The reviews are shorter now, and less formal, but with fresh energy. Don't miss the recommendations for new books, especially Chris McKinney's Eventide, Water City. Here you go: https://bethkanell.blogspot.com ..read more

Book recommendations ARE continuing ... over on my author blog, https://bethkanell.blogspot.com. Come read today's material ..read more

Dave and I took huge joy in creating Kingdom Books, first as a specialty bookshop (mysteries, poetry, Vermontiana) and then as a review blog. Dave's been gone four years, and I miss him all the time, but ... things must move forward, not back. Effective today, since I'm reviewing at the New York Journal of Books and Historical Novels Review, I won't be posting more on this blog. But I'll leave it in place so you can search past reviews.  As of 5:30 pm (Eastern), this blog racked up incredible numbers of page views (see below), and that's because of YOU. Thank you. Beth KINGDOM BOOKS Blo ..read more

Tamara Berry's wicked sense of humor is a great match for her neatly twisted plots in her "By the Book Mysteries," set in the Big Woods country of the Northwest. Crime novelist Tess Harrow's family legacy in this timber-centric town isn't as wild as her best-selling status, but it does include a former hardware stores (see the earlier books of the series) that she's turning into a bookshop of her own, with of course a stack of her newest release on the counter. But Grand Opening plans run awry when (of course!) murder sweeps into town once again. This time, a top-selling podcaster arrives at ..read more

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books] “Nesbø never releases the heartstrings through an otherwise classic dark police procedural.”   Harry Hole, depressed Norwegian detective, has fled to California as the 13th book in this “Nordic noir” detective series opens. It takes one to know one, they say, and an aging actress and gambling addict named Lucille, hanging out in the bar with him, nails Harry as running as running away from something—his wife? No, she’s dead. “Ah. You’re running from grief,” Lucille readily assesses.   For Harry, that could be both the sum an ..read more

  [Originally published at New York Journal of Books] “Weizmann’s updated LA noir storytelling is pitch perfect, so this quirky investigator stands in for each of us, committing in a fumbling fashion to doing what’s right even though we’re not equipped for the journey.”   Pull up that poignant song about driving a beautiful woman in your taxi cab and never forgetting her. Hold onto the emotion—now, pin the story to Los Angeles, to the brutal competitiveness of performance and production, and to the significance of small and persistent acts of kindness.   Too saccharine? Fear n ..read more

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books] “How could a former US President finally be able to take over an action-hero team? And what might the costs of that effort become? Or even, dare we imagine, the rewards?”   A fresh release of this lively thriller from master author James Patterson and presidential expert Bill Clinton comes just in time to add gusto to the summer reading stack. The President’s Daughter offers a quick and believable trip into the lives of a former President and his family, tucked into a secure compound in the White Mountains of New Hampshire—but no longe ..read more

  [Originally posted at New York Journal of Books]“What neither can say aloud is, Strafford failed to save Quirke’s wife in a shooting the year before, and there’s no forgiveness on the table.”   Crime may be impulsive, launched by a forgotten set of car keys dangling from a sports car’s ignition or an easily hacked online account. On the other hand, it can root deep in the history of grievance, violence, prejudice, and war—which makes a far more complex narrative and is, of course, how John Banville situates The Lock-Up. War and its profits, going back to an escape from Germany du ..read more

  [Originally published at New York Journal of Books] “Because Mason places the killer and his excuses openly among his protagonists, and the threats to Field and his family are menacing and time-linked, The Nightingale Affair is at least as much of a thriller as it is a historical novel.”   Tim Mason’s earlier historical mystery, The Darwin Affair, brought Chief Detective Inspector Charles Field into investigating the attempted London murder of Queen Victoria. In a clever twist of expectations, The Nightingale Affair offers a sequel in which Charles Field no longer holds a positio ..read more

Run Amok Crime Fiction releases today a new hard-boiled detective novel from Vern Smith. SCRATCHING THE FLINT continues to wind his dark twists tighter, until explosion is inevitable. Set in pre 9/11 Toronto, the book opens with a grim killing of a squealing witness that implicates a sleazy lawyer in the messy patterns of mob execution. Hard-boiled as a genre is saturated with rage and impulse; Smith takes it a layer deeper by leaking the real precursor to rage, the inner morass of doubt and shame invading lives spent avoiding human connection. Here's Gordon, for instance: First came Gordon ..read more