Playing Roulette with Minotaur Books

 

Playing Roulette with Minotaur Books   If you’ve been paying attention to the blog, you’ve already noticed my recent devotion to the writings of David Housewright; especially his long-running series about unlicensed Twin Cities P.I., Rushmore McKenzie. Back in February, 2024, I noticed the library had a shelf full of the McKenzie books in hardcover, which jangled my memory of when the long gone and fabled Leisure Books—fabled at my house, anyway—was reprinting the series in mass market during the second half of the ’00s. A title that had caught my attention back then was the second book in the series, Tin City (2005). I bought it but never read it, lost it in one move or another, and utterly forgot about both the series and Housewright. But this library bookshelf rekindled my interest in the series. So being a studious kind—and never really caring if I start with the first or twentieth title in a series—I studied each book, mostly looking at the blurbs from trades like Publishers Weekly (which I agree with often) and Kirkus (which I agree with less often) and settled on the eleventh book, The Devil May Care (2014), because it had received a starred review from PW. And wow did that book hit every note just right. To say I was hooked is an understatement. After turning the last page, I rushed to the library to retrieve the first book in the series, A Hard Ticket Home (2003), which of course wasn’t in the collection and so I rolled to the second, Tin City. The very same title that had caught my eye nearly two decades earlier.

After racing through a handful of the McKenzie’s, an idea jittered and popped. An idea that went something like this: the library has a bunch of mysteries published by Minotaur Books—the same house that has brought out all twenty-one of the McKenzie books—in the late ’00s and throughout the ’10s; so, I decided, I would concentrate much of my non-mandatory reading to the Minotaur Books sitting on the library’s shelves. And it went well, even though it was kind of like playing roulette with my reading since I often knew nothing about the books or authors before picking them up. Although I’ll admit I took too much advantage of the McKenzie’s since they accounted for eleven of the nineteen Minotaur titles I read. All eight of the authors were new to me and I have every intention of reading more books by at least five of those writers: David Housewright, Sasscer Hill, Brian McGilloway, John Keyse-Walker, and J. D. Rhoades. Due to sheer meanness, I chose not to finish two of the titles: Ranchero, by Rick Gavin (2011), and L’Assassin, by Peter Steiner (2008). As for 2025, I’m thinking of sticking to the game plan for at least the first few months, but after that, who knows? Maybe I’ll schedule my reading around Golden Books or maybe Harlequin’s NASCAR romance series or…. Here’s the rundown of the Minotaur Books I checked out from the library and read in 2024 (click the titles for the review, if I wrote one):

February The Devil May Care, by David Housewright (2014) – McKenzie #11 Tin City, by David Housewright (2005) – McKenzie #2

March Pretty Girl Gone, by David Housewright (2006) – McKenzie #3 Madman on a Drum, by David Housewright (2008) – McKenzie #5 The Taking of Libbie, SD, by David Housewright (2010) – McKenzie #7

April Flamingo Road, by Sasscer Hill (2017) – Fia McKee #1 Bleed a River Deep, by Brian McGilloway (2010) – Ben Devlin #3

May Man in the Water, by David Housewright (2024) – McKenzie #21 The Territory, by Tricia Fields (2011) – Josie Gray #1

June Highway 61, by David Housewright - 2011 – McKenzie #8 Ranchero, by Rick Gavin (2011) – Nick Reid #1

July Curse of the Jade Lady, by David Housewright (2012) – McKenzie #9

September The Last Kind Word, by David Housewright (2013) – McKenzie #10

November The Dark Side of Town, by Sasscer Hill (2018) – Fia McKee #2 Unidentified Woman #15, David Housewright (2015) – McKenzie #12

December Sun, Sand, Murder, by John Keyse-Walker (2016) – Teddy Creque #1 Breaking Cover, by J. D. Rhoades (2008) – Tony Wolf Stealing the Countess, by David Housewright (2016) – McKenzie #13 L’Assassin, by Peter Steiner (2008)

Trivia – My short story, “Asia Divine,” appeared in the same anthology, Bullets and Other Hurting Things (2021), as David Housewright’s tale, “Best Man.” A connection I didn’t realize I had with McKenzie’s creator until a few months ago. “Asia Divine” is available in my collection, Casinos, Motels, Gators (2024).

Review: "The Mailman" by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

 

The Mailman by Andrew Welsh-Huggins Mysterious Press, 2025     The Mailman, by Andrew Welsh-Huggins—best known as the author of the seven books in the Andy Hayes, P.I. series—is a peddle-to-the-metal thriller with a nod to Jack Reacher but with a wholly original character in freelance deliveryman, Mercury Carter. While delivering a package to attorney Rachel Stanfield, Merc finds Rachel and her husband, Glenn, being questioned, tortured really, by four men looking for Stella Wolford, the complainant in a seemingly meaningless wrongful termination lawsuit against Rachel’s corporate client. Rachel hasn’t seen Stella since her deposition weeks earlier, and Rachel has no idea where Stella lives. But the men, led by the menacing Finn, are determined that Rachel can tell them where Stella is hiding. Merc reacts quickly—and very un-deliveryman-like—and incapacitates two of the men before Finn stands Merc down by threatening Rachel and Glenn. Finn, with his entourage, leaves Merc and Glenn behind and takes Rachel as a hostage. With Glenn in tow, and a hunch Finn is going after Glenn’s daughter at a Chicago boarding school, Merc goes after the kidnappers with a single verbalized goal: his night won’t be over until the package is delivered to Rachel. The Mailman is a multi-layered chase thriller—there are a bunch of moving parts that are handled marvelously by Welsh-Huggins—with a handful of surprises and a likable, if somewhat stiff, hero. Merc’s backstory, including his motivation to help people, is told in short and interesting snippets in the first half of the narrative. The action moves across the Midwest, from Indianapolis to Chicago and places in-between, without much importance of the where—instead it is the what and the why of the villains’ activities (and Merc’s reaction to them) that give the tale interest. The Mailman is a nail-biting escapist thriller with twists and whirls and everything else the genre promises. It’s damn fun, too.

Check out The Mailman  on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the hardcover.

Review: "To Florida" by Robert Sampson

 

“To Florida” by Robert Sampson from Hard-Boiled ed. by Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian Oxford, 1997   Robert Sampson is a name I’m unfamiliar with, but if his story, “To Florida”—originally published in 1987—is representative of his body of work, it’s a serious deficiency in my reading. “To Florida” is a marvelous piece of noir about a low-life named Jerry Teller. When Teller’s girlfriend, Sue Ann, walks into the couple’s apartment with an armload of groceries, Teller is counting a stack of cash and watching cartoons. Sue Ann asks him where the money came from and if they could pay Mr. Davidson, the landlord, since their rent is late again. Teller responds, “He gave me this.” Sue Ann is confused, a condition that’s natural for her, and her confusion only increases when she stumbles across Mr. Davidson’s corpse on the kitchen linoleum. Her confusion turns to excitement when Teller asks if she wants go to Florida with him, in their former landlord’s car (of course). Thus their journey begins with a dazzle of Bonnie and Clyde and a shiver of Natural Born Killers—but very much its own self from beginning to end. “To Florida” is a ride on a dark street with a single, and obvious, destination. Teller is a straight-up crazy f*ck and Sue Ann is—while not truly bad—a lost girl from a bad home with no possibilities and nowhere else to go. Sampson’s narrative is linear perfection with a tight, laconic prose, and a measured, suspense building, pace. While the plot goes where it’s expected, there are surprises along the way and even better, the open ending leaves a little something for the reader’s imagination. “To Florida” is the best short I’ve read so far this year and honestly, it will take something special to overtake it.

There’s not much about Robert Sampson on the internet. The introduction to the story in Hard-Boiled, written by Jack Adrian, tells us he was “fascinated by pulp magazines” and wrote seven books and “countless” articles about the pulps. Several of his articles were published by The Armchair Detective. Sampson wrote for radio and placed shorts with Planet Stories, Science Fiction Stories, Asimov’s Science Fiction, the Weird Tales revival from the 1990s, and his story, “Rain in Pinton County”—published in New Black Mask—won the 1986 Edgar for best short story. Robert Sampson was born in 1927 and died in 1992.

Review: "The Moon is Down" by John Steinbeck

 

The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck Penguin, 1995   John Steinbeck wrote The Moon is Down, as an anti-Nazi propaganda piece for the U.S. Foreign Information Service (FIS)—which means it is one of Steinbeck’s minor works but it is far from lifeless propaganda and very much worth reading as literature. It was rejected by the FIS because it believed its depiction of an American town occupied by a foreign power would demoralize American readers during the early days of World War 2. Steinbeck reworked the setting, placing it in a nameless town in a nameless European country, but—as Donald V. Coers wrote in his Introduction to the edition I read—a place “cold and stern like Norway, cunning and implacable like Denmark, reasonable like France.” It was published by The Viking Press in 1942, and clandestine editions—The Moon is Down was illegal in all occupied Europe—were distributed throughout the continent (including Norway, Holland, The Netherlands, and France) and in smaller numbers in China as it fought against fascist Japan. Steinbeck had intended The Moon is Down “as a celebration of the durability of democracy” and it succeeded. The Town is overrun by conquering soldiers with only a whisper—a Quisling-like businessman had arranged for its small contingent of soldiers and its mayor to be away at the precise time of the invasion. The townspeople are stunned into something like a stupor. No one knows what to do. No one talks. Rather they walk in the streets with their faces turned down, their minds numbed with shock. The invaders came for the town’s coal mine and it is imperative it speed up the processing and coal shipments for the war effort. But as days and weeks pass, the Town’s citizenry regains their balance and begin rebelling in small ways. They are always polite to the invaders, but never friendly; a strategy that intensifies the loneliness and misery of the occupying soldiers. Their work in the mine is intentionally slow and when they can, they make small sabotages. The Moon is Down—a title borrowed from MacBeth—truly is a celebration of democracy. The townspeople are rendered with realism—there are collaborators, cowards, profiteers, and resistors. Rather than dehumanizing the invading soldiers, Steinbeck paints them in a genuine manner, as simple men following orders with a mindless allegiance to an authoritarian system. A system with a single head and no room for its subjects to question their great leader’s portrayal of reality. The Moon is Down is as relevant today as when it was written so many decades ago. It has the power to build morale in our darkening world where fascism and authoritarianism are rising. It is a blueprint for quiet defiance. And it showcases fascism’s primary flaw—an inability for anyone other than the leader to think—which is the opposite of democracy’s greatest strength.

Find The Moon is Down on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.

Shorts: "On the Corner" by Ben Boulden

On the Corner by Ben Boulden   *          *         *         *   JACK HAD SHOWN UP TWO YEARS AGO with a cardboard sign lettered in what had once been black marker, but had since faded to brown by Vermont’s harsh sun. The sign, in a shaky hand that slanted upwards from left to right, read: STRANDED! NEED AID! ANYTHING HELPS! The sign never changed in those two years Jack stood at the intersection of U.S. Routes 4 and 7, a bounce south of Rutland. His clothes never seemed to change, either. They were always clean, if a little ragged around the edges, and more than one motorist made a flippant remark that always sounded something like, “That lazy bastard dresses better than I do!” Of course, it wasn’t true. Jack dressed like a pauper but he was proud enough to keep his three outfits, which he called “costumes” when no one was listening, as clean as he could without benefit of a washing machine or even warm water. In the summer, everyone knew, Jack camped in a shady thicket of trees a mile south of his roadside work place on a bend of Cold River. He washed his clothes in the icy water, hanging them to dry on the dead branch of an impressive Eastern Hemlock. In the winter, well—the winter was different and no one seemed to know exactly where Jack slept. He sure didn’t take advantage of Vermont’s benevolent motel program that allowed its unhoused residents a free room. He rode, just as he did all summer, his squeaking and rusty Schwinn bicycle south at 5 pm. His summer camp abandoned from November to March with nary a clue as to where he went during those cold months. More than one of Rutland’s finest, both civilian and police officer, had taken it on themselves to follow Jack but none had been able to track him past the intersection of Routes 7 and 103. Right about where Rutland’s tiny airport sat. It was a mystery everyone in town talked about. A few figured he was a ghoul sent to chasten Rutland’s Godless denizens. While others thought him to be an eccentric millionaire with nothing better to do than stand on a street corner and look sad, which everyone agreed he did quite well. But most people figured Jack for an addict, a headcase, or as one old man with a scraggly beard said, “A lazy shit.” They also agreed Jack worked that corner like a job. He peddled into the intersection every morning at seven, stood with his tattered and unchanging sign until five, stepped back onto his bike and disappeared down the road. He did okay, too, since Rutland’s residents were mostly kind. He averaged $15 a day and never spent a nickel on alcohol or drugs. But his sign’s message became something of a joke to those commuters with a sarcastic sense of humor. A few liked to laugh and say, “Just how long can a person be stranded before they call where they are home?” Which is exactly what Janet Walters, a nurse at the local hospital, said to her teenage daughter—slumped down with embarrassment in the passenger seat—after passing Jack an Abe Lincoln through the window of her Kia Soul. It was December and the outside air was sharp. Even as Janet’s window was rolling up, Jack heard every word. He said to himself (but loud enough for Janet and her daughter to hear), “How long, indeed?” Janet’s daughter slumped even lower, and a crimson blotch of embarrassment spread across Janet’s face. She took her finger off the automatic window button before the window had fully closed and looked at Jack. His breath crystalizing in the frigid air. A puppy dog smile decorating his homely face and a benign curiosity in his bovine eyes. Janet said, “I’m sorry. I—” Jack hushed her with a finger to his lips. “No harm meant, ma’am.” “Mom…!” said Janet’s daughter. “It’s—” Janet began. She looked at the bumper of the car ahead of her, studied it for a moment as if an answer to an unasked question would reveal itself. Then she turned to Jack and said, “What are you doing for Christmas?” Jack cocked his head like the mutt Janet’s ex-husband had stolen in the divorce. He said, “Christmas,” like he had never heard the word before. His puppy smile grew bigger, his eyes seemed to dance, and Janet could have sworn Jack was wiggling his hips like a dog wagging its tail. “We always have dinner—” “Mom!” Janet’s daughter sounded alarmed. “We—” The car behind Janet gave an angry honk. She flinched and tightened her grip on the wheel. “Mom,” her daughter said again, “the light’s green.” Janet reached into her wallet and pulled out another bill and pushed it through the window towards Jack. Jack shook his head. “No ma’am,” he said. “You’ve already given me plenty.” “But—”  A second and then a third horn joined the chorus behind Janet. “You better go along, ma’am,” Jack said. “You’ll be late.” He stuffed the five dollars into a front pocket and turned away. Janet sighed and accelerated through the light and turned left onto Route 7. Her daughter pushed herself up in the seat. She said, “Geez, Mom. You almost invited that…that homeless man to dinner!” Janet smiled, just a little. “I’ll have to finish the invitation when I see him again tomorrow.” But no one ever saw Jack again. Two hikers—a woman and her husband—found Jack’s old Schwinn leaning against the Clarendon Gorge Bridge the next spring. The husband posted a photograph of the five-dollar bill with its note clearly in focus on Clarendon’s Neighborhood Facebook page. But it didn’t make sense to anyone— THANK YOU JANET. I FOUND WHAT I WAS LOOKING FOR. NOW I CAN GO HOME. —because Janet lived in a neighboring town and never saw it. But what made Jack’s story, and Janet’s too, truly remarkable is a twelve-year-old boy and his father swear they saw a flying saucer hovering over the tree line on a moonless night just before Christmas. That same day Janet had spoken with Jack about Christmas dinner. Its lights flashing blue and red and white before it zipped impossibly fast towards the star-laden sky and disappeared into the heavens. Fin

Ben Boulden is the author of two novels, several short stories, and more than 400 articles, book reviews, and columns. His latest book, Casinos, Motels, Gators, is available for Kindle, and as a paperback everywhere. Click here to see it at Amazon.

© 2025 by Ben Boulden

 

Review: "Pro Bono" by Thomas Perry

 

Pro Bono by Thomas Perry Mysterious Press, 2025   Pro Bono, by Thomas Perry, is a lightning fast, surprising, and uniquely structured—there are two separate plotlines with one acting as a catalyst for the other, but otherwise never converging—chase thriller. Vesper Ellis, a beautiful, young, and wealthy widow, enters the law office of Charles Warren with concerns that someone is embezzling the investment accounts her late husband had managed. Since his death a few years earlier, Vesper hasn’t done anything with the accounts other than place the quarterly statements in their respective folders. But lately she has noticed the accounts seem to be stagnant even as the market is going up. Warren, who has his own experience with fraudsters, takes the case seriously and when Vesper disappears shortly after leaving his office he reacts as if something nefarious has happened. He contacts the client who referred Vesper to him, any other of her friends he can find, and finally the police. In the background, an old heartbreak of his mother’s resurfaces, also involving financial fraud, which is only tangentially related to Vesper’s plight but plays a large part of the story anyway. Pro Bono is vintage Perry: the plotting is swift, the action is fast, and the pages seem to burn in the reader’s hands. Much of the background plot (or the catalyst plot) is used to build Warren’s motivation for helping Vesper—a widow being defrauded by bad actors, which is exactly what happened to his mother. But it is more than that and it plays out in a surprising and dangerous way. Pro Bono is far from Perry’s best. The separate plotlines are both interesting, but I had hoped the two would converge in a satisfying way, and both are dependent on coincidence. If you’ve never read Perry before, I would suggest starting elsewhere in his backlist, but if you’re already a fan—you’ll like this one, too.

Check out Pro Bono on Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the hardcover.

My Favorite Mystery Books Read (But Not Published) in 2024

My Favorite Mystery Books Read (But Not Published) in 2024   I debated about doing a second best of the year post featuring mystery books I read in 2024, but were published in a prior year. I mulled it over, lost sleep about it, and finally concluded—well, that conclusion is obvious, I guess. So…drum roll please…here are my favorite five mysteries I read in 2024, which were published in the far away past. My favorite mysteries published in 2024 can be found here.
SHOOTING SCRIPT, by Gavin Lyall (Charles Scribner, 1966). This aviation thriller from the master of the form, is Lyall’s fourth novel. Set in the Caribbean—Jamaica and the fictional Republic Libra—with a film crew, an ancient WW2 bomber, freedom fighters, and a little revenge. In my review I wrote: “Shooting Script is about as good as a mid-century thriller gets.”   Read the review here (see second paragraph). Check out Shooting Script here at Amazon.
THE SUMMONS, by Peter Lovesey (Mysterious Press, 1995). This traditional mystery, which is the third Peter Diamond investigation, is a marvelous fair-play puzzler with humor, wit, and a cracking good plot. In my review I wrote: “the denouement is a blissful surprise, and even better, a surprise that makes perfect sense.”   Read the review here. Check out The Summons here at Amazon.
ROBAK’S WITCH, by Joe L. Hensley (St. Martin’s Press, 1997). Don Robak, a trial lawyer that has just been elected as a rural Indiana judge, is recovering from a gunshot wound before he officially takes the bench. He agrees to help another lawyer defend a woman accused of killing two kids and what he finds is a marvelous mixture of the hardboiled and the traditional mystery. In my review, I wrote: “Robak’s Witch is simply terrific!”   Read the review here. Check out Robak’s Witch here at Amazon.
MADMAN ON A DRUM, by David Housewright (Minotaur, 2008). The fifth Rushmore McKenzie novel, which is also my favorite of the twelve series books I’ve read, is a personal case for McKenzie. When his goddaughter is kidnapped, there isn’t much McKenzie wouldn’t do to get her back. In my review, I wrote: “Madman on a Drum is a hardboiled tour-de-force private eye novel about justice and revenge.”   Read the review here. Check out Madman on a Drum here at Amazon.
SUN, SAND, MURDER, by John Keyse-Walker (Minotaur, 2016). This easy-going mystery is set on the tiny Caribbean Island of Anegada, part of the Royal Virgin Islands, where crime is uncommon and murder is unheard of. But, of course (as the title suggests), murder finds Anegada. In my review, I wrote: “Sun, Sand, Murder is a delightful whodunit (although it isn’t exactly fair-play) with a smattering of eccentric characters…a brilliant setting, and just enough action to keep the pages turning.”   Read the review here (see second paragraph). Check out Sun, Sand, Murder here at Amazon.
HONORABLE MENTIONS: Hemingway’s Notebook, by Bill Granger (Crown, 1986); Turnabout, by Jeremiah Healy (Five Star, 2001); Flamingo Road, by Sasscer Hill (Minotaur, 2017)