Customer Reviews

The Taken: A Hazel Micallef Mystery (Hazel Micallef Mysteries)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have been anxiously waiting for another Hazel Micallef book--after falling completely in love with Hazel in her first outing, The Calling. And, happily, author Inger Ash Wolfe lives up to the standard she set with that first book. The characters, as before, are rich and round; the plot is complex and unpredictable; the humor is natural to the characters and never for a moment feels forced. This is writing and plotting of the highest order. And even the secondary characters are fully developed. I am not going to give a plot summary--that's available in the product description. What I am going to do is encourage everyone to get to know Hazel; she's addictive. She's an actual adult and a parent, with all the fears and foibles, tics and heartaches and, finally, acceptance that go along with the accumulation of years of living. Highly recommended!

This is Wolfe's second novel featuring DI Hazel Micallef. Micallef, who has recently had back surgery and must temporarily move into her ex-husband's basement to recuperate. The police are called to a local lake where a body has been reported found. From that point, the story begins to develop.

Rather than the author giving the reader key information, it seems that she has assumed that everyone has read the first book where, hopefully, she explicitly tells the reader where the book is set, why Micallef needed back surgery, what motivated her to move in with her ex-husband and his new wife, etc.

There were a plethora of scenes that stopped my reading, for instance, introducing minor characters, but not giving enough information about them so that when she reintroduces them later, the reader is left wondering who these people are. Or having Micallef confined to bed only to jump up a few pages later and rush out of the house to go to a crime scene. Or the one that really stopped me cold was Micallef getting into the bath tub by herself, having her husband appear with her dinner and feeding it to her while she sits in the tub and then she purposely drops a greasy rib into her bath water.

I think some of the problem I had with this book was that the story line was implausible. Here is a 62-year-old woman who has only just had major back surgery (and still has stitches in) getting out of bed to go to crime scene. Surely, her recovery time would be longer - much longer. Add to all this, the author throws in my pet peeve: a supposedly intelligent cop goes into a potential suspect's home alone and, in this case, goes into a dark basement with him and then remains in the basement while he goes back upstairs.

I wanted to like this book. It has everything that would make me like it - a mature woman detective, an interesting sounding plot, and starred reviews. But I felt no connection to any of the characters and the story moved so slowly that it was hard to stay engaged, in fact, my mind wandered to other matters, like my grocery list, as I read it.

This second novel in the series of mysteries featuring Hazel Micallef, a rural Ontario police chief, is one of those rare discoveries -- a mystery series that really grabs me and has me completely believing that the cast of characters the author crafts aren't fictional inventions but real people.

Hazel Micallef is recovering from her pursuit of a very odd kind of killer in the first book (The Calling), literally. She's flat on her back, after back surgery, in the basement spare bedroom of the house she and her aged mother are forced to share temporarily with her ex-husband and his new wife until she's well enough to go back home. She's in agony, which only Percocet helps deal with, and she's bored out of her wits. So she is almost grateful when reports of a body found in a lake by fishermen force her back into the office. Until the body turns out not to be a body, but the first clue in a manipulative game being staged by someone bent on murder -- or is it revenge? Whatever the case, Hazel and her team are the criminal's tools.

I loved the characters, the writing, the author's ability to communicate a setting, and the deeply twisting (and twisted) plot of this novel that had me turning the pages more and more rapidly. I particularly enjoy Hazel, who is ruthlessly honest with the world -- to her own detriment, sometimes -- but also with herself. As she tells her sidekick, the equally appealing James Wingate, she has "a man trapped in my computer, live animals and body parts appearing on my desk, a CO who thinks I've outlived my usefulness and expensive gifts coming from missing friends, I also happen to have a pill problem ... So I'm slightly less than OK." In other words, she is human, flawed and thus appealing in a way that a glam 30-something detective just couldn't be.

Ultimately, this crime novel ends up being about love -- and the price of love and what people will do in the name of love. This is an intriguing mix of the cosy setting (rural Ontario, where the usual crimes run to someone throwing a cup of hot Darjeeling at someone else) with a gritty crime and deeply nasty criminal. Highly recommended; I can't wait for the next in this series and hope that Hazel has a long crime-solving career ahead of her.

Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef's life is in danger of spiraling out of control. She is laid up after back surgery and she has no choice but to move into her ex-husband's basement apartment. Andrew (to whom she was married for thirty-six years), his wife, Glynnis, and Hazel's eighty-seven year old mother, Emily, join forces to help Hazel during this difficult time. As if her neediness were not humiliating enough, Micallef has become addicted to Percocet; it will be a bear to wean herself off her medication. Emily is a sarcastic and overbearing type who is determined to prevent her daughter from remaining hooked on pain pills. Hazel will turn sixty-two shortly. Will she be put out to pasture, just another soon-to-be golden ager, no longer relevant or productive?

In "The Taken," by Inger Ash Wolfe, Hazel is saved from going insane by the visits of her loyal Detective Constable, James Wingate, and an intriguing new case. (Wingate is temporarily in charge of the Port Dundas Ontario Police Services detachment while Hazel recuperates.) DI Micallef learns that a couple who went fishing on a charter boat hooked what appeared to be a dead body, but turns out to be a plastic mannequin missing its head, hands, and feet. Eerily, this occurrence jibes with a series of stories that have been appearing in the local newspaper under the byline of Colin Eldwin. These events, along with other clues, lead Hazel to the horrifying conclusion that someone is being held captive and tortured. The perpetrator is manipulating the police and Hazel takes the bait. She pulls out all the stops in an effort to identify the sadistic felon who is behind a sick crime. Adding to her worries, Hazel's detachment is in danger of being downsized because of new "efficiencies" that the higher-ups believe are necessary to preserve the county's limited resources.

It is refreshing to read about a single woman in her sixties who is tough, independent, highly intelligent, occasionally self-deprecating, but far from a shrinking violet. When Hazel feels threatened, she fights back with a ferocity that belies her age, and she throws her tired body into this investigation with every ounce of her limited strength. Not only will Hazel be intellectually challenged by a criminal mastermind who knows exactly which buttons to push, but she will risk her fragile physical health in the process. All of this angst culminates in the reopening of a cold case that was once ruled a suicide, but may actually have been murder. Hazel will make several enemies in high places before this inquiry is concluded.

Wolfe is a sharp and savvy writer who handles her intriguing story with skill and style. The characters are well-drawn, the dialogue is crisp and darkly humorous, and the byzantine plot holds our interest as the suspense inexorably builds. "The Taken" would have been a marvelous installment in this entertaining series had Wolfe come up with a more believable and coherent ending. Instead, she goes for the glitz. Because of the irritatingly complex, melodramatic, and far-fetched conclusion, "The Taken" earns a marginal recommendation. Still, Hazel is a gem, and most readers will fall head-over-heels in love with this stubborn, irascible, and tenacious individual.

In the debut novel in this series, "The Calling," we learned that DI Hazel Micallef suffered a severe back injury. In the interim between that time frame and this sequel she has undergone two operations and we find her flat on her back, dependent on pain killers, in the basement apartment of her ex-husband's house and being tended to by his present wife. Hazel is regularly visited by her apparent second in command, DC James Wingate, who recently transferred from Toronto to the small town of Port Dundas.

But you can't keep a good man (or woman) down, and when a couple of tourists believe they have found a body at the bottom of a lake, and the local paper begins a serialization of a story in which such an event is described, Hazel jumps out of bed to take charge of an investigation during which she is led by the nose with clues placed by an unknown person. The maverick Detective Inspector really has nothing more to go on than her intuition.

This is an extremely complicated plot, not only confusing to the reader but also to Hazel and James. Nevertheless, they plod on, determined to solve the case, by criminy. Along the way the various characters learn more about the meaning of love, toward others as well as themselves. Hazel remains the interesting protagonist she appeared to be in the first installment and presumably she'll be back to entertain us soon once again.

Recommended.

The Taken is one of those rare mysteries that is so engrossing it's hard to put down. I had not previously read Inger Ash Wolfe, but I'm going out and getting the other Inspector Hazel Micallef books. Yes, it was that good.

One of the first things that caught my eye was the fact that it was set in Canada. I loved that. I read a lot of Britich mysteries, and I'm always looking for something just a bit different, and I was not disappointed. I'm so glad to see other mysteries set in Canada as well, from other authors. I'm fascinated by my "northern brother".

And poor Hazel Micallef. She's had back surgery and has been forced to move in with her ex-husband and his new wife. I simply can't imaging anything more appalling or humiliating. In fact, I have to admire Hazel for doing that because I'd pay complete strangers to let me live with them under similar circumstances.

While Hazel is recovering and dealing with the pain of back surgery, she gets involved in a case. A body is pulled up out of the lake--only to discover that the body...well...I don't want to give too much away. But what they discover in the lake propels them into a deadly "game" where those reponsible always seems to be one step ahead of the investigative team.

This writing is lean and compelling, and the mystery combines the best of mystery and suspense as Hazel gets further and further sucked into a desperate game. I really don't want to spoil the fun--there are so many twists and turns with this that it's hard to talk too much about the plot without ruining it. Suffice to say, the author takes you on a lot of unexpected sideroads that all circle back to a gripping conclusion.

I'm looking forward to my next Hazel Micallef book, that's for sure!

...then by all means, try The Taken! You won't be sorry. The second book in this outstanding series more than lives up to the promise of Wolfe's debut, The Calling. The series centers around the personal and professional life of one Hazel Micallef, a 60-something yr old Canadian police chief. Hazel is sharp, doesn't suffer fools glady yet she has enough flaws to make her one of crime fiction's most interesting characters in some time. As the story opens, Hazel is recuperating from back surgery in the home of her ex-husband and his new wife. As she struggles to overcome her humiliation with this situation and regain her independence, she is soon running her department from her bedside. When a mannequin (first thought to be a body) is fished out of a lake, Hazel is on the trail of a very strange case, linking marks found on the mannequin to a kidnapping/torture. This crime in turn, is also tied to a serialized story that's appearing in the local paper. While some of the twists and turns are a bit off-the-wall, Wolfe's talent keeps the reader intrigued and engaged. Complex, witty, dark, wonderful characters - it's all here.

Detective Inspector Hazel Micallif, lamed by recent back surgery that has forced her to move into her ex-husband"s basement, along with her sidekick Joseph Wingate, confronts a complicated crime that draws its participants through the Internet, through Wingate's past as a police officer in Toronto, and through a complicated web of mistaken identities.

I loved everything about this novel. First of all -- an extremely complex plot that leaves the reader guessing till the end. Plus points for the cryptic crosswords elements. Second -- stellar writing, both in mood and detail. We really get a feel for the situation in Port Dundas, and Micallif's responses to it. Third -- love the heroine, a 62 year old woman trying to come to terms with the mistakes and victories of her past.

An excellent, excellent read that deserves to be on the top ten lists of crime novels published this year. Highly recommended.

I usually try to read a series in order, but "The Taken" caught my eye and I read it before the first one in the series. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the book and I am now eager to go back and pick up "The Calling."

Hazel is a wonderfully quirky character, and I have to admit, I loved Wingate (her right-hand man - he is a bit shy, holds down the fort while Hazel is recuperating, gets airsick in helicopters, but he has a quiet strength that comes out in a most pleasant way). Not only is this a pretty decent mystery with its share of twists and surprises, but it's a good character study. The characters' lives, personalities and backgrounds are illuminated as each faces something that their past makes especially challenging (for Hazel, she's slowly recuperating from back surgery while relying on her ex and his new wife to help her; for Wingate, he's lost his partner and not only must he return to a place from his past, but something about the case reminds him too clearly of how he lost his lover). It's interesting to see how these people not only survive, but thrive despite their heartbreak. While I thought a few of the roads taken were a bit too smooth or easy, most of the roads were realistically bumpy, well-traveled with pot holes. And there's just something about this author's writing style that I really liked - I found it easy to read but not mindless; it was more reflective with a great deal of soul.

The ending was satisfying for the most part - one resolution was a bit overdone for my taste, while I would have liked to have known more about other characters/issues, but again, most of the many strings were well-tied at the end. I'll look forward to reading more about Hazel and her family, co-workers, and the next case.

First Line: Glynnis Pedersen's house was full of clocks.

Sixty-something Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef is not having the best of years. She's had major back surgery, and there was no alternative but she move into her ex-husband's basement and have his new wife take care of her. Just as she's beginning to think about getting back to work in order to salvage some of her sanity, her mother flushes her stash of painkillers down the toilet. It's almost a blessing when Hazel's informed that the body of a woman has been found in a local lake. What makes the discovery strange is that the local paper has just published the first installment of a story in which the details are eerily similar. In no time at all, Hazel finds herself caught up in a game concocted by someone who knows how to convince her to re-open a cold case... someone who knows that, once she gets started, Hazel will not stop until she has the answers.

I was thrilled with the first book in this series, The Calling. I enjoyed the setting and the swiftly moving plot, but most of all, I loved the character of Hazel. Her dedication, her ability to think outside the box, her compassion, her prickliness, and her sense of humor. I was hoping that I'd enjoy this next book in the series just as much, and I certainly wasn't disappointed.

The game Hazel finds herself in the midst of is deviously plotted, and although the identity of the criminal is revealed about halfway through the book, this has the effect of heightening the tension, not lessening it. To top it all off, I found that I liked Hazel even more in this second book because Wolfe takes the time to add more facets to her character. I know that Hazel is getting close to retirement age, but I certainly do hope that she'll be appearing in a few more books before she hangs up her badge.