The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Warren Adams

Madame R** is ill, been that way for a long time. Now she’s dead. Died after drinking something while sleep walking through her husband's laboratory. Turns out it was a poison . . . and her husband had recently taken out five insurance policies on his wife.  Insurance investigator Ralph Henderson’s job is to review the case and the legitimacy of the claims. 

And, during her illness, 3 more people have died, quite possibly by Baron R**’s hand. 

The investigation is presented by Mr. Henderson as his report to the bosses (and to the reader). Page by page, report by report. No narrative. No description of surroundings, or feelings, or expectations, or evil plans.  Every bit of information that the insurance company has on the case is in a file folder sitting on a table, in chronological order, and we are starting at page one. 

Clever, huh? I thought so. Yes, it’s dry. It’s an insurance investigator’s report for crying out loud. What would you expect? And you know what makes it especially interesting? 

It’s an 1865 copyright. Actually, the story was originally begun in 1862 as an eight part serial in a British magazine of the time called Once A Week, which had ties to Charles Dickens. The author was listed as a ‘Charles Felix,’ but subsequent research identified Adams, the sole proprietor of the publisher of this story, as the author. 

And if the copyright date doesn’t catch your attention, consider that people who study this sort of thing have pinpointed The Notting Hill Mystery as the first mystery novel, ever . . . the index example of the genre. For no other reason, lovers of mysteries might consider trying to dig this up. And it’s not long at all. By today’s standards, this would be, at best, a novella. A Saturday morning on the deck.

The new edition is being released August 5, 2015. 

East Coast Don

Four Seats

Four Seats is Aaron Cooley’s second novel, and this is a remarkable thriller. The premise is that someone has blown up the Supreme Court building with four of the justices inside, all of whom were killed along with more than 100 other people. Cooley spins an incredible conspiracy tale, in a six-part novel, of the solving of the crime and the intrigue behind the replacement of the four murdered justices. This one is a barnburner, and given that it takes place in DC, I know East Coast Don will be on it in no time – I’m sure he’ll give a more comprehensive review. Jason Lancaster is the compelling protagonist. In setting up the story, Cooley jumps forward and backward in time from one subplot to the next, in a way that works. This one gets my strongest recommendation. Just to whet your appetite, see this promo from Amazon:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut-J7_r1O5Q. Rumor has it that the film rights have already been sold.

The English Spy

The English Spy is Daniel Silva’s 15^th novel in the Gabriel Allon series, the Israeli assassin who is about to become Chief of “The Office,” which is Israel’s equivalent of the CIA. And, it’s the fourth novel for his character, Christopher Keller, the assassin who has recently been employed by a mafia don on Corsica. As Allon is unwisely and dangerously engaged in what is apparently his last field action before moving permanently to the Office to replace the legendary Ari Shamron, this book takes us back to Keller’s original work in Ireland during The Troubles. The action was at his greatest as Silva led Allon and Keller into Bandit Country in Northern Ireland, which was once the most dangerous place in the world. I need not say more about the plot. Silva remains my favorite author of this genre of international intrigue and espionage. Silva seems to be setting up Keller as his new principal field agent after Allon has become too old to do so, even if Keller is leaving his work for the Mafia and taking a job with the English MI6. This should be a dynamite relationship as it unfolds over Silva’s ensuing novels. My advice: read Silva, start with his first one: The Kill Artist.

The Murderer's Daughter by Jonathan Kellerman

The Murderer’s Daughter by Jonathan Kellerman is a deviation from the author’s very successful Dr. Alex Delaware series.  In this standalone psychological thriller, thirty four year old Dr. Grace Blades is a highly regarded psychotherapist practicing in L.A.  Independently wealthy and an I.Q. off the charts, Dr. Blades has true compassion and a gift for helping adult patients who have experienced violence either against a loved one or against themselves.

 

Grace has had some traumatic life experiences of her own.  She witnesses the violent death of her parents at a young age then is passed around to numerous foster homes before arriving at a ranch run by an elderly woman, Ramona who sees Grace’s potential. Ramona engages her quirky psychology professor brother-in-law, Dr. Malcolm Bluestone to test Grace and to structure a home school curriculum specifically for her.  But while at the ranch, Grace witnesses more violence and ends up living with Professor Bluestone and his wife, Sophie.  Here Grace is nurtured academically and has all her physical needs met but remains emotionally detached and reclusive and yearns for independence.

 

After graduating from Harvard, Grace earns a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from USC (completing a six year program in four years) and begins treating patients.  Soon she is sought out by the most challenging patients.  But she develops some quirks of her own.  The occasional sexual encounter with a stranger seems to satisfy her sexual desires while avoiding emotional attachment.  One day one of her conquests shows up in her waiting room as a new patient.  Andrew Toner had lied to Grace just as she had to him.  Mutual embarrassment leaves them uncertain about any future appointments.  The next day Toner is found murdered with her business card in his shoe.  Grace is interviewed by the police and learns Toner’s true identity.  He has connections to her violent childhood and his visit to her office puts her in danger.  She immediately notices people following her.  Without proper evidence to report to the police, Grace turns sleuth, begins investigating Toner, and identifies the two men following her.  Shocked by what she has learned, she takes matters into her own hands in search of revenge and redemption.

Kellerman creates a fascinating character in Grace Blades.  Brilliant and compassionate as a competent psychologist but calculating and ruthless when faced with evil, Grace is a protagonist hard not to like.  She’s not perfect… we can all relate to that… but when it comes to fighting her demons, she is all in and all alone.  Kellerman does a great job of building the suspense and pulling you in by alternatively revealing snippets of Grace the adult and Grace the child.  As you learn more about Grace’s childhood, you are compelled to be a fan of Grace the avenger.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advanced look at the latest work from one of my favorite authors.

Scarred by Thomas Enger

Part III of the Henning Juul (of what I thought was a) Trilogy. Maybe not.

What do we know so far about Henning:

• he's divorced, 
• his ex's new man is Henning's co-worker,
• Henning's toddler son Jonas was killed in a fire at Henning's apartment, 
• his face is disfigured from burns in that fire,
• a guy who may or may not have good intel on who set the fire dies suddenly, 
• Henning's mom pretty much hates him but allows him in her apartment because he brings cigarettes and booze, 
• Henning's sister Trine, and mom's favorite, is the Justice Minister, but they haven't spoken to each other for over five years. 

That about does it. Wonderful life Henning has.

We are a couple weeks after what went down in Pierced. A Sunday. Henning is trying to relax a bit doing what he normally does - sitting in a nearby sports park. His cell phone jolts him back to Oslo that will dramatically change his coming week. The assignment editor at 123News.no wants him to cover a murder at one of the local nursing homes.

Sounds dull. Nothing newsworthy comes from the initial review of the crime scene, but he goes. Erna Pedersen was found in her wheelchair, strangled. Odd since she was so close to death anyway. A wall photo is smashed and another is missing. Oh, and she was mutilated . . . her knitting needles were hammered into her skull through her eyes.

Trine, Henning's sister, is blindsided by the media with an anonymous report of a sexual assault by her on a junior politician shortly after she became the Justice Minister. She retreats to the family cabin on Norway's coast without so much as a word to her husband, communication director, Prime Minister, anyone. She goes off the grid as much as a cabinet minister can.

Erna Pedersen was a schoolteacher. And not a very well-like one at that. She was tough and was not above embarrassing a student in front of the class if some tough love was needed. Anti-Pedersen graffiti was common on the walls of her school. Her family seems to be in the clear so maybe it was a past student. With 30+ years as a teacher, that's a pretty big haystack to be searching for a needle.

A nearly middle age woman's apartment has been broken in to. Two weeks later, she is found dead at home. Obviously a struggle. And a former student of Pedersen. Then a guy who volunteers with a visitation group that stopped in where Erna was living is found dead. Only a couple of the cops think all the killings are related.

Henning needs to do some human interest stories on the victims for followup pieces so he talks to friends and neighbors of the victims. Piece by piece we see how Henning seems to stay a pace or two ahead of the police until the investigations by Henning and the police intersect just in time for a hostage situation to bring these two disconnected stories together.

This is a terrific series. I read them out of order, II, then I, then III. I don't recommend doing that. While any can be a standalone book, if you commit to all three, read them in order. It helps with the development of the continuing relationships, such that they are, within family Juul.

So is it a trilogy? I say nay nay. Why? Because is a trilogy, we'd have answers to questions like why does Henning's mom hate Henning and praise Trine? What happened between Henning and Trine to cause them (Trine mostly) to essentially disown each other? And most importantly, what happened that fateful night when Jonas Juul was killed in that apartment fire, who was behind it, and why? Enger gives us some snippets of info, but not the full nine yards. So, I'm going out on a limb and say there is more of the Henning Juul saga ahead.

And I for one, couldn't be more pleased. Enger is a masterful storyteller, which I think must be hard given the dark, foreboding nature of a story that is treacherously "claustrophobic with secrets and threats." I'm guessing that Henning should come face to face with the facts behind the fire very soon. Stay tuned.

East Coast Don

Radiant Angel by Nelson DeMille

The Diplomatic Surveillance Group is a contract arm of the FBI. The job is simple. Watch diplomats that the FBI is curious about and report back what/where/when said diplomat is doing. Depending on the mark dictates the extent of the surveillance. 

John Corey, former NYDP detective, former Joint Anti-Terrorist Task Force, and probably 'former' a couple other corners of law enforcement, is now a part of the DSG and in charge of a team watching Vasily Petrov of the Soviet mission to the UN. Supposedly he's part of the mission's HR office. But given that his daddy is part of the old KGB and Vasily is a Colonel with lots of lethal experience in Chechnya, it's not likely he's logging hours and checking employee benefits. 

It's a Sunday morning in September. John has a new trainee with him, Tess Faraday, and they sit in their Blazer outside of the Soviet mission offices. Got a couple more agents in another car and more on foot. A car and driver are idling in front of the offices waiting for Petrov to go somewhere, anywhere. When Petrov appears, another HR underling (Viktor Gorsky, a known compatriot of Petrov and skilled assassin) and an unknown third looked to be dressed for a late summer beach party. Photos are taken and relayed back to John's bosses to ID the third guy.

Now these diplomats are limited to a 25 mile radius from the mission offices and when the car crosses over to Long Island and keeps driving, everyone's radar becomes more sensitive. This little line of cars heads far east out toward the Hamptons eventually entering the estate of Georgi Tamorov, one of those Russian oligarchs who got obscenely rich with the fall of the Soviet Union. And it is a party. Lots of Russians, prostitutes, loud music, booze, sun, and sand. The third guy is ID'd as a Dr. Urmanov, Russian nuclear physicist who, by the way, managed to enter the US under an alias.

Corey is the very definition of an 'ask for forgiveness, not permission' type and routinely acts by the seat of his pants (and probably why he has 'former' multiple times on his resume). The party is being catered so he and Tess corner the caterer into hiring two more employees for the day. The DSG is to surveil and not lose the target, so he needed to get on the property.

The party goes along for the day, but Petrov, Gorsky and Urmanov are sitting off and not socializing or drinking, the latter of which apparently is highly unusual for a Russian. Around sunset, an unmarked amphibious vehicle rolls up to the beach. The now three persons of interest board along with about a dozen of the ladies.

Supposedly headed for another party. This time aboard the massive luxury yacht belonging to a Prince of the Saudi royal family. But John's charge is to surveil and not lose his subject, so he calls on the local harbor police to search for the boat and it's destination, but it just disappears and the lineup of ships queueing up to enter New York harbors presents John with a needle in the haystack quandary especially when the yacht turns off all electronics and identity beacons effectively going dark to all authorities.

By the way, that Dr. Urmanov is an expert in miniaturizing electronics and things controlled by those miniature electronics.

I love DeMille and have read a number of his books over the years, mostly pre-blog. DeMille's not a member of the book-a-year club so when something new is released, it's probably worth the wait. He wrote what I think is one of the best espionage books ever, The Charm School (a must read for lovers of the genre). This is about #5 in his John Corey series and Corey is one of the more fascinating continuing characters going. A lovable cad who has no filter whatsoever with friends and foe alike. He says what we all wish we could think quick enough to say and acts decisively from gut instinct that only an NYPD detective can.

When I saw DeMille had a new book out, a Corey book at that, I quickly reserved it from the library. But with most every DeMille book, I hold my breath when I finally get it because DeMille has a history of these 600+ page monsters. But this one, at a brisk 308 pages, is practically a novella by DeMille's standards. And the 308 pages takes Corey from mid morning Sunday toward a 846am Monday deadline. Take my advice. Clear out a day or two for this book because you're not likely to be engaged in much else. DeMille tells one helluva a story that damn well better never happen.

East Coast Don

Lethal Code by Thomas Waite

Where would we be without the Internet and the rest of our power grid? What would happen if it was here today and gone tomorrow? Just like turning off a light switch.

A normal September Monday in the DC 'burbs. Lana Elkins, single mom, is struggling to get her 14yo daughter Emma set for school in an outfit that won't get either arrested when the lights flicker and go out in the kitchen, the house, the cul-de-sac, the neighborhood, the suburb, all of DC, the east coast . . . the entire country goes black. 

Lana isn't any ordinary soccer mom. She owns CyberFortress and does contract work for the NSA, specializing in digital security that Congress and the White House largely ignore. She knows this isn't some substation overload. Hackers. Big time hackers. Maybe even state-sponsored hackers. Trains collide, gas mains erupt, the mother of all traffic jams. Thousands die across the country. 

A Saudi-born American, Ruhi Mancur, is Director of Research at the Natural Resources Defense Council. An environmental lobby group. He is an American with no love for Islamic fundamentalists. But his cousin Ahmed, who bears a striking resemblance to OBL, is way high up in AQAP, al Qaeda Arab Peninsula and one of the most sought after terror planners by every Western intelligence agency. That blood connection puts Ruhi under the FBI's and the NSA's program of constant surveillance. After the power comes back, possible suspects to the attack include Ahmed and Ruhi's connection is blasted over the airwaves. Roving gangs of looters spot Ruhi and if not for the help of his neighbor (and wanna be girlfriend) Candace, might've been torn to pieces. Candace may be an intern on Capitol Hill, but was also an embassy guard in Afghanistan so she knows how to handle a gun. 

There is code amongst hackers: leave air travel and banks alone. The grid comes back online 24 hours to the second after all went black. An eerie voice announces across the TV feed that the last 24 hours were but a preview. In the coming days, the entire grid would not just be shut off. It would be destroyed. The US would be sent back to the 19th century and earlier. And this time, they won't be so nice. They'll cut off air travel, banking, nuclear power, but all that's just the appetizer. They also control labs around the country that house lethal viruses and the big one: the nuclear arsenal, which they've programmed to launch and hit American cities. The imminent and total destruction of America is at hand.

All that plus that the US is the primary target suggests a jihad factor. The US intelligence services round up suspects, Ruhi included, use extraordinary rendition techniques to find out what Ruhi has on his cousin. But the interrogators don't really want to know about Ahmed. They want to know what Ruhi can handle so he can be sent back to Riyadh, find his cousin and, with the help of Lana, uncover the cyber stronghold in order to hack the hackers and release control of the US networks.

Wow, that's a lot for one book. Waite starts us off with a push off a 100 mile/hour waterslide. No hope of stopping if you get going too fast. You start reading . . . and you are in. Better than our typical airplane read and if the next Lana Elkins book (Trident Code) is this good, Waite will leap into my power rotation of thriller writers. There were times when I had to remind myself to breathe. It's that gripping. Who cares if the hero isn't a walking bottle of pure testosterone. Rui, Lana, and daughter Emma, are as tough as they come.

You can bet I'm on the lookout for Trident Code.

East Coast Don