Chanticleer Book Reviews

Author: Barbara Bamberger Scott

EPSTEIN’S PANCAKE by Bjarne Rostaing – Political Thriller, Thriller & Suspense, Mystery, CLUE AWARD WINNER

Styled in the cooling off days of the Reagan era and the still heated Iran Contra imbroglio, Epstein’s Pancake features a street-wise hero afflicted by PTSD and new to the spy vs. spy game. Viet Nam vet Rob Price is not having an easy time with civilian life when a friend introduces him to a mysterious man who wants to hire him for some low-level, well-paid courier work in France – dropping things off, meeting people in airports, that kind of thing.

Of course, it’s espionage and despite how careful Price normally is, he doesn’t hesitate. He has little to lose, though he will gradually realize that even someone with little to lose might find something worth saving. In this case, possibly, the entire world. As he gets more tightly drawn into more secretive levels of the work, Price begins to wonder who the good guys really are. He has one trustworthy supporter, a martial arts teacher name Jennie whose instruction might save his life as he takes on an entire military-industrial complex.

At the core of this multi-layered plot is a scientist playing with something that still seems ultra-futuristic, though it has been around for longer than most people realize: artificial intelligence. In this case, AI is represented by a plate full of genetic mush connected to wires and computers – the eponymous pancake that multi-nationals, dictators and even the leaders of the free world want to control. After numerous near-death experiences and constant switchbacks that force Price to re-learn his playbook almost daily, he will identify the villains in the piece and force their hand. But not without cost to his psyche.

Rostaing, an award-winning author, paints a remarkable picture of the times and the setting of this action-rich, intelligent tale, and is able to convey it in rich language. Doubtless, he has accessed many sources in piecing together a novel that seems entirely accurate down to small but significant details, from everything that was on TV in the late 1980s to how the bigwigs were thinking.

He inserts some believable behind-the-scenes vignettes and a few well-chosen opinions without weighing the narrative, and he has an excellent ear for dialogue. In Price, he has brought to life an enjoyable mix of John le Carré’s cool-headed Smiley and Dashiell Hammett’s hard-bitten Sam Spade.

With international intrigue, a new twist on almost every page, life-threatening danger, and a hard-living hero with a soft heart, Epstein’s Pancake is a smart story solidly in the spy thriller genre that’s bound to garner a loyal readership.

Epstein’s Pancake won First Place in the 2016 Clue Awards for Bjarne Rostaing.

August 12, 2018
HOPE of AGES PAST by Bruce Gardner – Historical Fiction, Thirty Years War, Historical Romance, Family Saga

A saga writ large on the stage of 17^th Century Central Europe, Hope of Ages Past portrays the deeply personal impacts of religious faith and love amidst the brutality of war.

Peter Erhart and Hans Mannheim are teenagers when they first meet in the Bohemian capital city of Prague at the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618. These are two of the three central, fictional, characters in Bruce Gardner’s noteworthy interweaving of fact and reasoned conjecture set during the first half of the war. The boys represent the two religious factions in that conflict: Peter is Protestant; Hans, Catholic. The meeting in Prague, based on a real event including actual historical participants, provides the backdrop for a fictional drama that is set in motion when Peter reaches beyond the sectarian divide to help Hans at a moment of deep disgrace. Hans will never forget that kindness.

As rebellion and conquest fire up across Europe, Peter, in his twenties, becomes a contentedly married Lutheran pastor in Magdeburg, Germany. Opposed by powerful rivals and threatened by the Catholic imperial army now approaching the city, he encounters Anna Ritter – a country peasant girl of uncommon beauty and inner strength who has secretly admired him for years and who is destined to share his trials. Each must fight bravely for the survival of their families and friends when local villains invade countryside cottages and the army, led by an awe-inspiring Black Knight, besieges the city. At the pinnacle of their trial, unthinkable tragedy brings Peter and Anna together and links their fates with Hans, now a grown man with a reputation to prove. Events eventually bring the three together in the siege’s aftermath, and a strange and unexpected reconciliation occurs — one that is put to the ultimate test in a final, horror-filled ordeal.

Gardner, delving deeply into the philosophical issues at the core of the Thirty Years War, very deftly maintains an over-arching theme of religious differences – and similarities – in the midst of a thrilling, continually evolving panorama of warfare, intrigue, and romance. Interlocking the two storylines – interpersonal and international – is the repeated possibility for human compassion to emerge despite deep religious disagreements. Gardner’s skillfully drawn characters, both Catholic and Protestant, are confronted with choices – to kill, to help, or to ignore their fellow human beings in times of terrible suffering. Gardner fairly and intelligently presents the positions of both groups.

Love conquers hate and uplifts two great faiths in Bruce Gardner’s Hope of Ages Past, contrasting romance, religion and family cohesion with the upheaval of battle and blood, all balanced by a thought-provoking, well-considered overview of the western world’s Christian heritage.

Ultimately, Gardner has gifted us with an epic novel of enduring faith and love set amidst the brutality of the Thirty Years War in Europe. A very good read.

June 18, 2018
DRAGON ASCENDANTS (Luminess Legends Book 1) by Paul E. Vaughn – Epic Fantasy, Paranormal & Urban , Young Adult

Dragon Ascendants, Luminess Legends Book 1 WON First Place in the CIBA 2018 OZMA Awards for Fantasy Fiction. Congratulations!

A boy comes of age when he learns his true heritage in a magical, mountainous land of dwarves, elves, men, and dragons, which is threatened by a powerfully malevolent force.

Tallian is the adopted son of Meerkesh, a dwarf whose wife died when his only child, Killmesh, was just five years old. Killmesh and Tallian are the same age – 18 – but have very different personalities. Killmesh tries to please his father, but his responsibilities are almost overwhelming as the apparent heir to the role his father holds as Spokesman for their burrow.

Tallian works with all the others in the gem mines of the Furin Mountains, and because he towers over his co-workers, he works faster and finishes sooner than the others. Tallian spends his spare time walking alone in the woods where he discovers a dragon he names Emerald Wildfire.

When terrifying bats formed of rocks invade the burrows, things go from bad to worse. Killmesh, charged with guarding wagonloads of jewels, is drawn away by a villain who shows him an axe he longs to buy. It’s a set-up. While he is gone, all the gems go missing. Killmesh can’t take the disgrace. He runs away, finds the axe and uses it for violence, which he finds very satisfying. He joins up with the evil elf-dragon monster Fearoc, who is bent on finding Tallian’s birth parents. They slipped from his cruel grasp 18 years before, and he has vowed savage vengeance.

Meerkesh, seeing the desperate situation in the burrows, finally tells Tallian the story of his origins, setting the stage for a colossal battle between Tallian with his dwarf family and the dreaded Fearoc and his minions.

Dragon Ascendants (Luminese Book 1) is a well-constructed soon-to-be-classic YA fantasy by debut author Vaughn, who envisions this as the first part of a series. He has carefully laid the scene: Tallian, aided by his brash but brave friend Briskarr and Briskarr’s gentle sister Briska, faces a barrage of challenges from Fearoc, with more to be revealed in future volumes of the Luminess saga.

Vaughn conveys a steady, credible view of his mystical setting. Tallian is a readily likable hero, someone who has such love for his adopted dwarf clan that he will do everything in his power to save them. Killmesh, by contrast, is disturbed and impulsive, driven by some anger within that causes him to wreak havoc among his kin.

Magic interspecies transformations, sparkling gems, and powerful weapons that make great mischief in the wrong hands all underpin Vaughn’s plot, resulting in a fast-paced page-turner for every age.

June 9, 2018
LINCOLN’S HAT and the TEA Movement’s Anger by David Selcer – Historical Fiction, Political, Literary

Set in the chaotic era of the American Civil War, Lincoln’s Hat provides an intelligent look at the many streams of thought that make up our political framework today, and how they may clash in times of upheaval.

Harlan Pomeroy is a young Kentuckian setting off for college in 1855 when he encounters Sally Hairston, a free black girl who will later bear him a child. Pomeroy never forgets her. He will use his education to become a journalist, joining a political movement known as the “Know- Nothings,” a group that despises President Lincoln in part because of his loose immigration policies that draw Germans, Irish, Jews and atheists into the country. When the Know-Nothings attempt to assassinate Lincoln, they end up with his hat, which they give to Pomeroy for examination. Tucked in it he finds a letter of support to Lincoln from the author of the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx. This adds further fodder to Pomeroy’s hatred of the President whom he now sees as a supporter of socialism, an ideology he believes will “rot the country from within.”

Pomeroy has allies who share his views and plot yet another assassination attempt that also fails. Leading a new movement called The Enlightened Americans, or TEA party, Pomeroy joins forces with actor John Wilkes Booth in a scheme to kidnap Lincoln. But after Booth’s bold assassination of Lincoln, Pomeroy will become a target for the Pinkerton agency and flees west to escape their investigations.

Lincoln’s Hat captures the imagination while presenting a character, fully believing in the rightness of his actions, yet unable – or unwilling – to fully contemplate the consequences of them; a problem that always makes for good story-telling. The Know-Nothings anti-immigration stance demonstrates their sense of nationalism, even though some understand their propaganda as racially motivated. Pomeroy and his friends little realize that their “exaltation of the rights of individuals,” as Selcer puts it, will result in endangering the general good.

In driving home these points, Selcer makes use of long, complicated conversations among his central characters and a blend of real and imagined events relevant to the story. His behind-the-scenes depiction of Lincoln as both high-minded and no-nonsense are an engaging addition to his story. Selcer has done extensive research on the historical period during and following Lincoln’s presidency which is admirable.

With a fast-moving plot and political intrigue, Lincoln’s Hat gives us history with a human face.

May 3, 2018
The SAGE WIND BLOWS COLD by Clint Hollingsworth – Thriller/Suspense, Mystery, Literary

Mac Crow is in his early twenties and an expert tracker, but he’s treated like a kid by his Uncle Gil, who doesn’t want Mac Crow to get hurt if he can prevent it. In the opening episode, Mac Crow’s special skills are called for in hunting down a “low-rent low-life” who has skipped out on his court date. While Gil and the rest of the team, including the lovely and wilderness-wise Rosa who seems sweet on Crow, are sure the miscreant has headed into the foothills, Mac Crow’s instincts, bolstered by his specialized tracker training, tell him otherwise.

His intuitive sense leads him straight to the fugitive and into a nasty fight that demonstrates his well-developed karate know-how. Mac Crow’s reputation as a wilderness sleuth is growing and soon a love interest from his teenage years (Kailee) reconnects with him during training camp. As part of a Search and Rescue team, Kailee tells him about a little girl who’s been lost in the Washington State wilderness for two days and nights. Mac Crow sets out immediately, finding footprints not only of the child but of an adult who is apparently stalking her. Then one of Kailee’s SAR team is found dead, arrows in his body and that of his sniffer dog. Clearly, a psychopath is on the loose, and no one will be safe until he’s hunted down. But, as Mac Crow will learn, the danger is a lot bigger than one lone killer.

Hollingsworth writes about what he knows: like his hero, he has been to tracker school and is a black belt in karate. He also studies the natural world and writes about it with sensitivity and respect. Mac Crow enjoys the world he works in – “the smell of pine was perfume to me.” He knows when the moon will rise and how to navigate through briars. He can interpret different bird sounds and make a warm bed on pine needles. All these small touches constructed by the author add to the suspense as Mac Crow imagines what a villain will do next by the tell-tale signs he leaves he moves through in the forest and fights gun-toting killers using his brains and his feet. Hollingsworth knows human nature, too, plausibly moving his focus from adventure to romance as Mac Crow tries to decide whether he should rekindle an old flame or feed a fire already gently glowing.

Fast-paced action, realistic survival skills, wilderness awareness and a tough but tender hero make this book a good read for any arm-chair adventurer as well as those who’ve walked the trails.

May 2, 2018
The BOATHOUSE CAFE: Book One of FIRST LIGHT by Linda Cardillo – Intercultural Romance, Literary, Historical Fiction

Mae Keaney is looking for a way back to her childhood, back to safety, and finds it in a property on Chappaquiddick Island. A wind-tattered cottage and an old boathouse she envisions as a café will be her haven, as long as she can keep her regrets and sorrows hidden.

With determination, she brings her talents as cook and waitress to bear, attracting locals and tourists alike with her hearty sandwiches, delicious cakes, and teas. She has her privacy and her shelter, and that is all she craves – until she meets Tobias, a quiet, kind, dark-skinned fisherman who begins the difficult process of enflaming her cold heart. Tobias is the son of the chief of the island’s Wampanoag tribespeople and scurrilous rumors begin to fly about Mae and her lover.

Set during the Second World War years and beyond, The Boathouse Café reminds us of a time when an unwanted pregnancy could ruin a woman for life and prejudice against Native Americans was status quo. These factors affect the star-crossed, inter-cultural relationship between Mae and Tobias, twisting it into a complex carpet of unanswered–and unanswerable–questions. Only strong, sincere, honest love can hold them together to face the storms that will beset them before their union can be secured.

This is a story that breaks through the barriers of race and challenges tradition and social mores for love.

Award-winning writer Cardillo planned out this stunning family saga with extreme care. Though the motivations and histories of her well-constructed characters may be mysterious at first, the author will thoughtfully tie up every thread as the story progresses. Her setting, a tiny dot of land hanging out in the Atlantic Ocean, subject to torments of both harsh weather and human weakness, gives the tale great power, somehow presenting more potential for drama than similar yarns spun on safe, dry land. When a fire rages on Mae’s property or a vindictive enemy vandalizes her cozy home, there will be people on “Chappy” who value the land and the traditions of the island and will step in to help and widen the circle of Mae’s support. The island, in Cardillo’s skilled hands, becomes not just an enthralling environment but a shared ethos.

Ultimately, this beautifully written, passionate, page-turning adventure of a blended family history and a romance of grand proportions will have readers yearning to continue the series with The Uneven Road and Island Legacy.

March 20, 2018
The BOUNDARY STONE by Gail Avery Halverson – Historical Romance, Black Plague

Catherine Abbott has everything a young lady of quality could wish for in England, 1660’s. She lives on her father’s comfortable estate in the village of Wells, Buckinghamshire and she’s soon to be wed to Miles Houghton, a childhood friend recently returned from several years in France. For Miles, the wedding is just the ticket to free him from his rather large gambling debt. His heart isn’t in it, though, as he still yearns for the Parisian nightlife.

However, Catherine has had an interest in science, books, and “the mysteries of this world” that inspires her to make complex drawings of butterflies and track the constellations in the night skies. Can she be happy as an idle wife? When she meets Simon, a young doctor who has been assigned to care for her aging, gout-ridden father, she begins to dream of a different future, impossible, she understands, but she still can dream, right?

Then the Black Plague strikes England. Taking orders from Simon whom he has grown to respect, Lord Abbott orders the village of Wells to be quarantined and ships Catherine’s brother Charles off to the colonies. Miles, unwilling to be hemmed in, flees without a word to Catherine, ignoring their planned nuptials. She, who once helped a servant girl in the throes of childbirth, finds a way to assist Simon in treating plague victims. He recognizes Catherine’s remarkable medical talents and begins to envision a way he and she might someday make a medical partnership. Or will their relationship go beyond the professional?

Award-winning writer Halverson has given us a character so completely believable, and so empathetic that readers will fall in love with her from the opening scene, when, as a little girl, Catherine sneaks out one night to observe the movements of the stars. We are hooked and are convinced that this heroine is a prodigy who will only find what she seeks in life by breaking the bounds of convention. Drawing on events of the time, such as England’s trade with India, the colonization of America, the controversial issue of autopsies as a means of studying illness, and of course the horrors of the plague itself, Halverson reveals extensive research into the century she writes about. And employing rich idiomatic phrasing and restrained but appropriate accents as needed, she shows her gift for the sound as well as the sense of well-constructed prose. In a short Afterword, the author relates the story of a little English village on which she patterned her fictional Wells, where quarantine did serve to save lives at the time of the Black Plague.

Set against the backdrop of England’s Black Plague, one woman bravely challenges the rules of stature and class to find her true love and true calling. Historical romance readers will enjoy curling up with Halverson’s first book in The Stockbridge Series and look forward reading the next one.

March 8, 2018
COMMUNITY AFFAIRS, A JERSEY SHORE MYSTERY by Michele Lynn Seigfried – Cozy Mystery, Female Sleuth
Bonnie Frattori, the heroine of Michele Lynn Seigfried’s latest Jersey Shore installment, has it all: a handsome neurosurgeon husband, two lovely little girls, and a big house right on the beach. Things couldn’t be peachier—until Lemon Face moves in next door.

Lyla (aka Lemon Face) and her husband, Senator Cason Spratt, are the neighbors from hell. Before they even settle in, Bonnie overhears Lyla accusing Cason of dropping his trousers in all the wrong places. It soon becomes apparent that Lyla is consumed with jealousy and sure Cason is after anything in a skirt.

Seeing that her own natural, innocent tendency to flirt bugs Lyla, and having gotten on the wrong side of her new neighbor’s temper without even trying, Bonnie goads Lemon Face on by humorously pretending she’s planning an affair with Cason. It isn’t long before Bonnie’s adoring spouse begins to suspect it’s true and stomps out in a rage. Poor Bonnie is left alone to deal with the increasingly insane, enraged Lemon Face who sends over poop bombs, paints WHORE on Bonnie’s garage door, and makes sure everyone in the community knows what a home-wrecker she is. See how quickly playing games can get you into trouble?

The book begins, though, on a far more sinister note with Bonnie sitting in a dank cell, with no memory of how she got there. She hears another woman’s screams through the walls. As Bonnie scours her memories of the past few weeks before she wound up in this terrifying situation, she recalls how she and her friend Chelsey, a private investigator, tried to find some connection between Lyla, Cason, and a girl named Polly Pitcher whose disappearance has the community in an uproar. Digging ever deeper, even neglecting her new job as a Municipal Clerk to hunt for dirt on Lyla and her philandering senator husband, Bonnie makes herself the target of thugs who will not stop at threats, but plan to murder her and the woman in the next cell. Flashbacks from Bonnie’s captivity to her attempts to ferret out the truth about her neighbors and restore peace on her little piece of the Jersey Shore make for moments both hilarious and harrowing.

Author Michele Seigfried has created Bonnie from a knowledgeable perspective, as she herself has worked as a Municipal Clerk in the State of New Jersey. Her up-close look at life behind the scenes in a local government office rings true. Chelsey, Bonnie, and others are recurring characters in this third of the Shore mystery series.

Seigfried knows how to cook up a multi-flavored stew with lots of surprise ingredients. Despite the imminent threat, her charmingly conceived heroine has more than her fair share of attitude and keeps comedy constantly on the boil.

A whodunit played for laughs as well as suspense, Community Affairs runs the gamut from gossip to greed to gore when neighbors clash on the posh Jersey Shore.

“Bonnie Frattori’s hijinx land her and her marriage in peril as she digs up dirt on her new neighbor. Cozy Mystery fans unite for Michele Seigfried’s 3rd book in The Jersey Shores Series: Community Affairs, a mystery with plenty of twists and turns staring a heroine with a penchant for designer shoes and trouble!” – Chanticleer Reviews
February 19, 2018
A DOCTOR a DAY: A Novel (EveryDoctor Series, Book 1) by Bernard Mansheim, M.D. – Literary Fiction, Medical, Social & Family Issues

A behind-the-scenes look at the life of a medical doctor, from med school to internship to private practice to the courtroom and beyond.

Dr. Luke James is in private practice. He has a loving wife and young daughter, and in some ways, his work brings joy and affirmation. But when he started his long journey through the healing profession, he knew there would be times when all his efforts would end in the loss of a patient. As this intensely emotional story opens, Dr. James is in court, defending himself in a malpractice suit in which, as the prosecutor accuses, “You let your patient die.” Told in flashbacks, we see how the lawsuit is calling into question many of the ideals the physician once cherished. He recalls crucial incidents from his fraught, exhausting, sometimes depressing, sometimes uplifting days of doctoring, the many times when his judgment might have prevented — or resulted in — the death of a patient in critical condition.

As he watches patients die, their last moments provide a profound reminder of the swiftness of death—” like flipping off a switch.” Yet Dr. James will continue to offer words of comfort and try daring remedies. Once he even donated his own blood in hope of a miracle cure for one of his patents. He thinks that the practice of medicine is an art and a craft that must be honed and believes that even the science of medicine inexorably dictates its own terms. As he remembers his work life in all its complex aspects, Dr. James ponders his decision for the patient whose demise is the focus of the malpractice trial. Was he “playing God?” Did he rob the patient of her right to a longer life, even though that would have been a life of an unconscious mind and a body riddled with tubes, unhealable wounds, and deterioration?

Author, and former practicing physician, Bernard Mansheim has fictionalized the duties and dichotomies of his own experience as a doctor so starkly that there can be no doubt of his deep connection to the questions posed and the answers sought by Luke James. Mansheim started his education with a BA in English Literature, and there is also no doubt of his ability to compose a gripping saga that tears away any blinders we might have had about the glamour of a doctor’s life.

At one point, Mansheim’s hero realizes he can’t allow himself to cry and begins to build an inner wall to hide some of his worst fears and sorrows, creating a backlog of unexamined depression. In an author’s note, Mansheim states that the suicide rate among doctors is 50% greater than that of the general population. It is known that a doctor a day commits suicide. This dismal trend has followed since 1858. His story boldly reveals some possible reasons for that grim statistic, while leaving room for hope for his embattled protagonist and others like him. This novel lays the foundation for discourse about this public health crisis and may be one of the most important books that you could read this year.

January 24, 2018
PIZZA WITH JESUS (NO BLACK OLIVES) by PJ Frick – Memoir, Grief & Dying, Devotion, Inspirational

Memories of love and despair combine with hope and faith in this honest depiction of one woman’s struggle dealing with grief surrounding the loss of her husband to cancer.

Author P.J. Frick writes movingly of her successful and courageous battle with breast cancer, to be followed, tragically, by her husband David’s diagnosis—inoperable pancreatic cancer. The couple shares a Christian faith that bolsters them with compassionate community, much-needed emotional support, and the belief that things will be better if not now, certainly in the future. But their faith isn’t their only anchor. The couple often finds joy in their shared love for their pets and pizza for dinners.

P.J. and David are moving contentedly through life when they must face a series of events the author calls a “hit list.” After they move to a more expensive home, a costly merger at work negatively affects P.J.’s employment. The author, experiencing physical signs of stress, quits her job to pursue a Master’s Degree in Library Science.

Just when things seem to calm down, P.J. discovers a lump and breast cancer is diagnosed. A plan is made to fight the disease. And the plan is successful! However, David secretly spirals out of control, dealing with the overwhelming stress and grief of almost losing his wife by secretly drinking. When he gradually comes to his senses, he receives his own diagnosis: inoperable pancreatic cancer.

David passes and P. J. is overcome with grief. One day as she is on a hunt for a neighbor’s lost dog, she has a revelation: God is always waiting for us, even as we stray from His loving care. This knowledge comforts her and aids in her grieving, bringing an ameliorating sense of peace.

This narrative will touch any reader who has been through even a portion of what she and David experienced. Her retrospective spiritual understanding adds a layer of hope and comfort, underpinned by comments about David’s positive qualities shared by family and friends after his passing. Interwoven with the chronicle of woes are vignettes of pets that provided cheer, even inspiration in this dark time of her life. Significant dreams, especially those about David after his death, seem a necessary part of Frick’s healing process.

January 18, 2018