Tag: Mystery

What You Never Knew – Jessica Hamilton

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Would you return to a family-owned island 30 years after an event that ripped your family apart? In Jessica Hamilton’s new psychological thriller What You Never Knew, Jane Bennett did just that….

When she was a child, June Bennett‘s family spent their summers on Avril Island in Lake Champlain. The Island had been gift to Avril Bennett from her new husband.

This family tradition ended tragically one night when June‘s father abruptly left his family. Now 30 years after that night, June discovers what she was told about her father‘s abrupt exit from their family may not have been the truth.

After the tragic death of her older sister May and her mother, June discovers that contrary to what she and May were told by their mother Avril Island was never sold after the family split apart!

So to help overcome her depression regarding the deaths and get her life back on track, June returns to Avril Island.

When she returns she discovers that the son of the  family’s handyman West Keen, has in fact, been taking care of their cottage. It seems that West also left the Island just ten days after Jane‘s father left his family.

Are the two disappearances connected?? The more June digs into the past the more she discovers there are “things she never knew“

About What You Never Knew

What You Never Knew is Jessica  Hamilton‘s debut as a novelist. She was born in Australia but grew up and resides in Canada. The book was published by Crooked Lane Books in April of 2021.

Thoughts About What You Never Knew

Overall, I thought What You Never Knew was a really good novel. The characters were well developed and there was a lot to like with each one.

Hamilton uses two narrators to tell the story. And while I’m not a fan of alternating narrators it works in this book. The narrators are June and her sister May (or May‘s spirit). It works because while May doesn’t know all that happened that night behause she has repressed those memories. she does know more than June.

Another aspect of the book, that bothered me. was the fact that June went to the Island ALONE! Then when she first visits the cottage it’s like they left it yesterday! It was 30 years…..no way these days the electrical and or pipes etc would still be in that house!

Then when Ezra Keen son of the handyman West shows up and it explains he has been taking care of and watching the place, I guess I felt better.

Overall, I found What You Never Knew a  well pace novel with a strong storyline and well-developed characters.

Sister Dear’s author Hannah Mary McKinnon‘s comment on the back cover of the box sums it up pretty well for me

Eerie and compulsive..this debut had me riveted right from the start. Well plotted and with  beautifully drawn characters, this is an excellent read.

Recommended to…..

Through the years What You Never Knew was not The type of book I normally read. My reads were manually either action thrillers from authors like Robert Ludlum , Brad Thor and Vince Flynn, or detective/private eye mysteries from folks like Janes Le Burke, William G Tapply or Lawrence Block.

However, lately I have read several psychological thrillers with involving families. So if I were recommending this book to othersI,  guess I would recommend it to fans of; Mary Kubica, Liv Constantine, Joshilyn Jackson and another new author Taylor Adams., and many more authors of this ilk unknown to me!!

My Rating

The Goodreads rating for this book was 3.77 out of 5. My Rating on Goodreads was 4.00 but if I could break it down farther it would probably be 3.85 or so. Really good but those little things still bother me somewhat. But I will still be on the lookout for Jessica Hamilton’s next book!

Links for the Further Exploration of the Books of Jessica Hamilton

Author’s Website
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Amazon
Goodreads

Green-Eyed Lady – Chuck Greaves

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Green-Eyed Lady –  Chuck Graves – Jack MacTaggart No 2

 

Green-Eyed Lady from Chuck Greaves has a great opening. Liberal Democratic candidate for the Senate in California Warren Burkett three weeks before the election, encounters a damsel in distress. The young lady’s pursue and keys have been stolen by an unknown assailant. Burkett offers to give the beautiful green-eyed lady a ride back to her mansion. Reminiscent of another Democrat, this one was elected President, Burkett’s libido doesn’t stop. He believes he has hit the mother lode with this young woman! So much so, he helps break into her mansion (remember her keys were in her purse, which was stolen!) But when the door to her bedroom bangs open,  where a lust-filled Burkett  lies in wait for a thankful young woman to repay her debt it’s not the damsel who enters the room, but the police. They had responded the break-in at the mansion! When the dust settles, the green-eyed lady is gone along with a 2 million dollar plus painting and  maybe Burkett’s hopes of winning the election!

In steps attorney Jack MacTaggart,, who is hired to defend Burkett and unravel the mystery! When the painting surfaces in a most unusual place, the election is rocked again! And it appears that MacTaggart has stepped into some deep, you now what, as he takes on not one but two swarmy politicians, a mobster, and an urban artist! This tale has lots of twists and turns and it’s hard to tell who the good guys are. Hint it may not be the politicians!!

I started this book early in the month and liked it, but I set aside, and I raced through both Alex Kava’s Breaking Creed and Parnell Hall’s Safari.When  I came back to the book, within a few pages of where I had left off, Greaves hooked me and he didn’t let go until the final pieces of the puzzle f ell into place! Douglas Preston says this about the book…..

“GREEN-EYED LADY by Chuck Greaves is the wickedest read of the year, smart, real, vivid as hell, and so plausible it could be in the Times. Greaves is a master of the language. I loved this book.”

Green-Eyed Lady is the second book in the Jack MacTaggart series. Book One is Hush Money which may soon be on its way to me from my library!!  Hush Money won the Southwest Writers International Writing Contest and was named a finalist for several national honors including the Rocky Award from Left Coast Crime, the Reviewers Choice Award from RT Book Reviews and the Audie Award from the Audio Publishers Association.

Bottom Line: Green-Eyed Lady was definitely a 4 star out of 5 book for me. I really enjoyed Jack MacTaggart and his associates. The story was well-crafted with lots of twists and turns and you really didn’t know who was responsible for the various murders, and there are a few. Mr. Greaves who was a trial lawyer for 25 years certainly knows both his stuff – both the law and writing!..So here I go again with another series to follow and one of the few that features a lawyer!!

The Lewis Man by Peter May – another winner!

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The Black House

The Lewis Man is the second book in Peter May’s wonderful Lewis Trilogy and in the words of The Guardian it is…..

“As good as its predecessor…not only a good mystery, but also a moving and evocative portrayal of a place where the weather is matched only by the church’s harsh patronage….”

The place is the Isles of Lewis, from the book’s  prologue….

On this storm lashed island three hours off the northwest coast of Scotland, what little soil exists gives the people their food and their heat. It also takes their dead. And very occasionally, as today, gives one up.

The body that it gave up is that of a nineteen year old male found in a peat bog during the annual peat harvest. The body is a typical bog body, Bodies found in peat bogs are sometimes perfectly preserved, retaining their skin and internal organs due to the unusual conditions of the surrounding area.

These bodies sometimes are thousands of years old! In this case it is the body of a nineteen year old boy, who was brutally murdered. He stabbed several times and had hos throat slit! The Elvis tatoo on his forearm though squashed any theories that the body was centuries old. Since the bodies internal organs were intact DNA was used to help determine who the boy was. Matched against DNA of male islanders (samples had been collected and tested a year prior see The Blackhouse) a match was found – Tormod MacDonald. Tormod is the father of Marsaili, the childhood sweetheart of Fin MacLeod. MacLeod is a recently retired Edinburgh police detective who has returned to Lewis to restore his family croft and maybe some personal relationships.

Tormod suffers from dementia and lives in a hazy world of past and present. Soon Fin and Marsaili are on a quest to find out who the bog boy was and how and why he was murdered.

The story of the murdered boy is told through the haze of Tormod’s dementia, as Tormod tells a tale of two brothers, neither of whom  Marsaili or other Lewis residents have any knowledge of, and reveals long lost and buried secrets that change everything

Marsaili thought about her past and ancestry! Last week, my wife sent the Facebook challenge to me to list 10 books that have stayed with me, The Blackhouse should have been included on that list and now The Lewis Man should be among those books also!

As the quote at the beginning of this post says, the book is not only a good mystery that is not unraveled until the close of the book, but also a wonderful portrayal of the harsh lives of the MacDonalds, MacLeods, Murrays and other families who live in the harsh environment found on the Isle of Lewis.

Scotsman Peter May now lives and writes in France. I have read several of his China Thrillers that feature Beijing detective Li Yan and American forensic pathologist Margaret Campbell and they are also great reads.

I have yet to read any of the books in his other series The Enzo Files which feature a Scottish forensic scientist Enzo MacLeod, but I should!!

The Lewis Man has won…

  • the Prix des Lecteurs of Le Télégramme newspaper in France, a 10,000 Euro prize judged by readers of the newspaper
  • the Prix des Lecteurs 2012 at Les Ancres Noires Festival, Le Havre, France.
  • the 2012 Prix International at the Polar&Co Festival, Cognac, France.

and was shortlisted for…

  • the UK Crime Writers’ Association Dagger in the Library Award for 2012
  • the Scottish Crime Book of the Year 2012
  • the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime novel of the Year 2013

So if you have never read a Peter May book grab a copy of  The Blackhouse, I do believe you will be moving quickly on to The Lewis Man!!  (Book 24 for 2014) (Grade 4.75 out of 5.0)

Book 17 – The Narrows – Michael Connelly

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Ok so the last book I read Nowhere to Run by C.J.Box was the 10th book in the Joe Pickett series and now book number 17 The Narrows by Michael Connelly also the 10th book in the series featuring  Harry Bosch only difference is that I have read all the books in the Pickett series and this is my first Harry Bosch book! I had started The Concrete Blonde book # 3 years ago and for one reason or another couldn’t get into it so I never tried to read another Connelly book (the series is now up to 14). What was I thinking! I enjoyed this book, liked both the writing style and Bosch’s character and will certainly read more, having picked up several last week at the library book sale.

The book starts with Harry Bosch, asked by the widow of his former friend Terry McCaleb to investigate what she feels is the murder of her husband. McCaleb’s heart medicine (he had had a heart transplant -the storyline of the book and movie Blood Work)  had been switch with shark cartilage pills leading to a heart attack.

Meanwhile, FBI agent Rachael Walling receives a call that she has dreaded for eight years! Eight years earlier she had been involved in the chase to track done a serial killer known as The Poet, who turned out to be her former mentor at the FBI Robert Backus. The Poet is back and operating in the Las Vegas area. Harry’s investigation into McCaleb’s death quickly puts him on to the trail of The Poet and soon Bosch and Walling must join forces to catch Backus!

Like I said I enjoyed this book and the final pages flew by and I am certainly going to read more Bosch novels. I have a lot of catching up to do!!

My bookshelf at Goodreads.com now holds 796 books – 4 more to 800!! Next up the new Body Farm book by Jefferson Bass The Bone Thief another favorite series featuring Bill Brockton and the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee and while I root for Bill Brockton, this Florida Gator can’t root for the Volunteers!