A Deadly Episode

 Anthony Horowitz wrote The Word is Murder in 2017. As explained in my review of that book, it was the first in a six book series. This prolific author of novels and screenplays, wrote the six book, A Deadly Episode just this year (2026), and I saw a very favorable comment about that one in the New York Times Book Review, so I started with the first and worked my way through them in order. Because of its popularity, I had to wait almost two months before the audiobook became available on Libby. I’ve enjoyed this series so much, I jumped right into it as soon as I could.

Please see my reviews of the first five books. The protagonists were Daniel Hawthorne, the world’s greatest detective, and a fictionalized version of Mr. Horowitz himself. He had in mind that he wanted to write himself into a series like Sherlock Holmes and Watson. He has done that but these two characters were actually antagonistic to one another. They never achieved a comfortable friendship, and right to the end, Hawthorne allowed Horowitz to write about his his crime-solving work, but he resisted letting Horowitz really know anything about his private life. The research into Hawthorne became the fictional author’s detective work.

Horowitz brought this series to an end that was quite satisfying, but it was not the rapprochement I expected. Rather, it seemed that after six books about Hawthorne’s brilliant detective efforts, both characters decided they had quite enough of dealing with one another. It was clear there never could be a true friendship, a mutual appreciation of the skills that they each brought to this situation. In the sixth book, a murder took place on the movie set where one of the earlier books in the series was being filmed. At first, it was thought that it was Hawthorne who had been killed, but then the author revealed that the death had been that of the actor who was playing Hawthorne in the movie. Hawthorne had come to the movie set as a technical advisor and Horowitz was there to comment on the screenplay which he had not been asked to write. This last novel actually helped tie the whole series together, and I would encourage readers to go through them in order. Once again, the narrator Rory Kinnear was fantastic throughout the entire series.

 

Bruno, Chief of Police: A Novel of the French Countryside

 Bruno, Chief of Police is a current day story that quickly ties into a WWII event. Bruno is the protagonist who is the Chief of Police in a small rural village in France. In fact, he’s the only police officer in the village. This is the first in a 21-book series authored by Martin Walker. I chose to get the audiobook format, and the narrator is Robert Ian MacKenzie. Considering all the audiobooks that I’ve consumed, it’s not a small compliment to write that he’s a good as any narrator that I’ve heard, and that includes Tom Hanks in the book The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. It’s an 8-hour, 52-minute listen. This first novel was first published in 2008.

Bruno Courreges is fully enjoying the quiet life he’s living in St. Denis. Previously, he was seriously injured by a sniper during the Balkan War. He had a past love who was killed in the same battle in which he was injured. He arrived in St. Denis as a single young man. He came to know of two men who had been resistance fighters during WWII, but rather than having become great friends, they never acknowledged one another. Then one of them, an Algerian who had fought on behalf of the French resistance in WWII was brutally murdered, and a swastika was carved into the victim’s chest.

As a result of the murder and the investigation that followed, it became apparent that the village was harboring some longstanding secrets and racial prejudices. The murdered man was an Arab, and in France at the current time, there is a growing ultraright movement against all immigrants. Meanwhile, Bruno found himself becoming very attracted to a woman investigator who had been sent from Paris to St. Denis to help with the investigation.

The author provided a cast of the most interesting characters, and Bruno’s ability to interact with a wide variety people turned out to be one of the reasons that I came to like him so much. I’m quite excited to find yet another author with an extensive body of work that I can look forward to. enjoying It’s my plan to find the second book in the series, The Dark Vineyard, and if the second book is as good as the first, then I have a lot of joy coming my way.

Whisper Down the Lane

 Whisper Down the Lane by Clay McLeod Chapman is the ultimate horror novel, a genre that I generally avoid. However, this story was inspired by the real and most ugly McMartin Preschool drama of the 1980’s. Two issues led to me fighting my way through a story that is so difficult to read as the result of very real human trauma involved. One of those issues is that I knew a family that sent all three of their sons to the true McMartin Preschool (which had first opened in 1956 and closed in 1984 after allegations of horrific child abuse) in Manhattan Beach, California, so those three  boys were never part of the trauma that was to follow. The second issue was the belief at the time that recovered childhood memories of sexual trauma were always true. I am a part of the mental health personnel that struggled with the reality of such claims of abuse and the fallout that occurred in families as the result of the wide publicity that came as the result of such claims.

At the end of the story which occurred after extensive investigation and legal action, all charges were dropped against most of the accused employees of the preschool, and no one was convicted of any wrongdoing. The mental health practitioners that pried stories from the preschool children were known to have used manipulative methods to pull out false information they thought were true.

I thought the author captured the essence of some of the trauma. He touched on Satanic rituals, the issue of multiple personalities, and without labeling it as such, he described dissociative identity disorders. I continue to feel embarrassed by those professionals who fell victim to the mass hysteria that underlied the McMartin Prescrhool trials.

I really can’t recommend this book to anyone because of it’s content. It’s just too terrible.

Magpie Murders

 

I raved about the Hawthorne & Horowitz Series by Anthony Horowitz. He is a prolific writer in multiple genres. Magpie Murders is apparently his best-selling thriller, and I got it in the audiobook format. Once again, he writes about a successful fictional author of crime novels, Alan Conway. His editor, Susan Ryeland has been working with Conway for many years and has already edited many of his novels. However, she becomes suspicious that Conway’s new book actually contains a true-life hidden story of greed and murder. Conway wrote about a detective he named Atticus Pund who is reputed to be the best in the world at what he does. Given the story-within-a-story format, there are many characters to learn about, so the reader has multiple options to choose who the real suspect is. Horowitz is clever and fun. I plan to scan his long list of novels and choose another one in the near future. You won’t be disappointed.

Blunt Instrument

 Blunt Instrument by Amy Bloom made the list by Oprah for Daily Best Book for the Summer. I didn’t think it was that good. I stumbled across this novel in the NY Times Book Review. Ms. Bloom has not previously been reviewed in this blog.

Elderly Professor Bullfinch was bludgeoned to death with a bust of Daniel Hawthorne. It was possible that his death was linked to the struggles in his department at Cromwell University. Bullfinch was not a very popular guy. The university president hired a private detective in an attempt to solve the murder before the police did, therefore being able to keep the matter quiet. 

Although Ms. Bloom is a prolific author, this is her first crime novel. I think I’ll wait for her to develop better crime chops before I read this author again.

Storm Warning

 Storm Warning is the first novel new series which introduces Sonny Marshall as the protagonist. I had already read the second novel, Storm Damage. The story line is pretty good when his beautiful girlfriend ended their relationship because she could not tolerate Sonny’s fixation with helping people who desperately need help. Please read my rave review of the second novel. Sonny is not a cop, not a PI, not a detective. Rather, he’s a successful musician who places the saxophone in a blues and jazz band known as the Storm Lake Blues Band. It was when he was unable to protect his sister from a brutal assault that he began study marshal arts, skills that he would often make use of in his “white knight complex” efforts.

There was one aspect to the story line in the second novel which I did not like. The plot had to do with the kidnapping of exceptionally bright and beautiful children. When one five year old girl was taken and Sonny began learning as much as he could about it, he ran into a police detective in Sacramento, Detective Katrina Hastings, who had been pursuing the kidnapping of a girl for the last seven years. They teamed up and then fell in love. That was a good part of the book. They discovered a ranch in New Mexico where the kidnapped children were taken and being trained. The powers behind the abduction scene wanted to create a master race. It was there intent to make these highly intelligent children run the world because they believed without them, the world would come to a catastrophic end. It’s an old story line of which I’m quite tired.

However, Terry R. Bacon has created a great cast of characters who are quite different than most of the murder mysteries that I read. I really want more of this – hint – so when am I going to see book three?

Ransom

 

Ransom by Daniel Silva is his 26^th novel about Gabriel Allon, an Israeli spy and assassin who rose to being the director of an undercover department, but he has finally, allegedly, retired from such clandestine work. Allon spends his winters in his flat on the Grand Canal in Venice with his Venecian wife, Chiara, and his two children. In retirement, during the summer months, he retires to a remote cabin in Cornwall, England. He works as a restorer of old art masterpieces, the same skill he often used during his years as a spy to disguise his true identity.

This story starts out with four women, now in their 30s, who have been friends since their college days. One of them, Alice Winnter, married to Edward Knight, a man worth billions, and she typically pays for all expenses for their annual week-long reunions in only the most extravagant places. The current gathering is on the island of Ibiza. Alice is a dazzling socialite who has millions of followers on social medial. However, before the week is over, Alice gets in a major argument with one of her girlfriends, Phoebe. Alice then disappears, and her husband is desperate to find her. The story become one of kidnapping and an outrageous ransom demand, leading to Knight’s plea to Allon to find Alice.

The plot involves the discovery that Knight is only so wealthy because of his financial support by a Russian oligarch. However, there’s an important twist regarding the kidnapping, and Alice reveals she must divorce night because of his connection to the Russians who are currently at war with the Ukraine. When the ransom demand went unpaid, at first, it is assumed that Alice has been killed. The unwinding of the mystery of Alice’s disappearance is the meat of the story, including the undoing of her husband’s source of wealth.

I’ve often thought of myself as Silva’s best fan. He produces one new book a year which I usually read in a day or two, and then impatiently wait for another year before I get to enjoy the continuing saga of his protagonist. The life and adventures of Gabriel Allon have captivated me. However, this book was not up to Silva’s usual engaging stories. It’s not a simple task to follow any  hero through 26 books as he ages out of the very work that made him so interesting. The wonderful and rich descriptions of his travels was present, just as in all of his previous novels. However, as Allon gets into the tedious details of money laundering on behalf of Putin (never named in the body of the book), we’re taken through lengthy and boring details. The plot stalled until the very end of the novel. So, this particular novel was not one that I can recommend.