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Murder at the Opera: A Capital Crimes Novel (Truman, Margaret, Capital Crimes Series.)

Margaret Truman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Margaret Truman, who knows where all the bodies are buried inside the Beltway, has written her most thrilling novel of suspense yet. Murder at the Opera features the popular crime-fighting couple Mac Smith and his wife, Annabel Reed-Smith, as they navigate the glitz, glamour, and grime that is Washington, D.C.

It ain’t over till the fat lady sings . . . but the show hasn’t even started yet when a diva is found dead. The soprano in question, a petite young Asian Canadian named Charise Lee, was scarcely a star at the Washington National Opera. But when the aspiring singer is stabbed in the heart backstage during rehearsals, she suddenly takes center stage.

Georgetown law professor Mac Smith thought he’d just be carrying a rapier in Tosca as a favor for his beloved Annabel, but now they’re both being pressured by the panicked theater board to unmask a killer. Providing accompaniment will be former homicide detective, current P.I., and eternal opera fan Raymond Pawkins.

Soon the Smiths find themselves dangerously improvising among an expanding cast of suspects with all sorts of scores to settle. What they uncover is an increasingly complex case reaching far beyond Washington to a dark world of informers and terror alerts in Iraq, and climaxing on a fateful night at the opera attended by none other than the President himself.


From the Hardcover edition.

Limitations

Scott Turow

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A Picador Paperback Original

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Presumed Innocent comes a compelling new legal mystery featuring George Mason from Personal Injuries. Originally commissioned and published by The New York Times Magazine, this edition contains additional material.

Life would seem to have gone well for George Mason. His days as a criminal defense lawyer are long behind him. At fifty-nine, he has sat as a judge on the Court of Appeals in Kindle County for nearly a decade. Yet, when a disturbing rape case is brought before him, the judge begins to question the very nature of the law and his role within it. What is troubling George Mason so deeply? Is it his wife's recent diagnosis? Or the strange and threatening e-mails he has started to receive? And what is it about this horrific case of sexual assault, now on trial in his courtroom, that has led him to question his fitness to judge?

In Limitations, Scott Turow, the master of the legal thriller, returns to Kindle County with a page-turning entertainment that asks the biggest questions of all. Ingeniously, and with great economy of style, Turow probes the limitations not only of the law but of human understanding itself.

Malice

Robert K. Tanenbaum

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Disappointing 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Having read many of the books in the Karp/Ciampi series, I was expecting a fast and harmless read, not great literature. This book fails to deliver on many fronts. It picks up where Counterplay, the writers last work, ended. There has been an event which took place at Saint Patricks Cathedral in New York which resulted in Butch having been shot and his Assailant killed by Marlene. The book opens with Butch Karp, in the hospital, recuperting from his wounds. As one would expect from this writer, the bad guys are not finished. Karp,while on medical leave, goes to Idaho in order to aid in the legal defense of his College roommates brother. Lucy hppens to be in the area with her Cowboy boyfriend. Marlene goes out to help and befriends a Basque sheepherder, whose daughter has disappeared. Surpringly enough, the many individual stories are pulled together about three-fourths of the way through the book. If the reader is unfamiliar with renegade Marlene, Truth and Justice Butch and Savant Lucy, stay away from this work. It does dot do well as a stand alone work and the characters are poorly developed and their motivations rather unclear. To a regular reader of the series, this is typical of the writer with frequent twists involving the plot existing. It is a convoluted and not a totally satisfying read.

Editorial Review:

Bestselling author Robert K. Tanenbaum pens his most suspenseful novel yet -- sending Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi on an investigation filled with twists and turns, gripping courtroom action, and a terrifying murder plot.

Taking on a shadowy terrorist cartel, New York DA Butch Karp struggles to uncover those responsible for planning the murders of innocent schoolchildren. Meanwhile, he must also travel to Idaho to help his college roommate's younger brother, who has been unfairly suspended as a college baseball coach. Joining her husband in Idaho, Marlene Ciampi soon befriends a Basque sheepherder who is searching for his daughter, whose disappearance may be related to Karp's case. And if that wasn't enough, the couple's daughter, Lucy, is furiously working to unmask an assassination attempt planned to occur in the heart of Manhattan -- a traitor's plot to further empower an evil criminal empire.

Midnight Clear: A Callahan Garrity Mystery (Callahan Garrity Mysteries)

Kathy Hogan Trocheck

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Christmas festivities and family bonding provide the backdrop in this seventh mystery featuring cleaning service owner-operator Callahan Garrity. While Callahan and her mother Edna are busy preparing trifle and a potent Garrity version of eggnog for their annual Christmas bash, Callahan's youngest brother, Brian, appears after a 10-year absence. Edna is thrilled, both with Brian and with the granddaughter he has presented; Callahan is more dubious, particularly when it becomes clear that her brother has been in town for well over a year and that he has taken the 3-year-old Maura without her mother's permission. Callahan, with pressure from Edna, agrees to help Brian fight the custody battle against his ex, but things only get more complicated once the woman is found stabbed to death. Police, not surprisingly, put Brian at the top of their list of likely suspects. After all, if he is willing to commit one felony by kidnapping his daughter, what's to prevent him from murdering her mother?

Despite overtones of O.J.--Brian is also accused of occasionally resorting to violence--there is much to enjoy here: Edna's toilet-training philosophy, Maura's precociousness, and the suburban South's peculiar social dimensions (just what constitutes white trash, anyway?) provide much to chuckle over. Callahan and her band of merry mop-bearers take on the police, Brian's mother-in-law, and even Brian himself to demonstrate his innocence so that he can stay out of jail and secure custody. Callahan is an admirable and entertaining heroine. Kathy Hogan Trocheck has a lighter touch than Sarah Paretsky or Sue Grafton, and Callahan is rarely as unforgivably foolhardy as counterparts V.I. Warshawski or Kinsey Milhone can be. With Callahan and her more charming relations at the novel's heart, Midnight Clear offers jolly holiday reading with both poignant and hilarious moments. --K. Crouch

Murder at the Washington Tribune: A Capital Crimes Novel (Truman, Margaret, Capital Crimes Series.)

Margaret Truman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

“Truman can write suspense with the best of them.”
–Larry King

“Satisfying . . . [a] solid mystery . . . a cautionary tale about ambition and a vote for journalistic integrity.”
–Publishers Weekly

At the big, aggressive Washington Tribune, a young woman, fresh out of journalism school, has been brutally strangled to death–and the hunt for her killer is making sensational headlines. Then a second woman is found dead. She, too, worked in the media. For veteran Trib reporter Joe Wilcox, the case strikes too close to home: His daughter is a beautiful rising TV news star. Seeing a chance to revive his free-falling career, Joe spearheads the Trib’s investigation and baits a trap for the murderer with a secret from his own past. Suddenly Joe is risking his career, his marriage, and even his daughter’s life by playing a dangerous game with a possible serial killer . . . one who hides in plain sight.

“Ripe with suspense, Truman’s mystery gets edgier with each page. . . . A captivating, fast-paced thriller.”
–Romantic Times

“Hooks the reader immediately.”
–The Ottawa Sun

Brat Farrar

Josephine Tey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Real Poser--morality plus--4.5 star value 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This is basically a wonderful period novel with an embedded mystery--with an overview of what might have been a mystery immediately revealed. But, the devil is in the details--providing accelerating suspense & an opportunity for Tey to again excel in her characterizations, dialog, descriptions of English life, etc. I am torn between a 4 & 5 star rating, but the explanation of the details at the end seems a bit thin. On the other hand, similar to "Miss Pym Disposes," the main character is faced with moral dilemma & the opportunity to play God--but this time acts differently. Assumptions are the delight of mystery authors! The interplay of the twin brothers is absorbing & the dichotomy between the twin sisters is interesting. Most of the characters are delightful--even the duplicitous Farrar. I wondered how Tey would manage the ending relationship with Eleanor--& she did it. The ending, as usual for a Tey, was explosive & (at least to a degree) unexpected. Again similar to "Miss Pym," we are given "incontrovertible proof" that's proven wrong. As Tey says herein, "If you thought about the unthinkable long enough it became quite reasonable."

Editorial Review:

Brat Farrar has been carefully coached to assume the identity of Patrick Ashby, heir to the Ashby fortune who disappeared when he was 13. Just when it seems that Brat will pull off the deception, he discovers the truth about Patrick's disappearance, a dark secret that threatens to tear apart the family and jeopardize Brat's carefully laid plans. Called "the best of its kind" by the New Yorker, Josephine Tey's classic is a tale of unrelenting suspense and tension.

The FRANCHISE AFFAIR

Josephine Tey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Though Josephine Tey is not, perhaps, as well known as Agatha Christie, her contribution to the Golden Age of mysteries is unquestioned. In contrast to Christie, Tey rejected formulas and long-running series in favor of experimentation with new settings and odd conjunctions of character and subject matter. Her historical tale The Daughter of Time is frequently cited as one of the greatest mysteries of all time.

The Franchise Affair resembles some of the best work of Poe in its introduction of an apparently inhuman evil in an otherwise sedate country setting. Robert Blair, a lawyer who prides himself on his ability to avoid work of any significance, is interrupted one evening by a phone call from Marion Sharpe. Ms. Sharpe and her mother live in a run-down estate known as the Franchise, and their lives drew little attention until Betty Kane charged them with an unthinkable crime. Ms. Kane, having disappeared for a month, now says that she was held captive in the attic of the Franchise during her entire absence. While her story seems absurd, her recollection of minute details about the interior of the house sway even Scotland Yard. Blair--who Ms. Sharpe has chosen for her defense because, as she says, he is "someone of my own sort"--must dust off his neurons and undertake some serious sleuthing if his client is to beat these serious charges. As with all fine mysteries, one has the sense of being in a sea of clues with a solution just out of reach. The Franchise Affair is a classic mystery, and also a superb record of country life in early twentieth century England. --Patrick O'Kelley

To Live & Die in Dixie (Callahan Garrity Mysteries)

Kathy Hogan Trocheck

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Tight plotting - generally a good read 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 16 people found this review helpful.

Try this author. She does not have the high public profile of some other female authors but she stands up there with the Graftons and Paretskys. This author has a lovely writing style and has created warm, believable characters. The mystery is compelling but I found myself wanting and enjoying more the dialogue and interaction between the characters.

Trocheck Can't BE Beat 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I have read all of Kathy Hogan Trocheck's books many many times. She is the best writer of fiction that I have ever read. Callahan is one great sleuth. Also be sure to check out Mary Kay Andrews who is also Kathy Hogan Trocheck.
This book is set in Atlanta and she makes you feel if you are right there with Callahan. If you are familiar with the area, you will recognize a lot of the places that she mentions.

GREAT BOOK!

Editorial Review:

While cleaning the home of Elliott Littlefield, housecleaner and part-time private detective Callahan Garrity stumbles upon the bloody body of a murdered woman and is hired by Littlefield to recover a priceless Civil War diary stolen by the killer. Reprint. PW.

Counterplay

Robert K. Tanenbaum

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 29 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

Thank goodness it's not just me! 1 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I read this book and immediately had to check the reviews to make sure that I wasn't crazy.

I am a long time fan of Butch and Marlene and was like, "WHAT THE ..." with the last two books. I was sure that I had missed the boat or something.

I always thought his writing was similar to Stephen King. While you certainly don't read these books to learn something (that would be the self-improvement section) ocassionally, there would be this great insight - like Marlene discussing the sacrifices women make without being noticed in "Reckless Endangerment" or the author's writing about how a subordinate should approach a supervisor with a problem "Immortal Certainty" (I think). These nuggets of wisdom would pop up and you were like, WOW - HOW COOL. This is totally entertaining, but with some depth.

Lately, I've felt like I'm reading a superhero comic book in longhand with no pictures. Still somewhat entertaining, but no depth whatsoever. And the fight scenes almost make me wish I was reading a comic book. I'm NOT a visual person. I can't picture them in my head. I try to skim past them and figure out who made it and who didn't.

Actually, these last books are so bad, I've started to critique things that I previously just accepted. I've always loved Marlene - she's my idol. This is the first time I've actually questioned how Marlene could be so violent and no one noticed (at the end when she shoots someone, I actually thought "She shot more people in this series than any actual police officer and she's just a citizen!") Not that I'm into gratuitous violence, but previously it was "just Marlene." Now that the book has gone so far over-the-top, I'm wonder if the whole series was stupid and I'm just now noticing. Hopefully it's just the last three books.

Thanks to everyone who wrote a comment that let me know that I wasn't crazy and that the books had seriously declined. Also, this was the first I'd heard of Michael Gruber ghost-writing. If this is true, then I just want to say...

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE COME BACK MICHAEL!!!!!

Editorial Review:

He's a political time bomb whose bid to become New York City's mayor was foiled by Butch Karp. Now Andrew Kane, awaiting trial for murder, escapes custody and stages a shocking and violent standoff in upstate New York. The manhunt is on for Kane before his plan for wide-scale destruction, targeting Karp and thousands of innocent lives, comes to pass. Karp's wife, Marlene Ciampi, is lured into an underworld of Russian gangsters whose ties to global terrorism pull her in over her head. For Butch and Marlene, survival depends on outwitting the world's most depraved criminal masterminds....

The Tattoo Murder Case (Soho crime)

Akimitsu Takagi

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Disturbing Series of Murders 4 out of 5 stars.
9 of 11 people found this review helpful.

I like the post-war Tokyo setting of this story. References are made to the horrors and trauma of war suffered by former Japanese soldiers. It also describes the wide discrepancy between different groups of people as they hold onto wealth and status, or madly scramble to grab them. We also see glimpses of black market and yakuza life styles. The murders are creepy and disturbing, and the psycho-sexual world of tattoo customers is nicely underlined. I'm not sure I quite believe the Boy Genius as a viable character, but I'm going to read the other books by Akimitsu Takagi as they become available.

Editorial Review:

If you read mysteries for insights into other cultures and different periods, this excellent translation of the first novel by Akimitsu Takagi, who became one of Japan's leading crime writers, is an eye-opener. In 1947 Toyko, the limbs of a murdered woman are discovered in a locked bathroom. Her torso--covered with intricately beautiful tattoos by her late father, a highly controversial artist--is missing. A doctor finds the body, and his detective brother is put in charge of the case. They bumble around until the doctor's friend, jokingly called "Boy Genius," leads them to the murderer. Fans of golden-age mysteries by S. S. Van Dine and John Dickson Carr should enjoy this unusual combination of ingredients.