Rogue Island

Bruce DeSilva has produced a well-written, well-edited but only mildly entertaining noir novel featuring a hero so obviously modeled on himself that it gets in the way of the story. The author succumbs to one of my pet peeves in these debut novels -- he inflicts his personal tastes and preferences on the reader in lieu of doing any genuine characterization.

DeSilva's author photo features him with a big stogie and his fictional hero Liam Mulligan distinguishes himself every few pages by "firing up" or "sparking up" a "cuban" with virtually everyone he talks to. In fact, it appears the secret to being a successful investigative reporter is to develop a cigar-smoker's network. Not that Mulligan is notably successful in his investigation although there are intimations of past glory (a 10-year-old Pulitzer gets a passing mention). We don't really know much about Mulligan in fact -- how old he is, what he looks like, or what he likes besides cigars and the Red Sox (and women) -- except that he never grew up.

Like most of the other characters in this book, Mulligan borders on caricature, and caricatures that are decades out of date. It's almost jarring when a cell phone is mentioned. The newsroom rivalries, the bookie, the strip joint are all pushed just a bit beyond the point where you want to suspend disbelief that people really talk and act like that.

But perhaps Providence, R.I. is really like that. We are told that DeSilva had a 41-year career as a newspaperman, so he must know. He does of course lament the decline and fall of newspapers and, after telling us what an irremediable mix of crime and corruption his hometown is, wants us to believe it will be worse off when the newspaper is gone.

As to the story itself: The plot about a serial arsonist torching buildings in a narrowly restricted neighborhood is fairly predictable. What little suspense there is tends to get lost in all the cigar-smoking, adolescent fumbling, and other childish antics of our ageless hero.

It's a little hard to understand how this book won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel. DeSilva makes it clear in his acknowledgments that he cultivated a dozen established crime fiction authors as he wrote the book, so perhaps that is part of the explanation. It tells you something about how literary awards get awarded.

For me, this novel is further evidence that self-published works can easily compete for readers' favor. Personally, I found Capriati's Blood  -- written by another veteran newspaperman, Lawrence DeMaria -- a much better read. It was leaner, more credible, less predictable and equally effective in conveying a sense of place (Staten Island in this case) as this Edgar Award winner from Tom Doherty's Forge imprint.

Blowout

This book by David Hagberg and former Senator Byron Dorgan is disappointing. It has many elements for a successful thriller, including the input of a genuine Washington insider, but simply fails to come together.

*Spoiler alert* For starters, there is never a "blowout." While the specter of an accident in an experiment involving billions of coal-eating microbes producing methane is invoked early, a terrorist attack apparently designed to achieve that fails and that's the last you hear of it.

Instead, you have an incompetent psychopath mercenary who not only fails the first time, but fails in a second attempt to sabotage a top-secret "initiative" in Dorgan's home state of North Dakota to solve America's dependence on foreign oil by developing the ultimate clean coal -- one that doesn't have to be mined or burned but simply converted to methane, which can then be burned cleanly to fuel turbines generating electricity.

Not going to happen, but it's not a bad premise for an energy thriller. Hagberg is apparently an accomplished thriller writer and the book is easy to read. Not surprisingly, given Dorgan's involvement, it is politically correct to the nth degree and the hero is an Afghan amputee veteran who has returned home to the quiet life as sheriff in the county where this top-secret experiment is masquerading as a generating station.

There is blood and gore and a lot of time spent in the mind of the psychopath, whose motives and objectives are a jumble. The sheriff is brave, dependable, divorced by a wife who didn't sign on for life in North Dakota. His love interest is a spunky journalist, who happens to be the daughter of the general heading up the initiative, and who is amenable to quashing journalistic scoops and spending her life in said North Dakota with the sheriff.

Venezuela plays the heavy, suborning the attacks on the initiative, decapitating a special U.S. envoy, and ultimately bearing the full military wrath of the United States of America.

Even the authenticity that would be the chief benefit of Dorgan's participation comes into question when in the space of a single paragraph the authors make two geopolitical mistakes that would have embarrassed Sarah Palin. As a President Thompson is ruminating on his full plate, he thinks of a China that refuses to "devalue" its currency -- when in fact, of course, the problem is that China won't allow its currency to increase in value -- and of a "European Economic Union" on the verge of imploding -- when in fact, of course, the current European Union replaced the European Economic Community without ever being called the European Economic Union.

Small details, but telling, and it does not mean that Dorgan does not or did not know better when he was in the Senate. I'm just saying.

So give this book a pass and find a better way to spend your time.

Capriati's Blood

Lawrence De Maria's crackling suspense yarn keeps the reader in thrall as first-person narrator Alton Rhode -- a cop turned soldier turned PI -- tries to hunt down a missing father whose daughter needs a bone marrow transplant to beat leukemia. Billy Capriati is the father and Rhode, just returned from combat and needing a client for his new PI business on Staten Island, takes on the case from the seductive Ellen James, a model and sometime actress devoted to her ailing 14-year-old daughter.

There's not much to go on, and as Rhode tries to track down the missing Capriati based on the few traces from his childhood and college days in Staten Island, he finds himself getting some unwanted attention from local Russian and Italian mobsters, who seem to have something to do with the sudden disappearance of Capriati shortly after the affair that left Ellen James with a daughter.

Both the narration and the dialogue are alive with wit and energy as De Maria, a longtime reporter for the New York Times, keeps the pace going through this relatively short (218 pages) thriller. Rhode is a sympathetic character possessed of a reckless integrity that makes him a soft touch for a part-time thug who is tailing him and a less sympathetic conspirator who dupes him. He takes romance where he can find it, falling not only for his client but for a swimming instructor/philosophy teacher at the college where he begins his search for Capriati.

De Maria renders the quirky charm of New York's forgotten borough with the affection of a native and also offers another convincing portrayal of Florida, the primary setting for his earlier Sound of Blood mystery, as Rhode closes in on his quarry. Telling details and vivid descriptions make both settings come alive.

There are numerous twists in the plot, some more convincing than others, but once you're along for the ride it's a simple matter to suspend disbelief as called upon. The plot needed perhaps one more layer or clever twist to qualify as a full-fledged novel, but in the age of e-books we no longer have to worry about length or complexity as long as the author, as he does in this case, serves up a completely satisfying read.

Open Season

Archer Mayor's police procedural featuring Joe Gunther has a lot going for it, so it took me a while to figure out why it was taking me so long to read it.

Here's what it has: A good, original plot, with some odd twists and turns; a wonderful sense of place in Brattleboro, Vermont; a sympathetic, well-drawn protagonist who narrates in first person with a distinctive voice; a great climax that really does, finally, keep you turning the pages.

After some reflection, I could put my finger on a couple of things that slow the book down. One is that the dialogue is at best prosaic and at worst wooden. There is no wit. The characters plod through their dull lines.

The other thing is that there are too many characters who don't contribute to the plot or add anything else meaningful to the reader. Gunther's love interest, Gail, is hardly even one-dimensional, intermittently there, and often inexplicably absent. The police chief, Brandt, is just plain annoying, fussing around with a pipe (who does that? why bother?) and in general contributing nothing to the novel except distracting the reader and slowing down the pace. A troubled colleague, Kunkle, likewise is really just a distraction, adding nothing of any significance to the plot and not really helping us understand Gunther.

Gunther's close friend and mentor, Frank, is a bit more interesting, but ultimately the reader understands too little of his motives and sees too little of him to feel anything like sympathy, let alone caring for him. Oddly, Gunther's nemesis as he is forced to reopen a three-year murder case -- known as Ski Mask because that's what he wears as he makes it clear to the police they jailed the wrong person -- emerges as a quirky character that in some way both Gunther and the reader actually do care about.

For me, the pluses outweigh the minuses and I can give the book 4 stars, keeping in mind the subjective nature of these ratings. I liked the book for the reasons listed and especially liked the climactic scenes in a driving New England snowstorm. However, having visited Vermont once with Joe Gunther, I couldn't say I'd hurry back for another adventure with him.

Hardscape

A small-town real estate agent might not be the obvious choice of hero for a mystery thriller, but Justin Scott makes it work. He endows Ben Abbott with a backstory as a financial wheeler-dealer who runs afoul of securities laws and spends prison time as a convicted felon. Then he returns home to northwest Connecticut to make a new life taking over his father's real estate business.

Abbott's past complicates his life. He feels like a liability to his sometime girlfriend, the politically ambitious "first selectman" of the fictional Newbury. He is looked upon with disdain by law enforcement officials, private detectives and eventually social connections. So the idyll of living in an inherited house on Main Street, running an inherited business in a town surrounded by friends and family is hardly perfect. Scott further complicates Abbott's story by making his mother come from the wrong side of the tacks, giving Abbott a whole raft of scurrilous cousins.

All this comes into play when Abbott is solicited to play private detective and videotape (the book first appeared in 1993, so there are videotapes, carphones, and junk bonds galore) a rich weekender's unfaithful wife. Abbott of course falls for the wife, destroys the tape and rushes to her aid when she is accused of murdering her lover. It is patently obvious who the murderer is, though Scott belabors the point in an entertaining fashion for another couple hundred pages. A subplot involving some of Abbott's disreputable cousins intersects at some points with the murder plot.

The strength of the book is the sympathetic hero and the Connecticut setting. Small-town New England life, with its cookouts, its simmering feuds, its stratified society, its quaint buildings and customs is all yours for a while. Abbott knows his flaws, but has inherited a "claptrap Puritan" nature that gives him some gritty integrity. He manages to string along three women -- that selectman, the adulteress, and even the female state trooper investigating the murder -- so we are to assume that our first-person protagonist has a magnetic charm.

This is another Poisoned Pen book, so a pattern is emerging. Competent prose with strong sense of place, quirky characters and plot, and an overall package hovering around four stars. Nothing startlingly original, but reliable.

The Jackpot

David Kazzie has written a thoroughly entertaining thriller that shares many of the good qualities of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen while introducing a wholly original voice. The story takes off from the first page and hardly lets you put it down.

As I posted recently in my writing blog, Kazzie succeeds at many levels. Part of what keeps you reading is the violence, the turns it takes and the suddenness of unexpected death. Part of it is the quirkiness of the characters; Kazzie takes the time to explore each character and endow them with surprising qualities. The concept -- what happens to the winner of a super-jackpot lottery -- is a great one, with lots of natural suspense. The writing, if not exactly scintillating, is much better than just competent.

But one of the main attributes is that from the first page you care about the characters. There is Julius, who is watching the lottery drawing with good-for-nothing cousin and realizes he actually has the winning number. There is Samantha Khouri, the ambitious associate who has just been passed over for partner at her law firm when Julius turns to her for legal advice about his ticket. You're on their side. But even the heavies, like Samantha's stressed-out boss at the firm, or the eccentric bounty hunter sent to find the ticket, draw more sympathy than antipathy from the reader.

The setting in Richmond, Va., is well-drawn without being intrusive. It is a place, a real place, but it is subordinate to the action. The riffs on the legal profession -- Kazzie has made something of a name for himself with his YouTube diatribe on the profession ("So you want to go to law school") -- are entertaining and just reined in enough.

As Samantha wrestles with her conscience to do the right thing by her client with this incredibly valuable lottery ticket, the story rockets to its conclusion with a twist that is a surprise even though Kazzie laid down a couple of clues on the way.

Kazzie is harsh in his description of ghetto life, but he is also harsh and unflinching in his portrayal of the hollowness of the 1 percent. There are attitudes and behavior that remind you this was the capital of the Confederacy, but the author does not club you over the head with it. It all comes across as being honest, and not offensive. It is a bit of a stretch to accept Samantha's naivete regarding her chances at the law firm given the particular history of her family, and this may be the weakest point of the plot. But there is so much else to like, the reader is more than willing to suspend disbelief on this point.

Revenge

Mark Young situates his police procedural in the wilds of Idaho. He makes you smell and feel the outdoors and you wish you were there. His hero, Travis Mays, takes a whitewater kayak trip with his Indian guide, Jessie, and begins a romance and a mystery that takes us up and down the river and trails along Highway 12 in western Idaho.

Takes us a few too many times, really. The 350-page book could have been 70, if not 100, pages shorter. The action is at times needlessly duplicated or drawn out without adding anything to the plot or character development. Travis is well-drawn as a policeman who has a case go terribly wrong and who wants to retreat to his inaccessible cabin in the Idaho mountains and teach his courses at nearby Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. But Jessie is two-dimensional and comes across as a bit whiney, while her father, Frank, the tribal chief of police for the Nez Perce, is also a cliche who never really gets fleshed out.

Otherwise, there are too many characters doing too many superfluous things to make this successful as a suspense thriller. I enjoyed the scenery, the sense of place, but felt too often that I was plodding through. There are a couple of twists at the end, but one twist creating too many coincidences, and the unmasking of a villain who is introduced late but too obviously.

It's a good enough addition to my 50-state mystery challenge, but could have been much more satisfying with a little more judicious editing. Young has a good command of narrative and language; his action sequences work well. His years as an officer in the Santa Rosa police force give the book an authentic voice and feel. I can't quite get to four stars on this but I would want to give it more than three, so I won't post it elsewhere. There is much to emulate in writing a procedural and some other good lessons from the mistakes.

Desert Wives

There is a murder mystery in Betty Webb's Desert Wives, but it takes a back seat to her harrowing portrayal of a polygamy compound on the Arizona-Utah border. The author's vivid descriptions of a primitive society outside the law, where women are treated primarily as breeding stock, make you feel like you've entered an alternative universe or a new circle of hell.

Lena Jones is a former cop/private eye based in Scottsdale, Ariz. Her client is a woman who has fled from the Purity polygamy compound operated by a fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon church. Her former husband wants to marry off their 13-year-old daughter to one of the elders in the compound, who all seek to earn their place in heaven by taking as many wives and producing as many children as possible.

Lena manages to rescue the young Rebecca but the girl's mother, Lena's client, is charged with the murder of the compound's head, Prophet Solomon. To clear her, Lena has to investigate the murder and find the real killer (even though she is not sure her client is innocent). Through various connections, she finds an older man in the compound who has become disaffected with its whole ethos and embittered because he unwittingly signed over all his property and assets and would be virtually impoverished if he leaves. Saul is willing to bring Lena into the compound as his second wife to investigate the murder. She must wear the plain clothing of the compound's women and adopt their submissive attitude --  none of which comes easily to Lena, who is fiercely independent and wrestling with demons from her own childhood spent in foster care.

There are some truths that can only be told in fiction, and Webb's brutal descriptions of present-day polygamy are one of them. This is not Big Love, but it rings too true to be made up (and the author offers considerable documentation at the end of the novel to show it is based on fact).

Lena observes two-thirds of the way through the book that she has been in the compound more than a week and is no closer to finding out Solomon's killer. This may frustrate some mystery readers who want her to get on with it. But the portrayal of this universe is as compelling and suspenseful as any murder mystery, if not more so. In the end, victim and killer alike are caught up in a system that appears to be unalloyed evil. It combines some of the worst ills in society today -- unbridled greed hypocritically posing as religious fundamentalism, battering and abuse of women, and child molestation, among others.

That said, some of the description of life in the compound could probably have been sacrificed to move the plot along more quickly. Also, in terms of mystery plotting, the reader would have benefited from more clues. As it is, Lena's illumination about the identity of the killer seems abrupt and somewhat arbitrary. Lena herself seems at times less mature and less professional than one might expect from a veteran law enforcement officer, and some of the other characters remain two-dimensional.

Webb excels at evoking the desert landscape of the Arizona Strip, with its beauty and its danger. The flashes of scenic beauty, the genuine joy of many of the children living together in a closed community with fixed parameters lighten the gloom of compound, where most of the people live in sordid poverty while the "prophets" enjoy a life of luxury.

The reader is happy to leave Purity, but much sadder, if wiser, knowing that such places exist and are allowed to exist by a corrupt society.

Punctured

Rex Kusler's debut novel in the Las Vegas Mystery series is as quirky as the town it's set in. Characters often seem at loose ends -- perhaps that's why they are in Vegas, or maybe people are just more open about it there. There is a murder, and a mystery, and enough suspense to keep the story moving along, but the real pleasure is precisely in this slice of life in a unique place.

The protagonist, Jim Snow, quits the homicide department to play limited poker for a living and manages well enough until he hits a losing streak. When his sister's estranged husband is killed in an RV park after selling his trailer, Snow has to undertake the investigation because the sister, who has already collected life insurance on two other deceased husbands, is the prime suspect.

Along the way, Snow encounters a bar owner who came to Vegas to play pool but couldn't cut it, a young woman who came there to be a dancer but ended up as an apartment manager, and an enigmatic tramp who is not homeless because he breaks into the RV park and sleeps every night in a parked yacht. Let's face it, you don't find characters like this everywhere.

People are talky, but this seems to be part of the spirit of the place. They are ready to tell Snow and his little team -- Alice James, a furloughed police detective and nascent love interest who becomes a full-time partner in subsequent books of the series, and Willie, that tramp -- their life stories as soon as they introduce themselves. What else do they  have? It's like all those aspiring actors and screenwriters waiting table in L.A.

Tracking down the murderer proceeds apace, though Snow is unaccountably obtuse in following up on one clue leading to the identity of the potential killer. There is a twist at the end that will not come as a shocker to mystery readers.

If what you want is nonstop suspense and thrills, this may not be your book. But if you're happy to spend some time in Vegas and immerse yourself in a world of quirky characters, laid-back humor, and a philosophy of life that is vastly tolerant, you will enjoy Punctured.

Eleven Days

Donald Harstad's police procedural set in small-town Iowa starts with a Satanic multiple murder and gets more complicated from there. His first-person narrator, Carl Houseman, deputy sheriff in Nation County, tells the story in a deadpan, occasionally stream of consciousness voice that is original, authentic and engaging.

Since Harstad was a longtime cop, the police procedure is painstakingly depicted and presumably 100% accurate, sometimes almost intrusively so. In the end, the unraveling of the crime, and its connection to previous crimes, hurtles along at such a pace -- all in eleven days, after all -- that no amount of 10-4s and 10-78s can slow it down.

Houseman is a good cop, with all the cynicism one would expect from a veteran in law enforcement, but an innate enthusiasm for his job that makes him excited getting up every afternoon and going to work. He is a good storyteller. He reminded me of my brother, who was a police officer for 30-some years.

You spend a lot of time in the squad room, which is really the kitchen of the small office, conferring and kibitzing, sorting through clues, manipulating the multi-layered bureaucracy of county and state law enforcement, with a New York specialist thrown in. And yet Harstad keeps this as taut as the action scenes that punctuate the grind of the investigation.

The author is particularly skillful in creating small-town characters, with their quirks, their petty jealousies, their surprising depravity. He is far less interested in setting the scene. There is virtually no sense of being in Iowa -- the plot could just as well have been set in Connecticut or Mayberry. One of the joys of reading these mysteries set in different states, of course, is to get that sense of place and that is almost totally missing from this novel.

But no one says he has to oblige readers doing a 50-state mystery challenge by having his state's scenery or geography play a major role. The decentralized but relatively small expanse of Iowa, with officers and evidence shuttling between Des Moines, the fictional Maitland and Dubuque gives a little bounce to the narrative.

The twists and turns in the plot are satisfying, the red herrings are not too red, and the identity of the killer is intimated enough towards the end that it is not a shock when it is finally revealed. There is (just) enough action and not an excessive amount of blood in the two-step climax.

The real winning quality, though, is the friendly, funny, solid as a brick narrator -- a character who does show what the heartland is all about. It's good to know that there's already a number of sequels with him around.

Castle Cape

This suspense novel by C.L. Withers -- a cross between a mystery and a thriller -- is set in Alaska and is gripping virtually from beginning to end. There are murders and mysteries, action and thrills, all against the dramatic backdrop of Alaska's spectacular scenery and elemental wildness.

Anchorage detective Dan McKenna is tormented by the death of his young son in a shooting accident and has given himself over to drink when the action begins with a shoot-out involving mysterious Russian-speaking hoodlums who may well be terrorists. McKenna, accompanied by his faithful German shepherd, Nero, sets out to unravel the mystery, working with or against the FBI and another shadowy federal agency following the leads first to Kodiak Island, and then into the treacherous waters of the Alaskan peninsula.

You may not be able to see Russia from everywhere in Alaska, but it's not far, and McKenna's case involves him with Russia now, with Chechnya, and even with the Soviet Union of World War II, when it was an ally of the U.S. He has to deal with an FBI Special Agent in Charge who despises him, an attractive FBI emissary from Washington who is more ambivalent, and a shadowy gentleman, also from Washington, who is the closest thing to an ally McKenna will have.

Pursuing his leads in Kodiak, McKenna makes common cause with a Russian-American family and embarks with their green-eyed daughter in pursuit of his hoodlum-terrorists. They encounter a storm more perfect than Sebastian Junger could ever dream of as the plot barrels into non-stop action toward the climactic encounter in Castle Cape, a formidable, inaccessible promontory.

McKenna is a sympathetic, complex character to whom conflict comes easy. His challenging mission brings out the best in him. His police instincts serve him well in seeing through various ruses of his quarry, and his canine partner proves a ferocious backup on several occasions. There is romance, treachery, and hair's-breadth escapes along the way. A great read and highly recommended.

Tularosa

I love geography and this compelling mystery by Michael McGarrity is full of geography. The plot  hinges on secrets held within the White Sands missile range and Tularosa Basin, which the redoubtable hero, Kevin Kerney, explores on horseback with his love interest, Army investigator Sara Bannon.

There are mountains, crevices, escarpments, gullies, petroglyphs, and caves with hidden treasure. There is heat and cold, and sunsets and sunrises. You are very close to nature in New Mexico and McGarrity doesn't let you forget it for a minute.

And then there is the Rio Grande, that fateful river, and the divided city of El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico, which also plays a role in this tale of murder, smuggling, and lost artifacts. McGarrity, a former policeman, moves easily in and out of the law enforcement community (not surprisingly his police officers are largely sympathetic). Added to the mix in this story is the U.S. Army, with its own hierarchy and its own set of priorities. The friction between civilian and military authority, the permeability of a secret, secure location that comprises thousands of square miles, and the added frisson of gold coins and precious artifacts from another century all make this an engaging story.

Kevin Kerney (KK to McGarity's MM, Irish of course) is the classic loner ex-cop. Not only is he divorced he is bitterly estranged from his former partner, whose malfeasance left him disabled with a trick knee and a nasty car in his belly. And yet, when that former partner's son, Kerney's godson, goes missing from the Army base is classified AWOL, all is forgiven and Kerney pledges to track him down.

The narrative never flags though it is not always fast-paced. The beautiful descriptions of New Mexico punctuate the story and give it a terrific sense of place. But the plot itself involves people that are part of the geography, too. Sammy Yazzi, the native American soldier who goes missing; Eddie Tiapa, the Army investigator who has unsuspected talents as an undercover agent in Juarez; and other assorted archaeologists, gamekeepers and Army personnel. One blurb cites Dick Francis as a reference, and Kerney indeed undergoes the masochistic pummeling that characterizes Francis's jockey heroes.

McGarrity seems equally at home in Kerney's pickup truck, on horseback dodging flash floods and ambushes, and in the seedy drug and smuggling underworld of Juarez. The love story is adult and anything but maudlin. The supporting cast, both friends and foes, is engaging. It's just a really good book.

A Cold Day in Paradise

Steve Hamilton's debut novel won both the Edgar and Shamus awards for first novel, and it is indeed very good. The writing is crisp, the voice fresh, the first-person main character, Alex McKnight, is well-drawn, able but flawed and mostly sympathetic.

And it is certainly a page-turner. After about the first third, you will want to finish the book at a single sitting because the author paces the suspense well.

But it is a first novel and not perfect. There are some big holes in the plot. The most gaping in my eyes, without giving too much away, is that when one of the characters who is a possible target of a serial killer goes missing, our able hero searches for him instead of immediately calling the police, who are already aware of the danger and taking precautions.

It is virtually impossible, given all the mystery and detective stories out there, to come up with an original back story for a new hero. Alex McKnight, however, checks a few too many of the usual boxes -- ex-cop turned PI, wounded in action, partner killed, retreats to rural setting, etc. It's not a bad formula, but it is a formula.

The other characters are not fleshed out that well, with the exception of Chief Maven of the local police department, who is an intriguing character though perhaps a bit too much like Rod Steiger in "In the Heat of the Night." Some characters seem to be belabored -- like Alex's love interest, Sylvia -- while others come up short, such as Alex's friend Edwin or his lawyer employer, Lane Uttley.

This is my first book in the 50-state mystery challenge. Its setting in Michigan's Upper Peninsula is very appealing to me, and shares a lot with the bleak landscapes of the Nordic mysteries. Particularly the brooding presence of Lake Superior adds a dimension to the novel. The wind whipping around, the biting rain, the whitecaps on a stormy lake -- great atmosphere!

Funny that Hamilton would set his mystery in a Michigan town named Paradise in the same way Robert S. Parker picks Paradise, Massachusetts for Jesse Stone's refuge. The difference is that there really is a town of that name in the Upper Peninsula, whereas Parker's fictional Paradise is reportedly based on a town called Marblehead. In both cases, though, the authors certainly enjoy getting Paradise into the title.

50Mystery

Here's the start of my list for the 50 States Mystery challenge (see my post on Goodreads challenges):
California (CA) Done for a Dime
Colorado (CO) The Bookman's Wake
District of Columbia (DC) Hell to Pay 
Florida (FL) Gumbo Limbo
Maryland (MD) Baltimore Blues 
Michigan (MI) Cold Day in Paradise
New Jersey (NJ) Bury the Bishop
New Mexico (NM) Tularosa
New York (NY) The First Deadly Sin
Oregon (OR) The Defense
Pennsylvania (PA) Moment of Truth