Keeper of the Flame

April 4, 2016
This is the sixth mystery (after Straight No Chaser) in prolific author Batten's series featuring the wily, one-named Crang, a lawyer and sleuth who thrives on taking on unorthodox cases. The action begins when Roger Carnale, the manager of the rising star rap performer Flame, hires Crang to deal with a blackmailing minister. Rev. Alton Douglas wants $8 million to return the handwritten lyrics to songs Flame wrote as a youth that are so offensive they will ruin his career if they come to light. Crang soon makes a deal with the reverend to get the papers back, but then the minister is found dead in his office. Crang follows the trail from the church of Heaven's Philosophersâa front for illegal activitiesâall over Toronto to get to the bottom of the blackmail scheme and murder. Batten fills the book with a colorful cast of characters: Crang himself; his smart-talking assistant, Gloria; his author girlfriend, Annie; his friend Maury's girlfriend Sal, who dabbles in acting in porn films; and various others who help or hinder Crang along the way. Batten's sardonic humor adds fun to this fast-paced whodunit that will keep readers guessing until the final showdown.

Starred review from September 24, 2012
Flynn’s bestselling novel is a dark and cynical treatise on how malignant a marriage can become when the wrong people say “I do.” The book begins with Nick Dunne’s first-person account of wife Amy’s disappearance on their fifth wedding anniversary and his subsequent encounters with the local North Carthage, Miss., homicide detectives who suspect him of murder. Interspersed throughout the book are Amy’s diary entries, which chart her possibly unreliable version of her and Nick’s meeting, marriage, and eventual growing apart. This literary setup is perfect for the dueling narration provided by Julia Whelan and Kirby Heyborne. The latter has a soft, youthful delivery that registers a vague sincerity that could also be interpreted as sarcasm—just the sort of voice one might expect from an intelligent, oddly disaffected, potential wife killer. Whelan’s version of Amy is filled with entitlement, egotism, and the edgy anger of a genuine or imagined victim. The combined narration of Whelan and Heyborne infuse Flynn’s bestseller with an energy that audio fans will find even more satisfying. A Crown hardcover.

February 15, 2016
A Toronto lawyer accepts another of the unusual cases (Take Five, 2013, etc.) he enjoys. The generally quiet lives of Crang and his girlfriend, author Annie B. Cooke, are complicated once more when he's hired by Roger Carnale, executive director of the Flame group, to get his client, the rap singer Flame, out of trouble. Flame lives a quiet life for a popular artist--no scandals, no wild parties, not even a tattoo--but some nasty unpublished lyrics he wrote as a younger man have come back to haunt him when they're stolen from his mother's home; a blackmailer demands $8 million to return them. Because Flame's about to launch what could be an extremely lucrative movie career, Carnale is eager to have Crang quickly retrieve the pages containing those lyrics. When Crang investigates the blackmailer, former priest-turned-eclectic minister Rev. Alton Douglas, he realizes that his church is a cover for a wide range of nefarious activities. With help from his old friend Maury Samuels, an expert in breaking and entering, Crang purloins the lyrics from Douglas' desk. But the minister's murder plunges Crang into trouble, especially when a second blackmailer appears on the scene. While Annie's on a road trip promoting her newly published book, Crang investigates rumors of stock fraud and porno moviemaking. His propensity for wisecracking gets him into trouble with some seriously nasty people. Vodka-sipping, jazz-loving Crang is a clever fellow who adds welcome humor to this sixth noir-light case.

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March 15, 2016
Crang is a Toronto criminal lawyer with a habit of getting mixed up in rather sordid cases. Here, in the sixth novel in the series, he's asked by the manager of an up-and-coming hip-hop musician, Flame, to retrieve some material from a man who's trying to extort money from the singer. The material: old song lyrics, written when Flame was a kid, containing sexist, homophobic, and graphically disturbing imagerylyrics that could ruin his career. The extortionist: the leader of a local church (as Crang soon discovers, the religious element behind Reverend Douglas' operation is a cover for a massive money-laundering scheme). Crang, who presumably has a first name even if he doesn't use it, is a fine character, a sharp-witted attorney who upholds the law but certainly doesn't mind skating around its shadier edges if it suits his purpose, a jazz-loving guy who doesn't mind getting his shoes dirty as long as he wins the day. Legal-thriller fans who haven't discovered the Crang series are in for a treat.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)