Category Archives: Book Reviews

I really enjoyed reading Cheryl Hollon’s debut mystery, “Pane and Suffering”. My favorite genre of books is mystery and I have been working with stained glass off and on for the majority of my adult life. It was a real pleasure to have an author describe a craft so well that you knew that it was something that she actually did and enjoyed. Some crafty cozy mysteries lack that touch of reality.

In this story, Savannah Webb has to travel back home to close up her family’s stained glass business after her father unexpectedly passes away. When the old friend, Hugh (who was going to purchase the shop), also passes away, things begin to look suspicious.

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This was a terrific but really horrifying book to read. I have not read any of Karin Slaughter’s previous books (which is something that I will remedy soon), so I didn’t know what to expect. A thriller, yes, but a book that kept me glued to the page and left me with visuals in my head was not what I thought of with such a sweet and innocuous title.

The story is about three sisters and their father. One of the girls, Julia, goes missing years ago at age 19 and we read about the ensuing years in a journal that the father kept in the form of letters to her. The story about the remaining two sisters is in the present day, though we do hear their remembrances and thoughts about the past, too. The sisters are separated by something that occurred later but which has kept them apart for many years. When another young woman goes missing, the two of them are brought back together again and together they discover their true past and present.

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I really enjoyed this book. It was not a murder mystery, which is what I am used to, but instead a book in which Driscoll investigations (and most notably, Giulia) is asked to discover the ghost that is haunting a local bed and breakfast and to get it to depart.

Giulia and crew are very skeptical about the request but as it comes with a promised big paycheck, they take it on. Giulia and her husband, Frank, stay at the B&B posing as guests on a get-away vacation. Right from the start, bizarre things begin to happen. There are psychics involved, ghostly occurrences, and event attempted murders while Giulia is investigating and putting together her answer regarding the haunting.

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I have enjoyed reading Elly Griffiths’s Ruth Galloway mystery series and was happy to pick up her first book in a new series, “The Zig Zag Girl”. As it turns out, the two series really could not be more different from one another.

“The Zig Zag Girl” is set in 1950, post-WWII Brighton, England. The main characters in the story are a group of men who comprised The Magic Men, a group working with the British government to fool and thwart a possible German invasion of the northern coast.

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“Dark Waters” is a debut thriller by Chris Goff, a mystery writer with five books published under the name Christine Goff. I have not read any of her mysteries but will certainly consider doing so based on how much I enjoyed reading “Dark Waters”.

The book is set in current day Israel and has its fair share of political shenanigans. To the author’s credit, she presents all sides of the issues that face turmoil-ridden Middle East without taking a stance as to who is right or wrong.

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“The Scam” is the newest book in the Fox and O’Hare series by Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg. I’ve read the previous books and really enjoyed them and this is the best one yet.

The characters in the story bring Elizabeth Peter’s Vicky Bliss mysteries to mind, except that Kate O’Hare is a tough and well trained FBI agent. The background for these books is that Kate has been on the trail of master criminal Nicholas Fox for years and finally brought him down. Almost immediately, Nick is back out and working with the FBI and especially Kate to bring down other criminals around the world.

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“Plantation Shudders” is a debut mystery series by Ellen Byron. The setting is in a fictional and fairly small town, Pelican, in Louisiana within driving distance of New Orleans.

The sleuth in the story is Maggie Crozat. Maggie has moved home from New York City after her relationship of six years fell apart and her old boyfriend married someone else. Maggie is Pelican “royalty” as both sides of her family can trace their lineage back to plantation owners. Her mother’s family gave up their plantation to the state and Maggie is a tour guide at the old plantation, Doucet, as her main bread and butter job. She also helps out and lives at the ancestral home of her father’s family, the Crozat’s, who have turned their main plantation house into a bed and breakfast as a way to hang on to the property.

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“The Girl in the Maze” is an interesting and good debut book by R.K. Jackson. While I am not sure quite how to classify the story, Mr. Jackson was able to grab my attention and keep it attentively on the story from almost the beginning to the end.

The reason I mention I am not sure how to classify it is that there is a mystery component, a thriller/action style component, and finally more of a fiction/literature component.

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