Framing the Dialogue

Archive for March, 2016

Swan Peak

swan peakIn Swan Peak famed New Orleans cop, Dave Robicheaux, tries to get away and relax in the wilderness of Montana.  Mayhem seems to find him wherever he goes when he and his long-time partner get involved in a murder investigation near a friends house.  Was the proximity of the murder a coincidence or a message?

“This place looks peaceful.  But it’s not.  The degenerate who murdered that college boy up there is the canker in the rose.  It doesn’t matter where you go.  The same fellow is always there.”

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Altar of Eden

altar of eden

In Altar of Eden, a storm-damaged fishing trawler in the wilds of Louisiana bring two old acquaintances back together.  One a former marine who now works for the U.S. Border Patrol and the other is a veterinarian/scientist working to preserve species before they become extinct.  The things they encounter on that ship shock them, but even more there are those who are hell bent on keeping the world from discovering what was on board.

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The Tainted Coin

tainted coin“With pain and effort he opened his swollen lips and said, so faintly I had to ask John Kellet if he heard the same words, ‘They didn’t get me coin.’  I had learned two things:  whoso attacked the fellow had sought a coin, or perhaps many coins, and more than one had done this evil.  I would learn no more from him, for as I began to inspect a bloody laceration between two ribs, his chest heaved and was then still.”

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Unhallowed Ground

Iunhallowed groundn the fourth chronicle in the Hugh de Singleton series, Unhallowed Ground, Master Hugh is called when the area’s bully is found hanging from a tree of an apparent suicide.  He is unceremoniously buried without the benefit of church as befits one who takes ones own life, but there are clues that his death may not have been of his own choice.  Author, Mel Starr takes the Bailiff of Bampton on another journey to find a murderer, however, the victim this time is one that very many of Master Hugh’s friends are not too unhappy to see underground.  Hugh has some help as he has someone else to bounce his theories off of.  If you’ve read the other novels you’ll like this!

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The Bad Seed

bad seed“Later that summer, when Mrs. Penmark looked back and remembered, when she was caught up in despair so deep that she knew there was no way out, no solution whatever for the circumstances that encompassed her, it seemed to her that June seventh, the day of the Fern Grammar School picnic, was the day of her last happiness, for never since then had she known contentment or felt peace.”

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Death Come Quickly

death quicklyIn Death Come Quickly we are treated to author Susan Wittig Albert’s twenty second novel in the China Bayles mystery series.  I am not sure that I’ve read them all, but at least most of them.

China and Ruby are thrust into a case when a crime is committed against a friend and may shed light on a very old cold case.  China Ruby as usual overstep their bounds as they investigate instead of the Pecan Springs Police Department.  China’s travels take into the world of Mexican art as she tries to find the killer.

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