Criminal Element

Book Review: Robert B. Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me by Ace Atkins

Thu, 14 Jan 2021 17:00:42 GMT

Robert B. Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me by Ace Atkins is the latest thriller featuring the legendary Boston PI, where Spenser and his young protégé, Mattie Sullivan, take on billionaire money manager running a network of underaged girls for his rich and powerful clients. As a child of the ‘80s, my main exposure to…

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Cooking the Books: A Catered Book Club Murder by Isis Crawford

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 20:00:54 GMT

The 16th installment of the Mystery with Recipes series finds the intrepid Simmons sisters wondering why a regular customer has forgotten to pick up her long-standing monthly order. Margo Hemsley is the kind of person who isn’t just punctual, she’s habitually early. Every month for the past five years, she’s ordered the same few items…

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Book Review: Bait and Witch by Angela M. Sanders

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 20:11:56 GMT

Librarian Josie Way moved to small-town Oregon to lay low. Instead, thanks to newfound magic abilities—and a killer on the loose—she’s leapt out of the frying pan and into a cauldron of trouble… Josie Way thought she had found her dream job working for the Library of Congress until an overheard conversation at work plunges…

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Book Review: Deep into the Dark by P.J. Tracy

Tue, 12 Jan 2021 16:25:02 GMT

New York Times bestseller P. J. Tracy returns with Deep into the Dark, a brand new series set in L.A. and featuring up-and-coming LAPD Detective Margaret Nolan and murder suspect Sam Easton. I have been a fan of P.J. Tracy since the first Monkeewrench novel and have read virtually all the books since. Twisty, dark,…

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Are You Paying Attention?

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 23:00:58 GMT

I’m that weirdo you occasionally see at an airport gate or in a waiting room; totally anomalous because I’m not a lonely planet orbiting around my digital sun. You can’t even see evidence of a digital sun on my person, which makes me rarer than a unicorn and appreciably suspicious. Of course, you might not…

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The Mitford Trial by Jessica Fellowes: New Excerpt

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 20:35:23 GMT

Prologue 18 June 1933 Outside, the horizon had been lost to the darkness, with sky and sea both black as the underside of a dead man’s eyelids. No stars shone and the moon was hidden behind the clouds. Only the white foam that curled away from the sides of the ocean liner revealed movement,…

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Book Review: The Breaker by Nick Petrie

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 15:30:36 GMT

It’s been almost a year since former Marine Peter Ash’s misadventure in Iceland landed him on the FBI’s Most Wanted (see: The Wild One). Since then, he’s been keeping his head down and living simply in Milwaukee with his ladylove June Cassidy and just down the street from his old friend Lewis, supporting the former…

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Book Review: City Of Schemes by Victoria Thompson

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 14:30:53 GMT

The fourth book in Victoria Thompson’s excellent Counterfeit Lady series is an utter page-turner! There isn’t a single wasted moment in this terrific, twisting tale as our intrepid heroine Elizabeth Miles seeks to not only preserve herself and her fiance Gideon Bates from a threat from their past, but also to prevent a con from…

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Cooking the Books: Fishing for Trouble by Elizabeth Logan

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 20:00:19 GMT

It’s just another busy Alaskan tourist season day at Charlie Cooke’s Bear Claw Diner until one of her guests abruptly starts choking at his table before falling over unconscious. Paramedics whisk young Ethan Johnson away to the nearest medical center, and a concerned Charlie drives there with his lunch date, Zoe, since only family members…

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Book Review: The Push by Ashley Audrain

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 17:00:02 GMT

The Push by Ashley Audrain is a debut novel and a tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for but everything she feared. College sweethearts Blythe and Fox Connor have a charmed life and romance. With…

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Book Review: Wrong Alibi by Christina Dodd

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 21:00:33 GMT

Wrong Alibi has a Perils of Pauline or Toad’s Wild Ride feel to it. Step up, step up: find out how Evie transforms herself from Too Stupid to Live to Too Smart to Lose. Everything is larger than life, starting with the location, Alaska. The villains are scarier, the heroism over the top, and the…

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Book Review: To Fetch a Felon by Jennifer Hawkins

Tue, 05 Jan 2021 19:55:21 GMT

Emma Reed and her beloved Corgi move from London to Cornwall with the dream of opening a tea shop—but first, they’ll have to collar a criminal in the first book in a cozy new series. After two decades working in The City, Emma Reed has decided to quit high finance and move to the small…

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Book Review: Olive Bright, Pigeoneer by Stephanie Graves

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 18:00:58 GMT

Olive Bright, Pigeoneer by Stephanie Graves is the first in a new, charming historical mystery series set in a charming British village during World War II, where a spirited young pigeon fancier finds herself at the heart of a baffling murder. Olive Bright is worried—and for good reason. Her best friend, George, has been called…

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The Highway Sweepstakes

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 05:00:53 GMT

Be 1 of 50 grand prize winners who will win a copy of The Highway by C.J. Box, the inspiration for the new ABC series Big Sky. Enter below for a chance to win! Sorry, you cannot enter at this time. Country Select oneUnited StatesOther E-mail First name Last Name Address 1 Address 2 City…

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Cooking the Books: Murder at Veronica’s Diner by J.D. Griffo

Wed, 23 Dec 2020 20:00:42 GMT

The four intergenerational members of the Ferrara Family Detective Agency—as their unofficial sleuthing club is known—are enjoying a nice breakfast at local institution Veronica’s Diner when their waitress, Teri Jo, approaches their table. Nothing out of the ordinary, despite Teri Jo having asked them earlier to deliver a package she didn’t have time to send…

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Criminal Element’s Best Books of 2020

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 17:28:39 GMT

Although it might be hard to believe, there were some good things that came out of 2020. We were charmed by Millie Bobby Brown’s Enola Holmes, and we laughed, cringed, and were unable to look away from the glorious trainwreck that was Tiger King. Sure, some days melded into each other. And fine, we’re all now Vitamin D-deficient.…

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A Stranger in Town by Kelley Armstrong: New Excerpt

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 15:17:33 GMT

Chapter 1 As we hitch our horses to a lodgepole pine, shouts and laughter float over on the night breeze. Teen agers partying in the forest. At their age, I’d longed to be invited to a party like the one we hear. I didn’t yearn for the beer kegs or the drug buffet or the…

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Featured Excerpt: Every Waking Hour by Joanna Schaffhausen

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 21:11:09 GMT

Chapter 1 Wait, you’re just going to leave us here? Alone?” Ellery Hathaway had faced down serial killers and lived to tell about it, but she felt a cold trickle of fear as she glanced at the lone child playing nearby on the grass. “I believe your ex-wife speciﬁcally forbade this proposition. In writing.…

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Book Review: Bloodline by Jess Lourey

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 20:45:28 GMT

1968 was a tumultuous year for America, and especially so for Joan Harken, aspiring reporter. Living in the city of Minneapolis, she believed herself to be the epitome of the liberated young woman, after a peripatetic youth with her fiercely loving if secretive and now-deceased mother. She certainly didn’t expect to fall in love with…

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Book Review: The Dead Season by Tessa Wegert

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 17:27:33 GMT

How are things going for Shana Merchant since she solved a “closed-door” mystery at an imposing mansion on one of the Thousand Islands (Death in the Family)? Not so great. She still hasn’t been cleared to return to work. In the aftermath of an unauthorized shooting in the waning hours of her last case, she…

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