January 2015 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday, January 6, 2015 when we will be discussing The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz. This is the first book in the Spellman series, the Spellmans are a family of private investigators. In this book we meet Isabel "Izzy" Spellman who works for the family's firm. The book description is "This twenty-eight-year-old my have a checkered past littered with romantic mistakes, excessive drinking, and creative vandalism; she may be addicted to Get Smart reruns and prefer entering homes through windows rather than doors--but the upshot is she's good at her job as a licensed private investigator with her family's firm, Spellman investigations. Invading people's privacy comes naturally to Isabel. In fact, it comes naturally to all the Spellmans. If only they could leave their work at the office. To be a Spellman is to snoop on a Spellman, tail a Spellman, dig up dirt on, and wiretap a Spellman.
Have a happy holiday season.

December 2014 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday December 2, 2014 at 7:00 pm as we discuss, A Perfect Evil by Alex Kava. This is the first book in the Maggie O'Dell series. Maggie is an FBI profiler. From the author's website: "The brutal murders of three young boys paralyze the citizens of Platte City, Nebraska. What's worse is the grim realization that the man recently execute for the crimes was a copycat. When Sheriff Nick Morelli is called to the scene of another grisly murder, it becomes clear that the real predator is still at large, waiting to kill again. Morelli understands the urgency of the case terrorizing his community, but it's the experienced eye of FBI criminal profiler Maggie O'Dell that pinpoints the true nature of the evil behind the killings -- a revelation made all the more horrific when Morelli's own nephew goes missing. Maggie understands something else: the killer is enjoying himself, relishing his ability to stay one step ahead of her, making this case more personal by the hour. But out there, watching is a killer with a heart of pure and perfect evil."

November 2014 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday, November 4, 2014 at 7:00 PM as we will be discussing The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith. This is the first book in the Cormoran Strike series.
The publisher's summary is: "After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He also has just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, know to her friends at the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man. You may think you know detectives, but you've never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you've never seen them under an investigation like this. Introducing Cormoran Strike, this is the acclaimed first crime novel by J.K. Rowling, writing under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith."

October 2014 Book Selection

The North Providence Mystery Book Club will be meeting on Tuesday October 7, 2014 at 7:00 pm in the library's first floor conference room. We will be reading The Bughouse Affair, which is a collaboration between two well known authors, Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini. This is the first book in the Carpenter and Quincannon mysteries.
The summary from the large print edition is: "In 1890s San Fransico, former Pinkerton operative Sabrina Carpenter and her detective partner, ex-Secret Service agent John Quincannon, undertake what appear to be two unrelated investigations. While Sabrina hunts for a ruthless lady pickpocket, Quincannon is after a slippery housebreaker who targets wealthy homes. The cases connect in a surprising fashion, not before two murders and other assorted felonies complicate matters. And not before the two sleuths are hindered, assisted, and exasperated by the bughouse Sherlock Holmes."

September 2014 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday September 2nd at 7:00 pm as we will be discussing, The Anatomist's Apprentice by Tessa Harris. This is the first in the Dr. Thomas Silkstone mysteries. Dr. Silkstone is an eighteenth century physician who specializes in dissection, and is a forerunner to a modern day medical examiner.
The book summary is, "The death of Lord Edward Crick has unleashed a torrent of gossip through the seedy taverns and elegant ballrooms of Oxfordshire. A few mourn the dissolute young man--except his sister, the beautiful Lady Lydia Farrell. When her husband comes under suspicion of murder, she seeks expert help from Dr. Thomas Silkstone, a young anatomist and pioneering forensic detective from Philadelphia. Thomas arrived in England to study under its foremost surgeon, the aging Dr. Carruthers, and finds hi unconventional methods and dedication to the grisly study of anatomy only add to his outsider status. Against his better judgment he agrees to examine Sir Edward's decomposing corpse, examining his internal and external state, as well as the unusual behavior of those still living in the Crick household. Thomas soon learns that it is not only the dead, but also the living to whom he must apply the keen blade of intellect. And the deeper the doctor's investigations go, the greater risk that he will be consigned to the ranks of the corpses he studies."

August 2014 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday August 5, 2014 at 7:00 pm as we discuss The Hangman's Daughter by Oliver Potzsch. This is the first book in his Hangman's Daughter series.
The book summary is "Magdalena, the clever and headstrong daughter of Bavarian hangman Jakob Kuisl, lives with her father outside the village walls and is destined to be married off to another hangman's son--except that the town's physician's son is hopelessly in love with her. And her father's wisdom and empath are as unusual as his despised profession. It is 1659, the Thirty Years' War has finally ended, and there hasn't been a witchcraft mania in decades. But now, a drowning and gruesomely injured boy, tattooed with the mark of a witch, is pulled from a river and the villagers suspect the local midwife, Martha Stechlin. Jakob Kuisl is charged with extracting a confession from her and torturing her until he gets one. Convinced she is innocent, he, Magdalena, and her would-be suitor race against the clock to find the true killer." The author has based the characters and events in the book on his own family's history.

July 2014 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday July 1, 2014 as we will be discussing Eva's Eye by Karin Fossum. This book takes place in Norway, and features Inspector Sejer.
From the publisher's website: " In the first novel in the Sejer series, Eva and her young daughter Emma are walking by the river when Emma spots something floating in the water. It's the body of a man, and what's more, a man Eva recognizes. Sejer and Skarre piece together the story behind two unsolved murders... does it all lead back to Eva?--Sejer sets to work piecing together the fragments of these two impossible cases, soon enough he realizes that they might not be as separate as they had seemed. Gripping and thought-provoking, Eva's Eye is Karin Fossum's first novel featuring the iconic Inspector Sejer." While this novel was first published in 1995 in Norway, it was published in the United States in 2013.

June 2014 Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday June 3, 2014 at 7:00 PM as we discuss A Test of Wills by Charles Todd. This is the first book featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge, a Scotland Yard Inspector who is a veteran of World War I.

From the author’s website: “Ian Rutledge, returned home from the trenches of the Great War, loses his fiancee Jean after long months in the hospital with what is now called PTSD, and faces a bleak future. Fight back from the edge of madness, he returns to his career at Scotland Yard. But Chief Superintendent Bowles is determined to break him. And so Rutledge finds himself in Warwickshire where the only witness to the murder of Colonel Harris is the drunken ex-soldier suffering from shell-shock. Rutledge is fighting his own battles with the voice of Corporal Hamish MacLeod in his head, survivor’s guilt after the bloody 1916 Battle of the Somme. The question is, will he win this test of wills with Hamish—or is the shell shocked man a mirror of what he’ll become if he fails to keep his madness at bay?”

Charles Todd is the pseudonym of a mother and son writing team of Caroline and Charles Todd.

The Book Club will not be meeting in May.

April 2014 Selection

Join the North Providence  Mystery Book Club on Tuesday April 1, 2014 at 7:00 PM as we discuss The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King. This is the first book in the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series. The book has fifteen year old Mary Russell meeting a retired Sherlock Holmes in Sussex, England and begins collaborating with him.
From the publisher's website: "In 1915, Sherlock Holmes is retired and quietly engaged in the study of honeybees when a young girl literally stumbles into him on the Sussex Downs. Fifteen years old, gawky, egotistical, and recently orphaned, the young Mary Russell displays an intellect to impress even Sherlock Holmes--and match him wit for wit. Under his reluctant tutelage, this very modern twentieth-century woman proves a deft protege, and a fitting partner for the Victorian detective. In their first case together, they  must track down a kidnapped American senator's daughter and confront a truly cunning adversary--a bomber who has set trip wires for the sleuths and who will stop at nothing to end their partnership. Full of brilliant deductions, disguises, and dangers, this this is the first book of the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes mysteries."

March 2014 Selection

The North Providence Mystery Book Club will be meeting next on Tuesday March 4, 2014 at 7:00 PM in the library's first floor conference room. We will be reading, Goodnight Sweet Prince by David Dickinson. This is the first book in the Lord Powerscourt series. Powerscourt is an aristocratic detectvie from the time of Queen Victoria.
From the publisher's website: "The debut of aristocrat-investigator Lord Francis Powerscourt, who takes on investigations too delicate for the police. Prince Eddy is a notorious wastrel. But when he is found in his bedroom at Sandringham witth his throat cut, his father, King George V, decides that the crime must be concealed. The prince is said to have died of influenza. Lord Francis Powerscourt is secretly commissioned to find the killer, but there are so many who have reason to hate the debauched and vicious prince that the task is a hard one. It leads him across Europe to Venice, where amidst scandal and suicide, Powerscourt finally unravels the mystery." Join us on March 4th.

February 2014 Book Selection

Join the North Providence Mystery Book Club on Tuesday February 4, 2014 at 7:00 pm as we discuss March Violets by Philip Kerr. This is the first novel featuring the private investigator Bernie Gunther. This book takes place in Berlin in 1936. Gunther investigates missing person cases, he is then asked to investigate the death of the daughter and son-in-law of an industrialist. The son-in-law was a member of the SS, and Gunther must deal with the Gestapo.