Mystery Monday: Linda Barnes

--by Hanje Richards
.
Because I am a huge mystery fan, "Mystery Monday" was born. Because I like to read mysteries in order, I'm going to list and talk about them in chronological, rather than alphabetical, order. If an author has written more than one series (and many authors have), I'll talk about different series in different posts to keep things as clear as possible.
.
For those interested in reading some of the featured titles, I've noted at the end of each book's summary whether it's available at the Copper Queen Library or at another library in (or outside) Cochise County through Interlibrary Loan (ILL).
.
Linda Barnes (born June 6, 1949) is an American mystery writer who was born and raised in Detroit and graduated cum laude from the School of Fine and Applied Arts at Boston University. She then went on to become a drama teacher and director at Chelmsford and Lexington, Massachusetts schools. While teaching drama, Barnes wrote two plays, the award-winning "Wings" and "Prometheus" but went on to write highly successful mystery novels.
.

She is best known for her series featuring Carlotta Carlyle, a 6'1" redheaded detective from Boston. Carlotta Carlyle is in the tradition of the hard-boiled female detectives created by Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky. Linda Barnes is also a poet.
.
A Trouble Of Fools (1987) - It's the kind of case that has "NO!" written all over it. But ex-cop Carlotta Carlyle has a P.I. license getting moldy from disuse, so she takes on the search for a little old lady's missing brother.
.
After all, how much trouble could an aging cabbie get into? Plenty, Carlotta learns, as she uncovers a scam of laundered money and drug running, all mixed together in that dangerously powerful brew known as Boston-Irish politics. (available through ILL)
.
The Snake Tattoo (1989) - Carlotta Carlyle, ex-cop, struggling private eye, and 6'1" of long tall redhead, takes any case that walks through the door. This time the door opens twice. First in is her old partner, Lieutenant Mooney of the Boston police, unfairly charged with brutality, suspended, and desperate. The witness who can clear him is a hooker with a snake tattoo... and she's vanished.
.
The second client is a teenager with a missing wallet and a split lip. He's been roughed up on the Boston streets while searching for his runaway girlfriend. He's too young to be a client, and Carlotta should have turned him down. Shoulda, woulda, coulda... didn't. Both investigations send Carlotta into Boston's Combat Zone and the dark alleys of the human heart. Hookers don't disappear and kids don't take off without good reason. Now Carlotta is coming face to face with the evil that men do, and what is she going to do about it? Tackle it head on.... (available at CQL)
.
Coyote (1990) - When a mysterious woman asks Carlotta to help locate her missing immigration card, it looks to be a pretty straightforward assignment. That is, until the lady disappears, and the card turns up in the possession of another woman... who just happens to be dead. Suddenly, the case is far too intriguing for Carlotta to drop — and when her investigation indicates that her client was somehow connected to her inner-city "little sister" Paolina, Carlotta's got an even bigger stake in seeing it through. Alongside a handsome immigration agent with some secrets of his own, she follows her leads into the treacherous underground world of illegal aliens and those who mercilessly prey upon them. It's a lawless, dangerous territory: a place where the only thing Carlotta can rely on is her own wits, and where nothing - from innocence to life itself -i s sacred... (available at CQL)
.
Steel Guitar (1991) - Carlotta Carlyle and Dee Willis once sang in harmony. Now Dee has a skyrocketing music career, while Carlotta drives a cab, dates a mafia scion, and looks for missing persons in Boston. But the miles they've traveled can't change what they once had, or keep it from coming back to haunt them.
.
Dee wants Carlotta to find the man who once worked magic with a guitar, but now dabbles in blackmail — claiming to be the author of three of Dee's hit songs. When Carlotta starts searching Boston's backwaters she finds a pattern of corruption that leads back to Dee's entourage... and then to a dead body in Dee's swank hotel room. Carlotta knows that this gig isn't just about song titles, money, or even murder. Instead, this is the kind of stuff the saddest songs are made of: the past, and what happens when the innocence dies forever. (available through ILL)
.
Snapshot (1993) - Every Friday, a child's snapshot arrives at the Boston office of P.I. Carlotta Carlyle. There's no note. No return address. Just pictures of the child as a newborn, as a toddler, as a preschooler. Maybe Carlotta should have tossed them all in the trash. Maybe then she wouldn't have gotten mixed up again... in murder. Discovering what happened to the child in the photos draws Carlotta into a shattered picture of private lives sadly out of focus — and big shots mixed up with deadly conspiracy that stretches from a New England hospital to the Third World. And when she finds her own "little sister" from the Boston Big Sisters program in a different kind of danger, the truth jumps out in harsh black and white. In a world filled with killers and innocence, Carlotta Carlyle may be the only avenging angel left... (available through ILL)
.
Hardware (1995) - Carlotta Carlyle takes on a case that draws her into the mysterious shadow land of computer technology, where information is cheap, and privacy may be a thing of the past. (available through out-of-county ILL)
.
Cold Case (1997) - Twenty-four years ago, teen prodigy Thea Janis vanished from her upper- crust Boston prep school. At first called a runaway, she's later named among the victims of a serial killer, a man doing life in Walpole Prison.
.
Then, a new manuscript appears in her family's mailbox. The words cry out from the printed pages, Thea's voice unmistakable even a quarter century since the girl's mysterious disappearance. A new client bearing a dead man's name turns up in the office of P.I. Carlotta Carlyle, looking for her help in finding whoever is sending the book — even if it turns out to be Thea herself.
.
The investigation leads Carlotta to a prominent Boston family with deep connections and even deeper pockets, and which badly wants the tragic past to stay buried. But after a hit man tries to write his own ending to the saga, the cold case suddenly goes white hot — and Carlotta may be the one who ends up getting burned. (available at CQL)
.
Flashpoint (1999) - When Carlotta Carlyle agrees to help an elderly recluse burglar-proof her apartment, the last thing she expected was that the woman would turn up dead. Now Carlotta must find out why the eccentric yet seemingly harmless Valentine Phipps isolated herself — and needed protection.
.
Who would want to hurt Valentine? What was she hiding behind closed doors? Is there a connection between her murder and an age-old mystery that the city’s top brass — and its real-estate moguls — want to keep buried? But the most troubling question of all involves the victim’s home health aide, Gwen: Why did she introduce Valentine to Carlotta in the first place? The race to catch one of Boston’s most ruthless and ambiguous criminals has just begun… (available at CQL)
.
The Big Dig (2002) - Carlotta Carlyle thought that working undercover searching out fraud on Boston's Big Dig would be a challenging assignment. After all, the Big Dig, the creation of a central artery tunnel running beneath crowded downtown Boston, is an engineering marvel, the largest urban construction project in modern history, a fourteen-billion-dollar boondoggle in the eyes of protesters. Playing a mild-mannered secretary working out of a construction trailer is not quite the thrill ride she had in mind.
.
Carlotta decides to moonlight, taking on a missing person's case, but the search for Veronica James turns up one dead end after another. So do her fraud investigations on the Dig, and soon it looks like Carlotta has dug herself into one big hole. But then a break-in at Veronica's, coupled with the mysterious death of a construction worker on one of the sites, stirs up a storm, and soon enough Carlotta is in over her head in more ways than one... (available at CQL)
.
Deep Pockets (2004) - Harvard professor Wilson Chaney's position in life is hanging by a thread; his marriage, his reputation, not to mention his tenure at Harvard are in the hands of a blackmailer, someone threatening to sell Chaney's secrets at very high prices. His enviable life could disappear into thin air should the blackmailer's evidence — proof of his affair with a young student — become public knowledge.
.
So he hires Boston private investigator Carlotta Carlyle to track down the blackmailer and put a stop to the scheme. Can she do it? Of course, but should she? The professor doesn't inspire much loyalty — after all, he did commit adultery with one of his own students — but Carlotta agrees. Digging into the case, nosing around Harvard and the possible suspects from the rest of Dr. Chaney's life, she uncovers a suspicious death as part of the backstory to Dr. Chaney's situation. Suddenly, Carlotta's sixth sense is telling her the case might be more complicated - and more dangerous - than it first seemed. (available at CQL)
.
Heart Of The World (2006) - When Carlotta Carlyle is wakened by a late-night phone call, she discovers that her “little sister,” Paolina, is missing. Carlotta combs the Boston streets looking for Paolina, torn between anger at the thoughtless teenage runaway and anxiety that something has really happened to her.
.
Follow Carlotta’s trail from New England to Miami to Bogotá and beyond as she probes the connection between Paolina’s disappearance and the corresponding disappearance of the Colombian drug lord father Paolina has never met. (available through ILL)
.
Lie Down With The Devil (2008) - Carlotta Carlyle wants to know what her on-again, off-again boyfriend Sam Gianelli did to earn himself the secret indictment for murder that’s keeping him out of the country. Sam’s exile could have something to do with his mob connections, but it can’t be that simple. Nothing involving Sam ever is.
.
Finding no easy answers, Carlotta goes back to basics and takes a job working for a jittery bride-to-be who wants to make sure her fiancé is being faithful. The case is simple enough — at first. But Carlotta catches the kind of break she wished she hadn’t when her client ends up getting killed. (available through ILL)