Black Cherry Blues

This Edgar-winning 3rd installment in James Lee Burke's "Dave Robichaux" series. Enemies have already come after Dave and murdered his wife Annie. Now a new threat appears when an old friend confides in Dave that he overheard talk of a murder. This time the bad guys, who work in the oil lease business in Montana, are threatening his adopted daughter, Alafair. Dave goes after them and leaves them beaten but alive. One of the men kills the other and makes it look as though Dave is the killer. Now Dave must travel to Montana with Alafair in tow to clear him name or end up in Angola prison.  While Kirkus is once again less than laudatory of Burke's writing style, they still conclude that "Burke tells an evocative and compelling story of a good man's struggle with the vigilante inside him."

Publishers Weekly is more favorable, opening their review by saying "Burke pits a land-hungry oil company against a Blackfeet Indian reservation in a stunning novel that takes detective fiction into new imaginative realms.." and they continue "Robicheaux's dogged investigation...sets him on a collision course with Mafia thugs and oil interests...All the main characters in this darkly beautiful, lyric saga carry heavy emotional baggage, and Robicheaux's sleuthing is a simultaneous exorcism of demons of grief, loss, fear, rage, vengeance. Burke's fictional terrain--stretching from the Louisiana bayous to Montana's red cliffs and pine-dotted hills--is uniquely his own, yet also a microcosm of a multi-ethnic America. He writes from the heart and the gut."  

Wolf Trap

 I have not read anything by Connor Sullivan before and don't know if I will read his previous thriller, Sleeping Bear. In spite of very positive reviews for both of his books, I found his writing to often be clunky and he frequently used the wrong word to convey his characters' actions. The premise is that Brian Rhome, a former operative for one of the CIA's most clandestine services, has left the service and gone off the grid. Motivated by guilt because he led his team into a terrorist ambush, he is totally disillusioned with the powers that be, himself and the world in general. However he gets pulled back in by his godfather, also a member of Ground Branch, with the offer of being able to kill the man who slaughtered his team and at the same time possibly prevent an assassination attempt on the President of the United States. I will give the guy credit for creating an elaborate and eventually compelling plot and hope that his writing gaffes are just the result of bad editing. 

Publishers Weekly says of this book, "In this exhilarating thriller from Sullivan (Sleeping Bear), U.S. president Angela Buchanan is on the brink of a major political victory with the imminent signing of a sweeping international climate-change agreement....Sullivan's clever rhetorical tricks will keep even savvy readers in the dark while he ratchets the tension ever higher. By the end, readers will be exhausted, breathless, and eager for further Ground Branch adventures. Sullivan is a writer to watch." Booklist reviewer agrees that "it's a solid, well-crafted thriller that will keep readers turning the pages."

Plunder

This book by Mary Anna Evans is the 7th installment in the Faye Longchamps series and, as such, there's a lot of background on the characters that I don't know. Faye is an archaeologist who, in this book, has been married for some time to Joe Wolf Mantooth (Native American) and has a toddler named Michael. They have come along with her, from their home on Joyeaux Island off the coast of Florida, to the Mississippi delta to provide a survey of archaeological sites that are in the line of fire from the recently exploded Deepwater Horizon oil platform. While there, she meets precocious 16-year-old amateur treasure hunter Amande Landreneau, who lives on a decrepit houseboat with her voodoo mambo grandmother. Amande is equally fascinated with ancient artifacts and shows Faye some of the ones she has found in the area. But within days, both an uncle who Amande has never met and her grandmother are murdered, throwing Amande's future into question. Her mother disappeared when Amande was a baby, and the father has never been in the picture, but the vultures quickly descend trying to take the houseboat and what little income might come to Amande through some oil shares her mother had. Faye and Joe want to protect Amande but must also get this enormous survey done before the oil covers everything and may even begin to threaten their home in Florida. I would gladly read more in this series and agree with Publishers Weekly that I "hope to see more of Amande in the sequel." Great characters (Booklist calls then "strong" and "sympathetic"), tight plotting, and colorful settings.

As the New York Journal of Books notes, the threat of the impending oil pollution provides as much tension in the story as do the murders. The reviewer goes on to say that "Strong heroines are always a pleasure to read about and both Faye and Amande fit that bill," and go on to say "highly recommended."

Eagle Catcher

Having recently read a later book (The Girl with Braided Hair) by Margaret Coel set on the Wind River Reservation, I wanted to go back and start the series from the beginning. This book introduces "two intelligent, compassionate sleuths: Father John O'Malley, S.J., a history scholar and recovering alcoholic, exiled to an Indian mission on the Great Plains, and Vicky Holden, an attorney who, after ten years in the outside world, has returned to the reservation to help her people" (from the author's website).
The opening event is the murder of the tribal chairman of the Arapahoes at Wind River, and the immediate suspect is his nephew, Anthony, who was heard arguing with him the previous evening. Vicky takes Anthony's case while she and Father O'Malley undertake to discover who the real killer is. The motivation for the crime involves the early history of the Arapahoes when land was taken from them, and their current efforts to buy back pieces of that land through the profits from their oil (mineral rights). Of course Vicky and John make themselves targets when they start digging into past and present crimes against the tribe. Once again, this is well-written, tightly plotted, and informative, providing insights into historical and present situations and issues facing the Arapaho people. I would not hesitate to read more in the series.

The English Girl

This book by Daniel Silva was again the discovery of a new author for me. I have certainly heard of Silva but not read any of his work, although that will change now.  Apparently there are several previous installments that involve protagonist Gabriel Allon, described on the dust jacket as "master assassin, art restorer and spy." Here he is called in by no less than the British Prime Minister, whose mistress has ostensibly been kidnapped from Corsica by French criminals and is being held for ransom. Allon agrees to help only because he owes a favor to his British Secret Service counterpart. This is an intriguing plot grounded in current events surrounding control of the the world's oil supplies. At first this appears to be just a grab for money, but it is quickly revealed by Allon to be a "false flag" operation being run by the current day equivalent of the Russian KGB in an attempt to blackmail Britain into selling North Sea oil rights. Layer after layer is revealed as Allon digs deeper and brings in the resources of Israel's Secret Service to carry out a complex sting operation that will both stop the Russians and find the victim. Allon may be rescuing her from more than just a kidnapping, however. Well written, fast-paced, good detailed settings all make this a compelling thriller and I will definitely go back for more, starting with the first in the Allon series.