Inez Stannert, her husband, Mark, and Abe Jackson, a black man, arrived in Leadville, Colorado with enough money to open a saloon. It was the late 1870’s and Leadville was once again a boomtown. First gold in 1860 and then silver in 1875 brought men and women to the town seeking fortunes. As stakes were mined, rich men would be looking for those that seemed most promising and tried to purchase the claims. Assayers checked the content of samples brought in by the prospectors and, for a fee, estimate the value of a claim. Stores, banks, saloons, dance halls and brothels sprung up to serve the miners. Sheriffs kept peace and order. With a chance for easy money, any of the men and women might be honest or not.

Mark Stannert had served in the Union army with Abe and they stayed together after the war, moving from town to town gambling and running minor confidence games until Mark arrived in Inez’s family’s hometown in New England. He swept Inez off her feet and they were married in a week. She traveled with her husband and his friend until arriving in Leadville. They formed a partnership, each owning a third share of the Silver Queen Saloon. Their plan was to get enough money together to move to San Francisco and open an establishment there.
Mark left town one day and was never heard from again. Inez and Abe continued running the saloon. The profitable business had two house rules: married men cannot gamble; and drunken men will not be served liquor. Inez hosted a weekly high stakes poker game and took a cut from each pot for the business.

It is winter in the Rocky Mountains. Inez is attending her church intent on its new, interim minister when her friend, Emma Rose, reveals that her husband, Joe, did not come home the previous evening. She is extremely worried as that is so unlike him. Upon leaving church, the sheriff indicates he may have bad news. A body was found in the frozen muck behind Inez’s saloon. Sheriff Hollis hopes someone will positively identify the man who was horribly beaten and unrecognizable. Hope vanishes completely as Abe shakes his head when he sees them.

Of course, Inez and Abe become prime suspects.

I’m enjoying this series because I find historical mysteries interesting. Most authors extensively research the time period about which they write, so readers can get a real feel for life at that time and place. In this case, winter in the Rockies in the 1870's, it is cold and bleak. Ann Parker had discovered she had an ancestor who was a blacksmith in Leadville around that time. Inez is an interesting character because she is somewhat unconventional. She grew up in the east to a good family and was a proper miss, yet she went off with Mark having just met him. She is well known around town and respected by all who know her, but she runs an saloon.

Published by Poisoned Pen Press

Silver Lies, 2003
Iron Ties, 2006
Leaden Skies, 2009

You may be wondering why I haven’t mentioned Janet Evanovich yet since I know she’s one of the most popular female mystery authors. She has a new book coming out in June, Finger Lickin’ Fifteen, which is, as you might guess, the 15th title in her Stephanie Plum series. Stephanie is a Jersey girl born and raised in the Burg, a neighborhood in Trenton. She’s still single and lives in an apartment with her hamster, Rex, most of the time. When her apartment has been trashed or she needs to hide or feel safe, she moves in with Joe Morelli or into the Rangeman complex.
In the first volume, ‘One for the Money’, she has lost her job as lingerie buyer for a department store and is looking around for a job. Her cousin, Vinnie, is a bail bondsman looking for someone to find people who did not appear for their court dates. If they are not found and do not reschedule, then Vinnie is out the bond. When he hesitates to give Stephanie the job, she blackmails him; Vinnie has secrets. Stephanie earns a percentage of the bond amount to bring them in.
Evanovich’s books are full of funny, quirky, characters and laugh-out-loud antics. Her Grandma Mazur has come to live with Stephanie’s parents and has her nose in everything. Grandma forgets she’s not a spring chicken any longer (by a long shot!) and wants to assist her granddaughter in her job. Stephanie meets up with quite a few other individuals, many who are funny and a few who are sinister. Her mother, who wonders where she went wrong in raising Stephanie that she turned out without a steady job and carrying a gun, and her long-suffering father, who just wants dinner on the table at a reasonable time are among Stephanie’s foibles along with Joe Morelli, with whom she has a long history and is the subject of her first apprehension, and Ranger, Carlos Manoso, who is an expert employee of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds and helps Stephanie learn the ropes. There’s lots of sexual tension between Steph and these two hunks.
I have listened to many of the Stephanie Plum titles on audio and I enjoy C J Critt’s readings. She is not the only narrator, however, so I’ll leave it up to you to decide. There are 4 titles that feature Stephanie Plum in what Evanovich calls her Between the Numbers Series as well, but these are shorter, though even more outrageous.

Published by Scribner

One for the Money, 1993
Two for the Dough, 1996
Three to get Deadly, 1997

Published by St Martin’s Press

Four to Score, 1998
High Five, 1999
Hot Six, 2000
Seven Up, 2001
Hard Eight, 2002
To the Nines, 2003
Ten Big Ones, 2004
Eleven on Top, 2005
Twelve Sharp, 2006
Lean Mean Thirteen, 2007
Fearless Fourteen, 2008
Finger Lickin’ Fifteen, 2009

From a cozy series, we turn to a gritty, hardboiled series by Philip Kerr. Bernhard Guenther looks for people. More precisely, he tries to find out what happened to people, for he lives in perilous times, 1936 Berlin, and more often than not there are no answers, much less good ones. Nazis, the Gestapo and the SS are everywhere and usually behind the disappearances, so Bernie must tread carefully lest he come under the suspicious eye of a member of law enforcement. This is not always easy to do because he must ask questions to find answers. In the first volume of the series, Bernie is ‘requested’ to come to the aid of the owner of one of pre-war Germany’s largest steel mills. Herr Six, the owner, is looking for jewels, or is he? He claims a valuable necklace was stolen from his daughter and son-in-law’s home after they were murdered and the home set ablaze to cover up the deed. As Bernie gets deeper into the case he finds more questions than answers, some from top-ranking officials.

Philip Kerr recreates an extremely realistic Germany under the Third Reich. Once a woman married, she was expected to stay home and take care of the family. This also helped with unemployment. Another program to keep people off welfare was the building of the autobahns. Pay was minimal, but men were working, and the autobahns were strategic to the Nazis, since they were built to allow armies and their equipment access to countries such as Czechoslovakia which was invaded a few years later. At this point Jews were not the only people sent to KZs, concentration camps. Homosexuals and Communists were sent there as well. In fact, Bernie remarked about one man who was all three that his luck hadn’t run out so much as hopped on a motorcycle and fled. In the midst of this were the 1936 Olympics and Jesse Owens.

This is one of those series that I’d run into every so often and finally read the first in the series. I highly recommend it to readers of hard-boiled and noirish mysteries as well as fans of historical mysteries. In the meantime, I’ve requested the second title on audio and anxiously await its arrival. Philip Kerr, by the way, has written a variety of thrillers as well as a series, Children of the Lamp for middle-school-aged kids. He lives in Scotland.

Published by Viking

March Violets, 1989
The Pale Criminal, 1990
A German Requiem, 1991

Published by Penguin Books

Berlin Noir, 1993 compiles the 1st 3 titles

Published by G P Putnam’s Sons

The One from the Other, 2006
A Quiet Flame, 2009

This week we’re turning to a subgenre of mysteries called cozies. These usually take place in a small town or village. Typically the language is clean and violence, other than the murder or murders, is minor. In cozies, the main characters can be anyone, sometimes retired and they are put into a situation where they must find the killer because they or friends have come under suspicion by the local police detectives. Mary Saums is the author of a cozy mystery series that features two retired ladies from very different backgrounds. Jane Thistle was born in England and spent many summers in Wales. She married an American career soldier and moved where he was stationed as his career moved him up the ladder to become Colonel John Thistle. Phoebe Twigg has retired from her job as Children’s Librarian in her home town. These two women formed a friendship from the first day Jane moved to Tullulah.

Jane discovered Tullulah while taking a scenic route from Florida to the Midwest after supervising the packing of her household after another transfer. To her it was a place of wonderment such as she had experienced as a child. Jane, you see, has two secrets. The first is that she can see ghosts and auras; at least she could while she was in Wales. Once she left Wales for the last time, that ability seemed to go to sleep and was reawakened when she entered Tullulah. She had rather forgotten about it, but something in this sleepy little town reminded her of Wales and she determined that this is where she would live if she outlived her husband. This was not a place where he would be happy and she never told her husband about it. She saw a little girl on her first trip into town. She thought nothing of it until she returned, this time traveling from the Midwest back to Florida years later. She saw the little girl again and she had not aged at all and was still wearing the same white dress she had on when Jane first saw her.

The house she purchased was far from town, on the border of a wildlife refuge. She liked hiking and birding and having few neighbors. She was excited to settle in to her new life at a relaxing pace. One of her neighbors, Cal Prewitt, a man the townsfolk call ‘no account’ stopped over the first night. He was drunk but stopped to introduce himself and his dog, Homer. The Prewitt’s owned many acres of untouched woods and Cal had begun writing the Native American stories that had been handed down each generation. They had a long conversation and Cal asked Jane over the next day to see some of his woods and the secrets they held.

Things are not as they seem on Cal’s land and a body is discovered. Cal seems the only choice for the deed, so Jane and, reluctantly, Phoebe start investigating.

I have enjoyed this short series. So far, there are only two titles, but I’m hopeful for more. And, oh, yes, Jane’s second secret. It’s a whopper, but I’ll let you discover it yourself. Some things may seem a bit preposterous, but the series is imaginative and fun to read.

Published by St Martin’s Press

Thistle and Twigg, 2007
Mighty Old Bones, 2008

Readers everywhere are heralding the return of Jane Whitefield after a hiatus of several years. Thomas Perry’s character, Jane, was introduced to readers in 1995 in Vanishing Act. Jane is a Native American from the Seneca tribe, Wolf Clan in upper New York State. She helps deserving, desperate people ‘disappear’ by giving them new identities to hide from abusive husbands or the perpetrators of high-profile killings.

Jane knows many tricks and teaches her clients how to stay safe by keeping a low profile, blending in, living where others wouldn’t expect them to live, but most of all by keeping alert …and aware…always. For a new life to work there has to be a new background. Family and their stories must be forgotten, given up because those looking will be watching them, too, waiting sometimes years for a chance that something will turn up to tell them where to search. The new stories must be rehearsed until they become natural, the first response to a question, answered without thought or hesitation. False papers and paper trails are easy for Jane to obtain, for she knows people in the right places, people who trust her as she trusts them, because they all operate outside of the law.

Is it easy? Not at all, but it can be done. The worst thing is to forget to be watchful, because someone is out there, searching.

This is a great series because Jane is very real, resourceful, clever and likable. Her story and the story of the Native Americans in the area surrounding Lake Ontario is present throughout the books. But, suspense is the key to this series as well as action, confrontation and narrow misses. Jane is very good at what she does, but there are always surprises.

Published by Random House

Vanishing Act – 1995
Dance for the Dead – 1996
Shadow Woman – 1997
The Face-Changers – 1998
Blood Money – 1999

Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Runner - 2009

Edith Pargeter is one of the grande dames of the historical English countryside mysteries. Writing as Ellis Peters, her most memorable character is Brother Cadfael, a Welshman who joined the first Crusades. Upon his return to England, he gave up his worldly life to join a Benedictine monastery, The Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, in the English county of Shropshire. He is the herbalist for his brethren and knows the medicinal value of the herbs he grows and finds in the countryside and would prefer to spend his time in his greenhouse. But war and its cruelty come to Shrewsbury Castle. King Stephen and Empress Maud are battling for the kingdom and the lords in Shropshire have taken sides.

The series was well researched and Peters used a number of historical events in her chronicles including the battle in Shrewsbury. In the first title, A Morbid Taste for Bones, one of the abbey’s monks has a vision that one of his fellow brothers will be cured if he visits the spring of St Winifred in Wales. They begin to feel that it would be fitting that her bones should be honored more significantly should they be moved to the Shrewsbury Abbey. Since Cadfael is Welsh, he is included in the group to request the transfer of the relics. When the person most opposed to this is found murdered, it is up to Cadfael to find the miscreant. The ending is a bit of a surprise that I won’t give away here.

In addition to the books by Ellis Peters, two companion volumes were co-authored by Peters and Robin Whiteman. The first is the Brother Cadfael Companion, printed in the US by Mysterious Press in 1995. It includes all things Cadfael: the places; people and events that take place in the 20 Chronicles and 1 book of novellas. The second was also co-authored by Rob Talbot: Brother Cadfael’s Herb Garden: an Illustrated Companion to Medieval Plants and their Uses, printed by Little, Brown in 1996.

Brother Cadfael’s Chronicles are available on audio as well as print format. Sir Derek Jacobi is perfect at Cadfael on video, originally published for television.

• 1 Morbid Taste for Bones, 1977 by Mysterious Press
• 2 One Corpse Too Many, 1979 by Morrow
• 3 Monk's Hood, 1980 by Warner
• 4 St. Peter's Fair, 1981 by Morrow
• 5 Leper of St. Giles, 1981 by Ballantine Books
  
  

Published by W Morrow

• 6 Virgin in the Ice, 1983
• 7 Sanctuary Sparrow, 1983
• 8 Devil's Novice, 1984
• 9 Dead Man's Ransom, 1984
• 10 Pilgrim of Hate, 1984
• 11 Excellent Mystery, 1985
• 12 Raven in the Foregate, 1986
• 13 Rose Rent, 1986

Published by Mysterious Press

• A Rare Benedictine, short stories from Cadfael's life before the monastery
• 14 Hermit of Eyton Forest, 1988
• 15 Confession of Brother Haluin, 1989
• 16 Heretic's Apprentice, 1990
• 17 Potter's Field, 1990
• 18 Summer of The Danes, 1991
• 19 Holy Thief, 1992
• 20 Brother Cadfael's Penance, 1994

Jane Austen has inspired any number of authors who copy her style and use her settings. There have been books written supposing what happened, for example, once Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy were wed and moved to Pemberley. There is even a mystery series (by Carrie Bebris) where Elizabeth and Darcy must discover who is behind dastardly events befalling their friends a la The Thin Man’s Nick and Nora, according to the books’ jackets.

This entry will be focusing on a series by Stephanie Barron where Jane Austen is the sleuth. The stories take place in villages and towns where Jane’s family lived and visited and Ms Barron uses fictional diary entries and letters to Cassandra, Jane’s beloved sister, just as these devices were used in Miss Austen’s own works.

The interesting aspect to the books is how well Ms Barron is able to include situations that are similar enough to Austen’s own works that, were they not fictional, one might suppose that these events inspired her to write her novels. Included are various footnotes to help a reader who is unfamiliar with life and society in the early 1800’s England.

In the first of the series, Jane is visiting her friend, Lady Scargrave. Isobel calls her from her bed because her husband of only 3 months is in agony. Earlier that evening he was merry, enjoying a party to toast his and Isobel’s nuptials. Lord Scargrave does not revive and to further upset the house party, Isobel receives a ‘missive’ accusing her and the Earl’s nephew of adultery and murder. With so many people in residence and nearby, Jane reluctantly consents to assist her friend.

These titles do follow Jane’s life and travels, and are best read in order.

Published by Bantam Books

Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, being the First Jane Austen Mystery, 1996
Jane and the Man of the Cloth, being the Second Jane Austen Mystery, 1997
Jane and the Wandering Eye, being the Third Jane Austen Mystery, 1998
Jane and the Genius of the Place, being the Fourth Jane Austen Mystery, 1999
Jane and the Stillroom Maid, being the Fifth Jane Austen Mystery, 2000
Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House, being the Sixth Jane Austen Mystery, 2001
Jane and the Ghosts of Netley, being a Jane Austen Mystery, 2003
Jane and his Lordship’s Legacy, being a Jane Austen Mystery, 2005
Jane and the Barque of Frailty, being a Jane Austen Mystery, 2006