Inspector Montalbano

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Barbara and The Poisoned Pen Staff

Is full of good things.

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What a way to start off the year, so many wonderful books

To see our Picks, click here

Unsigned Hardcovers: click here

Signed Hardcovers, click here

Trade Paperbacks, click here

Mass Market Paperbacks, click here

To read an interview with Meltzer published today in the Arizona Republic, click here. It mentions his role on the History Channel

Given he's here on Inauguration Day, the concept of a thriller set in Washington with the President at its heart and involving the National Archives is certainly appropriate.

Meltzer, Brad. The Fifth Assassin (Grand Central $29).

"Ratchets up the drama and human interest, and Meltzer's fans will enjoy the usual sprinkling of history factoids, fast-paced writing and the double-whiplash bombshell conclusion.: --Kirkus Reviews

The 2^nd in the Culper Ring Trilogy kicks off after

 Continuing the Presidential theme, 2013 marks the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. Naturally this has piqued several novelists' interest. None has the forensic expertise of Hunter. He puts it to work in a challenge for Bob Lee Swagger. 

  Hunter, Stephen. The Third Bullet (Simon Schuster $27).

I've given my rave in the Booknews, so here are others!

"Former Marine sniper Bob Lee Swagger tackles the granddaddy of all conspiracy theories-the 1963 Kennedy assassination-in his latest adventure. . . . The author's obsessive attention to the events of Nov. 22 yields a stunningly plausible theory that will have readers holding the book in one hand and Googling satellite photos of Dealey Plaza and the and the Texas School Book Depository with the other." (Entertainment Weekly)  

"Only Stephen Hunter, with his brilliant knowledge of firearms, could have produced The Third Bullet and offered up a plausible explanation for one of our nation's greatest mysteries. Despite the explosive subject matter, there is a jauntiness approaching pure joy in both the reading and the storytelling. This book will be huge." (C.J. Box)

 "The Swagger novel we've all been waiting for, and the Swagger novel Stephen Hunter was born to write . . . a magnificent thriller-and it might even be true." (Lee Child)

"Like an elite sniper, Stephen Hunter zeroes in on one of the most infamous shots ever fired and delivers a mind-bending thriller that answers the question 'What if?' in astonishingly plausible detail. The Third Bullet is his best Bob Lee Swagger thriller yet." (Vince Flynn)

"For nearly 50 years, the world has been obsessing over the assassination of JFK, from grassy knolls to magic bullets. Finally, though, there's somebody on the case who likes to act more than talk: Bob Lee Swagger. . . . like Stephen King in 11/22/63, Hunter has used the assassination to forge a terrific thriller." (Booklist (starred review)

"One of the hardest things for a writer to do is establish an identity, but there is no mistaking Stephen Hunter's thrillers. They have a unique insight into what it takes to be a hero, combined with an unequaled lyrical, even poetic approach to the ballistics, tactics, and firearms of a gunfight. Hunter's novels (what a great last name, given his themes) combine authenticity with fascinating, compelling, real-feeling characters, and in The Third Bullet, he even adds a further dimension, experimenting with structure while embedding literary quotations. To me, he's a model of what a thriller author can be." (David Morrell)

Rankin, Ian. Standing in Another Man's Grave (LittleBrown $26).

Edinburgh's Rankin retired John Rebus when he hit the mandatory

Ian Rankin

"Old homicide cops never die; they just shuffle off to the cold case department. That's where Michael Connelly's maverick, Harry Bosch, found himself after his ill-considered resignation from the Los Angeles Police Department. The same spirit of insubordination periodically lands a career detective like Jussi Adler-Olsen's Carl Morck in some dead-end division like Department Q. And in the honorable tradition of the watch commander known as the Oracle in Joseph Wambaugh's Hollywood Station procedurals, every veteran seems to feel duty-bound to take one last crack at an unsolved murder before he retires. Come to think of it, every active homicide assignment involving a longtime serial killer seems to lead to the cold case files.

Ian Rankin covers all these bases here. His incorruptible but moody hero, John Rebus, had second thoughts after retiring from the Edinburgh police force and has since made his way back as a civilian employee in the Serious Crime Review Unit. Rebus claims to find satisfaction working these old cases, "each one ready to take him on a trip back through time." But he doesn't come to life until the mother of a teenage girl who vanished on New Year's Eve in 1999 persuades him that her daughter's disappearance set the pattern for more recent missing persons cases, each occurring in the vicinity of the same major highway and all involving young women.

Always impressive at handling plot complications, Rankin adds another twist by making Rebus redundant, forcing this ex-cop to take unorthodox action in order to muscle his way into an active investigation. As an outsider, he can ignore protocol and consort with criminals, to the point of activating hostilities between two major underworld figures. But his seditious behavior hardly endears him to the detectives working the current kidnapping, and finally goads an enemy in the complaints department into waging a vendetta to keep him from rejoining the force. ("I know a cop gone bad when I see one.")

What's really at issue here isn't Rebus's maverick style but his character. Abrasive, secretive and unable to make nice with his superiors, he's not a team player - never was, never will be. At the same time, he's uncomfortably aware that he's out of step with the new age. As a sad Scottish toast goes: "Here's tae us / Wha's like us? / Gey few - / And they're a' deid." But once in a while some dinosaur like Rebus manages to rise up to show us how to get the job done."

SIGNING NEXT WEEK

Wed. Jan 30: Erica Bauermeister signs The Lost Art of Mixing($26)

Thurs. Jan. 31: Charles Todd signs Proof of Guilt ($26)

Feb. 2: Earlene Fowler 2 PM signs The Road to Cardinal Valley($26)

The School of Essential Ingredients ($15), a 2010 Modern Firsts Club Pick, won my heart with its delicious yet poignant story about a chef, her students, and the evocative lessons that food teaches about life. I'm not a big fan of "women's fiction" but this book offered much more. And now Lillian and her restaurant return. The Indie Next Pick adds: "Cooking classes brought the characters together in the first book and entwined their stories with one another as effectively as the ingredients they were learning to blend. In this book, new characters are introduced and the resultant 'mixing' of their lives with the original characters gives the reader further insights into their personalities and circumstances. Happily, while neatly answering questions regarding the fate of the characters, the threads of this story also lend themselves to future volumes."

 

Not Elvis, nor Joe, but Maggie, an ex Military Work Dog. She has been severely injured in Afghanistan. So was Scott James of the LAPD, now assigned to the K-9 Division when his partner Stephanie is killed  As man and dog work together to uncover the perps (Ok, crooked cops here, and other suspects), behind Scott's shooting and Stephanie's murder, the bond between this new team grows. Still, Maggie is the hero(ine) of this standalone. Which could IMHO morph easily into a series.

Fowler, Earlene. The Road to Cardinal Valley (Berkley $26 SIGNED Feb. 2).

The Saddlemaker's Wife ($7.99) was a very personal and challenging book for Fowler, author of the award-winning Benni Harper mysteries, to write. Here is the rest (for now anyway) of Ruby McGavin's story. Ruby never thought she'd return to Cardinal, but she's hoping the place and people who gave her so much can give her brother Nash-who's been drowning in drink in Nashville-the fresh start he so desperately needs. Saddlemaker Lucas McGavin is thrilled that Ruby has come back. He hasn't given up on his love for her, despite the awkward fact that she is his brother's widow, and he's well aware that this may be his last chance to win Ruby's heart. When Nash starts drinking again and ends up in a devastating accident, Ruby decides she must find her estranged mother to help with an intervention. Two states away, Etta Walker harbors a horrible secret.... An unusual love story, and unpredictable.

Mansbach, Adam. Rage Is Back Signed(Viking $27)

I, Barbara, picked this for the Hardboiled Crime Club. It's a blockbuster tale of revenge, redemption, and the world's most beautiful crime. Dondi Vance is the son of two famous graffiti artists from New York City's "golden era" of subway bombing. Recently kicked out of his prestigious prep school for selling weed-and his mother's Brooklyn apartment for losing his scholarship- he's couch-surfing his way through life, compulsively immune to rumors that his long-lost father, Billy Rage, has returned after sixteen years on the lam. But Dondi's old man really is back-what's left of him, that is. A wizened shell of his former self, Billy is still reeling from a psychic attack by an angry shaman in the Amazon basin when Dondi finds him at the top of a pseudo-magical staircase in DUMBO. The uneasy reunion comes just in time: Anastacio Bracken, the transit cop who ruined Billy's life and shattered his crew back in 1987, is running for mayor. Only by rallying the forgotten writers of the eighties for an epic, game-changing mission can Billy and Dondi bring Bracken down. In this mind-bending journey through a subterranean world of epic heroes, villains, and eccentrics, Adam Mansbach balances an intricately plot­ted, high-stakes caper with a wildly inventive tale of time travel and shamanism, prodigal fathers and sons, and the hilariously intertwined realms of art, crime, and spirituality. Moving throughout New York City's unseen com­munities, from the tunnel camps of the Mole People to the drug dens of Crown Heights...

Neuhaus, Nele. Snow White Must Die (St Martins $25).

Our Poisoned Pen Press German agents, located in Munich, have often mentioned Neuhaus to us. "German author Neuhaus makes her U.S. debut with this impressive multidimensional police procedural, which has already been published in 15 countries with more than three million copies in print. Convicted on circumstantial evidence of murdering two vanished 17-year-old girls, 30-year-old Tobias Sartorius returns home to Altenhain, a village near Frankfurt, after serving his 10-year sentence, to find his parents divorced and their lives as hopeless as his has become. The townspeople maintain a mafia-like code of silence to protect terrible betrayals past and present, even as the discovery of the skeletal remains of one of the missing girls leads Det. Insp. Pia Kirchhoff and Det. Sgt. Oliver von Bodenstein to suspect Tobias was innocent. Meanwhile, the two police officers get caught up in personal crises that realistically counterpoint the violence that greets Tobias's attempts to re-establish his life, when yet another girl goes missing and masked villagers nearly kill him. Again and again, Neuhaus inserts the old Grimm fairy tale refrain-"White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony"-that describes Snow White, the role of one of the original missing girls in a high school play 10 years earlier, to underscore the grimmest of human emotions: white for icily plotted revenge, red for raging jealousy, black for homicidal madness.--Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Our January Fresh Fiction Club Pick. 

The translator is my classmate Steve T Murray, whose earlier work includes the novels of Stieg Larsson (Murray took a pseudonym there) and Camilla Lackberg.

Robinson, Peter. Before the Poison ($15).

New in paperback, Robinson's Arthur Ellis Award-winning terrific standalone . Chris Lowndes built a comfortable career composing scores for films in Hollywood. But after 25 years abroad, and still quietly reeling from the death of his beloved wife, he decides to return to the Yorkshire dales of his youth. To ease the move, he buys Kilnsgate House, a rambling old mansion deep in the country. Although Chris finds Kilnsgate charming, something about the house disturbs him, a vague sensation that the long-empty rooms have been waiting for him-feelings made ever stronger when he learns that the house was the scene of a murder more than fifty years before. His curiosity piqued, Chris talks to the locals and searches through archives for information about the case. But the more he discovers, the more convinced he becomes the case ended in a miscarriage of justice, which is certainly upsetting to someone very active today....

Stashower, Daniel. Hour of Peril: The Secret Plot to Murder Lincoln Before the Civil War Signed (St Martins $27).

"This engaging book by Edgar Award-winning author Stashower is filled with anecdotes, quotes from contemporary sources, and excellent back stories that interweave four strands of little-known American history: the rise of Allan Pinkerton, America's original 'private eye'; the critical period between Lincoln's election and his inauguration, when the country teetered on the precipice; how Lincoln dealt with the crisis before he had the power of office; and the plot to assassinate him before he took office on March 4, 1861. Highly recommended for anyone fascinated by American history.

Thomas, Samuel. The Midwife's Tale Signed (St Martins $27). 

Everything rings true in historian Thomas's superb first mystery, set in 1644 during the English civil war. While antimonarchist rebels lay siege to York, midwife Bridget Hodgson ventures to a city parish not her own to help deliver a bastard child about to be born to a maidservant "perhaps twenty-three years old and no great beauty," who refuses to divulge the name of the father. Bridget faces a quandary because she can't legally attend a labor unless she can identify the father, to spare the city having to support the child. Bridget later faces a greater crisis when her dear friend, Esther Cooper, is accused of fatally poisoning her husband, a crime defined as treason. To gain time to investigate, Bridget avers that Esther is pregnant in order to defer the date of execution until she comes to term. Authentic details of life in 17th-century York complement the whodunit's intelligently concealed clues. -PW. Our January History/Mystery Club Pick.

Woods, Stuart. Collateral Damage Signed (Putnam $28).

After a productive trip to Bel-Air, Stone Barrington is back in Manhattan-and back in his element, ready to return to the world of deluxe fine dining and elegant high society that New York does best. But then an unexpected visit from his friend and periodic lover, CIA assistant director Holly Barker, draws Stone into a dangerous game of murder and vengeance, against an enemy with plans bigger than they could ever imagine....

A very hot book drawing tons of excited reviews.

Christopher, Nicholas. Tiger Rag Signed (Random $27). "Poet and novelist Christopher mixes fiction with jazz history in this delightful dual narrative."-PW.  Plus Ruby is a cracker, the Bolden cylinder perfect for a kind of treasure hunt, and the dynamic of the mother/daughter grabs.

The Washington Post reviews:

On July 5, 1904, this novel tells us, seven New Orleans musicians - the Buddy Bolden Band - gathered for a recording session. In those early days, they used wax cylinders attached to an Edison recorder, each cylinder capable of recording four minutes. This invention was just one of many innovations of what became a new technological age.

The head of the band was Charles "Buddy" Bolden, a masterly cornetist playing a new kind of music: jazz. The session went on through a stiflingly hot afternoon, and three cylinders came out of it, two with imperfections, the third close to perfect. "The three Edison cylinders left that room separately," Nicholas Christopher writes: one with the engineer's assistant, one with the recording engineer and the last (and best) with Willie Cornish, a fine musician who was Bolden's best friend.

You just know those three Bolden cylinders are going to go missing. The first falls into the hands of an oafish, second-rate cornetist who suffers from a bad case of envy and the unshakable delusion that he's a better musician than Bolden. The second wanders at random through the narrative, and the third ends up, at the beginning of the next century, as the most precious possession of another first-rate musician: Sammy LeMond, a prosperous, generous nightclub owner in Harlem. He has a beautiful wife and a fine career; music is a religion for him. But his lifestyle is catching up with him, as it did 100 years before with Bolden. After Le­Mond dies, who will end up with the lost cylinder, which is worth, by this time, hundreds of thousands of dollars?

Long ago, the New Yorker ran a cartoon that became famous: A man resembling Dizzy Gillespie - black beret set at a rakish tilt, dapper little goatee - sits at his son's bedside. The kid, snug under the covers, asks for a favorite bedtime story: "Tell me again, Daddy, how jazz came up the river from New Orleans." This is Christopher's version of that quintessentially American story... all the agonizing emotional places where sloth, incompetence and ambition intersect.

And the author also talks about women and their uneasy place in the world of jazz, from Bolden's beautiful mistress, who's expected to do no more than decorate a couch by sitting on it, to a female singer named Devon, who along with her mother, Ruby, occupies half of this narrative. And there is another woman whom we see in various disguises. She is a caster of spells and a user of mysterious herbs and potions. She's crucial to the plot and important in showing African influences in the world of jazz.

The structure here is like a long and complex jazz arrangement. There is a comparatively simple theme set up against what might be thought of as distinctive chord changes. And then, against this main story, the author sets up what might be seen as highly individualistic solos. The themes of the male performers and the female audiences come together, separate, then come together again. If you love the world of jazz, if it's a little like a religion to you, you'll love this ambitious, thoughtful novel."

I have been having a lovely correspondence (via email) with Mr. Christopher who has shared many of his reviews and excitement with me. Those who remember David Fulmer's Chasing the Devil's Tail, a book I edited for Poisoned Pen Press (Shamus Award, LA Times Book Prize, First Mystery Club Pick) will realize doing so made me well acquainted with Bolden, the hero of Fulmer's fabulous book. 

2013 National Book Critics' Circle Nominees

Fiction:

Laurent Binet, Sam Taylor (Trans.) HHhH ($26) - 2012 First Mystery Club Pick

Ben Fountain, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk,

Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's Son ($28 3 Signed left)-2012 First Mystery Club Pick

Lydia Millet, Magnificence

Zadie Smith, NW ($27 one Signed left)

2013 Edgar Allan Poe Award Nominees (Mystery Writers of America)

BEST NOVEL
The Lost Ones by Ace Atkins ($16)  

The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye ($26 Signed) 2012 History/Mystery Pick  

Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn ($25 later printings) 

Potboiler by Jesse Kellerman ($26 Signed)  

Sunset by Al Lamanda () 

Live by Night by Dennis Lehane ($28 one Signed left)  

All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley ($15 Feb.)   

BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR  

The Map of Lost Memories by Kim Fay $26). 2012 Modern Firsts Club Pick  

Don't Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman ($25)  OK, not my cup of tea  Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal ($15) 2012 British Crime Club Pick  

The Expats by Chris Pavone ($15) 2012 First Mystery Club Pick  The 500 by Matthew Quirk ($28 Signed) 2012 First Mystery Club Pick  

Black Fridays by Michael Sears ($27 Signed) 2012 First Mystery Club Pick    

BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL 

Complication by Isaac Adamson ($16)  

Whiplash River by Lou Berney ($15) His first, Gutshot Straight, a First Mystery Pick  

Bloodland by Alan Glynn ($16) His first, Winterland, a Hardboiled Crime Club Pick  

Blessed are the Dead by Malla Nunn ($15) Her first, A Beautiful Place to Die, a First Mystery Pick  

The Last Policeman: A Novel by Ben H. Winters ($15)  

 BEST FACT CRIME  

Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China by Paul French ($26 one Signed left)
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King 

More Forensics and Fiction: Crime Writers' Morbidly Curious Questions Expertly Answeredby D.P. Lyle, MD
Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre 
The People Who Eat Darkness: The True Story of a Young Woman Who Vanished from the Streets of Tokyo - and the Evil that Swallowed Her Up by Richard Lloyd Parry 

BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL  

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe: The Hard-Boiled Detective Transformed by John Paul Athanasourelis )  

Books to Die For: The World's Greatest Mystery Writers on the World's Greatest Mystery Novels edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke ($30)  

The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics by James O'Brien 

In Pursuit of Spenser: Mystery Writers on Robert B. Parker and the Creation of an American Hero edited by Otto Penzler ($15)   

I highlighted all the FMC and other Club Picks in the Awards Section above to emphasize how much we support, and how well we recognize, new voices!

My worry is we will get fewer of them as the publishing industry changes, consolidates, and such. Voices of quality, voices that have been through an editorial process.

So for 2013 to encourage new members to our First Mystery Club, limited to no more than 20 Picks for the year, if you join now you will receive one free (Unsigned, so we can highlight a debut of quality that can't be signed) Pick towards the year's end.

Naturally current members of the club will also receive this bonus book.

The two January Picks are not yet in, so there is time to sign up between now and next Saturday, January 26.

Simply email sales@poisonedpen.com or call 888 560 9919.

For those of you who wonder why we hold events at the Arizona Biltmore for some authors, last Wednesday's giant overflow crowd for Sue Grafton illustrates why!

The Biltmore was completely booked for January 16, as can happen when an event pops up in December for January. 

So, now we known we can seat 160 people with 90 more standing inside The Pen. We hope no one had to hold their breath to squeeze in.

What we didn't expect was the crowds who gathered around the outside doors (3) to wait for a chance to have Sue sign a copy of Kinsey and Me

With great presence of mind, Will printed up slips with the URL for the Livestream broadcast and passed them around.

Neither Sue nor I was aware until the end of the event (at 10 pm) that there were crowds outside the bookstore watching the event inside the bookstore on their phones! 

So if you missed the evening, or if you wish a replay, please click here to watch it.

Sue returns in the fall with W IS FOR.... (she wouldn't tell). When we promise to secure plenty of room at the Biltmore or some other offsite location.

Our apologies to anyone whose experience on the 16th was not all he or she wished!