14. Listen for the Lie by Amy Tinterra

listened on Libby, but it returned itself (early!) so I had to buy it on Audible to finish.

352 pgs.

2024
Adult Mystery
Finished 3/21/25
Goodreads rating: 4.09
My rating: 4
Setting: contemporary small town Texas

My comments: Well, that was certainly an entertaining listen.  You never knew who to believe, including the protagonish, who heard voices in her head.  Many violent people, many nutso people, and a whole lot of extra marital screwing going on in this little town in Txas.  I've never enjoyed a podcast-based story before, but this was not bad, the interruption of the podcast kept things moving along perfectly, pushing it in the right direction.  

Goodreads synopsis:  What if you thought you murdered your best friend? And if everyone else thought so too? And what if the truth doesn't matter?

       Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all and, if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. But after Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer.
       It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life. But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast Listen for the Lie and its too-good looking host, Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one who did it.
       The truth is out there, if we just listen.

28. Conviction by Julia Dahl

#3 Rebekah Roberts, NYC investigative reporter
Listened to Audio on Audible
narrated by Andi Arndt
Unabridged audio (8:17)
2017 Minotaur Books
312 pgs.
Adult Mystery
Finished 2/10/20
Goodreads rating:  3.83 - 812 ratings
My rating: 3.5
Setting: Contemporary Brooklyn with lots of flashing back to the late 90s

First line/s:  "The little boy walked to the storefront church alone, with blood on his hands and face."

My comments:  Another story told though descriptions of different times related to the major incident of the story.  The summer of 1992 in Brooklyn, New York, and the present, what took place from different points of view - and how Rebekah is following up on all the information she is able to compile. I was really uncomfortable whenever it flipped back to 1992 because I felt so horribly sad the the 16-year old who was falsely convicted and then imprisoned for over twenty years.  And so, so so pissed a the cops!  It almost got to the point I didn't finish the book because I was so darned uncomfortable and pissed at the whole situation.  And Rebekahs's mother...geez!  Poor Rebekah, working so hard in the first two books to find and figure out her mother and now we discover one of the most unlikable people ever.  I've seen nothing about a book number four, and it's been a few years, so I wonder if one will be coming at all....

Goodreads synopsis:  New York City 1992: a year after riots exploded between black and Jewish neighbors in Brooklyn, a black family is brutally murdered in their Crown Heights home. A teenager is quickly convicted, and the justice system moves on.
          Twenty-two years later, journalist Rebekah Roberts gets a letter: I didn't do it. Frustrated with her work at the city’s sleaziest tabloid, Rebekah starts to dig. But witnesses are missing, memories faded, and almost no one wants to talk about that grim, violent time in New York City—not even Saul Katz, a former NYPD cop and her source in Brooklyn’s insular Hasidic community.
          So she goes it alone. And as she gets closer to the truth of that night, Rebekah finds herself in the path of a killer with two decades of secrets to protect.
          From the author of the Edgar-nominated Invisible City comes another timely thriller that illuminates society’s darkest corners. Told in part through the eyes of a jittery eyewitness and the massacre’s sole survivor, Julia Dahl's Conviction examines the power—and cost—of community, loyalty, and denial.

56. Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nora Jacobs

read on my iPhone
2018, Touchstone
337 pgs.
Adult mystery
Finished 6/21/18
Goodreads rating:  3.63 - 3205 ratings
My rating:  3.5
Setting: Contemporary LA

First line/s:   "On the morning he was to die, the old man woke early and set about making breakfast."

My comments:  An in-depth look at one screwed up family, The Last Equation of Isaac Severy comes at you from many directions.  Told distinctly from two different points of view and less distinctly from one or two others; mystery, reality of a gritty world, and some scientific/fantastic mathematics combine to make quite an interesting tale.

Goodreads synopsis: The Family Fang meets The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry in this literary mystery about a struggling bookseller whose recently deceased grandfather, a famed mathematician, left behind a dangerous equation for her to track down—and protect—before others can get their hands on it.
          Just days after mathematician and family patriarch Isaac Severy dies of an apparent suicide, his adopted granddaughter Hazel, owner of a struggling Seattle bookstore, receives a letter from him by mail. In it, Isaac alludes to a secretive organization that is after his final bombshell equation, and he charges Hazel with safely delivering it to a trusted colleague. But first, she must find where the equation is hidden.
          While in Los Angeles for Isaac’s funeral, Hazel realizes she’s not the only one searching for his life’s work, and that the equation’s implications have potentially disastrous consequences for the extended Severy family, a group of dysfunctional geniuses unmoored by the sudden death of their patriarch.
          As agents of an enigmatic company shadow Isaac’s favorite son—a theoretical physicist—and a long-lost cousin mysteriously reappears in Los Angeles, the equation slips further from Hazel’s grasp. She must unravel a series of maddening clues hidden by Isaac inside one of her favorite novels, drawing her ever closer to his mathematical treasure. But when her efforts fall short, she is forced to enlist the help of those with questionable motives.

10. Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

Truly Devious #1
listened to on Audible
2018 Harper Collins
432 pgs.
YA CRF/HF Time Flipping back and forth
Finished 1/22/2018
Goodreads rating: 4.16 - 838 ratings
My rating:  4.5
Setting:  Contemporary middle-of-nowhere Vermont

First line/s:  "Fate came for Dottie Epstein a year earlier, in the form of a call to the principal's office."

My comments:  Terribly mixed feelings about this book.  The ending drove me nuts, though I must admit I had a little bit of a clue about one part of it.  Some of the story dragged a bit, but it was a good mystery, and it was time for a good mystery.  At first I wasn't really sure whether I liked the protagonist, Stevie, but she grew on me.  I liked her uncertainty and her quirkiness and her totally obsessive love for crime-solving.  I loved her quick comebacks and her snoopiness - even though she didn't want to be snoopy she felt she had to be and couldn't stop herself.  More and more she felt like a real person to me.  She supposedly had anxiety, but that didn't really work for me.  And the ending did piss me off - I didn't know this was not a standalone.  Note to self:  it'll be awhile before the second book in the series comes out, so I need to make sure I either re-read this or read a really thorough summary of it before I read the next.

Goodreads synopsis: New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson weaves a delicate tale of murder and mystery in the first book of a striking new series, perfect for fans of Agatha Christie and E. Lockhart.          
          Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. “A place,” he said, “where learning is a game.”     
          Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym “Truly, Devious.” It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.
          True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester. But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder.   
          The two interwoven mysteries of this first book in the Truly Devious series dovetail brilliantly, and Stevie Bell will continue her relentless quest for the murderers in books two and three.

12. Desert Shadows - Betty Webb

#3 Lena Jones, Phoenix PI
read on my iPhone
2004/2006, Poisoned Pen Press
280 pgs.
Adult murder mystery
Finished 2/22/16
Goodreads rating:  3.82
My rating: 4
Setting:Contemporary Phoenix, AZ

First line/s:  "Gloriana Alden-Taylor wasn't exactly satisfied.  The word rarely appeared in her personal lexicon, but with two new titles due out, Patriot's Blood Press by the end of the week, she felt, at a minimum, gratified."

My comments:  Good mystery, and more unraveling of Lena's own mysterious story.  The setting, of Scottsdale, is somewhat known to me, and I think I'll make sure that on my next adventure that far north I'll take book number 4 with me so that I can check out some of the actual places she talks about!

Goodreads synopsis from Reviewer "Stuart": (The Goodreads synopsis is weirdly misleading, as he also notes...)  This is the third Lena Jones mystery, though only the first I have read. In this story, sub-titled “Publishing can be Murder”, Lena investigates the death of publisher Scottsdale publisher Gloriana Alden-Taylor, who was poisoned at the annual Southwestern Publishers' Convention. She is drawn in to the case because a Pima Indian friend has been accused of the murder.
Gloriana’s publishing house delivers primarily racist texts, so the field is rife with people who may have wanted to kill her, including her grandson, who stands to inherit the publishing house, and who plans to change its direction completely. One of the authors about to be published is a death row inmate, with his own brand of racist drivel, a tract endorsed by the Aryan Brotherhood, whose leaflets Lena encounters everywhere, but which seemingly do not really add anything to the story. I think that’s something that may have been edited out. 
Gloriana turns out to be a complex woman drive by her desires, one of which was her enduring need to secure the genes of her ancestry, from the Mayflower and from President Zachary Taylor. She also turns out not so much to believe in the racism in her books, but in their ability to sell. I was a little annoyed by the digs at the commercial nature of publishing (no-one publishes literature any more, only what sells etc) – perhaps the author has an axe to grind there? 
The book also explores more of Lena’s personal history, she having been brought up in several foster homes, having apparently been shot by her mother at the age of four. She is working out anger management issues with a psychiatrist, and as she does so, we learn more about her past, a story in its own right. And then there is the on/off relationship with her ex-husband, which leads to dangerous encounters, and which will no doubt be a theme of subsequent books. 
The prime suspects end up being the people (publishers) who shared Gloriana’s table at the last dinner of the conference. Lena, who is a private detective and thus has a valid reason for investigating, unlike some others I have read recently (librarians), chases down these suspects, at the risk to her own life at one point. I didn’t feel that all that much detecting went on, however. When the criminal eventually appears, it’s by accident, Lena having focused on the wrong person. That’s not the way to endear me to an author’s work.
However, it was an easy read, and there is a lot in it. I felt it could have been stitched together better – it felt a little choppy, not really smoothly moving towards a conclusion.PS I felt that the Goodreads summary was misleading, even getting Gloriana’s surname wrong, and as the surname was key to the plot, I was surprised. Perhaps taken from an earlier description; the same applies to the Aryan Brotherhood stuff, which seemed to add little to the story, but which was referenced in the Goodreads blurb also.: