Still Waters by Nigel McCrery

Continuing my streak of mysteries, Still Waters is a British police procedural.  I picked it up because the detective interested me -- DCI Lapslie has synesthesia, a condition in which the senses get their wires crossed, so one perceives sensation in odd ways.  Specifically, in Lapslie's case, he tastes sounds.  At times this is overwhelming, and working in an open office surrounded by dozens of other people, phones, fax machines, and so on, is more than he can bear.

Lapslie is called in off of medical leave to investigate a body found in a forest.  It is the corpse of an elderly woman, and appears to have been there quite a long time.  He has no idea why he has been assigned to the case, and his superior hasn't got anything more than vague answers.

So the story is about Lapslie trying to get back into the routine and manage his condition enough to be able to work.  The parallel story line is about our killer, an older woman who we discover is killing old women and assuming their identities and assets.  She is, in fact, a serial killer, and the parts told from her perspective are appropriately creepy and depressing.

I have to say that I generally don't care for this structure in novels:  I prefer to discover things as the detective does, rather than know things he doesn't and wait for him to catch up.  Of course Lapslie does eventually catch up with her.  I also am very tired of serial killers, so that makes me disinclined to love the book on general principle.  There isn't anything wrong with them, but they're overused and I'm tired of them, rather like I'm tired of depressed alcoholic detectives.

Further, as Lapslie continues his investigation, he begins to suspect -- okay, this sounds stupid -- a shadowy government conspiracy to prevent him from solving the case.  And he's not wrong.  Aargh.  [Lean over and pound head on desk]  Really?  Why?  I mean, come on, we have an interesting detective and a serial killer.  Do we really need a government conspiracy too?  Sigh.  Which is why I am undecided whether I will read anything else by this author.  I like Lapslie.  I'm interested in him and would like to read more.  But I'm not sure that these are a type of story I am capable of fully enjoying.

Tilt a Whirl by Chris Grabenstein

Tilt a Whirl is a mystery set in a beach town in New Jersey.  Our protagonists are John Ceepak, former MP, and his sidekick Danny Boyle, who is a seasonal police officer over the summer months, when the city needs more police because of the tourists.

Ceepak and Boyle are eating breakfast at their usual diner one morning when a girl, covered in blood, comes running down the street claiming that her father was killed before her eyes.  They had snuck into an amusement park before it opened, and were sitting on the Tilt a Whirl when a man walked up and shot him.  Ceepak and Boyle rush to investigate, of course, and find that the dead man was a ruthless and dirty real estate tycoon, and that the girl has inherited his billions.

Ceepak is a good guy with a rigid code of behavior, both professional and personal.  Boyle is young and impressionable, and over the course of the investigation they grow into true partners.  Boyle is a native of the town, and knows the place and the people.  Ceepak is a smart investigator and a forensics nut.  Together, they fight crime.

The story is told from Boyle's perspective.  He is our Watson to Ceepak's Holmes.  I think this is necessary--it's important not to reveal too soon what Ceepak is thinking.  Boyle isn't stupid, though, and his voice is delightful.  The novel is entertaining, fast-moving, frequently funny, and a joy to read.  Really, I loved this book.  It had been on my list to read for a while, and I regret not getting to it sooner.  What a great, fun book, and I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

Burn by Sean Doolittle

I think I mentioned in my last review that my reading has been in a bit of a funk lately--I have been trying books, but nothing seems to really grab me.  This morning I picked up Burn at the library with no particular expectation of liking it--it's more a crime novel than a mystery, and didn't particularly look like my thing.  However, my usual thing hasn't been working for me recently, so I figured it was worth it to try something different.

The main character is Andrew Kindler.  He has recently moved to Southern California, and is living in his cousin's beach house.  In his previous life Andrew was involved with organized crime in Baltimore, but he decided to get out, and now he's resting and hiding.  He is surprised to receive a visit from a police detective who is asking him about a homicide and a missing man, as he knows nothing about it.  He is further surprised when he finds a private detective rifling his home and asking him the same questions as the police.  Why would anyone think he knew anything about it?  However circumstances lead him to decide to get involved himself, and he digs into the business and family of the missing man, who have made a fortune off the fitness industry.  We also meet a cast of colorful characters who all have a role in unraveling what happened to the dead man.

I am happy to report that I enjoyed Burn very much.  It's always so satisfying when you start something without expectations and it turns out to be enjoyable. I was sucked in from the first page, and read it straight through in one sitting.  What a fun and entertaining story.  It moves right along, lots happens, and the characters are very entertaining.  For instance the PR guy: "Todd Todman tried to never think in terms of problems: only challenges and opportunities."  We've all met people like that, and I think we all hate them.  I certainly do.  Our protagonist, Andrew, is smart and capable without being a superman.  The police detective is also smart and capable, which is nice.  In the end the bad guys get what they deserve and the good guys are alive to tell the tale.  Burn was really great fun, and I am going to seek out the author's other works.

Dog On It by Spencer Quinn

I'm sorry there haven't been many entries recently.  I'm in kind of a reading funk--nothing much appeals to me at the moment, so I've mostly been re-reading lately.  I probably wouldn't have read this one, either, except that it's for my book group, which meets tomorrow, so I pushed through it.

The narrator of Dog On It is Chet, who is a dog.  He lives and works with Bernie, a recently-divorced private eye and former cop.  Bernie is hired to look for a missing teenager, and Chet is instrumental in his eventual success.

I wasn't very interested in the missing teenager plot, frankly, but that's probably because I'm in a reading funk and this is a book I never would have picked to read myself.  That said, it was pretty entertaining, entirely because of Chet.  Chet is awfully smart and perceptive for a dog, but he is still doggy enough to be sort of believable--he is often more interested in barking at the dog next door or sniffling around under furniture for treats than he is in what the humans are talking about.  He is a charming narrator, and I enjoyed his perspective.  That said, the mystery wasn't that interesting to me.

If this were not a book group selection, I probably wouldn't have bothered to finish it.  But then I never would have selected it in the first place.  It's light and cute and I didn't mind it, but  I won't be reading the rest of the series.

So Dark the Night by Cliff Burns

So Dark the Night is a noir fantasy private eyes save the world story.  I'm not sure that's an actual established story type, but it's what happens in this story.  Our protagonists, Zinnea and Nightstalk, work the graveyard shift for After Hours Investigations in the city of Ilium, which seems to be built on Lake Erie.  The agency apparently consists of three people--the Old Man owns the agency, reads their reports, and hides in his office--neither of them have ever seen him, and he scares the crap out of them both; and Cassandra Zinnea and Evgeny Nightstalk are the investigators.

The Old Man sends Zinnea and Nightstalk to investigate the murder by immolation of an unidentified man in a park.  They have the usual private-eye unfriendly run-in with a couple of cops, and then set about testing the area for signs of magical activity.  So Dark the Night is a secret history--magic is real and dangerous, and our protagonists know it but most people don't.  So they realize that the killing had some magical motivation, which the police would never guess, and they set about trying to learn more.

Nightstalk is the narrator of So Dark the Night.  He is apparently short, broad and muscly, not very magical, a good man in a fight, and head over heels in love with Zinnea.  Zinnea, at least as seen through Nightstalk's eyes, is tall, gorgeous, smart, a powerful sorceress and a great investigator.  And, though aware that he's in love with her, is not that interested in him.  I was a little uncomfortable with their relationship.  She depends on him, demands the support and reassurance of his love, all the while rubbing his nose in the fact that she's got an active dating life that will never involve him.  And he knows it, and it makes him miserable, but he still offers steady support, adoration, and hero-worship, and showed no signs of getting over it.  It was kind of creepy and sad.  I felt bad for the poor guy, and therefore I never liked her, no matter how perfect she was in his eyes.

Anyway, back to the dead guy.  They set about investigating, and end up stuck in the middle of a struggle between two groups called the Brotherhood and the Cabal.  A few people they talk to are horribly murdered, which leads to no one else wanting to talk to them.  Nevertheless they keep plugging away at it, tracking down and investigating various members of the Cabal, who frankly I wasn't able to keep straight.  Too many of them, not introduced in a way that allowed me to distinguish between them.  Meanwhile Evgeny is having dreams about evil stuff and Zinnea being in danger, which makes him go all caveman in his determination to keep her safe while providing foreshadowing that he may not be able to.

Despite all the gruesome deaths and the very high stakes if the bad guys succeed, So Dark the Night is written with a slightly humorous tone.  Zinnea and Nightstalk banter back and forth, his assessment of all the whackos and losers she likes to consult for psychic advice, his killer houseplant--it starts out sort of clever and humorous.  I read a sample online and liked it well enough to buy the ebook, but in the end it disappointed me.  With the setup, the tone, the action, it should have been rich and interesting.  But instead it was just really flat and a bit dull.  I already mentioned the fact that I couldn't keep the bad guys straight.  I also thought the story was quite a bit longer than it needed to be, and would have moved along much better if it were more compact.  Which is really too bad, because I expected to like the story. I wanted to like the story.  But in the end it was flat and disappointing and took longer to read than it would have if I'd been enjoying it.

Leaving aside the story itself, I will also note that the story is not widely available online, so I ended up buying it from Powells.  It turned out to be in Adobe Digital Editions format, which is more horribly sucktastic than I can express in polite language.  Proprietary format, doesn't play well with others, DRM, requiring me to download extra software and register with Adobe, and then there was no obvious way to get it onto my ereader so I wound up printing the story out and reading it on paper.  It is a horrible, horrible pain in the ass format and I will never again be foolish enough to buy another story in that format, no matter how interested I am in reading the story.  Just say no to crappy DRM-laden proprietary file formats.  Phooey.