WHO KILLED THAT GUY ON THE MOUNTAINTOP BOOKSTORE?? THE SANDY QUILL CAN FILL YOU IN!

          

          A big beautiful bookshop situated on the side of a ski resort mountain......so how did a murder victim pop up on one of the gondolas that ride up there?

           Brand new on store shelves this week is Ann Claire's delightful cozy mystery "Dead And Gondola" a clever and witty new series featuring the bookshop's owners the Christie sisters. 

            The Christies bear no relation to the legendary Agatha, but just like Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, they're out to find out whodunit......and you won't be able to turn the pages fast enough.

            For all the inside info and a full review of "Dead And Gondola", head on over to www.thesandquill.blogspot.com......and while there, you can enjoy all of The Sandy Quill's other informative reviews. See you there......

STRANGLERS IN THE NIGHT.....EXCHANGING GLANCES......ANOTHER GRISLY GRABBER WHERE THERE'S MORE THAN MEETS THE FBI.

ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS by J.T.Ellison.  We'll admit, when it comes to mysteries, BQ rarely picks up what they call 'police procedurals'. Yes I know....zillions of readers dearly love these, following the cops as they painstakingly, doggedly sift through clue after clue, stumble as they follow false leads pointing them in the wrong direction.....but ultimately connect the dots and corner the killer. For us, it comes down to how well the author conceives the sleuths......whether the cops are straight arrows or drunken burn-outs, it comes down to this....are these people we want to spend any time with and do we really care if they finally catch whoever's leaving dead bodies on the road every three days?

The dynamic duo in Ellison's thriller didn't exactly thrill us with any special quirks or qualities.....we found them standard issue, like two characters awaiting their own "Law And Order" spinoff series. Nashville Homicide Detective Taylor Jackson, a tall, gorgeous blonde, conveniently co-habits with FBI profiler John Baldwin as they jointly hunt down the 'Southern Strangler'.  The 'SS' keeps them busy as he abducts and strangles the numerous pretty girls of the book's title, then chops their hands off and leaves the hands in the vicinity of his next victim....whose missing hands will next appear....well, you get it, right?.

What lifts this book above the pack of procedurals and kept us reading til the end.....its plot, not the cops. . Ellison intersects the strangler's trackdown with the tangled lives of twin sisters who share a dark, disturbing history....having been kidnapped and sexually assaulted when they were 12 years old. As the puzzle unravels and the killer unmasked, the turn of events turns genuinely twisted and ultimately heartbreaking. You expect satisfying solutions in a book like this..Ellison makes good enough on the delivery that we wouldn't mind checking out his next effort......BQ arrests this one with a gruesomely good 2 1/2 stars, (And we used great restraint in not saying something like "hands down, it's top notch!"  Ooops....)

MALLORY, OUR FAVORITE DYSFUNCTIONAL CRIME-FIGHTING GODDESS RETURNS! AND YOU PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF HER....HIDDEN TREASURE ALERT!

Detective Sergeant Kathleen Mallory of the NYPD.....remember that name (and call her 'Kathy' at your peril, she prefers 'Mallory' only)....she's the striking, unforgettable creation of mystery/thriller novelist Carol 'O Connell in a series of 12 books, the newest of which, "BLIND SIDE" came out a few months ago.

How to describe 'O Connell's Mallory? Try to picture Dragon Tattoo's Lisabeth Salander as a blonde, six foot tall, drop dead gorgeous  New York City detective. And like Salander, Mallory's childhood backstory almost defies description in its horror......orphaned, and sadistically victimized, the child Mallory, a waif with a core of steel, winds up as a scrabbling, homeless street thief in NYC until she's arrested and adopted by Detective Louis Markowitz. Markowitz and his wife raise Mallory, attempting their best at coating this implacable force of nature with a veneer of civility and humanity. But Mallory remains Mallory, with a single-minded, cold, unforgiving moral compass to strike back and avenge wrongs....to herself and others. And what better career for her than a a police detective in New York City.....where the murderers she pursues discover, to their utter terror, that the cop hunting them is every bit their equal in monstrous, amoral behavior.

We haven't cracked open 'Blind Side' yet (we promise a review soon), but Beached Quill can tell you without reservation that the previous eleven books challenge the formidable Kathy Mallory with a masterfully written array of intricate twisting plots and suspects. You'll have your own personal favorites as you read through the series, but most of all, you'll stay with them for the sheer joy of watching the relentless, remorseless Mallory cut a swath through the storylines like an avenging angel. And you'll come to savor the extraordinary moments when 'O Connell reveals that underneath all the emotional scar tissue, there lies hidden a surprisingly warm, beating heart somewhere inside Mallory,,,,, which virtually no one ( except you, the reader) ever sees.

Oddly enough, two of our all time best-loved Mallory novels take her outside the confines of New York City.....STONE ANGEL sends Mallory back to the sleepy deep South town of her birth, where she arrives to wreak Mallory-style vengeance on the man who incited a mob to stone her mother to death. She suits up like Clint Eastwood's spaghetti western Man With No Name and the town's deep-fried Faulkner rednecks soon face Mallory-geddon. Our other best-of-Mallory, FIND ME, puts her out on historic Route 66, where a heartbreaking caravan of grieving parents has taken to the highway in search of their missing abducted children. Mallory must deal the with memory of her own horrendous childhood while travelling to the inevitable 'High Noon' encounter with a psychotic pedophile.

If you haven't heard of these books, or have heard of them and haven't gotten to one yet......know that Beached Quill loudly declares this series the FIND OF FINDS. We aim a full 5 .357 Magnums.....