Thomas Grant Bruso
2016 Grand Master Award Winner Walter Mosley’s entertaining 14th Easy Rawlins Mystery, “Charcoal Joe,” picks up where his last book, “Rose Gold,” ended.
Private investigator Easy Rawlins’ life is in transition. He’s taken the money he received from his last case in “Rose Gold” and, with his two partners and close friends Saul Lynx and Tinsford “Whisper” Natly, has opened up his own detective agency.
Rawlins is also ready to propose to his girlfriend, Bonnie Shay.
But inevitably, a new case gets in the way. It involves a man named Charcoal Joe, aka Rufus Tyler, and Joe’s friend’s son, a young man named Seymour, who has been arrested and charged for a crime he did not commit.
Promising to pay Rawlins a lot of money to help exonerate Seymour, Charcoal Joe hires Rawlins to find out who really murdered a man from Redondo Beach.
It might be a tall order for Rawlins, considering the racially charged allegations against Seymour, who was seen standing over the man’s dead body at the victim’s cabin. But Rawlins is ready for a new challenge.
Set in the late 1960s, the novel is steeped in deep-southern history, atmosphere, mystery and a colorful company of eccentric characters. Walter Mosley doesn’t disappoint when it comes to an Easy Rawlins narrative.
'THE VIOLATED'
Bill Pronzini detours from his usual Nameless Detective series and hits another home run with this gripping new standalone, “The Violated.”
The story opens with the body of what appears to be Martin Torrey, the serial rapist, who has been hunting women and killing them for pleasure. Santa Rita Police Department Officers Leo Malatesta and John Jablonski interview the two young men who were at the scene, walking through Echo Park on their way home.
Torrey is lying face up in a grassy riverbed, three gunshot wounds to his body, two decimating the genital region, and a bullet through the head. Officers Malatesta and Jablonski further examine the body until the county coroner and Lieutenant Ortiz arrive at the scene.
Unsure if the victim was really the serial rapist Martin Torrey, people of Santa Rita are warned by the local law enforcement not to go outdoors after dark. When another woman is brutally raped in her apartment late at night and lives to tell her story, the citizens of Santa Rita are in an uproar about the latest shocking events, and a new nightmare begins for the tight-knit California town.
Told from various points of view, everyone has something to contribute to the perplexing case. “The Violated” is a slow burning, complicated and entertaining standalone thriller written by one of the best mystery writers in the crime fiction genre.
'THE HATCHING'
A new deadly species of arachnids is invading cities around the world in Ezekiel Boone’s novel, “The Hatching.”
Described as softball-sized and flesh eating, a dormant species of spiders are hatching in masses and killing anything or anyone that gets in their way. The first of several incidences begin in the jungles of Peru, where a black skittering mass of eight-legged arachnids devour a group of American tourists hiking through the forest.
When the body count begins to pile up from Peru to thousands miles away in Minneapolis, and then a gruesome discovery in the City of Angels, the FBI is brought in to fight the onslaught of what appears to be a uncontrolled outbreak of spiders, hatching in astonishing 24-hour periods.
During the same week, the Chinese government detonates an “accidental” nuclear bomb in their own country, leaving the FBI and the public afraid for China. What was the reason for this bizarre mission?
As more innocent people and their loved ones are swallowed up whole, their bodies spun in cocoons by the ravenous arachnids, their eggs laid inside the victims’ bodies for hatching, time is ticking for a solution to stop these flesh-eating spiders before it is too late and more innocent people die.
Boone spins a new definition of horror and weaves a deliciously skin-crawling new novel for all horror fans. The rushed, cliffhanger ending and paper-thin caricatures might leave readers feeling let down.
Thomas Grant Bruso is a Plattsburgh resident who writes fiction and has been an avid reader of genre fiction since he was a kid. Readers and writers are invited to connect and discuss books and writing at www.facebook.com/thomasgrantbruso.
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