Category Archives: female detectives

Passing Time Inside The Black Hour

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Black HourThe Black Hour
Lori Rader-Day
Seventh Street Books
Trade Paper, 331 pp., $15.95
Ebook $11.99 Kindle Nook

The Black Hour is Lori Rader-Day’s debut novel. It takes place in the halls of academia, and it shows a good look at the maneuverings that occur in the ivory tower.

The story concerns Amelia Emmet, professor of sociology at a small and rather prestigious private university and victim of a shooting. A student named Leonard Lehane shot Amelia outside her office one evening then turned the gun on himself. Now a year later Amelia has physically recovered enough to return to work. Psychologically she still has some healing to do.

I found the backstory, and figuring out the real backstory is the heart of the mystery, to be quite engaging on a personal level. I work in academia, and for my sins, I was asked earlier this year to serve on a disciplinary committee. The thought of a student coming after me has crossed my mind more than once. It doesn’t help that my office is in a building in which three murders have occurred, one of them a beheading. (My wife is not aware of that, and we’ll just keep it that way, shall we?) Continue reading →

The Return of Ellie Stone

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No Stone_coverNo Stone Unturned
James W. Ziskin
Seventh Street Books
trade paper, 285 pp., $15.95
ebook $11.99 Kindle Nook

The first Ellie Stone mystery (Styx and Stone, reviewed here) introduced us to the young journalist as she investigated an assault on her father. I found Ellie to be a delightfully flawed protagonist, one who drank and slept around as much as her male counterparts, and with little to no thought of the consequences.

In that inaugural volume of what I hope will be a long running series, all the action took place in New York City and revolved around academic intrigues as Ellie’s father was a respected Dante scholar. For No Stone Unturned, Ellie is back in the small town in upstate New York where she’s been working as a reporter for a few years.

It’s been less than a year since the events in Styx and Stone, and Ellie is still dealing with the emotional wounds she suffered as a result of the events in the first book. When a hunter discovers the nude body of a prominent judge buried in a shallow grave in the woods over Thanksgiving weekend, it could be Ellie’s big break.

If she can survive the investigation, that is. Continue reading →

A Review of Styx and Stone

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styx_coverStyx and Stone
James W. Ziskin
Seventh Street Books
trade paper 285 pp
US $15.95 Can $17.00
Amazon Barnes and Noble
ebook $11.99 Kindle  Nook

Styx and Stone is a period mystery set in the first couple of weeks of 1960. The cover of this novel says “An Ellie Stone Mystery”. That’s an indication that this is the first volume of a series. This is a good thing.

Ellie Stone isn’t a private investigator. Rather she’s a journalist, but of the hardboiled variety. She drinks and gets laid as much as her male counterparts in the genre. Where she differs from them is that she doesn’t get into shoot-outs, engage in fisticuffs, or end up being knocked unconscious by a blow to the head.

Ellie and her estranged father are the remaining members of the Stone family. Her mother died of illness a few years back, but not before her brother was killed in a motorcycle accident. Her father is a Dante scholar at Columbia, one of the foremost in the world. Ellie is working as a reporter at a small town newspaper up north.

Ellie gets a call telling her that her father was attacked in his study at home. He’s in a coma, and the prognosis isn’t good. So Ellie returns home to keep vigil beside his bed. What she discovers is the manuscript of his latest book is missing. And one of his colleagues was found dead in his bathtub the day after her father was attacked, having apparently knocked his radio into the tub with him.  Being a good reporter, Ellie begins to ask questions about both the attack on her father and the death of his colleague. Continue reading →