Telegraph Hill by John F. Nardizzi: Book Review/Tour

Title: Telegraph Hill by John F. Nardizzi
Published May 2013 by Merrimack Media
Genre: crime fiction, suspense, mystery

Someone was watching. She opened her eyes. A black shape stood at the edge of the dell. One of the Triad soldiers. He peered through the trees, but he wasn't sure where to go. Locked his dark eyes on a clump of trees and undergrowth where she lay. He stepped toward Tania. (ch. 11)

Book description:  John Nardizzi's Telegraph Hill introduces private detective Ray Infantino searching for a missing girl named Tania. The case takes him to San Francisco, the city he abandoned years ago after his fiance was murdered. Thrust into his old city haunts, Ray finds that Tania may not be lost at all. Tania saw a murder; and a criminal gang, the Black Fist Triad, wants to make sure she never sees anything again. 

Ray enlists help from an old flame, Dominique, but now he has three women on his mind. Meeting with various witnesses-ex-cops, prostitutes, skinheads-he relentlessly tracks the evidence. But the hunt for Tania fires his obsession with avenging the murder of his fiance. When the triad retaliates, and blood begins to flow, Ray must walk the knife edge between revenge and redemption on the streets of San Francisco. (publisher)

My comments: Quick and fast trips from Boston to San Francisco into the haunts of the Triads who control much of the underbelly of the city. PI Infantino is hired to find a girl missing from her home for over ten years. Infantino's mission is dangerous and there is thrilling action and near escapes as he attempts to find and then hide the girl Tania.

Fast paced novel with good descriptions of San Francisco as Infantino traverses it to find the missing girl. A good plot with an alluring setting. I enjoyed this quick and exciting read.

About the author: John Nardizzi is an investigator, lawyer, and writer. His writings have appeared in numerous professional and literary journals, including San Diego Writers Monthly, Oxygen, Liberty Hill Poetry Review, Lawyers Weekly USA, and PI Magazine. His fictional detective, Ray Infantino, first appeared in print in the spring 2007 edition of Austin Layman’s Crimestalker Casebook. Telegraph Hill is the first crime novel featuring Infantino

I received a complimentary copy of this book for review through Partners in Crime Virtual Book 
Tours. For other reviews of the book, visit the tour schedule. 

Herbie's Game by Timothy Hallinan: Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

Herbie's Game: Junior Bender Mystery #4 by Timothy Hallinan
To be published July 15, 2014; Soho Crime

Junior Bender, the clown prince of crime fiction, returns in his most hardboiled adventure yet—a tale that will take Junior Bender deep into a murderous conspiracy in present day Los Angeles and  uncover an increasingly confusing legacy of his burglar-mentor, Herbie Mott, who until very recently was always one-step-ahead of just about everybody.

It’s everyday business when Wattles, the San Fernando Valley’s top “executive crook,” sets up a hit. He establishes a chain of criminals to pass along the instructions and the money, thereby ensuring that the hitter doesn’t know who hired him. Then one day Wattles finds his office safe open and a single item missing: the piece of paper on which he has written the names of the crooks in the chain. When people associated with the chain begin to pop up dead, the only person Wattles can turn to to solve his problem is Junior Bender, professional burglar and begrudging private eye for crooks.

But Junior already knows exactly who took Wattles’s list: the signature is too obvious. It was Herbie Mott, Junior’s burglar mentor and second father—and when Junior seeks him out to discuss the missing list, he finds Herbie very unpleasantly murdered. Junior follows the links in the chain back toward the killer, and as he does, he learns disturbing things about Herbie’s hidden past. He has to ask himself how much of the life he’s lived for the past twenty years has been of his own making, and how much of it was actually Herbie’s game. (publisher)

What book are you waiting for? 

Mailbox Monday: Two Thrillers and The Art Thief

Visit Mailbox Monday, hosted by Vicki, Leslie, and Serena, to see other bloggers' mailboxes each week.

Thanks to the publishers for Advance Reader's Copies of the two thrillers:

Uncaged: The Singular Menace

Publisher description:
#1 New York Times bestselling Prey author John Sandford and Michele Cook debut a high-octane young adult thriller series.
 Shay Remby arrives in Hollywood with $58 and a handmade knife, searching for her brother, Odin. 
Odin’s a brilliant hacker but a bit of a loose cannon. He and a group of radical animal-rights activists hit a Singular Corp. research lab in Eugene, Oregon. The raid was a disaster, but Odin escaped with a set of highly encrypted flash drives and a post-surgical dog. When Shay gets a frantic 3 a.m. phone call from Odin—talking about evidence of unspeakable experiments, and a ruthless corporation, and how he must hide—she’s concerned. When she gets a menacing visit from Singular’s security team, she knows: her brother’s a dead man walking.

What Singular doesn’t know—yet—is that 16-year-old Shay is every bit as ruthless as their security force, and she will burn Singular to the ground, if that’s what it takes to save her brother.

Remains of Innocence

Publisher's description:
Sheriff Joanna Brady must solve two perplexing cases that may be tied together in New York Times bestselling author J. A. Jance’s thrilling tale of suspense that brings to life Arizona’s Cochise County and the desert Southwest in all its beauty and mystery. 

An old woman, a hoarder, is dying of emphysema in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In cleaning out her house, her daughter, Liza Machett, discovers a fortune in hundred dollar bills hidden in the tall stacks of books and magazines that crowd every corner. 

Tracing the money’s origins will take Liza on a journey that will end in Cochise County, where Sheriff Joanna Brady is embroiled in a personal mystery of her own. A man she considers a family friend is found dead at the bottom of a hole in a limestone cavern near Bisbee. And now there is the mystery of Liza and the money. Are the two disparate cases connected? It’s up to Joanna to find out. 

 Bought at the library book sale:

The Art Thief

Publisher description:
In "The Art Thief," three thefts are simultaneously investigated in three cities, but these apparently isolated crimes have much more in common than anyone imagines. A dizzying array of forgeries, overpaintings, and double-crosses unfolds as the story races through auction houses, museums, and private galleries -- and the secret places where priceless works of art are made available to collectors who will stop at nothing to satisfy their hearts' desires.
What's new on your book shelves?

COLD STORAGE ALASKA by John Straley

Friday 56 Rules:

 *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. *Post it. *Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice Also Book Beginnings by Rose City Reader.

Cold Storage Alaska

I have loved all of John Straley's crime books, his prose often like poetry, his characters unusual and memorable; and I have no reason to think Cold Storage Alaska is any different. The setting is Alaska, a land of starkness, in people and place.

page 56:
"I'm sorry," Jake Shoemaker simpered in an uncommonly polite voice. "I know this must be inconvenient for you." Oscar sat on the couch, his hands tied behind his back. "I mean it's more than just inconvenient; this is frightening, I'm sure."

Book beginning:
Anabelle had put the tea kettle on just moments ago. Now it was whistling, yet she didn't get up to attend to it. Recently the past had become a hallucination constantly intruding into the present moment, so she wasn't certain what really needed doing. 

Book description:

"An offbeat, often hilarious crime novel set in the sleepy Alaskan town of Cold Storage from the Shamus Award winning author of the Cecil Younger series. 
Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing outpost where salmonberries sparkle in the morning frost and where you just might catch a King Salmon if you’re zen enough to wait for it. Settled in 1935 by Norse fishermen who liked to skinny dip in its natural hot springs, the town enjoyed prosperity at the height of the frozen fish boom. But now the cold storage plant is all but abandoned and the town is withering.

Clive “The Milkman” McCahon returns to his tiny Alaska hometown after a seven-year jail stint for dealing coke. He has a lot to make up to his younger brother, Miles, who has dutifully been taking care of their ailing mother. But Clive doesn’t realize the trouble he’s bringing home. His vengeful old business partner is hot on his heels, a stick-in-the-mud State Trooper is dying to bust Clive for narcotics, and, to complicate everything, Clive might be going insane—lately, he’s been hearing animals talking to him. Will his arrival in Cold Storage be a breath of fresh air for the sleepy, depopulated town? Or will Clive’s arrival turn the whole place upside down." (goodreads)

 What do you think? Is this a book you'd keep reading?
Thanks to Soho Crime for a review/feature copy of this book.

Book Review: THE MAP THIEF by Heather Terrell

REVIEW OF THE MAP THIEF

The Map Thief

The Map Thief  by Heather Terrell links 15th century, Ming Dynasty, Admiral Zheng He with Portugal explorer Vasco da Gama, also of the 15th century. The two men sailed their ships on the same routes, perhaps 70 years apart. 

How a map of Zheng He's travels lands up in the hands of the Portugese navigator to Vasco da Gama is the mystery the novel tries to solve. In present day New York, Mara Coyne, antiques finder, hopes to solve the mystery after being called in to investigate and recover a priceless 15th century map stolen from an archaeological dig in China. How did a copy of this map reach Portugal so many years ago? And where is that copy now? 

The book takes you from New York, to China, and to Lisbon, and blends historical facts with fiction to explore an interesting theory regarding the first sailors to "discover" America and the New World.

This informative, well written and researched novel, printed in 2008 by Ballantine, presents some interesting and challenging historical questions for readers and scholars alike.

Mailbox Monday: A Bit of Magic

Visit Mailbox Monday, hosted by Vicki, Leslie, and Serena, to see other bloggers' mailboxes each week.

Thanks to Penguin for some delectable cozies for review, these with a magical, enchanted, or witchcraft theme:

Some Enchanted Eclair: A Magical Bakery Mystery

From Fear to Eternity: An Immortality Bites Mystery

A Vision in Velvet: A Witchcraft Mystery

Be Careful What You Witch For: A Family Fortune Mystery

Did you get anything spooky good in your mailbox last week?

Sunday Salon:Summer Reading

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! Also visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer; It's Monday: What Are You Reading? at Book Journey.

Books for summer reading: Southern fiction, a few mystery novels, and historical fiction.

The Hurricane Sisters

The Hurricane Sisters by Dorothea Benton Frank takes us deep in the heart of the magical Carolina Lowcountry--a sultry land of ancient magic, glorious sunsets, and soothing coastal breezes, where three generations of strong women wrestle with the expectations of family while struggling to understand their complicated relationships with each other.(goodreads)

In Be Careful What You Witch For by Dawn Eastman, Clyde Fortune has returned to her seemingly quiet hometown of Crystal Haven, Michigan. In spite of the psychic powers of its residents, there’s no telling what trouble is brewing in this burg…(goodreads)

and an audio win from Soho Press: 
The Blood of An Englishman by James McClure, a mystery set in South Africa.

I am currently reading a library book:

Fleur de Lies by Maddy Hunter has travel agency owner Emily Andrew-Miceli taking her band of tech-savvy seniors to France, cruising down the Seine River. But once a guest is found dead along Normandy's famed Alabaster coast, Emily bids adieu to the hopes of a fatality-free trip. (goodreads)

For a book tour by the publisher, I'm also reading

The Beautiful American by Jeanne Mackin:  From Paris in the 1920s to London after the Blitz, two women find that a secret from their past reverberates through years of joy and sorrow. (goodreads)

What books are on your summer reading list?