If you’ve ever wondered how to commit the perfect murder, this book will give you some clues. Much delightful mayhem occurs in these five short chapters, where we come to know the seemingly mild-mannered Maud, an elderly retiree in Göteborg, Sweden. Maud leads a rather comfortable but pedestrian life of solitude, which she will protect at …
Andrew Shaffer is responsible for Hope Never Dies: An Obama Biden Mystery. That’s right: Joe Biden and Barack Obama as a crime-fighting duo. Obama graciously inhabits the Sherlock Holmes role in this crisp and chatty crime caper, while Biden shows Watson a thing or two about how the sidekick should steal the show. Sure, it’s all …
A woman crosses a London street, walks into a funeral parlor and plans her own service. Six hours later she is strangled to death in her home. Did she know she was going to die? Did she plan her own murder? Was it suicide? Was it merely fate? Bad luck? Horowitz (Magpie Murders, PBS’s Midsomer Murders) has written himself as narrator into his latest …
Sometimes when I look back over the past few books I’ve read, I notice a common thread running through them. Might be a particular time period or historical event, a theme whether big or small, or frequently, a locale. And that’s why one corner of The Front Table is currently draped in the green, white …
Non-fiction for the cold, hard facts, fiction for flights of fancy. One grounds you while the other sets you spinning. Most of the time, maybe, but my experience this week perfectly inverts that paradigm. I’ve been reading a brand-new book from Oscar-winning documentarian Errol Morris, who is best known as the filmmaker behind such projects …
Throughout my career as a bookseller, one of my favorite duties was selecting the books to be displayed on the bookstore’s Front Table. Usually just inside the front door, a stack on that table was the best way to tell fellow readers “pick this one next.” Now that I’m retired, I no longer have such …
Seattle Mystery Bookshop closed at the end of September 2017, but it lives on in the hearts and memories of many fans. On April 1, former customers were delighted to find an update to the store’s blog– a fresh edition of the Newzine. (Really– it’s not an April Fool’s joke.) We are all still reading, …
I just love a mystery involving orphans, snowstorms, old houses on mountaintops, ghosts, stained glass, and smugglers, don’t you? Well, if you do, this story has all of these things and more. Milo thinks he’s settling in for a nice, relaxing holiday with his adoptive parents at their inn when his plans are disrupted by …
This book was recommended to me by a longtime friend. I trusted her judgment when she told me I would enjoy this author and book. Elena Hartwell captured my attention with One Dead, Two to Go. This is the first book in a series featuring a Jewish (but not practicing) private investigator in Bellingham in the northwest …
I have read all of Robert Dugoni‘s legal thrillers and police procedurals, and The Trapped Girl may be the best of them all. The book is the 4th in the series featuring Seattle Homicide Detective Tracy Crosswhite and her A Team of detectives. Mr. Dugoni continues to impress me with his increasingly better writing each time …
