“Curran’s enemies thought he was dead. They were wrong. He thought his past was left on the Voula Beach Road. He was wrong. Now, that nightmare is drawing his enemies out”
Whisper Legacy is a brilliant, powerful and well written cyber warfare “take” on the familiar noir tale of criminals needing to keep their stolen records hidden. But with some intriguing twists. Beset by PTSD, lingering injuries and creeping old age, (Mar)Lowe Curran makes a living “on both sides of the ethics line” as what’s left of the former black ops spy he once was. Now a security expert, an unregistered PI and a fixer for the powerful, enigmatic TAE–“Tommy” to his friends–Curran inadvertently stumbles into a much more sinister plot involving the highest levels of government.
When Curran steals back the records and files that the hacker “Piper” stole from TAE’s company, he inadvertently downloads the records of a shadowy influence-peddling group’s blackmail operations, known as Whisper. Worse, for Curran, the Whisper group has already tried to kill him. Twice.
Whisper Legacy takes us through slimy operators, to the rich and powerful, right up to the highest levels of politics, where everything is personal. Not least, for Curran. He lives not only with the aches, pains and nightmares of his past work, but also with deep regret. This is about to get ugly. And dangerous. Powerful people with shady friends need the duffel bag to remain hidden. To stay alive and expose Whisper will take all of Curran’s experience, guile and grit. The police are the least of our hero’s problems.
Lowe Curran is an engaging narrator and guide. The story moves along confidently and quickly, spinning its seemingly disparate strands in a way that feels fresh, all while leading us, and Curran, inexorably on. I liked that our hero was human, hobbled by old wounds in very real ways. He’s forced to use his wiles more than his fists or a gun (though he certainly knows how to use them both when called upon). The scene that opens the book is a wonderfully chaotic masterclass in improvised spy craft. Levels of madness misdirect from the darker purpose and set an assured tone for the story to come.
James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, Dark Network , and Emergency Powers–noir tales about a stolen presidency, a conspiracy, and a nation on edge. Bastard Verdict, his fourth novel, is about a conspiracy surrounding a second Scottish Independence referendum. His novel-in-progress is called Witness Tree, a (pinot) noir tale of murder and corruption set in Oregon’s wine country.
Allbooks are available on BookShop.org, IndyBound.org, Barnes & Noble, your local bookshop, and Amazon. eBooks are available in multiple formats including Apple, Kobo, Nook and Kindle.
SWIPE, is a tense, smart and page-turning psychological thriller where life and love on a dating app goes from strange, and sometimes desperate, to menacing. And deadly.
SWIPE, by R.G. Belsky and Bonnie Traymore is a tense, smart psychological thriller. Life and love on the fictional dating app MetMee goes from strange, and sometimes desperate, to deadly when two strong, sympathetic and believable characters looking for connection in life get more than they asked for or expected. The same may be said for lucky readers.
I’m a huge fan of Belsky’s previous work, while Traymore is new to me. On the strength of this book, I’ll definitely want to check out more of her work, too. So, though I should have known better, I expected this novel, given its subject matter, would have the whimsical elements of a cozy. While it has some (dark) humor, the authors do a remarkable job of introducing tension and menace from the very start. And ratcheting it up.
SWIPE, “The perfect match, the perfect murder”, by R.G. Belsky and Connie Traymore EAN/UPC 9798230469544 – Pages 278 – Paperback Pub. date – April 27, 2025 – BISAC Categories: Mystery, Thrillers & Crime
Jake Parker is a former high-flying reporter now writing puff pieces for an online magazine obsessed with clicks, reposts and viral reports, called The American Scene. Sonya Romano, by her own admission, is something of a vigilante. She bears the scars of a troubled childhood–a philandering father who drove his fragile wife to suicide, along with a dark grudge against the two-faced, and often philandering cheaters she encounters on the dating app site “MetMee.”
The story unfolds chapter by chapter from the alternating points-of-view of Jake and Sonya, who quickly track together. Jake has been assigned to write a click bait expose about dating apps, while Sonya worries that an accident resulting from the payback she’s been dealing out to the genuinely horrible men she has encountered will put her in the frame for murder. Jake, with his nose for news, scents a bigger, more important story than the piece his online editor commissioned. Quickly, the two are searching for information about each other that is far outside the normal likes and dislikes. There is an appealing and suspenseful feeling of cat-and-mouse in the early chapters as Jake closes in on what he thinks the story is, and Sonya works to cover her tracks.
There is also a satisfying cat-and-mouse being played with identity here: each character has aliases and multiple personas on the app. This could have been very confusing to read, but Belsky and Traymore carry it off very well.
The alternating viewpoints between Jake and Sonya does an extraordinary job of creating pressure and anxiety about what will happen next. Early on, their courtship is conducted over MetMee’s texting app. This could have been cooly distancing but it actually increases tension as it creates a sense of an inevitable collision. As a reader, I was breathlessly turning the pages to find out just how bad this pile-up would be, only to find…well, I won’t spoil it.
I received a review copy for a free and fair review.
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James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, Dark Network , and Emergency Powers–noir tales about a stolen presidency, a conspiracy, and a nation on edge. Bastard Verdict, his fourth novel, is about a conspiracy surrounding a second Scottish Independence referendum. His novel-in-progress is called Witness Tree, a (pinot) noir tale of murder and corruption set in Oregon’s wine country.
Allbooks are available on BookShop.org, IndyBound.org, Barnes & Noble, your local bookshop, and Amazon. eBooks are available in multiple formats including Apple, Kobo, Nook and Kindle.
During the launch for Bastard Verdict, I was able to “guest” on some great blogs – Murder is Everywhere, The Book Diva’ Reads and The Mystery of Writing. I was excited to contribute, and I looked forward to adding to the discussion. In this case, about collaboration, seeking help with a book and about verisimilitude. I’m grateful for the opportunity. Because most of them deal with the theme of taking help where it’s needed and/or given, I thought I might link to them again.
You might check out these and other posts, and follow these blogs.
In “The Voices in My Head”, for Murder is Everywhere, I talked about how I’d lived in Scotland as a boy, and had longed to write a story set in Scotland. Doing so created a set of unique writing problems… MORE
For Elena Hartwell’s Mystery of Writing, I explored collaborative writing: “I think that if I’m honest with myself, I wouldn’t be a very good collaborator. I worry that sharing the vision would diminish the work…” Or would it? MORE
In “It Takes a Village,” on the Book Diva’s Reads blog, I began, “The writer needs a combination of arrogance and humility—arrogance to carry you over the bad spells of imposter syndrome and worse, and humility about the work itself, and your own limitations….” MORE
The crime writing community is very engaged and supportive.
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James McCrone is the author of the Imogen Trager political suspense-thrillers Faithless Elector, Dark Network , and Emergency Powers–noir tales about a stolen presidency, a conspiracy, and a nation on edge. All books are available on BookShop.org, IndyBound.org, Barnes & Noble, your local bookshop, and Amazon. eBooks are available in multiple formats including Apple, Kobo, Nook and Kindle.
His current book, Bastard Verdict, debuted on May 18th. A noir political thriller set in Scotland, it’s available through the link above, or wherever you buy your books. His current, work-in-progress is a mystery-thriller set in Oregon’s wine country…A (pinot) Noir, called Witness Tree.
A Seattle native (mostly), James now lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and three children. He’s a member of the The Mystery Writers of America, Int’l Assoc. of Crime Writers, Int’l Thriller Writers, Philadelphia Dramatists Center and is the president of the Delaware Valley chapter of the Sisters in Crime network. James has an MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle.
For a full list of appearances and readings, make sure to check out his Events/About page. And follow this blog!
His most recent short fiction is below. The first is available for online reading.
“Ultimatum Games” in Rock and Hard Place magazineissue #7 A rare book heist, bad decisions. The narrator and his partner-in-crime clash over evolving bourgeois norms.
“Nostalgia” in Low Down Dirty Vote, vol. 3 An armed group tries to resurrect a past that never was as they struggle with change.
In JJ Hensley’s compelling Record Scratch, Trevor Galloway takes a case from the sister of a murdered superstar musician, who expects him not only to solve her brother’s eight-month-old homicide, but to recover a vinyl record she believes could ruin his reputation and his legacy. The client closes the meeting by putting a gun under her chin and pulling the trigger. Galloway’s sense of obligation drags him down a path he may not be ready to travel.
This is the second in the Trevor Galloway series, beginning with Bolt Action Remedy (2017), and following up later this year (Oct. 14) with Forgiveness Dies.
I’m a bit late to the party, not having read the first Galloway thriller, but I never felt lost in the plot, and Hensley keeps the action going. The writing is crisp and direct, with wit, humor and darkness as the trail to what really happened to rock star Jimmy Spartan unfolds. It probably isn’t a spoiler to note that things get violently out of hand for Galloway, but I’ll leave it at that.
As Galloway pieces together the final days of rock and roll legend Jimmy Spartan, he struggles to sort through his own issues, which include having the occasional hallucination. He’s not certain how bad his condition has deteriorated, but when Galloway is attacked in broad daylight by men he assumed were figments of his imagination, he realizes the threat is real and his condition is putting him and anyone nearby at risk. The stoic demeanor and ironic distance that earned Galloway the nickname The Tin Man works well as a device for carrying the story forward, even as that detachment is tested.
Pittsburgh, PA, itself plays a role in this thriller. Like Stephen Mack Jones’s Detroit, the author guides us through the city, its neighborhoods and its denizens with familiarity, exasperation and love. I enjoyed every page of Record Scratch, and I read the final third in one night. The picture of a man slowly coming unmoored from the codes to which he had adhered and that gave his life meaning is fascinating, compelling and darkly satisfying. The novel begins and ends ominously: “There are two types of men you must fear in this world: Men who have everything to lose—and men like me.”
The stakes and the conflict are real. Recommended for anyone who likes forceful, intelligent thrillers.
This is one of an occasional series of mystery-thriller book reviews, archived here.
James McCrone is the author of the Imogen TragerNoirPolitik thrillers Faithless Elector and Dark Network. The third book, working title Emergency Powers, is coming soon.
In JJ Hensley’s compelling Record Scratch, Trevor Galloway takes a case from the sister of a murdered superstar musician, who expects him not only to solve her brother’s eight-month-old homicide, but to recover a vinyl record she believes could ruin his reputation and his legacy. The client closes the meeting by putting a gun under her chin and pulling the trigger. Galloway’s sense of obligation drags him down a path he may not be ready to travel.
Chosen Words - James McCrone 