Review: Just One Evil Act

Title: Just One Evil Act

Author: Elizabeth George
Genre: Mystery/British Detectives
Price: $29.95 (Hardcover)

Barbara Havers, nothing gets in the way of her loyalty to a friend

Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, second banana to Inspector Thomas Lynley of Scotland Yard in most novels in the series, takes the lead in “Just One Evil Act,” a story of betrayal, lies, and loyalty.

Barbara does not let anything get in the way of her quest to help her neighbor Taymullah Azhar, whose daughter has been taken by her mother Angelina. Hadiyyah’s parents never married. Consequently Azhar’s name isn’t on Hadiyyah’s birth certificate. He has no legal claim, which makes getting the
police involved problematic.

As the story progresses Angelina returns and demands to know what Azhar has done with their daughter. It turns out the child has disappeared, this time from in a marketplace in Tuscany where Angelina now lives with her lover.

The story heats up and so does Barbara’s efforts to find the child. Barbara figuratively climbs into bed with a tabloid journalist whose prime directive is to get the story, spin it with rapier disregard for consequences and sell papers. The best that can be said for Mitchell Corsico is his determination to get the facts. What he does with them is another matter entirely. Barbara hopes to manipulate him and his newspaper to achieve her own ends, but her plans backfire on her time and again, causing Lynley’s high regard for her to take a tumble, and their boss to threaten to sack her.

She can hardly get past one crisis before another rises. The private investigator Azhar hires hits a dead end and Barbara is left with nothing but frustration.

But there is much more going on than Barbara knows. As she learns about Azhar and his actions, she must decide between loyalty and facts. She will do anything to protect him. In her determination to find Hadiyyah and keep Azhar safe from legal action, she is blind to what is going on around her. An enemy within the ranks of Scotland Yard is doing everything he can to undermine her and tarnish her reputation. Not even Lynley can protect her, especially since she insists on going her own way. The private investigator she has hired, who had previously worked for Azhar, is lying and covering his tracks.

The one thing Barbara refuses to believe or even consider is that she cares more deeply for Azhar than she’s willing to admit. These feelings color every decision and effect every choice on her road to discovery.

Be prepared to curl up for a long siege of reading. Every one of the 725-plus pages draws you into the story. You want to keep going until you reach the climax.

In “Just One Evil Act,” we see Barbara in a different light and come to understand more about her as a woman. She is clever, determined and loyal. She may not be conventionally attractive but everything about her speaks of a woman at peace with who she is.

Elizabeth George is a master at complex story lines. Her characters are rich and colorful, distinctive and compelling. Her plot development is flawless and her use of language memorable.

George is a graduate of University of California in Riverside. She also attended California State University at Fullerton, where she was awarded a master’s degree in Counseling/Psychology and an honorary doctorate of humane letters.

She is American born and educated but writes with a sharp understanding of British culture, use of language, and police procedure.

According to her website she started out as a teacher, and much like Barbara, not inclined to go along to get along. She was fired from her first job along with ten other teachers for union activity.

George has won the Anthony Award, the Agatha Award, and France’s Le Grand Prix de Literature Policiere for her novel “A Great Deliverance,” for which she was also nominated for the Edgar and the Macavity Awards. She has also been awarded Germany’s MIMI for her novel “Well-Schooled in Murder.”

Book Review: A Serpent's Tooth

Title: A Serpent’s Tooth
Author: Craig Johnson
Publisher: Viking
Price: $26.95 (Hardcover)

I’ve read every single Walt Longmire mystery in the series. That tells you how much I like the characters, the storyline and the writing. A Serpent’s Tooth doesn’t disappoint. From the moment Walt jails a “lost boy” with no apparent connections, to the arrival of the ghost of Orrin Porter Rockwell – a legendary enforcer for the founders of the Mormon religion, right down to the confrontation with greedy thieves hauling oil out of a camouflaged canyon by the truckloads, the action moves with lightening speed.

Henry Standing Bear, Vic Morretti and the rest of the sheriff’s crew do their part to keep the action lively. The dialogue is crisp, the mystery compelling, the characters well defined and the premise timely.

Author Craig Johnson has a way of engaging the reader by weaving current events, history, literary references, spirituality and a touch of romance into his novels. 

Walt Longmire is clearly a man to be reckoned with, unwilling to vary from his personal true north, which is to protect those who need protection and go after the bad guys with relentless determination.
In A Serpent’s Tooth the difficulty lies in who to go after. The boy, Cord, is from a compound posing as a religious community, but Walt has his doubts. There’s something odd about Cord, the place he comes from and the disappearance of the boy’s mother.

Walt must look beyond the obvious, tread carefully through a morass of unrelated clues, and determine what crime has been committed and by whom.

It’s further complicated by suspicions that a couple of Walt’s deputies may have known more about what’s going on than they let on. And then there’s the guy claiming to be with the CIA on behalf of Homeland Security. Who is he? Is he telling the truth? Walt is on the hunt, and he won’t quit until he has the answers, all the answers.

Johnson, a proud resident of U-Cross, Wyo., is a New York Times best selling author with eight published novels, several of which have won awards and critical acclaim.
In a radio interview I did with Johnson a year ago, he talked about how important it is for his

characters – particularly Sheriff Longmire – to be realistic. In the development of Longmire he spent hours with working sheriffs and other law enforcement personnel learning how it’s done. Detail is important to him as is understanding and conveying the complexity of his characters.

In a Publisher’s Weekly interview, Johnson was asked if his books are “westerns.”

“They are in the sense that they’re novels set in the American West, but I try to deal with the universal imperative of the human condition. I love and live in the West, but I also try to be honest about it. I’d be a fool to not realize that there’s a certain amount of baggage that goes along with writing contemporary western fiction, but instead of falling into the ruts, I try and take it down the road less traveled.”

Johnson is good at taking his readers down that road, and he’s good at telling stories, which is the best thing you can say about a writer no matter what genre they’re writing in.

A Serpent’s Tooth is available at booksellers nationwide, and through online retailers. For more information about the author and his books go to www.craigallenjohnson.com.

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This article also appears in Happenstance Magazine, published by Happenstance Publishing. For more information go to www.vandermeerbooks.com. 

Featured Author: Frances Bonney Jenner

A life-changing journey across America

 Title: Prairie Journey
Author: Frances Bonney Jenner
Publisher: Irie Books
Genre: Historical
Price: $14.99

I’ve been on a journey. It hasn’t always been pleasant, nor has it been particularly fun, but it has been life changing for the Clarke family, sometimes tragic, often heroic, and every day a challenge. Frances Bonney Jenner has captured the story of young Savannah who is wrenched from her familiar surroundings and lifelong friends to embark on a harrowing trip across the continent in a wagon train.

Facing unknown obstacles 12-year-old Savannah and her family set out in search of better prospects, leaving their Missouri farm and the life she loves. It is a coming of age story set in a historical setting. Savannah considers herself less-than her smart and pretty sister, Faye. She is a sensitive child and as many children do, internalizes much of what happens and finds fault with herself, taking on worry and uncertainty like ill-fitting coats. Despite her misgivings, she proves to be self-reliant, courageous and daring.

Jenner’s careful research brings to life the perils of traveling across the country by wagon train, an endless line of lurching prairie schooners pulled by oxen, barely able to hold the essentials of life – food and water – and little room for carrying passengers, and then only when absolutely necessary.
The rhythm of wearisome days and nights of restless sleep are the heartbeat of trail life it seems, punctuated by conflicts and fears, obstacles to go over or around, and Savannah’s certainty that it will end in disaster for her family.

Through it all there is an underlying song that brings harmony and hope to the story. Savannah’s poetry peppers the narrative, which is told in her voice. Each milestone on the journey reveals her fears and her transformation.

At Ragtown in the Carson River Valley, Savannah and her mother rest by the river following the trip across a brutal and unforgiving desert. Her mother reads from a familiar book. Savannah’s mind wanders and she thinks…

I listened.
Saw herds of buffalo, the Kentucky salt
springs long ago,
the singsong rhythm
of Mother’s voice, the comfort
of words I knew so well, soothing the pain
of the desert crossing.

These bits of Savannah’s heart and mind shared throughout the narrative bring light to a story of pain and suffering, healing and hope.

Prairie Journey is told from the perspective of a young girl, but its appeal is in a story well told about a time in American history that is perhaps romanticized in movies, or at the least glossed over. Jenner’s research for the book was extensive. She learned that despite starvation, illness and death the pioneers also had exciting times and times of pure drudgery. The story conveys life on the trail with insightful attention to detail, and characters you hope will find their way safely to their new home.

The author lives in Evergreen, Colo., with her husband Doug. The couple traveled all 2000 miles of the California Trail and walked alongside a covered wagon and rattlesnakes to reach Chimney Rock, which is featured in the storyline of the book. “We slept there overnight, just like Savannah, my star character,” she writes on her blog. For more information about Frances and Prairie Journey go to http://www.prairiejourney.com

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This article also appears in Happenstance Magazine, published by Happenstance Publishing. For more information go to www.vandermeerbooks.com. 

Book Review

Title: Spider Woman’s Daughter
Author: Anne Hillerman
Publisher: Harper Collins
Genre: Crime Mystery
Publication Date: Oct. 1, 2013

Bernie Manuelito isn’t about to sit out the investigation into the shooting of her mentor and friend, Joe Leaphorn. When the retired lieutenant is shot point blank Bernie is the first to see him fall, and the only witness to the incident. Joe’s prognosis isn’t good. Bernie, and fellow officer on the job – and husband at home – Jim Chee, start looking into what Joe has been up to, and who might have wanted him dead. They are troubled by questions about his personal life, factors which lead other investigators to suspect someone close to Joe of the crime. Add to the mix a case he’s been working on as a private detective that delves into the history and provenance of Native American pots dating back centuries.
 
Missing data, incomplete reports and the mysterious activities surrounding the car used by the shooter all serve to complicate the investigation. Bernie has been ordered to stay away from direct involvement. After all, she is the only witness, and her boss doesn’t want her testimony to be tainted when the perpetrator comes to trial. And then there is Bernie’s relationship with Joe, rocky in the past, but rock solid as her respect for him has grown over time.
 
Spider Woman’s Daughter is a first class mystery filled with interesting detail about being a member of the Navajo police department, and part of an extended and sometimes complicated Native American family. While Bernie is coping with her concerns about the shooting, and trying to adhere to her boss’ order to take a few days leave, she is also dealing with an aging mother and an irresponsible sister whose troubles are escalating.
 
There is plenty in Spider Woman’s Daughter to hope author Anne Hillerman will continue in her famous father’s tradition of taking character to new depths with every outing. Bernie is a conscientious officer, a dedicated wife, daughter and sister, and a strong character whose future seems golden as a respected police officer, and as a strong protagonist in what we can only hope will become a new series. Hillerman’s research is evident, her love of New Mexico comes through in her clear description of southwest vistas, and her respect for Native American culture is an underlying melody that holds the novel together and gives it life.
 
This book is described as a Leaphorn and Chee Novel. In my view it stands on its own, a crime mystery in which a determined young woman becomes a police office to be reckoned with; someone who doesn’t wait to be rescued, but who takes an active role in her own survival, her own success.
 
About the author (From the Harper Collins website): Anne Hillerman is the author of six books and has been a journalist for 10 years. She has received awards for her work from the National Federation of Press Women and the New Mexico Press Association. She is the director of Wordharvest Writers Workshops and the Tony Hillerman Writers Conference: Focus on Mystery. She lives in Santa Fe, N.M.

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This article also appears in Happenstance Magazine, published by Happenstance Publishing. For more information go to www.vandermeerbooks.com.

Q&A: Sherry Robinson

Careful Research Produces Well Told History of Lipan Apaches

Title: I Fought a Good Fight,
a History of the Lipan Apaches
Author: Sherry Robinson
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Price: $32.95

Sherry Robinson is a journalist who loves history. She has been a newspaper reporter, columnist and editor in New Mexico for more than 30 years. She credits her passion for history to three good high school teachers. Other history books she has written include “El Malpais, Mt. Taylor and the Zuni Mountains” and “Apache Voices.”

H: Writing history requires a lot of research. Where did you start in terms of collecting information for “I Fought a Good Fight, a History of the Lipan Apaches?”
SR: I began with local libraries and quickly moved on to UNM’s Special Collections and the State Archives in Santa Fe. Researchers learn quickly that librarians can be your best friends. By the time I finished, I’d visited more than a dozen libraries and archives in six states.
 
H: Your book has been described by one reviewer as the most thorough historiography of the Lipan Apache. Tell about what sets the book apart from other historical perspectives.
SR: When I started this project, I attended a history conference in Texas. Every time I mentioned what I was working on, some learned soul would recite in two minutes what he knew about Lipans and then tell me the Lipans were extinct. I was already interviewing Lipan descendents and knew the learned souls were misinformed. Because I figured it would be difficult to find information about the Lipans, I pursued every tiny thread of information, so my research was extensive.
 
H: In compiling this history, what was your greatest challenge?
SR: Information about Lipans appeared in little bits and pieces. Often the history I found was riddled with errors or warped by historical biases – old racist attitudes as well as new revisionist silliness. I kept on collecting my bits and pieces and every now and then was rewarded with a good, objective account. When I began stitching them together, I was surprised at what I had.
 
H: Where are the Lipan now?
SR: Several hundred Lipan survivors came in to the Mescalero Apache Reservation in southeastern New Mexico between 1875 and 1914. Others, who were in Mexico, began drifting back to their former homes in Texas during the 1880s, and because they feared the army and the Texas Rangers, they passed as Mexican Americans. Some ended up on reservations in Oklahoma. And some are still in Mexico.
 
H: How much of what you wrote came from the descendents of a people who managed against all odds to remain free when many other Native Americans were being sucked up into a system designed to alter who they were and how they lived?
SR: I was fortunate to interview two Lipan elders at Mescalero. One was the great-granddaughter of the last Lipan chief. They were wonderful ladies. And I spoke often to the leader of the Lipan Apache Band of Texas. He is also the descendent of a prominent Lipan chief and began years ago at his family’s urging to try to find the scattered Lipan descendents. I also had access to oral histories done from the 1930s through the 1960s, in three different archival collections.
 
H: Movies and books have portrayed Native Americans in less than heroic light and pretty much bunch all Apaches together. What sets the different tribes or bands apart and how are the Lipan different?
SR: People often think the Apaches were one big tribe, and they were all in Arizona and New Mexico in the desert. Not so. There were a number of bands, and within the bands there were groups. They were all autonomous, didn’t necessarily like each other, and each group spoke Apache a little differently. Lipans are Eastern Apaches, along with Mescaleros, Jicarillas and Kiowa Apaches (now called Naishan). Eastern Apaches lived in the mountains and plains east of the Rio Grande. Lipans are culturally Apache, but they absorbed habits of their friends and enemies. For example, Apaches don’t eat fish, but Lipans do. Apaches didn’t count coup, but Lipans did. 
 
H: This is one of several books you’ve written. Talk a little about the craft of writing. What is your discipline?
SR: Newspaper work has been a great blessing. You learn to report and write no matter what. Illness, fatigue, elusive sources, broken hearts, too little time, computer glitches, whatever – the newspaper must be published. It’s the reason I don’t believe in writers block. You sit, you write, and the writing may be crappy, but that’s what revisions are for. I’m a freelance writer, so I work on books alongside my assignments. In one day I may go from business writing to politics to high tech to history. The gear changes keep me sharp. I set aside time every day for book projects, and I’m pretty obsessive about it. 

H: You’ve worked as a journalist, columnist and editor. How do these roles differ from being an historical or travel writer?
SR: Each role serves the other. In journalism, you’re programmed to be objective, and I often thought historians should have been more objective. At the same time, the historian has to interpret the material for the reading public, and then the columnist is handy. You can’t just recite facts, you must create a place and time, which draws on a travel writer’s skills. My internal editor was most useful. After leaving the writing for a period of time, I could wade into it as if it were somebody else’s work, and slap it into shape.
 
H: What author events or speaking events do you have scheduled?
SR: I will be at Bookworks in Albuquerque on July 16, Collected Works in Santa Fe on Aug. 6, and in Alamogordo in September. I’m still in the process of setting up events.
 
H: Where can readers buy your book?
SR: Your local bookstore can order the book if they don’t have it. I like to support local book sellers. You can also order directly from the publisher, University of North Texas Press, at http://www.tamupress.com/product/I-Fought-a-Good-Fight,7451.aspx. 








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This article also appears in Happenstance Magazine. For more information go to www.vandermeerbooks.com.

Book Review

Anonymous Sources
Author: Mary Louise Kelly
Publisher: Gallery Books
$26.00
ISBN: 978-1476715544

Women who are flawed but focused make for intriguing characters. Alexandra James is fighting personal demons, and on some days barely keeping it together when a story falls into her lap that alerts her reporter’s instincts. In “Anonymous Sources,” James becomes convinced the death of Harvard graduate Thomas Abbot Carlyle, a gifted student who has just returned from a year abroad, is neither an accident nor a suicide, despite evidence – or the lack thereof – to the contrary.

She manages to get past police lines and other barriers through sheer guts to further her investigation. Her tenacity and ability to sort through clues keeps her moving forward to the story of a lifetime, or perhaps to no story at all.

In this fast-paced book about international intrigue and an ever-changing newspaper world where online instant headlines vie with above-the-fold breaking news that sells papers, James finagles her way to Cambridge believing Thom’s last year holds the key to his death.

She learns a lot about Thom, his liaison with a glamorous woman, and other facts about his life in England, most of it innocuous, hardly cause to commit suicide or reason enough be a murder victim. Nor does everything she’s learned about him indicate he is careless. He was well liked, had no controversial friends and seemed to have it all. With a charmed life ahead of him, how and why did he end up with a broken body in the cobbled courtyard at Harvard?

In her pursuit of the truth the New England Chronicle reporter triggers events that put her life in danger and make her even more determined to continue asking questions. What she learns exposes a conspiracy bigger than anything she could have imagined and puts her in the crosshairs of an assassin.

Author Mary Louise Kelly spent two decades traveling the world as a reporter for NPR and the BBC. Her assignments have taken her from Belfast bars to the glittering ports of the Persian Gulf, and from mosques in Hamburg to the ruined deserts of Iraq. As an NPR correspondent covering the spy beat and the Pentagon, she reported on wars, terrorism, and rising nuclear powers. A Georgia native, her first job was working as a staff writer at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Kelly was educated at Harvard University and at Cambridge University in England. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and their two children.

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This article also appears in Happenstance Magazine, published by Happenstance Publishing. For more information go to www.vandermeerbooks.com.

Author Interview: Elizabeth Barlow Rogers

 It's all about Place

Learning Las Vegas,
Portrait of a Northern
New Mexican Place
By Elizabeth Barlow Rogers
Publisher: Museum of NM Press
$39.95



In her book, “Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History,” Elizabeth Barlow Rogers wrote, “Throughout the ages landscapes have reflected cosmological notions underlying one of humanity’s great imponderables: Where are we? How was the world created, and what is the place and fate of human beings within the context of space and time?” As the author of several works about the subject, Rogers is well prepared to delve into what makes a place distinctive.

Rogers, who has a background in art history and city planning is the president of the Foundation for Landscape Studies. A native of San Antonio, Texas, she has lived since 1964 in New York City, N.Y. and has received many accolades for her work and dedication. Among her many accomplishments, she is a writer and photographer. For people from a small town in northern New Mexico how she writes about place tells a story about life, culture and history. Why did she choose the small town as the subject of her book, “Learning Las Vegas, Portrait of a Northern Mew Mexican Place?”

“I wanted to look at the subject of place in a unique and special place. In Las Vegas people have strong feelings about their town. As a part time resident of Santa Fe and a photographer and writer, it seemed ideal for what I wanted to do. It was an assignment I gave myself. I took photos of things that go on, and I began talking to people. I realized the best way to write the book was through their voices.”

Rogers began taking photos and collecting information in 2007. What she found was a town in transition, past its glory days, and living in the struggle that comes when a local economy can’t sustain the next generation.

“I learned about the glory days by researching historical documents. At one time Las Vegas, with its vibrant economy, was one of the most important cities in the West,” she said. “I learned about Las Vegas today by talking to people.”

Rogers said that discovering the layers of identity for Las Vegas are like peeling an onion. “One person led me to another person, and that person led me to someone else. It helped me build the story over time. It needed that multi-year perspective to get a sense of how this place became what it is today.”

She had no outline to work from at the beginning, letting the book shape itself as she went along.

The book is beautifully constructed, with evocative photos and elegant prose, lots of white space, fonts slightly suggestive of another era. Rogers said she was deeply involved in the design and selection of photographs.

“I brought the book to the Museum of New Mexico Press because I know they have great production values and I have a lot of respect for David Skolkin. I worked closely with the editor and David as the book developed.”

In her selection of content, Rogers said she wanted most to convey the notion of what makes a place unique historically, geographically, and culturally.

“I would say the book has an anthropological slant,” she said. Given her concentration on the origin, historical behavior, and the physical, social, and cultural development of the area, this is a fitting statement.

Rogers said that the principal theme of the book is the meaning of place. She sought long and hard to understand Las Vegas as a place whose identity has developed and changed over time. Focusing her discerning photographer’s eye on the local scene and the architecture and people of Las Vegas helped her determine the shape the book would take. The chapters are defined along thematic lines, but within each you learn a lot more than the headings would imply. The book’s narrative structure came only after Rogers had spent hundreds of hours talking to Las Vegans from all walks of life.

“After talking to Jesus (Lopez, local attorney), and listening to the things he told me, I have a degree of insight into the way the city runs itself, the way Hispanics have felt disenfranchised, and how that has informed later history and the way (some) people continue to think and behave.”

Rogers has a way of writing, allowing the subject of the chapter to speak for him or herself, or in the case of actual place, itself, without injecting her own spin. All of her books are written with detail and poetic imagery, enhanced by striking photos. I asked her if her writing is influenced by her photographic art.

“The writing has to stand on its own, but I love the image itself. I want the writing and the photos to complement each other. I didn’t actually need them, and I wanted the text to independently tell the story. But I love photography, and feel that words and images together capture the essence of place better than either would alone.”

She said her biggest challenge in the whole project, was cutting out so many pictures. Of the several thousand she took, Rogers, her editor, and the book designer selected photos that most closely conveyed the special aspects of her story about Las Vegas as place. Not surprisingly, many of these were shot in the plaza when she attended fiestas, motorcycle rallies, weddings, and Fridays al Fresco and spent hours watching all the impromptu things that go on at the bandstand gazebo.

“In lots of ways you can consider the plaza to be the soul of the town,” she said.
“Learning Las Vegas, Portrait of a Northern New Mexican Place,” is considered to be a regional book. Rogers said she hopes it provides a sense of place compelling enough to interest the general reader outside of New Mexico. She also hopes its sociological and anthropological slant will increase its audience beyond the confines of landscape history, the field with which she has traditionally been associated.

The cover photo is of Bridge Street, an iconic image of Las Vegas photographed by many. Why did that photo among the thousands she had available end up on the cover?

“I thought the cover should be a West Las Vegas streetscape. In this particular photo the light was right, the composition was good, and to me it says a lot about Las Vegas as a place. So that’s the one
we all agreed on.

When asked if there was anything she would like to have included but didn’t have room for, Rogers laughed.

 “Oh, yes, a lot of interesting things have happened since the book was finished. You might call me an Optic addict. Every time I read an interesting story and meet another interesting individual in its pages, I think to myself, “Darn! Why didn’t I get that in the book? But you have to stop somewhere.”

Rogers will be featured in upcoming events at which she will talk about “Learning Las Vegas, Portrait of a Northern New Mexican Place.” Look for her on Saturday, June 22, 2 p.m. at the New Mexico History Museum Auditorium where she will be participating in a panel discussion and book signing along with Elmo Baca, Frances Levine and Christopher Wilson. On Sunday, June 23 at 2 p.m., she will be at Bookworks, 4022 Rio Grande Blvd. NW, Albuquerque, N.M. On Saturday, June 29 at 2 p.m. Rogers is scheduled to be at Tome on the Range, 158 Bridge Street, Las Vegas, N.M., immediately followed by a reception sponsored by the Citizens Committee for Historic Preservation, at 116 Bridge Street.


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This article also appears in Happenstance Magazine, published by Happenstance Publishing. For more information go to www.vandermeerbooks.com.