eyes.2c Reviews

Death of the Red Rider  (Leningrad Confidential #2) by Yulia Yakovleva,  translated by  Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A glimpse into the conditions, the harshness of Soviet Russia post the revolution as  Leningrad  Detective Vasily Zaitsev of the Criminal Investigation Department investigates the death of a trotting horse and its Red Army Cavalry rider. A death brought about by something unusual, strange even. Filled with darting, often satirical commentary on the times, the novel is dark, brooding and at times savage, with moments of compassion. A time when the Red Terror is unleashed, the political purge by the Bolsheviks. Zaitsev’s search takes him to  Novocherkassk in Southern Russia where the Cavalry training school has suddenly been relocated. Is this a subterfuge, an effort to save the horses or something else? An unasked for assistant, Comrade Zoya, is sent with him. She’s prickly and annoying. There’s more here than meets the eye. Is she checking ...

Blood Betrayal  (Blackwater Falls #2) by Ausma Zehanat Khan      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Community Response Unit is called out to two police shootings of young men—one Latino, one Black. Mateo Ruiz was gunned down by Kelly Broda, a police officer in Denver precinct. It turns out Mateo had been holding a spray can, not a gun.  Harry Cooper from Blackwater Falls had from all the evidence shot  Duante Young. Young was a graffiti artist and he also had a spray can. Detective Inaya Rahman is part of the Community Response Unit. Their job is to determine what has happened in police shootings of unarmed people. The community have no doubt that the deaths will be white washed. Lieutenant Waqas Seif heads the Response team. He’s also an FBI agent. Part of his job is to track down the white supremacist who have infiltrated the Blackwater Falls police. Inaya Rahman is a Muslim woman who had been attacked by her fellow officers at Chicago Police for wearing  an ...

The Dead Hand  (Harriet & Matthew Rowsley Victorian Mystery #5) by Judith Cutler    ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Harriet and Matthew Rowsley have their hands full. Archeologists have arrived for the summer dig in the grounds of Thorncroft House, Shropshire, uncovering the Roman ruins.  Professor and Mrs Marchbanks have come to catalogue the library. He’s rather nasty and she appears bullied. Mrs Marchbanks also experiences frequent fainting episodes. Harriet has a new housekeeper who seems to not quite fit in, but Mrs Brooks came with an excellent reference. Both parties are on trial for a month. Still her questioning of Harriet and the use of the house keys does grate on Harriet. Life is busy, busy, busy! Harvesting has to happen so it’s all hands on deck. It’s when newly expectant father Ned Marples is found dead in a dig trench and his friend Harry Tyler is arrested for murder that the tension reaches boiling point. More problems emerge for Thorncroft House. Harriet and the local ...

The Lord and the Lady Astronomer  (Grantham Girls #3) by Alissa Baxter       ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Abigail Grantham is a sparkling character, impulsive and intelligent. Interested in a variety of subjects including astronomy. Underneath she carries a sadness and fear of things changing, of the ground shifting. Her parents died when she was young and that has altered her ideas about permanency. Maybe that’s why she finds astronomy and the past so interesting. The future is too uncertain. Lord Rochvale appears to be one dimensional, withholding himself. (A rather distant Mr. Darcy if you will.) He keeps the secrets of others and confuses Abigail by his distance, except when he’s talking about his love of Roman antiquities, and of course astronomy. Despite that, Abigail finds herself increasingly drawn to Rochvale. Abigail is helping her uncle and Rochvale with their astronomical calculations.  Her cousin Henrietta appears somewhat troubled. Rochvale’s cousin, the quite handso...

Murder Most Treasonable  by Paul Doherty (Brother Athelstan Mystery #22)   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ England at the time of King Richard and John of Gaunt. The English have a spy ring spread across Paris.  It’s being decimated. Head of the Paris organization, the spy Nightingale, flees to England, to his Master of the secret English chamber. Master Thibault and his Secret Chancery. France has its equivalence, the Chamber Noir. Somehow secrets are being taken out of from the well guarded repository in London and being sent to France. Treason is at hand. Brother Athelstan, Dominican Parish Priest of St Erconwald’s in Southwark, and his friend  Lord High Coroner of the City of London, are in danger. They are required for an investigation into the death of Hugh Norwic, principal clerk in the Secret Chancery. A price has been put on their heads. They are being attacked on two sides, by agitators asking questions about  Radix Malorum, the king of housebreakers, and they’re being hun...

A Christmas Vanishing  (Anne Perry’s Christmas series) by Anne Perry   ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Octogenarian Mariah Ellison (grandmother to Charlotte Pitt) travels to the village of St. Helens in Dorset at the request of an old friend Sadie Alsop, whom she hasn’t spoken to for twenty years. Time to put the past aside. Mariah arrives only to find Sadie is missing!  Sadie’s husband Barton refuses to put Mariah up. Sadie’s sister Annabelle agrees to take her in. It’s puzzling!  No-one has seen Sadie for a couple of days. Yet none of the villagers seem concerned. Mariah has a bad feeling. Barton seems to think Sadie’s done an Agatha Christie type vanishing and will turn up in her own time. Mariah however is not convinced as Sadie has obviously made all the preparations for her visit. Where can Sadie be? Distressingly, it seems Sadie has not forgone her habit of finding out people’s secrets and then using that information to her advantage. Could this play a part in her disappearance? Ca...

Never Wager with a Wallflower  (Merriwell Sisters #3) by Virginia Heath     ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The last Merriwell sisters’ story. Venus (Vee) Merriwell is a handful. A pocket Venus, a rapacious reader, intelligent, and after being let down so badly by Galahad Sinclair, a confirmed wallflower Gal is her nemesis ever since she first met him. Very had attacked him in the grounds of their home where thinking he was an intruder. Returned from America, Gal was looking to invest in a building to turn into a gambling establishment. He’d found one just after the owner had died. The heir needed cash. It was next to an orphanage but Gal had plans for that as well. However, as he found out later, not just any orphanage but the one supported by Vee Merriwell.  You can imagine how Vee took that! An enchanting bluestocking, enemy to lovers romance, with some delightful orphans thrown in to bleed us emotionally dry! A  St. Martin’s Press ARC invite  via NetGalley.     ...

Murder in Williamstown  (Phyrne Fisher #22) by Kerry Greenwood      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Honourable Phyrne Fisher, glamorous private investigator, is visiting Williamstown for a lingering dinner with Jeoffrey Bisset, a rather dishy lecturer in Classics and English. Somehow she finds herself in the midst of unseemly happenings. Phyrne decided not to drive over there but to take the ferry and then train to this out-of-way  suburb on the other side of Port Philip Bay.  These events include the finding of a smashed opium pipe in the botanical gardens,  a scream coming from a warehouse, and then later the drowned body of an unknown Chinese worker.  Back home, Phyrne’s been receiving cards through her letterbox branding her with rather harsh words! Meanwhile Dot’s worried because Hugh seems so distant. Hmm! Ruth and Jane are doing well at school and have been assigned to work at the Institute for the Blind over the next couple of weeks  as part ...

A Murderous Tryst  (Beatrice Hyde-Care Mystery #11) by Lynn Messina    ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Oh my! Bea certainly has a lot to contend with. Bea’s rattled! The Duke has been missing from their bed for a night. When a distraught Bea come downstairs the next morning she finds her beloved husband Damien clasped in the arms of a glamorous female. A female who turns out to be Kesgrave’s first mistress, Mrs. Penelope Taylor! What?! Of course Bea’s heart sinks and she falls back on her painful memories of Aunt Vera’s responses to such a situation. Bea is both shaken and traumatised, but determined not to show it.  It seems Penny has been accused of murder. Actually  Penny’s desperately trying to avoid Newgate.    As a former mistress Penny does the unthinkable thing in society’s eyes. She asks for help from Bea. Bea’s response is just as shocking. She says yes. Kesgrave is as usual inscrutable. Of course this is the beginning of a harebrained chase, complications between...

The Cutthroat Countess  (Wicked Women of Whitechapel #3) by Minerva Spencer      ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A mantra Blade (Josephine Brown) has lived with for years. Not for her the usual upbringing! Death and violence, hiding, travelling great distances in dangerous places, have all been her way of life. This is the final in the ‘ Wicked Women of Whitechapel’  series. I find Blade the most fascinating of Spencer’s Farnham’s Fantastical Female Fayre ladies. She’s always been distant and mysterious, accompanied by her Raven Angus, disappearing from time to time, then turning up unexpectedly. As for Elliot Wingate, he’s equally as admirable, intelligent and solid. Fourth son of an earl he’s been an effective  English, able to blend in perfectly no matter the situation, as Blade attests. Jo (Blade) is lethal with the various knives she always has about her person. Her tame raven Angus is wonderfully eccentric (if birds can be that), and appears to be quite fond of Elliot. Jo,...