New V.I. Warshawski Sleuthing from Sara Paretsky, OVERBOARD

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“One of Vic’s friends makes a comment near the end that sums up why this investigator finds her work worth the effort: Max comments, ‘If everyone sat at home watching Netflix, we’d never have any justice in this life.’”

No good deed goes unpunished. Detective V.I. (Vic, or Victoria) Warshawski may have only let her dogs out for a short run, but they take off by the waterfront and find a half-dead young woman lying among the rocks. Of course Vic calls for emergency services, and by the time the fragile teen is getting help at the hospital, the private investigator has got trouble with the police, the hospital, and, most importantly, someone from the Chicago underworld who thinks the immigrant teen was carrying a vital small item and must have slipped it to V.I. during the rescue. Not so—but is anyone going to believe Vic, or is her life going to be repeatedly in jeopardy at every move she makes?

Of course, her life is never simple enough to just have one crisis underway: She’s also trying to provide protection for some aging Jewish friends whose synagogue is under attack. Oddly, there’s a big-money real estate deal offered for the old building. Is the vandalism connected, as a form of pressure? As she gradually begins to also see parallels between the two ongoing crises, Vic also suspects someone on the police force is involved with the mob and its money.

That’s enough to concern her friends, especially after one particular officer with a reputation for torture and menace targets Vic maliciously, with both language and force.

Her trusted advisor Lotty puts it bluntly: “It’s shocking, and deplorable, that you and this young man were molested,” Lotty said. “But, Victoria, please be realistic. If the police really are covering up a major crime, you can get yourself seriously wounded physically, on top of the degradation of a strip search.” When Lotty asks Vic to back off, for the sake of the friends who love her, it seems important to do so.

Yet other forces are in action: The rescued teen vanishes from the hospital; when Vic tracks down the youth’s Hungarian grandmother, she finds collusion between a nursing home and the black-ops police officers. More assaults on the synagogue distress Vic’s elderly friends to almost the breaking point. She clearly can’t help being pulled back into this dangerous mess, can she?

One of the pleasures of reading Sara Paretsky’s Warshawski novels is that despite the threats and pressure, there’s relatively little gore spread around, so the focus can stay on the perpetrators and their motives. Even the bent police pressure on Vic amounts to little more than battering her (although, granted, much worse gets threatened). Series readers will recognize the steady build-up of Vic’s insistence on justice at any cost, a reliable characteristic of these books. New to V.I. Warshawski? Relax and enjoy the well-plotted story and don’t worry about earlier titles—Parestsky doesn’t embed anything that calls for reading the other books, and her highly professional narrative makes it easy to catch Warshawski’s motivations and maneuvers. The quirks of the Chicago waterfront add to the book’s drama, and to the factors stacked up against this lone detective. But don’t take the “lone” notion too seriously: Vic’s willingness to be a friend, with all her heart, gains an equal return, and she’s well supported.

One of Vic’s friends makes a comment near the end that sums up why this investigator finds her work worth the effort, despite its risks and her often wounded body: Max comments, “If everyone sat at home watching Netflix, we’d never have any justice in this life.”

For Vic, that’s not going to be a problem.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Chicago Culinary Mystery: SMOTHERED, A WHIPPED AND SIPPED MYSTERY, G. P. Gottlieb

 G. P. (Galit) Gottlieb's first culinary mystery, Battered, won fans for both its Chicago neighborhood setting and its punchy, relentless amateur sleuth, Alene Baron. Owner of a café with a specialty in vegan, "cruelty-free" pastries, Alene has an unusual crew working for her: the sister and daughter of the previous owner, as well as some talented young people and her own old friend Ruthie. She knows her customers mostly by name, and otherwise by what they order or how they hang out (and most of them do hang out for a while). 

But nothing's exactly simple for her as the sequel, SMOTHERED, opens. Yes, she's started to date detective Frank Shaw, a nice by-product of his intervention in the earlier book. Yet her employees can be quirky and moody at a level that interferes with business; she's got three kids at home (and a nanny); and her father usually lives with her but at the moment is ill in a hospital.

On top of all this, her business neighbor, a scuzzy guy with a womanizing habit, is running a health gym that serves up smoothies and prepackaged snacks that are starting to rival her own food business. When the neighbor is found murdered, Alene has every incentive to solve the crime, so she won't be blamed.

Brace for roadblocks in her love life, of course, if Alene's involved with the detective on the case: "It felt weird to talk about plans for the evening while Frank was dealing with Stanley's death. Were their dates always going to be last-minute? And his partner Lee was with him."

Culinary mystery collectors will want this book (published in softcover by D. X. Varos) on their shelves (no recipes, though); so will Chicago-area crime fiction collectors, for the fun of local landmarks and neighborhoods. It does have two marked flaws -- an overabundance of unnecessary characters (to the extent that the book provides a character list before the story starts), and a number of genre-style hints of action or complication to follow that in fact are dropped abruptly, without explanation (even a romantic date that never takes place). Some focused editing would have helped a lot.

That said, the book is a good entry from an author whose professional training was actually in piano and voice; I hope she may bring in some of her expertise in those fields in future books, and I'll watch for those with interest. Publication for this one is scheduled for February 16, 2021.

 PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

A Delightful 1930s Mystery from Cheryl Honigford, HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS

What fun to have a second mystery in the "Viv and Charlie" series from Chicago author Cheryl Honigford! I loved her first, The Darkness Knows (an irresistible radio drama mystery with hints of the old radio series "The Shadow"), and HOMICIDE FOR THE HOLIDAYS is every bit as delicious -- a quick-paced amateur sleuth tale of the cash-strapped 1930s.

Vivian Witchell, a rising star in radio drama in the Windy City, has her eye on keeping the job she loves, no matter the pressure from home to step back into a more traditional woman's role, or the competition in the broadcasting studio, where flirtation is both a skill and a weapon. But at home, things have become complicated, and a discovery of both a hidden key and a wad of cash, with a threatening note, also threatens to undo the rosy glow Viv holds around her deceased father's life.

Fortunately, she's got a pro on her side: private detective Charlie Haverman. But that connection is also tangled with romance and passion, which Viv actually is supposed to be focusing entirely at her work relationship, where the radio drama says she's madly in love. Yep, it's complicated.

When her best friend Imogene casts doubt on Vivian's agonizing, it's tempting to call off the hunt and go out for a holiday hot chocolate instead.

Vivian frowned. She knew Imogene was right. Nothing she found in that drawer could possibly have any bearing on the present day. Still, something pricked at her conscience. Something about that envelope of money was wrong. The fact that her father had hidden the key to his own desk drawer was wrong.

Even worse, though, are the doubts that Charlie shares about Vivian's dad -- and soon she's in much hotter water, dreading a possible connection to the past crimes of Al Capone himself ... and whoever is running his operations now.

Every page of this madcap mystery has a fresh twist, and the frank urgency of Vivian's passion for Charlie adds a lively spice to the action. I had a ball reading the book -- even though I dread thinking of those Big Holidays cruising toward us already!

Well, if we can make the best of New Year's Eve the way Vivian finally does ... let's jazz it up! (Oh, you won't need to read the two titles in order. Set aside a shelf for the series, though, because I bet it will keep on rolling with great success.)

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Noir Crime Fiction from Tod Goldberg, GANGSTER NATION

I've always been tickled by those stories of really terrible criminals who set aside one part of their life in which to be nice -- even, to be generous, kind, loving. In some versions, I can hope the "good" part will gradually leach into the awful part and transform someone. Certainly that was one idea about Whitey Bulger during the long hunt for him and the discovery that he'd been living as someone's almost unnoticeable husband in a small ordinary-seeming retirement world. Real life, though, proved he hadn't changed underneath: still the brutal criminal who had no hesitation about killing, maiming, violating the social contract in the most violent ways.

Enter Rabbi David Cohen in GANGSTER NATION, the eagerly awaited sequel to Gangsterland by Tod Goldberg. There's no secret for readers about Rabbi David Cohen's original identity: He's a Chicago hitman named Sal Cupertine, who made one of the great escapes from capture, through plastic surgery and into a new life. Tenderly, Goldberg reveals the rabbi's attachment to his new life of attending committee meetings, listening to marriage problems, escorting families through their teen's bnei mitzvah processes and ceremonies. As he reflects on how uncomfortable he feels about solemnizing a marriage -- knowing that if his identity ever comes to light again, the married couple will feel unmarried and even besmirched -- it's tempting to wonder whether Sal has actually transformed, changed into a new person inside as well as outside.

Stop right there. Consider how this rabbi figures out how to get "Temple Beth Israel" through a tight funding period:

If someone missed two [tuition] payments, the Temple would start getting liens right away, none of that Fair Debt Reporting crap, the Temple getting every family to sign contracts allowing property liens, never mind the public shame aspect. Worst case scenario, David figured if someone had to accidentally get electrocuted at home to get their life insurance to pay the debt, well, then he'd go and f*** with their pool light. It hadn't come to that, thankfully, because the nice thing was that everyone was rich as f*** these days.

Count on a dark ride through this lively page-turner, and expect more than the usual share of violence (although not especially gory and without kiddie porn, thank goodness). Obviously there are plenty of grim chuckles too (especially if you've been part of an organized religion scenario), and a few heart-jerking moments of family love, distorted of course by gangster ethics.

Just released by Counterpoint, tightly written, and a good one to add to your noir shelf -- as well as any collection that favors Chicago or Las Vegas or Jewish dark fiction.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Exploring Immigration Through Crime Fiction, MIGUEL'S GIFT, Bruce Kading

Bruce Kader's first novel, MIGUEL'S GIFT, takes place mostly in the 1980s -- a good way to distance the issue of illegal immigration and enforced deportation from today's difficult political climate. At the same time, this crime novel, told mostly from the point of view of INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) agents, offers a fascinating view of the issues that have become today's fuel for flame.

Joining the INS in Chicago in the late 1980s without having taken the "old boys" route through Border Patrol first, Nick Hayden has the rookie cards stacked against him. Idealistic and "overeducated" for the job, Hayden really wants to fit in anyway. His enthusiasm and remain edgy and uncertain.

Still, he's almost managed to fit in with the investigative teams, when the recruitment of an inside agent among the "wets" (illegal Latin American immigrants) and his own commitment to the man at risk derail his confidence in the work. But he's been harboring some odd doubts anyway -- some from a secret past of his own. They show up in his subconscious, long before he meets Miguel Chavez:

Hayden usually didn't remember his dreams and made little effort to do so. To him they were mere flights of the imagination, not to be taken seriously. But there was one dream he'd begun to have almost every week, and it disturbed him. It would always begin in a desert, the sun blazing through a cloudless sky -- the peaks of dry, craggy mountains looming hazily in the distance. Several figures in brown robes, like those of Franciscan monks, shuffled slowly along a sandy path. ... Nick, from a distance, would call out to get their attention, but they couldn't hear him.

Kading's own pre-novelist career as a federal special agent took him into the INS, the EPA, and the FBI (what a combination!).  So I was fascinated by the emotions and choices he provided for his fictional agents. Knowing some people who work on this side of today's enforcement issues also kept me glued to the pages, even when the writing was a bit too much "telling" instead of showing, and conversations felt overly predictable. I found the mild suspense of the novel was heightened by my curiosity over how Kading would bring about the climax and where his protagonist would end up -- as well as Miguel and his family, of course!

So I recommend this book strongly as an emotionally honest way to look at both the human and the criminal sides of immigration crime. It's not always a strong book, but it's a much-needed one, and I'm glad it came my way -- from Academy Chicago, an imprint of the Chicago Review Press.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Mystery in Maine and Chicago, Clever and "Snarky," HUSBANDS AND LAP DOGS BREATHE THEIR LAST, David Steven Rappoport

Philanthropist Cumming Flynn Wanamaker and his husband live in contemporary Chicago, but their network of friends and locales extends to the coast of Maine. That turns out to be very helpful for this amateur sleuth, when he's the guest of a friend at a Chicago meeting of an occult gathering with delicious steampunk accents. When the speaker self-combusts, Cummings quickly receives an urgent requent to discover more of what had been going on under the table (so to speak) in the group, as well as to recover an item of jewelry that the speaker had flourished.

But Cummings has barely begun to investigate the odd couplings within the group when he gets a second request for his amateur sleuthing skills: His only friend in the rural town of Horeb, Maine, the "elderly, upper class New Englander" Ernestine Cutter, needs him at once to investigate a suspicious death in her own circle. In quick succession, Cummings realizes that not only do both deaths connect with authors (including a gay romance author compared with Barbara Cartland for his many works), but they also both relate somehow to William Reich's psychological explorations of "orgone," a sexual force long since ignored. How can the two deaths share so much, at such a distance from each other?

Between artful descriptions of Chicago classic architectures, "snarky" (the author and publisher's term) interactions among several sets of husbands, and explorations of the occult, this romp through motives and means is in turns a bit naughty and very entertaining. The book is David Steven Rappoport's debut, but he's no raw beginner himself -- author of two Off-Broadway plays, holder of a pair of master's degrees (one is in writing), and a full-time consultant for high-dollar nonprofit plans for health care and other missions, he deftly crafts a lively and often humorous tale, with a lively balance of red herrings and a memorable cast of bizarre characters. I liked Cumming in particular for his habit of solving his choice dilemmas with a combination of stopwatch and random selection. But he's also a dogged investigator who won't leave a stone unturned in the hunt to solve his cases.

HUSBANDS AND LAP DOGS BREATHE THEIR LAST is titled from Alexander Pope's poem "The Rape of the Lock." The pace is lively, the twists abundant, and the characters unstoppable (including in their romantic commitments). I considered it a good page-turner, keeping me well engaged and chuckling, in spite of a few leftover-from-revisions errors that the casual publisher, Mainly Murder Press, allowed to slide by. The book came out in e-version first, and today is the paperback release date; I'll be watching for the sequels, which are Dead Words, and Heidi on the Half Shell. 

Top Summer Suspense: THE GOOD GIRL, Mary Kubica

THE GOOD GIRL is a debut thriller from Mary Kubica, a married mom of two who lives outside Chicago and has a degree in history and American literature. Now, forget the author details and focus on the book -- because this is one of the summer's big winners.

When wealthy but unhappy Chicago socialite Eve Dennett gets a phone call from one of her daughter's colleagues at an inner-city school, she brushes off the caller's concern about Mia Dennett not showing up for work. As far as Eve and her judge husband are concerned, Mia is a disappointing daughter, confused about her role in the world, unwilling to meet her parents' expectations, and a bit of a flake. If she's not at her art-teaching do-gooder job, well, maybe she forgot.

Detective Gabe Hoffman's main concern at first is meeting his sergeant's demands on a maybe-missing-person report that involves such powerful people; "Don't f** this one up," was the order from above. Not that Gabe would do so deliberately. But balancing the unpleasant emotions of the two Dennett parents with their reluctant and partial information is a challenge, for sure.

And then there's Mia herself: We meet her early in the book, through her mother's eyes, in a jump of the timeline as the two of them head out of a post-trauma psych appointment, with Mia's impatient and abrasive father ready to drive them home. Clearly, Mia's badly damaged by whatever it was, and whoever it was, who caused her abduction. Where has she been? How did she get there? Who is responsible for this?

Kubica uses a highly unusual framework to pry open the story in all its emotions and facts, alternating not only the narrators and points of view, but also the time at which they are communicating: "Before" Mia's return, and "After." Each chapter is neatly labeled with speaker and time zone -- and tightly packed with tension, shock, anger, and mixed motives. It's clear that only discovering what really happened is likely to free up Mia, whose amnesia includes a new name for herself, as well as multiple levels of fear, even to as small a thing as the radio being too loud.

But getting to the truth requires opening the layers of Mia and her life, and Kubica holds these layers tightly in suspense, even as winter's ravages push the urgency of the discovery process. It isn't until the final chapters that all of the details so painstakingly assembled build to "what happened."

There are two minor drawbacks to the book -- the sometimes challenging before/after framing (you have to pay close attention), and the present-tense narration, which is coupled with each character missing a lot of information that the others have. Yet those become gradually part of its power as a narrative. And the book's positives -- its relentless pace, its flawless peeling back of the psyche, its sometimes shocking but always acutely portrayed versions of what love is and what love does -- make this an amazing debut, and a mystery I expect that I'll always remember and compare others to.

The publication release date is July 29 (two days from when I'm writing this); that's enough time to place your own pre-order, or, if you want to think about things a bit further first, to explore the author's website, here. THE GOOD GIRL reveals a lot of pain, and a comparable amount of love and loyalty. Definitely worth reading, whether you get to it within the summer reading season or let it linger on the shelf until the long evenings of autumn or even the fierce windy winter in which its memorable chain of actions is set. Published by Harlequin's mystery arm, MIRA -- another example of how this imprint is bring out some of today's best mysteries.