Reviewed by Patricia Reding for Readers' Favorite

Settling in to read a murder mystery is always a satisfying experience, and with A Murder on Wall Street by Owen Parr, it is also an enjoyable one. In it, readers discover some lovable key characters in the form of Joey Mancuso, a former NYPD homicide detective who left the force in the midst of some “cooked up” charges with Internal Affairs, and his older half-brother, Father Dom, who loves solving mysteries and who is beloved by those around him as a priest with a keen understanding that if he lives his life as a testimony to others, he needn’t preach to them. Together the brothers own Captain O’Brian’s Irish Pub and Cigar Bar in Manhattan’s Financial District. There they meet a wide variety of patrons and from there, they work together to identify the guilty parties behind a series of crimes, beginning with a murderous shove of someone from a high rise, and quickly moving on to the hit and run murder of one of their key witnesses. Add in some financial thugs who’ve been running a Ponzi scheme, a Marilyn-Monroe lookalike with a string of assumed names, and the varied puzzle pieces, with some intriguing angles, eventually come together.

Owen Parr has created a couple of appealing characters in Joey and Father Dom. They both display caring for one another and for Joey’s love interest, Marcy, for the patrons of their bar, and for their wider community. I appreciated Joey’s sense of humor and found Father Dom a quick favorite. Add in the rush of activity of Manhattan’s Financial District and some information that makes understandable some basic background principles of the financial world (such as how a Ponzi scheme works), and the story achieves depth. While the reason the brothers took on the mystery in the beginning (they didn’t have a client, they just didn’t think the conclusions the NYPD reached were in line with the facts as they knew them), and the method the brothers use to disclose the wrongdoers (a meeting with all of the interested parties, held at their bar), were both a bit unorthodox, the approach was certainly unique. This story moves right along, providing readers with an enjoyable getaway with characters they’re sure to want to revisit in other books in Owen Parr’s crime mystery series.

Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite

The Amazon Detective Agency: A Murder Novel is a sleuth murder mystery novel written by Patrick Oster. Mel McGinty had been working the overnight shift as part of the Supreme Court’s police force for eighteen months when she discovered Oliver Wendell Oglethorpe’s body in the building’s private gym and basketball court. Mel’s real love was her private detective agency, which she hoped one day to make a self-supporting enterprise, but until then the Supreme Court gig had worked quite well. The veteran military police officer and former beat cop with the Arlington P.D. instinctively knew the FBI was wrong in considering Oglethorpe’s death to be from natural causes. There were too many different variables. For one thing, the pending decision on the presidential election would have massive repercussions, and Oglethorpe was sure to vote in a way that conservative President Fett would not be pleased with. There were any number of persons and groups interested in seeing the conservative president remain in power, with the opportunity to appoint more right-wing Supreme Court justices. McGinty was determined to look further into what she saw was the mystery of Oglethorpe’s death, and she would do it, with or without the approval of her superior.

Patrick Oster’s years spent as a U.S. Supreme Court reporter and the editor-in-chief of the National Law Journal give The Amazon Detective Agency a sense of authenticity and immediacy that will attract the attention of anyone who’s wondered at the impact of elections on judicial appointments, and decried the disgraceful decision the Supreme Court reached in Bush v. Gore. Throughout the book, there’s the tension and detail one would expect to find in a political thriller, which makes this murder mystery even more enjoyable. Oster’s McGinty is a welcome look back at the hard-boiled detective; one who has no issues with working outside the system when necessary to get to the answers. The author gives McGinty and the reader plenty of red herrings to consider in solving the mystery, and getting to that solution is great fun indeed. This well-written and thoroughly engaging murder mystery is most highly recommended.

Reviewed by Rabia Tanveer for Readers' Favorite

The brilliant end to a brilliant story. The Brilliant Game by A. Gavazzoni is the third and last novel in the Hidden Motives series. I am a little sad to see that this is the last novel in the series, but at the same time I am very happy to see that A. Gavazzoni did an amazing job with wrapping up a very complex and interesting story. The story continues the life and struggles of Simone Bennet, a gifted psychiatrist who got caught in the world of lies, deceit and malicious intent when she decided to help a lawyer find the real killer of a woman named Lara.

After being kidnapped by a serial killer, Simone is back in her old life, trying to help some of her patients while still working with Cal who brought all this into her life. Her life is not stable, especially now that her daughter has been kidnapped and she, Edward (her boyfriend), the police and the FBI are trying to find her daughter. In the meantime, Simone is also trying to decode and decipher more of Lara’s story and find out what happened in the life of this enigmatic young woman. Simone’s conflicted feelings for Cal, her desire to find her daughter, and discover more about Lara is driving her mad. Is there any end to her story? Can she finally find out what happened to Lara? Can she find her daughter?

As always, A. Gavazzoni blew me away with her brilliant storytelling and her ability to take me on a journey with Simone. I was eagerly anticipating what she would bring in the third novel and how she would end Simone’s story. I enjoyed Simone’s journey, her development and how real she is. A. Gavazzoni’s characters are very real, they seem to breathe with every word and come to life on every page. I simply adore this author and the way she writes.