Mystery

Review – The Hypnotist

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The Hypnotist

By MJ Rose

Mira Books

ISBN: 978-1-4268-5469-9

4 stars

Lucian Glass is an FBI agent with the Art Crime Team, a long suffering artist, and a man damaged by not only his past but his job.  Working though a recent head injury, headaches plague him along with dreams of unknown women and the love of his life — a woman murdered at 19 years of age.  Attacked in the same robbery where his girlfriend lost her life, Lucian lives with guilt over not being able to save her and surviving.  That guilt pours over into his job tracking and retrieving stolen art.  When he is pulled into a case involving his dead girlfriend’s family, his life takes one stumble after the other pulling him into a game with too many players all wanting the same thing.

The Hypnotist is the third book in The Reincarnationist series.  I haven’t read the two previous books:  The Reincarnationist and The Memorist.  As a standalone book, The Hypnotist worked but as a person who loves a series, I wished I had read the two earlier ones but was already into this one when I realized that was the case.

Lucian is a tortured person and one who doesn’t seem to want much help either.  As a character, he can be frustrating but it also lends him the sad artist persona, sketching away in his notebook trying to ease headaches that only cease when he’s frantically drawing women he doesn’t know.  A sculpture with a mythical power that no one understands fully is at the center of the story but the focus is on its heist, however, I wanted to know more about what it could do.  It was a part of the story I started to get into when it ended.  In fact, a few of the story lines ended abruptly for me but also left me wondering if another book is in the works.

I liked this book and moved through it fast.  I’m a lover of museums and staring at art for no other reason than to admire its simple beauty and I found myself getting entranced by that aspect of the story.  I haven’t been to the MET in years (much of the story takes places there) and this book made me want to go back.  It also made me want to pick up the other two books to get the back story

I won this book through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program.  The book was downloaded as an ebook from NetGalley.

The Sunday Salon

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We had visitors this weekend so not much reading was done. I did get in a few chapters here and there but mostly it was filled with football games and touristy things.

In the last week, I finished The Distant Hours by Kate Morton, The Sherlockian by Graham Moore, The Exile by Diana Gabaldon, and started Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling so even if I didn’t get to read this weekend, it was still a good week overall.

I don’t have much to say today which is probably due to the lack of sleep I’ve had the last few nights.  Even the nap this afternoon didn’t help so I’ll be making this a very short salon today.  I was planning to talk about cleaning off the bookshelves or maybe even holiday reading but I don’t have it in me today.  🙂

Happy Sunday.

The Mosaic of Shadows

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The Mosaic of Shadows

By Tom Harper

Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Minotaur

ISBN: 0-312-33867-8

3 stars

The Mosaic of Shadows had a perfect setting, Byzantium, a mystery which I was willing to accept under the guise of historical fiction, and some interesting characters.  Unfortunately, the story fell a bit flat for me.

In Byzantium in 1066, an assassin narrowly misses the emperor with an arrow.  Knowing the implications if the emperor were to die, the palace wants the assassin found.  Demetrios Askiates, a man known for uncovering mysteries, is called to the palace and given orders to uncover the assassin’s plot and catch the would be killer.  Demetrios, whose usual cases have to do with finding lost items, ends up in an unknown world dealing with princes, slaves, and mercenaries.  When an army summoned by the emperor appears at the city’s walls, the hunt for an assassin takes on a new urgency.

The setting of this book was wonderful but the characters, with the exception of one, weren’t so wonderful.  Demetrios is in over his head and doesn’t seem like a person you would hire for this type of job unless you wanted him to fail.  He has a family but they’re mostly an afterthought and the love interest is barely thought of until she’s needed.  All of this made Demetrios rather unappealing.  He was supposed to be a solver of mysteries but he was more like a bumbling detective you would hire to find a cat in a tree.  I wanted to like him but I couldn’t find his redeeming value.

Some of the more interesting characters didn’t get developed as much as I would have liked.  The Varangians, who guard the emperor, are known for their fierce devotion and fighting abilities and the captain of the emperor’s guard, Sigurd, was a character I would have liked to have seen more of.

The ending, however, was exciting and I was glad that I stuck around for that.  Unfortunately, the mystery part of the story didn’t feel much like a mystery for me.  The person who “did it” was a person I wanted to see gone anyway so it’s wasn’t much of a surprise when his association with the killer was revealed.

This is the first book in a series and I don’t know if I will be following up with the others.  However, if I find out that the Varangian guards are featured, I may change my mind.

Teaser Tuesdays

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Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.  The idea is to give everyone a look inside the book you’re reading.

Play along: Grab your current read; Open to a random page; Share two teaser sentences from that page; Share the title and author so that other participants know what you’re reading.

I’m starting The Mosaic of Shadows by Tom Harper today.

“It was evening when the axe-wielding barbarians arrived at my door.  The sun was sinking behind the western ramparts, casting the sky and all below it in copper.” (1)

What are you teasing us with this week?

The Divine Sacrifice

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The Divine Sacrifice

By Tony Hays

Forge Books

ISBN: 978-0-7653-1946-3

3.75 stars

This is the second book in the Arthurian legend mystery series following The Killing Way.  You can read my review of The Killing Way here.

Malgwyn ap Cuneglas is a counselor to King Arthur. He’s asked to accompany the King to Glastonbury Abbey to investigate reports of rebellion. What he finds on his arrival is a dead monk, accusations of heresy, and while investigating one murder, finds himself entangled in a second. The second murder becomes the more problematic one as the dead man is a well-known and revered man of the church. While trying to find a murder, or murderers, Malgwyn uncovers a conspiracy to overrun the church and the kingdom.

I’m not a mystery person but I’ve been trying to read more of them. I always have the same problem with all mysteries though — I spend all my time trying to figure out who did it that I don’t always enjoy the story itself. I don’t have this problem with other genres, although I do read ahead a lot and of course I do that with a mystery too but I just get caught up in it too much. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy this book because I did find it a fun read but I think I’m coming to a realization about mysteries themselves. They might just not be for me.

There was a small thing that did bother me about this book. All the men are rough and stay true to their nature throughout which I appreciate. I don’t expect 5th Century warlords to be overly kind but when an old murder — rape and murder of a young girl actually — is mentioned, it’s treated so casually and coldly that it bothered me. It’s a brutal murder but somehow having taken place so many years ago means nothing to all the people involved. It irked me too much.

I will say this though, I was surprised by who did it in this book. It was hidden well behind a name I didn’t connect. Of course, by this time I was too busy trying to figure out who did it that I had completely overlooked the connection and was annoyed by several of the characters reactions to past events to pay attention to this person at all. Then again, maybe that was the master plan of the author. Overall, this quick read was good and if you like historical fiction mixed with your mystery, it’s not a bad aside.

My Favorite Reads – The Hound of the Baskervilles

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Alyce from At Home With Books features one of her favorite reads each Thursday and this week my pick is…

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

From the back cover: The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of master mystery writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most accomplished stories. Sherlock Holmes and his companion Dr. Watson confront one of their most difficult cases ever: is there truly a curse on the old Baskerville estate? Is there truly a ghostly beast lurking on the dark, eerie moors? A masterful concoction of plot and mood, this story is guaranteed to give you the shivers.

Since that doesn’t give you much, and in case you want more, this wikipedia page should give you what you need.

My thoughts: I don’t read many mysteries, so I wonder sometimes why I like books and short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes so much. A few years ago, I remember going on a binge and reading pretty much everything I had in the house that the Holmes characters was even vaguely mentioned in. In the last few months, I’ve gone out of my way to read several mysteries hoping to find something I like. I can’t say that I’ve found anything yet but I’m hopeful.

The reason I like this book so much — there’s more than a mystery here. It’s the suspense, the mood, the darkness, the setting on the moors, murder, a ghostly pack of hounds hunting individuals at night, and the possibility of death while investigating. Other mysteries have these things but somehow the parts don’t add up the same. There’s something about the way all the elements come together here that make this a perfect read. Out of all the Sherlock Holmes books on my shelf, this one always sticks out in my mind as a wonderfully chilly read that makes you want to turn on the lights while sleeping.

The City & The City

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The City & The City

The City & The City

By China Miéville

Del Rey

ISBN: 0345497511

4 Stars

In the far reaches of Europe, the citizens of two cities strive to unsee each other. The cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, are crosshatched sister cities divided for and by political reasons which even it’s own citizens cannot always understand.

When a woman turns up dead in Beszel, Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad is called in to investigate. The young woman turns out to be a foreigner studying in Ul Qoma. When he cannot take the case any further without causing an incident that might give him reason to see someone in the other city, he tries to turn the case over to Breach, the agency that deals with crimes that cross city lines. When his request is rejected, he is ordered to cross into Ul Qoma to investigate the murder himself. The investigation causes him to question many of his own beliefs and those of his own government.

A crime/mystery/police procedural is not part of my regular reading diet and this certainly falls into the not my normal reading fare category easily enough. What drew me to The City & The City was the invention of the two cities that are not supposed to see or acknowledge each other but exist in the same time and physical space. There are subtle differences — clothing, language, architecture — but if one were to look past these differences, they could in fact be the same place. The Breach, which is supposed to deal with infractions that involve the seeing of both cities, is interesting in that it only exists to clean up accidents or punish people who cross the border without going through proper channels. When someone is taken by the Breach, they are never heard from again and people are understanding of this because this is how things are in their cities. As they have been trained to do since childhood, they unsee it and move on with their lives. In some ways it’s frustrating because I started to wonder how the citizens of these two cities could live with this going on around them, pretending that the neighbor they can clearly see is not there because they actually live in the other city. At some point I realized that I had to let go of my annoyance with the unseeing thing and go with it.

The story does take place in modern time but these two cities seem to exist in a world all their own and the entire time I kept wondering how these two places are like they are. There is some explanation but I didn’t feel completely satisfied by it but I think Miéville wants you to feel this way about the cities. Confused by the political, societal, and legal boundaries that are Beszel and Ul Qoma. While the murder investigation pushes the plot along, the story is really about these two cities, the strangeness of their existence, and the politics surrounding them. While it took me a few pages to get into the story and understand what was supposed to be seen and unseen, it was worth it. I’m looking forward to reading another book of his that comes out the summer called Kraken. I think The City & The City was a good Miéville primer.

A Corpse at St. Andrew’s Chapel

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A Corpse at St. Andrew's Chapel

A Corpse at St. Andrew’s Chapel

By Mel Starr

Monarch Books

ISBN: 978-1-85424-954-8

3.75 stars

Master Hugh de Singleton is a surgeon and the bailiff at Bampton manor. He’s the Lord’s representative and not always a popular person around the manor. One night, the village beadle, the man in charge of curfew, goes out on his rounds but doesn’t return the next morning. Hugh and a few men from the village go out to search for him and find him dead under a bush looking as if he’d been attacked by a wild animal. Soon after, a second person turns up dead and Hugh finds himself on a search for two killers.

In addition to his duties at the castle, Hugh is trying to solve two murders, find a poacher, and reassure people that a wild and crazed wolf is not on the prowl. He spends his days creeping about like one of the killers hoping to find out who’s been poaching deer from the Lord’s forest and wondering if the two murdered men might have seen something they shouldn’t have.

A Corpse at St. Andrew’s Chapel is a medieval murder mystery. It’s the second book in the chronicles of Hugh de Singleton. It was a quick, fun read and while it was still a bit of historical fiction for me (which I’ve sort of been avoiding to staunch any burnout I think I might be suffering from) it wasn’t overflowing with history, it was just the setting and I enjoyed that about the book. There were a few odd parts which I could have done without (Hugh gets a bit too interested in a scullery maid for my taste — leering is never becoming) but overall it a was nice distraction from my regular reading pattern. It’s the second book in the series featuring Hugh de Singleton but it worked as a standalone book for me. You don’t need to know anything about the people and places and Starr provides enough background for you to understand without feeling left out. My guess is that might change as the series progresses. A third book in the series is planned — A Trail of Ink.

I received this book through the Early Reviewer program on LibraryThing.