JANA DeLEON – Louisiana Longshot. (Miss) Fortune Redding #1. CreateSpace, paperback, June 2012. Also available in other formats.

First Sentence: I stepped off the Learjet at the private airfield just before dawn.

   When CIA agent Fortune Redding, assassinates the brother of a Middle Eastern arms distributor, ruining a perfectly good pair of Prada stiletto heels in the process, the result is a price on her head. To protect her, she is sent into hiding at the small-town Louisiana home of her Director’s niece, one Sandy Sue Morrow, a former beauty-pageant winner. What could go wrong when one is trying to fit in, solve a local murder, and stay undercover?

   Now and then, one hits a reading slump and needs something light and fun to get moving again. This was it. It was a delightful surprise and a lesson that one is never too old to listen to one’s mother when they recommend a book to read.

   DeLeon has a voice full of sass and sarcasm— “I stared down Main Street and grimaced. It was a cross between a Thomas Kinkade painting and a horror movie.” —and defines the protagonist. But beware, the neighbors, particularly Gertie and Ida Belle, who is president of the Sinful Ladies Society— “I looked outside and saw a crowd of gray-haired women bearing down on the restaurant. Sixteen of them, probably from the Jurassic period…” –aren’t what one expects either, which is so refreshing. In fact, none of the characters are, including Bones, the very old hound who is true to his name and finds the human bone initiating the murder investigation.

   The author captures a small town perfectly. one in ehich everyone knows your business almost before you do. Her pragmatism about religion is delightful— “Religion was by and large constructed by men, and I had yet to find a man who was logical. Deconstructing religious rules would definitely be a journey into madness.” But it is also the south where food plays an important part— “‘Give me the Seven Deadly Sins.”‘ Eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, gravy, pan-fried potatoes, and pancakes. I could practically hear my arteries hardening.”

   There are wonderful, laugh-out-loud moments, which is such a treat, especially when the scene isn’t silly, but clever and relatable. But there is also a wonderful moment of self-realization— “Good Lord. I was actually pretty. Like Mom.”

   It’s not all light and fun, however. There is a murder to solve, and a handsome cop with questions to evade. There are good insightful observations and truisms— “Clearly, people were the biggest complication life threw at you.” –well-done information on Fortune’s past, and surprises and twists right through to the end.

   Louisiana Longshot is a delightful book. DeLeon cleverly avoids a number of stereotypes. The characters are wonderful, the humor is perfect, not slapstick, and the twists are plentiful and well executed. It really is a well-done introduction to a series which should be fun to continue.

Rating: Very Good.

       The Fortune Redding series —

Louisiana Longshot (2012)
Lethal Bayou Beauty (2013)
Swamp Sniper (2013)
Swamp Team 3 (2014)
Gator Bait (2015)
Soliders of Fortune (2015)
Hurricane Force (2015)
Fortune Hunter (2016)
Later Gator (2016)
Hook, Line and Blinker (2017)
Change of Fortune (2018) e
Reel of Fortune (2018)

DOUG ALLYN – Icewater Mansions. Michelle Mitchell #1. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1995; paperback, 1996.

   Allyn is the author of two novels about a Hispanic Detroit policeman, and numerous short stories. His “real” job is musician in a rock band. I’ve read one of his previous novels, Motown Underground, and had mixed reactions.

   Michelle “Mitch” Mitchell is an underwater welder for oil rigs on the Texas Gold Coast, or at least she has been. Now she’s back in her hometown on the Northern Michigan coast of Lake Huron, straightening out the affairs of her estranged father who died in a recent auto accident, She’d intended to sell the saloon he owned and then go back to Texas, but questions keep arising about the way he died, and pieces of her old life keep bobbing to the surface — including the father of her child back in boarding school.

   The previous Allyn book I read had some decent hard-boiled prose, but I never liked the characters enough to get involved in the story. With this one, I did. Mitchell is a tough, appealing heroine, and Allyn di d a good job with the supporting cast as well.

   The prose was lean and direct, ad there was a good feel for the cold, hard country the story was set in. The novel won’t get nominated for any awards, but it was a good story, well told.

Bibliographic Update:   The Detroit policean Barry was referring to in the first paragraph of this review was Lupe Garcia, who appeared in just the two novels he mentioned, Motown Underground being one of them. Icewater Mansionsw was the first of three cases tackled by Michelle Mitchell. I’ll list them below.

   Allyn is much better known as a short story writer than as a novelist, with over 120 of them to his credit. From one online source: “[Allyn’s] first published story won the Robert L. Fish Award from Mystery Writers of America and subsequent critical response has been equally remarkable. He has won the coveted Edgar Allen Poe Award twice, (nine nominations) seven Derringer Awards for novellas, and the Ellery Queen Readers’ Award an unprecedented eleven times.”

      The Michelle Mitchell series —

Icewater Mansions. St Martin’s, 1995.
Black Water. St. Martin’s, 1996.
A Dance in Deep Water. St. Martin’s, 1997.

IONE SANDBERG SHRIBER – The Last Straw. Lt. Bill Grady #8. Rinehart & Co., Inc., hardcover, 1946. No paperback edition.

   I think that Ione Sandberg Shriber is a sure-fire choice for inclusion in the category of Little Known Mystery Writers. This is spite of the fact that between 1940 and 1953 she wrote a total of eleven mystery novels, eight of them cases solved by Lt. Bill Grady, whom I talked a bit about in my review of Pattern for Murder, number seven in the series, which appeared here on this blog late last year. (Follow the link.)

   The fellow named Hemingway who appeared in that one as Grady’s assistant/aide-de-camp does not show up in this one, and Grady himself has moved from the state of Ohio to the La Jolla, California area. But just as in the previous book, the book focuses on a dysfunctional family, a rather wealthy one, but money certainly does not guarantee happiness.

   The new wife of a much older man, now an invalid, is in fact in love with a another man, whose return from the war seems to be catalyst for several events to come to a head, beginning with a fatal hit-and-run accident committed with someone who has access to the family car, then a series of thefts from the house, the most recent that of some diamonds worth a small fortune.

   The old man’s death is verified by his doctor to be entirely natural, but his will, or rather his plans to change it, makes it hard to believe that hi death was just a coincidence. And in the background is the mysterious death several years before of Henry Thorne’s previous wife Iris.

   When a second death occurs, this one definitely murder, a lot of rivalries, jealousies — and just plain greed — all come to the fore. There are lots of clues and alibis for Grady to sort through, but it’s the personalizes of the people involved that Shriber takes the most care to build her novel upon, and I think she did a good job in doing so.

   The detective end of things is in fact wrapped up a tad too quickly, from my point of view, but all in all, as a mystery, it’s not at all bad. I don’t believe that Ione Sandberg Shriber should have fallen into the cracks as much as she seems to have.

       The Lt. Bill Grady series —

The Dark Arbor. Farrar 1940 [New York]
Head Over Heels in Murder. Farrar 1940 [New York]
Family Affair. Farrar 1941 [New York]
Murder Well Done. Farrar 1941 [Michigan]
A Body for Bill. Farrar 1942 [Ohio]
Invitation to Murder. Farrar 1943 [Cleveland, OH]
Pattern for Murder. Farrar 1944 [Cleveland, OH]
The Last Straw. Rinehart 1946 [California]

STEVE SHERMAN -The White Mountain Murders. Hugh Quint #2. Walker, hardcover, 1989. No paperback edition. (See also comment #2.)

   Hugh Quint, ex-Boston cop, now a PI, heads for New Hampshire to help find the half-sister of a friend and ends up preventing the theft of a $100,000 antique chest. Several murders occur as well, he most obvious suspect being a back-to-nature Abenaki Indian.

   The same Indian who’s gone off with the half-sister who started it all. The detective work is slight, and most of the book’s charm comes from the rustic setting and the bucolic nature of its inhabitants. Unfortunately it begins to wear off about halfway through.

       The Hugh Quint series —

The Maple Sugar Murders. Walker 1987
The White Mountain Murders. Walker 1989
Primary Crime. Appledore 2000

MICHAEL J. KATZ – Last Dance in Redondo Beach. Andy Sussman & Murray Glick #2. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, hardcover, 1989. Pocket, paperback, 1990.

   Here’s a first. It’s gotta be. A professional wrestler dies, apparently of a heart attack, in a network’s “celebrity sports” competition. It’s really murder, of course, and on the scene, in his second brush with detective work is CBS sportscaster Andy Sussman.

   Doing most of the legwork, however, is his pal, a sleazy Chicago PI named Murray Glick, who works out of a Northbrook Court mall. You may have gotten the idea by now that the tone of this book is not entirely serious, but I surprised myself and enjoyed it anyway. (*)

       —

(*) I’d be remiss in pointing out, however, that I found the ending to be a bit too slick. The final confrontation works out far too easily — and not easily enough to avoid leaving a mess behind. Katz seems to think that justice is done, or at least his characters do, and in a sense they’re right, maybe as well as it ever does in real life, but I still think there’s some guilt not yet accounted for.

      The Andy Sussman & Murray Glick series —

Murder Off the Glass. Walker, 1987.
Last Dance in Redondo Beach. Putnam, 1989.
The Big Freeze. Putnam, 1991.

MICHAEL ALLEGRETTO – The Dead of Winter. Jake Lomax #3. Scribners, hardcover, 1989. Avon, paperback, 1991.

   In this his third case, PI Jake Lomax is hired to find a barber’s missing daughter. The barber’s also a bookie, and the daughter, a sensitive type, has just found out. A good beginning, and the stakes quickly become even higher. The next day a bomb destroys the barber’s car.

   Allegretto has a smooth, even style of writing, but until the kidnapping plot is revealed, not much out of the ordinary actually happens. I’m ambivalent about the kidnapping plot, too. It’s an interesting twist, but overall the story line is a combination of bad coincidence mixed with poor judgment.

      The Jake Lomax series —

Death on the Rocks (1987)
Blood Stone (1988)
Dead of Winter (1989)
Blood Relative (1992)
Grave Doubt (1995)

MIKE PHILLIPS – Point of Darkness. Samson Dean #3. St. Martin’s Press, hardcover, 1995. First published in the UK by Michael Joseph, hardcover, 1994. No US paperback edition.

   Phillips is new to me, though obviously not to everyone. The two previous tales about Sam Dean, a reporter of Anglo-Caribbean descent, have been set in London — Blood Rights and The Late Candidate. This, the first since 1991, takes place in New York City. Phillips also write the novelization of for the movie Boyz in the Hood.

   Sammy Dean is in the Big Apple to try to find the straying daughter of a boyhood friend dying in London. He’s no stranger to the city abd its Caribbean neighborhoods — Jamaica, Queens, the Bronx — but an outsider nevertheless, The girl had disappeared after working as a domestic for the aging parents of a high City official, and more people than Dean are looking for her — for reasons he doesn’t know. What seemed to be an uncomplicated if tedious and difficul task turns nasty, and he soon finds both himself and the object of his search in serious danger.

   This is blurbed as being “on the tradition of Walter Mosley.” Me, I’d have thought that Mosley was a few books shy of a “tradition” — but hey, whatever works. Phillips is a lot closer in tone ro Mosley than to Chester Himes or Barbara Neely, if that counts. Traditional or not, I liked it. Phillips seems to know his territory, and tells his story in first-person in an undramatic, semi-reflective way that I found appealing.

   The urban black/Caribbean world was new to me, and I thought he did an excellent job of painting its picture without slowing down the story. As I’ve said before, it would be foolish of me or any white man to try to judge the realism of black characters, but they seemed like real people to me, and believable and sympathetic ones. Phillips is a good writer with a different viewpoint.

Bio-Bibliographic Notes:   One online source describes the author as having been “… born in Georgetown, Guyana. He came to Britain as a child and grew up in London. He was educated at the University of London and the University of Essex, and gained a Postgraduate Certificate of Education at Goldsmiths College, London.” Another source calls Sam Dean a “Jamaican-born, London-bred, street-smart, sexy, self-effacing, tough, and likeable black journalist.”

   There was but one more book in the series, that being An Image to Die For (1995).

RICHARD ROSEN – Saturday Night Dead. Harvey Blisssberg #3. Viking, hardcover, 1988. Signet, paperback, June 1989.

   In this third adventure of PI (and former major league baseball player) Harvey Blissberg, the death of the producer of a late-night comedy show is designed to give him a smooth transition from sports-related mysteries to the world of show business. It doesn’t work. Compared to earlier entries in the series, it’s definitely not a step up.

   There are a lot of suspects, many of whom Harvey quickly eliminates. In fact, most of the clues point one way, but it still comes as a surprise when Harvey decides who the killer is with nearly 80 pages to go. On page 233 Harvey admits his reasoning was all guesswork.

   Neither exceptionally well told, nor more than merely bland. On the basis of this one, I think Harvey had better go back to playing the outfield.

       The Harvey Blissberg series —

Strike Three You’re Dead (1984)
Fadeaway (1986)
Saturday Night Dead (1988)
World Of Hurt (1994)
Dead Ball (2001) .

CAROL O’CONNELL – The Man Who Cast Two Shadows. Mallory #2. Putnam, hardcover, 1995; paperback, 1996.

   I was really afraid to read this, after liking O’Connell’s debut with Mallory’s Oracle as much as I did.

   TV news reports policewoman Kathy Mallory dead at 6 o’clock, but she’s not. Someone who resembled her and was wearing one of her castoff coats is, however, and Malory naturally takes an interest in who she was and who saw to it that she wasn’t any more.

   Mallory is technically on suspension because of a shooting incident, but she doesn’t fret about technicalities. She quickly determines by computer-aided deduction that the killer must live in a particular building, and shortly thereafter is ensconced in the same building, determined to smoke him out.

   But there are several suspects, and though Mallory wouldn’t agree, there seems to be some question as to who is the hunter, and who the prey.

   This didn’t have the impact on me that Mallory’s Oracle had. Having said that, I should probably say that there’s a real tendency on my part (and I imagine on that of most of us) to judge the follow-up to a highly regarded book by standards that are perhaps set too high. I should judge it on its own merits, and not by how it compares to its predecessors, but I don’t know if I’m able to do so.

   O’Connell is still a superb prose stylist. There were no passages that “grabbed” me as there were in the previous book, but there was a sustained quality of word-crafting that not too many equal. I felt there were some plot problems here, and some character problems, the latter mostly causing the former.

   It’s impossible to discuss them without giving away the plot, which I almost guarantee will have some surprises for you. Too many, maybe; some mental gear-shifting that O couldn’t easily manage.

   This is the kind of book that I hate to review briefly, as its pluses and minuses call for a critique that I’m probably not qualified, certainly not prepared to do. O’Connell is a vastly talented writer, but I think she needs an editor. And I don’t think she had one here. Still—

      The Kathleen Mallory series —

1. Mallory’s Oracle (1994)
2. The Man Who Cast Two Shadows (1995)
3. Killing Critics (1995)
4. Stone Angel (1997)
5. Shell Game (1999)
6. Crime School (2002)
7. Dead Famous (2003)
8. Winter House (2004)
9. Find Me (2006)
10. The Chalk Girl (2012)
11. It Happens in the Dark (2012)
12. Blind Sight (2016)

SHELLEY SINGER – Spit in the Ocean. Jake Samson #4. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1987. Worldwide, paperback, June 1989.

   Vandalism — let’s not get into whether you’d call it murder — at a sperm bank, then a fatal accident off the rocky spit into the ocean north of San Francisco suspiciously does look like murder. Luckily unlicensed PI Jake Samson is already on hand to investigate.

   Along with him is his partner, Rosie Vincente. It takes a while to determine their relationship more than that, but in a word: none. This mystery comes as close to the classic detective story as any I’ve read recently, spoiled only by a “gratuitous” sex scene.

        The Jake Samson series —

Samson’s Deal. St. Martin’s, 1983.
Free Draw. St. Martin’s, 1984.
Full House. St. Martin’s, 1986.]
Spit in the Ocean. St. Martin’s, 1987.
Suicide King. St. Martin’s, 1988.
Royal Flush. Perseverance, 1999.