Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder

Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder (Book 1 in the series) by T. A. Willberg 336 pages

London 1958. The city is still trying to pick up the pieces shattered during World War II. Far below the city streets are a series of secret tunnels and passages, shifting doors and hallways, gadgets of all kinds and the home of Miss Brickett’s Investigations & Inquiries. A group of researchers, spies, agents that take on the cases that Scotland Yard cannot solve.

As the story opens, Michelle White is on duty, monitoring the letter boxes. All over London are secret receiver boxes that take letters (tips) from the streets down a six-mile pneumatic system, to land in Miss Brickett’s Filing Department, where they are read and either passed on or filed away. This night, April 11, Michelle received a letter addressed to her with only “a name, a time a place and one simple revelation.” She decides to investigate, grabbing her belongings and heading upstairs, toward the library and the locked room gate. Once inside, Michelle is murdered in a decidedly gory manner. Her body is discovered in a locked room, a la an Agatha Christie murder mystery.

Enter Marion Lane, a resourceful young woman, eager to rise through the ranks. She and her best friend, Bill, are apprentices, spending part of each day in various departments to learn what a successful Inquirer needs to know. I felt like I was on the set of “Get Smart” or a James Bond movie (without the coolness).

Michelle’s murder seems to just fade away until the last third of the novel, but all the efforts Marion and Bill have been putting forth are to solve the mystery. It’s convoluted and not very interesting. Well I will admit that the aluminum (I think) snake had cameras in its eyes and could detect movement was kinda cool in a creepy sort of way.

This is supposed to be the first book in a new series, but I’m done.  The story was interesting enough to keep me reading, but it was a slow read.  Therefore, Marion Lane and the Midnight Murder receives 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

Last Stop in Brooklyn

Last Stop in Brooklyn by Lawrence H. Levy   320 pages

This book is the third in the Mary Handley series. I haven’t read the first two. As with most books in series, they can be read alone, but it helps when to have read the previous entries, especially when the author make a reference to the plots.

The time is 1894, and the story takes place in Brooklyn, New York. Mary is the borough’s first female detective. Her case begins with a seemingly easy circumstance of adultery, which takes her to the downside of Coney Island. I had hoped to read more about the amusement park’s heyday, but those are the details that Levy leaves out.

I got real confused after that. I’m not sure where the second part of her case, solving the murder of a Coney Island-prostitute. There was so much detail (except about Coney island) that I was often lost. Most of it was things the readers didn’t need to know. I know that writers are supposed to know everything about their characters,, but the reader doesn’t. I often got bored before I reached the end of a paragraph.

This books has other problems: the characterizations seemed off, the dialogue didn’t seem appropriate to the time, and I just couldn’t care about the problems of any of these people.  Therefore Last Stop in Brooklyn receives 2 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world. I did love the cover and the title, which saved it from a 1-star rating.

I received this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for this review.

Murder in the Lincoln White House

Murder in the Lincoln White House by C. M. Gleason   304 pages

I’m a historical fiction buff, especially for the Civil War era and doubly for anything about the Lincolns. It was with bated breath that I opened the cover of this first book in the Adam Quinn series. 

The time is March 4, 1861, Lincoln’s first inauguration. The day has gone rather smoothly…a bomb threat at Lincoln’s podium was thwarted, but otherwise it’s been a peaceful day. Now it’s almost 11 p.m. and the Lincoln’s have…finally…made an appearance at the Inaugural Ball.

While Abe and his beloved Mary promenade around the room, a body is discovered in one of the side rooms. There isn’t much blood, but Custer Billings is dead, apparently stabbed. When Abe learns of what has happened he asks his closest friend, Joshua Speed’s, nephew, Adam, to handle the case.  

Adam has no background in detective work. In fact he has just returned from the Kansas Territory. He accepts the challenge and the search for the killer begins.

Author Colleen Gleason, writer of more than twenty books, does an excellent job in steeping the reader in the 1860s culture, politics and ambiance of Washington, D.C. The Ball is held in a thrown together building, erected especially for the occasion. Planks cover the mud outside. The half-finished Capitol Building looms in the background. I felt as if I was at the ball with the description of the dresses, the dances, the men’s fashions. But often Gleason went on too long. She used the same description of the dresses several times, and repeated many images. 

Given the tenseness of the times, there is no tension in Murder in the Lincoln White House. Most of the time we see Adam scurrying from place to place, trying to enlist the help of anyone he can to solve the murder, picking up a small clue here and there and berating the ones he does have to death. As the novel takes place over three-four days, that makes the plot seem to move even slower.

I want to give this disappointing novel 2 stars, but the author's research coerced me into giving it 3 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

The St. Lucia Island Club

The St. Lucia Island Club by Brent Monahan   306 pages

Since 2000, author Brent Monahan has been penning the John Le Brun detective series. The St. Lucia Island Club is the fifth novel, and the latest, novel in the series. If I had realized that when I agreed to review, I’m not sure I would have.  However, Monahan does an excellent job in not having to have read the four previous investigations to enjoy this effort.  He did make several references to the first book, which were really unnecessary.

In this episode the “retired Southern sheriff-turned-New York City detective John Le Brun and his wife, Lordis, set sail in 1910 for a long-awaited honeymoon on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, they expect to find relaxation in paradise.” They are traveling with another couple, but I don’t think that was their intention. The two couples seem to annoy each other.

Once there, they discover that they have been recruited to take the island’s perks back to their friends in Manhattan as a place they should vacation. The book, set in 1910, regales the reader with the lush descriptions of the island’s beauty, decades before it became an international commercial paradise that boasts more than 50 resorts. I loved this aspect of the story, and set against the racial, economic and social tensions of the island, it made for a wonderful dichotomy that many books today don’t have. The writing also has that slow, old-fashioned feel to it. It’s not a page-turner, but a book to be savored, even when the topic is murder.

Soon after their arrival, Le Brun is invited to join the wealthy planter’s at the Club (not sure why Monahan is fixated on men’s clubs). Then a planter’s family is horribly murdered, in what the guilty parties hope to appear as an accident. It’s a clever murder method that I rarely see used.

It’s not hard to figure out who-done-it.  And, for what I could gather, this is the first time that our hero allows his wife to help him as much as a female on that island can.

I enjoyed The St. Lucia Island Club and give it 4 out of 5 stars.