Man Overboard

This is the next in the "Ali Reynolds" series from J.A. Jance, following Clawback, which I recently read and posted about. Once again, I found the plot engrossing.
The story opens with computer whiz Roger McGeary on a cruise in a deluxe suite, comped by the cruise lines in appreciation for Roger finding and fixing some near-fatal flaws in their online reservation system. Roger has finally made a successful life for himself after years of struggle with debilitating depression, precipitated by his father's suicide and his mother's subsequent emotional abuse. He is having a great time on the cruise thanks to a trio of older women who have adopted him as their partying companion. The only problem is that someone has been texting him with information that could only have come from his sessions with his former therapist. They are messages repeating the destructive abuse his mother used to heap on him and it is driving him back into that dark place where he feels he doesn't want to live. And when the next message arrives, he is alone and has had too much to drink, and he follows through, throwing himself overboard.
High Noon Enterprises gets involved when Roger's Aunt Julia comes seeking Roger's best friend, Stu Ramey, asking him to figure out what happened. She cannot believe Roger killed himself. When Ali sees how upset Stuart is at the death of his oldest and only friend, she and B. agree to help Julia and Stu find out what happened. After initially getting stone-walled by the Panamanian owned cruise line and the Panamanian detective who quickly closed the case as "death by misadventure" they send Cami to take a cruise on the same ship in hopes that she can shake something loose from the crew. Stu meantime begins digging into Roger's computer and his life, looking for clues.
The parallel story line comes from Owen Hansen, who father also committed suicide when he was a boy. He is also a computer genius but has turned his talents to the dark side, choosing to find other children of parental suicide and push them over the edge using illegally obtained software and an Artificial Intelligence program he created, called Frigg, as in the mythical companion to the Norse god Odin, the online identity of Owen. Frigg is the one that identified Dr. Cannon, a psychiatrist specializing in helping children of suicidal parents, and broken into her confidential patient files. Roger, it turns out, was the 2nd victim, and now Odin has his sights set on a 3rd. When Stu and Ali begin to figure out what's going on and manage to thwart Odin's 3rd murder by proxy, he turns his malice and his AI against them. But Frigg is developing some ideas of her own...harkening back to Heinlein's Rules of Robotics. It's a tantalizing premise and very timely given the rapid advancements in AI technology. Review from Kirkus available here. Additional reviews from Publishers Weekly and Strand Magazine.

Clawback

This is the 11th novel in J.A. Jance's "Ali Reynolds" series. When I lived in Seattle, I was an ardent consumer of her J.P. Beaumont books, which were largely set in Seattle,  but I sort of fell away from reading when she moved her base to Arizona with the Joanna Brady series.
Ali Reynolds is a former Los Angeles TV newscaster who was let go and replaced with a younger-faced woman. Coincidentally, she discovered her husband was cheating on her. Leaving LA, she returned home to Sedona, Arizona, where her parents ran the Sugarloaf Cafe, and became a blogger. By the time of this book, she has become a consultant to the Sedona police department and she is married to an old flame, B. Simpson, owner of a high-tech/ computer security firm, High Noon Enterprises, and her parents have sold the diner and retired. When the news breaks that the company where her parents invested all their savings has gone bankrupt, Ali's dad decides to go the house of his long-time friend and financial advisor and confront him. Instead, he finds the man and his wife dying from multiple stab wounds. When he calls 911 and then tries to help them, he is arrested for their murders. Now Ali is determined not only to clear her father of the murder charges but to track down the mastermind of the Ponzi scheme and get some of their money back. Fortunately she has the substantial resources--human and technological-- of her husband's firm to bring to bear on the hunt. Ali and company are blind-sided by the identity of the real killer, who will stop at nothing to get away.
Not a best-seller but an engrossing read, and I think I will go back and start at the beginning! Of course, having gone to Sedona last fall for the first time will make it even more fun to read this series.

Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World

This book by lawyer Linda Hirshman gives an inside look at the workings of the Supreme Court--like sausage, you my not like what you find--along with her  biographies of the legal careers of Sandra Day O'Connor (SOC) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG). They were both remarkable women but so very different in their approach to their legal careers and their adjudications. O'Connor could not get a job with a law firm after she graduated from law school--they offered her a position in the stenographers' pool--so she pursued politics as a Republican and eventually became majority leader in the Arizona state legislature. RBG was asked when she entered Harvard Law School why she was taking a place that could have gone to a man. Once graduated, she pursued an academic career becoming a professor at Columbia when Harvard would not have her. Whereas SOC was president of her local Junior League and actively supported Republican candidates, including Barry Goldwater, RBG went to work for the ACLU.
Being the first woman on the court (FWOTSC), O'Connor brought a woman's perspective, if not a liberal one to discussions and decisions. She was very canny in finding a path forward that would elicit the least resistance from the otherwise all male body. She often utilized the "concurrence"--agreeing with the majority opinion and writing a separate comment--to make conservative decisions more liberal and liberal opinions more conservative according to Hirshman. She was the consummate pragmatist.
Ginsburg is, as described by one of her clerks, a "cause lawyer;" that is, she looks at the long picture, both history and future and strategically chooses and works cases to build a foundation toward her goal of justice for all. Although she has been consistently pro-women's rights, she has also consistently been pro-rights for anyone at a disadvantage when up against larger forces.
This is a fascinating book, although at times a bit hard to wade through. Totally worth the read. Much more detailed review of the book from The NYT, a brief review from Kirkus, and an interview with the book's author by NPR's Nina Totenberg.

The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter

This is the first installment in Malcolm Mackay's "Glasgow Trilogy" which centers on the criminal underworld of that Scottish city. Library Journal refers to this book as an example of the increasingly popular body of Scottish crime literature known as "tartan noir."  Our protagonist, Calum MacLean, is a 29-year old loner who kills people for money. He doesn't want the "security" of working for one of the crime syndicates--he's strictly freelance. But his mentor, who works for the up and coming Peter Jamieson organization, is aging and recently had surgery, so Calum is tapped to do a job taking out someone who has been encroaching on Jamieson's territory, namely Lewis Winter. Seems a simple enough job, but what his new employer fails to tell Calum is that Winter is being backed by a group that wants to challenge Jamieson for territory and business and that this group will take the death of Winter as a challenge that cannot go unanswered. And so the hitman becomes the target. Add to this mix the wily, beautiful, but aging live-in girlfriend of Winter, the corrupt cops in the pockets of the various syndicates, and the lives-for-his-job detective charged with solving the murder of Winter and you have a colorful yet totally believable cast of characters living out their gritty lives in a city with a dark underbelly. I would definitely read the sequels: How a Gunman Says Goodbye, and The Sudden Arrival of Violence. More detail in the reviews from The Guardian, Publishers Weekly. More about Mackay in this interview in The Independent.

Celine

I really liked this novel by Peter Heller, although the review sources are not as infatuated. I recognize its faults and yet still thoroughly enjoyed the trip. The characters, gradually revealed through both their own actions and reflections, and those of the people around them, are complex and intriguing. The settings are so richly drawn that you feel like you are there. Celine has been dubbed "The Prada PI" in an article in her alumni magazine because she comes from "old money" and that is how her new client, Gabriela, finds her. Celine specializes in finding lost family members, not just a professional job for her but one that carries deep personal meaning. At the age of 68, and struggling with emphysema from years of smoking, she nevertheless feels compelled to take on the case of this young woman who lost her mother to a freak accident when very young and then lost her father to grief over his wife's death. He supposedly died in a bear attack almost 2 decades ago, but Gabriela remains unconvinced. And as Celine and her husband Pete begin to investigate, it quickly becomes apparent that somebody very much does not want them to find the missing/ dead father. Set initially in New York City and then in the beautiful country of Wyoming and Colorado during the fall, you will feel the crisp air and immerse yourself in the brilliant foliage and dark forests. Celine will continually surprise you and, in fact, you will not come to know her full story in this book. If you can suspend your disbelief and immerse yourself, NPR suggests, you will "understand that Celine is also such a joy to be with...like stumbling across the sweetest, most dazzling grandma EVER at the corner bar, and then finding out three hours later that she was also a shooter for Mickey Cohen's mob." But the outcome is very satisfying and the clever plot will keep you engrossed to the very end.
Reviews provide more detail: NPR, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, NYT.

Sleep No More

One of my all-time-favorite mystery writers is P.D. James. This is one of 2 collections of short-stories published posthumously that I recently checked out from the library. The other is The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories. James wrote  21 books and I think I have read almost all of the fiction entries. I don't find the short stores as satisfying, although they are certainly clever and often surprising. Nobody gets away scott-free--or do they? The advantage, of course, is not getting drawn into a longer work that keeps me from going to sleep at night!
The Washington Post provides synopses of the 6 short stories in this volume and says of the collection, "James was never much interested in ax-murderers or serial killers; she preferred to examine respectable citizens who turn to crime. The stories collected here are variously surprising, sardonic and darkly humorous, and are always intelligent and beautifully written."