Grand Jury Connections
Bridget Vaughan & Larry Moore
Gayle Publishing
11.99, 264 pp.

Set in 1960’s Memphis, Grand Jury Connections blends a coming of age tale with a murder mystery. Athletic and studious, Walter Pruitt is college bound thanks to an athletic scholarship. After attending a concert Walter and his friend Cecil are stopped by police. Driven by fear, Walter flees the scene, is chased by one of the policemen and knocked unconscious. When Walter awakens the cop who was chasing him lies next to him dead. The Pruitt family and their community, band together to hire an attorney and collect the $10,000 for Walter's bail. GJC also offers the back-story of Tyrone, Cecil's brother, a recent college graduate determined to awaken Memphis to the revolution as he organizes and recruits the areas Black Panther Party.
While I appreciated the authors attempt to blend history with fiction, the handling was choppy in parts causing the story not to flow. There were far too many details of non-essential characters. There was no need for readers to suffer through background like officer Barnes' wife was a crossing guard before she married him, or Stanley's wife had attended nursing school. Things like this were irrelevant and annoying. Unless these people ended up being the killer, readers didn't need to know anything about them. There were other structural problems with this novel. At one point Chief MacDonald pulls into the murdered officer's (Samuels) driveway to relay the news of the incident to his wife. Suddenly there are multiple paragraphs about why Samuels moved into the neighborhood. Samuels was dead at this point. A better treatment would have been to fully flesh out the officer’s character in chapter eight during the chase or even before then allowing the reader to get a full understanding of the man.
The Black Panther Party back-story could have been great if there had been some interaction between Tyrone and Walter leading up to that point. Perhaps Tyrone could have befriended Walter or been an admired community leader that Walter looked up to. The way the writers treated it made these come off as two separate stories.
As I read chapter after chapter I wasn't sure whose story this was or what kind of story it was. The writers take far too much time making a point, side-tracking readers with Walter's draft notice, other people in the community and their connection to the family but not to the story at hand and backgrounds on characters not central to the story. GJC could have been a riveting thriller. The concept is refreshing and it’s a good first effort. Vaughan and Moore are creative writers and we look forward to their next work.
CS Rating:$$1/2

A Dark & Deadly Deception
Eleanor Taylor Bland
St. Martin’s Minotaur
23.95, 262 pp.

Chicago detective Marti MacAlister has a lot on her plate. First an actress turns up dead on a movie set and then skeletal remains surface in a hundred-year old building under renovation. Clues reveal a connection between the two cases.

In addition to the two murder cases, Marti’s husband Ben informs her of his disturbing PSA test and she’s worried she might lose him. If this isn’t enough, the Lieutenant in charge of Marti’s precinct has it in for her and does everything she can to be a thorn in the side.

From the first page I became embroiled in this story, but by page 100 the pace had become excruciating and I found myself putting the book down because I was tired of the multitude of characters and subplots. There’s Marti and Ben, Sara and Akiro, Vladimir and Nicolae, Delilah and Cornelius, Thomas Newsome and Harriet for starters, then throw in about half a dozen law enforcement personnel and a Lieutenant with job security issues and you end up with more characters than toppings on a Chicago Deep Dish Pizza. Then you throw in the movie set, DaVinci Code knockoff and cancer themes and you just want the tale to end. The book is only 260 pages long. I loved the relationships between the characters I just wished there were less of them. I loved the way the story ended too with the Lieutenant Nicholson cliffhanger. CS rating: $$$

Fatal Justice
Faye Snowden
Dafina, 15.00, 384 pp.

Two years after her mother’s murder, Dr. Kendra Hamilton has returned to Dunhill County to bring the killer to justice after the courts failed to do so. But in the process of avenging her mother’s death she is distracted by another troubling case—that of a young woman with the mental capacity of a child and the sick father who cannot care for her. When the man is accused of a heinous crime against his daughter, Kendra seeks out old lover and former homicide detective, Richard Marvel to assist.

Though well written, this tale is an amalgam of tedium; from the stream of characters to the time it takes for Rich and Kendra to hook back up. By page 200 so many new characters had been introduced I had to keep turning back to see who the old ones were when they reappeared in the story. Kendra is over-the-top, all kind of crazy and needs to be in therapy if there is a third installment in this series. Her obsession with Luke Bertrand became stale and a little ridiculous. As in The Savior, Rich and Kendra finally come together and the event is low on passion considering how long they have been without and the fact that they are in love. This story is way too long and took months for me to get through. But get through it I did. Only to be left on the cliff of possibility that Kendra still has a gnawing in her belly to exact revenge. Enough already! I hope there is a third installment and in it Luke Bertrand kills Kendra, and maybe Rich too and put them out of their misery. ChocolateSleuth.com rating : 2.5