The Fifteenth Letter
Karen Wiesner, Chris Spindler
Swimming Kangaroo Books

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Once again Karen Wiesner and Chris Spindler’s police procedural, „The Fifteenth Letter“, conveys the reader to Falcon’s Bend where twenty four year old Patrol Officer Amber Carfi and her partner

Warren Jensen, who is a decade older, have been working the Christmas holiday to allow those having families time at home.

The pair has no yearning for spending holidays home and alone. Jensen has not quite recovered from the death of his wife. It was 4 years ago that Jen died due to ovarian cancer. Carfi is not certain how she feels regarding her father’s impending parole hearing.

Abruptly the crackle of the car radio jars them back to reality, a bank robbery is in progress.

From that opening the reader is initiated into a mystery filled with distrust, expectation, death, aspiration, tracking devices, pandemonium, abduction and trepidation. A diary, deliberately aged to create the appearance that it is older than it is, kidnapping, torment, an assortment of stolen maps, bank thefts, and even romance are all included on the pages of Wiesner and Spindler’s „The Fifteenth Letter“.

Back in 1989, Nelson Salim and Zeke Carfi, associates in business, partners in crime, entered a bank intending to rob it according to Zeke’s -fool proof- plan. In the getaway car waited Salim’s wife Serena along with their son Roman.

Sometimes even the best laid plans do go awry, that is what happened in 1989. When Nelson pointed his pistol at the bank manager, Zeke had to intercede.

Within minutes Nelson lay dead and Zeke was sent to prison.

Every year, on the anniversary of his partner’s death, Zeke has been receiving a threatening letter signed by the man’s wife. He has not opened the letters except for the first two. No need, they all read the same; threats and anger that Nelson is dead and Zeke is not. What Zeke does not know is that Serena too has been dead for years.

So who is sending those hate filled letters?

Ahead of Zeke and his wife Violet divorcing, Zeke all but lost real contact with his only child Amber. How the pair enjoyed working together to create secret codes and puzzles and unworkable designs. Zeke’s affinity for puzzles culminates in the assembly of a globe he and Amber designed before the divorce.

In due time, Zeke Carfi does receive his parole and is sent to Falcon’s Bend in anticipation that Carfi’s being near his police officer daughter may perhaps help him reside outside prison more successfully.

Amber is torn between the affection she feels for her father, and the powerless childlike fury she harbors because he was so thoughtless as to take part in serial robberies; with the last one eventually sending him to prison. Zeke, with the smugness of a master criminal, actually penned his faultless robbery plan in a diary along with sheets bearing a series of inexplicable numbers and letters.

Amber received the diary from her father years ago, however she put it away, and has never taken a peek at it. Her emotions remain too raw.

Amber’s police sense has kicked in, she has no idea why or who nevertheless; someone has been in her house. Warren Jensen is resolute in his purpose to look after his partner and woman he finds himself becoming more attracted to.

Overflowing with energy, joie de vivre and air of mystery, „The Fifteenth Letter“ is a commendable account transporting the reader along on a breathless ride. That authors, Wiesner and Spindler, reinforce each other's writing approach is unmistakable, transitions are faultless, characters are abundantly developed, settings are detailed to draw the reader into the sequence of events, storyline is plausible and emotions exhibit are believable.

Wiesner and Spindler’s „The Fifteenth Letter“ conveys an exhilarating many-sided page turner offering readers all the excitement and conundrum they may look forward to when reading an edgy police procedural mystery.

That puzzling globe, along with the group of maps, menace, more than one stray bullet, and even the commencement of a romance are all combined into one rousing chronicle. Watch the red herrings!

Happy to recommend Wiesner and Spindler’s „The Fifteenth Letter“ for those who take pleasure in a good mystery well done, and in particular for those who have a preference for police procedurals.

While I do not keep all the books I receive for review, this is one that I will be keeping on my own library shelf.

Tears on Stone
Karen Wiesner and Chris Spindler
Swimming Kangaroo Books

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Falcon’s Bend’s most recent residents Pam Garland, social worker, and her former wards, siblings Shelly and MaryEmma Gold, as well as Shelly’s four year old Ariel Wilson are quietly settling into their new home. That is how they liked it. Settled and quiet.

Recently widowed Shelly is having a tough time with melancholy. MaryEmma divides her time between caring for Ariel and toiling at the local floral shop while Pam is busy setting up a counseling service for battered and abused women.

When MaryEmma realizes the garden in her old childhood home yard next door has fallen into disorder she is saddened. How beautiful the garden had been.

Before long she becomes conscious that the house is now owned by childhood chum Jordan Shasta. The duo had been indissoluble as children before MaryEmma’s mother and step father had died, Pam was appointed guardian, and Pam and the girls moved from the town.

Focused on the dreadful toll spousal abuse wreaks on women, their offspring and whole families; Falcon’s Bend „Tears on Stone“ presents the reader a group of characters who are not always as they seem.

Pam, and her social work are the consequence of her own childhood filled with abuse. Watching the ill-treatment her own mother tolerated has produced an irate, ruthless woman who is willing to use the only reliable process for alleviating her pain.

Marigold, a fine designation for a pensive woman who today continues to find consolation in gardening; MaryEmma recollects her childhood crush on Jordie Shasta with fondness.

As local police begin investigating what seems to be a death resulting only to the heavy hand of the murdered; they unexpectedly recognize that a series of deaths appears to have been dogging Pam, MaryEmma and Shelly.

„Tears on Stone“ launches Falcon Bend’s first woman officer Amber Carfi, as well as continuing to follow officer’s Pete Shasta and Danny Vincent as the pair accomplish their investigations. The officers must unravel the string of bodies laying in Shelly’s wake, become au fait with the rather distasteful play boy who arrives on the scene and soon appears to be chumming up to one woman after another as she leaves SOS, Society of Survivors, meetings conducted by Pam.

SOS founder Dorothy Hawks, a survivor of spousal abuse, is a woman who killed her husband in self defense, was jailed by an unsympathetic jury, and has been searching for her children from the time of her discharge from jail. She has been influential in developing the program, incorporated by Pam, to aid women as they try to find help for themselves and their children.

A female coroner, a female detective and a string of men dead in widespread venues carry the narrative in breathless fashion toward a gratifying conclusion.

Writers Wiesner Spindler have created a well written, potent account centered on what even today often remains an disregarded, denied and bristly matter of spousal abuse.

Even today; women suffering cruelty often find society to be pretty hardhearted, willing to prolong the myth that –she musta asked for it, or who could blame name when he is married to a woman like her.-

The vulnerable, despondency these women undergo, especially when they have children to shield, is well portrayed on the pages of „Tears on Stone“.

These writers have done a noteworthy job for bringing a tricky subject to the forefront as they knit a tale surrounding that which is comprehensible in scope, not acceptable from a legalistic sense and is at times what seems to be only method left to those who must deal with the impossible.

The trepidation, hurt and incomprehension presented by each of the three main characters is conspicuous, different for each, and provides the reader occasion to recognize that we each respond to misfortune in OUR way.

While not a factual tale; „Tears on Stone“ drives home the point: When irrational, abusive relationships are in play there is no one hard and fast do this or do that, or the response will be;

„Tears on Stone“ is the second book in the Falcon's Bend Series and can be read as a stand alone book.

Happy to recommend „Tears on Stone“.