Flash and Bang: A Short Mystery Fiction Society Anthology by J. Alan Hartman (Editor)

December 11, 2015 By 2 Comments

FLASH
Flash and Bang: A Short Mystery Fiction Society Anthology by J. Alan Hartman (Editor)
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Genre: Suspense/Mystery, Contemporary, Historical
Length: Short Story (115 pages)
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Sometimes, crime occurs with the sound of a drip of poison, or the whispering whistle of a knife moving through the air. And, sometimes, it happens with a “flash and bang.”

The Short Mystery Fiction Society was formed in 1996 to promote the reading, writing and publication of short-form mystery and crime. This includes the yearly presentation of the Derringer Awards, which celebrate excellence in the writing of stories of up to 20,000 words in length.

With over 1,600 members worldwide, SMFS represents a unique pool of authors. Now, the Short Mystery Fiction Society is pleased to present all-new stories for its first-ever anthology of stories in the short form—Flash and Bang.
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From Vikings to ancient Chinese judges, diners to pawn shops, and a variety of gumshoes and amateur sleuths, Flash and Bang not only represents a wide variety of tales, but also serves as a showcase for a sampling of the incredible talent in the SMFS ranks.

Within these pages are contributions from Herschel Cozine, Bobbi A. Chukran, Su Kopil, P.A. De Voe, Laurie Stevens, Tim Wohlforth, Suzanne Berube Rorhus, Sandra Murphy, Julie Tollefson, O’Neil De Noux, John M. Floyd, JoAnne Lucas, Andrew MacRae, Judy Penz Sheluk, Albert Tucher, Earl Staggs, Barb Goffman, BV Lawson and Walter Soethoudt.

Almost everyone has at least one secret they hope will never be revealed. For most of us, though, these secrets aren’t as dangerous as the ones found in this collection.

By far my favorite entry was “The Bag Lady.” The narrator was a successful businessperson who strikes up a conversation with a homeless woman on a train ride. The beginnings of a friendship blossoms between these two women at the same time that the businessperson tries to figure out what lead the bag lady to end up in such a precarious position in life. I was completely enthralled by the clues her unlikely seat mate revealed as the journey progressed. There were a few of them that I didn’t recognize at all until after the final scene ended. This could have easily been expanded into a full-length novel, although it was perfectly satisfying as it was written.

I loved almost every single tale that Mr. Hartman compiled here. There were only a handful of exceptions to this, and even in these cases I still found something to like in the ones that didn’t fully capture my attention. Most of these stories were incredibly short. A few were only a page or two long. While this format worked well for the majority of them, ““Fireworks (from Judge Lu’s Ming Dynasty Case Files)” would have benefitted from a much longer format. It involved a death that occurred at the same time that a large group of fireworks were being set off. There were so many characters milling around, though, that I had a hard time keeping them all straight while also trying to figure out how the victim died and who, if anyone, might be responsible for his death.

In “Fractured Memories,” Keith woke up the morning after a wild Fourth of July party to discover something horrible had happened the night before. From his disorientation in the beginning to his reactions to the stunning conclusion, I felt like I was walking alongside this character every step of the way. The clues were revealed steadily enough to keep me revising my theories about what must have really happened after he went to sleep. I was so interested in what the solution would be that I couldn’t stop reading this one.

Flash and Bang: A Short Mystery Fiction Society Anthology was a lot of fun to read. I’d recommend to anyone who likes very short mysteries.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Good Cop by Dorien Grey

November 24, 2015 By Leave a Comment

GOOD
The Good Cop by Dorien Grey
A Dick Hardesty Mystery, #5
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Genre: Suspense/Mystery, Historical
Length: Full Length (151 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

All Tom Brady wanted was to be a good cop; to keep a low profile and prove to a notoriously homophobic police department undergoing its own internal upheavals that gays deserved the right to be among them. But when he and old friend Dick Hardesty go out for a quiet evening, an incident leads to Tom shooting two thugs attacking patrons of a gay bar. Dick finds himself trying to protect Tom from being outed, while heading off a violent antipolice rebellion by the gay community.

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Dick has really grown as a person since the first instalment in this series. While it isn’t strictly necessary to read The Butcher’s Son, The Ninth Man, The Bar Watcher, and The Hired Man first, I’ve deeply enjoyed seeing how this character has changed over time. Just like living people, his personal growth hasn’t always been steady. Sometime it stalled or happened so slowly that I could barely notice any difference in him. When I compare the sometimes reckless Dick I knew four books ago to the much more thoughtful one I met this time, though, I’m amazed at how much he’s learned from his life so far. His maturation process has been a lot of fun to witness, and I’m looking forward to seeing how he changes in the future.

At times the subplots threatened to overwhelm the main plot due to how many of them there were and how long it took to introduce all of them. While I was interested in them, I would have liked to see more attention paid to figuring out what was going on with the fallout from the shootout that Tom was involved in early on in the plot. There was a lot of interesting information about those events that never had all of the time they needed to be explored because so many other things were happening simultaneously.

With that being said, Mr. Grey definitely knows how to keep me guessing. One of the things I appreciate the most about his writing style is how much time this author spends exploring the world his characters live in. Having such a clear understanding of what life was like for gay men in the 1980s only made me want to know what was going on in the moments before the crime Dorien investigates even more earnestly because of how steeply the cards were stacked against justice ever being served for the victim or the LGBT community as a whole at that point in history.

I’d recommend The Good Cop to anyone who is in the mood for a mystery set in the recent past.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Mysterious Heir by Edith Layton

October 13, 2015 By Leave a Comment

HEIR
The Mysterious Heir by Edith Layton
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Genre: Historical
Length: Short Story (139 pages)
Heat Level: Sweet
Rating: 5 stars
Reviewed by Orchid

THE EXQUISITE PRETENDER

In dress, manner, and speech, Miss Elizabeth DeLisle seemed every inch a leisured lady. No one could guess she had been forced to take a position in trade—or that she had come to the Earl of Auden’s estate to entice him into naming her dismayingly disagreeable cousin Anthony heir to a fortune that she then could share.
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But Elizabeth had stiff competition for the Earl’s imperious favor…from the schemingly seductive Lady Isabel Courtney and her odious little boy, Owen…from the implacably upright Richard Courtney and his unfortunate honesty…and from the memory of the Earl’s first wife, who had made him despise women who deceived.

Elizabeth knew she could never reveal the truth to the Earl—even when she forgot about gaining his fortune and began losing her heart….

Left with a bad limp from the Napoleonic wars and a broken heart from his deceased wife, Morgan, Earl of Auden, has no desire to marry again. He must decide which of his three great uncles’ male children will be heir to his title and estates. All three cousins are called to his country estate at Lyonshall so he can decide who will be the chosen one.

One is a young schoolboy and his widowed mother accompanies him, eager to either get her son named as heir or grab the Earl as a husband. One penniless young man hopes to sway his true love’s heart with the title. The last is a radical, reckless young man. His family sends his maternal cousin Elizabeth (no relation to the Earl) to accompany him and keep him from ruining his chance of becoming the heir.

There is mystery behind each of the prospective heirs, and hidden reasons why each would like to become the sixth Earl. Anthony and his cousin Elizabeth have been kitted out by their uncle to appear worthy and wealthy applicants for Anthony to inherit. This duplicity worries Elizabeth and makes her act in unusual ways. The interaction between Elizabeth and Morgan is tense at first then sways between tension and guilt then sweet and tender moments with the promise of something deeper.

I haven’t read a regency romance for some time as they tend to read like variations of similar stories. This one however is different. The conflict ebbed and flowed and kept my attention from beginning to end. The ending didn’t really show itself until the final pages, and it was the promise of what was to come and more to the point, how it would come about, that kept my interest. Good book, well written, excellent story.

Filed Under: Reviews, Romance Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Hired Man by Dorien Grey

September 4, 2015 By Leave a Comment

HIRED
The Hired Man by Dorien Grey
A Dick Hardesty Mystery, #4
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Genre: Mystery/Suspense, Historical
Length: Full Length (195 pages)
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

When private investigator Dick Hardesty is hired by businessman Stuart Anderson to conduct routine background checks on potential store managers, he becomes reacquainted with a former trick, Phil Stark, who has undergone an amazing transformation from bar hustler to professional escort. When Anderson is murdered, Hardesty is hired by the escort services owners, Arnold and Iris Glick, to keep Phil and the agency away from police scrutiny. Two subsequent murders make this impossible, and Hardesty embarks on a mission to find the identity of the killer.

If the police can’t solve these murders, how will Dick be able to piece everything together?
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The pacing was strong and steady from the first chapter to the last one. It was difficult to find a decent place to stop reading when I needed to do other things because every scene was plotted out so well. No sooner would one question be answered than another one would take its place. I simultaneously didn’t want this story to end and couldn’t wait to find out how the author was going to tie everything together!

The cast was quite large. It would have been really helpful to have a list of who all of the new people were and how they were connected to this case. The characters from the previous books in this series were easy to remember because I’ve read all of them, but I occasionally mixed up the ones who were brand new in this universe. There simply weren’t quite enough details about their lives to remember who was who in a few cases. This is my only criticism of an otherwise very well done storyline.

One of the things I enjoy the most about Mr. Grey’s books is how closely he expects his audience to pay attention to what is going on in them. None of the Dick Hardesty mysteries that I’ve read so far have been easy to figure out. The clues were there, but I definitely had to put some work into them in order to fit everything together properly. I appreciate that in this genre.

While this plot does technically work as a standalone novel, I do recommend checking out The Butcher’s Son, The Ninth Man, and The Bar Watcher first in order to get to know the recurring characters and their backstories. I would have been a little confused by the first few scenes if I wasn’t already familiar with this series.

The Hired Man kept me guessing until the end. It’s a good choice for anyone who enjoys historical mysteries as much as I do.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

Mount II: The Next Adventure by Arlen Blumhagen

August 17, 2015 By Leave a Comment

MountII
Mount II: The Next Adventure by Arlen Blumhagen
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Genre: Historical, Action/Adventure
Length: Short Story (92 pages)
Heat Level: Sweet
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Arlen Blumhagen captures the feel of the western wilderness of the late 1800’s in this story of one man’s adventures across the American wilderness.

Mount leads a simple life, using his skills to survive in his cabin on the side of a mountain. When circumstances require him to make a trip into St. Louis, Mount thinks it will be a quick visit to The Big City and then home. What he isn’t prepared for is the request of Andrew Worthington to lead his family through the wilderness and up through the Oregon Trail. What ensues is a series of adventures from attacks by Indians and snakes to blizzards and several near-fatal disasters. All Mount wants to do is get home to his life, but can he keep his band of travelers alive long enough to make it?

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The past can be hidden, but it can never truly be forgotten.

I ended up reading all ninety-two pages in a single day because I was so curious to see what would happen to this protagonist next. The pacing was so strong that there wasn’t ever a good place to stop and take a break from the plot. Every scene lead to one that was even more adventurous! I simply had to know how it all ended for Mount and his friends.

At times I had trouble keeping track of all of the characters. There were more of them than I would typically expect to see in a short story, and there simply wasn’t enough time to get to know all of them as well as I would have preferred to do so. While I liked all of the characters, I would have given this work a much higher rating if I’d been able to get to know a smaller number of them better.

By far the most interesting scenes for me were the ones that showed what Mount knew about healing the human body. He’d never had any kind of formal medical training as far as I could tell, yet he seemed to have a lot of tricks up his sleeve when he needed to act quickly. I was absolutely fascinated by everything he knew about how bodies work.

I should note that this is the second tale in a series. I haven’t read the first one yet but had absolutely no problem understanding what was going on. They can be read out of order, although I’m now quite curious to see what I missed in book one!

Mount II: The Next Adventure is a good choice for anyone who likes westerns.

Filed Under: Reviews, Romance Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The Bar Watcher by Dorien Grey

July 9, 2015 By Leave a Comment

BAR
The Bar Watcher by Dorien Grey
A Dick Hardesty Mystery, #3
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Genre: Suspense/Mystery, Historical
Length: Full Length (158 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

When the obnoxious owner of a gay bathhouse begins receiving threatening messages accusing him of not admitting people inside that he doesn’t deem “hot” enough, he enlists the services of private detective Dick Hardesty to find the person behind the notes. When the owner is murdered following a heated argument with Dick, Hardesty becomes a suspect. Following a succession of other seemingly unrelated deaths — all involving individuals noted for their cruelty to other gays — Hardesty begins to suspect the actions are of someone who is looking to “take out the garbage” of the gay community. Can he solve the case and clear his name before the body count rises even further?

They say karma catches up with everyone eventually. Has someone decided to give karma a helping hand?
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Life in the 1980s was very different from the way people live in 2015 in some ways. I was completely fascinated by these differences because I hadn’t realized that the opinions of society in general have shifted so radically on certain topics. It’s difficult to discuss this in detail without giving away spoilers, but it was definitely a highlight of the plot for me.

Dick was such a fascinating protagonist in the first book in this series, The Butcher’s Son. It came as a surprise to me to see how little he’s changed as a person since then. He seemed to make the same choices over and over again. This wasn’t something I would have expected at all when I was first introduced to him, so it would have been really helpful to know why this was the case. Even a brief explanation of where he was in his life and why he hasn’t addressed certain issues yet would have prompted me to choose a much higher rating for this tale!

The mystery itself kept me on my toes. The clues required me to think methodically and take a few notes in order to determine what they were telling me. This is something that I specifically look for in this genre because it feels so satisfying to work alongside the main character as we both try to figure out what actually happened.

There were references to events from The Butcher’s Son and The Ninth Man that will only make sense to people who are already familiar with this series. I’m glad that I’ve read everything in order so far, although this story can be read a standalone novel.

I’d recommend The Bar Watcher to anyone who likes to be kept guessing until the very end.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

Sour Grapes: A Claudia Seferius Mystery by Marilyn Todd

July 8, 2015 By Leave a Comment

GRAPES
Sour Grapes: A Claudia Seferius Mystery by Marilyn Todd
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Genre: Historical, Suspense/Mystery
Length: Full Length (175 Pages)
Rating: 5 Stars
Reviewed by Cyclamen

Deep in the reed beds, the water shimmered and rippled. After three days’ submersion, the gases inside gently raised the body to the surface. Setting a seventeen-year-old youth on his final journey downstream.

When a wealthy horse trainer starts courting her mother-in-law, Claudia knows love has bugger-all to do with it. Especially with the number of hangers-on who’ve moved in. But exactly what is his game? Can it be connected to a string of local misfortunes?

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Then a young man is found dead…

Claudia heads to Mercurium to visit her mother-in-law, Larentia, and quickly finds herself caught up in a series of murders. She also has to fight for her own survival because if Larentia marries, as she is threatening to do, Claudia will lose control of her own affairs. Ancient Rome was not a friendly place for single women and if there is a man in the household and Claudia is unmarried, then Larentia’s new husband will assume control over everything.

Claudia is a very likeable and believable protagonist. She is a complex character who is very intelligent, curious, and capable. She is certain that Darius is not what he seems, and she can not believe that he really wants to marry Larentia. But what about the bad luck that is plaguing a number of families in Mercurium? Is it really bad luck?

Sour Grapes is set in Ancient Rome and the setting certainly enhances the story. It seems very authentic and I really felt as if I had been taken back in time to a very different world. The sights and sounds, smells and tastes, all come alive in amazing ways.

This is the twelfth novel in the Claudia Seferius series and I have read several of the earlier ones. I find them to be extremely engaging and the mysteries are complex and challenging. I thought I’d pegged the villain in Sour Grapes, believing, as Claudia did, only to be caught unawares as Claudia fights for her very life against a most worth adversary. The finale of the novel is bone-chilling in its intensity.

I think that historical mysteries, when written as well as this one is, bring the past to life and add a level of depth and interest to any mystery. Fans of this genre are sure to enjoy traveling back in time and meeting Claudia Seferius.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Ninth Man by Dorien Grey

July 8, 2015 By Leave a Comment

TheNinthMan
The Ninth Man by Dorien Grey
A Dick Hardesty Mystery, #2
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Genre: Suspense/Mystery, Historical
Length: Short Story (128 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Beware of strangers bearing gifts.

A serial killer is on the loose, apparently targeting gay men at random for death by a most unusual means, and the homophobic police force seems much more interested in meeting its parking ticket quota than in bothering with a bunch of dead faggots. As the body count mounts, it’s up to PI Dick Hardesty to find out not only to find what all the dead men had in common, but who killed them, and why.

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One of the things I enjoy the most about Mr. Grey’s writing style is how he writes his metaphors. They are incredibly vivid and lively. Every single one of them caught my attention in this story because they were so carefully put together. This was by far my favorite metaphor: “He looked like a butter pecan ice cream cone with delusions of grandeur.” Not only did it give me a perfect mental image of the character the narrator was describing, it also made me laugh!

I would have liked to see more attention paid to the main plot. While the subplots were interesting, some of them were discussed so regularly that they threatened to overshadow the series of murders that Dick is attempting to solve. The inclusion of so many different storylines would have worked better in a full length novel. It wasn’t very effective in something of this length, though.

The dialogue was well done. It sounded incredibly natural and conversational as I was reading it. I especially liked seeing how Dick spoke to all of the people he met during the course of his investigation. His conversations spurred both character and plot development in some pretty creative ways.

This book is the second in a series. It can be read on its own or out of order, although I would recommend also checking out The Butcher’s Son to readers who enjoyed this tale.

The Ninth Man is a good choice for anyone who likes mysteries set in the recent past.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Butcher’s Son by Dorien Grey

July 7, 2015 By Leave a Comment

TheButchersSon
The Butcher’s Son by Dorien Grey
A Dick Hardesty Mystery, #1
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Genre: Suspense/Mystery, Historical
Length: Short Story (144 pages)
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Dick Hardesty is pressed into service when someone starts burning down gay bars all over town and the police chief (nicknamed ‘the butcher’) shrugs the whole thing off. Then drag queens and female impersonators get into the act and Dick is required to sleuth out who is hot and who is not.

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I was quite pleased with how three-dimensionally the protagonist was written. The plot spent a great deal of time exploring his backstory which only made his quirks even more memorable than they would have been otherwise. His flaws were given an equal amount of attention. Knowing so much about where they came from and why they’d developed, though, only made me a bigger fan of Dick as a person.

The pacing was a little slow in the beginning due to all of the characters the narrator needed to introduce to the audience. While a few of them could have been introduced a little later on, most of the characters needed to show up right away so that the reader would understand what was happening. I understood why Mr. Grey wrote it this way, although I would have chosen an even higher rating had I not been momentarily confused by all of the people who showed up in the first few chapters.

One of the things that matters the most to me in a good mystery are plot twists that I didn’t see coming. This book was full of twists that I couldn’t figure out in advance, and all of them were really well done. They stayed true to the atmosphere of the story while at the same time prodding me to look at the evidence again to see if there was anything else I might have missed.

The Butcher’s Son was a thrilling introduction to the Dick Hardesty series. If this is any indication of what is to come, I can’t wait to see what happens in book two!

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

Mangrove Bayou by Stephen Morrill

July 2, 2015 By Leave a Comment

MANGROVE
Mangrove Bayou by Stephen Morrill
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Genre: Suspense/Mystery, Contemporary
Length: Full Length (163 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Troy Adam, mixed-race, ex-Army, and northern-born, is fired from his job as a Tampa cop. Looking for work, Adam finds himself in Mangrove Bayou, a small gulf coast Florida town located south of Naples and in the midst of the Ten Thousand Islands/Everglades National Park region. In short order he’s hired, on probation, as Mangrove Bayou’s new police chief. Not much of an accomplishment, as there weren’t any other serious candidates, but Adam intends to show his worth.

No sooner does he arrive than a prominent citizen is found dead. Although the medical examiner rules the case an accident, Troy believes all signs point to murder. The town council doubts that Adam or his small department can handle the case, but Adam is determined to prove them wrong. As a hurricane arrives, Adam and his team are up to their elbows in storms and suspects, assisted (or hindered) by a collection of residents who redefine the term eclectic.

It’s never easy to be the new guy in a small town.
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Troy’s character development was well done. His persistence was exactly what this case needed, and his intelligent approach to the clues kept me interested in what he would discover next. He felt like a real person to me because so much time had clearly been spent crafting his strengths as well as his weaknesses. The author did a marvelous job with this protagonist.

The cast of characters was extremely large. There were so many different individuals being introduced to the plot that I had trouble keeping track of who everyone was and how they knew one another. This also made it difficult for me to remember important details about the suspects because they were mixed in with so many other people.

The subplots were just as interesting as the main one. I wasn’t expecting this book to include such a wide variety of storylines. It’s difficult to discuss them without giving away spoilers, but I really liked how many different problems Mr. Morrill expected Troy to try to solve simultaneously. It gave the plot a sense of urgency that it otherwise wouldn’t have had.

There were some pacing issues in this story. The narrator spent a great deal of time introducing all of the characters to the reader. While the mystery did make itself known, I would have liked to see it show up in some way much sooner. It felt odd to read so many chapters about the daily lives of ordinary people when I was expecting to solve a case alongside Troy.

With that being said, the murder itself was compelling. I enjoyed seeing how methodically each clue was revealed. While I did figure out the twist ahead of time, it definitely took some work on my part to do so. This isn’t the kind of mystery that reveals all of its secrets easily. Needing to put in that extra effort is something I appreciate when reading this genre.

Mangrove Bayou is a good choice for anyone who enjoys tales set in rural, insular communities.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,
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