I actually listened to Trunk Music by Michael Connelly last month, it's just taken me this long to write a review, so it's just going to be brief.
This is the fifth in the Detective Harry Bosch series, which I'm listening to our of order. It's easy enough to just jump in though. There are a few returning characters, but their re-introduction is well done, giving us enough information to know who they are and how they relate to Harry.
In this installment Harry has returned to the job after an involuntary leave of absence. His first case back is a little more than he bargained for. B-grade L.A. movie producer Tony Aliso is found shot twice in the head and stuffed into the trunk of his Rolls Royce - what looks like "trunk music," a Mafia hit. Bosch is not so sure, and follows the money trail to Vegas. Tony had enemies, and the investigations quickly gives Harry his own share of...
Picture London, December 1893. The city is in mourning and angry at the man who killed a remarkable man. Sherlock Holmes is dead, killed at Reichenbach Falls by his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle is amazed that people have responded as if Holmes, the character who he honestly hates, was a real person.
Jump ahead in time to 2010. The Baker Street Irregulars, a group of Holmes devotees, have gathered in New York for their annual get-together. The highlight this year is to be a presentation by Alex Cale. He has announced that he found the missing diary chronicling the years between when Doyle killed Holmes off and brought him back again in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Unfortunately, Alex is killed before he can make his presentation, and our main character, Harold, the youngest and newest Irregular, decides he needs to solve the case, using all he has learned from Holmes along the way. He is helped, or hindered, along...
I adore Miss Marple. She seems like a sweet, gentle old lady, but she's bright and knows human nature. In A Caribbean Mystery, Miss Marple is on vacation, enjoying relaxing in the Caribbean sun thanks to her nephew's generosity. There's only one problem - she's bored. It may be paradise, but nothing ever changes. But then Major Palgrave dies under suspicious circumstance, and Miss Marple takes it upon herself to figure out who the killer is.
Miss Marple is on center stage in this one, in a new setting making new friends. Of course, everyone has their secrets, here mostly romantic ones, and there are plenty of suspects. None of the characters really struck me, except Mr. Rafiel, a rich elderly man who becomes Miss Marple's ally in catching the criminal.
I can't say that the plot here is the strongest. It wasn't too tough to figure out the killer, even if there were red herrings aplenty. There were simply only so...
Mrs. McGillicuddy saw someone murdered on a train that passed the one she was on. She is positive that she saw a man strangling a woman, but after reporting it to the authorities, no body is found. No one seems to believe her, so she turns to her dear friend Miss Marple. Miss Marple listens to the whole story, goes to the local police who find nothing, and then assures her friend that she has done her duty. Mrs. McGillicuddy then goes on her way, but Miss Marple hasn't done all she can.
As an older woman, Miss Marple cannot do al the necessary running around herself, so she calls on some old friends to help her. She sends Lucy Eyelsbarrow, a professional housekeeper to Rutherford Hall, the place Miss Marple is sure the body is. Of course, Lucy does find the body hidden in a sarcophagus in a barn, putting the Crackenthorpe family who live in the hall under the...
