Hot Mysteries, January 12th, 2012

Last Updated on Thursday, 01 March 2012 20:22

PRESS RELEASE: For January 18, 2012 Release

TO: Marion Star & Mullins Enterprise

FROM: Marion County Library

CONTACT: P. Alan Smith, 423-8300

SUBJECT: Library News Column, By P. Alan Smith, Director

January is a great month for mystery readers! This week we have brand-new titles from a few of the best-known names in the genre. In these mysteries a detective’s past comes back to haunt him, fiction becomes disturbing reality, and a U.S. Marshal uncovers a deep conspiracy.

All I Did Was Shoot My Man by Walter Mosley

In the latest novel in Mosley’s Leonid McGill series, Leonid finds himself caught between his sins of the past and an all-too-vivid present.

Seven years ago, Zella Grisham came home to find her man, Harry Tangelo, in bed with her friend. The weekend before, $6.8 million had been stolen from Rutgers Assurance Corp., whose offices are across the street from where Zella worked. Zella didn't remember shooting Harry, but she didn't deny it either. The district attorney was inclined to call it temporary insanity-until the police found $80,000 from the Rutgers heist hidden in her storage space.

For reasons of his own, Leonid McGill is convinced of Zella's innocence. But as he begins his investigation, his life begins to unravel. A gripping story of murder, greed, and retribution, All I Did Was Shoot My Man is also the poignant tale of one man's attempt to stay connected to his family.

Breakdown by Sara Paretsky

Carmilla, Queen of the Night, is a shape-shifting raven whose fictional exploits thrill girls all over the world. When tweens in Chicago's Carmilla Club hold an initiation ritual in an abandoned cemetery, they stumble on an actual corpse, a man stabbed in a vampire-style slaying.

The girls include daughters of some of Chicago's most powerful families: The grandfather of one, Chaim Salanter, is one of the world's wealthiest men; the mother of another, Sophy Durango, is the Illinois Democratic candidate for Senate. For V. I. Warshawski, the questions multiply faster than the answers. Is the killing linked to a hostile media campaign against Sophy Durango? Or to Chaim Salanter's childhood in Nazi-occupied Lithuania? As V.I. struggles for answers, she finds herself fighting enemies who are all too human.

Raylan by Elmore Leonard

Leonard, recognized as one of America’s greatest crime writers, brings back U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, the hero of several novels and the TV series Justified. In Leonard’s Harlan County, Kentucky, marijuana has become a big cash crop, but it’s chump change compared to the quarter million a human body can get you—especially when it’s sold off piece by piece.

So when Dickie and Coover Crowe, dope-dealing brothers known for sampling their own supply, decide to branch out into the body business, it’s up to U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens to stop them. But Raylan isn’t your average marshal; he’s the laconic, Stetson-wearing, fast-drawing lawman who juggles dozens of cases at a time and always shoots to kill. But by the time Raylan finds out who’s making the cuts, he’s lying in a bathtub, with Layla, the cool transplant nurse, about to go for his kidneys.

Dark and droll, Raylan is pure Elmore Leonard—a page-turner filled with the sparkling dialogue and sly suspense that are the hallmarks of this modern master.

Visit www.marioncountylibrary.org and click on “library catalog” to search our holdings or request titles.

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