A resident of the Rocky Mountains, Sandi lives in the area where her character Jamaica Wild works. When she isn’t working on her next mystery, she works as a Fire Information Officer.

Wild Inferno (A Wild Mystery #2)

Author: Ault, Sandi
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 287pp.
Pub. Date: February 2008
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Website: Sandiault.com

Wild Indigo introduced rough and ready Bureau of Land Management agent Jamaica Wild and her wolf, Mountain. Now they return, deployed to a wildfire on the Southern Ute reservation, where a puzzling plea whispered by a burning man points to a mystery more menacing than murder.

Wildfire erupts on a patchwork of land including the Southern Ute Reservation, and BLM agent Jamaica Wild is called away from her normal duties to serve on the Incident Command Team. A cantankerous old man from the Ute tribe named Grampa Ned has reportedly snuck around barricades and entered an area to one side of the fire. Jamaica risks danger to go after him, but before she can find him, the fire crowns and torches through the area, forcing her to run for her life. As she escapes, Jamaica discovers a firefighter smoldering and wavering on the side of the road. The man, part of a hotshot crew that is trapped in the burn area, sputters a cryptic message to Jamaica before losing consciousness.

While the burned man lies comatose in a burn unit, the rest of his crew is found deep inside the black — where the fire has burned through — singed and suffering from smoke inhalation, but alive thanks to their fire shelters. The charred body of Grampa Ned is discovered nearby in the seared forest — but he has not died from the fire, but rather from a blow to the head. The FBI investigates the murder, and the agent in charge asks for Jamaica’s help. The Chimney Rock Fire intensifies, threatening homes, highways, and a major power line feeding much of Southern Colorado.

Meanwhile, even as the fire threatens the high mesa on which they are encamped, a determined gathering of Puebloans, descendants of the ancient civilization that built the ruins at Chimney Rock, are doing ceremony atop the high cuesta. They refuse to evacuate because the sacred Lunar Standstill — an event that takes place every 18.6 years, when the moon rises exactly between the two spires of Chimney Rock — is about to occur. One of them is Momma Anna, Jamaica’s medicine teacher from Tanoah Pueblo, who has brought Jamaica’s wolf Mountain with her to Chimney Rock and into the path of danger.

Jamaica must work to ensure that the Native Americans and her beloved wolf are safe while she tries to discover what happened to both Grampa Ned and the burning man. What was Grampa Ned doing on the mountain before he was murdered — and why didn’t the burning man stay with his crew? What would make them risk incineration in a Wild Inferno?

You can order this and other novels by Sandi Ault through the Heights Library web catalog (click on the book covers) or order by phone by calling the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library.

Someone asked me for a list of authors who write like Robert Ludlum and I thought I would post one.  Just remember all of the authors listed here are different and approach fiction in unique ways.

Len Deighton

Ken Follett

Frederick Forsyth

William Buckley

John LeCarre

Ralph Peters

Ted Allbeury

Allan Folsom

Brian Freemantle

Clive Egleton

Vince Flynn

Brian Haig

These authors write intrigue, adventure, spy novels which some say are or have been making a come back.  Note that we have had an inflex of books using terrorism and biological threats as the focal point of the story in recent years.  If you are up for an international thriller, you might want to read one or two books by the authors listed here.  Please let me know what you think.  Happy reading.

This book features the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe in living color.  Each murdered woman (notice they are all women and if I am remembering correctly Poe did not murder only women when he was devising devious ways to do away with someone) is found dead by using a method of murder that Poe created in one of his stories.  For example one is walled up in a corner of her living room; another is found in the crawl space of her house with the beating heart of the house still sounding.  You can figure out which story is being highlighted.   The serial killer is soon dubbed the Raven and Illinois special agent Elizabeth Hewitt catches the case.  This book won lots of acclaim when it came out and Rusch has since written two others featuring Hewitt.  THE BOY WITH PERFECT HANDS and SEPARATED IN DEATH were published in 2006 and 2008. 

The Noble Mystery Evening readers will be discussing FOR EDGAR and hearing about Edgar Allan Poe’s writing life on April 9th at 7;00PM.  Poe is considered to be the Father of Mystery Fiction and in the short stories used by Rusch as the backdrop for murder his genius and certainly his unusual mind is illustrated.  Certainly there is much to discuss when dealing with Poe.  His birthday was January 19, 1809 and there was a lot of press at that time this year in celebration.

You may know Veronica Heley as the author of the Ellie Quicke mysteries and the Eden Hall series.  If so you know that she writes very well.  Her female characters are always clearly drawn showing strength of character and the ability to overcome obstacles (even when they do not have a high opinion of themselves). 

Heley’s newest series is about the Abbot Agency.  Bea Abbot and her husband ran an agency that helped people solve problems.  If you were giving a party and you needed a butler, they would find one for you.  If you were having trouble getting good help for your business or were finding that you had business problems and needed help solving them, the Abbot Agency knew what to do.  Then Bea’s husband got sick and they decided to travel the world before it was too late.  He passed away in Asia.  When she arrives home in London she finds that all is not well with the running of the agency.  Her son who is a Member of Parliament and his wife have taken over her house and her ex-husband is calling on her.  If this sounds like a recipe for disaster, it is not in the capable hands of Heley and her marvelous Bea Abbot.

The titles in the series are FALSE CHARITY, FALSE PICTURE, FALSE STEP which will be out this Spring and FALSE PRETENCES which will follow.  These books can be read by anyone but Heley really speaks to women of a certain age.  She has a great deal of empathy for young people and real savvy when it comes to how to talk to them. 

Heley also knows how to plot a good mystery.  The reader is captured from the first page to the last following along until the guilty party is found.  Will you guess who did it?  Maybe if you read tons of mysteries the way I do.  Will you enjoy the books?  Yes!  Even though Heley’s touch is fairly gentle the stories are full of modern problems, confrontation between parents and children, modern concern for making enough money to live and the ability to go on when a loved one has passed. 

If you are in the mood for a good mystery set in London peopled with characters that you might want to get to know better, try Veronica Heley’s the Abbot Agency books.  And please let me know what you think.

Robert Crais was a successful screenwriter in Hollywood when he decided to turn his attention to writing mysteries. His Elvis Cole and Joe Pike series has won several awards and much praise but the book I want to present to you today is a stand-alone novel about Carol Starkey, a scarred bomb squad survivor turned police detective.

Demolition Angel

Author: Crais, Robert
Format: Hardcover
Type: Novel
Page Count: 386pp.
Pub. Date: June 2000
Publisher: Doubleday
Website: Robert Crais.com

On the heels of the breakthrough bestselling and critically acclaimed L. A. Requiem, returns to the City of Angels with the most ambitious novel of his career — a stand-alone thriller featuring a complex and original female protagonist.

Carol Starkey is a survivor — a Los Angeles bomb squad veteran now doing time as a Detective-2 with LAPD’s Criminal Conspiracy Section. It has been three years since the detonation that killed her partner and lover, “Sugar” Boudreaux. Sugar saved Carol’s life, but couldn’t stop two bomb fragments that sliced through her protective Kevlar, leaving her permanently scarred. The emotional fallout from the trauma can only be tempered by a steady diet of Tagamet and gin.

When a seemingly innocuous bomb call takes the life of another colleague, Carol embarks on an investigation of a series of explosions that reveal intentions far more disturbing than one-shot acts of anarchy. They are designed expressly to kill bomb technicians, and as the one tech who got away, Carol is in the fight for her life.

Against the dazzling and lonely backdrop of contemporary Los Angeles, Crais has crafted the most unforgettable female lead character in crime fiction and pitted her against a frighteningly brilliant killer for the modern age.

You can order this and other novels by Robert Crais through the Heights Library web catalog (click on the book covers) or order by phone by calling the Cleveland Heights-University Heights Public Library.

The last book discussion was fun but we missed you . . .

Join us for the next Mystery Evening Book Discussion at the Noble Neighborhood Library on Thursday, January 8, 2009 from 7:00 to 8:00pm.

The discussions are led by Noble Neighborhood Library’s branch manager Jo Ann Vicarel.

We will be reading Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin.

A chilling, mesmerizing novel that combines the best of modern forensic thrillers with the detail and drama of historical fiction.

In medieval Cambridge, England, four children have been murdered. The crimes are immediately blamed on the town’s Jewish community, taken as evidence that Jews sacrifice Christian children in blasphemous ceremonies. To save them from the rioting mob, the king places the Cambridge Jews under his protection and hides them in a castle fortress. King Henry I is no friend of the Jews — or anyone, really — but he is invested in their fate. Without the taxes received from Jewish merchants, his treasuries would go bankrupt.

Hoping scientific investigation will exonerate the Jews, Henry calls on his cousin the King of Sicily — whose subjects include the best medical experts in Europe — and asks for his finest “master of the art of death,” an early version of the medical examiner. The Italian doctor chosen for the task is a young prodigy from the University of Salerno. But her name is Adelia — the king has been sent a mistress of the art of death.

Adelia and her companions — Simon, a Jew, and Mansur, a Moor — travel to England to unravel the mystery of the Cambridge murders, which turn out to be the work of a serial killer, most likely one who has been on Crusade with the king. In a backward and superstitious country like England, Adelia must conceal her true identity as a doctor in order to avoid accusations of witchcraft.

Along the way, she is assisted by Sir Rowley Picot, one of the king’s tax collectors, a man with a personal stake in the investigation. Rowley may be a needed friend, or the fiend for whom they are searching. As Adelia’s investigation takes her into Cambridge’s shadowy river paths and behind the closed doors of its churches and nunneries, the hunt intensifies and the killer prepares to strike again . . .

Please join us next Thursday.

For more information call Noble Neighborhood Library at 216-291-5665. To place a hold on a copy of Mistress of the Art of Death, either click on the book cover or call the library and a librarian will assist you.

I was just looking at the new Mystery bin here at Noble Library and found that we had so many good books for people to read.  At Holiday time many folks stop reading because they are so busy doing other things.  That means that this is a great time to come to the library and see books that you may have missed. 

Some of the titles are new and some not so new but all are good reading. 

Natasha Cooper A Poisoned Mind: A Tish Maguire Mystery

Charles Finch A Beuatiful Blue Death   and  The September Society

Peter King    Hangman’s Corner: A Ned Parker Hansom Cab Mystery

Michael Wlaters       The Shadow Walker which is set in Mongolia and a thriller

Shirley Wells        A Darker Side: A Forensic Psychologist Jill Kennedy and DCI Max Trentham Mystery

And then there is Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo’s The Man Who Went Up In Smoke.  This is an older book which was the prototype, if you will, of all of the Police Procedurals coming out of Scandinavia.  There books are dark and deal with problems in society that still plague us today. 

Hope you find something good to read.