Category Archives: Seventh Street Books

A Piratical Mystery

The Bloody Black Flag
Steve Goble
Seventh Street Books
Trade Paper $15.99
ebook $9.99

The Bloody Black Flag is Steve Goble’s debut novel, and it’s definitely worth a read. It’s a historical mystery set onboard a pirate vessel in 1722. I covered the historical adventure aspect of the novel in my review over at Adventures Fantastic. Since this is a mystery and crime blog, I’ll look at the mystery component of the novel here.

The story starts out with Spider John and his friend Ezra joining the pirate crew of the Plymouth Dream.  They had attempted to start an honest life on land, but they were recognized. Being wanted pirates, they decided to go back on the account and head to sea.

Spider and Ezra both had women in their families who were accused of witchcraft. Remember, this was 1722. The Salem witch trials were fresh in people’s minds. One of the crew recognizes Ezra and accuses him of being bad luck because of this. Later that night Ezra is found dead. At first glance it appears he had fallen and hit his head in a drunken stupor. The problem with this idea is that Spider knows Ezra didn’t drink. His friend was murdered. Continue reading

When a Murder is Welcome

A Welcome Murder
Robin Yocum
Seventh Street Books
Trade Paperback $15.99 US/$17.99 CAN
Ebook $9.99 US/$11.99 CAN

Robin Yocum’s A Brillian Death was probably my favorite book last year.  He returns with another tale of murder in set in a rustbelt Ohio town.  A Brilliant Death was a coming of age story wrapped in a murder mystery.  As such, the profanity and sexual content were pretty minimal; its content would not be inappropriate for younger readers.  This one deals with what happens when the dreams of youth and high school turn to disappointment and death.  The content in A Welcome Murder is much more raw than that of A Brilliant Death and may not be appropriate for readers under twenty-one eighteen.

The books are both well written, with compelling stories that knocked all other reading commitments aside, but they are told in such different ways that I was quite impressed with Yocum’s versatility and range.  Permit me to elaborate. Continue reading

Death in the Library

the-paris-librarianThe Paris Librarian
Mark Pryor
Seventh Street Books
Trade Paper $15.95
Ebook $9.99

I’d like to thank Seventh Street Books for sending me a copy of The Paris Librarian. It’s been out for about a month now. I finished the book about the time it was released, and things have just slowed down enough to write the review. The reviews you’ve seen in the past month were for things I’d finished before this one. Hopefully things will settle down for a bit, and I can be more productive.

This is the sixth installment in the Hugo Marston series.  I’ve not read any of the previous books.  Seventh Street has sent me review copies, but I’d not been able to work any of them in until now.  I’m going to go back and read some of them. Continue reading

A Brilliant Death is a Brilliant Book

A Brilliant DeathA Brilliant Death
Robin Yocum
Seventh Street Books
Trade Paper $15.95 US/$17.00 CAN
ebook $9.99

First I’d like to thank Seventh Street Books for the review copy of A Brilliant Death.  This book reached out, grabbed me, and pulled me in like no book has done in a long time.  Robin Yocum has just been added to my Read-Anything-He-Writes-Including-His-Grocery-List List.  A Brilliant Death catapulted me into a time and place and made me feel like I was there.

The narrator is Mitch Malone, and his best friend is Travis Baron.  They’re high school students in the town of Brilliant Ohio in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Brilliant is a real places, Mr. Yocum’s hometown in fact.  That’s proably a main reason the town described in the book seems so real.

Travis’s mother Amanda died when he was a baby, killed when a barge sunk a riverboat she and her lover were on in the middle of the night.  At least, that’s the story everyone believes.

Travis’s father, Big Frank, is a long haul trucker who was on the road the night his wife died.  He doesn’t have much time for his son, unless it’s to beat him.  So not surprisingly, Travis spends a lot of time at Mitch’s house.

Also not surprising is the desire Travis has to know more about his mother.  He can’t help but overhear the stories people in town tell about how she died.  It doesn’t help that her body was never found, nor was the body of her lover.  And since no one turned up missing in the area, it’s widely believed that he managed to swim to shore and is still alive.

What is surprising are some of the things Travis learns about his mother.  Not everything everyone “knows” turns out to be true.

Yocum does a great job of peeling the layers of the mystery away, like digging through the layers of an paleontology dig.  There are plenty of twists in this one, each one believeable and completely logical.  Mitch and Travis come across as thoroughly real people.  They each have their motivations and quirks.  The amount of detail is especially well handled, with things you think are there just for background turning out to be important.  Pay close attention to the memorial service in Chapter 2.  Most of what follows is flashback, and there are some details that are significant in that chapter.

The author bio on the back cover of A Brilliant Death says Mr. Yocum is a former crime and investigative reporter.  It shows in his writing.  From the disgraced detective who treated Amanda’s death as a hoicide to the ways the boys go about gathering evidence, there’s a clear logic in what we’re told and when.  Remember, details.

In academic circles, there are arguments among people with too much education and too much time on their hands over whether genre can also be Literature.  That’s with a capital “L”.  I submit that A Brilliant Death is Literature.  And a fantastic read.

There’s a prologue in which Mitch setting the stage where he mentions he has two cousins.  All three were born a few months apart.  He says that all three of them had a common bond between them and that was murder.  But their stories aren’t his to tell.  (The cousins pop in and out of this story.)  I really hope that means we’re going to see two more novels from Mr. Yocum.

A Brilliant Death is highly recommended.

When a Thousand Crows Fall

Thousand Falling CrowsA Thousand Falling Crows
Larry D. Sweazy
Seventh Street Books
Paperback $15.95
ebook $ $11.99

I love noir, especially Depression Era noir, and most especially when it’s set in my home state of Texas. So A Thousand Falling Crows was my pint of hooch. Many thanks to the good folks at Seventh Street Books for the review copy.  Seventh Street has an outstanding line, and I need to get caught up on a number of their titles.

Sonny Burton is a Texas Ranger in the Panhandle who has been forced to retire after a shootout with Bonnie and Clyde in which he took a bullet in his right arm. Now the arm has been amputated, Sonny is no longer a Ranger, and he’s got to figure out what to do with the rest of his life.

He befriends the janitor, Aldo Hernandez, at the hospital. Aldo’s daughter has stolen her father’s recipe for bathtub gin and run off with a couple of minor league bootleggers, twin brothers. Aldo is afraid she’s going to end up in serious trouble with the law. He’s right. His daughter and the brothers are about to set out on a Bonnie and Clyde crime spree that is only going to escalate. Continue reading

Being Dead Broke Can be Lethal in Jarrett Creek

Dead Broke_coverDead Broke in Jarett Creek
Terry Shames
Seventh Street Books
Trade Paper, 250 pages, $15.95
ebook $11.99 Kindle Nook

Hard times have come to the small town of Jarrett Creek.  The city coffers are empty, and there’s a dead body behind the American Legion building.

The body belongs the son of a prominent banker who works at his father’s bank.  He was last seen alive in the parking lot after a meeting to discuss what to do about the town being broke.

Now there isn’t any money to pay the police.  The now former chief hasn’t finished drying out, so he’s in no shape to continue with the job, even if there were money to pay him.  The acting chief quits when he learns he won’t be getting paid.

Thus it falls to former police chief Samuel Craddock to fill in.  He agrees to work for a dollar a year.  His first order of business: find who killed Gary Dellmore.  Was it a jealous wife?  A jealous girlfriend?  A business partner?  Someone associated with a failed water park development, the same development that caused the city to go broke?  Or someone else? Continue reading

Take a Walk Down Blind Moon Alley

Blind Moon AlleyBlind Moon Alley
John Florio
Seventh Street Books
trade paper $15.95
ebook $11.99 Kindle Nook

I love me some Prohibition gangster stories, and with his debut novel Sugar Pop Moon (reviewed here), John Florio created one of the most unique and intriguing characters in that subgenre. Jersey Leo is an albino, a bartender in a speakeasy, and someone who is a whole lot tougher than the looks.

In the sophomore installment in the series, Jersey is working in a speakeasy in Philadelphia when he gets a call from his childhood friend Aaron Garvey. During their days on the playground, Garvey was Jersey’s protector. These days he’s on death row for killing a cop.

It turns out that death row inmates can have one guest at their last meal, and Garvey invites Jersey to dine with him. He needs a favor. Garvey had loaned twenty grand to another childhood friend, Myra Banks, so she could buy into a speakeasy. Now Reeger, the partner of the cop Garvey killed, is putting the squeeze on Myra. Garvey wants Jersey to help Myra with Reeger.

Jersey is understandably reluctant to get involved, but then on the eve of his execution, Garvey manages to pull a breakout and heads straight to Jersey for help. Now, whether he likes it or not, Jersey is involved, so he helps Garvey hide.

Then Reeger comes knocking. Jersey Leo is about to find out that no good deed goes unpunished. Continue reading

Passing Time Inside The Black Hour

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

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

Death and Football in Texas

Last Death of Jack HarbinThe Last Death of Jack Harbin
Terry Shames
Seventh Street Books
Trade paper, 255 pp., $15.95
ebook $11.99
Amazon   Barnes and Noble

I missed Terry Shames’ debut novel, A Killing at Cotton Hill. It was on my radar, but before I got around to buying and reading it, a review copy of her second novel, The Last Death of Jack Harbin, showed up. I’d like to thank Lisa Michalski of Seventh Street Books for the review copy.

This is the second novel about Samuel Craddock, the retired police chief of Jarret Creek, a small town in southeast Texas. In this one, he has to solve the murder of Jack Harbin. Harbin was once one of the stars of the high school football team. He enlisted in the Army shortly before the Gulf War broke out, and when he returned he was missing his eyesight and one leg.

Shortly after his father has a fatal heart attack, Jack is found brutally stabbed in his bed. There are a number of suspects. His former best friend and teammate from high school, his estranged brother, some unknown person with a grudge. Since the current police chief has been taken away to dry out and his replacement is only slightly more competent than Barney Fife, Craddock is asked by the city council to look into the matter. Continue reading