Lesa's Book Critiques
Sharing Books and Authors, with an Emphasis on MysteriesRecent Posts
What Are You Reading?
It's the third week of the month, so I'm on deadline for Library Journal. I read four books over the weekend to review for them, and I'm finishing the last book today. That means I don't have a book to discuss this week. I read all of those books, but reviews will be...
Graveyard Fields by Steven Tingle
In Steven Tingle's debut, Graveyard Fields, he takes an inept cop turned equally incompetent private investigator, stomps him into the ground, and turns all of his actions into a tragic comedy. I don't know when I felt so frustrated with a character, and ended up...
Lightning Strike by William Kent Krueger
Lightning Strike is the eighteenth Cork O'Connor mystery by William Kent Krueger, but don't hesitate to pick it up if you haven't read the other books. The sensitive, moving book is a prequel, set in the summer of 1963 when Cork is twelve. Krueger himself said the...
Thomas Kies, Guest Author
I met Tom Kies at a Poisoned Pen book conference just about the time his first book, Random Road, was released. Now, his fourth Geneva Chase Crime Reporter novel, Shadow Hill, is out. His short bio on The Poisoned Pen Bookstore's website doesn't do justice to his...
Jim Hanvey, Detective by Octavus Roy Cohen
Readers sometimes ask for mysteries without murder. Octavus Roy Cohen's Jim Hanvey, Detective, fits the bill. The seven stories in the collection, first published in 1923, feature Jim Hanvey, who investigates con men and thieves. The stories originally appeared in The...
Gone by Morning by Michele Weinstat Miller
Michele Weinstat Miller's debut crime novel, Gone by Morning, was good enough that I gave it a starred review in my journal review. It has such a great twist as the ending. Just perfect. But, it's a difficult book to summarize because there are multiple viewpoints and...
