Rex’s reviews of anything (but mostly books)

Three years ago Lionel “Lonnie” Byrd had dodged a bullet. Charged in the murder of a young prostitute, Byrd had been released from custody thanks to legwork by The World’s Greatest Detective, Elvis Cole. Just a couple of nights ago, though, a self-administered bullet had proved un-dodgeable. And on the table between Byrd’s rigid hands, spread out before his sightless eyes, lay the evidence that Cole must’ve been wrong. A scrapbook filled with grisly Polaroids clearly placed the dead man at the scene of Yvonne Burdett’s murder… and six other murders, too. It sure looked as if Cole’s detective work had set a serial killer free to continue practicing his nasty hobby, a little fact the LAPD detectives on the Byrd task force seem disinclined to let him forget. Ever.

If you’re The World’s Greatest Detective (WGD), though, you’re probably unaccustomed to second-guessing yourself. Naturally, Cole opens his own investigation; and, naturally, it soon becomes clear that there is something decidedly rotten in the state of Denmark. A few of the details of Byrd’s alleged suicide don’t quite add up; and certain cops on the case seem to have done some remarkably sloppy detective work. Then, too, the task force’s rush to judgment seems even more rushed than would be usual for a media-frenzied case. What – or, perhaps more to the point, who – is a deputy chief who’s personally running the investigation’s task force hiding? It definitely looks as if Cole, the ultimate outsider, has his work cut out for him this time. Read the rest of this entry »

“My blood runs cold, my memory has just been sold
My Angel is a centerfold…”¹

For John Blake, the revelation was even more blood-chilling: the ten-year-old high-school graduation photo of a stripper found murdered in NYC was undeniably that of his first love, Miranda Sugarman. How could the shy, pretty blonde he’d last seen heading west with dreams of becoming an ophthalmologist have ended up shaking her booty for dollar bills tucked into a G-string? How, indeed…

The same ten years have treated Blake only slightly better; he’s finished an apprenticeship with ex-cop Leo Hauser to become a private investigator. Privately, this is one murder the baby-faced Blake fully intends to investigate; so he packs his kit and treks into the silicon mountains on a trail that leads back to Miranda’s freshman year in college. There he learns that Miranda and her roomie Jocelyn had dropped out in Spring semester, never to be heard from again – at least not until Randy, as she was calling herself, had performed one last bump and grind on the roof of a titty bar called the Sin Factory.

The cops didn’t seem interested in the death of a stripper (everyone knows they’re just hos) – but Blake felt he owed the Little Girl Lost one last bit of dignity. Little did he realize… Read the rest of this entry »

Ever had the rug pulled right out from under your dream? That’s exactly what Valena Walker’s feeling, wandering the halls of McMurdo Station. For as long as she remembers she’d dreamt of Antarctica; but now that she’s finally reached the Last Continent it appears she’ll be on the next plane home after only a day. No matter how hard she’s worked to get there, a 24-year-old Glaciology MS student doesn’t stay in Antarctica when her professor’s been hauled off the ice and charged with murder. Emmett Vanderzee, who stands accused of killing a visiting journalist the previous field season, has been taken north for the investigation, though not before having been tried in absentia by the dead man’s newspaper.

In hopes of salvaging her dream (not to mention career), Valena must determine the truth of what happened last year; for if Vanderzee is exonerated and returns she can stay. Determined to make the best of what little time she may have at McMurdo, she enlists the help of the tiny, close-knit community to help her solve what may be the southernmost (and coldest) locked-room mystery in history. The problem is, of course, that if everybodyknows she’s looking, that includes the real killer: there are so many ways to die in the cold that it would only take the slightest misstep, and “goodbye, Valena!” Read the rest of this entry »