Review by New York Times Review
Honestly, how hard can it be to write a likable hooker? (Give her a brutish ex-husband, have some thug hold her for ransom, and take her shopping on Rodeo Drive.) But it takes real talent to write a coyote with personality. Petty is up in the Hollywood Hills, waiting for a ride, when he sees two coyotes trotting down the middle of the road, "one of them shooting him a hateful yellow glare" as it ambles past. To add insult to injury, it smirks at him when he tries to shoo it away. Even inanimate objects come to life in Lange's world: "Tumbleweeds bounded across the road, flashing in the headlights like fleeing animals." The caper plot is tidier (and more violent) than Lange's usual free-form efforts, with a solid back story about Army buddies conniving to retrieve the cash they made from stolen goods ("everything from computers and printers to microwaves and washing machines") in Afghanistan. The book is most fun, though, when it focuses on Petty's clever ruses to separate the rubes from their life's savings. Through trial and error, the con man has learned that a yellow safety vest, a baseball cap and a clipboard constitute an all-purpose disguise for real estate scams. And the telephone is his friend when he just wants to rustle up a few bucks for breakfast. Lange's bread and butter are his quick studies of colorful characters, many of whom die here in unpleasant ways. So it's only fitting when those who are still alive at the end raise their glasses on New Year's Eve in a toast "to the lucky and the unlucky, the swindlers and the swindled, the living and the dead." ?? ace atkins and his devoted readers, Tibbehah County, Miss., is no less real than Yoknapatawpha County was to Laulkner and his followers. So the first thing you do with THE FALLEN (Putnam, $27) is take a quick head count to make sure all your favorite characters are still standing. Sheriff Quinn Colson is back in office and oblivious to the adulation of his deputy, Lillie Virgil. Dances are still held at Sammy Hagar's Red Rocker Bar and Grill, gossip still traded at the Lillin' Station diner. And fear not, Lannie Hathcock is still doing land-office business at Vienna's Place (formerly known as the Booby Trap and still the "best strip club south of Memphis"), where happy hour dances are still a reasonable $20 per lap. Tibbehah has been an outlaw haven since bootlegging days, so it's a professional insult when out-of-town robbers steal $192,000 from the Pirst National Bank. But even that major crime is overshadowed when two local girls go missing and everyone fears the worst. What Atkins understands is that regional mysteries can go only so far when updating local crime patterns. It's O.K. to rob the town bank, but you can't burn it to the ground. MEDIEVAL VENICE SPREADS out her treasures for religious pilgrims in S. D. Sykes's CITY OF MASKS (Pegasus Crime, $25.95) - not the aesthetic riches of La Serenissima or the material wealth of her Doges, but the kind of treasure that buys a place in the afterlife. If they hustle, pilgrims can amass heaps of indulgences by praying at iconic shrines containing "the feet of Mary the Egyptian, the ear of St. Paul the Apostle and the molar of Goliath." Oswald de Lacy, Lord Somershill of Kent and the amiable amateur sleuth in this series, has not come to the city for the shrines. De Lacy is a gambler, and Venice has some of the most infamous dens of iniquity in Europe. But once he's lost his purse, there's no sport left but to solve the murder of Enrico Bearpark, grandson of a great Venice patriarch who suspects the boy was killed by his male lover. "A murderer will hang in this city," the old man informs de Lacy, "but a sodomite is always burned." Needless to say, this investigation is an extremely sensitive one, even for a dab hand like de Lacy. Michael connelly introduces a new sleuth in the late show (Little, Brown, $28), a detective named Renée Ballard who can almost, if not quite, lift her own weight among the tough guys in the Los Angeles Police Department. Most nights are slow on the late shift, with Ballard looking for wandering Alzheimer's patients and signing off on suicides. But this new cop has a personal mission to find her late partner's killer without undermining the last case they worked together, one that she rightly calls "big evil." Worse, she's being pilloried in the press, thanks to false information being leaked by someone at her own station. There's nothing wrong with Ballard's case or her serious work habits. It's just that she doesn't seem to be having as much fun as all the guys. ? Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 30, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The first two mysteries in the Somershill Manor series focused on fourteenth-century rural England following an outbreak of the Great Plague. This third installment, still starring Oswald de Lacy, who became a too-young and too-unprepared Lord Somershill after his father and two older brothers died in the plague, follows Oswald to Venice in 1358, as he travels through Europe to try to outrun the mental darkness that has consumed him for years. Sykes' depiction of depression is one of the beauties of this book; she doesn't impose a modern perspective but instead gives Somershill's agony a presence, like a beast that is tracking him. Then Somershill trips over the mutilated body of a new friend in an alley, the grandson of the wealthy Englishman with whom Somershill is staying. Friendship and gambling debts compel Somershill to investigate the death for the grandfather's proffered fee. And we are plunged into Sykes' rich soup of Venetian intrigue (where even a casual trip to Piazza San Marco can result in imprisonment in the Doge's Palace), period detail, and increasingly intricate plotting, all with the deeply realized character of Lord Somershill fighting his own demons while investigating. A brilliant addition to the Somershill Manor novels.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Sykes's superior third Somershill Manor novel (after 2016's The Butcher Bird), Oswald de Lacy, Lord Somershill, and his mother embark on a journey to the Holy Land in 1357, but a war between Hungary and the Venetian Republic strands them for months in Venice, where they find a temporary home with an old family friend, the Englishman John Bearpark. Unfortunately, Oswald's presence in the city during the conflict arouses the suspicions of the authorities. His situation becomes even more perilous after a member of John's household is murdered, his face savagely butchered. Oswald's mother volunteers that he's had success in the past solving murders, and his host asks him to find the killer. Oswald, who has lost a lot of money gambling, agrees to sleuth for a fee large enough to cover his debt. Sykes's gamble in putting Oswald in unfamiliar terrain pays off, as she again blends a detailed immersion in the time period with a clever mystery plot line. Agent: Gordon Wise, Curtis Brown (U.K.). (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
It's 1355, and Oswald de Lacy, Lord -Somershill, is in Venice awaiting transport to the Holy Land on a pilgrim ship. But Oswald can't escape involvement in a murder investigation when he stumbles upon a dead man during a Venetian carnival. This third series outing (after The Butcher Bird) offers further insights into Lord Somershill and the past that bedevils him, along with sophisticated plotting, intrigue, and immersion in a fascinating historical setting.-ACT © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young man cannot escape his past no matter how far he runs.The carnival in Venice just before Lent of 1358 provides entertainment but no peace for Oswald de Lacy, Lord Somershill, whose trip to the Holy Land has stranded him and his mother in Venice because a war has halted all ships. They're staying at the home of John Bearpark, an old family friend. Bearpark's beautiful, much younger, and heavily pregnant wife, Filomena, is also there, along with two other pilgrims awaiting passage. Bearpark's grandson, Enrico, has been showing Oswald around Venice, and Oswald's gambling has put him deeply in debt to one of Enrico's friends, who demands payment within a week. After Oswald finds Enrico murdered, his mother brags about his past successes solving crimes (The Butcher Bird, 2016, etc.), and Bearpark engages him to find the killer, a task Oswald accepts only because he's desperate for money. Bearpark refuses to notify the authorities, and Oswald, who's already been questioned by them, agrees. Enrico's homosexuality was punishable by death in Venice, and Bearpark thinks his unknown lover killed him. With the help of Bearpark's clerk, Giovanni, Oswald travels around Venice searching for Filomena's vanished brother. Suffering from a deep melancholy, Oswald constantly feels that he's being watched, perhaps by the ghost of a depressed monkey he tried to rescue in London, but he can never bring himself to face what he fears. As he continues his investigation, he's once again detained and tortured by the authorities, who think he's a spy. Although he seems to be getting nowhere, he refuses to give up, and in the end, finding the truth sets him free from his despair. A Venice whose ancient glories still survive today provides the background for an investigation whose solution is secondary to identifying the cause of Oswald's angst. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
