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C.W. Sughrue series

• The Last Good Kiss (1978)
• The Mexican Tree Duck (1993)
• Bordersnakes (1996)

Milo Milodragovitch series

• The Wrong Case (1975)
• Dancing Bear (1983)

Other Novel

• One to Count Cadence (1969)

C.W. Sughrue—an ex-Army spy turned sometime investigator, sometime bartender—must be the toughest egg in the hard-boiled-detective basket. A loner out of Meriwether, Montana, he's no stranger to booze and drugs, and he knows how to get what he wants out of people:

"Listen, old buddy," I said pleasantly, "the U.S. Army trained me at great expense in interrogation, filled my head with all sorts of psychological crap, but when I got to Nam, we didn't do no psychology, we hooked the little suckers up to a telephone crank—alligator clips on the foreskin and nipples—and the little bastards were a hundred times tougher than you, but when we rang that telephone, the little bastards answered."

When a drunken gunfight ensues, Trahearne, who's huddled under a table, catches a slug in the butt. With Trahearne out of commission in the hospital for a few days, Sughrue agrees to do some investigating for Rosie, the bar owner. Ten years earlier Rosie's daughter, Betty Sue Flowers, at age 17 disappeared into the drug culture of San Francisco. Rosie knows in her heart that her baby girl is alive, and she pays Sughrue $87 to find her.

Sughrue spends a few days on his own interviewing people who knew Betty Sue before Trahearne leaves the hospital and joins him. Together the two men travel around the western United States following leads and giving new meaning to the term hard drinking. All the while Sughrue feels that no matter how many people he talks to, he still doesn't know Betty Sue Flowers. Occasionally he pulls her high school picture out of his wallet and stares at it trying to understand the girl. "You're stuck on her," Betty Sue's high school girlfriend tells him.

And indeed he is obsessed with Betty Sue Flowers—not only with finding her for Rosie, but with the girl herself. Such sentimental behavior is surprising in someone who talks about "home" in these terms:

Home is my apartment on the east side of Hell-Roaring Creek, three rooms where I have to open the closets and drawers to be sure I'm in the right place. Home? Try a motel bar at eleven o'clock on a Sunday night, my silence shared by a pretty barmaid who thinks I'm a creep and some asshole in a plastic jacked who thinks I'm his buddy. Like I told Trahearne, home is where you hang your hangover. For folks like me, anyway. Sometimes. Other times home is my five acres up beyond Polebridge on the North Fork, thirty-nine dirt-road miles north of Columbia Falls and the nearest bar, ten miles south of the Canadian border. There's an unfinished cabin there, a foundation and subflooring and a rock fireplace…

Jill Smith series 

• Karma (1981)
• As a Favor (1984)
• Not Exactly a Brahmin (1985)
• Too Close to the Edge (1987)
• A Dinner to Die For (1987)
• Diamond in the Buff (1990)
• Death and Taxes (1992)
• Time Expired (1993)
• Sudden Exposure (1996)
• Cop Out (1997)

Kiernan O'Shaughnessy series

• Pious Deception (1989)
• Rogue Wave (1991)
• High Fall (1994)

Vejay Haskell series

• An Equal Opportunity Death (1983)
• The Bohemian Connection (1985)
• The Last Annual Slugfest (1986)

Cop Out (1997)

I'd heard a lot of praise for Susan Dunlap's Jill Smith series, so I was pleased when the Women's Mysteries Group on America Online chose this book as one of its selections. The story revolves around Herman Ott, private eye to the counterculture in Berkeley, California, who is hated by the local police. Detective Jill Smith, however, has often used Ott as a source in the past, and when Ott turns up missing Smith is the only person who seems to care.

Smith's fellow police officers at first are annoyed as she investigates the case, but they soon begin to shun her for her involvement. Even fellow officer Seth Howard, the lover in whose house Smith lives, feels the pressure at work.

I wasn't far into this book before I begin feeling that the story was making a mountain out of a molehill. It's not very obvious why the other police officers hate Ott so much, and I found it hard to believe that they would heap so much overt disdain on Smith herself and on Howard because of his association with her. As a product of the 1960's, I enjoyed the descriptions of Berkeley and its inhabitants, but this just didn't seem like much of a story.

Too late I found out that this is not the book for making the acquaintance of Jill Smith. According to the members of the Women's Mysteries Group on AOL, Cop Out makes more sense if you've read earlier Smith novels, since Herman Ott occasionally appears in them and his identity builds throughout the series.

Nonfiction

• Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape (1993)

Fiction

• Final Jeopardy (1996)
• Likely to Die (1997)
• Cold Hit (1999)

Final Jeopardy (1996)
Scribner, 400 pages, $23.00 hardcover, ISBN 0-684-81489-7, Books on Tape 4699

The prime directive for new writers is to write what they know. Linda Fairstein has run the Sex Crimes Unit of the District Attorney's office in Manhattan for more than 20 years. But her first novel demonstrates that knowledge of a subject may be necessary, but is not sufficient, to produce a novelist.

In Final Jeopardy Fairstein introduces Alexandra Cooper, a sex crimes prosecutor in New York City. When an actress friend of Cooper is murdered while secretly vacationing at Cooper’s country house, police begin to think the prosecutor herself may have been the intended victim. Soon Cooper agrees, and the search is on to find the killer before the killer gets to Cooper.

The novel’s plot, suspense, and resolution are well done enough that they almost carry off the novel. But the characterization of Alexandra Cooper exhibits flaws that are impossible to overlook. Fairstein, apparently in an attempt to show that she can create a hard-nosed female character who can hold her own with the hard-boiled guys, occasionally inserts strings of profanity into Cooper’s mouth. The dirty words are sprinkled over the dialogue like salt and pepper, not incorporated so that they portray the prosecutor’s character. The result is that when the invective occurs, it’s jarring and out of place—an obvious, self-conscious attempt at creating a tough female protagonist.

Any successful prosecutor needs a trusty cop for a sidekick, and Cooper has hers in the person of detective Mike Chapman. As this first novel progresses, Cooper comes to appreciate Chapman’s ability and even grows indulgently fond of him. The trouble is, though, that Chapman is a chauvinistic bigot. The fact that Cooper condones and accepts Chapman’s behavior contradicts her characterization as a prosecutor sensitive to the victims of the crimes she investigates.

Finally, there are problems with some aspects of the story. Would the police really casually discuss a crime under investigation with a psychiatrist who happens to be Cooper’s neighbor but is not an official police consultant? I don’t think so. And would the police send an unarmed civilian in as the first contact in a potential hostage situation? I hope not! These scenes are obviously—and clumsily—contrived in order to introduce a character who will appear in subsequent installments of the series.
 

• Greenwich Killing Time (1986)
• A Case of Lone Star (1987)
• When the Cat's Away (1988)
• Frequent Flyer (1989)
• Musical Chairs (1991)
• Elvis, Jesus, & Coca Cola (1993)
• Armadillos & Old Lace (1994)
• God Bless John Wayne (1995)
• The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover (1996)
• Roadkill (1997)

This was my first experience with The Kinkster. Kinky Friedman the fictional character—a cigar-smoking, cat-loving Manhattan private detective—is the creation of Kinky Friedman (no relation) the country-western singer.

Early on, the plot of this novel becomes peculiarly erratic, but then one doesn't read Kinky Friedman for the plot; one reads him for the running jokes, which vary in quality from the extremely clever to the stupidly sophomoric—with the two extremes often juxtaposed. To the ever-irreverent Kinky Friedman nothing is sacred: no country, no religion, no relationship, no body part or orifice.

Kinky Friedman does have a colorful way with language. The first time the character said, "I set fire to the end of my cigar" instead of "I lit my cigar," I laughed (well, OK, I chuckled inwardly). But when he uses the same phraseology every time he smokes a new cigar—and he smokes A LOT of cigars—the novelty quickly wears off.

For a light (very light), quick, entertaining read, Kinky Friedman serves the purpose. But if you're easily—or even not so easily—offended, The Kinkster might not be for you.

• Random Access Murder (1988)
• Blind Trust (1990)
• Love nor Money (1991)
• A Woman's Place (1994)
• Lethal Genes (1996)
• Vampire Bytes (1998)

A Woman's Place (1994)

Catherine Sayler is a private investigator specializing in corporate crime. In A Woman's Place Catherine and her male partner, Jesse, are hired by a company that has been having problems with sexual harassment in the form of offensive e-mail messages and suggestive office pranks. To find out who is instigating the harassment, Catherine and Jesse pose as new employees.

There is a problem with the beginning of this novel. Before Catherine is hired, some female employees have received offensive e-mails. There was also an incident in which a prankster put white mice into desk drawers. After Catherine begins work at the company, someone puts red ink on her office chair so that she gets a red stain on the back of her skirt. Then suddenly Catherine and other women begin receiving pornographic photos, then photos of women being tortured and killed. Finally, one of the company's female employees is murdered, her body left in an obscene position on her desk. The jump from white mice in drawers to snuff photos seems to come out of nowhere, as if Grant didn't quite know how to get started on her real subject matter: sexual harassment and the relationships of men and women in the workplace.

After the awkward beginning, though, the mystery moves along well. This is a popular series that explores issues with a feminist slant.

Denise Mina

• Garnethill (1998)
• Exile (2000)
• Resolution (2001)

Garnethill (1998)
Carroll & Graf, 349 pages, $14.00 trade paperback, ISBN 0-7867-0839-5

Maureen O'Donnell wakes up one morning to find her lover, Douglas Brady, tied to a chair in the middle of her living room, his throat neatly cut through. Before she can regain her balance, Maureen finds herself the prime suspect in this grisly murder.

It's easy to blame Maureen. After all, she's spent time in a mental hospital and was the victim of sexual abuse by her father. Her mother is a raving alcoholic, her brother a drug dealer. She holds a dead-end job in a ticket booth and lives in Garnethill, a run-down section of Glasgow. She doesn't have friends in high places. Maureen realizes that, to clear herself, she'll have to find out who lured Douglas to her apartment and murdered him, and why.

This unflinching first novel, which takes on issues such as sexual abuse, mental illness, domestic violence, poverty, and police corruption, was a hit with our mystery book group. A couple of people said that the story was hard to follow because it's so fragmented. But that narrative structure is one of the aspects of the novel's realism. With Maureen as the focus character, the reader learns things as Maureen does. Solving the mystery is like working a puzzle: Maureen (and the reader) must first find various pieces of the puzzle (facts), then assemble them into a coherent whole.

Garnethill received the 1998 John Creasey Memorial Award for best first crime novel from the British Crime Writers' Association.

Edited Anthology

• First Cases: First Appearances of Classic Private Eyes (1996)

Joe Keough Series

• Alone with the Dead
• In the Shadow of the Arch
• Fire under the Arch
• Blood on the Arch

Robert Randisi has written hundreds of books in the mystery, suspense, men's adventure, fantasy, and western genres. In the mystery genre he has created the Nick Delvecchio and Miles Jacoby private eye series as well as the police detective Joe Keough series; he also writes mysteries jointly with his wife, Christine Matthews. The founder of the Private Eye Writers of America, he grew up in Brooklyn, NY, but currently lives in St. Louis.

The title of this collection is somewhat misleading, as these are not necessarily the first appearances of the private eyes, but rather the first appearances in a short story. The editor does, however, make this point clear in his introduction.

Randisi prefaces each story with a short history of when the detective first appeared and when the story appeared. Here are the stories and authors (followed by the private investigator's name in parentheses) included in this anthology:

1. "No One Likes to Be Played for a Sucker" by Michael Collins (Dan Fortune) [Note: Michael Collins is a pseudonym for Dennis Lynds]
2. "It's a Lousy World" by Bill Pronzini (the Nameless Detective series)
3. "File #1: The Mayfield Case" by Joe Gores (Dan Kearny Associates stories)
4. "Out the Window" by Lawrence Block (Matthew Scudder)
5. "Where is Harry Beal" by John Lutz (Alo Nudger)
6. "Merrill-Go-Round" by Marcia Muller (Sharon McCone)
7. "The Steinway Collection" by Robert J. Randisi (Miles Jacoby)
8. "Robbers' Roost" by Loren D. Estleman (Amos Walker)
9. "The Takamoku Joseki" by Sara Paretsky (V.I. Warshawski)
10. "Long Gone" by Sue Grafton (Kinsey Millhone)
11. "C is for Cookie" by Rob Kantner (Ben Perkins)
12. "The Strawberry Teardrop" by Max Allan Collins (Nathan Heller)
13. "Till Tuesday" by Jeremiah Healy (John Francis Cuddy)
14. "Lucky Penny" by Linda Barnes (Carlotta Carlyle)
15. "Mary, Mary, Shut the Door" by Benjamin M. Schutz (Leo Haggerty)

This is not to say that the other series are not good, that the stories are not compelling, or that the anthology is not worthwhile. But I should have listened to Robert Randisi and used his collection as a way to revisit old friends instead of as a way to meet new ones.

Blood on the Arch (2001)
Dorchester, 394 pages, $5.99 paperback, ISBN 0-8439-4946-5

There's blood on the Arch--and a trail of blood leading inside the museum under the Arch and over to the trams, the tiny, pod-like cars that carry visitors the 630 feet to the top of St. Louis's gleaming monument. And inside one of the tram cars is the body of Mark Drucker. Enter homicide detective Joe Keough.

Drucker is somehow involved with the mayor's office, although nobody Keough and his partner question seems to know exactly what Drucker did for a living. As Keough tries to find out who would want Drucker dead and why, his investigation keeps circling back to City Hall. As Keough works his way around the St. Louis area, Randisi throws in a remarkable number of details about the area's geography, culture, and lifestyle.

Yet, for someone who glories in these little details, Randisi makes one major mistake: the Gateway Arch is a national park, not a City of St. Louis facility. And this is not an insignificant mistake, because the underlying assumption that the City of St. Louis runs the Arch is central to the plot.

Our mystery group chose this novel because of the local connection, but most members were disappointed in its amateurishness. "I know who killed Drucker, but I don't know why," a couple of people said. And others were surprised to learn how many books Randisi has written: "I thought this was a first novel," one said.

Indeed, the novel reads like the first draft of a manuscript. The book raises, then leaves hanging, several questions. Granted, this is a series novel and the author may be setting up ideas to be further explored in future novels. But this novel doesn't feel like that. More skillful series authors, such as Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Earl Emerson, Dennis Lehane, and James Lee Burke, know how to include subplots that they complete within an individual book while still leaving room for development of the character in subsequent books. Perhaps Randisi's prodigious output is the reason for this sloppiness: since he has so many other books to write, he can't be bothered polishing up a manuscript before its publication.

• Caught Dead in Philadelphia (1987)
• Philly Stakes (1989)
• I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia (1991)
• With Friends Like These (1993)
• How I Spent My Summer Vacation (1994)
• In the Dead of Summer (1995)
• The Mummers' Curse (1996)
• The Bluest Blood (1998)
• Time and Trouble (1998)

Caught Dead in Philadelphia (1987)

Gillian Roberts won the Anthony Award for Caught Dead in Philadelphia , the book that introduces Amanda Pepper. A self-described "thirty-year-old spinster schoolmarm," Amanda Pepper is an English teacher at Philadelphia Prep, a school for rich kids.

The book opens with Amanda getting ready to leave for school on a rainy Monday morning. Liza Nichols, an aspiring actress and part-time drama teacher at the school, arrives at Amanda's house acting confused and distracted. Liza asks Amanda if she can stay at Amanda's house and, against her better judgment, Amanda agrees. Amanda then leaves for school, reminding Liza that she's supposed to teach Macbeth to Amanda's class in the afternoon. But Liza never shows up for the Shakespeare lesson.

When Amanda arrives home that afternoon, she finds Liza dead on the hearth. Amanda soon becomes the prime suspect, but after satisfactorily accounting for her whereabouts at the time of Liza's murder, Amanda begins to work with Officer C.K. Mackenzie in investigating the case. Soon another local actor is murdered, and Amanda receives a threat indicating that she'll be the next victim.

As the investigation heats up, so does the relationship between Amanda and Officer Mackenzie. Amanda is an English teacher, and the novel is peppered with literary allusions, particularly to Macbeth, which both Liza and Amanda were teaching to one of Amanda's classes. But the allusions are just there; they don't have any deeper significance, either as symbols or plot devices. Another ongoing thread is Amanda's attempt to guess what Mackenzie's initials stand for, a secret that he won't reveal. Members of the Women's Mysteries Group on America Online say that this guessing game continues throughout the popular Amanda Pepper series.

As Jack Early

• A Creative Kind of Killer
• Razzamatazz
• Donato & Daughter

As Sandra Scoppettone

Lauren Laurano series

• Everything You Have is Mine (1991)
• I'll Be Leaving You Always (1993)
• My Sweet Untraceable You (1994)

Other Novels

• Some Unknown Person
• Such Nice People
• Innocent Bystanders

Everything You Have Is Mine (1991)
Little, Brown and Company, 261 pages, $19.95 hardcover, ISBN 0-316-77646-7

Lauren Laurano, age 42, is a former FBI agent turned private detective in New York City. Lauren has been in an 11-year lesbian relationship with Kip Adams, a psychotherapist, and the two own a brownstone in Greenwich Village. A chocoholic who loves to read, Lauren describes herself as "an overprotected only child" of a lawyer father and an alcoholic mother.

Ursula Huron hires Lauren to investigate the rape of Ursula's half-sister, Lake Huron (yes, really). Rape is a sensitive, personal subject for Lauren Laurano, and Scoppettone skillfully weaves Lauren's personal history into the narrative so that it doesn't look like contrived exposition. Lake was raped by a man she met through a personal ad. But Lauren barely has time to begin investigating the rape before Lake is murdered. Now Lauren wonders if she's looking for one criminal or two.

Lauren's humor makes her an appealing character. An intelligent woman who loves to read, she constantly compares herself to fictional detectives: "Would Kinsey Millhone believe her?" "What would V.I. Warshawski do?" "So what if Sharon McCone doesn't do things this way?" After the murder Ursula hands Lake's laptop computer over to Lauren. A confirmed technophobe, Lauren has no idea what to do with the machine, but she gallantly buys herself some computer magazines and begins to learn. Lauren's rapid transformation from technophobe to online addict adds another element of humor to the book—one that most readers of this page will probably identify with.

A bit of intelligent insight at the end helps Lauren solve the case, but mainly it's methodical detective work and persistent effort that produce success. She may be short (only five two, and sensitive about it), but Lauren Laurano is one clever, entertaining detective. And Sandra Scoppettone is one heck of a mystery writer. Not only has she created a memorable lead character, but she gives us a complex plot that will make us think about love, life, and human nature.

Susan Henshaw series

• Murder at the PTA Luncheon (1987)
• The Fortieth Birthday Body (1989)
• We Wish You a Merry Murder (1991)
• All Hallow's Evil (1992)
• An Old Faithful Murder (1992)
• A Star-Spangled Murder (1993)
• A Good Year for a Corpse (1994)
• Tis the Season To Be Murdered (1994)
• Remodeled to Death (1995)
• Elected to Die (1996)

Josie Pigeon series

• Shore to Die (1996)

A Star-Spangled Murder (1993)
Fawcett, 220 pages, $4.50 paperback, ISBN 0-449-14834-3

Not too far into this book I began asking myself, What's wrong with this picture? The farther I read, the more I felt as if I had entered The Twilight Zone.

Susan Henshaw and her friend Kathleen Gordon, a former police officer, arrive on an island off the coast of Maine to open Susan's summer house for the Fourth of July weekend. It's getting late when they arrive, and by the time they buy a few groceries in town and get them put away, they're ready for bed. That's why they don't discover the body in the living room until they pull the covers off the furniture the next morning.

The dead man is Humphrey Taylor. Tricia and Ted Taylor started building a new house across the cove from Susan's house. But during the construction Tricia and Ted were divorced. Shortly after the divorce Tricia married Ted's brother, Humphrey. Tricia and Ted's three girls--Titania, Theresa, and Tierney--have been living with Humphrey and Tricia in the new house. Apparently the girls did not like their new stepfather and had been playing pranks on him, everything from putting pudding in the pockets of his jacket to tampering with the brakes on his car. So when Humphrey turns up dead, gossip holds that the girls must somehow be involved.

Here's the book's first disconnection from reality. A man has been bludgeoned to death with a heavy object, and people immediately jump to the conclusion that three children, ages 13, about 11, and about 8, are involved? When Titania, the oldest Taylor child, goes into hiding, the rumors fly even faster.

The novel's action progresses in two different spheres. On the one hand there's the islanders' preparations for their annual Fourth of July celebration rituals. On the other hand there's the murder of Humphrey Taylor and other strange goings on in the Taylor household. It's as if these two sets of actions are occurring in parallel yet separate universes. I kept waiting for the two worlds to intersect in some meaningful way, but they never did. For example, at one point Susan decides, "Tomorrow she would have to figure out a way to protect Titania while allowing her to participate in some of the day's activities" (174). By this time a man has been murdered, Titania has gone into hiding, people are assuming Titania must be involved in the murder, and, if Titania isn't involved in the murder, she could be in danger from the killer--and Susan's worried about the girl missing the Fourth of July fun? What's wrong with this picture?

The dénouement is no more realistic or satisfying than the rest of the novel. And I owe Rod Serling an apology: his stories all hold together much more coherently than this novel does.

Several members of the Women's Mysteries Group on AOL say that Murder at the PTA Luncheon and The Fortieth Birthday Body are better than A Star-Spangled Murder.

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