"River Ghosts" by B.R. Robb

B. R. Robb is the pseudonym for attorney, Bruce Steinberg of Chicago. He has one previous novel, "The Widow's Son," which won a first novel grand prize in Milwaukee in 2000.

"River Ghosts," is a masterpiece. It should be receiving critical acclaim for its author, whom I hope will write again much sooner than in eight more years. It has the same kind of psychological impact that "Lovely Bones" had and it should be getting the same kind of attention.

This is a police thriller and a commentary on racial prejudice in America, which is portrayed as still very much alive and well.

We are confronted with the release of a supposedly reformed Neo-Nazi who had been convicted of the murder of a racially mixed couple sixteen years prior in a smallish Midwestern city. He was convicted on the eye-witness testimony of the young son of the couple, who grew up to become a police officer in his home town. Understandably, the cop, Richard's sleep is regularly disturbed by images of his parents' murders and the man who committed the crime, whom he saw from his hiding place under a table.

This taught and beautifully written story uncovers how DNA evidence could have been manipulated to acquit a guilty man and how the young police officer and his partner managed to prove it.

Hopefully, that's not giving away too much of the plot. I believe anyone who reads this book will find it refreshingly literary. I know I did after a summer of reading good, but mostly formulaic mysteries by well known authors.

Yes, there is still a literary muse at work in new fiction!

Liz Nichols

Susan Wittig Albert's "Nightshade"

At first it was difficult to get in to the China Bayles mystery, "Nightshade," because this is the third of a trilogy. It continues "Bleeding Hearts" and "Spanish Dagger," both of which were about the death of China's father. The third book tracks the way China and her husband, Mike McQuaid, sleuth out her dad's killer.

China is a former assistant DA, who has become a shop owner in the hill country outlying Austin, TX. China's character has always bothered me a bit because I personally do not know any shop owner or restauranteer who can break away from the business long enough to solve a murder mystery. One has to suspend reality long enough to appreciate the plot.

While I found the information about the Nightshade family of plants-- including the tomato, tomatillo, chili pepper, potato, eggplant, petunia and tobacco, not to mention the other deadly varieties, I didn't really get how it tied in with the plot. Well, there is one character crucial to solving the case who raises tomatillos. I kept expecting someone to get poisoned.

No such luck. People got blown up, run over and shot in this one.

Still, it's a fast read and it kept my attention throughout, even though I never quite got into the characters or the plot.

I've read other China Bayles mysteries before, and I'm sure I'll pick them up again. I just don't think I'll go out of my way to go back to the two previous titles in the trilogy. I got the picture from the third one.

One thumb up.

Liz Nichols

"The Box" by Marc Levinson

In doing a group of articles on containerization for a client, I had the pleasure to read Marc Levinson's "The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger."

For a very dry topic this is a very exciting book. It is one of those non-fiction creations that tells a story in a dramatic way. It's a page turner. You want to keep reading in order to find out how the heck the world could come together on standardizing something as complex as international, intermodal shipping.

The book brings to life some mid-20th century innovators whose achievements serve as powerful examples for us and for our children. "The Box" documents a recipe for creating large-scale change.

Great piece of social history.

Liz Nichols

Susan Conant's "All Shots, A Dog Lover's Mystery"

This was not the best read of the summer. I do appreciate all the information I did not previously know about malamutes, and learning that that breed and Alaskan huskies are not the same thing was of some interest.

There is lots of non-fiction information in this book for dog lovers.

As mysteries go, however, I found this one confusing. There were just too many Holly Winters in the book. That's all part of the plot. The heroine's name is Holly Winter, and there are two more Holly Winter characters involved. It seems like someone is trying to steal the heroine's identity until she finds out there are others with her name. I haven't gone back to verify this, but with all the Holly Winter characters running around (or lying in the morgue) it felt like the author was changing voices all the time. Perhaps that's what led to the confusion.

At any rate, I just couldn't get into this one, unlike some of her previous Dog Lover's Mystery titles. Perhaps the series is growing stale.

Conant also has a new series for cat lovers and another mystery series for "gourmet girls."

Liz Nichols

Patricia Cornwell's "Book of the Dead"

Cornwell is one of the most enduring and reliable mystery writers on the face of the earth. The fact that she has been a police forensics professional and knows that subject from the inside out gives readers a real picture into the procedure of finding a killer-- not the pretend picture that we get from the crime scene investigation shows on TV.

"Book of the Dead" does not disappoint. Dr. Kay Scarpetta, her niece, Lucy, and the other cast of characters that have surrounded this super CSI for years have their hands on the latest devices to detect composition and origins for grains of sand left on the victims' bodies and latent blood left at the crime scenes. Crime scenes in this book span the globe from Rome to Charleston, SC to Hilton Head where the reader gets to soak up a sense of place as well as a sense of character.

To add some additional drama to the book, there is trouble in the lives of Scarpetta and her cohorts. Secretary, Rose, is down with a mysterious persistent cough, Lucy is disappearing for days at a time, and Pete has a new girl friend who is definitely a bad influence. Scarpetta and Benton are alternatively hot and cold, though all is well with their relationship in the end.

The team has settled in to Charleston to run a private lab. Things are going well in terms of business. There are plenty of cities and counties around the world that need the expertise of Scarpetta's private forensic lab. The problem is that her team has not entirely settled in. Scarpetta is not entirely trusted by the natives either.

This is a great addition to Cornwell's list of Scarpetta forensic mysteries, and is sure to please Cornwell's fans.

Liz Nichols

"The Serpent's Tale" by Ariana Franklin

"The Serpent's Tale" is an absorbing historical mystery set it 12th century England around the story of Eleanor of Aquitaine's rebellion against her husband, Henry II. There are many accurate historical details in the book, and the Franklin has the social context of women in that society pegged right.

The heroine, Adelia Aquilar, is in secret a medical doctor who has been trained to forensic work, a "doctor of the dead" as she calls it. She was transplanted to England in the wake of Henry II's crusade, along with her Islamic servant, Mansur, who must pretend to be the doctor because of the low tolerance of women in professions during that time. If left on her own, she would have been considered a witch. Adelia's lover is one of Henry's knights, who has been rewarded for his loyalty with a bishopric- Rowley, Bishop of St. Albans. Together they have a baby girl.

The mystery revolves around finding the killer of Rosamund, Henry II's consort, and to determine if there is a tie between that murder and the death of a young lord who loses his life on his way to elope with a young woman who is being educated at the Godstow Convent.

Franklin does a masterful job of drawing interesting characterizations that are multi-dimensional. Even the villains are complex and worthy of consideration as to why they are the way they are. The details about how people lived in medieval times are accurate and interesting.

Two thumbs up for "The Serpent's Tale."

Liz Nichols

Goodbye to Bookwise

I am saddened that Bookwise has decided to merge into another company. What I found so attractive about Bookwise is it fed my passions for reading and writing all in one affiliate-based company. The writing aspect of Bookwise is also being pulled out and saved under a different company name. I will have to see if that will be worth joining stand-alone from the online book aspect.

I'm undecided about the new company. It seems more oriented to lifelong learning, similar to Success University, but it is more expensive than Success University. I have so many other opportunities for lifelong learning that I don't know that I want to pay almost $80 per month for the privilege of learning from Brian Tracy and the like. Been there; done that.

What I want to do is manage a great online bookstore. What I think I'll need to do is to focus this blog increasingly on Amazon.com, or on the independent bookseller site I also belong to.

I also plan to create another book review blog specifically on current mysteries. I'll give a shout out when I have that one up and running.

Liz Nichols