Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley

Charcoal Joe: An Easy Rawlins Mystery by Walter Mosley --- 305 pages

In this latest Easy Rawlins mystery, Charcoal Joe, Easy is in a good place for a change: with money from his last case, he's gone into business with two partners in his own detective agency; he's about to propose to his girl friend Bonnie Shay; even his kids seem to be thriving.

But of course, all that good luck is just an illusion.

Easy's boyhood friend Raymond “Mouse” Alexander, comes asking a favor. Mouse wants Easy to clear the name of a young black man who's been arrested by the L.A. police for murders he didn't commit.

The accused, Seymour Brathwaite, is a brilliant graduate student at Stanford University, with no prior record. He says he stumbled on the murder scene by accident. The  two dead men have ties to the Los Angeles underworld and a lot of missing diamonds. The man who wants Easy Rawlins to exonerate Seymour is a legendary black mobster called Charcoal Joe, who is an old friend of Seymour's foster mother.

Easy can't turn down Mouse, even though he's not happy about getting mixed up with a man as ruthless and violent as Charcoal Joe. And Seymour, totally lacking in street smarts, is his own worst enemy, and a real liability to the investigation.  Easy has to enlist the help of another well-established Mosley character, Fearless Jones, to keep Seymour out of trouble once Easy manages to spring him from jail. But Easy still has to find out what really happened in order to prove Seymour's innocence beyond a reasonable doubt. This is 1968, and Easy has to walk a fine line with law enforcement and a legal system that is overwhelmingly white and racist. A black man is always presumed guilty.

As always, Mosley uses fiction to portray the history and experience of Southern blacks who migrated to southern California during the war years.  The racial barriers that began to break down during the 1960s created opportunities but also real risk for anyone like Easy who pushed for change.

An award-winning author of over fifty books, including fourteen Easy Rawlins mysteries, Walter Mosley was named the 2016 Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America.

Click HERE to watch an interview with the author discussing his new book, Charcoal Joe.

Click HERE to watch a podcast of Mosley being interviewed by Tavis Smiley on PBS.

Click HERE to read a review from the Washington Post.

Click HERE to read a review from Kirkus Reviews.

Click HERE to read a review from Publishers Weekly.

Mr. Kiss and Tell (Veronica Mars #2) by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham

Mr. Kiss and Tell (Veronica Mars #2) by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham - 330 pages

I liked reading this one a lot. It's the second Veronica Mars mystery set after the film of the same name. It is set 6 months after the end of the first mystery novel. A girl from Veronica's past is raped and beaten at the Neptune Grand and Veronica sets out to find the person responsible. Also, there's more drama around the incompetent Balboa County Sheriff Dan Lamb and a new contender to replace him in the November election. This one was better than the first novel, although I enjoyed reading both. It had everything I liked about the show and more. If you liked the show and movie, I would recommend reading the two novels that have been written so far.

Home by Nightfall by Charles Finch

Home by Nightfall: A Charles Lenox Mystery by Charles Finch --- 294 pages

It's 1876 and Charles Lenox has abandoned his promising career in Parliament in favor of his fascination with detection. Drawing on his reputation and contacts as an amateur sleuth, he is now a partner in a detective agency, along with his former protegee Lord John Dallington, and the intrepid Miss Polly Strickland.

Just now London is agog with the mysterious disappearance of a celebrated German pianist and favorite of the Royal family. Charles and his partners desperately want to be called in by Scotland Yard to consult on the case, but their overtures have been rebuffed, and a rival agency has been hired instead.

Charles is also concerned about the desolate state of his elder brother Sir Edmund, who is mourning the sudden death of his wife Molly. When business requires Edmund to return to the family estate in Sussex where Molly died, Charles decides to go with him. No sooner have they arrived then they learn that the peace of Lenox House and the nearby village of Markethouse has been disturbed by a series of small but strange incidents targeting a respectable resident of the village. Lenox investigates, coaxing his brother to participate (in the hopes of distracting Edmund from his grief). But as the odd happenings continue, Charles begins to suspect there is something seriously amiss in Markethouse.

Juggling two myserious cases, one on London and one in Sussex, Charles finds his powers of detection challenged at every turn. Neither case is as simple as it seemed at first. Reputations and lives are hanging precariously in the balance. Worst of all, Charles finds no matter what he does, any sense of justice achieved is ambivalent at best.

Finch writes well: his characters come alive on the page, his plots are fiendishly clever, and his research incorporates fascinating details of everyday life in Victorian England.  This is the ninth book in the Charles Lenox Mysteries Series. It can be read as a stand alone, but I recommend reading the series in order, starting with A Beautiful Blue Death.

Click HERE for a review from Publisher's Weekly.

Click HERE for a review from the Reading the Past Blog.

Click HERE for a review from The Bookwyrm's Hoard web site.

Blood Orange by Karen Keskinen

Blood Orange by Karen Keskinen - 312 pages

Set in Santa Barbara, Jaymie Zarlin is trying to get her private investigator business off the ground.  Her specialty is finding missing people.  That is, until Lili, teenage star of the annual solstice parade is murdered and Danny, a lower middle class mentally disabled young man, is accused.  Having  some experience with the mentally disabled Jamie thinks he's become the scapegoat.  His Aunt Gabi asks for Jaymie's help, but is a wealthy socialite who also hires trying to hide something?  If you like Susan Grafton novels try Keskinen's debut novel.

A Death in the Smal Hours by Charles Finch

A Death in the Small Hours by Charles Finch --- 310 pages

Charles Lenox, member of Parliament and happily married father of a newborn daughter, still finds himself occasionally hankering in his soul for his former avocation as a notable amateur of criminal detection.

But when Lenox is awarded the signal honor of making the opening speech on behalf of the government at the new session of Parliament --- a sure sign that he is an up-and-coming man in the ruling Liberal Party --- he resolves to use this opportunity to advance the cause of relief for England's poor.

He soon realizes that he will need a few weeks away from the pressures of London in order to prepare this important speech. Lenox seizes on the happy chance of an invitation from his favorite uncle Freddie Ponsonby to bring his family to visit Uncle Freddie's beautiful, secluded rural estate in Somerset.  That Uncle Freddie has appealed to Charles for assistance in solving the vexing case of vandalisms in the nearly village of Plumbley, will provide Lenox with a welcome diversion.

It seems but a minor distraction until a local constable is brutally set upon and murdered in the middle of the village in the small hours of the night. Lenox steps up his investigation, with the assistance of his rakish but gifted protege Lord John Dallington, and they identify the man responsible. Everything seems to be neatly sorted out until Uncle Freddie is kidnapped.  Then Lenox discovers that his simple case is far more complex and dangerous than he at first imagined.

Cleverly plotted and well written, Finch is developing an interesting cast of recurring characters in this series of Victorian mysteries.

Click HERE for a review from Publisher's Weekly.

Click HERE for a review from Kirkus.

The Laws of Murder by Charles Finch

The Laws of Murder: A Charles Lenox Mystery by Charles Finch --- 290 pages

This is the eighth book in Finch's Victorian mystery series featuring private investigator Charles Lenox.

It’s 1876, and Charles Lenox, has just given up his seat in Parliament after six years, primed to return to his first profession, detection. With high hopes he and his friend Lord John Dallington have decided to create a consulting detective agency, the first of its kind. The partnership also includes two other private inquiry agents that have been friendly rivals of Lenox and Dallington in the past: Mrs. Polly Buchanan, a well born but penniless widow, and the Frenchman, LeMaire. But much to Lenox's surprise and chagrin, his new venture is ridiculed and belittled in the press, with slighting comments from Scotland Yard inspectors whom he considered friends and colleagues. Months pass, and while the other partners are attracting business to the firm, Lenox has not a single client to show for himself.

Then late one night Scotland Yard shows up on Lenox's doorstep. Inspector Thomas Jenkins, foremost of Lenox's detractors, is found murdered near Regent’s Park. In fact, his body lies almost at the doorstep of the Marquess of Wakefield, a peer of unsavory reputation whom both the police and Lenox have pursued in the past without success. Jenkins, inexplicably, has left precise instructions that in the event of his own death, Charles Lenox must be called in to consult on the case.  As Lenox and Dallington begin their investigation the mystery thickens as they discover Lord Wakefield disappeared shortly before Jenkins' murder. Lenox perseveres on the trail in spite of threats against himself and his family, uncovering a scandal that reaches into the highest echelons of society.

Click HERE to read reviews of the book on GoodReads.

Rose Gold by Walter Mosley

Rose Gold: An Easy Rawlins Mystery by Walter Mosley --- 308 pages

In his thirteenth Easy Rawlins novel, Mosley continues what some critics consider his social history of race relations in Los Angeles in the years after World War II.  Rose Gold, set during the 1967 "Summer of Love" is Mosley's riff on the Patty Hearst/Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapping that captured America's horrified fascination in that time and place.

Rose Gold --- Rosemary Goldsmith --- is the disaffected daughter of a munitions manufacturer making a fortune out of the Vietnam War, supposedly kidnapped by a black nationalist calling himself Uhuru Nolice, the leader of revolutionary group calling itself Scorched Earth. The LAPD wants Easy Rawlins to rescue Rosemary and find Uhuru Nolice (a young black ex-boxer, Robert Mantle, with a chameleon personality).

Rawlins holds his nose and takes the job because he needs the money to pay his bills and to fund his adopted daughter's education at an elite private school. But the more he finds out about the ex-boxer, Robert Mantle, and about Rosemary Goldsmith's penchant for radical causes, the more he smells the deadly stink of police corruption emanating from the case. Is Rose Gold a victim or a willing accomplice in a plot to extort money from her father to fund further mayhem?  Is Bob Mantle a radical instigator or is he being set up with a "shoot on sight" order by bent cops in the highest echelons of the LAPD?

Mosley's latest meditation on the Black American experience is fortuitously timed to remind us that our current troubles have deep roots. As Ivy Pochada observes in her review of Rose Gold for the Los Angeles Times, "Mosley didn't write "Rose Gold" as a parable of recent events in Ferguson, Mo., and beyond. He wrote it as an evocative tale of race relations in the late 1960s. If we recognize it as entirely too familiar, I do not think Easy Rawlins would be suprised."

Click HERE to read Pochada/s full review.

Click HERE to read a review from ABC News.

Click HERE to read a review on the Read Me Deadly Blog.

An Old Betrayal by Charles Finch

An Old Betrayl: A Charles Lenox Mystery by Charles Finch --- 294 pages

The seventh volume in Finch's series of Victorian mysteries featuring Charles Lenox.

It is early spring 1875 and Charles Lenox gladly plays hookey from his hectic schedule as a member of Parliament and Junior Lord of the Treasury to oblige an old friend. Lord John Dallington is following in Charles' unconventional footsteps as a private inquiry agent; Lord John is unwell and Charles agrees to meet with a new client on his behalf in the restaurant at Charing Cross Station.

Because of a a series of assumptions that prove to be incorrent, Lenox does not recognize the client until too late, but has an abrupt encounter with a man calling himself Archibald Godwin, whose arrival caused Dallington's mysterious client to flee. A few days later, Lenox and Dallington are summoned by the police when Archibald Godwin is found murdered in a respectable London hotel. But the murdered man in the hotel is not the man Lenox met in the restaurant.

Then the victim's sister arrives and reveals that her brother came to town in pursuit of an imposter who was using his name and credit to commit fraud. It seems that the man Lenox encountered at Charing Cross was actually the imposter, and the police find evidence that seems to suggest this imposter murdered the real Archibald Godwin.

But what is the connection between Archibald Godwin, a quiet country squire, the imposter, and Dallington's erstwhile client, who, Lenox discovers, is one of Queen Victoria's social secretaries at Buckingham Palace. Soon Lenox begins to suspect that this murder is just one part of a much larger and very dangerous conspiracy. Somone has been nursing a grudge for a very long time and is about to take his revenge.

What Darkness Brings by C.S. Harris

What Darkness Brings: A Sebastian St. Cyr Mystery by C.S. Harris --- 353 pages

Harris' latest mystery is set in Regency London in September 1812. A London diamond merchant with an unsavory reputation has been found murdered and rumor has it that a magnificent blue diamond (said to have been stolen from the French crown jewels during the late revolution) also disappeared from the merchant's premises on the night of his death. Sebastian St. Cyr, Viscount Devlin, whose passion for justice has led him to take an interest in the solution of several notorious crimes, and his new wife, Hero Jarvis, become involved in the investigation when the husband of Sebastian's former mistress is taken up for the crime.

Although Russell Yates, Kat's husband in name, insists he is innocent, Sebastian knows that Hero's father, Lord Jarvis, will make sure Yates hangs for it unless Sebastian can discover the real killer. As Sebastian begins asking questions he quickly discovers the merchant had many enemies, a penchant for sexual intrigue and blackmail, and an obsession with black magic. A clever historical mystery series with a developing Regency-style romance at its heart.  

Little Green by Walter Mosley

Little Green: An Easy Rawlins Mystery by Walter Mosley --- 291 pages

The twelfth volume in Mosley's acclaimed crime noir series featuring his iconic P.I. Ezekiel "Easy" Rawlins and set in Los Angeles in the fifties and sixties.

Readers last saw Easy in Blonde Faith (2007), comatose after his car plunges over a cliff into the sea.  In this new story, the indomitable World War II veteran and streetwise investigator has regained consciousness and is back on the street searching for a young man gone missing in the drug-fueled free love counterculture of the Sunset Strip, where peace and love can turn on the spin of a dime into murder and mayhem. A trip back in time to the mean streets of 1967 L.A. during a time of social upheaval, Little Green powerfully explores Mosley's signature themes of good and evil, guilt and redemption.