The Literate Kitty

A police detective with a taste for bespoke suits, vintage watches, fine art, and classic European sports cars sounds like a conundrum, doesn’t it? Not easy to afford such high-ticket items on the average police salary. 
Nothing about Detective Marko Zorn is quite what you’d call “average”, though, in Otho Eskin’s debut crime thriller, The Reflecting Pool… and that fact makes for a highly-compelling read.

_______________ When a woman is found facedown in the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, Washington, D.C. homicide detective Marko Zorn has questions… not the least of which is how could an obviously fit female—in the prime of her life, by the look of her—manage to drown in less than two feet of water? 
Once the body has been identified as Sandra Wilcox, a Secret Service agent who’d been assigned to the First Lady’s detail, it seems that nearly every branch of the military, police, and government does its damnedest to shut down his investigation, leaving Marko with a larger question: …

Find someone special, settle down together, start a family; that’s always been, well… the dream, at best, or in any case, where life ends up, for most people. Today—with a whole fabulous rainbow of possibilities for what a “family” unit might look like—having some variation on the theme is still what the majority of us seemingly want. And, once we have the family, it’s only natural we feel the need to protect it—parents to safeguard their children, siblings to look out for each other, etc.—from all the things that can go wrong or bad in our world.
But what would happen if a family discovered something completely unthinkable… like finding out that they weren’t, in fact, the family they thought they were?
JP Delaney explores how that scenario might go down in his latest psychological thriller, Playing Nice. _______________
Pete Riley and his partner Maddie are more or less your average, struggling young parents. Things are a little tense, with Pete not getting done much of the writing-from-…

An ancient Indian artifact. A dead archeologist. An attractive art history professor. A dangerous ex. A determined cop. A pair of eager-beaver college students. And secrets, so many secrets. 
Sounds like the key elements in a new Indiana Jones tale, doesn’t it? Instead, they’re all part of author Vee Kumari’s first novel, Dharma (A Rekha Rao Mystery), which I’m joining on a virtual book tour, today!  _______________

When professor Rekha Rao wakes up one Saturday morning, the last thing she expects is a call asking her to assist the police. Actually, make that the next-to-the-last thing; the last thing is what the police want from her, which is to help identify an ancient statue that was used to bludgeon a murder victim, then left atop the body. 
The victim? Her mentor and friend, Dr. Joseph Faust, a fellow professor at the same college.
Rekha really doesn’t want to get involved, for reasons that go much deeper than the horrifying nature of Faust’s death. Her own father was murdered, a few…

My latest streaming recommendation is—not surprisingly (if you know me)—international, but—more surprisingly—not from Great Britain or any of the Nordic countries. Instead, this very enthusiastic pick is from a land Down Under (hint: the one associated with a lovely, fuzzy fruit, not the one with adorable-fluffy eucalyptus-munchers).
The Brokenwood Mysteries might be described as the antipodean second-cousin of Midsomer Murders (the looooong-running mystery series set in the British countryside)… but if so, it’s the charming, wry, witty, non-uptight cousin. As in MM, TBM is set in a small (New Zealand) town which also covers the rest of the county, wherein a shocking number of murders (and other shenanigans) occur. Both shows also share a light touch; there’s always at least one murder—and usually more—but the tone is never grim, because the focus is always strongly on the personalities.
And for me, that’s where TBM really shines. First, there’s a fantastic main cast—Neill Rea as the mi…

When it comes to detective novels (whether suspense/thriller, police procedurals, or P.I.s), there’s no shortage of smart, interesting, “mature” male characters out there… but precious few female detectives “of a certain age” in starring roles. For every Vera Stanhope or Temperance Brennan, we’ve probably got a dozen middle-aged guys… which, given the number of women in these careers, who are nearing retirement, seems like an oversight that needs to be corrected.
With A Door in the River, author Inger Ash Wolfe takes a step in the right direction. (An author new to me, 2012’s River is actually the third in the series, but reads easily as a standalone.)  __________
Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef has a good grasp of the goings on in her patch, which is comprised of little Port Dundas, Ontario, and the surrounding area. Recently divorced and now living with (and caring for) her ailing, tough-as-(really)-old-boots, elderly mother—while facing the prospects of being phased out at work, he…

Your first love… do you ever forget that? Those crazy rushes of hormone-enhanced feelings, hours spent daydreaming, and riding that constant high, while the first flush of infatuation (or “love”, as we all call it at the time) lasts? 
No, those memories stay with you, most of us would agree, and it’s that notion which is at the heart, if you will, of author D.P. Lyle’s latest thriller, Rigged.

But let me start by getting the big problem I have with this out of the way. The “first love”, in Rigged, took place between a pair of 12-year-olds… and ended right after the 6th grade, when the girl’s parents moved. (Okay, you’re thinking, so it was puppy love. What’s the problem?)
I wouldn’t have a problem, if the author didn’t make such a monumentally-big deal of it, with one of his main characters—the humorously-nicknamed “Pancake”—going on (and on) about how “in love” they were, and how much he’s thought about her in the intervening twenty-plus years… despite never once bothering to pick up th…