Tag Archives: Mystery

Review | Victims, Jonathan Kellerman

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Alex Delaware is back! I’m a huge fan of Jonathan Kellerman’s mystery series featuring child psychologist/consulting detective Alex Delaware. I’d been disappointed by the last few books in the series, because they felt more like police procedurals with Alex being a fairly generic amateur detective instead of the psychology expert that made me love the series in the first place. However, I’m happy to say that Victims, the latest in the series, is the Delaware series at its best. We have the creepy psychopathic killer, and Alex Delaware providing psychological insights that, at times, are almost uncanny.

Alex and his friend, Detective Milo Sturgis, are called in to investigate the murder of Vita Berlin. A thoroughly unpleasant woman, Vita had had a lot of enemies, but even the people who hated her admitted she didn’t deserve such a gruesome (think Jack the Ripper) death. Alex is struck by the clinical nature of Vita’s disembowelment; he is reminded of a child he’d once counselled who cut up animals not because he took pleasure in it, but because he’d been curious.

Here is the Dr. Alex Delaware-type insight that I’d been missing from the more recent books in the series — Kellerman may have put them in, but it hadn’t felt as essential to the storyline for a long time.  So when I read that, and I knew Alex and Milo were hunting a truly disturbed mind, I knew Victims was going to be classic Kellerman. More victims are then discovered, and none of them are linked, as far as Milo’s team can tell. Who is the killer, how is he choosing his victims, and why is he killing in the first place? It’s a dark, twisted, creepy psyche, which gives Alex lots of opportunities to use his psychology training.

Victims is a very chilling book. I made the mistake of beginning it at night, and I ended up reading until about two in the morning. I very reluctantly went to bed only because my eyes were literally closing, despite my mind still racing ahead and trying to figure out the solution to the mystery. I was also sufficiently creeped out by the killer that I had to gather up the courage to go into the kitchen for a glass of water. Granted, I’m a major chicken, but somehow the idea of a person who would kill others not because he is sick enough to enjoy killing, but because he is fascinated by human biology just makes me shiver.

Victims made me realize how much creepier human monsters are than supernatural ones. Then, as I learned more about the motivations behind the killings, the book just got even scarier. This feels much darker and more disturbing than previous Delaware novels, and I think it’s just because the antagonist here seems so much colder and more monstrous than I remember from Kellerman’s other books. Alex Delaware fans — this book is definitely recommended. New to Alex Delaware — Victims is a good place to start.

WIN A COPY OF VICTIMS!

An Alex Delaware fan or interested in trying out the series? Random House Canada has kindly provided me with a finished copy of this book to review, and I’d love to pass it on to a fellow mystery fan!

For a chance to win, please leave a comment on this post and answer this question:

What is your favourite mystery series and why?

Contest ends April 10th. (Canada only)

Review | A Room Full of Bones, Elly Griffiths

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I’m always up for discovering a new mystery series, so when I heard of Elly Griffiths’ A Room Full of Bones, which features Ruth Galloway, a forensic archaeologist who solves mysteries, I was definitely interested. In Bones, a museum curator is found dead beside a coffin thought to contain the bones of medieval Bishop Augustine. I work in an art gallery, and I’ve always been fascinated by museums and artifacts, so I was excited to see how a forensic archaeologist would use her expertise to solve this mystery.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really see much mystery-solving from Ruth Galloway in this book. Bones is the first Galloway I’ve read but the fourth book in the series, and from this Eurocrime review, I see that Galloway is usually more involved in the actual case. However, I agree with the Eurocrime reviewer that the Galloway storyline in this book focused way too much on her personal life. It’s certainly realistic — as a single mother of a one year old, I can imagine that’ll take up most of her time. As well, I bet long-time fans of the series would be pleased to see so much character development. We learn not just about Galloway as a mother, but also about her complicated relationship with the baby’s father, D.I. Harry Nelson. To be honest, I really felt for Nelson’s wife Michele, and I did enjoy the scenes where she and Nelson struggle to make their relationship work. I also liked that, while Galloway clearly loves Nelson as the father of her baby, she doesn’t seem to be in love with him. I found that an interesting twist to the usual love triangle.

Despite the focus on Galloway’s personal life, there is a pretty interesting mystery in Bones. Galloway does discover a shocking fact about the bishop from the bones, and her expertise is eventually key to solving the curator’s death. I was disappointed that these pivotal elements appeared mostly in passing and I was somewhat disappointed at the way that mystery was resolved.

That being said, there are a couple of other mysteries in Bones — another character’s death and Nelson himself contracting a mysterious disease. These are both interesting puzzles, and I love the cast of secondary characters that we get to meet. The Smith family members are particularly quirky, and I like how the they reminded me a bit of Agatha Christie’s mysteries. We have all these complex characters, each potentially with his or her own motivations to commit a crime.

A blurb at the back of the novel calls Griffiths’ books “atmospheric,” and definitely, Bones contains an element of the gothic. I like that Griffiths never really confirms whether an incident is supernatural or whether it can be explained by science. For one plot twist in particular, Galloway’s friend Cathbad, a Druid, offers a supernatural explanation and drug-induced hallucinogenic solution, yet later on, someone else gives a more prosaic, perfectly rational explanation. This ambiguity adds to the atmosphere. While I found the potentially supernatural elements odd, I never really was sucked deep enough into the story to find them genuinely creepy. Even when someone received a snake that Cathbad says was a curse, I really just thought of it as a snake, despite Griffiths’ ambiguous treatment. That being said, I did have a horrible nightmare the first night I read this book. Perhaps my subconscious was more afraid than I realized.

A Room Full of Bones is a pretty good mystery. I was expecting a bit more of the historical mystery and I would have liked to see a bit more of the forensic archaeologist side of Ruth Galloway, but her personal life does make for an interesting story. I liked learning about the relationships between the characters, and I like how Griffiths made them seem real.

Review | Birthdays for the Dead, Stuart MacBride

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Wow. Stuart MacBride just never lets up, does he? I received an ARC of Birthdays for the Dead at the Harper Collins Canada Stuart MacBride event, and it’s the only book I have with the inscription “Bieber!” scrawled on it. (Long story.) At a quiet moment during that event, I flipped through the first chapter of Birthdays. I shuddered at the detailed, creepy-as-hell account of a twelve year old girl tied to a chair and a man singing Happy Birthday to her, “the words coming out all broken and hesitant, like he’s scared to get them wrong.” For some reason, that touch of shyness and vulnerability just made that man even creepier. The chapter was barely three pages long, and I glanced up afterward, not wanting to get so engrossed in the book that I forget I’m at a public event. I saw the author whose words had scared me so much, and he was laughing at something someone said. Such a jolly, friendly man, seriously one of the nicest, funniest authors I’ve ever met. Also the writer of one of the darkest, twistiest, and yes, funniest psychological mystery/thrillers I’ve ever read. To anyone who heard MacBride read the first chapter from Birthdays at a literary festival, fair warning: it just gets darker.

Detective Constable Ash Henderson is investigating “The Birthday Boy,” a serial killer who, for the past twelve years, has been abducting girls just before their 13th birthdays. The Birthday Boy then sends birthday cards to his victims’ parents every year, chronicling their daughter’s torture and death. Ash’s own daughter Rebecca was kidnapped five years ago, and he’s been keeping it a secret from everyone, even his family, so that he won’t be taken off the Birthday Boy case. Ash’s desire for revenge fuels his investigation, and his need to continue to keep it hidden, even as more bodies are found and he fears his daughter’s body might be next, makes life even harder for him. Worse, because his ex-wife and younger daughter believe that Rebecca ran away and just never contacted them again, Ash has to deal with his ex-wife’s angry comments about Rebecca and his younger daughter’s guilt-induced rebellious behaviour.

There’s a lot going on in Birthdays, and MacBride never lets you stop to take a breath. Ash is a very sympathetic, complex character, and MacBride does a great job making Ash teeter on the very fine line between hero and anti-hero. Even when Ash does morally questionable things, you understand. As a reader, I’d sometimes be torn between feeling very sympathetic for Ash and thinking he’d gone a bit too far — and all this in the same scene. Birthdays takes the reader on an emotional roller coaster — you want them to catch the Birthday Boy (seriously, such a horrible, evil villain) and you feel for the characters as well, because they all seem so real.

Speaking of characters, I love Dr. Alice McDonald! A forensic psychologist with a list of neuroses, she’s hilarious! She also has the amazing talent of getting into the minds of psychopaths, but she has to get really drunk before she can do it. A superhero with a tragic flaw! She also gets on the nerves of Ash and everyone she works with because she’s such a chatterbox. Possibly, if I had to work with her, I’d be annoyed too. As it is, I love reading about her. MacBride’s writing shifts effortlessly between hilarious and horrific throughout the novel, even with non-comic characters, but seeing Alice appear on the scene elicits an immediate grin. In the words of Ash Henderson: “Complete. And utter. Freakshow.” Love, love, love her!

Birthdays was the first Stuart MacBride book I’ve read, and I’m definitely reading more. (So far, I’ve also read Cold Granite, the first in the Logan McRae series, and loved it too!) MacBride isn’t afraid to delve into the darkest reaches of a murderer’s mind, nor is he afraid to have his hero get just as dark and twisty as the monster he’s tracking. You are sucked right into the story, and all you can do is hang on for the ride. Best part is that the irreverent humour that makes MacBride so wonderfully entertaining at author events electrifies his writing as well. Imagine Ricky Gervais writing Val McDermid. Birthdays is brilliant, psychological thriller writing at its best. Rarely have I wanted the villain in a mystery taken down more, and the fact that I got so invested in the outcome of this case is a testament to MacBride’s writing. If you’re a fan of Val McDermid or Jo Nesbo, you’ll love Stuart MacBride.

The blurb on the back cover of my ARC says it all:

Bloody. Brilliant. MacBride.

Stuart MacBride also has a totally “bookular” website and is friendly and funny on Twitter.