David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "police-procedural"

When I saw the review for LAKE OF TEARS, a mystery featuring a woman sheriff of a small town, I was thinking “Marge Gunderson!” No such luck. Although Mary Logue has published twelve mystery novels, many featuring Claire Watkins, this book is nothing like “Fargo”.

At the beginning of the book, the sheriff in the county seat of Fort St. Antoine, Wisconsin, has a heart attack, and Claire takes his place, just in time to be confronted with a skeleton imbedded in a replica of a Norwegian longboat set afire to celebrate the town’s Norwegian heritage.

This book is different in that a couple of the characters are Afghanistan vets, suffering from PTS; one of the suspects who had been a boyfriend of the victim prior to his war service is a newly hired deputy on Claire’s staff. One of his best friends from the war also shows up looking for the deputy. Another suspect is the girl’s current boyfriend who had given her a diamond engagement ring. He and Andrew Stickler, the deputy, had locked horns previously, apparently over the girl.

Logue throwS in a further complication with Stickler, aged 26, dating her daughter, Meg, 18.

Otherwise, LAKE OF TEARS reads like a episode of “Law and Order” or one of the numerous cops shows on TV. It’s short, only 207 pages, and Logue takes the easy way out in respect to resolution, but I didn’t hate it. I guess I’ll have to wait for the new “Fargo” TV series, sanctioned by the Coen brothers, to get my “Fargo” buzz.

STOLEN PREY is one of those books you can read in one sitting; it's so focused, only minimally interruptedby an ATM stick-up in which Lucas Davenport is robbed of $500. He has no time to go after the crooks himself because he's involved in a family slaying, similar to what was happening in one of my favorite books, Thomas Harris's RED DRAGON. Virgil Flowers gets the job and he comes out smelling like manure.

Like most of the Prey novels, we know from the outset who is responsible and we're inside their heads just as we are with Davenport and his team. A Mexican drug cartel killed the family because they're missing 22 million dollars that was being laundered through the father's bank. Another bank executive is killed in similar fashion before we find out it's really a bunch of computer geeks who stumbled across the Mexican ploy. One of them just happens to be a Serb who knows a woman who's expert at turning money into untraceable lucre.

This one is also interesting in that Lucas's adopted daughter Letty seems to be moving away from her television career. She's recently become accomplished in handling a gun. At one point Lucas says that most of us are crazy in some way or another but not in a way that we can not function in civilized society. "Letty's like me," he says. Lucas has been piling up bodies for twenty some Prey novels now, and he can't shoot first and ask questions later if he doesn't want the press and his BCA boss on his tail. John Sandford handles that conundrum rather well in this one.

The Mexican assassins are rather interesting. They're named Uno, Dos, and Tre because all their first names are Juan. One of them is actually religious. Sandford has him attend the St. Paul Cathedral after killing someone. They also have a partner who shall go unnamed for spoiler reasons. As a matter of fact, Lucas is a little clueless here, because I had this person pegged almost immediately if only peripherally. I also guessed the ending, which makes me believe we may be seeing one of the crooks again in a future Prey novel. I also had a bit of a problem with the way the Mexican cartel is behaving at the end of the story. We know these people are brutal, vicious killers who never give up and let's just say they're acting out of character. That's called author intrusion, when an author does something to move the story that his characters wouldn't do.

John Sanford’s PREY novels are different from other mystery thriller/suspense vehicles in that we usually know who the culprits are from the beginning. This one starts with an abduction of a woman who gets away.

Heather Jorgenson is kidnapped by two dirtballs, one of whom throws her in the back seat of his pickup. She’s tied up in a mail sack, but she’s got a knife, and she works herself free, reaches up and stabs a man named Horn in the neck several times. She doesn’t know he has a partner, but she gets away by running through a cornfield, then finds a place to call the cops.

This begins one of the subplots. What the heck is going on with Horn, who should, by all rights, be dead? We’re shortly introduced to a football player and his girlfriend who discover the dumping ground for over twenty victims. It’s an old cistern, referred to from then on as The Black Hole.

People from Minnesota will recognize the place names: Zumbrota, Red Wing, and Holbein, two small towns and a small city near the Wisconsin border. Red Wing is infamous as home to a reform school. As young people there weren’t many boys who weren’t threatened with being sent to Red Wing if they misbehaved. When Lucas Davenport is called to the scene he must contend with the Wisconsin state police who lay claim to some of the bodies, and a Goodhue County detective named Caitrin Mattson who has a very big chip on her shoulder. Also, for some reason Lucas takes his adopted daughter, Lettie, along. She’s been showing more than a little interest in her dad’s profession, and she’s already good at it. Weather, Lucas’s wife, puts a stop to that when she asks to go again later on.

Del, Lucas’s number one partner, is involved in a gun running/drug case involving some senior citizens and Virgil Flowers is on vacation, then must deal with another case in Iowa. There’s some funny interplay between that “effing” Flowers and Davenport when he learns Virgil knows Caitrin. She’s a very good looking woman. Former lech Davenport is tempted, but he’s happily married to Weather.

It’s not long before, the second string killer, R.A., targets Caitrin as his next victim, and that’s where most of the suspense lies. R.A. looks like a lump of clay, but like the senior citizens, he’s more imposing than he looks. He also seems to be getting help from Horn, who should be dead.

Davenport does not have the lead in this case. That job went to the more careful Bob Shaffer, who keep a murder book that he carries with him every place he goes; he also has a smaller notebook. Both will become instrumental later on in the story.

This is one of the better PREY novles, but Lucas drops the ball upon occasion. A little girl identifies a man who may be one of the killers as her mailman. He was sorting mail at the time, so it couldn’t be him. It takes forever and a day for Lucas to show the picture to the locals. Lucas also keeps a file of dirtballs who might know the kind of psycho who would do this sort of thing. He actually has the name of the killer before he’s distracted by Del’s case in Texas and doesn’t follow through. Doesn’t sound like Lucas Davenport.

The climax scene is riveting; usually I’m not to worried when it’s Lucas who’s in a fight for his life, because Sandford isn’t going to sacrifice his bread and brother for a twist, but in this one it’s somebody else who has us really worried.

Long time fans of the PREY series will welcome the return of Elle, Lucas’s childhood friend, now a nun and a psychologist. She helps Heather Jorgenson remember more of what happened the night she was kidnapped.

I'm not a big horror fan, but Stephen King has always had the ability to hook the reader on the first page, so I've read my fair share of his novels and short story collections. MR. MERCEDES isn't really horror anyway. King's son, Joe Hill, must have influenced him to try the mystery genre, and that's what this book is.

King hooks us with these two likable characters, Augie Odenkirk and Janice Cray, who are both standing in the rain waiting for a job fair to open. A thousand people are to be hired and they're both desperate for work. Janice is so desperate she's brought her baby with her and it needs to be changed and fed. Augie loans her his sleeping bag. Just when she's all set, a Mercedes plows into the crowd. We're hoping Augie, our hero, and Janice and her baby aren't hurt, but that rat King won't let us have our way. So then who's this story about? King is a lot like John Sandford in that he lets you follow the killer throughout the book. This killer is a computer repairman, part-time ice cream salesman (That's how he gets to know the real hero of the book, a retired cop, named Bill Hodges, who's thinking of eating his father's hand gun). Brady Hartfield has seen him through the window. and he intuitively knows that's what Bill is doing. So he writes Bill a letter, signing it Mr. Mercedes. (BTW, that's a flaw in the book. Newspapers don't give serial murderers nicknames anymore like the Zodiac killer or Son of Sam. That's what they want, publicity. If they do, they'll hear from the police.) Brady's new target is Bill Hodges, and he wants to drive him to suicide, just as he's done with the owner of the Mercedes.

Brady Hartsfield is one sick puppy. He's got an Oedipus complex for one thing. He still lives with his mother, and he's got a man cave in the basement where he torments his future victims via the dark Internet. He's trying to get Bill to sign on to a site called “Debbie's Blue Umbrella”, but actually he's done Bill a favor; Bill now has a reason to live besides watching Judge Judy on TV: to track down this monster before he hurts somebody else.

Often divorced Bill also meets the owner of the Mercedes's sister, Janey. Mr. Mercedes has sent her sister a letter similar to the one Bill received. Bill is 62; Janey is 44 and beautiful. For some reason, she likes him, despite the age disparity. She hasn't had much luck with men, and Bill is a very nice man. She wants in on the search for the killer. So does Jerome, Bill's lawn boy, who also happens to be an all-American boy bent on being accepted at an Ivy league school. But he likes to pretend he's a field hand around Bill as he's an African-American. He's also adept at computers, and he helps Bill check out “Debbie's Blue Umbrella.” The last member of the group is Holly, whose mother was Mercedes owner Olivia Trelawney's sister. Holly ia forty-four years old but her mother, along with other bullies, has driven her to bat city She's got more ticks than a Rocky Mountain forest, but she's also computer literate, and she's brave and smart, despite her condition.

This book will keep you on the edge of your chair until the climax is over, and you'll keep reading to find out what happened to everybody after that. It even ends with a cliffhanger of sorts. Usually that's a no-no for me, but I would have read the next King mystery anyway.

As many of you know, Robert B. Parker is no long among us. Since his passing, Michael Brandman (never read him) and Reed Farrel Coleman have continued the Jesse Stone series.

The hardest part to capture is Jesse Stone's dialogue, which is most evident when he's having a discussion with his deputy, Suit, who is almost as laconic. Reed Farrel Coleman, an experienced mystery writers captures Jesse's style rather well, although he sometimes over does it. Coleman has written the last four episodes.

In this one, Jesse is on an alcoholic binge due the murder of his fiancee'. But he tries to keep it together because Suit is getting married, and he's the best man. Meanwhile, an old woman is murdered. Jesse finds out who the culprits are through his connections with the Boston underworld. In short order, one of them turns up dead.

So . . . who hired these ex-cons to do the job? They weren't looking for money and the old woman's jewelry is still there, except for one valuable ring one of them takes without the other's knowledge. The other guy finds the key to a safety deposit box without telling his partner.

Meanwhile Jesse wards off the ambitious mayor and her assistant who know about his drinking and want him gone. He finds a connection to the missing album, THE HANGMAN'S SONNET, which was recorded by a Bob Dylan clone, Terry Hester, who was supposed to be as good or better than Dylan. Jesse finds out the old woman rented out rooms, and he has his deputy search her house for some kind of registration book. As a result he gets a lead as to who might have stolen the album. The culprit is also taunting the police and Jesse. He sends a poem written by Hester to Roscoe Niles, who used to be the Dick Clark of New England disk jockeys, who has been going to seed lately. Jesse quickly posits the man behind the murders is trying to stir up the press so that the bids are higher for the missing album if he indeed has it. The plot clues us in on how the old woman was connected to the missing album.

Okay, so is this enjoyable enough to contend with Robert B. Parker?This might seem trivial but, there is no dog. Jesse usually talks to his dog when he's muddling through his latest challenge. Ozzie Smith takes the dog's place in this episode (Jesse has a picture on one of his walls of Ozzie doing his acrobatics). For you non-baseball fans, Ozzie Smith may have been the greatest defensive shortstop to ever play the game, the same position Jesse played until he hurt his arm. You probably won't be able to guess who was behind this mess, but the number of possible candidates will keep you turning the pages.

Sandford's new Prey book is especially appropriate these days with Covid19 demonstrations supposedly organized by gun rights groups and sometimes violent and destructive demonstrations in response to the George Floyd police abuse incident.

Lucas is called in by the FBI to ferret out those behind a web site called 1919, which means SS. There are pictures of the children of congressmen and women alongside extreme anti-government articles. The FBI thinks it's a call to murder congressional children to barter votes on radical issues. Oh yes, there's a social media loving daughter of a democratic senator involved. She discovered he site while looking to see how her brand is circulating on the Web.

Eventually Lucas calls in Bob and Rae, his new partners and fellow US marshals. Lucas talks to an “expert” on potentially violent militia and right wing groups who may be involved. They are surprisingly helpful. You'd think they were essentially good hearted underneath the dangerous exteriors.

Lucas is working with FBI Special Agent Chase. She's meant to keep a damper on the sometimes off-the-record Davenport. Like that's going to work.

We also get a look at the man who plots and carries out a murder influenced by 1919. He thought it was real. At first he sent out letters to three others who might want to do his dirty work for him. It's surprising how normal this guy is in his every day profession. He's a surveyor. Anyway the letters help find him. And that loose cannon Lucas isn't about to let him get away with murdering kids.

The ending kind of fizzles. The reader is expecting some kind of catastrophic denouement, which doesn't happen. After all, in the last Prey novel, Lucas was shot.