Carter Ross Returns!

The Player (Carter Ross Mystery #5) by Brad Parks (Minotaur hardcover, 4 March 2014).

Reviewed by Marlyn Beebe.


Investigative reporter Carter Ross receives a phone call from a young woman named Jackie Orr, who tells him that her grandmother recently died from an illness that appears to be affecting her whole neighborhood.  Carter snags one of the Eagle-Examiner's interns -- in this case Ivy League-educated Neesha Krishnamurthy, affectionately known to her colleagues as "Pigeon" -- and heads over to talk to Jackie, who promised to gather a group of the aforementioned neighbors to talk to them.

The illness resembles a flu, characterized by coughing  and respiratory issues, coming and going often, and unpredictably.  On top of that, though, several of the people had broken bones, again for no particular reason.  It's obvious that  something in the local atmosphere is causing this, but  impossible to determine exactly what that something is. The residents are all certain, though, that it has something to do with a nearby construction project.

As usual, Carter's investigation doesn't go smoothly.  Both he and Pigeon wake up the next morning with the mysterious symptoms described by the residents of Ridgewood Avenue.  And when the developer for the construction site is found dead, Carter becomes more convinced that something is going on.

Meanwhile, Carter's personal life is a mess.  The combustible attraction between him and his editor Tina Thompson  effectively combusted when he refused to be her sperm donor.

He's sorta-kinda dating Kira O'Brien, one of the newspaper's librarians, who is prim and proper at work, but pierced and punked-out after hours.  Since Carter's idea of rule-breaking is to wear something other than a blue or white button-down shirt with his pleated khakis, he's pretty sure she'll tire of him soon.

Carter is an easy character to empathize with, which is emphasized through Parks' use of a first-person narrative.  Though Carter tries hard to project the air of a tough, hard-as-nails journalist, the softer side of his nature peeks through often.  He's conscientious about researching stories, and concerned about the well-being of his sources, as well as his friends and family.  But he does have the knack of being in the wrong place at the worst time, which can have results that range from hilarious to dangerous.

Further adventures of Carter Ross, in the form of a sixth book in the series, are due to be published in 2015.


Brad Parks is the only author to have won the Shamus, the Nero, and the Lefty Award.  An enthusiastic public speaker, Brad will serve as Toastmaster at Left Coast Crime 2014 in Monterey later this month.
He has also been known to burst into song at bookstores, libraries, book conferences, and other places where no one was thoughtful enough to muzzle him. When not writing, he is a washed up jock, a closeted community theater nerd, a father to two and a husband to one. He lives in the tidewater part of Virginia, where he is currently working on the next Carter Ross mystery.




FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for the e-galley.

You're NOT my mother!

The Wrong Girl (Jane Ryland #2) by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Forge hardcover, 10 September 2013).

Reviewed by Marlyn Beebe.

Jane's former colleague Tucker Cameron shows up on her doorstep one snowy afternoon, saying she has an incredible story.  Over a glass of wine, Tuck explains that, ten years earlier, upon learning she was adopted, she contacted the private agency who facilitated the process, and was told that the records were sealed unless the birth mother agreed to open them.  Tuck had left her name with them just in case the woman ever changed her mind.   

A few days earlier, Tuck received a call from the agency, telling her they'd found her mother.  But, Tuck tells Jane, upon meeting her she was certain that the woman wasn't her real mother at all, and that she had proof.

Meanwhile, Detective Jake Brogan and his partner Paul DeLuca are called to the scene of a murder at an apartment in Roslindale.  The victim was a young woman who'd been found with her head bashed in, thanks to an anonymous 911 call.  There were two toddlers, a boy and a girl, found in the home, and all they could communicate were their names, Phillip and Phoebe.

Hank Phillippi Ryan at The Book Carnival in Orange, CA.

The newspaper assigns Jane to this story, and and as she investigates, she receives anonymous calls and threatening notes, which lead her to the realization that there may be a connection between the two incidents.

This is a worthy  follow-up to Ryan's The Other Woman (which I reviewed here), published almost exactly a year ago.  Like its predecessor, The Wrong Girl is a gripping story with a plot that's just complex enough and well-developed characters. 

In my review of The Other Woman, I cautioned readers not to begin it near bedtime.  I'll reiterate that warning here.



FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to Edelweiss and MacMillan/Forge for the e-galley.

Just an ordinary girl?

The Girl Next Door (Carter Ross Mystery #3) by Brad Parks (Minotaur hardcover, 13 March 2012).

Reviewed by Marlyn Beebe.


Not unlike his creator, Carter Ross is smart, funny and irreverent.  Not unlike his creation, Brad Parks was a journalist and has a quick wit.

Hopefully Mr. Parks is very much unlike his imaginary alter-ego in his tendency to get himself into trouble.

Carter Ross works for the fictional New Jersey Eagle-Examiner.  In The Girl Next Door, he is reading the paper's obituaries looking for inspiration for an article, when he comes across one for a woman named Nancy Marino, who was struck by a car while crossing the street on her Eagle-Examiner delivery route, the victim of a random hit-and-run.

Ross initially pursues the story just to call attention to a "girl-next-door" type who makes ends meet working as a waitress and delivering the newspaper, and attends her wake in order to find out more about her, but stumbles upon a loud argument between two men, one of whom is the publisher of his own newspaper.  Then, one of Nancy's sisters approaches Carter, telling him that Nancy was killed deliberately and asks him to investigate.

Carter doesn't agree, but he does begin to wonder if something is going on, and decides to continue on the story he originally intended to write, reasoning that if he does stumble across anything suspicious he can decide then. 

He gets so involved in Nancy's story that he neglects his assignments (what reporter worth his salt wants to write a fluff piece about a bear wandering through the city?) which gets him in trouble with his editor.  When he's conspicuously ordered to stop investigating Nancy Marino, he quits and continues on his own. 

What Carter discovers is a lot more arcane and mercenary than he expected, and uncovering the truth nearly gets him killed as well.

I prefer to start series at the beginning, but since I was looking for books published in 2012 that might be eligible for certain awards, I broke my rule and began with this one. There were no problems understanding the plot, and Carter's backstory was filled in as necessary.  I will likely read the first two books in the series when I can, because I liked Carter Ross and would like to get to know him better.



FTC Full Disclosure:  I borrowed this book from my local library.

Books Within a Book

Miss Me When I'm Gone by Emily Arsenault (William Morrow trade paperback, 31 July 2012).

Emily Arsenault's third novel, like the first two*, blew me away.

In this story, Gretchen Waters, the modestly successful author of a series of essays called Tammyland, written during a trip to Nashville after her divorce, dies after falling down a slippery staircase.  Her dear friend Jamie Madden is asked by Gretchen's family to complete the follow-up book which was nearly finished.

As Jamie soon discovers, this involves going through boxes and boxes of paper and notebooks as well as computer files on top of her job as night-shift copy-editor at a newspaper.  She learns that Gretchen was nowhere near finishing the book, but in fact was writing on a different topic altogether:  focusing on the violent death of her mother when Gretchen was about seven. 

Intrigued, Jamie, who is heavily pregnant,  starts retracing the trail of Gretchen's research, contacting and visiting all the people her friend had, not really knowing why she's doing it.

What's wonderful is that Arsenault includes chapters excerpted from Tammyland, as well as Gretchen's notes for the new book.  In essence, she has created three (well, almost) books in one.  Any one of these stories would be fascinating on its own, but by intertwining them, Arsenault has taken what could have been a tangled mess, and turned it into awesome piece of work!





FTC Full Disclosure: Many thanks to the publisher, who sent me an advance copy of the book for review purposes.

*The Broken Teaglass (Delacorte, 2009) and In Search of the Rose Notes (Morrow, 2011)

The Reporter Who Came in From the Cold

A Killing Winter (Leo Desroches #2) by Wayne Arthurson.

Reviewed by Marlyn Beebe.

Journalist Leo Desroches is going undercover as a homeless person during an especially cold Edmonton winter.  During this time, he tries to look up someone he knew when he actually was homeless, a young First Nations man by the name of Marvin.

He's unable to find him, and upon learning that the normally reliable guy hasn't shown up to work in a week, he files a missing person report with the police, only to be asked to identify a John Doe in the police morgue who fits Marvin's description.  The body is indeed Marvin's, and Leo learns that a tattoo on the back of the boy's hand is a gang marking, and that it's likely Marvin's death was a gang punishment.  

Leo is aware of the existence of native gangs, but knows few details.  Surprised that Marvin, who was employed and took care of other native teens adrift in the city, was a member of the largest native gang in the country,  Leo begins to investigate on his own.  He uses his own half-Cree status to wangle a meeting with some members of the Redd Alert, and that is when things begin to go awry.

Unfortunately, Leo hasn't informed anyone at the paper about what he's doing, so he has no backup.
"Going rogue" has consequences, and Leo may lose everything he worked so hard to regain due to his gambling addiction.

It's helpful to read  Fall From Grace, the first book in the series, before tackling this one, though not absolutely necessary.  Still, if you read A Killing Winter first, you'll find yourself searching for its prequel.

Wayne Arthurson is an aboriginal writer from Edmonton, Alberta. He has worked for newspapers, magazines, advertising companies, and as a freelance writer and ghostwriter. His first crime novel Fall From Grace was published in 2011, and the sequel, A Killing Winter,  in Spring 2012.