Books reviews
Kevin’s Corner Annex – Three Strikes – You’re Dead.
Once again, it’s Monday and I’m halfway through two books and neither is ready for review yet. Thanks, as always, to Kevin Tipple for his review of a story collection, Three Strikes – You’re Dead.
After an interesting introduction by SJ Rozan that points out the parallels connecting sports and crime, it is on to the fourteen stories that make up the anthology, Three Strikes-You’re Dead! The entertaining anthology edited by Donna Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley was published in April 2024. While it has been in my massive TBR pile for months, that is only because I am way slower in everything I do these days.
Read more here.
Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Close Call by Elaine Hart Kipness.
Sports reporter Kate Green is back in her third adventure. Close Call (Thomas & Mercer, 19 August 2025) by Elise Hart Kipness takes Kate to the US Open Tennis Championships, i.e., the US Open, where a major competition is brewing. Lucy Bosco, seasoned but volatile tennis pro who has won almost every major award possible and who is rumored to be considering retirement, is playing against Brynn Cole, up-and-coming young tennis prodigy, in a match that is getting huge amounts of press attention. Kate has scored exclusive interviews with both of the players, despite the gatekeepers for each of them reluctant to grant access.
After Kate and Lucy visit Lucy’s hometown where she first began training as a tennis pro and they meet her first coach and some of her high school friends, Lucy disappears. Her coach receives a note saying she is resigning from the championships for personal reasons. A photo showing her battered face and chains around her wrists appears on Brynn’s telephone, demanding $2 million dollars in ransom. The police scramble to find her and to identify anyone who might want to hurt Lucy, while both families try to raise the ransom and squelch rumors. Kate has some ideas of her own, based on the time she spent with Lucy and the people they met, and shares them with her law enforcement father.
Read more here.
Paula Messina Reviews: Case with No Conclusion: A Sgt. Beef Mystery by Leo Bruce.
Case with No Conclusion
By Paula Messina
Leo Bruce loves to make fun of mystery writers. Case with No Conclusion is no exception. It begins with Sgt. Beef complaining that his chronicler, Mr. Townsend, is doing him a disservice. “You don’t seem to make much of my cases. Not what some of them do for their detectives….Not like Miss Christie, or Mr. Freeman Wills Croft. They do get taken notice of.”
In turn, Townsend gripes about Beef, and because Townsend is telling the story, he gets to gripe ad infinitum. It’s true Beef previously managed to solve two cases, Townsend tells us, but that was dumb luck. Beef drinks too much beer. He’s easily distracted and barely seems to work. Beef doesn’t speak the King’s English, and he’s a few darts short of a game.
By the end of the novel, Townsend blames Beef for destroying both their careers. “It’s not only yourself you’ve ruined by failing in this case….Here I’ve been working to build up a reputation for you, and the whole things smashed. If you ever get another case there’s not a publisher in London would use the story of it.”
This is not a mutual admiration society akin to the relationship between Sherlock Homes and John Watson. Townsend is never dazzled by Beef.
In No Conclusions, Beef has retired from the police force and set himself up as a private investigator. Much to Townsend’s great surprise. Beef gets his first client when Peter Ferrers hires Beef to investigate the Sydenham Murder and exonerate Peter’s brother Stewart, who is awaiting trial for the murder of Dr. Benson.
Beef admits that things look grim for Stewart. Benson was killed at The Cypresses, Stewart’s home. Stewart’s fingerprints are the only ones on the murder weapon. The house was locked tight, so no one else could have entered and killed the doctor. It’s widely known the doctor’s wife and Stewart have been carrying on an affair, and a heated argument between Stewart and Benson is well documented.
Read more here.
We love you, Ross Macdonald
And a small tribute to Lew Archer, created by Ross Macdonald, aka, Kenneth Millar.
Macdonald took Chandler, added plot, and poured on the weird family/societal dynamics. :)
The Name Is Archer by Ross Macdonald, 1955.
The spotlight is on Ross Macdonald for this Friday’s Forgotten Books over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase.
I SAT in my brand-new office with the odor of paint in my nostrils and waited for something to happen.
— Opening line of ‘Find the Woman’ in which Ross Macdonald first introduced Lew Archer
If something doesn’t happen then Lew Archer, the private detective from Southern California, makes something happen, as he does in two out of the three stories I’ve read so far in this collection of seven original stories by Ross Macdonald (Kenneth Millar).
In both the stories, Gone Girl and The Bearded Lady, Archer happens to be around when a crime is about to take place or has already taken place. When he is not hired to solve the case, he hangs around to investigate the crime. Although money is thrust into Archer’s hands, you get the impression that it’s not important in his scheme of things and he'll, matter-of-factly, pocket a fifty-dollar advance.
Read the rest here.
Click here to read “The Sky Hook” by Kenneth Millar.
Check out the selection here!
PS: I wanna move here. :)