The Killing in the Cafe: A Fethering Mystery by Simon Brett

The Killing in the Cafe: A Fethering Mystery. Severn House Publishers. March 2016. 192 pp.  ISBN#: 9781780290812.

Polly’s Cake Shop is a village bakery shop that is pure delectable muffins and pastries and a comforting place to spend some time with several cups of tea and one of the desserts.  It now appears it’s up for sale and it’s owner is the epitome of apathy when it comes to the sale of the shop, seeing it as time to end the financial venture and get out with as much money as she can get from the sale. 

The end of this business winds up compelling many residents of the town to form an action committee to save the shop, lest a commercial Starbucks wind up replacing the cozy little restaurant.  It’s a bizarre bunch of characters comprising this venture, but their goal is to have a group of volunteers take over running the same cake shop business as a community venture.  As members vie for control, the committee and other town residents are shocked to find a murder has occurred in their village.  Jude winds up being snagged to run the shop and Carole has mixed feelings about the whole affair.  This is the 17^th mystery that Jude and Carole, two friends of opposite character types, set out to solve.

Rather coincidentally, along comes an unknown business entrepreneur who volunteers to cash the renovation necessary for the project.  At first, the murdered man with a bullet in his temple is unknown but very quickly is identified and our two heroines begin to explore his background, as well as the original owner of the cake shop and some other connected characters.

The Killing in the Café… is an old-fashioned, clever mystery that keeps the reader guessing all the way to the end.  The quirkiness of the characters lends to the intrigue of it all and the who-done-it, eerie quality remains to the very surprising end.  Relationships run awry motivate the crime and provide a satisfying end that is ironic indeed! This is a stand-alone story but will make many readers want to read the other mystery novels in this series! Nicely plotted, Simon Brett.

Into the Dim by Janet B. Taylor

Into the Dim.  Janet B. Taylor. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. March 2016. 432 pp.  ISBN#: 9780544602007.

Hope Walton up to now has lived a very controlled life.  Her mother insists Hope be home-schooled as she has a photographic mind, remembering absolutely everything she reads.  Now, however, her mother has been gone for six months, believed to have died in a terrible earthquake.  Hope’s father has quickly remarried and it’s quite clear his new bride indicates it would be better to lose the burden of a grieving, angry daughter.  Hope therefore reluctantly accepts the invitation to visit her mother’s family in Scotland.  The shocking details she receives soon after arrival there plummet her into a phenomenal journey that will challenge everything she thinks she knows.

Hope’s Scottish family call themselves the Viators, those who have the ability and materials to travel backward in time.  Hope discovers this fact by accident when she is wandering throughout her aunt’s home and finds basement rooms full of clothing, jewelry, weapons and other artifacts from the 12^th Century.  Hope will be shocked beyond words to learn a secret that compels her to travel back to that time of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.  She and her relatives who travel with her have two quests to complete – to find a certain person and to secure an ancient stone with extremely special powers. 

To no surprise, another family member, who is a sworn enemy of Hope’s aunt, heads another group with the same purposes but with questionable purposes, ends that could literally change the entire history of mankind if successfully completed.

Before she left on the terrifying journey back in time, Hope had met a young teen who seemed the only person on earth to treat her as a friend.  Now she will meet him in the 12^th Century and is quite unsure whether he is friend or foe.

In the court of Henry and Elizabeth, Hope will win both support and starkly hostile opposition.  Who prevails in this war is what drives the complex plot of this time travel novel that reflects a personal and historical war.  Plenty of fierce action, dialogue and description pack these pages and keep the reader riveted until the last surprising pages!  Even a few obviously contrived scenes won’t stop the reader’s total engagement and desire to see how this tale unfolds.  There’s an indication as well that this is only the first novel in what will be a series! Nice!

The Promise of Forgiveness: A Novel by Marin Thomas

The Promise of Forgiveness: A Novel.  Marin Thomas. Penguin Group (USA). March 2016. 352 pp.  ISBN#: 9780451476296.

Ruby, now aged 31, seems to be a natural magnet for loser men.  As a result her daughter Mia is one angry teenager convinced her mother is totally selfish and has never given one thought to what Mia thinks or feels about their unstable life.  Her plan was to move to Kansas for a fresh start where she could focus specifically on her daughter’s upbringing. However, now Ruby has received a lawyer’s note telling her to come to see her real father, Hank McArthur, in the town of Unforgiven, Oklahoma.  The town’s name is obviously contrived but clearly appropriately named.  Ruby is distressed as she resents that her natural parents gave her up for adoption.  Meeting Hank, Ruby is determined to give him no easy way to her heart.

Little does Ruby or any reader, for that matter, realize that little by little, Mia and Hank begin to form a natural grandfather and granddaughter relationship.  Both are tart of tongue and Mia seems seriously concerned about the poor state of Hank’s health.  Hank would like Ruby to inherit his oil ranch but it seems someone else has different plans as different “accidents” start happening.  Mia is the smart one who senses someone else with devious ideas is orchestrating the mishaps.

Joe, a ranch hand, and Ruby begin to hit it off, but both have past stories that need to be released before they can let go to care for each other.  Mia, on the other hand, has Hank’s passionate love for horses.  He begins to teach Mia how to train them and care for them as the precious possessions these horses are.  This is really the highlight of this beautiful novel, filled with tender, funny and poignant moments the reader will love!

The Promise of Forgiveness is wonderful, contemporary fiction that is more than pleasing reading and memorable for the evolution of love that gradually but potently emerges! Very nicely done, Ms. Thomas!

The Changing Season: A Novel by Steven Manchester

The Changing Season: A Novel. Steven Manchester. The Story Plant. February 2016. 276 pp.  ISBN#: 9781611882261.

Billy was a typical Senior in high school, about to graduate, planning to go to college but totally oblivious as to what he was to study or do with the rest of his life.  His one obsessive love is his elderly dog, Jimmy, with whom he shares camping and other adventures.  Billy and his friends, Charlie and Mark get together frequently in Billy’s smelly, unkempt bedroom to play video games.  They are quite content.  Charlie and Mark have college plans for the future and are thinking of careers.  Billy seems totally out of the loop – at first!

The night of graduation, the key note speaker insists that the students will have to face the responsibility and consequences of their actions and decisions; Billy heard it all as more “blah, blah, blah,” never realizing his world was about to change.

Billy accepts a job as an assistant in a dog shelter which he enjoys due to the help and conversations he has with a mentor there. She’s realistic without being preachy which clears the way for Billy to truly “listen.”  On the other hand, Billy’s friend, Charlie, isn’t listening to anyone and he really needs to take advice.  In a fit of rage and jealousy, he acts out a rash action which shatters the world of a family.  Rather than tell the truth, Charlie buries himself in self-pity and fear.  While that happens, Billy finally meets a girl, Vicki, with whom he wholeheartedly falls in love.  She changes his world over the summer, but Billy is broken when an act of omission on his part makes Vicki drop him like a hot potato.

One could say more, but this is too amazing a story to ruin by dropping plot snippets.  Suffice to say, this is, like all of Steven Manchester’s novels, a terrific read.  While there is a somewhat contrived quality to the story, one still roots for the major and minor characters and is always deeply moved by the challenges and outcomes therein. Readers will love and recommend this story of love, loyalty, betrayal and truth!

The Widow: A Novel by Fiona Barton

The Widow: A Novel.  Fiona Barton. Penguin Group (USA). February 2016. 336 pp.  ISBN#: 9781101990261.

Jean Taylor’s husband, Glen, died very recently.  Since then, Jean’s been hiding out at home, a fearful, shaking, exhausted woman who dare not open the door to any of these vulture reporters who smell a harrowing story that will thrill the public and yield even more stories.  None of them are allowed entry, until Jean finds she has silently welcomed tabloid reporter, Kate Waters, into her living room.  Kate has a homey style that comforts Jean, makes her feel that out of everyone Kate would understand. Still, Jean isn’t talking at all.  Kate manages to get Jean out of her home and into a hotel, hoping that a new place will allow her to rest and eventually loosen up enough to talk about her late husband, Glen. 

Detective Inspector Bob Sparkes has a different case plaguing his mind.  A little girl, Bella Elliott, was playing in her front yard one minute and the next minute was gone.  The police haven’t been able to find two year-old little girl since her disappearance in 2006 in Southampton, England; and now four years later after innumerable conversations with Jean Taylor, the truth is about to be told.

Glen Taylor was the suspect at the time of the kidnapping but his wife Jean believed his denial of the crime.  This is truly a psychological crime novel and Jean is a pathetically timid wife who lives her life to please her husband, obeys his every suggestion as well as command, and fears his disapproval although he has never hit her or abused her in any way.  When he’s home, he spends a great deal of time working on his computer, but Jean has no idea what that work actually involves.  She herself works as a hairdresser in a beauty salon, a job that doesn’t thrill her very much.  So Glen is her world – a world that is about to come crashing down with mind-numbing truth and identity-crushing reality!

The Widow: A Novel is a very nicely plotted first thriller story by Fiona Barton!  The character studies say it all!

The Vatican Princess: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia by C. W. Gortner

The Vatican Princess: A Novel of Lucrezia Borgia.  C. W. Gortner. Ballantine Books/Penguin Random House LLC, New York. February 2016. 400 pp.  ISBN#: 9780345533975.

The Borgias: ruthless, perverted, calculating, infamous!  Lucrezia describes the infamy as a “poison in our blood.”  Some would say the family of Lucrezia was cursed. However, C. W. Gortner, after meticulous research, clearly places Lucrezia in the middle of a fictional world where her father, Rodrigo, bribes his way to the papacy as Pope Alexander VI and her mother Vannozza appears for the bounty to follow.  The whole family seems anxious to marry Lucrezia off to Spain despite the fact that she is really but a child entering her teens, not yet become a “blooded” woman.  So who is this young woman: saint, sinner or both?  We watch this woman brutally pass from the world of her father’s innocent adoration to eventually realizing just how severely her brothers hate each other and how manipulative her own father was and is in the late 15^th Century. Indeed, each member of this family, including the Pope’s mistress, make their own disasters!

The hatred between Juan and Cesare clearly parallels the larger turmoil raging across Europe as Spain and France look for the opportunity to invade Italy and destroy the Borgias.  Even the cities within Italy are constantly waging civil war and seeking foreign assistance to victory.  But the spoils of victory are not necessarily true for the Borgias as the Pope is always borrowing to escape looming debt and bankruptcy of the Vatican.  Lucrezia’s first husband, a Sforza, has little money but large expectations; as the reality looms, his true nature is cruelly revealed to Lucrezia along with that of her brother Juan.  Shocking scenes are the norm herein but one finds it impossible to stop flipping pages and wondering what in heaven will happen in this hellish Vatican world.

Murder, rape, theft and so much more follow within each new chapter.  Lucrezia will briefly find great love in her second husband, Alfonso, but her own treacherous silence will test that relationship to the maximum level! 

Juan, who is worshipped by his father, trusts no one and reveals a force of cruelty and perversion that makes him totally unlikeable and perpetually mistrusted. Cesare, who moves quickly from priest to Cardinal, would rather be a warrior for he also lusts for battle and vengeance.  Lucrezia after one particular scene realizes she must stay far away from Cesare.  The results of that scene will shock the reader many times as the complex, insane plot continues. While there is a touch of repetitive snarling throughout the story, there are brilliant and potent quotes to savor and remember.

The Vatican Princess… is a phenomenal and memorable read that will provoke much talk and controversy in the days to come.  Read it and be amazed at the power and depravity of this family that scurrilously left so much pain and passion in its wake.   

Back Blast: A Gray Man Novel by Mark Greany

Back Blast: A Gray Man Novel.  Mark Greany. Penguin Group (USA). February 2016. 528 pp.  ISBN#: 9780425282793.

CIA Operative Court Gentry has been running around the world, trying to evade those who follow him in order to kill him.  Court can’t understand why these people are those whom he used to work with.  Throughout the beginning of the novel, Court replays past cases in his mind, trying to figure out what he did that deserved a termination order. 

Now Court decides to turn it around and pursue those would-be killers, as he’d had to kill those who almost caught him.  Every death has added to his enemy’s determination to finish what they believe is a former agent gone rogue. So imagine their shock when they discover that Court has invaded a drug den in order to obtain the money and weapons he needs for his mission.  The bloody aftermath has the earmarks of his work all over it but in particular a number 6 etched in the dust, a symbol of the agent known as Sierra Six, Six, the Gray Man, or the most commonly used name, Violator.  Now he’s determined to discover his former superiors and colleagues to try to get out of them the reason for this hunt.

On the other side of the coin, we have Denny Carmichael, head of the National Clandestine Services.  He’s on top of the game and only one man is slotted for his job eventually.  Other men know Carmichael controls every agent and circumstances and fear crossing him.  But not one of them knows the real reason Carmichael is determined to end the life of Court.

In the pursuit of his hunt, Court winds up being responsible for killing more agents or former agents, but it also happens that a hidden sniper kills one of them and the news manipulates the account so that Court is blamed.  Court is wounded seriously but manages to patch himself together as he relentless pursues what he now realizes is more about Carmichael than it is Court.  Back Blast was the beginning of a game that stretched all the way to the Middle East and back to Washington, D.C.

Greany, the writer who co-authored many Tom Clancy novels, knows how to spin a riveting, pulse-racing plot that reads much like spy thriller novels of old, like those of Robert Ludlum.  For those who love crime novels or political thrillers, you certainly will be thrilled with this intense, fast-paced thriller fiction!  Good read for sure!