Times are tough in Depression-Era America. Eleven-year-old Turtle’s Mom keeps losing housekeeper jobs and getting her heart broken by no-good men. When her Mom gets a job with an old lady who doesn’t like children, she has no other choice but to send her daughter Turtle home to Key West to live with her sister, Minerva. Turtle really isn’t sure how her Mom is going to survive since she’s the sensible one of the two of them, but hard times call for desperate measures.

Turtle arrives with her cat, Smokey, only to discover she’s going to be living in a house with boys, a dog, and nobody wears shoes on the island. At least, she’s not the only one to have a nickname, there’s Beans, Too Bad, Slow Poke and others.

She rides along with the Diaper Gang, a bunch of boys who babysit for candy, and learns the secret family formula for diaper rash.

While in the Conch Republic, she learns about alligator pears (avocadoes), rum running, sponge fishing and most importantly, that she still has a Grandma.  Prior to this, her Mom had told Turtle that her Grandma was dead. Oddly, the hard-shelled Turtle is one of the few people that Nana Philly actually likes. She also meets Key West’s most famous denizen and advises him he should be writing for the funny papers.

Jennifer L. Holm is a descendent of one of those first dwellers on Key West.  ”Turtle in Paradise” is based upon old family stories that have been passed on through the generations.  The tale’s full of good-humored fun and a few hard lessons.  It’s not just a book that young adult readers will enjoy, though.  Anyone who wants to take a quick trip to the Conch Republic is going to love this one.

Reviewed by Rebecca Kyle, July 2010.

Roman citizen I might be – indeed I was born a nobleman in my own tribe – but I was also an ex-slave and a tradesman, and the gulf between myself and Marcus was as great as that between me and the bath-house attendant himself. Without the most explicit instructions I would never have dared to come seek my patron here.

In late second-century Glevum (modern Gloucester), a body is discovered in a shrine to the Emperor Commodus, living embodiment of Hercules. The mere fact of the crime is shocking enough, but complicating matters are the facts that the emperor is not one to take sacrilege of his divine person lightly and that the victim appears to be an ambassador from Rome.

Then the body disappears, and there are reports of unearthly wailing and phantom bloodstains.

As the highest-ranking magistrate in Glevum, Marcus Aurelius Septimus is responsible for finding and dealing with  the perpetrator(s) of the crime, but it is his client, pavement-maker and freed former slave Libertus, who assumes the actual task of  solving the mystery. Upon receiving news of the imminent arrival of another imperial legate, Libertus must do so quickly, even as rumors spread through the city that he committed sacrilege against the emperor.

I’ve read several of Rosemary Rowe’s Libertus mysteries in the past year, so it follows that I enjoy them. I do, though not for the mysteries themselves, which I find rather thin. Rather, it’s her attention to historical detail, in particular the incredibly complex nature of ancient Roman society and interactions between patron and client, patrician and ordinary citizen, free and slave, and Roman and Celt, that pulls me in and holds my interest.

As a student of history I’m wary of historical fiction in general because it tends to fall into two categories: those that include every imaginable microscopic detail in the name of authenticity, but fail to produce a narrative structure sturdy enough to support all that detail; and those that throw in a few historical details to make the story seem authentic, but the wildly anachronistic characterizations undo any potential realism. When I do read historical fiction it’s usually set in Britain during the Roman occupation because it falls within the general purview of my historical interests but doesn’t land right in the center of my specialization. That way I can enjoy the story and the efforts at authenticity without being too bogged down by details I know are wrong.

Rosemary Rowe is, in my opinion, the best – as in most authentic – writer of this particular subgenre precisely because of the attention she gives to the way Roman society functioned back then. (For the record, I find Ruth Downie’s Medicus mysteries more enjoyable as a casual reader, but Rowe’s make my inner historian wriggle with delight at the details she includes.) In truth, Rowe loses me with her use of the first-person narration, which has rarely ever not annoyed me in long-form fiction.

Libertus, however, is an appealing and sympathetic protagonist; his efforts to re-establish a relationship with his former wife, with whom he has recently been re-united after they were separated and sold into slavery twenty years before are especially moving. Marcus is likeable as well, in his own privileged and self-centered way; it helps that he occasionally reveals glimmers of self-awareness, in that he recognizes, if not acknowledges, who’s actually driving the cart. Ultimately, it is their relationship and the many challenges they must negotiate in accordance with Rome’s arcane beliefs and traditions about one’s place in society, that truly makes these books worth reading.

Reviewed by Laura Taylor on Beyond the Blurb; reprinted here with permission.

If you think that Moriarty is the only truly evil villain that Holmes dealt with, think again.  There is a shadowy man pulling strings all over England and in portions of Europe, strings strong enough to get Mycroft Holmes hauled off to gaol.  Strong enough to have Holmes and Russell looking for bolt holes on both sides of the Channel.

It would be easier if they weren’t both encumbered by family.  Russell is charged with protecting Estelle Adler, Holmes’s granddaughter.  Estelle is three and a half; this should give readers some idea of the challenges Russell faces in trying to stay one step or more ahead of the law.  Russell is amazed at how much work a child is, and also at how rewarding some moments can be.

Holmes is trying to escape from England with his son, Damien Adler.  Damien has been wounded, and so the challenges for Holmes are not the same as for Russell.  Still, they force him to confront the realities of his age, both physical and mental.  Not a pleasant series of realizations, as one might imagine.

They are running from the law.  Warrants are out for Russell and Holmes; Mycroft is already in gaol, although nobody is quite sure why.  The shadowy figure behind all this is truly a worthy adversary.  He is patient, cunning, devious, and determined.  One might almost think that Moriarty had fathered him.

This is a compelling novel, full of suspense and wonderful writing.  King has always taken liberties with the Sherlockian canon, that’s no surprise to her readers.  The new family members?  That just continues what she started so many books ago.  Reading HIVE as one’s first Russell/Holmes novel might take some mental adjusting on the part of the reader; long-time readers of the series will know right where they are and be delighted to be there.

Reviewed by P.J. Coldren.

Dr. Max Liebermann is living in Vienna, attending the lectures of Dr. Freud and seeing patients.  He has concerns about his relationship with one of his patients, a woman after whom he lusts but feels compelled not to pursue.  It’s not just the problem of a doctor and his power over a patient, it’s the problem of a man she trusts abusing that trust.  So he’s conflicted.

He’s also conflicted, although considerable less so, about his relationship with his father, who wants him to give up psychoanalysis and come to work in the family business.  Max finds the business incredibly boring.

When Detective Inspector Oskar Reinhardt comes to him with a problem, Max is happy to lend his expertise.  The problem?  Someone (or something) is killing priests by ripping their heads off.  The priests are found by plague pillars, near schools, surrounded by mud.  Max is asked to determine the meaning of these disparate clues.  The pattern seems clear, until a Jew is killed in the same manner.  Is his religion relevant?  Is there some connection between the third victim and the first two?  How are the heads being separated from the bodies?  Why are there no signs of struggle?  So many questions, and no CSI to turn to for answers.

Max finds himself in Prague, against his will, following the recommendations of a Rebbe who urged him to look to his roots, his history.  Max is unsure what the Talmud has to do with his problems; psychoanalysis doesn’t seem to be helping him that much either.

Vienna Secrets is a mystery for readers who enjoy learning a little something along with their entertainment.  Readers familiar with some of the more “woo-woo” elements of Talmudic lore will think they know where the plot is going but they will probably not be totally correct.  There are three books before Vienna Secrets in the Liebermann saga; it is quite tempting to hunt them down, see where Max came from.

Reviewed by P.J. Coldren.

Note: Some of the author’s books in the Liebermann Papers series have been re-titled for US publication.  Vienna Secrets is titled Darkness Rising in the UK.

I first read the first 5000 words of “The Sound of Building Coffins” as part of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards in 2008.  If I had the rest of the book, I would have finished reading right then.  As it was, those first chapters haunted me. I bought the book as soon as I heard it was available and it did not go onto my massive TBR pile.

The tale begins in 1891 New Orleans as the Creole Age was dying and the Jazz Age was being forged in the fires of poverty and calamity. Nine-year-old Typhus Morningstar is riding his bike to the river with a sack of aborted fetuses courtesy of Dr. Jack. Those babies are going to the river, to be ‘rebirthed’ into catfish. Further down the Mississippi, Marcus Nobody Special is fishing. So far, he’s kept nothing of what he’s caught since he casts his line for a particular catfish.

That same half-moon night, lynchings of Sicilian prisoners take place in the New Orleans jail. Reverend Noonday Morningstar (Typhus’s father) and several of his cohorts are summoned to the wife of one of those men because her infant son is possessed by a demon. They perform a voodoo exorcism using a hand of glory claimed from the child’s hanged father and rebirth the baby afterwards.  Not all of the party survive that night and none remain unscathed. That demon pursues the rest of the party, alive and dead, through the next several years.

New Orleans itself is as strong a character as any. Through the pages, you can feel the damp, hear the hot sweet strains of a cornet changing music history, taste the spice of cajun food, and see the bodies rising out of the ground with the weather. The Crescent City’s call is so strong there are times you have to stop and recollect the storyline, but the effort is very worthwhile.

WARNING:  After reading this book, you’re going to have some cravings for some low country boil and beignets, maybe some crawfish etouffe and Preservation Hall jazz.

Reviewed by Rebecca Kyle.