FREE/BARGAIN - Mystery, Suspense, Thriller - 2014

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by Wearever

I am enjoying the back & forth banter, about the Maisie Dobbs & Bess Crawford series

I have read a couple each and have liked them. Although I like the Rutledge series best. I must confess that the first Maisie Dobbs, ( The one on sale now ) is not one I want to read. Lol. Only because I don't want to go back that far in her history. I only started to read her books with the 3rd one. I know it's a good book, but I feel that I have met her character as an adult, and she has moved on.

This always happens to me when I miss the first couple books Then of course they go on sale.

Actually, even though you've read the subsequent books, you might enjoy the first book. Just think of it as a "prequel". I like the fact that there's a lot of time spent explaining her relationships with Lady Rowan Compton and Dr. Maurice Blanche. These relationships certainly color all the rest of the series.

And now I'm going to have to track down the Bess Crawford books!

[mitford13]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Bargain @ $2.99 for Canadians only from Simon & Schuster's Touchstone imprint (non-couponable; linkage goes to Kobo, should be price-matched in the usual Canadian stores, was $12 in the US when I checked):

Death of a Patriot by Don Gutteridge (Wikipedia), the recently-published 6th and latest in his Marc Edwards series of historical military/legal murder mysteries set in pre-Confederation Canada, where the tensions between the UK and US are still going on over the colonial borders, starring the titular officer-turned-lawyer...

I read the first five on my Scribd account and thought the series was pretty good, overall (though I did rate one 2stars.) This one is too new for Scribd, and I'm not too hopeful about an amazon drop for us 'mericans, but this price is perfect! (With a border hop...)
TYVM

[peachiekene]

Originally Posted by Wearever

I am enjoying the back & forth banter, about the Maisie Dobbs & Bess Crawford series

I have read a couple each and have liked them. Although I like the Rutledge series best. I must confess that the first Maisie Dobbs, ( The one on sale now ) is not one I want to read. Lol. Only because I don't want to go back that far in her history. I only started to read her books with the 3rd one. I know it's a good book, but I feel that I have met her character as an adult, and she has moved on.

This always happens to me when I miss the first couple books Then of course they go on sale.

Me too. I did grab it since I could use a coupon on it - "unfortunately" I gave away my better coupons and could only use a 35% off, but that made it under $2 - so a pretty good deal for me. :P

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

I definitely wouldn't place the series in the trad-cozy-ish British mysteries. The books are rather dark, and speak of hard times and situations.

Thanks for the correction, that does make them sound a bit more interesting; I'd gotten a kind of cozy-ish impression from a quickie skim of just the opening chapter and the general sort of setting (and all the Agatha Awards), which of course is never necessarily representative of how the story will turn out.

In any case, I now have the 1st Maisie Dobbs on loan from the local-library-which-is-within-walking-distance, though I probably won't get around to it until next week after I've finished some other titles which are due Real Soon Now. Sadly, they did not have the early volumes of Don Gutteridge's Marc Edwards series (only #4 & #6, which I just bought), but likely the not-so-local-libraries will have them and I'm probably buying those anyway once they price-drop enough.

Bargain @ $2.99 each from HarperCollins' Witness Impulse imprint (non-couponable, linkage goes to Kobo, price should be good in the standard Canada & US stores, may possibly be matched elsewhere):

#1-4 & #6 in Rory Clements' (SYKM) John Shakespeare Mystery combo murder/espionage historical series set in Elizabethan England, starring the older brother (entirely fictional) of Will, whom one of the blurbs likens to an Elizabethan Bond (so… a cold-blooded near-sociopathic womanizing manipulator and spy with no life outside of his job ), in the employ of Sir Francis Walsingham. SYKM says that these have multiple minor award noms, and provides a review for the 1st in series. #5 is currently priced at $9.99, so $3 per novel for 5 out of the 6 seems a pretty good price if this appeals to you.

NB: The author's website says these can be read out of order. And from the TOC listings, it looks like he includes historical notes (and also some supplementary backgrounders on his website). These do sound like they could be my kind of thing (the late Tudor period is one of my favourites to read both fiction and non-), so I'll read the samples, and if they're promising enough give the 1st one a try.

In order:

1. Martyr, involving an assassination plot on Sir Francis Drake
2. Revenger (2010 Historical Dagger Award winner, according to SYKM), supposed to be investigating the doomed Roanoke colony (Wikipedia), which nobody has ever figured out (although the most likely explanation of absorption into the local indigenous populations is probably it)
3. Prince, a generic kind of murders and plague thing with no historical name-dropping in the blurb
4. Traitor, involving the mystic Dr. John Dee (Wikipedia) and a threat of a second Spanish Armada
5. The Heretics (not on sale)
6. The Queen's Man, involving yet another plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots (ETA: a customer review says that this is a prequel, being the chronological 1st which explains Our Hero's backstory)

There also happens to be a novella, which is priced at a reasonable 99 cents in the US, and an unreasonable $2.99 in Canada. Our petro-dollar has not fallen that much due to the drop in the price of oil, just so you know.

[wawasteele]

Originally Posted by Wearever

I am enjoying the back & forth banter, about the Maisie Dobbs & Bess Crawford series

I have read a couple each and have liked them. Although I like the Rutledge series best.

I've enjoyed the banter too. I've also read all three series. I like the Bess Crawford ones the best and Ruthledge comes in the last, although I am very close to being current on his series. I can only read his series when I'm in the right mood. They are just so much darker to me than the other two.

[Lynx-lynx]

Martin Walker (another fav of mine!) has two books on offer depending on your location:

Bruno and le Père Noel: A Christmas Short Story
51 pages
blurb:

Spoiler:

It's the last market day before Christmas and Bruno, Chief of Police is preparing for a traditional gastronomic feast. But, never off duty for long, Bruno is called to action when he receives information that a prisoner on parole has gone missing, last seen heading for St Denis, where his ex-wife and son live. The goose, the oysters, his English girlfriend's Christmas pudding and Bruno's famous mulled wine will just have to wait…

And if Martin Walker's 'Bruno' novels have inspired you to visit this beautiful part of France yourself, keep reading for the author's own guide to 'A Perfect Week in Perigord'

Free at:
Amazon Aus
Amazon UK
99 cents in Amazon CA and US

Bruno, Chief of Police: (Bruno, Chief of Police #1)
$2.99 Amazon CA and Kobo CA (Discount codes don't apply)
(But full price everywhere else, I think)

blurb:

Spoiler:

A Recipe for Success
Take a rural commune in the heart of the Dordogne and a one-man police department by the name of Bruno.
Add a brutal murder with the hallmarks of a racial crime against immigrant workers from North Africa.
Season with clues that point to unsettled feuds from the Nazi legacy of the Second World War.
Serve with Gallic charm in all good bookshops as the first book in a brilliant crime fiction series.

Set in the street markets, cobbled squares, vineyards and farmland of the Dordogne area of France, Bruno, Chief of Police features Captain Bruno Courrèges, a man as charming and eccentric as he is wise. A formidable investigator, Bruno must rise to the challenge when the head of an Algerian family is murdered and the peace of Bruno’s beloved village of St. Denis is shattered.

Racism is the obvious conclusion, and the son of a local doctor who is caught playing sex games surrounded by Nazi paraphernalia is the immediate suspect. But Bruno knows his people well and sees a more complex explanation lurking in the memories and unsettled feuds of the German occupation.

This addictively readable novel, filled with the sights and sounds-and politics-of the French countryside, launches a stunning new crime fiction series.

It's been this low price in the Canadian Kobo store since the sales last week, don't know how long it will last.

The Bruno series is a must read for me!!

[Apache]

An excellent series and I am eagerly waiting for the release of the next book in the series.
Apache

[Wearever]

Originally Posted by Hampshire Nanny

Actually, even though you've read the subsequent books, you might enjoy the first book. Just think of it as a "prequel". I like the fact that there's a lot of time spent explaining her relationships with Lady Rowan Compton and Dr. Maurice Blanche. These relationships certainly color all the rest of the series.

And now I'm going to have to track down the Bess Crawford books!

Thanks Hampshire Nanny Your right Dr. Maurice Blanche & Lady Compton do come up in the latter books I have read. So I did get the 1st book Maisie Dobbs while it's still on sale

Hope you enjoy the Bess Crawford books as well. I like that time period WW1, too.

[Wearever]

Originally Posted by wawasteele

I've enjoyed the banter too. I've also read all three series. I like the Bess Crawford ones the best and Ruthledge comes in the last, although I am very close to being current on his series. I can only read his series when I'm in the right mood. They are just so much darker to me than the other two.

That's true about the Rutledge series, I also have to make sure I'm in the right mood to read them. There is just something so compelling about " Hamish " the character that Rutledge talks to & can see and hear, and guilt in his subconscious mind. He forgets that Hamish is not really there. Lol. I really need to catch up on those & Bess Crawford.

[sufue]

@AT Drake, from previous posts, I think you and I may have similar historical mystery tastes, and I've read the first 2 in the Rory Clements/John Shakespeare series and the one with the 2nd Armada threat, and have liked them. Thanks for a chance to pick up a couple more at good prices!

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Thanks for the correction, that does make them sound a bit more interesting; I'd gotten a kind of cozy-ish impression from a quickie skim of just the opening chapter and the general sort of setting (and all the Agatha Awards), which of course is never necessarily representative of how the story will turn out.

In any case, I now have the 1st Maisie Dobbs on loan from the local-library-which-is-within-walking-distance, though I probably won't get around to it until next week after I've finished some other titles which are due Real Soon Now. Sadly, they did not have the early volumes of Don Gutteridge's Marc Edwards series (only #4 & #6, which I just bought), but likely the not-so-local-libraries will have them and I'm probably buying those anyway once they price-drop enough.

Bargain @ $2.99 each from HarperCollins' Witness Impulse imprint (non-couponable, linkage goes to Kobo, price should be good in the standard Canada & US stores, may possibly be matched elsewhere):

#1-4 & #6 in Rory Clements' (SYKM) John Shakespeare Mystery combo murder/espionage historical series set in Elizabethan England, starring the older brother (entirely fictional) of Will, whom one of the blurbs likens to an Elizabethan Bond (so… a cold-blooded near-sociopathic womanizing manipulator and spy with no life outside of his job ), in the employ of Sir Francis Walsingham. SYKM says that these have multiple minor award noms, and provides a review for the 1st in series. #5 is currently priced at $9.99, so $3 per novel for 5 out of the 6 seems a pretty good price if this appeals to you.

NB: The author's website says these can be read out of order. And from the TOC listings, it looks like he includes historical notes (and also some supplementary backgrounders on his website). These do sound like they could be my kind of thing (the late Tudor period is one of my favourites to read both fiction and non-), so I'll read the samples, and if they're promising enough give the 1st one a try.

In order:

1. Martyr, involving an assassination plot on Sir Francis Drake
2. Revenger (2010 Historical Dagger Award winner, according to SYKM), supposed to be investigating the doomed Roanoke colony (Wikipedia), which nobody has ever figured out (although the most likely explanation of absorption into the local indigenous populations is probably it)
3. Prince, a generic kind of murders and plague thing with no historical name-dropping in the blurb
4. Traitor, involving the mystic Dr. John Dee (Wikipedia) and a threat of a second Spanish Armada
5. The Heretics (not on sale)
6. The Queen's Man, involving yet another plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots (ETA: a customer review says that this is a prequel, being the chronological 1st which explains Our Hero's backstory)

There also happens to be a novella, which is priced at a reasonable 99 cents in the US, and an unreasonable $2.99 in Canada. Our petro-dollar has not fallen that much due to the drop in the price of oil, just so you know.

[sufue]

And now there's the Die Laughing 2 "box set" - whatever a "box set" is for ebooks, other than a hassle to separate into its various books.

This one is in the same style as the Die Laughing and Violent Femmes sets referenced up-thread. It's $0.99 right now at Amazon US (link), and contains the following five books:

Ben Rehder: Gone the Next
Paul Levine: Last Chance Lassiter
Parnell Hall: Client
Bill Fitzhugh: Radio Activity
Steve Brewer: Calabama

blurbs are here:

Spoiler:

GONE THE NEXT
Ben Rehder

Meet Roy Ballard, fun-loving wise-cracking freelance videographer with a knack for catching insurance cheats. He's working a routine case, complete with hours of tedious surveillance, when he sees something that shakes him to the core. There, with the subject, is a little blond girl wearing a pink top and denim shorts—the same outfit worn by Tracy Turner, a six-year-old abducted the day before. When the police are skeptical of Ballard's report—and with his history, who can blame them?—it's the beginning of the most important case of his life.


LAST CHANCE LASSITER
Paul Levine

In this prequel to the “Jake Lassiter” series, the linebacker-turned-lawyer faces overwhelming odds. Fired from his job and dumped by his girlfriend, Lassiter rents a grungy law office in a Miami Beach parking garage. What else could go wrong? Well, he could be disbarred for punching out his own client. As for cases, the down-and-out lawyer has only one. Lassiter represents Cadillac Johnson, an aging rhythm and blues musician who claims his greatest song was stolen by a top-of-the-charts hip-hop artist. The evidence is long gone and chances of winning are slim. Except for one thing. “If your cause is just,” Lassiter says, “no case is impossible.”


CLIENT
Parnell Hall

Stanley Hastings couldn't be happier. He had his first paying client, and the assignment was straight out of a forties noir movie, tailing the man's cheating wife and snapping pictures of her at a motel. If only he hadn't fallen asleep on stakeout. When he wakes up the woman is dead, the murder weapon is in his car, and a small town police force straight out of In the Heat of the Night has him cast in the Sidney Poitier role. To clear his name—and get paid—Stanley will have to figure out who his client is, who killed the woman in the upstate motel, and who was the resultant corpse!


RADIO ACTIVITY
Bill Fitzhugh

FM rock deejay Rick Shannon has just been fired from his latest Classic Rock station. He’s thinking it’s time to get out of radio once and for all. But when a famous deejay disappears in Mississippi, Rick gets a job offer to take over the slot. So he packs his bags and moves back to his home state where he comes across a tape of an illegally recorded phone conversation that might explain the fate of the missing deejay. Rick starts looking into the matter, and before you can say “Stairway to Heaven” he’s uncovered a scheme of blackmail, arson, murder, and a major FCC violation. Based on an illegal recording made by the author (and former FM rock deejay), Radio Activity redefines classic rock.


CALABAMA
Steve Brewer

When a speeding Corvette flies over his head, leaving him without a scratch, Eric Newlin decides it's an omen and his life is about to change. He's right. Within days, he's broke, homeless, unemployed and getting divorced. He falls so far that he ends up involved in a kidnapping scheme with hillbilly crimelord Rydell Vance. Leavened with dark humor, CALABAMA takes a wry look at California's rural, redneck interior, a bitter, precarious place where it's easy for an outsider's life to spiral out of control.

A couple of these look as if they might be self-pubbed series add-ons to already established authors/series, but at least some (Client, Radio Activity) were published in DTB a while back. So if you think any of these are worth $0.99, you can get the other four included "for free".

[Wearever]

Thanks AT Drake

I agree , the John Shakespeare books are also $2.99 at Amazon. I just got the Novella for 99 cents. A Christmas story in this series. Thanks also Sufue. I'll start with that.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

Martin Walker (another fav of mine!) has two books on offer depending on your location:

For fans of Walker's Bruno series who don't already have all the books, it may be worth your while to wishlist and keep an eye on the price of this HarperCollins Canada money-saving omnibus edition of the first 4 books:

Bruno, Chief of Police: Books 1-4, currently @ $19.99, which is not bad at $5 per book (regularly $9-12 individually, as far as I can tell), but Kobo Canada occasionally deep-discounts HarperCollins and other Canadian-branch omnibus editions during their periodic weekend sales or as the Deal of the Day, and sometimes the other Canadian stores match them.

In the recent past I've scored for $4.99 each from the weekend sale:

1. Gail Bowen's The Joanne Kilbourn Mysteries 3-book bundle: Volume 1, #1-3 currently $19.99
2. Jo Nesbø's Harry Hole Mysteries 3-book bundle, #7-9 currently $24.99
3. Guy Gavriel Kay's Guy Gavriel Kay: Three Novels, 3 standalones currently $29.99

And at the $2.99 mark as the Deal of the Day, I got:

• Kim Harrison's Kim Harrison Bundle #1, #1-4, currently $19.99

So while I was pretty tempted by the 1st Bruno book when it dropped to 99 cents during Kobo's Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale, I personally opted to hold out for a future sale on the omnibus, since the library has these.

Originally Posted by sufue

@AT Drake, from previous posts, I think you and I may have similar historical mystery tastes, and I've read the first 2 in this series and the one with the 2nd Armada threat, and have liked them. Thanks for a chance to pick up a couple more at good prices!

Thanks for your recommend of the John Shakespeare series.

I recently read and enjoyed the 1st-in-series of both the Martin Jensen King's Hounds Danelaw illuminator medievals (currently on sale for $2 each upthread, if anyone else wants to try them) and the Mel Starr Hugh Singleton English medical medievals you'd recommended and liked them quite a lot, so I'm going to trust your judgment again and grab the 1st to try out this weekend and see if I want to scoop the rest (in case HC decides to raise the prices suddenly).

Speaking of AmazonCrossing stuff, another one of their translated exclusive Nordic crime mysteries has gone on sale again:

Bargain @ $1.99 from Amazon only from their AmazonCrossing imprint (price good for Canada & US, possibly other countries, but not the UK when I tried; IIRC it's one of their periodic sale deals which goes to mid-month):

Sun on Fire by Icelandic novelist Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson (SYKM, Wikipedia), 2nd in his unnamed maybe-series starring Reykjavik police detectives Gunnar Maríusson & Birkir Li Hinrikson, an ethnic Icelander whose mother is a German immigrant, and a Vietnamese-born naturalized Icelander of possibly Chinese descent (together, they fight solve crime!).

I've bought read both this and the 1st-in-series a couple of months ago, and quite liked them. IMHO, this 2nd book is the better of the two, even though the 1st was popular enough to be adapted into an Icelandic TV mini-series.

You can read these standalone, since the character relationships are treated as long since established, with no major changes between the books, which also don't reference-spoiler the previous case. They're also a pretty nifty dip into modern Icelandic cultural and social issues, if you're interested in such.

When the gutted body of a businessman is discovered in the Icelandic embassy in Berlin, Iceland’s best detectives are sent to Germany to investigate the crime.

The stab wounds and the murder weapon—an elegant hunting knife—suggest a ritualistic killing. But the only suspects present in the sleek modern office building were some of the island nation’s cultural elite, including Jón the Sun Poet and ceramics artist Lúdvík Bjarnason. The victim is someone few would miss, and investigators Birkir and Gunnar, joined by forensics expert Anna Thórdardóttir, wager they have an open-and-shut case on their hands.

What they find is anything but: The crime reeks of premeditation and vengeance, and leads the team into a sordid tale of international child abuse, arson, and retribution.

[Lynx-lynx]

I should've mentioned in my earlier post that Bruno and le Père Noel by Martin Walker is free at Kobo India.

[sufue]

William L DeAndrea's Killed on the Ice (published in the US, at least, by Open Road) is on sale for $1.99 through 12/31/2014, per their daily email which hit my inbox this morning. Open Road titles are usually couponable in multiple Kobo stores.

This is the fourth in DeAndrea's series featuring Matt Cobb, who is an "executive problem solver" for a fictional TV network. I'm not quite sure why this blurb says it's the "last installment" - I've read the whole series and there are several more after this one. Oh well...the rest of the description seems pretty accurate.

blurb:

Spoiler:

Matt Cobb deals with love and murder on the rink

In the last installment of the popular Matt Cobb series, the TV network’s expert troubleshooter, faces a literal case of cold-blooded murder. At two in the morning, he stands in a Manhattan ice rink, over the grisly body of Dr. Paul Dinkover. The network was supposed to be taping a figure-skating special, and this discovery can’t be a coincidence.

The victim is a psychologist, one so thoroughly disagreeable that any number of people could be considered suspects—including beautiful Wendy Ichimi, the show’s celebrity skater. But while Cobb’s men are mysteriously attacked, he can’t stop thinking about the way Dinkover died gripping an American flag, a symbol or clue he can’t unravel. And as the leads and tension mount, it will take all of Cobb’s strength to keep his cool and remain on his two feet.

Although I'm usually more into historical mysteries, I quite enjoyed this series in DTB. It's a little odd that it's the fourth and not the first in the series that's on sale, but that's just the way it is.

Links:

Amaz US: http://www.amazon.com/Killed-Matt-Co...dp/B00AEGIJ9O/

Kobo US: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/boo...ed-on-the-Ice/