Storm Damage

 Storm Damage is the second book in the Sonny Marshall Thriller series written by Terry Bacon. This is an excellent and well-written story, and I’ve already downloaded the first novel in the series, Storm Warning. Sonny Marshall is a blues musician whose band has brought him considerable success. Most of his time is spent in the Bay Area of California, and he owns a music studio in San Francisco. His back story is important because it includes his family suffering a home invasion in which his older sister was brutally raped. He was only a boy at the time and came away with intense guilt, that he had failed to save her from the trauma. He promised himself he would not allow another innocent person to suffer. Sonny began an intense study of Marshall arts. A couple years later when his younger sister was being bullied by a group of boys, he followed her home from school and when they began their harassment of her, he took them on all by himself. Sonny brought the group down and they left his sister alone after that. Author Bacon called this a “white knight complex.”

There are many references in this second book, Storm Damage, to Sonny having repeated similar events in his adult life, but I’ll have to read the first book to learn about that. In this book, The Storm Lake Blues Band has just returned to the Bay Area from a tour. They were working on a new album which was due to be released the following month. Eric, the lead guitarist, had been hitting cocaine quite heavily. He went to a drug party only to try an unknown designer drug which led to his death. At the same time, there were several similar drug-related events around the Bay Area in which people were suddenly become homicidal – behavior which was totally foreign to their day-to-day personalities. The deaths were piling up and Sonny began to use his own contacts, including law enforcement, to track down the mysterious creator of this new substance.

Meanwhile, the author let us know more about Sonny’s personal life. His girlfriend, Katrina Hastings or Kat was a detective in Sacramento, and she had a daughter, Sara, of middle school age. Kat shared some of Sonny’s savior feelings, so she was able to tolerate his rescue behaviors. Even though Sonny and Kat seemed averse to talking about their future together, the book ends with the two of them moving together in Sonny’s apartment where the very talented Sara will be able to attend a special high school.

I found myself attracted to the author’s writing, and I’ll give you a one paragraph example:

When my former girlfriend, Marily Anne Crittenden, caught COVID in 2020, I spent a       week sleeping on the couch while she recovered in our bedroom. Nobody in the world knew what to do back then. Advice from the CDC changed every other week, and the president advised people to drink bleach and shine ultraviolet light up their ass. Mac wasn’t sick enough for a hospital, but my taking care of her was like a grease monkey arranging flowers

Bacon treats the reader to a rich cast of characters including Kat, Sara, his band members, members of law enforcement, and the drug-affected victims. One subplot had to do with replacing Eric with a new guitarist, and Bacon introduced the remarkable artist Le’Andre Kimani to fill Eric’s shoes. He wrote beautifully about the emotional process of producing new music. Now, I must impatiently wait for the third book in this promised series.

Close to Death

 Close to Death is the fifth of six books in the Hawthorne & Horowitz series written by Anthony Horowitz. I’ve already reviewed the first four books, so I need not report here what has drawn me to this series which has gotten my rave comments. This book is different from the others since the two protagonists do not appear in the book until about the 30-40% mark. Rather, the author Horowitz, distinct from his semi-fictionalized writer in the novels, provides us with a lot of background about the small and elite housing area near London, Riverview Close. Close is an English term for a small and relatively insular area of homes, the word coming from the word “enclosure.”

I’ll be brief. Once again there is a murder. While there has been very little turnover of the houses in the close, one of the houses went up for sale. It was purchased by Giles Kenworthy who very quickly becomes an irritant to all of the other neighbors, and it is Giles who is murdered with a crossbow shot into his throat. Detective Hawthorne comes to the scene to solve the murder, and Horowitz is there to gather material for his next novel. The reader is provided with a great cast, any of whom had a motive to kill Kenworthy. There are artful misdirections, and there was the usual tension between the two main players.

The sixth book is entitled A Deadly Episode, and I’m in line to get it, estimated at another seven weeks although there are 47 copies in use. I’ll impatiently wait for it to become available.

Long Lost Midwife

 Long Lost Midwife by Skye Smith is a type of novel that I rarely read. This is a period piece which occurs during the early 1930’s in St. Louis, and the main themes are racism and misogyny. As a result of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state and even though more than 100 years had passed since then, St. Louis remained a totally segregated state. Former slaves had been freed, but the racial divide was intact. Although African-Americans were hired as employees by whites, any socializing between the races was forbidden. At the same time, in a convention of absolute hypocrisy like the owners of slaves before the Civil War, white men continued to seek black women as sexual partners. That sexual activity resulted in children of mixed races who were often rejected by both blacks and whites.

In St. Louis, there were separate police departments, separate churches, and separate hospitals. The disparity of wealth between most whites and blacks was significant. Although white families had transitioned from having babies at home, blacks continued to depend on midwives to deliver their new babies, and it was just such a situation that led to the main storyline.

Pamela Dorset, a young wealthy white woman was about to give birth to her first child. Although her husband, parents, and in-laws expected her to have the baby in the hospital, as the result of her own anxiety about the delivery, she wanted to have her former nanny, Miss Minnie, present at the time of her birth, and such was not allowed in the all-white hospitals. She did give birth to a healthy boy, but she seemed to have been lost in a severe postpartum depression. Her husband had no understanding of her emotional problems. She had not seen Ms. Minnie in many years, and no one would help her find Miss Minnie. Her desperation increased and her emotional status deteriorated.

It was in the midst of Pamela’s search that Miss Minnie (aka Minerva) was found in her own room with her throat slit. There seemed to be many possible killers, but most notable was Pamela’s father. It was his secret that he had been constantly seeking black women to take to bed. Miss Minnie had been one of his early mistresses. He was desperate to keep that a secret, and given his status as one of the wealthiest men in the city, he certainly had the political power to keep his secret from being discovered and tried.

Because Pamela no longer believed in segregation, and she discovered that it was her father’s love affair with Miss Minnie that led to her own birth (and that of a brother). However, she was caught between her own family’s rejection of her, and she could never gain favor with the very blacks she supported. There was also a story about a little black girl who would mysteriously appear at Pamela’s emotionally critical moments. She was never sure if the girl was real or if she was merely hallucinating the presence of this child.

The book was thought provoking, and it would seem that the multiracial society in the United States, in many ways, has made little progress regarding racisim in the last 200 years since the Missouri Compromise. The author succeeded in portraying the agony of racism and mysogeny for all parties.

The Twist of a Knife

 The fourth of six books in Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne & Horowitz series is a bit different than those that preceded it. Once again, author Horowitz lies a path full of possible suspects, and the fictionalized Horowitz was always a step behind figuring out all the clues. In The Twist of a Knife, rather than have the fictionalized author sort of take the role of Watson, like in the Sherlock Holmes series, Horowitz himself was accused of murdering the critic who harshly critiqued his most recent play. Again, the antagonist for detective Hawthorne and his reluctant bibliographer Mr. Horowitz was the buffoon, Deputy Inspector Cara Grunshaw. Grunshaw is angry that Hawthorne had made such a fool of her in a prior case, and she is determined to get even with them. She provides an apt comedy figure for the seriousness of a bloody murder. After learning about all the possible suspects, the reader is led to a remarkable closing scene in which Hawthorne solves the case. All possible suspects have been called to a room where Hawthorne leads his understanding of what happened and then reveals the killer.

Once again, I’ve been successfully entertained by Horowitz’s plot, subplots and lively characters. This is a series that deserves to be read in the order of publication, and I’ve already begun the fifth book. I think this is delightful writing and you will be so happy that you chose to dive in.

A Line to Kill

 A Line to Kill is the third book in the six-book series written by Anthony Horowitz, the series being called Hawthorne & Horowitz. Please refer to my reviews of the first two books, The Word is Murder and The Sentence is Death. I’ve enjoyed Horowitz’s semi-fictionalization of himself as the unwilling biographer of ex-Detective Daniel Hawthorne. It is the real author’s intent to write something about the relationship between Hawthorne and himself, akin to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. In the novel, although it was Hawthorne who approached Horowitz to write books about him, he remains aloof from revealing details about his own life. So, the question that the fictional author constantly faces is how to write a book about a man who won’t reveal his own history and thought process. It is Hawthorne who can see and analyze clues in a manner that no one else can do. The fictional Horowitz is constantly frustrated by his inability to understand the clues and discovery process the way Hawthorne does.

In this novel, Horowitz has completed the first book in his series about Hawthorne, and they travel to a book festival on Alderney Island, which is just 12 miles off the coast of France, in the English Channel. The population of the small island is currently in an uproar over the plan to build an important relay station for underground cables. On the one hand, the plan would provide every inhabitant of the island with annual proceeds, but on the other hand, the construction process is likely to mar the scenic beauty of the island. The islanders are spit on the topic and anger abounds. The book festival is being sponsored by a wealthy man Charles le Mesurier, who would likely financially benefit from the installation which would happen on his lands. Charles is found murdered, and then his wife disappears.

There is a rich cast of characters, and as was the case with the first two books, the author provides very clever misdirection to the reader. There were other authors who were present for the festival, a man who Hawthorne had been accused of throwing down a flight of stairs causing him to be permanently disabled, and there were islanders who were extremely upset about the construction plan. There is wonderful misdirection provided by Horowitz. This is good stuff, and just like the first two novels, A Line to Kill gets my very favorable recommendation.

 

The Swiss Agent

 

The Swiss Agent, by Anna Pitoniak, is a true espionage/spy thriller. I haven’t read a good story like this in a long time. What’s different about the novel is that the two key figures are both women who have long careers with the CIA. The action in the book centers around the efforts by Bosnia to join NATO which is favored by the US and disfavored by Russia. It’s a story of great wealth and great bribes as both the superpowers are attempting to get Turkey to vote what is favorable to them. In the NATO charter, only one negative vote among all the NATO nations would be enough to kill the Bosnian effort. It’s clear that Turkey’s vote will go to the highest bidder, but trickery is required to get the money out of Russia at times when its funds are being blocked from transfer. Both women have struggled with being in a mostly male endeavor, with the cost to their personal lives as the result of being a spy, and with their ability to trust each other. Who is really an agent for the US and who is not? Who is playing a long game, and who is not? What do you do with a US President who is much more interested in doing what’s best for him as opposed to what might be best for his country.

This is a good and well written story. It certainly gets a strong recommendation from me.

 

The Sentence is Death

 The Sentence is Death is another NYTimes best seller. This is the second book in the Hawthorne & Horowitz six-book series. As previously described in my review of The Word is Murder, Author Anthony Horowitz fictionalizes himself as the biographer of private investigator Daniel Hawthorne. It was Hawthorne who approached Horowitz to write a book about him and his cases. Horowitz stated intent is to write in the mold of the Sherlock Holmes series in which Dr. Watson is Holmes partner who can never keep up with Holmes talent for solving crimes. Hawthorne in a Holmes-like fashion observes various details that others miss and then solves complicated crimes that baffles everyone else.

In this second novel, it’s a divorce lawyer, Richard Pryce, who has been killed, and the author presents a cast of characters who could have had a motive to kill the barrister. Once again, I listened to the audiobook format, and while the narrator, Rory Kinnear generally excels at performing the voices of so many different characters, his falsetto voice for Deputy Inspector Cara Grunshaw, is actually hysterical. Hawthorne made no secret of the fact that he thought she was an idiot, and the voice of Grunshaw fit his contempt for her.

Known as the “Blunt Razor” Pryce was famous for his absolute honesty even if it hurt the case for his own clients. In a nasty divorce case, one of his clients and the client’s wife were both hiding significant streams of income and assets from each other. Pryce had apparently discovered their lies and although the divorce matter had been settled, he seemed to be intent on reopening the matter, Both the husband and wife could have had a motive to kill him before he had made his revelations. There were other deaths like that of Gregory Taylor who apparently fell in front of a train, and the earlier death of Charles Richardson who died in a caving accident six years earlier. Pryce, Taylor, and Richardson had been college buddies.

There were multiple skillful misdirections by the author, so just like the first book and similar to the experiences of Watson and the fictionalized Horowitz, the real murderer was not revealed until the end of the book, and it was much to my surprise when author Horowitz revealed just who that was.

This second book was even more fun than the first. I’ve already started the third book, A Line to Kill, and I’ve downloaded the fourth, The Twist of a Knife. My advice, don’t you dare miss this series. It’s a delightful discovery for me.