A surprise. Normally I don’t like fantasy fiction — but this one is more of a murder mystery.

A high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. … it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible.

The Tainted Cup is a 2024 fantasy murder mystery novel by Robert Jackson Bennett. 

… won the 2025 Hugo Award for Best Novel …

The two main characters are very likeable.

Anagosa “Ana” Dolabra is hilarious. She’s the troublesome but brilliant, eccentric investigator. 

Known for her almost impossibly insightful deductions, she is often depicted wearing a blindfold to limit sensory input.

If Ana is Sherlock Holmes, Dinios “Din” Kol is Watson, narrating the story.

He’s young. Inexperienced. Unconfident. BUT Ana needs Din because he has augmented perfect memory. He is her eyes and ears.

Din stumbles around the crime scene, later recounting what he heard and saw to Ana. She then makes sense of what’s happened.

Very original.

Historical fiction. Good concept. Dual timelines. But not a great novel.

London, 1953.  Louise is still adjusting to her postwar role as a housewife when she discovers a necklace in a box at a secondhand shop. The box is marked with the name of a department store in Paris, and she is certain she has seen the necklace before, when she worked with the Red Cross in Nazi-occupied Europe —and that it holds the key to the mysterious death of her friend Franny during the war.

Flashback to NAZI occupied Paris. Lévitan—a once-glamorous furniture store converted by the Nazis into a forced labor camp, and Helaine, a woman who was imprisoned there, torn apart from her husband when the Germans invaded France.

The two stories are intertwined, but how?

That’s the mystery.

Season 1 was excellent.

BUT season 2 was simply too weird for me. Too confusing.

Peter Capaldi still excellent.

Benjamin Chivers positively spooky.

Perhaps season 3 will make more sense.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

A very good book. Smart and insightful writing.

In Vanishing Act (1994), our hero is Jane Whitefield, a Native American (Seneca) who specializes in helping people disappear.

The book Shaman or Sherlock? says “Perry makes both Whitefields credible—the native woman with a secure role in the tribal hierarchy and a deep-seated commitment to tribal values, and the highly competent modern professional, who skirts the edge of the law to do good in her community.”

The story is excellent.

As a hiker, I appreciated it when the chase got into the woods. On foot. By canoe.

Jane relies on both modern skills and her Native American heritage to guide her clients from their old lives into new, presumably safer, lives.

Jane’s clients are generally in danger, whether from abusive partners, criminals, or the law. Her services include both the practical – documents, transportation, money, and protection – and the philosophical – how to adjust to a new and strange life and how to become a new person.

She teaches her clients to think “like a rabbit, not a dog”. As she explains to a client, “This is like dogs chasing a rabbit. When the rabbit wins, he doesn’t get to kill the dogs and eat them. He just gets to keep being a rabbit.”

Thomas Perry received a 1983 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel for The Butcher’s Boy.

Not bad. This 1998 novel kept me guessing.

Claire Heller Chapman has the perfect life. She’s a Harvard law professor and a high-profile criminal defense attorney known for taking on—and winning—tough cases. But one day this perfect life is shattered when her husband Tom Chapman is suddenly arrested by a team of government agents and accused of a brutal crime he insists he didn’t commit.

As Claire finds herself drawn closer into a web of duplicity and shadowy figures, she discovers that her husband is not who he says he is…that he once had a different name…even a different face.

Now Claire must put her reputation on the line to defend Tom in a top-secret court-martial. As she searches for the truth, she begins to unravel an insidious, high-level government conspiracy that threatens not only her career but also her life, and the lives of her loved ones.

All the while, she struggles to maintain her belief in her husband’s innocence—even when all the evidence seems to indicate that he is a cold-blooded murderer.

JosephFinder.com

It was adapted for a 2002 movie staring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Mistress is a stand-alone novel, much more entertaining than the usual Patterson shoot-em-up thriller.

The novel is written in the first person from Ben Casper’s point of view.

Ben has an obsession with recalling trivia that continually sidetracks his thoughts. Movies, U.S. Presidents, popular culture, etc.

At the beginning of the book his friend Diana Hotchkiss appears to commit suicide, but the more Ben looks into it, the more it looks like murder.

When Ben starts looking too much into this, some group then repeatedly tries to kill him and those associated with him.

Twists and turns.

The Lions of Lucerne is a 2002 spy novel by Brad Thor.

Thor’s first novel with the character of Scot Harvath, an ex-Navy SEAL and current U.S. Secret Service agent, The Lions of Lucerne relates how Harvath survives an attack which leaves 30 of his fellow agents dead and the president of the United States kidnapped. Harvath then begins a search for those responsible and attempts to rescue the president.

Spy novel?

I’d call this a thriller. And I don’t like thrillers.

Thrillers are where one hero saves the world. No attempt at anything remotely realistic. Think Tom Clancy

Publishers Weekly wrote “it’s hard to get past the novel’s many graceless shortcomings, clichéd language […], cartoonish scenes and a protagonist whose superhero character desperately needs fleshing out.”

I did enjoy some scenes set in Europe. But that’s about it.

Today Thor is some kind of political junkie. He announced his candidacy for President of the United States in the 2020 election.

I will read no more Thor.

A good psychological thriller.

The writing of Never Lie, I found, simplistic. Similar to McFadden’s other books.

But the plot and (somewhat predictable) twists kept me going.

It tells the story of a married couple, Tricia and Ethan, who are stranded in a house in upstate New York because of a snowstorm. 

The house belonged to renowned psychiatrist Dr. Adrienne Hale, who went missing three years prior.

When Tricia discovers a room of secret tape recordings in Adrienne’s house and starts listening to them, the truth about Adrienne’s murder is revealed, as are secrets about Tricia’s and Ethan’s own murderous pasts. …

Never Lie is told via two alternating points of view, shifting back and forth between the voices of Patricia Lawton, first introduced only as “Tricia,” and Dr. Adrienne Hale. Tricia’s voice narrates the present, while Adrienne’s voice narrates the past. …

SuperSummary

I’ve got mixed feelings on this absurd 1996 thriller.

The premise is interesting.

But the storytelling bogged down with far too much geeky detail.

FBI Special Agent and counterterrorism expert Sarah Cahill doesn’t know the man she’s tracking. But the so-called “Prince of Darkness” knows her—intimately. So when Sarah is summoned to Wall Street to investigate, little does she know that she’s the one under surveillance… until the terrorist infiltrates himself into the deepest, most desperate corners of her life.

Soon Sarah is plunged into a deep labyrinth of intrigue and catastrophe as she races to uncover a diabolically clever conspiracy…before time runs out…and the clock strikes THE ZERO HOUR.

JosephFinder.com

Criminal Record is a British crime thriller television series …

… premiered on Apple TV+ on 10 January 2024.

Two detectives, one a seasoned veteran and the other early in her career, clash on an old murder case after an anonymous phone call draws them to it.

Very good.

Peter Capaldi as DCI Daniel Hegarty should win all the awards.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.