freight of Memory is Greg Fields’ fourth novel, but the first one reviewed in this blog. Unlike most of the books that are reviewed at Men Reading Books, this is not a murder mystery. There are some deaths in the story, but that’s not what carried the plot. Rather, the story is primarily about two fatherless boys growing up in poverty who had rather helpless mothers that could not meet the needs of their sons. Friends during their early years, Matthew Cooney and Donal Mannion took different paths while not living far from their original neighborhoods. Alcoholism was a part of their generational stories. There is a supporting cast of characters that help flush out their stories of never being able to rise to a level of feeling meaning in their lives or meaningful and lasting relationships.

The quality of the writing far exceeds the books that are often reviewed in the blog. Fields primary and secondary characters grabbed my attention. I give this book a 5/5 rating – it is worth your time to enjoy the prose of Greg Fields. If it was not for another reading project on my plate, I would surely jump right into one of Fields’ earlier novels.

A Hired Kill by Steven Konkoly

Garrett Mann has assembled a nearly off-the-books team of FBI experts along with some Mexican law enforcement to do a deep dive into the drug and human trafficking trade across the southern US border. They answer only to an Assistant Director of the FBI who runs interference for the team any time someone gets a whiff of their activities.

They’ve learned about an underground training facility in the New Mexico desert (originally built by the CIA for training purposes). The raid results in the death of dozens of cartel types who’ve been training Mexican natives as sleeper agents on how to blend in. A lone survivor tells them of a coming action in the Sacramento area.

Mann takes his team to Sacramento. Reinforced by local and state law enforcement, they surround a mansion in a gated big-bucks community. While the home is empty, it’s not a walk in the park. The property is heavily mined. The house is wired to its foundation with explosives. All of it triggered remotely once agents are on the property and inside the house. Someone knew they were coming and were watching for the perfect time to detonate. Dozens upon dozens of law enforcement agents were killed.

The hunt for the cartel leaders behind all this is now massive. California, Sacramento, and the FBI are frothing at the bit to administer some serious revenge. It’s up to Mann to keep all in line to track down who is responsible and, importantly, the obvious presence of leaks. some to the highest levels of federal law enforcement.

The key to finding the bad guys lies deep within the mind of the survivor who is doing his best to work out a deal to save his own skin despite his own pro-cartel history.

Now this is what we at MRB live for. Slam bang, gnashing of teeth, speed of light plotting and action. Believable (somewhat) characters with righteous motivation. Just keep a notepad handy to keep track of all the acronyms and initialisms tossed around. Konkoly has a long history of writing mysteries and thrillers. Two earlier titles were favorably reviewed by MRB (by moi). Wouldn’t be a stretch to want to expand into his other titles. One never knows. 

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance reader copy.

Available May 27. 2025

ECD

Boney Creek by Paula Gleeson

Tom and Addie lived a good like in the city. Good jobs, recently wed, considering children. While they slept, they were victims of a break-in and assault. The physical and emotional effects were so severe that they decided to up and leave their city life for the safety of a backwater town far in the country. Boney Creek.

They purchase a little general store/post office and set up a new life. Boney Creek, like many small towns, were wary of outsiders. Tom tries to get the store, homestead, and the basics of a life reborn. Addie had an entry job at a big city newspaper and yearned to become an investigative reporter. Someone with her curiosity and general nosiness might not be well received.

She wasn’t. Stuck her nose into too many people’s business.

Even for a small town, seven unexplained deaths seem unusual. Not to mention that Boney Creek has a history based on a series of killings decades ago. Rumor was it was a serial killer. Or a drifter on a spree. But no one was ever caught, and the town suffered a slow demise as a result. Addie wonders if history is repeating itself. Or is there a copycat. Can't just be coincidence.

Addie is sure the town needs to know the truth so it can heal. Many locals, however, think just let bygones be bygones. She digs deeper, championing herself as some nose to the grindstone reporter who’s sniffed out a major story and the accompanying glory. All she does is offend most of the town.

Then she learns that Boney Creek wasn’t just picked at random. Tom had a reason for steering Addie to move when they decided to leave the city.

This was kind of interesting. Normally the hell-bent reporter has lots of street cred and contacts in law enforcement and sometimes the underworld. Not Addie. Her only experience was in writing fluff pieces and never got her shot anywhere close to the big time. Gleeson lets us peek over Addie’s shoulder while she trips up (repeatedly) in her obsession to score the ‘big story’.

Give this one shot. As a story about the press, it’s nowhere near the level of the likes of RG Belsky. But it’s still worth a shot. Well presented. Believable characters. Cleverly  plotted.

Thanks to the good folks at NetGalley for the advance reader copy.

Available June 3, 2025

The Alpha Particle by TJ Hawkins

Tom Rivers is your basic British architect until he has a serious accident. When he awakens, he finds his life wasn’t as expected. His skills stretch well beyond that of an architect. Turns out his younger days were spent is training for the highest level of security and espionage. Then his handlers ‘put him to sleep’ to hide his skills only to be activated (awakened) in the event of a potentially catastrophic emergency. Oh, and his wife Luna is a similarly trained sleeper agent.

Russia has a new class of long-range missile capable of hitting targets without warning. If that’s not bad enough, a middle east terrorist, Baqri, has managed to obtain a rare element and gets it weaponized. The Brits and the US get word that Baqri is working to put this rare element on one of those Russian missiles to fire on the US (seems Baqri’s issues with the US aren’t political or ideological. In an earlier life, Tom killed Baqri’s brother. His motivation in pure revenge against both Tom, his wife, and the US in general). Baqri is backed by a mysterious cabal of disaffected billionaires who think they know what’s best for the world – call them The Collective (blood kin to SMERSH of SPECTRE, et al.?).

To get the attention of the US leadership, Baqri fires a missile on a mid-size city in Ohio killing thousands. This mobilizes the US medical community to determine and treat the killing element. The security community is out in force to find the number of missiles Baqri has access to and when/where he might strike again. The sharp end of the US’s spear is Tom and wife Luna.

This is an engaging if (in my opinion) outlandish scheme involving super spies, obsessed lunatic middle easterner, and the author’s version of the Bilderberg Group. While the writing style is polished, the story just seemed to me to be too much, too unbelievable, and entirely unrealistic. One of the things that make thrillers so interesting is the possibility that the story might happen. I had a hard time believing that The Collective exists, that husband/wife sleeper agents are out there unaware of their past only to be awakened to save the world, that such weapons (missiles and biochemical) can be adapted for mass murder and no one is aware.

If you like the impossible, check this out. I’ll just sit idly by in blissful ignorance.

ECD

Istanbul Crossing

Istanbul Crossing is the seventh book by Timothy Jay Smith and the first reviewed in this blog. Smith is a most interesting character himself, and he has obviously incorporated himself and the cast of characters that he has met in his own peripatetic life into the story. The author is an award-winning author who has apparently achieved some fame for his writing skills. This is an important book about trafficking of humans who are seeking to get clear of the Syrian conflicts and other Middle Eastern conflicts of the current time. Desperately seeking safety in his life, the protagonist Ahdaf fled from Syria. But rather than continue to Europe, crossing from Istanbul to Greece, he found a niche, assisting other travelers who were trying to go farther.

 

The lives of the people involved in this migration were well-described by Smith, and death was a constant possibility for them. However, staying in the war areas meant that death was likely, so the people, nearly all men, kept coming. Ahdaf had a reputation for being honest and helpful, so he was able to get paid for his work. Of course the traffickers had to know the underbelly of this world so they too were doing their best to figure who among their colleagues were telling the truth and who were just running another scam on them.

 

Of course, governmental action was always a threat, and it occurred periodically. Suddenly armed and uncontrolled police would be at unexpected checkpoints and at key border locations. At the same time, fighters for ISIS were looking to move back and forth between Europe and Syria, but they also did damage to the societies along the way which they hated but never understood. It was the fighters who would bomb bars in Greece, just to make an unfathomable point.

 

While Ahdaf was safer in Istanbul than he had been in Syria, he was far from being free of potentially lethal danger. Yet, he could not get himself to flee even farther from his home. To complicate his predicament, he was a gay man who was moving through Middle Eastern cultures that often responded intolerantly to gay men with violence, sometimes murder. In the course of acting out his homosexuality, Smith described Ahdaf’s involvement in various homosexual acts. Ahdaf was looking for the safety of love, and the story hinged on the love he felt for a man he met early in the story, Selim. Throughout the story, Ahdaf was pulled in different directions regarding the issues of his safety and his affections.

 

In the end, I thought Smith has written an important book, but it was not a good book from my persepective. Perhaps I’ve already read too much about the desperation and cruelties that the migrants faced on a constant basis. It’s a subject that I’ve grown weary off. I mostly read for escape and I wanted to escape from that material rather than stay stuck in the morass of it, as Ahdaf found himself doing. Ironically, this book is not one for escape of the Middle Eastern horrors.

 

Although I have respect for the effort that it took to put this story together, and while I imagine that it will have a following from this successful author, I cannot recommend it for the readers of this blog.

The Grey Wolf

 

The Grey Wolf, A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel, is the 19^th in this series by Louise Penny. She is one of my favorite authors, who I think stands shoulder to shoulder with Michael Connelly, Daniel Silva, C.J. Box, and John Grisham. Ms. Penny is better than Lee Childs, David Baldacci and Jonathan Kellerman.

 

She produces one book a year. I always pre-order her novels, and since her original magnificent novel, Still Life which was written 19 years ago in 2005, I’ve counted on having an enjoyable day as I dive into her story. As usual, I love her characters, both the longstanding ones as well as her introduction of new people with her new plots. Her descriptive writing is always wonderful. Usually, the plots have been local ones rather than international espionage stories. However, this plot was a bigger and grander story which required more characters to carry the theme. I found that disappointing. With the plot being more complex and international in scope, I think it lost some of the intimacy for which Ms. Penny has been famous. So, this book was not my favorite. But all of my favorite authors have produced stories that seemed a bit off, so for the first time in 19 books, that is my opinion of The Grey Wolf. I will continue to pre-order her books and hope for another good day of Three Pines drama when she publishes her next book in 2005.

The Mailman

This book was scheduled for publication on 1/28/25. As you'll read below, I loved it.

The Mailman by Andrew Welsh-Huggins is his first book reviewed in this blog, but it looks like he’s written at least 13 other crime novels. Given how impressed I was by his newest novel, I have a new author whose works I want to explore. The book is subtitled “A Mercury Carter Adventure.”

This is a plot-driven story and Welsh-Huggins drops us right into the middle of the action in Chapter 1. Rachel Stanfield is an attorney in Indianapolis. She and her husband are in the midst of an argument about Rachel’s stepdaughter, 15-year-old Abby, who is not taking care of business with regard to her schoolwork which has been plummeting. It was into that setting that four armed and masked men entered Rachel’s house. One man, Finn, pulled off his mask and demanded that Rachel provide him with material from one of her cases, something she had been refusing to do, and initially, she told Finn he had no right to the information. When Finn put a gun to Glenn’s head, she backed off and provided the data to him. But, Finn wanted to know more about one person, Stella Wolford and Finn did not accept that Rachel didn’t know her current whereabouts. As threats were made by Finn, there was an unexpected knock on the door. It was Mercury or Merc Carter, an unimpressive and slightly built man of average height. He said that he had a package for Rachel which only she could sign for. And so, the adventure began.

 

Through the locked front door, Merc described that he was running on a tight schedule and he was insistent that only Rachel could sign for the package. At the moment, Finn had Rachel and Glenn tied up in the basement.

 

I loved the plot, but I don’t want to give away any more of the story. Especially at the beginning, this story had the feel of a Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novel. The protagonist, Merc Carter, is just going about his business when crazy trouble finds him. In reality, I found this book more compelling and spell-binding than any of the late Reacher novels. The author deserves that compliment. The plot was not overly complex and the characters, especially Merc, were most compelling.

 

This book gets a 5/5 in the murder mystery-thriller genre. When I get a little time and get caught up on my reading queue I’m planning on jumping back into another Welsh-Huggins novel.

Where the Bones Lie

 

Where The Bones Lie is the most recent of several crime novels authored by Nick Kolakowski, but it’s the first one I’ve read and the first reviewed in this blog. This novel will be released early in 2025. It’s really a classic detective thriller that was a page-turner, for sure.

 

Dash Fuller was the protagonist, and he had a history of working in Hollywood’s underbelly, working for the studios and protecting stars when they got in trouble. Basically, he was a fixer. At the moment the story begins in Los Angeles, Dash is at loose ends, being tired of the dirty work that he was expected to do, work that he apparently excelled at. Mostly, he would babysit stars while they finished movie projects, making sure they did not get too much into alcohol and drugs so they could finish their projects. His efforts at being a stand-up comic were total failures because he just wasn’t funny. Then his mentor in the dirty business of Hollywood, Manny, asked him to find a couple stars who had gone missing, Karl Quaid and Amber Rodney. Fuller quickly found them in their drug infested hideaway and was there when the stars were gunned down. In his last brief effort on a comedy stage, the day before their murders, he had announced that he was looking for Karl and Amber and he offered to pay for information about their whereabouts.

 

It was in response to his request for information about the stars and their next day murder that led to Madeline Ironwood appearing at Fuller’s door. Madeline was a beautiful young redhead who dressed in a most bizarre manner. She had decided he must be a resourceful man to have found the now deceased stars and she wanted to hire him to find out about her estranged father whose body had been found in a dried up lakebed in San Douglas, California. He had been stuffed into a barrel which was only discovered when the lake dried up due to the changing climate. Ken Ironwood’s remain consisted only of his skeleton and an old wallet.

 

This was a story about Fuller’s work to solve the mystery of his client’s father, the relationship between himself and Madeline, and the surprise involvement of Manny in this case which Fuller had not seen coming. I’ll leave the rest of the details to you to read about.

 

Kolakowski has presented us with some great characters about whom I’d like to read more. The plot is well-developed and nicely revealed. Certainly, there were good and unexpected twists. I love this genre and I love Kokakowski’s latest contribution to it. The novel gets my very strong recommendation.

Widow's Walk

 

Wido’s Walk, is the third book in a series, The Martha’s Vineyard Murders by Raemi A. Ray. I’ve read and reviewed the first two novels, and you can see those reviews in this blog. I continue to give high praise to the author. This story took a bit longer to grab me because Ms. Ray took enough time to fully develop the characters, which turned out to be quite necessary given the nature of the conclusion. I did not figure out who the ultimate villain was until the very end when the author revealed it. The story involved some of the people that we’ve learned about in the prior two novels, as well as a group of new characters that helped flesh out this new story.

 As occurred in the first two books, the British Lawyer Kyra Gibson found herself on the island of Martha’s Vineyard as the result of the murder of her father from whom she had long been estranged. Her law firm in England had been hired to deal with the sale of a business whose owners lived in the US, so rather than have a carefree vacation, Kyra found herself on Chappaquiddick, the neighboring island of Martha’s Vineyard, with all the principals of the sale of the valuable business. Some of those people were decidedly unpleasant. A huge estate had been rented for those people to close the deal during a weekend together.  There were also locals involved since servants were needed on the property, and Kyra already had a history with some of them, a history which was very troublesome. Just to add fuel to the evolving mystery, a massive storm struck the island causing the power to go out. They lost the internet and all means of communication with the outside world. They had no means to communicate with the police when the murders started to occur.

 

The closing sections of this story were fantastic – could not put it down. This series deserves my strong recommendation. You won’t be disappointed.

 

 

She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper

Nick and Nate McClusky. Brothers in arms. Older brother Nick taught Nate to follow him into crime. Mostly robberies. 

"When  you walk into a liquor store with a gun in your hand and a mask over your face, you rip the lid off the world. Time does some real Einstein shit. It streches; it shrinks."  

Nate ends up in a California prison for a short stint at ‘rehabilitation.’

The prison has a supermax wing for lifers. In solitary is Crazy Craig, the President of the Aryan Steel, the biggest dog in the white supremacy hierarchy of the California penal system. He has a brother in the joint who decides to get into a dustup with Nate (who is days from release on some legal technicality) . . . the two go at it and Crazy Craig’s brother ends up dead . . . prison goes on lockdown but after a week of failed investigation, the lockdown in lifted and Nate gets his release . . . within a day or two of release, the word is out that it was Nate who killed Craig's brother . . . Crazy Craig puts out a bounty to his Aryan Steel family . . . kill Nate . . . and his wife . . . and his daughter. When Nate is alerted to the bounty, he sets out to find his ex, Avis, and their daughter, the 11yo Polly.

First stop. Avis’ home and her husband – both dead. And not by a single shot to the head. No. Don't just kill them. Send Nate a message. They were both bludgeoned and tortured. Polly had gotten a ride from school that day and was late getting home. She finds Nate there, a man she barely knows, who whisks her up to put some distance between them and the Aryan Steel. He has to protect her and to teach her how to survive. And not only are they dodging the gang, they are also keeping their distance from Detective Park who is looking for Nate as a possible kidnapper.

It’s one town after another down the central valley of California. Each stop they run into an Aryan Steel member (or wanna-be) intent on cashing in on Crazy Craig’s call to action. 

"Looking down the barrel of a gun, you don't see the tip of the bullet. You just see darkness, like a preview of eternity."

After besting a few derelicts, Nate comes up with a plan. Instead of just killing each hunter and moving on, he decides to hit Aryan Steel where it hurts – their income. He hits cooking houses, drug warehouses, their ‘banks’ accumulating a tidy sum. His plan is to cut them off so hard that the kill order would be lifted so business could return to normal.

But Aryan Steel isn’t so easily reasoned with, and they press the chase harder deep into the desert to a town of wholesale meth cookers protected by a seriously crooked sheriff. The confrontation in the desert between the cookers, the sheriff, Aryan Steel, and Detective Park, each hell bent on being the first to get to Nate and Polly is the stuff of legend.

Boys and girls, this is a serious ball buster. Top shelf California Noir. A story of redemption and a renewal of family; of father protecting daughter and daughter turning the tables and protecting her dad. Where an ex-con and absent father discovers that he does indeed have feelings for a little girl and the little girl grows to worship this man she doesn't know but really does know. The ends that Nate will go to protect her will have you scratching your head and high-fiving their every success.

If you like newbies to the noir world like SA Cosby and Brian Panowich (all their books are reviewed here in MRB; just search for each author), you’ll need to add Jordan Harper to that short list. Harper’s 2^nd effort, Everybody Knows, received high praise from me. So high that I ran right out and got his first book . . . this one. When the chase hits the desert, send everyone away. Any interruptions will have you slamming and locking your door so you can finish.

This book was published in 2017 and won Harper the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. And a movie is in post-production now and looking for a distributor. Keep your eye/ears open. Assuming Hollywood doesn’t f*** this up, the movie will be a stone cold winner.

ECD

Tokyo Swindlers

 Tokyo Swindlers by Ko Shinjo is exactly what the title suggests. There are gangs of crooks who are attempting to illegally fake ownership of some of those properties valuable properties in downtown Tokyo and despite significant securities in place to prevent such thefts from happening, very bright swindlers were able to find loop holes and lies that would allow them to gain titles of the very valuable land in downtown Tokyo. The deals are fast moving, ownership only being briefly held, long enough to be sold to unsuspecting people. I think that anyone who is involved in any aspect of the real estate game anywhere would find this story to be fascinating. In southern California, the status of the real estate market, both residential and commercial, is a frequent topic of casual conversation, so the intrigue in this story probably is applicable to many people.

 

I thought the plot was good and the characters were most interesting. The only problem I had is a cultural one. I had trouble keeping the many Japanese name straight. I’m embarrassed to say that many of the names sound very similar to me. If the topic interests you, then have a look. This has been released as a movie on Netflix in July 2024.

Assume Nothing

 

Assume Nothing by Joshua Corin is an excellent YA read. The protagonist is a 15-year-old girl, Kat McCann, but the reader does not learn her name until a little ways into the book. Rather, she introduces herself by the username she uses in a specific AOL chatroom, KMcCann14. The chatroom is a key element in story since it is solely devoted to the mystery writer Carissa Miller who has written numerous murder mysteries which have been solved by the detective fictional detective Adrian Lescher. It’s in the chatroom that Kat meets Dev whose chatroom name is WmbleyLnDet, meant to pay honor to Lescher whose address in central London was on Wembley Lane.

 

The chatroom was filled with intense devotees of Carissa’s books who often played obscure trivia games about those novels. It was in the chatroom that Kat met Dev, and when they discovered they both lived in Boston, and they met so they could attend a lecture at Harvard by Alik Lisser who was the real life detective and criminologist about whom Lescher was created for the novels. We learn that Dev is 19 years old and is attending college.

 

As the book develops, we learn that Kat suffered multiple tragedies. Starting with her mother’s death and her father’s imprisonment, she had significant signs of post-traumatic stress and ongoing struggles with anxiety. She was just six years old when her mother was murdered and her father was convicted of having been the murderer, something that Kat was never willing to accept as a fact. She was quickly shipped off to live with her aunt and uncle. Over the course of the story, we’re told about the several other murders that were impacting Kat’s life. Eventually, Kat confessed to Dev that her mother’s murder had been the plot for one of Carissa’s books, a crime which Lisser had solved. At the age of 70, after having penned so many novels, Carissa suddenly disappeared and left no clue about what happened to her. The chatroom characters were distressed about the loss of their favorite mystery writer.

 

I don’t want to give away the plot, but I’ll tell you that the plot, subplots, main characters, and accessory characters are all well put together. There’s a major and unexpected plot event at the 1/3 mark of the book, and it took the rest of the novel to deal with that change.

 

I think this novel is one that my 11-year-old grandson would enjoy. He is reading at a level of sophistication that far exceeds his peers. Perhaps this story will help him see the joy in reading such mysteries. I liked this story and would give it a strong recommendation, especially to teen readers.

Open Season by Jonathan Kellerman

 

The adventures of the crime fighting duo, Dr. Alex Delaware and L.A. Detective Milo Sturgis continue in Open Season.

The body of a young starlet is dumped at an emergency room entrance of a decaying hospital in a seedy area of L.A.  She has been drugged and inspection of her social media leads the crime fighters to a likely suspect known for his misogyny and reputation for date rape.  Before the police can question him, he is shot to death with a 308 rifle.  The rifle used in this killing is quickly tied to other crimes and the M.O. is found to be consistent with several other murders around the country.  Alex goes to work developing a psychological profile while Milo turns his team loose on the now expanding suspect pool.  They think the killer is avenging the victims of men without boundaries but finding and capturing this vigilante takes all the skills Alex and Milo can muster.

Open Season is Kellerman’s fortieth Delaware/ Sturgis novel.  I have read them all and never tire of the formula… it’s all about the chase.  Kellerman is a master of engaging the reader and not letting go until the end.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance look.

The Reluctant Sheriff by Chris Offutt

MRB returns to the Kentucky hills where author Chris Offutt sets his Mick Harding books.

Mick has returned home to Rocksalt, KY to help family. His sister is the county sheriff now convalescing after being wounded in her leg in the line of duty. She deputizes Mick (and he then deputizes another Army buddy). Along with a couple others in the Sheriff’s office, Mick takes on the day to day minutiae that waddles through the door – vagrant in a barn (actually a deer), missing pets, noisy neighbors.

He's not without skills. He’s former Army CID but wasn’t interested in getting back into law enforcement until his sister was shot. Actually there are two parallel stories going on. The minor story involves Johnny Boy who killed someone. Mick quickly sent him off to Corsica to stay with an old MI6-type Mick knew from Afghanistan to help him get over his PTSD. The primary story involves a series of murders that may or may not be connected. Part of the connection is that a person of interest is his ex-wife’s current husband not to mention a bunch of Deliverance rejects. Outside business interests are trying to establish a foothold in the hills and are doing their best to muscle their way in.

Offutt is a widely respected southern writer who skillfully takes the reader into a world most of us never experience. This is the 4^th Mick Hardin novel reviewed by MRB and he has developed a loyal following. Solid books. Compelling storylines, Smoothly paced and written. He is also the author of Country Dark that I thought was downright spectacular. Offutt may not be a household name, but he is certainly worth checking out.

Thanks to Netgalley for the Advance Reviewer Copy. Estimated publication date is 25 March 2025.

East Coast Don

 

Everybody Knows by Jordan Harper

This 2023 copyright is quite topical, probably more so than the author realized while writing it. 

The title is part 3 of the underlying theme of this book: Nobody Talks. Everybody whispers. Everybody Knows. 

Mae Pruett works for a formidable PR firm in LA. She is sort of a specialist in that she is a ‘black bag’ publicist. When a client goes afoul of public opinion (or the law), she dives in deep to find a way to swing public opinion in another direction. She’s a critical piece of “The Beast” that feeds, sucks, manipulates, and coerces public opinion in favor of the client no matter the level of depravity.

Her boss wants to meet Mae off site. She thinks he may be making a play for her, but it’s really about mapping out a strategy for a particularly powerful, wealthy, and secretive client and the office walls have ears. When she arrives at the meeting, she finds her boss has been killed in what the cops are saying is a carjacking gone bad. The next day, cops corner the perp and put him down. Case closed.

But Mae, and her former boyfriend Chris (ex-LA County sheriff, and currently muscle for a global security company – think Blackwater) think otherwise. They begin with the killer, a newbie gangster and work their way up a ladder that gets progressively more degenerate (and wealthy) with each step in a ladder filed with drugs, human trafficking, prostitution, corrupt cops, racketeering, and money laundering. And with each rung, they run the risk of becoming another victim in a demented subculture that seems to permeate LA.

Gotta love what has become neo-noir. You may not like Mea and Chris, how they operate, what laws they bend, and the people they manipulate to get to those who feed The Beast.

We all read books that are ‘torn from the headlines’ and this is no exception. You’d have to be blind or in denial to not see Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein or P Diddy in this story. And I’m betting that the level of depravity presented in this book is just the tip of the Weinstein/Epstein/Diddy iceberg. If you think this might require readers to have a strong stomach, you might not be wrong. It’s not the violence. It’s the subject matter. 

The author is a former Edgar Award winner so you know this guy  knows how to write. I've already received his winning book, She Rides Shotgun. I'll be back with Harper's first in short order.  

East Coast Don

The Clandestine Education of Owen Roberts

 

The Clandestine Education of Owen Roberts is the first book in a trilogy by Richard Snyder. I had recently read the second book, Defector in Paradise, and I immediately knew I wanted to read the first one. Synder is a former intelligence officer who writes about the moral chaos of espionage. It is clear that this is a topic with which he is intimately familiar. This book starts as Owen Roberts graduates from spy school, or what the author referred to as the Schoolhouse. This was a school for non-CIA spies who were instead linked to the military intelligence operations. In fact, throughout the book there was great competition between the Agency and the Service.

 

While the new spies had been repeatedly told that an allegiance to the Service was an essential part of their assignments, from the beginning of his first assignment, the rookie spy Owen was repeatedly told by his senior partner that they would tell the Service what they wanted them to know, and they would sometimes make outright lies. There were always undercurrents to any information they were provided by the Service, and there was always the Agency who which was eager to take over their cases and always demanded to be kept informed about what they were doing and what they were planning. Owen and his partner Garret Langston, a senior operative were the protagonists of the story.  At the graduation from training, Garret had told the eighty newly minted spies that they would never figure out all angles of a case to which they were assigned. He said, “You never get the full story about anything or understand the full gauntlet of threats that await you as you sit alone in your hotel room far from the shores of the United States. Your agents will always lie to keep the money coming in so they can live the lift they think they deserve.” As Owen was being sent on his first mission, he learned that he was being sent to help an Iranian diplomat in Paris who wanted to defect.

 

In the course of the stories, there were murders and a suicide. Owen chose to help Garret settle an old score against a Russian agent, an action which was brutal and was far outside the assignment they had been sent to do. They kept this side hustle a secret from their bosses at the Service who demanded to know about every action they took. They encountered bad guys from the other side, one of whom had a beautiful sister that Owen fell in love with. I don’t need to give more away about the plot except to say that there were many twists in the story I did not see coming. It felt as if the reader was in the same position as the spies, not knowing all they needed to know in order to carry out their mission. Who was telling the truth and to whom were they telling it?

 

As this story came to an end, it was in a fantasy or hallucination that Owen had a conversation with his deceased cousin who had died on D-Day on the beaches at Normandy. As the adventure to rescue the Iranian diplomat was coming to an end, Owen struggled to justify his actions, and he heard his cousin say, “The horror in this world never stops coming at you. It’s a human avalanche of misery that never ends…. But horror, and the evil that comes with it, is like the devil, it is always there, full of grandiose deception, smiling faces, and powerful rhetoric, always changing as it hides behind injustice and grievance, using them as shield and sword. It uses those things to cloak the evil it does while wearing robes of white.”

 

I found author Snyder’s prose to be remarkable and he presents the dilemmas of the clandestine world in a perspective that makes me know he’s been there. Richard Snyder is a master storyteller, and now I eagerly await the third book in this trilogy about Owen Roberts.

Truth Over Tribe: Pledging Allegiance to the Lamb, Not the Donkey or Elephant

 Warning: Another book that is way out-of-genre.

I was recently contacted by a lifelong friend who wanted me to have a look at a book he had just finished reading, and then to have a discussion about it. The book is entitled Truth Over Tribe: Pledging Allegiance to the Lamb, Not the Donkey or Elephant. He admitted that he was having somewhat of a struggle with his lifetime affiliation with the Republican Party and the upcoming presidential election in which, if he was going to remain true to the party, or the Republican Tribe, that he would have to vote for Trump. My friend is a deeply Christian man who has lived his life by admirable standards, and he also lives in the midst of a red bubble. He admitted that he had been moved by recent declarations by Liz and Dick Chaney and Adam Kizinger to vote for Harris.

 

The book is written by two pastors, Patrick Keith Miller and Keith Simon, and they present a strong case about the dangers of tribalism which they define and explain. Much of their reasoning was based on biblical text with which I am not familiar. Regarding my friend, I find it fascinating that despite out very different perspectives about the source of our own spirituality, that we seemed to have arrived at the same point of view, that Trump does not deserve our votes, and Harris does.

 

The pastors have written a very readable book. I did get bogged down a bit in the Christian lingo and biblical quotes, but none the less it’s clear that the authors’ logic is sound. If the topic interests you and if you’re feeling a dilemma about the divisiveness that is present in our country today, then you might benefit from having a look at this book.

 

If nothing else, my friend and I are going to have ongoing interesting conversations. It seems that we are building a bridge between two very different bubbles, and I’m excited about that.

Call Me Hunter by Jim Shockey

Atria Books (imprint of Simon and Schuster) sent me a copy of this book. Another in the long line of products from the highly productive Emily Bestler Books.

A young reporter from Pinehurst, NC (think US Open Golf) finds a raw manuscript on her doorstep. She’s a bit hesitant to read it, but once she unwraps the package, she embarks on an investigation that is bound to change her life.

The subject of the book is a little boy with a unique ability. He’s able to spot ‘beauty’ be it art, published word (original copies only), and other things that someone might find to be ‘beautiful.’ The manuscript traces the growth of this boy through school, university, and beyond. He is absorbed into a shady and secret society whose goal is to find, obtain, preserve, and eventually sell these objects. It’s the ‘obtain’ aspect that tests the boy’s (and the reader’s) sensibilities and stomach for violence.

Our intrepid reporter takes on the task, with her goofy roommate, to trace the story line from NC through the US and Canada to follow this boy's attempt to separate himself from this society of art-obsessed killers and reach the meat of the surprise ending.

Now I’m an unapologetic supporter of anything published by Emily Bestler Books. But not this time. It took me the better part of a year, picking it up and setting it down, and still never finished. I could never get into what was, to me, one far-fetched story. I looked up other reviews on GoodReads.com. "International Bestseller!"  the website says in huge bold letters. Bottom line was that other readers either loved it or where like me, kind of confused and unimpressed.

But as with art, it’s all in the eye of the beholder, right? Don’t take my word for it. You might find it a fascinating ride. Me? Not my cup of tea. 

But I still love Emily Bestler Books.

East Coast Don.

In Too Deep by Lee Child and Andrew Child

Never gets old. Even after 29 books, the Jack Reacher story continues to roll on.

Somewhere near the Ozarks, Jack Reacher (no middle initial) is having a burger, coffee, and a slice of pie. Outside, it looks like a couple punks are trying to steal a car. Reacher’s sense of right/wrong won’t let him ignore them, steps outside and in his typical friendly manner, convinces the would-be thieves to rethink their plan.

The car owner is quite grateful and in the ensuing conversation learns that Reacher is headed toward New Orleans via his thump and a bus ticket. The grateful car owner offers Reacher a ride. While showing off what his car can do, the driver runs the car off the road. Driver dead. Reacher unconscious. No memory of the attempted car theft, the ride, of the crash.

Somehow, Reacher ends up in a hospital with a healthy case of retrograde amnesia and a casted broken wrist. A day in the hospital is more than Reacher can stand and makes his leave against medical advice.

His first task is to find out more about the driver. On second thought, that might not have been his best decision because he’s stumbled onto a small ‘gang’ of crooks who specialize in stealing/selling counterfeit or original artwork. And they’ve been pretty good at it.

One member of this gang is quite the online researcher. She directs her compadres on where to find and obtain said artwork. But she’s also hacked into something called Cone Enterprises and has hit on what could be the motherlode of motherlodes. A report whose contents are so explosive that they could name any price and sell it to enemies of the US. Reacher, a suspended Phoenix PD detective, and the FBI try to track down the report and keep it away from any form of prying eyes.

Good grief. This is the 29^th Jack Reacher book. And Child and Child still manage to keep the story fresh and current. This was a fast 3-day read for me. Saying it was a page-turner is trite. You just can’t wait to see where the next page will take you.

And if you’ve been living in a cave, Amazon Prime Studios has two seasons of Reacher for streaming. And no, Tom Cruise isn’t playing Reacher. Alan Ritchson (all 6’2” and 240 lbs of him) is carrying the weight of the franchise on his considerable shoulders. Season 3 is being shot now and a 4^th season has already received the green light. With 29 books, the Reacher character has plenty of source material.I've watched both seasons twice. A third is in my future.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance reviewer copy. Publication date is 22 OCT 2024 so reserve your copy now . . . not tomorrow. NOW.

East Coast Don