Tag Archives: Mystery

Dead Easy shows us the internal workings of an FBI missing person’s case

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Dead Easy
by Arthur F. Nehrbass
Publisher: Onyx (October 1, 1993)
ISBN-10: 0451177045
ISBN-13: 978-0451177049
Paperback: 320 pages
Genres: Mystery and detective literature


“Dead Easy” is the story that every family denies will happen to them. When Jean Stockton opens her front door to two strangers in response to a claim that the strangers were there to deliver a message of need from her children, she never dreamt it would be the last trusting greeting that she would ever experience in her life.

The Florida Everglades play host to a whole new kind of wildlife when petty thief-turned kidnapper, Donald Stanley vents his inferiority complex based lust on Jean and leaves her to die. As Jean falls further away from reality in order to escape the horror of being eaten alive by small animals and insects, her husband works through his own guilt in an effort to work with authorities to save the life of his wife.

Mr. Nehrbass offers a brief glimpse into the mind of the victims as well as the criminals in this crime novel, but his main focus is on the internal workings of the FBI as they attempt to think one step ahead of a sadistic criminal looking for his “one big score”.

If you’re looking for gory details and psychological thrills, this isn’t the book for you. If you want to know about the lives and thought processes of well-trained agents who give up their personal lives in an effort to serve the greater good, then “Dead Easy” is just the book you’re looking for. The story itself is what you would expect of a petty thief with average intelligence trying to pull off something beyond his grasp. You won’t be overwhelmed with sensory detail as much as you may be fascinated by the level of control that the agents in charge have to exert over not only the investigation, but their own thoughts and emotions.

“Dead Easy” is a book for those interested in the details of crime, in what makes things tick and how much planning and cooperation can go into saving one single life. While the movement and storyline are somewhat hard to follow, the mechanical details are well developed and interesting enough to peak the curiosity of any lover of crime novels.

-Kathy Foust

Review of ‘A Sporting Murder’

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A Sporting Murder: Greg McKenzie Mystery No. 5
Chester D. Campbell
Night Shadows Press
ISBN: 978-0-9846044-0-1
240 pages
October, 2010
Detective Fiction

http://www.chesterdcampbell.com/

The Plot

A Sporting Murder is the fifth installment of the “Greg McKenzie mystery series” by octogenarian author Chester D. Campbell. It reunites the reader with Jill and Greg McKenzie, who are the owners and indomitable operators of McKenzie Investigations.

With a long track record of successful case resolutions under their belts, they are hired by a group of hardcore NHL fans to scope out the veracity of some rumors that suggest the NBA might be sending a team to their neck of the woods – and thereby encroaching on the NHL team fan base.

The plot thickens when a trusted source claims to have crucial information — only to be found murdered. Before long, there are bomb explosions, shady investment deals, some serious undercover investigating and a gift of cyanide.

The (masterfully) Tangled Web

Campbell knows how to spin a good yarn, and it shows. There are the murderous plot involving the NHL team and the engaging sub-plot of the man with a grudge. There is some back-story and some lovin’. Keeping all the balls in the air at all times, the parallel investigation makes for an exciting read, especially since there is never a shortage of action.

The protagonists are a charming couple of seasoned professionals (not the bumbling ‘chick lit’ characters that mystery writers of late seem to favor). They are also not the brooding private eyes with the haunting past, which make up pretty much the other half of the genre.

Just like the plot, they are straight forward in a most refreshing way, which leaves the darker twists and turns to the plot without allowing the main characters to get in the way. The story is a welcome departure from recent genre pieces, which automatically turns A Sporting Murder into a must-read.

Making a Holiday Buying List?

This is the quintessential cozy mystery that is suitable for all readers with a hankering for a good whodunit. Buy A Sporting Murder for grandma, the minister’s wife, that hard-to-buy-for co-worker or anyone else who is on that holiday shopping list of yours.

***

For the sake of full disclosure: let the kind reader please take notice that I received an advanced reading copy of A Sporting Murder – free of charge – from Mr. Chester D. Campbell himself.

The Queen of Bedlam by Robert McCammon

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The Queen of Bedlam
by Robert McCammon
Pocket Books, 2007
978-1-4165-7157-5
eBook, 655 pages
Historical Fiction/Mystery

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It’s 1702 and Matthew Corbett has been working as a personal secretary to Magistrate Nathaniel Powers of New York. When his employer suddenly announces he is retiring and sends the young man on an arranged job interview, Matthew realizes he has allowed himself to become complacent about his future. A growing town of approximately 5,000 people, the promise represented by New York is being considered by many: businessmen, financiers, politicians and criminals. Matthew now realizes he will have to do the same. So, when he’s offered a position with the Herrald Agency, perhaps the first private investigators to set up shop in the Colonies, Matthew recognizes it as a serious opportunity for which he is well suited.

(For those of you who don’t know, Matthew Corbett was introduced in 2002 in a two-volume suspense novel called Speaks The Nightbird. Working as a scrivener-apprentice to Isaac Woodward, a magistrate in Carolina, the two men came to the village of Fount Royal to investigate the charges against Rachel Howarth, who apparently was a witch who killed her husband, a man of the cloth. No one but Matthew believed the woman innocent, and he had to single-handedly solve the murder in order to save Rachel from burning at the stake.)

Now, as Matthew Corbett embarks on his new career, he has three more mysteries to solve…

1. Discover the identity of the fiend New York’s printer of the Earwig (A 2 page rag that passes for a newspaper) has dubbed The Masker. Matthew was intent on solving this particular puzzle even before becoming a detective. But he’s given extra incentive by the widow of one of the victims, who offers him 10 shillings to track down the killer. His new employer is also interested in how Matthew will perform with respect to such a dangerous case.

2. Prove that  Eben Ausley, the headmaster of the local orphanage, has been abusing boys for many years. Matthew spent his childhood at this institution and knows the man is a monster.

3. Complete an agency job which requires that he and his new mentor, Hudson Greathouse, discover the identity of a long-time mental patient known only as The Queen Of Bedlam.

Using the tools of his time, Matthew unwittingly chases after a criminal mastermind so foul one can almost sense the detective will fail. And as we follow our hero through a cast of interesting characters (Matthew’s new mentor, Hudson Greathouse, who is what we, today, would call a mercenary; Zed, the hulking, tongueless slave who works for the city’s strange coroner; even the new Governor, who dresses in women’s clothing in deference to his cousin the Queen), McCammon also paints us a vivid picture what it must have been like to be at the birth of a new century and her greatest city.

I’ve read all four books in the Matthew Corbett series, and I have to say The Queen of Bedlam is my favourite. Robert McCammon takes three seemingly unrelated crimes and turns them into a sinister operation of epic proportions (and makes it seem easy to do). Dropped into the middle of this nightmare is the refreshing hero, Matthew Corbett, who is such a perfectly drawn character he has become a good friend to me. Now, add in meticulous and often surprising descriptions of New York city in its infancy and you have an historical novel of suspense like none other.

The reader will have great fun as McCammon masterfully weaves the many threads of his mystery, creates a fictional world with great skill and still manages to keep some of the playfulness you can find in some of his earlier works. Perhaps the reader will also be excited about the recent release of the fourth Corbett novel, Mister Slaughter.


Copyright © Clayton Clifford Bye 2010