MURDER IN THE AFTERNOON READS AND DISCUSSES AUGUST SNOW

The Murder In The Afternoon book club will get a glimpse of current Detroit for our March discussion. Stephen Mack Jones got the attention of many with his debut, August Snow. The title character and his relationship to the city show great possibilities for a long-running series.

August is an ex cop returning to Detroit a few years after stirring things up. He won an eight million dollar lawsuit for being wrongfully fired after he blew the whistle on the mayor and some brothers in blue. He moved into his parents’ home in Mexican town, flipping other properties in the neighborhood as well as serving as its unofficial protector. When a finance magnate offers to hire him to look into questionable practices at her bank, he declines, but her suspicious “suicide” after draws him into a plot involving shady real estate and old enemies.

August Snow is a unique riff on the detective novel. We could talk about August himself for an hour. Join us Monday, March 18th, at 1pm on BookPeople’s third floor. The book is 10% off to those planning to attend.

ACE ATKINS CALLS INTO THE MURDER IN THE AFTERNOON BOOK CLUB

This month, the Murder In The Afternoon Book Club goes down the outlaw road with Ace Atkins’ Infamous. The book is a well-researched historical crime novel concerning George “Machine Gun” Kelly. Ace will be calling in to talk about the fact and fiction of it.

Infamous mainly looks at Kelly’s biggest crime, the kidnapping of oil magnate Charles Herschel. Most of it was planned by his wife Kit, who goaded her husband into a life of crime. The book focuses on their relationship and Kit’s drive as they contend with a wily ex-Texas ranger out to nab them for the FBI and some criminals meaner than George out for the ransom money.

Infamous is a fun read, full of humor, vivid characters, and flying bullets. The fact that most of it really happened makes it all the more engaging. If you show up at our discussion you’ll find Ace to be as entertaining as his writing. We will be meeting on BookPeople’s third floor. Monday, the 18th, at 1PM. The books are 10% of for those attending.

MURDER IN THE AFTERNOON DISCUSSES AN EARLY DON WINSLOW

January’s Murder In The Afternoon goes to sunny California to deal with some dark souls in Don Winslow’s earlier crime novels. The Winter Of Frankie Machine is a unique mob story in its approach and setting. It also shows the talent Winslow had early on.

The title character is known in his San Diego community as Frank Macchio, the affable older bait shop owner and surfer. When he comes home from a long day, he finds two men from his past, when he was enforcer Frankie Machine, standing in his driveway. Soon, he is chased by mobsters with no clear idea why. While alluding those after him, he examines his sordid past to figure out who is all behind this.

The Winter Of Frankie Machine will give the group a lot to discuss, the mob in Southern California, how the past is never past, reinvention. There is also a possibility Don will call into the club. We will be meeting on BookPeople’s third floor, at 1PM Monday January 21st. The book is 10% off for those planning to attend

MARK PRYOR SITS IN WITH THE MURDER IN THE AFTERNOON BOOK CLUB

On December 17th, the Murder In The Afternoon Book Club will be celebrating the holidays during  our discussion. We’re bringing snacks as well as our opinions this time. I’m planning on making my Golden Grahams s’mores. we will also be joined by Mark Pryor, author of Blood Promise, the book we will be discussing.

Blood Promise is the third book to feature Hugo Marston, head of security for our embassy in Paris. He is assigned to protect a U.S. senator brokering a treaty at a country chateau. After some odd occurrences, the senator disappears. Hugo finds his search tied to an antique sailor’s box and a secret that goes as far back as The French Revolution.

Come join us on BookPeople’s third floor, Monday, December 17th, at 1PM. You’ll meet some great people and a great writer. The book is 10% off for those planning to participate.

INTERVIEW WITH C.M. WENDELBOE

C.M. Wendelboe is a western writer, no matter what genre he writes. A veteran of decades of law enforcement in Wyoming and the Dakotas his books show an understanding of the land and its people while delivering a well crafted and highly entertaining tale. In his latest to feature Arn Anderson, a retired Denver cop turned hired consultant for one of the city’s news stations, we have Arn also doing detail as as stock detective tracking down sheep rustlers. When he stumbles upon a murder he realizes “The Midnight Shepard” may have witnessed it. We talked to Mr. Wendelboe about Hunting the Saturday Night Strangler, how his writing is tied to his former profession, and the western life.

MysteryPeople Scott: Part of the plot deals with the crime of sheep rustling. Is that more common than most people think?

C.M. Wendelboe: Sheep rustling is still a common problem here in the west, as is cattle rustling. With sheep thefts, it is as I describe it in Hunting the Saturday Night Strangler where a trained dog can herd enough sheep to fill a small trailer (usually 25-30 head) and the rustler gone from the pasture within ten minutes.

MPS: What did tying the two mysteries of the killer and the “Midnight Shepard” allow you to do?

CMW: It allowed me to establish a continuity and a sense of purpose to Arn. Since he retired from the Denver Metro Detective Division, he has done what many retired lawmen have done after they hang up their shield—nothing except sit around watching soaps and drinking beer. Suddenly, the consulting gigs that Ana Maria snagged for Arn give him direction once again. He can use what has been his defining trait as an investigator—the ability to look at things from, first a broad perspective, and narrowing his thinking down into a laser-like focus to solve the cases.

MPS: As in the first book, you occasionally have a chapter from the killer’s point of view. How difficult is that to do without tipping the reader off?

CMW: I have wanted to use the killer’s perspective for some years now. When I was a law officer, I interviewed numerous genuine psychopaths and sociopaths, and each time I came away with the same perspective—they were highly intelligent killers whose intellect eventually were their downfall. To a man (and one woman) I talked with, each thought they were too clever—either because they were inherently intelligent—or that they were too ruthless to drop their guard.

Those chapters were the most difficult in the book because I am unlike the killer, and because it would be so easy to slip up. Of course the last thing I wished to do—aside from the foreshadowing—was give the reader too much information where he or she could solve the identity of the murderer before I was ready to reveal it.

MPS: One thing I like about Arn is that he is an older protagonist. What are some advantages in writing a hero with a few years on him?        

CMW: Arn is a lot like I was in my law enforcement career: the older I became, the more time I took to process things. This wasn’t due to a slowing of the mind, but rather an awareness that I missed many clues, many insights as I rushed headlong to find the answers. As an older character, Arn has grown out of the “puppy lawman” phase and thinks things through logically. Even though it takes him more time to do so.

MPS: Like Craig Johnson, you mainly give a sense of place through its people. What did you want to get across about the citizens of Cheyenne?

CMW: This series has a western flavor to it. Apart from Frontier Days (“The Daddy of ‘em All” rodeo), people here still live the western lifestyle even though most rarely set a horse or participate in brandings. But there are enough things in the community to point to the western heritage and makeup of the town, from the daily wagon and carriage rides seen on the streets in the summer to the lesser rodeos held nearly year-round to the abundance of large cattle and sheep herds within minutes from city center. A person can still see doors opened for others and women escorted away from curbside and men tipping their hats when introduced to strangers. But strangers not for long as the western hospitality will shine through.

MPS: You also have a new western with Tucker Ashley. What can you tell us about that?

CMW: I developed Tucker Ashley in the true sense of what folks think of the buffalo hunter/part time army scout/gunfighter. But I also wanted to showcase his abilities as a man tracker. Folks often assume that every frontiersman was track-savvy with the abilities to follow a gnat across choppy water. This was not so back in the day. Tales are full of men who misread sign and wound up lost or hundreds of miles off their presumed destination. Competent trackers back then were sought out, as they are today.

MPS: You will be calling in to our Murder In The Afternoon Book Club on November 19th for your discussion of your first Bitter Wind Novel, Hunting The Five Point Killer. Is there anything we can’t ask?

CMW: Sky’s the limit. Look forward to it.

 

C.M. WENDELBO CALLS IN TO THE MURDER IN THE AFTERNOON BOOK CLUB TO DISCUSS HIS WILD WEST

After Craig Johnson’s success with the Sheriff Walt Longmire series, the western mystery has had  a renaissance. Investigations in rustic areas west of the Mississippi are proving to have an audience. One of the best newcomers in the field is C.M. Wendelbo. Our Murder in The Afternoon Book Club will be discussing the first book in his Bitter Wind series, Hunting The Five Point Killer.

The book introduces us to Arn Anderson, who retired from the Denver Police under a cloud and now works as a consultant for one of the city’s news stations. When reporter Anna Maria Villareal  works on a story involving three Cheyenne police detectives, Arn is dragged back to his home town. The investigation turns up old ghosts, as well as an old flame as the killer closes in on Anna Maria and him.

Hunting The Five Point Killer is a well crafted story that delivers everything you want in the sub-genre. It has humor, characters that pop, and mines the Cheyenne setting for great effect.

It makes for a fun book to talk about and to make it more entertaining Mr. Wendelbo will be calling us to join in on the discussion.

We will be meeting on BookPeople’s Third Floor, Monday November 19th, at 1PM. The book is 10% off for those planning to attend.

THE MURDER IN THE AFTERNOON BOOK CLUB TAKES A FICTIONAL LOOK AT A TRUE CRIME

For October, The Murder In The Afternoon book club will look at one of Scotland’s most notorious crimes through the pen of one it’s finest authors. Denise Mina’s The Long Drop looks at The Beast Of Birkenshaw who murdered eight people around the Glasgow area in the late fifties. Mina takes the facts and blends a fiction that creates something more personal and even darker.

Two of the killer’s victims were the wife and daughter of William Watt who was originally under suspicion. The book begins with a meeting Watt’s lawyer has arranged with Watt and Peter Manuel, a petty criminal who says he has knowledge of where the murder weapon is. He agrees to show Watt the evidence and tell him more, if they ditch the counselor. The two have a nightmare pub crawl that Mina weaves through Manuel’s trial for the murders.

Mina uses both stories to examine moral and social aberrations, delving into media, class, and both sins of commission and omission. Everyone who has read this book has loved it and come away with their own interesting take.  Share yours with us Monday, October 15th, at 1PM, on BookPeople’s third floor. The book is 10% off for those planning to attend.

 

AFFECTS ON A BRILLIANT MIND : SHERRY THOMAS’ LADY SHERLOCK

Rachel R., who co-leads the 7% Solution Book Club, wrote about Sherry Thomas’s new Lady Sherlock book and Holmes adaptations ahead of the release of the latest book in the series. 

Sherlock Holmes fandom has been active since the publication of the first short stories. It’s a commonly known fact that the only reason Holmes came back from the dead, for example, is because too many fans wrote angry letters at Arthur Conan Doyle demanding his return. These days, it’s almost as common to see a Sherlock Holmes adaptation as it is to see one of Shakespeare. What tends to make or break a Sherlock Holmes adaptation, in my experience, is not a supposed “faithfulness” to the characters or the cases (though that’s too often used as an excuse for lazy writing), but a thoughtful engagement with the world that Holmes and their ilk inhabit. Take Elementary, for example; many of the cases, if they reference the original stories at all, do so in name only, and Holmes and Watson, though true to the spirit of their Conan Doyle counterparts, live in different places in society. They’re not gentlemen of leisure; the detective work is their livelihood. But what makes Elementary so captivating as a Holmes adaptation is the extent to which the show examines what someone with Sherlock’s capabilities would struggle with in the 2010s in New York City: drug use, mental health, et cetera. At one point Sherlock, speaking during an AA meeting, asks, “Sometimes I wonder if I should have been born in a different time…ours is an era of distraction, it’s a punching drumbeat of constant input, this cacophony which follows us into our homes and even into our beds…In my less productive moments, I am left to wonder, if I had just been born when it was a little quieter out there, would I have even become an addict in the first place?”

This attention to place and its effect on a mind as brilliant as Sherlock Holmes’ is no less acute in Sherry Thomas’ Lady Sherlock series, though she still resides in 1880s London. Charlotte Holmes cannot move about society, restricted by her gender, and instead pretends to be an assistant for her recluse brother, the nonexistent Sherlock Holmes. But this gender reversal doesn’t just serve as a story hook, something cool and new and different—there have actually been several Holmes adaptations in which Holmes or Watson or both have been women over the years—but instead Holmes’ gender fundamentally alters the world in which the story takes place. Holmes, no longer the aforementioned gentleman of leisure, desires and wants things from a world that does not immediately provide them: mostly autonomy, bodily, financial, or otherwise. At one point while trying to figure out her financial situation, Charlotte explains, “I do not like the idea of bartering the use of my reproductive system for a man’s support—not in the absence of other choices.” These wants extend past Charlotte herself; she wants that for her landlady and confidante Mrs. Watson, for her sisters, and the many women of all classes that she encounters in the ins and outs of her cases. By changing Holmes’ gender, Sherry Thomas has done something that Arthur Conan Doyle was never able to do: she has made Sherlock Holmes altruistic.

Thomas is well acquainted with the significance of setting in her work. In her romances, both historical and contemporary, the setting often serves to inform the plot beyond mere contrivance. Her young adult fantasy novels, with their rich worldbuilding, still keep one foot firmly in the “real” world, giving each character who crosses over to the fantastical setting the gift of awe at seeing magic for the first time. It is a delight to be a bookseller who reads across genres, watching her become more and more refined in her craft, as she continues to interrogate what is important about stories, whether they be romance, or fantasy, or mystery.

Sherry Thomas will be at BookPeople Tuesday, October 2nd at 7PM to celebrate the release of the third Lady Sherlock book, The Hollow of Fear. The 7% Solution book club (which I co-lead) will be meeting directly before the event on the third floor to discuss the second in the series, A Scandal in Belgravia, before we attend the event together. All are welcome to join, whether or not you finished the book, although there may be spoilers for the first two novels. We usually meet the first Monday of every month at 7PM; upcoming discussion titles can be found on BookPeople’s website here.

MURDER IN THE AFTERNOON GETS INTRODUCED TO JOE O’LOUGHLIN

In September, our Murder In The Afternoon book club will be introduced to one of the most complex and believable series characters in modern crime fiction. Joe O’Loughlin, created by Michael Robotham, is a psychiatrist who assists the British police as a way to deal with his early onset Parkinson’s disease. We will discussing the first O’Loughlin novel, The Suspect.

It is in The Suspect where Joe gets his diagnosis and is first asked by D.I. Ruiz (another great character) for help. The victim turns out to be a nurse who was a colleague and former patient of O’Loughlin’s. As he digs deeper and darker he becomes the chief suspect and the killer targets his family. The book proves to deliver Hitchcock style suspense grounded in an emotional character study.

O’Loughin and Ruiz should give us a lot to talk about. You can join us for a discussion on BookPeople’s third floor on Monday, September 17th, 1PM. The Suspect is 10% off to those planning to attend.

THE MURDER IN THE AFTERNOON BOOK CLUB EXPLORES IRELAND’S TROUBLED PAST

The Murder In The Afternoon book club‘s August book is the second in Adrian McKinty’s Troubles series, a series that’s a favorite to many MysteryPeople staff and customers. It follows Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in early eighties Ireland, a dynamic that places him at odds with almost everyone. He copes with humor, a strong sense of justice, both personal and social, and a great record collection. In the book we will be discussing, I Hear The Sirens In The Streets, a grizzly discovery leads to larger crimes and a man and car anyone who remembers the eighties will recall.

A torso is found in a suitcase. A tattoo on the body part serves as the thread Sean follows into a dangerous web of murder, business, and politics. before the case is solved, he has to face the IRA and deal with famous (or infamous) car manufacturer John Delorean, who set his plant in Ireland.

I Hear The Sirens In The Streets is a great read. It examines life life in a war zone with a very human eye. Each chapter provides something to talk about. We will be meeting at 1PM, Monday, the 20th on the third floor. The book is 10% off to those planning to attend.