Peyton Place filtered through Graham Green with a little bit of P.G. Wodehouse thrown in.

When Barry Fairbrother drops dead of an aneurysm, his death sets off a chain reaction in the small English town, Pagford. First of all, it creates a vacancy (hence the book’s title) on the Council. Fairbrother had been a strong supporter of keeping a low income housing project as part of Pagford. He is opposed by a smug, controlling businessman Howard Mullison who wants to rid the village of the “undesirables.” The battle over the empty seat, and the haves and have-nots, soon engulfs everyone in Pagford, and slowly reveals the messy and not-so-pretty reality behind the pretty facade of the town. 

Very few of the characters of likeable, living almost completely in their small, self-centered world. Rowling slowly strips the town bare, revealing issues of abuse (domestic and child), marital infidelities, neglect, rape, racism, suicide, poverty and rampant hypocrisy. 

The book falls within the “black comedy” genre, with a dash of 21^st century Dickensian storytelling. Rowling uses the third person omniscient viewpoint throughout the book, and though a tricky technique, pulls it off quite well. The scene during Howard Mullison’s birthday party is one of the highlights of the book, alternately hilarious and heartbreaking, seamlessly moving from one character to another to give the reader a quick snapshot of the party, very much like a roving tracking shot in movie.

Give Rowling credit for breaking out of the Harry Potter world. She takes a bold move in shucking off the YA fantasy writer mantel and pulls it off quite well.  

In this opening novel of the Molly Murphy series, the biggest mystery is … how long will the coincidences keep occurring in Molly’s favor?

Molly Murphy accidentally kills a man and flees Ireland at the spur of the moment. She manages to catch a boat to England where miraculously she is taken in by an Irish woman with two small children. They are leaving tomorrow for America to join her husband.  However, the woman is unable to board the ship due to suffering from TB so … she asks Molly to take her place, pretend to be her and take the children to America for her. (Coincidence #1).

She finds herself on a boat to America caring for two children she doesn’t know. Once she reaches New York a murder happens at Ellis Island and Molly soon becomes a suspect. Realizing the NYC police will not do it, she begins to investigate in order to clear her name, before she gets arrested, or worse, shipped back to Ireland.

Molly is a fun character, fiercely independent, sassy and headstrong.  I understand that this is meant to be a “cozy-styled” mystery, with a good bit of romantic flare, but the sheer number of times that Molly meets the exact person she needs to, or happens to hear the exact information she was looking for … got to be quite humorous. The fact that the book won an Agatha Award, although the mystery is less compelling than the rest of the story, makes me wonder about the standards of the award. 

All in all, though, Murphy’s Law is a fun book. I read it in two sittings.

London, 1930. Maisie Dobbs runs small private investigation agency a professional office in Fitzroy Square with an assistant, the happy-go-lucky Billy Beale. A former nurse in the Great War, she has proven herself as a psychologist and investigator. In the spring of 1930 Maisie Dobbs is hired to find a runaway heiress. When three of the heiress’s old friends are found dead, Maisie must to discover who would want to kill these seemingly respectable young women. She discovers that the answers lie in the agony of the Great War.

This is the second book in the Maise Dobbs series and there is a dramatic drop-off.  We are constantly told (by other characters) how smart Maisie is, but she never comes across that way. She is cold, arrogant and often condescending. Her method of investigating using mysticism is too much New Ageish, feels silly and is ultimately unbelievable. 

There is also the aspect of withholding information from the reader. Maisie finds clues at each murder scene, but we never know what the clue is … she tucks it away. When it is revealed, (and you realize the major clue is related to the title) the effect ham-handed and amateurish. It’s a technique you would expect from a TV show, not a novel. Even Jessica Fletcher wouldn’t stoop so low. 

There also two subplots with Maisie’s father and her assistant Billy that seem to have been added into the story just to make it novel length.

The concept of this series is interesting, but this second book is w-e-a-k.

This is an impressive novel – even more so because it is the author’s debut. Matthew Fitzsimmons has written an engrossing political thriller that is filled with complexity but is easy to read and follow.

The novel opens on the tenth anniversary of the disappearance of Suzanne Lombard. Her disappearance became one of those national stories that was covered 24/7 for weeks and weeks by the media, mainly due to her father – who was a U.S. Senator at the time, currently the vice president and a presidential candidate. Ten years later, when a new photo of Suzanne appears Gibson Vaughn is approached by a private investigation team to assist in a new inquiry into Suzanne’s case.

Gibson was the son of Senator Lombard’s chief political advisor and best friend to Suzanne. However, after Suzanne’s disappearance, Gibson’s father commits suicide, and soon after, the teenage Gibson is arrested for hacking into the Senator’s private computer files, releasing damaging info. Due to his age, the judge gives Gibson an alternative –go to prison for 10 years, or join the marines, and upon completion of his military career, his criminal record will be expunged.  

Even though Gibson keeps his end of the deal, when released from military service, he discovers it difficult to find more than a low-level IT job and suspects V-P Lombard still holds a grudge. Then, Gibson is shown the new photo of Suzanne and asked to join the investigation …

To say any more about the plot would be unfair. The book practically gallops along, with fascinating twists and turns. The major characters are all fascinating and the mystery of a “what happened to Suzanne” is tantalizing. Go and read. You will not be sorry.

Intriguing premise that quickly becomes a write-by-numbers plot, with an unbelievable Hollywood Dan Brown-style conclusion that was ridiculous. It’s also obvious that the author, Charles Belfoure, is an architect, since his descriptions of buildings and their designs offer the best writing in the book. Too bad he didn’t bother to create characters as interesting as the buildings.  

John Cross, a successful architect in late 19^th century New York City, has a problem. Seems his eldest son has accumulated excessive gambling debts, and is entangled in a web of organized crime, thugs and opium dens.  A gentleman gangster, James Kent, is determined to make the son, or the father, pay up. So the son is kidnaped and John is blackmailed into helping Kent and his gang set up robberies of prominent New York citizens whose houses and office buildings Cross designed.

Cross gets in deeper with the gang, finds he actually enjoys the robberies, and then, his wife gets involved, as does his teenage daughter and younger son. Talk about stretching the limits of the suspension-of-disbelief? The characters soon became boorish and I openly rooted for the older son to be killed, since his selfish behavior was the root of the entire plot and he was such an ass. By the end, this upper crust, prim-and-proper family, is involved in the world of pickpockets, murderers, opium dealers, and organized illegal gambling. The climactic scene takes place during the dedication ceremony of the Statue of Liberty and is so silly that I literally tossed the book on the floor.  

Instead of going for gritty realism, depicting the disparity between the New York elites and the horrific poverty of the lower class and the homelessness of thousands of children, the author, Charles Belfoure, opted for a sanitized on-the-surface plot and shallow characters.