Reviews of the Hydrogen Murder. Order the Hydrogen Murder
The First Mystery in THE PERIODIC TABLE MURDER SERIES.
By Camille Minichino
Synopsis
On her fifty-fifth birthday physicist Gloria Lamerino makes a U-turn: she cleans out her Berkeley, California condo and her physics lab, signs for a retirement bonus, and flies east to her hometown of Revere, just outside Boston.
Back in the city she left thirty years ago, Gloria moves into an apartment above her friends' funeral home and drives their hand-me-down Cadillacs. When she signs on with the local police as a consultant in science-related crimes, she thinks the most exciting thing about it will be testifying as an expert witness.
But Gloria finds challenges she doesn't expect: the murder of Eric Bensen, a physicist she knew in California; the re-appearance of Peter Mastrone, an old boyfriend; and an unprecedented feeling of attraction to Matt Gennaro, the homicide detective who's in charge of the Bensen murder investigation.
Although she hates to acknowledge the possibility of shady dealings among her peers, Gloria is forced to admit that Eric's murder may be related to fraud in the scientific community. If Eric was planning to expose a cover-up, she can't rule out high-tech suspects—the lecherous project director for the ground-breaking hydrogen research Eric was working on when he was murdered, the young female colleague determined to climb the corporate ladder on the strength of the team's findings, and the apparently saintly post-doc who may have a grudge of another kind against Eric. And if rumors are true about Eric's love life, his wife and alleged girlfriend must be added to the list of suspects.
Gloria is so successful at overcoming her timidity and confronting the suspects in Eric's murder investigation that her own life is threatened. Her friends try to convince her to abandon her work on the case, but she uses newly acquired assertiveness techniques and old stand-by scientific reasoning skills to meet her contract deadline in a spectacular way.
Gloria uncovers fraudulent scientific data, solves Eric's murder, and engages in her first physical combat, all in the same week. She also has her first date in decades and makes progress in deciding what she wants to be when she grows up.
From: Booklist / December 15, 1997
*Minichino, Camille. The Hydrogen Murder. Dec. 1997. 185p.
Avalon, 401 LaFayette St., New York, NY 10003, $17.95 (0-8034-9268-5).
After retiring from teaching, fiftysomething physics professor Gloria Lamerino becomes a scientific consultant to the police department in her suburban Boston hometown. When Eric Bensen, a young physicist, is found murdered in his lab, Detective Sergeant Matt Gennaro asks Lamerino to determine whether the death was related to Bensen's research on hydrogen and superconductivity. Despite threats and a break-in at her apartment--made doubly spooky because Lamerino lives above a friend's funeral home--the scientist turned sleuth doggedly investigates, uncovering fraudulent dealings by members of Bensens research team. This first novel in a new series is a real find. Not only does author Minichino, herself a physicist, clearly explain the scientific concepts relating to hydrogen and superconductivity, but she also offers a tightly constructed mystery with appealing, sympathetic characters. And her Boston ambience holds its own with that of Parker, Tapply, Higgins, et al. There are numerous physician/medical examiner sleuths at the moment; now there's a physicist on the beat, too, and a very good one. Minichino is currently working on The Helium Murder, the next in the series. Watch for it. -John Rowen
From: The Revere Journal, December 24, 1997
Former resident writes mystery set in Revere
By Stephen F. Olivieri
Journal Staff
A graduate student conducting groundbreaking hydrogen research
was fatally shot at his Charger Street lab...
Well ... not in reality, but in a new mystery novel by a former
Revere
resident.
Camille Minichino, a California physicist, has written "The
Hydrogen Murder," a book set in the streets of the city
she grew up in.
It's all here in her book - St.Anthony's Church, Kelly's, the
Journal, the Lincoln School, Wonderland Ballroom and the Shirley
Avenue police substation.
The mystery's crime solver is Gloria Lamerino, a physicist who
grew up in Revere and moved to California after the death of
her fiance.
After retiring from her California lab, Lamerino decides to come
back to Revere and moves into an apartment above a funeral home
on the corner of Revere and Tuttle Streets.
Lamerino is hired as a consultant for the Revere police on science-related
crimes.
Her expertise is put to the test when a graduate student, who
is also her former colleague, is murdered early one morning at
his lab on Charger Street.
Was the victim about to expose a fraudulent science experiment?
Did his messed-up personal life play a part in his death?
Those are the questions Lamerino and the Revere Police Department
hope to answer.
In addition to being a mystery novel, "The Hydrogen Murder"
is a romance. The heroine falls for the Revere police sergeant
who heads the murder investigation.
Minichino's Revere is true to life. The author comes back to
the East Coast a couple of times a year, and she has driven through
Revere to check street names and take pictures.
"I love the city and I hope that came through," she
said.
There are some small items that are not factually accurate.
In the book, the Columbus Day Parade starts at St. Anthony's
Church and goes to the beach. (It actually starts at the Chelsea
line on Broadway and goes up Revere Street to the church).
In one scene, Lamerino, has a cappuccino in a Starbucks - yes,
a Starbucks - near the Chelsea/Revere line. There's a half-dozen
Dunkin' Donuts in Revere, but no Starbucks.
Of course, Minichino's story is fiction and not a history of
Revere.
Minichino also invents several fictional restaurants in Revere,
although her heroine's favorite place to grab something to eat
is not fictional - Luberto's.
The author and the her heroine have a lot in common.
Both Italian-Americans grew up in Revere and graduated from Revere
High School.
Lamerino, 55, is a 1958 graduate of Revere High; Minichino, 60,
is a 1954 graduate.
"I thought (Lamerino) might be a little more appealing if
she wasn't 60 yet," Minichino said of the age difference.
Both have a Ph.D. in physics and moved to California.
The big difference is that Lamerino moved back to Revere, while
Minichino only visits friends and relatives here.
Minichino does think about moving back to the Boston area.
"It's a wish I have," she said. "(My husband)
doesn't think he could take the winters.''
Unlike Lamerino, who pines after Sergeant Matt Gennaro, Minichino
is married to Richard Rufer.
Minichino said there is one other difference between her and
her heroine: "She's more together than I am."
Minichino is a part-time editor at the same lab she has worked
at since she moved to California in 1975.
Her physics career has included teaching and research. Teaching
science literacy to non-technical people has been a lifelong
mission for Minichino. Her mystery novels are one vehicle for
doing that.
"I want people to think science is friendly," she said.
The former Revere resident has two more books ready for publication
- "The Helium Murder" and "The Lithium Murder."
(Hydrogen, Helium, and Lithium are the first three elements,
respectively, in the periodic table.)
The new books feature Lamerino and are set in Revere.
"The Hydrogen Murder" was published by Avalon Books
of New York. It costs $17.95 and can be ordered by calling 1-800-223-5251.
From: East Bay Express, February 27, 1998
An Unconventional Woman
by Laura Hagar
... San Leandro mystery writer Camille Minichino came of age
in a small, working-class town in New England. Unlike most nice
Italian girls in her hometown of Revere, Massachusetts, Minichino
grew up to become a nuclear physicist. Now retired from her job
at Lawrence Livermore Lab, the sixty-year-old Minichino has started
a new career as a mystery writer. Despite her rather late start
in publishing, one would hesitate to call her a slow starter.
Her first book, The Hydrogen Murder (Avalon), came out in January.
Her second, The Helium Murder, is due out in May. Her third book,
The Lithium Murder, is already at the publishers', and she's
hard at work on her fourth, The Beryllium Murder. (She's working
her way down the periodic table. Only a hundred or so more elements
to go!)
Minichino's witty; wisecracking sleuth Gloria Lamerino is a middle-aged
physicist who, like her creator, feels torn hetween two coasts.
In the first book, Lamerino, a former employee of a Northern
California laboratory; moves back to Revere and goes to work
as a scientific consultant for the local police department where
she explains the intricacies of metallic hydrogen and superconductivity
to science-phobic detectives.
As a longtime science educator, Minichino is particularly sensitive
to how intimidated most people are by any discussion of science
or higher mathematics. One of the great charms of The Hydrogen
Murder is the expert and painless way in which Minichino slips
in the necessary scientific explanations.
"As a scientist, I have heard my whole life that science
is hard, that science is boring, that science is only for geniuses.
You know, there's that saying, 'You don't have to be a rocket
scientist...' and what people mean by this is that whatever they're
talking about is easy compared to rocket science, which they
assume is the hardest thing going. But compared to history or
literature-where you're dealing with the unpredictabilities of
the human mind-rocket science is relatively easy. It's just basic
physics-you push down and you go up-with a little bit of chemistry
mixed in. I've always tried to counteract the idea that scientists
are some special breed of people with some kind of special brain."
Minichino traces her own interest in science to the early mathematics
training she received from her father, a carpenter with almost
no formal education. "My father was very good at arithmetic-which
you have to be as a carpenter-and he taught me how to do that.
It was like a game. He'd say, 'How long do you think this room
is?' and we'd all guess and then we'd measure. And then we'd
figure out how many tiles we'd need. I loved it. It was a way
to play with my father. But it was also laying the foundations
for understanding math and eventually science. Then, when I was
in high school, I had a wonderful woman math teacher. She really
latched onto me because, by that time, I was the only girl in
the room. It's odd, but at the time I didn't notice that I was
the only girl, or if I did it wasn't a big deal because I was
already really confident of my math skills. It was too late for
anyone to tell me that I couldn't do it, because, thanks to that
early training with my father, I already knew that I could."
Minichino's detective Gloria Lamerino comes from a similar background.
She's also close in age to her creator-55 to Minichino's 60.
But Gloria Lamerino isn't anyone's idea of a senior citizen.
She is certainly not a tea-party sleuth in the mold of Agatha
Chnstie's decorous Miss Marple. She even has a romance in the
works with a sad-eyed Italian detective.
I did that deliberately," Minichino says. "I just turned
sixty. It doesn't seem old to me. The word senior keeps getting
pushed ahead. Inside, I don't feel any different than I did when
I was younger. I just wanted a protagonist to reflect that."
From: Gothic Journal, February/March, 1998
The Hydrogen Murder
Camille Minichino (Avalon)
Setting: North of Boston and Revere, Massachusetts, present day
As Eric Bensen is going through the program of the Hydrogen
project, a familiar person walks into the lab and murders him.
He was within months of finishing his doctorate and becoming
famous due to his team's discoveries with metallic hydrogen.
This is the opening scene of a unique murder mystery.
After living in California for 31 years, Gloria Lamerino returns
to Revere. She left Revere suddenly, at age 24, when her fiancé
was killed in an accident. Her reappearance raises eyebrows,
especially when she joins forces with mild-mannered Sargeant
Matt Gennaro to solve the Hydrogen murder.
Gloria lives on the third floor of a funeral home with her doting
best friend Rose while she slowly gets back into an intimate
community life. Her life is filled with giving science lectures
in schools, developing lesson plans for scientific projects,
and working with the police for scientific consultations in their
investigations.
She is soon involved in this murder mystery where the suspects
are her col-leagues. Other secondary characters incude her old
boyfriend Peter, who tries to keep her out of danger while wooing
her back into his arms. Rose knows her best friend well and wants
her to find a nice man. Matt shows little emotion, but he urgently
pleads with her to be careful throughout the investigation. In
the back of her mind, the voice of Gloria's mother, Josephine,
complains about her daughter's many shortcomings. With this cast
of characters, Gloria is bound to solve this case.
Gloria is lovable, smart, funny, and wonderfully quirky. She
wears pins with every outfit, is drawn to danger, and lends a
colorful view to each situation. The author paints an intimate
portrait of Gloria's new life and her impressions of those around
her. In life-and-death situations, she is an action-heroine.
The writing style also details every-day life and provides a
shock when the reader least expects it. The attention to detail
enhances a pleasant narrative voice. For the scientifically challenged,
this novel is exciting. For the scientifically gifted, this novel
is exciting. The idea of creating a series of mysteries based
on the table of elements is innovative. Readers will love following
Gloria on her sleuthing journeys.
This is a mild yet riveting murder mystery that will satisfy
mystery addicts and draw in newcomers to the genre. The plot
leads the reader through the discoveries and questions of a classic
murder mystery. The reader will try to solve the mystery him/herself
and will be surprised by the ending. Every one is a suspect and
has a skeleton or two in the closet. Readers will look forward
to solving The Helium Mystery.
ISII.N 0-8034-9268-5, 185 pp., $17.95 (hardcover), Mystery, December
1997
-Patience H Smilk
From: Marina Times, July, 1998
The Mystery Shelf
by Alicia Berberich
The Hydrogen Murder
by Camille Minichino
I always wondered why I had to memorize the Periodic Table
of Elements in my high school chemistry class. I thought it was
just another way the nuns could torture us under the guise of
science. Now some twenty-odd years later (with more years later
than years prior) I can see that someone has put this knowledge
to good use: Camille Minichino. She has taken the Kinsey Malone
Alphabet Mystery Series concept and added a scientific overlay.
Science was always a mystery to me and I much prefer the fictional
variety when it comes to mysteries but Minichino has managed
to make the science understandable, and even enjoyable.
The Hydrogen Murder, hydrogen being the first element of the
periodic table, is a tightly written mystery that introduces
a colorful cast of characters whom I look forward to getting
to know better. The protagonist, fifty-five year old Dr. Gloria
Lamerino, has recently returned to her roots in the Boston area
after working for the last twenty-five years as a physicist at
UC Berkeley. She is torn between settling in Revere, MA or to
returning to her friends in the Bay Area. At the rate that scientists
are turning up dead in Revere, I'm surprised she doesn't high
tail it back West, but a certain police sergeant has caught her
eye. She has signed up as a scientific consultant for the police
department in Revere and starts working on a case right away.
Gloria has some ghosts that haunt her, including her mother,
Josephine, who, even though she has been dead for many years,
still plays a big part in Gloria's life, and an old boyfriend
who was murdered. She is lives above her friend's mortuary and
drives one of their cars, which takes a certain personality.
The book opens with a prologue that allows the reader see the
murder occur without revealing the murderer. Mystery writers
always debate the effectiveness of prologues. I for one enjoy
them because they create an opportunity to meet the victim and
to establish an emotional connection prior to the inevitable.
The prologue can show us the direction of the story so we have
some background while we get to know the characters. Minichino
uses this technique effectively to present the murder victim
and the background right up front. She then can take her time
to introduce the characters and build their relationships. I
for one enjoy them because they create an opportunity to meet
the victim and to establish an emotional connection prior to
the inevitable. The prologue can show us the direction of the
story so we have some background while we get to know the characters.
Minichino uses this technique effectively to present the murder
victim and the background right up front. She then can take her
time to introduce the characters and build their relationships.
The story involves a physicist, Eric Bensen, who is working on
a project that will greatly impact his lab's work and their future
contracts and funding. He discovered fraudulent data in the hydrogen
research and was having a moral dilemma: whether to withdraw
the paper the group had submitted to the leading journal, or
to remain quiet. Someone else made the decision forEric by murdering
him. Dr. Gloria Lamerino is called in to assist the police. Gloria
is unsure how to pursue a relationship with Sergeant Matt Gennaro,
since they are now workingtogether. Plus, an old friend of Gloria's,
who seems to have been waiting for her return all these years,
is determined to win her affection.
I look forward to many more encounters with the Periodic Table
of Elements Mystery Series gang. I know that Camille Minichino
certainly has her work cut out for her with over 100 elements
to go! The Helium Murder should be available by the time you
read this. If you would like to experience Dr, Minichino's humor
in person, she is on the physics staff at UC Berkeley Extension.
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401 LaFayette Street
New York, NY 10003
1 (800) 223-5251
$17.95 (0-8034-9268-5).
