Eeny Meeny, by M. J. Arlidge

Eeny Meeny

Author:            M. J. Arlidge

Publisher:        NAL (sold by Penguin Group)

Format:           E-file, 422 pages

List Price:        $ 7.99 E-file  

                        $10.78 Paperback

                        $33.99 Hardcover

Two people are abducted, imprisoned, and left with a gun. As hunger and thirst set in, only one walks away alive.

It’s a game more twisted than any Detective Helen Grace has ever seen. If she hadn’t spoken with the shattered survivors herself, she almost wouldn’t believe them.

Helen is familiar with the dark sides of human nature, including her own, but this case—with its seemingly random victims—has her baffled. But as more people go missing, nothing will be more terrifying than when it all starts making sense....

ARC provided by NetGalley

Doreen’s Thoughts: 

M. J. Arlidge has written a fast-paced thriller that centers on a damaged Detective Helen Grace chasing a new kind of serial killer.  For the majority of the story, we see only glimpses of the damage that was done either to her or to the killer; it is never quite clear.  Typically in this kind of procedural, the main character is a police officer who drinks or does drugs to reflect their impairment.  Here, Arlidge has come up with a unique way to demonstrate Helen’s self-destruction; however, her quirk, as it were, was far more intense that I expected. 

In addition, the killer proves very creative.  The manner of death is probably one of the most unique twists I have read in a long time.  Two people, left alone to die of starvation and thirst, are given a choice – a gun with one bullet.  Do they vote on who should die?  Does one simply overpower the other to survive?  Or will one actually sacrifice themselves for the good of the other?  It certainly demonstrates the character of people at their absolute worst. 

The killer remains elusive throughout most of the novel.  About halfway through the tale, the reader may suddenly suspect one character or another, but the truth is more startling and surprising than I imagined.  In some ways, the killer reveal almost let me down.  The background that created the killer, and in some ways Helen herself, does lend itself to creating a murderer, but I had some small sense of sympathy for the antagonist by the end.  I suspect that was not the emotion that Arlidge wanted to create. 

Overall, Helen is a deeply flawed, deeply sympathetic character who has spent most of her life berating herself for crimes she did not commit and dedicating her life to hunting down those who do commit the most heinous crime of all – murder.  Eeny Meeny is the start of a thriller series centered on Helen, and I am curious about the next killer she must apprehend.  That in itself is a good achievement for a first novel. 

Favorite Fantasy Authors of 2014

My favorite fantasy authors of 2014 included Ilona Andrews, Faith Hunter, Jennifer Estep, and Kat Richardson.

Dreaming Spies by Laurie R. King

Doreen’s Thoughts:  Dreaming Spies by Laurie R. King

Dreaming Spies

Author:                Laurie R. King

Publisher:   Bantam  

Format:  E-book,  352 pages

List Price:  $10.99

Disclaimer:  ARC read via NetGalley.

After a lengthy case that had the couple traipsing all over India, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are on their way to California to deal with some family business that Russell has been neglecting for far too long. Along the way, they plan to break up the long voyage with a sojourn in southern Japan. The cruising steamer Thomas Carlyle is leaving Bombay, bound for Kobe. Though they’re not the vacationing types, Russell is looking forward to a change of focus—not to mention a chance to travel to a location Holmes has not visited before. The idea of the pair being on equal footing is enticing to a woman who often must race to catch up with her older, highly skilled husband.
 
Aboard the ship, intrigue stirs almost immediately. Holmes recognizes the famous clubman the Earl of Darley, whom he suspects of being an occasional blackmailer: not an unlikely career choice for a man richer in social connections than in pounds sterling. And then there’s the lithe, surprisingly fluent young Japanese woman who befriends Russell and quotes haiku. She agrees to tutor the couple in Japanese language and customs, but Russell can’t shake the feeling that Haruki Sato is not who she claims to be.
 
Once in Japan, Russell’s suspicions are confirmed in a most surprising way. From the glorious city of Tokyo to the cavernous library at Oxford, Russell and Holmes race to solve a mystery involving international extortion, espionage, and the shocking secrets that, if revealed, could spark revolution—and topple an empire. 

Doreen’s Thoughts: 

Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell is a worthy partner for Sherlock Holmes.  Introduced first in The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, Mary is a bright, brash American woman several years younger than Holmes, yet able to intrigue the man enough to bring him out of retirement and into handling cases once again.  In Dreaming Spies, Mary and Holmes are returning from an adventure in India when they are entangled in a mystery set in Japan.  This mystery spans both the past (in Asia) and the present (England), and King is able to create a separate tone for each of the locations. 

One of the best things about King’s writing is her ability to totally immerse her characters into the heart of their setting.  The reader ends up learning not only about the history of a particular time, but also the characteristics of a particular location.  For this outing, King focuses on Japan, and as a way of framing the story, she starts each chapter with a Haiku, the short 5-7-5 syllable poem that evokes a specific sense and time.  It is a lovely way to introduce each section and hint at what has happened and may happen in the tale. 

As always, King does a great job creating characters that invoke the best and worst of the people they are intended to represent.  By having Mary and Holmes travel through the Japanese countryside, King illustrates the self-sacrifice representative of its people.  The main character, Haruki Sato, is another bright, ambitious woman who is more than she seems, which also is true of Mary herself. 

The plot centers on a small Japanese book of illustrated Haiku, and the history of the piece is established so firmly, a reader might believe such a work exists.  The politics of both England and Japan are at work during the early 20^th century, and America has yet to prove itself friend or foe to a Japan that only recently opened itself up to the West. 

Dreaming Spies is an enchanting read, one that had me staying up late and getting up early to reach the end.  As always, King has done a marvelous job continuing the legend of Sherlock Holmes and the wife that he should have had at Baker Street.