Reviewed By Liz

ISBN 0-312-35475-4

JIGSAW is the first book in the new Carroll Quint series. Carroll is the entertainment critic for a San Francisco paper. A native San Franciscan, he is the son of eccentric, divorced parents who still share a house. His father is a dapper local piano player and the toast of the ladies in town and his mother is a former Bond girl and the old friend of two murdered show business old-timers. The murderer has taken it upon himself to email notices of his Hitchcock-themed murders to Carroll, setting him up to find the bodies and become the prime suspect.

But Carroll has other problems – the newspaper’s new cutthroat editor has made communicating with the murderer in an effort to get an award-winning story his top priority, causing Carroll’s younger rival to eye his beloved entertainment job. And Carroll is also the main suspect in the theft of a valuable necklace that was stolen from a theater party he attended so he is being hounded by two police departments and an insurance investigator simultaneously. To top it all off, he has to take his new girlfriend home to meet Mom.

JIGSAW is an enjoyable read with interesting characters. Books about theater and movies are always appealing and Kennealy mixes trivia, nostalgia, and gossip with a masterful hand. Carroll Quint is a fun character and his mother is an outright treat. The book’s only read drawback in my opinion is the lack of potential suspects. Although Kennealy manages to muddy the waters quite a bit, it is still fairly obvious who the killer will turn out to be.

Favorite character? Quint’s mother, closely followed by his girlfriend. Did I guess it? Yes. Will I read another? Yes. I will definitely look for the next book in the Quint series and will check out Kennealy’s Nick Polo series.

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

Available at Amazon!

ISBN 1590584503

For Mark Rohr, a decorated Desert Storm vet, the last ten years have been filled with shady jobs and countless misadventures around the globe, the low point being his current stint as a bouncer at a nameless whorehouse bar in Thailand. When the beautiful and naïve Robin Antonucci arrives from the States and hires him to help find Shawn, her brother missing since the tsunami, Mark sees the chance to make some easy money. Guide her around until she gets bored or until the money runs out and she heads home. Simple.
But what should be an easy job in a tropical paradise quickly sours when they meet Pim, the stunning Thai prostitute who claims to be Shawn’s wife. Within hours two men are dead and Jarin, southern Thailand’s most notorious gangster, wants Mark to pay. Getting away alone would be difficult. Getting away with Robin and Pim, plus an old man and a small boy – the only members of Pim’s family to survive the tsunami – might prove impossible.
With nowhere to hide and no idea where they are heading, they set off around the Thai coast, racing through beach resorts and remote villages, staying one step ahead of Jarin’s men as they all move closer to finding the truth about Shawn.

Check out Charles’ web site at www.charlesbenoit.com.

Available at Amazon

New book releases are a feature provided for our readers by reviewedbyliz, but are not written by us. Where available, the descriptions of the books are those provided by the publisher.

ISBN 978-0-312-32300-4

DEATH AT THE OLD HOTEL is the third book in the Brian McNulty series. Brian is a bartender at the Savoy Hotel in New York City in the early 1990’s. The workers at the hotel are between a rock and a hard place - the hotel is a dumping ground for union malcontents who have had conflicts with the union management, but who put up with the low pay and difficult working conditions because they need to keep their jobs. But when the corruption at the hotel becomes obvious and the enforcers and the management start to whittle down their numbers, the hotel staff takes action and goes on strike. And Brian finds himself in charge of the striking staff.

The strikers’ solidarity is jeopardized by both conflicts amongst themselves and by two murders. Everyone on the picket line has a lot to lose – they are risking their jobs, deportation, and accusations of murder are in the air. Brian is feeling the pressure from them, the union, the police, and from his labor-organizer father. At some point, Brian realizes that this strike isn’t going to end well for everyone and that all he can do is find the best solution for himself and the bulk of his fellow workers.

In THE OLD HOTEL, Lehane has drawn on his previous experience as both a bartender and a union organizer to bring detail and a fantastic realism to this book. The situation is a tough one and there is an undercurrent of danger that colors all the actions of the characters, who alternate between determined, scrappy, and desperate.

Lehane’s writing is wonderful and there isn’t a character or situation that rings false. Because the characters seem so real, the risks also seem real and I was riveted, waiting to see how Brian would extricate himself and his fellows from jeopardy. And Lehane stays true to life to the end, which, like real life, isn’t happy for everyone.

Favorite character? Brian himself. Did I guess it? No – and my single complaint about this book would be that we don’t get the crucial piece if information until right near the end. Will I read another? Yes.

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

Available at Amazon!

Welcome to the second Sample Chapter Sunday! Sample Chapter Sunday is the cure for the boring Sunday afternoons when you have no new reading material. You can swing by here and find links to sample chapters of mysteries by favorite authors and authors you haven’t read before.

Any mystery author is welcome to put a link to their online sample chapter by leaving a comment on this post. Hopefully, they will also give us their name, title of the book, and a brief description or synopsis to pique our interest.

We haven’t told a lot of people about SCS yet, so it is starting small and will grow as we go along. So tell your friends to come read and your favorite authors to come show off their sample chapters!

To see the access the sample chapters that the authors have posted links to, click on the COMMENTS link below.

ISBN 1-59058-326-4

THE RAGTIME KID is a historical mystery based on actual people and events surrounding Scott Joplin’s composition and publication of The Maple Leaf Rag in Sedalia, Missouri in 1899. The story is told through the eyes of Brun Campbell, a young white piano player who hears Scott Joplin’s “colored” Ragtime music and becomes obsessed with it and the composer. He leaves his home to study piano with Joplin in Sedalia and becomes involved in a murder case and an interracial struggle for control of the black composer’s music.

Until I read this book, I knew little about Joplin or Ragtime music, but I found this book fascinating. Karp has done a wonderful job of bringing to life a time and place that seems very distant to many us now. Karp’s Sedalia is a turbulent mixture of blacks and whites with strongly held feelings about the desired relations of the races – former Union and Confederate soldiers, freed slaves, freeborn blacks, abolitionists, and KKK members all live in this small town. And when Scott Joplin, a talented, educated black man, refuses to sell the rights to his music cheaply to a white man, it is like putting a match to a powder keg.

The thing I found so interesting about this book was the amount of historical fact that Karp has used in the story. He has basically created the mystery to suit and explain the fantastic and unprecedented events of 1899. While he did create several fictional characters for the story, Karp populated Sedalia with many of its actual inhabitants and businesses. Those of you who know more about Ragtime than I did may already know that Brun Campbell isn’t a fictional character, that he did study with Joplin in 1899, and was a professional musician for much of his life. Me? I was surprised.

While the resolution of the mystery is a little too sensational to ring true, Karp’s exploration of the motivations of the different historical characters is a delightful study of conflict and compromise. Frankly, I couldn’t put the book down because I wanted to find out how these real-life people from long ago turned out.

Favorite character? Dr. Walter Overstreet. Did I guess it? Mostly. Will I read another? This is the first book of a Ragtime trilogy and the quality of Karp’s writing and the ability to draw in the reader makes this a definite yes. I have to know how it ends!

You can find Larry Karp on the web www.larrykarp.com. On the web site you will find the first chapter of THE RAGTIME KID, several author interviews, upcoming appearances, and a listing and descriptions of Larry’s other titles.

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

Available at Amazon!

ISBN 0385518021

DEAD EX is the third Wollie Shelley book. Wollie is a greeting card designer, muralist, and reluctant professional dater and she returns with her off-beat L.A. friends and family. In this outing, one of her former lovers, David, is murdered and Wollie’s pal Joey is the prime suspect. Joey is also one of David’s former lovers and one of the prime beneficiaries of his will. Wollie tries to clear Joey while her friend hides out from the rabid press, the police, and her soon-to-be-ex-husband.

To exonerate Joey, Wollie has to find out a lot more than she ever wanted to about the inner workings and rivalries of a soap opera where David worked. And she falls back on her professional dating skills to do so, going out on televised dates with the male cast members. As usual, these are the “how not to” dating encounters that we have come to expect with disaster prone Wollie.

I thought DEAD EX was a little more serious in tone than the previous Wollie books, but there is still plenty of Wollie misadventure to amuse the reader. And between seriously bad hair days and flying glogg, Kozak shows us some really good writing. She is incredibly but subtly sensitive when she writes about Wollie’s institutionalized brother PB. Kozak balances Wollie’s love and devotion for PB with his sometimes frustrating behavior and naively charming worldview. PB is never exploited for laughs or ill-treated, but you see a genuine and natural humor as he interacts with the world at large.

And you can tell that Kozak has some really good female friends and has modelled Joey and Fredreeq after them. She has captured the essence of friends who stick by each other in a crisis and band together against all comers. And she does it in brief - the list of items that Wollie picks up for Joey when she is on the run from the paparazzi says it all.

Favorite character? Uncle Theo. Did I guess it? No. Will I read another? Absolutely.

Mystery Book Reviews by Liz at http://reviewedbyliz.com ©2007

Available at Amazon

I would like to send out a big thank you to the following authors who linked their sample chapters to our first Sample Chapter Sunday on extremely short notice:

Larry Karp - FIRST DO NO HARM

Sandra Parshall - DISTURBING THE DEAD

Evelyn David - MURDER OFF THE BOOKS

Gail Farrelly - CREAMED AT COMMENCEMENT: A GRADUATION MYSTERY

Betty Sullivan La Pierre - THE ENEMY STALKS

Jack Getze - BIG MONEY

Roberta Isleib - DEADLY ADVICE

L.L. Bartlett - MURDER ON THE MIND

Martha Reed - NATURE OF THE GRAVE

Karen Olson - DEAD OF THE DAY

Rick Mofina - A PERFECT GRAVE

Lillian Stewart Carl - THE BURNING GLASS

Lou Allin - BUSH POODLES ARE MURDER

Beth Groundwater - A REAL BASKET CASE

Maryann Miller - DOUBLETAKE

Jinx Schwartz - JUST ADD WATER

Some of these authors are returning favorites from the Summer Mystery Reading Challenge and some are new to reviewedbyliz. I happen to know that these sixteen authors have written a bunch of books and hopefully they will return for future Sample Chapter Sundays so we can sample them all.

If you didn’t make it all the way through the list, click on “Sample Chapter Sunday” under the categories listing to see the links again - and in the future, feel free to work backwards and read previous weeks.

Welcome to the first Sample Chapter Sunday! Sample Chapter Sunday is the cure for the boring Sunday afternoons when you have no new reading material. You can swing by here and find links to sample chapters of mysteries by favorite authors and authors you haven’t read before.

Any mystery author is welcome to put a link to their online sample chapter by leaving a comment on this post. Hopefully, they will also give us their name, title of the book, and a brief description or synopsis to pique our interest.

We haven’t told a lot of people about SCS yet, so it is starting small and will grow as we go along. So tell your friends to come read and your favorite authors to come show off their sample chapters!

To see the access the sample chapters that the authors have posted links to, click on the COMMENTS link below.

My mother will often start off a conversation with the words “So I had a brilliant idea…” I am going to borrow it for a moment.

So I had a brilliant idea that harkens back to the Sundays of my childhood. Those old-timers amongst us and those of us who grew up in “God’s Country” will remember blue laws - those who have no idea what blue laws are should check here.

For a devoted reader, there are few things worse than finishing up your last unread book late Saturday or early Sunday in an area where there are blue laws or where the tradition lives on. The library isn’t open, the bookstore isn’t open, and no book is going to appear by magic in your mailbox. Instead of reading something new and exciting, you end up re-reading a book from your personal library. When I was a kid, the Sunday afternoon book scavenge was a frequent event. The four members of my family would drift like restless spirits from bookshelf to bookshelf in search of something tasty. On a good day you would find an undiscovered treasure, but often you had to settle for something that wasn’t really what you wanted.

So for those Sunday afternoons when you are fresh out of books and really want some new reading material, we are going to introduce a new reviewedbyliz feature - Sample Chapter Sundays.

I was tickled pink to discover how many authors’ and publishers’ web sites had sample chapters of books available to read when we were doing the Summer Mystery Reading Challenge. The process of posting an author’s page would become an hours-long event if I was enticed by sample chapters from several books. These sample chapters are a great (free!) resource for readers who want to try before they buy and a great (free!) marketing idea for authors - because if we readers like the teaser, we will buy the book. But you have to find the sample chapters before you can read them, so…

On Sundays, we are going to put up an open invitation for mystery authors to post a link to a sample chapter of one of their books. It could be their new book, the first in their series, or even somewhere in the middle. We are going to start this Sunday and see who shows up. Since we haven’t told anyone we are doing this yet, it will probably start small. But tell your friends because sample chapters really are darn fun and a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Or even a Sunday morning. I think we will make the post available for comments on Saturday night (shall we say 8:00 p.m. Eastern?) so when we wake up Sunday morning it will seem as if the Sample Chapter Fairy has left us presents during the night.

See you on Sunday!

978-0425218013

TAPPED OUT - In the second book in the Jenny T. Partridge Dance Mystery Series, Jenny thinks filling in as a dance instructor on the Hollywood StarMakers Tour will be easy money-until someone makes it clear that they want her to shuffle off to Buffalo. When other instructors start disappearing, Jenny, with the very attractive Detective Tate spotting her, vows that the show will go on.

Check out heroine Jenny Partride’s web site at jennytpartridge.com.

Available at Amazon

New book releases are a feature provided for our readers by reviewedbyliz, but are not written by us. Where available, the descriptions of the books are those provided by the publisher.