You don't have this one yet?

 "You don't have it yet? That is perverse! Don't tell anybody you don't own The Strange Case of Eliza Doolittle!

....it's gonna be alright."

(paraphrasing Barry from High Fidelity)

Robertson Davies

"Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command.”

Review: Stone Cold Dead

 Let's just say it right off: a pretty teen-age girl is a target. It's true today in the era of
#metoo, and it was true in the early sixties, when the Ellie Stone mystery series is set. Maybe even truer when the girl has a bit of mischief in her. And nobody knows that better than Ellie herself, who, as she learns more and more about the missing girl, Darlene Hicks, sees herself in the child, realizing that there but for the grace of God she might have gone.

   But where has the girl gone? Has she run off with a boyfriend? Or has she come to some harm? Is she alive or dead? There are certainly enough suspects, from a lecherous teacher to an insanely jealous boyfriend, to her own stepfather. Elle, an investigative reporter has promised Darlene's mother to find out the truth, is plunged into danger from all sides, not to mention sabotage from her own co-workers.

     It's hard to believe that a series set in the sixties is a period piece, but Ziskin brings that era alive, with a heroine who's always a fish out of water as a "girl reporter". I can't remember how many books there are in this award-winning series (this is the 3rd) but I look forward to reading them all.

Now available for pre-order.

Hello again! 

My second novel, The Strange Case of the Dutch Painter, is now available for pre-order On Amazon.

Paris, 1890. When Sherlock Holmes finds himself chasing an art dealer through the streets of Paris, he’s certain he’s smoked out one of the principals of a cunning forgery ring responsible for the theft of some of the Louvre’s greatest masterpieces. But for once, Holmes is dead wrong.

He doesn’t know that the dealer, Theo Van Gogh, is rushing to the side of his brother, who lies dying of a gunshot wound in Auvers. He doesn’t know that the dealer’s brother is a penniless misfit artist named Vincent, known to few and mourned by even fewer.

Officialdom pronounces the death a suicide, but a few minutes at the scene convinces Holmes it was murder. And he’s bulldog-determined to discover why a penniless painter who harmed no one had to be killed–and who killed him. Who could profit from Vincent’s death? How is the murder entwined with his own forgery investigation?

Holmes must retrace the last months of Vincent’s life, testing his mettle against men like the brutal Paul Gauguin and the secretive Toulouse-Lautrec, all the while searching for the girl Olympia, whom Vincent named with his dying breath. She can provide the truth, but can anyone provide the proof? From the madhouse of St. Remy to the rooftops of Paris, Holmes hunts a killer—while the killer hunts him.