Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding
Robert Allen Papinchak

In Rhys Bowen’s latest Her Royal Spyness book, Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding, the action takes up less than two months after On Her Majesty’s Frightfully Secret Service (2017) ends in April 1935. That leaves 24-year-old Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie Rannoch, 34th in line to the British throne, less than three months to plan her wedding to Darcy O’Mara.

Introduced in Her Royal Spyness (2007), Georgie, then a 21-year-old royal of meager means, becomes something of an accidental detective after Queen Mary asks her to spy on her son, the Prince of Wales, and his intended, Wallis Simpson, only to find a body turn up unexpectedly in her bath. The only employee of Coronet Domestics Agency, Georgie is prone to clumsiness, but also forthright and resourceful. Her family includes a ne’er-do-well brother, a dismissive sister-in-law, an oft-married mother, and an extended “family” of schoolhood friends (all of whom—along with an Irish maid, Queenie—make appearances in subsequent novels).

Several royal missions, romance, and 11 books later, Georgie is finally ready to settle down and be wed. As might be expected in a Bowen novel, however, nothing goes smoothly. Unable to find a residence for her future life, Georgie is unexpectedly offered Eynsleigh, the Sussex country estate of her ex-stepfather and godfather, Sir Hubert Anstruther.

The manor is in disrepair and the newly hired staff—headed by an officious butler—seem inept at their duties. The cook serves tinned soup; a rude lady’s maid balks at serving her lady; and gardeners spend their time leaning on spades and pocketing profits from selling the estate’s produce to the local stores. What’s more, Georgie has inherited along with Eynsleigh its random residents (one a very Jane Eyre-like octogenerian who favors free-flying parrots and parakeets in her quarters).

The book starts out a bit uneven. Early on, Georgie seems out of character when she plays the royalty card and reprimands her staff, and the plot, not as involved as earlier novels, is thin. But as corpses and coincidences begin to pile up, Georgie returns to her stalwart style of detection and sorts out what is going on, and Bowen succeeds in providing a solid ending.

Though Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding is a less exciting entry in the always jaunty and mostly thrilling Royal Spyness series, it sets up much to look forward to in the next one. Will Darcy and Georgie live happily ever after? You’ll have to keep reading to find out. Until then, as Queenie would say, “Bob’s yer uncle.”

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 01:50:52
Cape Diamond
Benjamin Boulden

Cape Diamond is Ron Corbett’s dark and atmospheric second novel featuring Frank Yakabuski. Yakabuski is a police detective in the fictional city of Springfield, at the southern edge of Canada’s Great Boreal Forest. When Augustus Morrissey, the retired leader of the Irish criminal gang North Shore Shiners, is found murdered and hanging from a park fence, the suspects are many. But the $1.2 million uncut diamond stuffed in Morrissey’s mouth is something special.

Then, when a member of the Travellers, an almost mythical gang of smugglers tracing their lineage back to the Central European gypsies, is murdered and left hanging from the same fence as where Morrissey was found, a gang war threatens to break Springfield apart. The murders, along with the kidnapping of a young girl, and a psychopath drug dealer on the loose, keep Frank jumping at shadows while trying to decipher the conspiracy behind events.

Cape Diamond is a rich and detailed crime novel with motives as dark and forbidding as its Canadian setting. A unique mixture of modern crime procedural, gangland drama, rural folklore, and revenge tale with a superhuman killer—similar to the villain, Anton Chigurh, from Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men—combine for a thrilling and suspenseful ride. Frank Yakabuski is a dogged detective and a likable character. His flaws make him interesting and the mystery glitters with the appeal of a half-buried diamond.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 01:59:47
When the Lights Go Out
Robin Agnew

Mary Kubica’s book is like a long fever dream. She utilizes two plot threads—a past and a present one—and slowly draws them together. In the present, we meet Jessie, who is keeping a sleepless vigil by her mother’s deathbed in the hospital. Then we are taken back in time 20 years where we meet Eden, a woman with a beautiful new home and a handsome new husband, but an unhappy heart. She wants nothing more than a house full of kids, but she can’t seem to get pregnant. Eden’s frustrations are only multiplied after meeting her pregnant neighbor, a woman who already has two kids in tow and a neglectful and uninterested parenting style.

Back at the hospital, Jessie takes a sleeping pill and lies down in the bed next to her mother’s. When she wakes up, her mother is dead. Readers then accompany Jessie on her sleepless journey through life as she prepares her mother’s home for sale, finds a new place to live, and applies to school—only to discover that she doesn’t exist. Jessie’s identity, on paper at least, seems to be fake, which of course gets in the way of many, many things she needs and wants to do and raises quite a few questions about where she came from. The most disturbing parts of the book follow Jessie in her growing sleepless state as she starts to hallucinate—or does she?

In Eden’s story, we see her growing desperation as she plunges deep into fertility treatments, putting her and her husband in debt and, eventually, driving a wedge between the two. Eden gets a job at the local hospital where she spends all her free time looking through the window of the hospital nursery.

Both women are on frustrating quests—Jessie for her identity, Eden for a child—that seem to be hopeless. How these two stories meet I am going to leave to the reader to discover, as Kubica’s story is full of twists and surprises. This is an elegiac novel about grief—grief over losing a parent, grief over wanting a child. Jessie and Eden get inside your brain and take a seat. Good luck dislodging them after you finish the book.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 02:03:43
Leave No Trace
Sharon Magee

Lucas Blackthorn was nine years old when his mother died, devastating him and his father, Josiah. They find solace in the endless miles of forests and waterways that make up the isolated Boundary Waters of northern Minnesota, traveling there at every opportunity. One time they don’t return. After an investigation of their campsite, the general consensus is they were victims of a bear attack.

Fast forward ten years. Maya Stark is an assistant speech therapist (and a former patient) at the Congdon Psychiatric Facility in Duluth, Minnesota, where a violent, wild young man is brought in after being caught breaking into an outfitter store. Lucas has returned from what everyone assumed was the dead. But where is his father? Lucas won’t say. In fact, he won’t speak to anyone except Maya, although at their first meeting he tries to strangle her in an escape attempt. As Maya continues to work with this lost soul, it seems he senses a kindred spirit; Maya has had a rough upbringing and deep dark secrets of her own, including abandonment by her mother. As she and Lucas become closer, he opens up to her and convinces her to help him escape and find his father. But there are those who also want to find him, including a group of Lucas groupies and the law, and Maya and Lucas must use all their skills to evade them.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 02:07:55
Under My Skin
Hank Wagner

Shortly after losing her husband unexpectedly to a random act of violence, photographer Poppy Lang disappears after his funeral, only to resurface days later, disheveled, physically exhausted, with no memory of the time in between.

Poppy spends the next year trying to deaden her grief through a combination of therapy and ill-advised self-medicating. Her attempts fail miserably. And what’s more, she begins to experience a series of surreal waking dreams, which seem connected to her blackout. As her dreams intensify, she becomes convinced they are repressed memories, and sets out to determine their verity. Her search for the truth causes her to question both her everyday reality and the story of a mugging-gone-wrong that the police long ago closed the case on.

A winning blend of mystery, psychological thriller, and ghost story, Under My Skin lives up to its title, telling an intimate story of tragedy, betrayal, obsession, and secrets. Lisa Unger takes readers on a harrowing, tortuous trek through a dark mental landscape where nothing is certain. Readers, as well as Poppy, are forced to question her perceptions and determine for themselves whether she’s onto something bigger and darker than just booze, pills, and self-deception. The book is a labyrinth, full of twists and turns, but one that makes for fascinating and rewarding reading.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 02:14:00
Remember Tokyo
Matt Fowler

In the third book from Nick Wilkshire’s Foreign Affairs Mystery series, the reader follows Charlie Hillier, a consular officer, in Tokyo. After getting settled at his new job, Charlie is sent to work on a case involving a comatose investment banker. Death, amnesia, and the flutters of romance befall Charlie as he gets pulled deeper into the case after the death of the investment banker’s supposed friend. With the help of a police officer, Chikako Kobayashi, Charlie does his best to ascertain what is really going on.

Wilkshire appears just as—if not more—interested in his setting than his plot. And why not? The story itself is the kind of by-the-numbers mystery that one might expect from a novel in a series. However, the writer makes a point to accentuate and pull out the uniqueness of the culture that surrounds his main character. Wilkshire is happy to jump into the plot when the story calls for it, and just as content to let the twists simmer as he leads his protagonist through an entirely new metropolis playground.

It’s the Japanese police officer Kobayashi who is the treat of this novel. While Charlie is important to moving the plot along, it’s his partner who steals the show. Her intriguing personality covers over some of the more guessable plot twists.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 02:22:35
Strange Ink
Craig Sisterson

Australian debutant Gary Kemble blends dark mystery with a touch of the paranormal in this highly original and engaging read, which was short-listed for the Ned Kelly Award in the author’s home country of Australia and is now available to US readers.

Jaded journalist Harry Hendrick was once a rising star, but his career was derailed and is now circling the drain in Brisbane. He’s meandering through life, a shell of his former self, and one morning he wakes from a hangover after a friend’s bachelor party with a strange symbol tattooed on his neck. He writes it off as a stupid, drunken choice, but then his mate Dave can’t remember anything about them going for a tattoo. It seems to have appeared out of nowhere and is soon followed by more tattoos and violent visions that seem to be tied to the war in Afghanistan. Something isn’t right.

Then Harry meets Jess McGrath, a successful, married woman also suffering from mysterious tattoos and violent visions. As an election looms and the leading contender seems tied to their visions, Harry and Jess need to work out just what’s going on.

This is a smoothly written book with a highly original premise that could have stumbled, but Kemble handles it well and makes it believable within the world of his novel. Strange Ink is a novel that draws you into its mystery while offering plenty of fascinating contemporary issues woven throughout the tale, a great sense of place, and interesting characters.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 02:25:55
Death in Shangri-La
Hank Wagner

The first Dotan Naor thriller to be translated into English finds the ex-Israeli operative trying to unravel the mystery of his friend Willy Mizrachi’s decapitation in a fleabag hotel in Delhi, against the backdrop of a terrorist attack on Israeli tourists in the Himalayas. Dotan, who erroneously feels responsible for his friend’s death, travels to India in the company of government agent Maya Kefir to track down the killers. Upon arrival, he embarks on his search, which also puts him on the trail of Willy’s son, Israeli expat Itiel, who has been resisting his father’s desperate entreaties to return home. As he pieces the complex puzzle together, he reconstructs the details of what appears to be an illicit arms deal gone sideways. In pursuing those responsible, however, he is also putting his and Maya’s heads on the chopping block.

Death in Shangri-La is a combination of traditional mystery (with Naor tracking down a killer), thriller (the backdrop of a terrorist attack), and travelogue (through India). Naor is a great character, an affable, insightful sort whose narrative voice proves irresistible, providing many informative and humorous asides as he relates this engaging tale. Readers will find themselves growing ever more interested in his quest and anxious to discover more about his undoubtedly complex backstory (the tidbits he casually provides seem as if they could justify their own novels). Hopefully, this is only the first of his adventures to be published in English.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 02:38:37
Paris in the Dark
Jean Gazis

In this latest installment of the acclaimed Christopher Marlowe Cobb series it’s autumn 1915 and the “Great War” is devastating Europe, but the United States has yet to enter the fray. Impatient with President Woodrow Wilson’s pacifism, intrepid Americans are volunteering at the front, driving ambulances and staffing hospitals in France. Cobb—known as Kit to his friends—is an American journalist writing about his heroic countrymen for the Chicago press. He interviews and rides along with ambulance drivers Cyrus Parsons, a Midwestern farm boy, and John Barrington Lacey, a Harvard man. Meanwhile, he finds himself increasingly drawn to the cool and beautiful Louise Pickering, a supervising nurse at the American hospital.

Cobb is also an undercover foreign agent for the United States government, and when a Paris café is bombed, he is quickly assigned to track and neutralize the suspected German saboteur. With the morale of the French populace and civilians’ lives at stake, speed and discretion are paramount. Cobb must follow the slenderest of leads and confront his own worst phobias to catch the killer before he can strike again.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 02:44:51
Penned
Robin Agnew

The fourth book in the veterinary sleuth series by Eileen Brady, Penned is a nice mix of cozy and semi-hardboiled elements, which is one of my favorite kinds of books to read. The main character, Kate Turner, is a busy vet in a small town in New York’s Hudson Valley, and as the story opens, it’s Halloween. She’s been asked to keep an eye on a client’s elderly aunt, and while Kate and the woman wait for the niece to return with the car, a group of Halloween-garbed grown-ups walk by, one of them making the woman turn to Kate and whisper, “Someone evil is here.” Kate dismisses it as the fear and confusion of her elderly companion, who is somewhat cognitively impaired, but shortly thereafter the older woman is found dead in an apparent burglary.

As the book’s prologue begins inside the killer’s head as he plans how to kill the elderly woman, this is hardly a surprise, but the twists and turns the story takes are. Kate is drawn into the investigation of the woman’s death when a reporter pounces on her at the funeral. He’s writing a book about a missing serial killer he calls the “Big Bad Wolf” and thinks there is a connection. The two develop a kind of friendship, and when he is injured about halfway through the story, she starts looking into things on her own, along with a little help from her tech-savvy grandfather.

On the more cozy end of the book, we also follow Kate on her veterinary rounds, and these parts of the book are not only enjoyable, but the animals and clients serve to advance the story and provide background on Kate’s character and life.

Brady manages to blend the elements of a serial killer novel with a cozy by not including any graphic violence. While the killer’s deeds are alluded to, the details are left unspoken. In the end, this really becomes a straight-up detective novel, not a scary serial killer book, and I am happy to say I was completely wrong about the killer’s identity. Penned was a very enjoyable read on every level.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 02:48:47
Shot of Love
Jay Roberts

Nick Teffinger, the head of Denver’s homicide unit, has a problem. He doesn’t know how to properly end a one-night stand. Most people would simply do the morning-after walk of shame and return to their regular life. But not Nick it seems. Copious amounts of alcohol leading to a night of drunken sex with a ravishingly beautiful woman (whose name he can’t remember) is apparently enough to make him forget his responsibilities and his job.

Instead, he ends up embarking on a road trip with the woman (Jackie, according to her ID) for reasons past understanding. “Love” makes you do some pretty stupid things, but Nick takes the cake. Despite slowly learning that Jackie is far more complicated and potentially dangerous than what she seems, Nick continues by her side, the fact that Jackie is on the run from henchman determined to kill them both failing to penetrate his cranium. Oh, and she might also be mixed up in the murder of a lawyer in Chicago.

As Nick tries to separate fact from fiction, his situation becomes tenuous and then downright criminal as he goes about committing or abetting crimes that he’d normally be arresting people for. Repeated warnings for Nick to get away from Jackie from a coworker, a celebrity friend, and a private investigator go unheeded. As Nick stumbles his way closer to the real truth, the book fumbles its way to a twist ending that feels tacked on and unearned.

As someone who grew up around law enforcement, I found the portrayal of Teffinger to be an insult to the real men and women in blue. While flawed characters make for better reading than a goody-two-shoes Pollyanna, I was unable to suspend disbelief at the seeming ease at which Nick abandoned all the oaths he swore to uphold as an officer of the law. There’s an attempt to make it seem as if he’s going along just to investigate Jackie and her actions, but I found it half-hearted at best. Frankly, Shot of Love left me longing for the days of Dudley Do-Right, when the police were held in higher regard and actually met those expectations.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 02:58:35
Our House
Robert Allen Papinchak

Our House is the stunning US debut for popular British novelist Louise Candlish. This is a mind-boggling, head-spinning, jaw-dropping domestic thriller as good as Liane Moriarty. It outdoes anything by Gillian Flynn, Ruth Ware, or Aimee Molloy.

The novel begins in an unsettling fashion when Fiona Lawson arrives at her redbrick double-fronted Edwardian home in an upscale London neighborhood one sunny January afternoon to encounter strangers moving in. All of her own furnishings have been removed and her husband Abraham has disappeared. Fiona suspects a phishing scam—if only she were so lucky.

Candlish’s high-tech narrative takes a unique approach to the standard marital drama with perspectives that alternate between 42-year-old Fiona and her podcast, The Victim, and notes from a computer document, a series of astonishing revelations from her husband, Abraham. Both sources are riddled with lies and misdirections.

Fiona and Bram do not have a happy marriage. After Fiona discovered Bram having sex with another woman in their backyard playhouse, she asked him to leave, but eventually established a “bird’s nest” co-parenting arrangement to raise their two young sons. The boys stay in the home while the parents alternate residency based on a somewhat complicated and carefully planned schedule. When not in the house, Fiona and Bram each rent an apartment nearby.

Their complicated marriage is further complicated by a car accident involving Bram, which leads to the death of a child. Bram drives away from the scene and tells no one about it, but someone claims to have seen what happened and an intricate blackmail scheme ensues.

Candlish makes the improbable perfectly believable, and few readers will be able to sort out all the twists and turns or anticipate the conclusion. In fact, there are so many secrets in Our House that it is difficult to avoid spoilers, but suffice it to say, if Candlish’s other 11 books are as solid as the all-engaging Our House, the author is about to have a very large American following.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 03:04:21
Depth of Winter
Oline H. Cogdill

Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire is so intrinsically connected to Absaroka County that, at first, it’s a bit jarring when he travels to Mexico in the superior 14th outing in Craig Johnson’s series.

Johnson’s series has always perfectly melded that superb sense of place with in-depth character studies. That combination has been so strong that it has spun an annual festival called Longmire Days. Now in its sixth year, Longmire Days attracts up to 10,000 people to tiny Buffalo, Wyoming.

Walt goes to Mexico to battle a “monster among monsters”—the killer Tomás Bidarte who has kidnapped Walt’s daughter, Cady, and is keeping her captive in a mountain compound in a remote area of the Chihuahua desert.

Accompanied by a small group of companions, Walt sets out to find Cady. At six-foot-four, Walt is hard to miss. So to try to conceal his identity, Walt and his friends tell a Mexican colonel that he is Dallas Cowboy star Bob Lilly. But that rather humorous episode aside, Depth of Winter is one of Johnson’s most tense novels. The steadfast Walt’s moral code is tested several times as he is loath to kill unless absolutely necessary. By contrast, Walt is up against criminals who have no hesitation in killing without provocation.

True to form, Johnson keeps the suspense high as he briskly moves Depth of Winter to its surprising, but believable conclusion. Although the TV series Longmire has ended its six-season run on Netflix, the novels continue spinning Walt’s adventures. Depth of Winter is a highlight in an already outstanding series.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 03:13:15
The Pint of No Return
Joseph Scarpato, Jr.

It’s Oktoberfest in Leavenworth, Washington, a small town west of Seattle, and beer connoisseur Sloan Krause and her boss, Garret Strong, are looking forward to introducing a new brew at their small pub, Nitro. Complications arise when a former movie star, Mitchell Morgan, and a documentary film crew arrive to film the local festivities and take a special interest in Nitro.

It’s obvious right from the start that there is more than a little conflict between Morgan and various members of the documentary crew. Before long, one of the newcomers is murdered, and sometime-amateur sleuth Sloan uses her curiosity and deductive talents to aid the local police in solving the case.

Like any small town, plots and subplots abound, including Sloan’s soon-to-be-terminated marriage to an unfaithful husband, Mac, and her growing attraction to her boss, Garret. Meanwhile, a young woman who claims that she was invited by Morgan to attend the festivities as his guest finds herself as a possible suspect and is taken under her wing by Sloan.

Aside from the interesting whodunit aspects of the case, the unusual and interesting characters involved, and the smooth writing style, what I found even more enjoyable were the descriptions of the various mouthwatering microbrews such as Cherrywizen and the intricate processes for creating them.

This is the second entry in the Sloan Krause mystery series by author Ellie Alexander, who has previously published eight books in the Bakeshop Mystery series.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 03:16:27
The Thief of All Light
Erica Ruth Neubauer

Carrie Santero is a green cop with a burning desire to become a detective. She volunteers for the Anti-Crime Task Force and pulls double shifts in order to learn everything she can. She’s the first female police officer in Coyote Township, Pennsylvania—far out in the western part of the state, where she’s often treated like either a glorified secretary or a sex object.

When Carrie comes across a van with a horrifically mutilated body inside while on a routine patrol, she is finally part of the investigation team, and she’s excited to be working her first big case. But it’s not so thrilling when the killer strikes close to home, taking the young daughter of Carrie’s best friend.

Enter Jacob Rein. Once the partner of Carrie’s boss, Waylon, Rein is a retired detective, a damaged soul, a recluse from society, but an expert in missing children cases. Carrie and Waylon convince him to help locate the missing child, and perhaps stop a serial killer in his tracks.

It must be said that there is graphic sex and violence on the page, including rape. But Bernard Schaffer writes the inside of a cop’s brain—the danger and the darkness that lurks there after too many years on the streets, and the uncertainty and energy when you’re fresh on the job—with care and skill. Santero is young and has watched far too many cops on TV, but her drive, enthusiasm, and optimism are a great balance against Rein’s dark experience and cynicism. This looks to be the first in a violent, but well-paced new series, and I find myself looking forward to seeing what’s next for Santero and Rein.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 03:18:58
Vox
Katrina Niidas Holm

This terrifying and timely debut novel from linguist Christina Dalcher is set in an alternate reality where extreme-right fundamentalists run the United States government. Only men can hold jobs. Schools are segregated by sex, with girls learning nothing but the skills it takes to run a home. Women of all ages must wear counters on their wrists that administer electric shocks if they speak more than 100 words per day. They’re forbidden from communicating nonverbally, and they can’t read books, use computers, own cell phones, or possess passports.

Dr. Jean McClellan was a cognitive linguist on the verge of curing aphasia (language difficulties resulting from brain damage) when she had to abandon her career. She’s resigned to being a housewife and stay-at-home mom until President Sam Myers’ chief policy adviser sustains a head injury while skiing and loses the ability to communicate. Myers allows Jean and her six-year-old daughter, Sophia, to remove their counters temporarily if she’ll resume her work on her anti-aphasia serum, but it doesn’t take her and her team long to realize that the president is hiding something. Why is the government willing to spend millions of dollars setting up a lab to help a single man? Why is the security surrounding the project so intense? Does the Myers administration have nefarious plans for their research, and, if so, is there any way to stop them?

Equal parts thriller, cautionary tale, and call to action, Dalcher’s first foray into long-form fiction is a visceral, thought-provoking read certain to inspire nightmares in—and increased democratic participation from—nearly every person who cracks its cover, regardless of gender. The pace is breakneck, the narrative drive is relentless, and the stakes start high and increase exponentially. Dalcher’s plot is intelligent and inventive, her world building is efficient but thorough, and her characters are passionate, nuanced, and realistically flawed.

Much of Dalcher’s denouement happens off-page and the conclusion feels a bit pat, but those are minor quibbles; even if it’s not fully earned, the ending still satisfies emotionally, answering questions and—like the rest of the book—offering hope while cautioning readers against complacence. Where the #MeToo movement focuses on giving women a voice, Vox sees Dalcher do the literal opposite, silencing her female characters and forcing her audience to contemplate the consequences of taking their supposedly inalienable rights and freedoms for granted.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 03:23:09
Wrecked
Benjamin Boulden

Wrecked is Joe Ide’s third Isaiah Quintabe thriller. Isaiah, known as IQ, is an East Long Beach, California, private eye with a penchant for helping people without many resources. He is happy to trade an IOU (without ever collecting on it), a handmade reindeer Christmas sweater, carpet cleaning, and nearly anything else for his services. This business plan is satisfying for his clients—especially since IQ is very good at what he does—but unrewarding for his bank account. To help collect his debts and attract larger clients, IQ warily partners with an old friend, Dodson.

When a young artist named Grace approaches IQ for help finding her mother, who ran away from a murder rap when Grace was a teenager, in exchange for a painting, it strains the young partnership to the breaking point. Dodson thinks IQ is taking the case without pay because he likes the young woman, which is mostly true, but IQ’s inability to say no to anyone in need is the true culprit. And his option to drop the case evaporates when he uncovers a conspiracy that goes back 15 years to Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison where American service members tortured suspected Al-Qaeda members during the Iraq War, and it becomes obvious Grace’s life is in danger.

Wrecked is a beautifully written, character-rich, and deftly plotted detective thriller. Its working-class California setting is vibrant, as both a geographical place and a mixing pot for the lively, at times oddball, and always entertaining characters.

IQ is a hero worth reading about and rooting for. He is two parts Sherlock Holmes—his cases are solved with a high quotient of brain power—and one part hardboiled private eye. The novel’s melancholy mood is lightened with humor and IQ’s thoughtful goodness. The story is surprising and original with enough twists to satisfy any reader. Wrecked is that rare treat that works as a thriller, as a detective story, and most importantly, as a clear-eyed observation of the modern world.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 03:27:03
#FashionVictim
Vanessa Orr

#FashionVictim follows the career of New York fashion editor Anya St. Clair, who, despite her inability to pose properly for a press picture, is doing well in one of the world’s most cutthroat industries. Unfortunately, much of her success can be credited to the fact that she’s a serial killer, and that she quickly dispatches any competition that comes her way.

When she sets her sights on making Sarah Taft, fashion’s It Girl, her new best friend, it’s only a matter of time before her psychopathy shows through—though in an industry this narcissistic, it’s also a long time before anybody notices. One person who does pay attention is Detective Hopper, who has his suspicions about Anya and about her enigmatic relationship with her therapist, Dr. M.

The story is told from Anya’s point of view and includes conversations between her and her doctor, so the reader gets a front-row look at how this fashionista’s mind works. What’s worrisome is that while Anya is insane, she seems nearly normal in a world where all people care about is who’s trending and what they’re wearing—her magazine goes so far as to create a “26 Best Funeral Looks” article spotlighting the outfits of those attending the constant memorials in Anya's wake.

Amina Akhtar’s background as a former fashion writer and editor for magazines including Vogue and Elle gives her great insight into this backstabbing world, and as would be expected, the labels her characters wear get almost as much attention as their actions. The story’s dark humor is one of its best attributes, and while the reader may wonder if Anya will get caught, there’s no doubt that whatever happens, she’ll be dressed to kill.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-20 03:30:53
The Popularity of Podcasts
Oline H. Cogdill

Podcasts have become so popular it is hard to keep up with the latest ones. Today, author Eryk Pruitt, right, puts podcasts in perspective and gives his favorites.

Eryk Pruitt is a screenwriter, author, and filmmaker. He wrote and produced the short film Foodie, which won eight top awards at more than 16 film festivals. His short fiction has appeared in The Avalon Literary Review, Thuglit, Pulp Modern, and Zymbol, among others, and he was a finalist for the Derringer Award. He is the author of the novels Dirtbags, Hashtag, and the Anthony Award nominee What We Reckon (all published by Polis Books). His latest book is Townies: And Other Stories of Southern Mischief. He also hosts the true crime podcast The Long Dance. Pruitt lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife, Lana, and their cat, Busey.


Five Amazing Single-Story True-Crime Podcasts
By Eryk Pruitt

When Serial ended its 12-episode run in December, 2012, the demand was cemented for more podcasts that combined investigative journalism with the production value of an audio documentary.

Serial's episodes, released one per week, investigated the 1999 murder of Baltimore high school student Hae Min Lee, and the subsequent incarceration of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. However, this new form of storytelling had a shortage of podcasts that could match Serial.

In fact, not even Serial’s second season was able to match the intrigue earned by its predecessor.

So investigative journalists began turning on their microphones and heading out to recapture that spirit.

Count me among them. This summer, we released The Long Dance, an eight-part true-crime podcast about North Carolina’s 1971 Valentine’s Murders. In addition to Serial, here are five other true-crime podcasts that were our inspirations.
 

1. Atlanta Monster
Those of us who did not grow up in The Big Peach during the early 1980s have taken it for granted that Wayne Williams was behind the murders of scores of children from Atlanta’s black community. However, ask anyone from that community and they will voice their suspicions that authorities captured the wrong man. Journalist Payne Lindsey, host of Up and Vanished, guides readers through the murky conspiracy theories surrounding the murders and their alleged perpetrator.

2. The Shot
When Hampton Roads police officer Victor Decker was found shot to death outside a nightclub, no one believed the crime would still be unsolved seven years later. The Virginian-Pilot released a seven-part, investigative series analyzing every scrap of evidence. Later, the newspaper released six more episodes. Would they produce an answer?

3. Slow Burn (Season Two)
Season One of Slate’s Slow Burn mired deep into Nixon’s Watergate, overturning even the smallest nuance that has long been forgotten by historians and pop culture. Season Two turns that same discerning eye on the more salacious of presidential scandals: the Clinton impeachment following the Monica Lewinsky affair. Each episode is delivered weekly.

4. In the Dark (Season Two)
Madeleine Baran leads listeners into the depths of the Winona, Mississippi, justice system as Curtis Flowers, a man who has been tried six times for the same grisly murder, awaits a seventh trial on death row. How can one man be tried seven times for the same crime? Is he guilty? If not, who did it?

5. Someone Knows Something (Season Three)
While the FBI scoured Mississippi in 1964 for the three missing civil rights workers, two other bodies were uncovered. Over four decades later, the Canadian Broadcasting Company takes award-winning broadcaster David Ridgen into the deep South to reopen the case and confront the Ku Klux Klan. 

Oline Cogdill
2018-09-23 11:42:09
Chris Evans to Star in “Defending Jacob”
Oline H. Cogdill

William Landay’s 2012 novel Defending Jacob began as a typical legal thriller, then matured into a suspense-laden insider’s view of the law, ethics, and familial bonds. The end was a shocking twist that was as believable as it was surprising.

That is how I described Defending Jacob in my review of the novel that I compared to Scott Turow’s 1987 Presumed Innocent.

Defending Jacob made such an impact on me that I included it in my annual best-of-the-year list.

And I am pleased to know that Defending Jacob is getting a reboot by no less than Captain America.

Chris Evans is set to star and executive-produce Defending Jacob, which will be a limited drama series on Apple. The Imitation Game‘s Oscar-winning filmmaker Morten Tyldum will direct the series, according to several reports. No air date, though, has been set.

Defending Jacob will be Evans’ first major television role since 2000’s The Opposite of Sex miniseries. Evans will be appearing as Captain America in the fourth Avengers film, scheduled to come out next year.

Defending Jacob revolves around Andy Barber, whose priorities are his family—his psychologist wife, Laurie, and their 14-year-old son, Jacob—and the law. He is the first assistant district attorney in Newton, Massachusetts. But Andy’s worlds collide when Jacob is arrested for the murder of a classmate.

Andy refuses to believe that his quiet son could be a killer, insisting that the culprit is a local child molester. Andy firmly believes in his child, but also fears that Jacob may have inherited a family background that he’s kept secret.

In my review I said, “Landay intersects the past and the present with aplomb as Andy grapples with who he is as well as who his child is. Andy is stunned to learn, through social media, how little he knows Jacob, whose psychologist says the teenager has a ‘heart two sizes too small.’ But a lack of empathy doesn’t mean Jacob is a killer. Defending Jacob soars as Landay’s rich plot weaves in parenting skills, unconditional love, and the law.”

Apple is poised to be a competitor of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, and basic cable networks. According to reports, Evans is the latest to join Apple’s growing original series roster, joining Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, Octavia Spencer, Jason Momoa, and Oprah, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Oline Cogdill
2018-09-30 08:59:32
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Craig Sisterson

Agatha Christie meets Groundhog Day, Cluedo meets Quantum Leap: the Hollywood-style taglines are easy to imagine for this genre-blending novel. But here’s the twist: as clever and beautifully delivered as its high-concept premise is, Stuart Turton’s debut outdoes all the taglines, outdoes all the hype.

It’s intricately plotted, exquisitely written, and richly delivers on so many levels.

Our narrator wakes in the woods, confused and scared. He thinks a woman’s been shot, he may have been attacked himself. He stumbles to a dilapidated country manor, eventually learning he’s a doctor and guest for a party hosted by Lord and Lady Hardcastle, celebrating their daughter Evelyn’s return from Paris. The day ahead is surreal, but things get even odder when our narrator wakes the next morning, answering a banging on the manor door to the disheveled doctor he was yesterday.

Turton takes the classic country house murder mystery and flips it on its head. The narrator is tasked by a masked plague doctor with solving the murder of Evelyn Hardcastle. Until he does, he’ll relive the same day over and over, but each time in the body of a different guest. How long has he been stuck in this purgatory? Months? Years? Decades? It’s a brilliant conceit, allowing readers a chance to not only witness the eclectic cast of such an Agatha Christie-style mystery from the sleuth’s point of view, but within. There’s a Rashomon-esque touch as we see the same events from different perspectives.

A finger-clenching, mind-bending, smile-inducing read. A contender for crime novel of the year.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-25 17:06:31
Mystery author Lorie Lewis Ham launches MysteryRat's Maze podcast

MysteryRat's Maze PodcastSan Joaquin Valley, California-based mystery writer Lorie Lewis Ham has been regularly featuring mysteries and mystery writers at her online Kings River Life Magazine for quite some time, but this past June she took her passion for the genre and launched Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast, an audio series in which mystery short stories and novel excerpts are brought to life by actors.

Kings River Life came about as a way for Lewis Ham to "write about all those things that my editor had told me no one would read," she said in a 2012 Mystery Readers Inc blog post. The mystery section of her online publication quickly took on a wider audience and a life of its own. Now, eight years later, it's still going strong with the addition of Mysteryrat's Maze Podcast. "So if someone tells you that you can’t do something that you know is your passion and what you feel you are meant to do—prove them wrong," said Lewis Ham.

Current podcast episodes feature writing by authors like Kathleen Kaska, Dennis Palumbo, and Jeri Westerson. And Lewis Ham promises several more in the works, including writing by Cleo Coyle, Elaine Viets, Lesley Diehl, and Nancy Cole Silverman to name just a few.

New Mysteryrat's Maze episodes generally go up the first Tuesday of each month. Listeners can subscribe and listen to the episodes at mysteryratsmaze.podbean.com, and through iTunes and Google Play.

Teri Duerr
2018-09-25 18:17:44
J.J. Hensley on Music
Oline H. Cogdill

(Mystery Scene continues its ongoing series in which authors discuss their works or their lives.)

J.J. Hensley, left, is a former police officer and former Special Agent with the U.S. Secret Service, drawing on his law enforcement experience for his novels. Hensley’s debut, Resolve, was selected as a finalist for best first novel by the International Thriller Writers organization.

Hensley’s sixth novel, Record Scratch, follows private detective Trevor Galloway investigation into the life and career of a rock legend. Record Scratch will be published on October 22 by Down & Out Books.

In this essay, Hensley discusses music, an appropriate subject for his new novel.

The Writer’s Soundtrack
By J.J. Hensley

Every book has a soundtrack.

At least all of the books I write have a soundtrack.

You can’t download the full album on iTunes, but you could seek out some of the individual songs if you knew which ones were included. Which you don’t—because the soundtracks to my books are in my head and if you’re hearing them then we both have serious problems.

On some level, I blame Miami Vice.

Those of us who spent our formative years watching television in the ’80s were introduced to the concepts of both storytelling and coolness through the actions of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs. They cruised around South Florida in an incredibly expensive sports car, wore sweet threads (socks optional), and worked narcotics cases while inexplicably using the exact same undercover names they would fearlessly drop for five powerful seasons.

The producers didn’t waste any time letting you know how high they were setting the bar of awesomeness.

 In the second part of the two-part pilot, Crockett and Tubbs motored down a Miami roadway under the streetlights while Phil Collins let us know there is something was definitely coming In the Air Tonight.

I can tell you, for a 10-year-old kid longing for identity and adventure it…looked…awesome. Yes, it did. Oh, lord.

While there may have been a few problems with the story line of Miami Vice—okay, a million problems—the creators were onto something.

There has always been a strong relationship between music and storytelling and the two feed off of each other. I don’t know how a writer can’t hear music playing in his or her mind when envisioning and writing scenes.

Now the song may be different from day to day, but the mood of music is likely appropriate to the action in the story.

For instance, if the protagonist having a particularly tender romantic moment with a love interest, the writer may be hearing a favorite love song and probably not Back in Black by AC/DC.

Or maybe they are.

We won’t judge.
    
Even when I’m plotting out my stories while going for a run or in the car, I’ll skip through my iPod or cell phone and search for songs similar to the mood of the scene to which I’m thinking of because I find it stimulates my creative process and helps with visualization.

Sometimes, I’ll even stumble across a key word or phrase within a song that leads me to take a story one direction or another.

In fact, the entire prologue of my novel Record Scratch was inspired by a song that I had heard one day while driving.

The power of music is something to behold and shouldn’t be underestimated. Musicians convey a massive amount of emotion in a three to four minutes period and those feelings, as well as the memories we associate with certain songs, can stick with us for decades.
    
Novelists spread those emotions out over hundreds of pages and often struggle to captivate the reader the way music entrances the listener.

But, the novel is the author’s album—the writer’s soundtrack.

The lyrics are plentiful and the pacing is deliberate. The desk is the studio and the rough cuts are drafts. Edits can be painful and not everything will end up being part of the final product. There will be cover art, marketing, reviews, and hopefully fans of the work.

There will also be detractors—critics who claim the latest album is lacking when compared to the previous ones. There are sure to be cancelled appearances due to unforeseen circumstances, disagreements with publicists or publishers, complaints about royalties, and a hundred other irritations that come with the business.

Those are all part of the price we pay to get an album out there in the public eye, whether it is in writing or song.
    
The good and bad of the writer’s journey will factor into that individual’s future works and although you may not realize it, you’ll learn about the ups and downs; the celebrations and struggles.

Those moments may not be overtly spelled-out by the actions of their characters or described in an essay or blog post.

However, the next time you’re reading your favorite author’s work—if you listen carefully—her entire journey may be laid out song by song.

Oline Cogdill
2018-10-06 12:40:08
The Man Who Came Uptown
Pat H. Broeske

In his series work as well as his standalones George Pelecanos often explores themes of retribution and redemption. Known for gritty DC settings, he riffs on movies, music and sports—giving a pop culture vibe to his social issue-infused crime fiction. All those elements are in place in his latest novel, his 21st, but the skillfully written The Man Who Came Uptown is most notable for its determination to let you know that books can change lives.

Yes, the plot has crime and crime solvers, but it’s the eponymous newbie bookworm Michael Hudson that we root for. As the story unspools, 28-year-old Hudson is in a DC jail, awaiting prosecution for a drug robbery. He spends his time lying on his upper bunk, reading. All thanks to the efforts of the dedicated prison librarian known to the inmates as Miss Anna.

Unexpectedly freed when a key witness declines to testify, Hudson returns home to live with his doting mother and aging rescue dog. He gets a library card and a dishwashing job (in that order). Then comes a call from Phil Ornazian, a private investigator who convinced the witness against Hudson to back off. Ornazian has teamed with former-cop-turned-bail bondsman Thaddeus Ward in schemes to roust and rob bad guys. Ward, who lost a daughter to prostitution and drug use, enjoys roughing up creeps, especially those who hurt women. Ornazian’s motives are less noble. A family man, he bolsters his bank account with the raided loot—a moral descent that began with witness tampering.

In need of a skilled wheelman to do the driving on late-night raids, Ornazian strong-arms the reluctant Hudson. Attempting to soothe Hudson’s worries about the planned robbery of a man who owns a brothel, Ornazian says, “We’re gonna relieve a slave trader of his ill-gotten gains.” What the PI fails to anticipate is that he and Ward will become as violent as the thugs they target, or that Hudson’s participation in an assault will prove to be a turning point.

Meantime, Hudson’s friendship with Anna continues on the outside. She lives with her husband in a nearby gentrified area and continues to suggest books to the former inmate, who eagerly tracks them down. Their relationship is nuanced and complicated, not only by what seems to be latent sexual tension, but also implied race and culture issues. Though he made his name with hardboiled works involving racial themes, the author purposely hedges in physically describing these characters. It feels like a cheat, considering his otherwise vivid character portraits.

But there’s nothing hazy about Pelecanos’ lit picks, which include shout-outs—even Oprah-type book discussions—of dozens of titles/authors ranging from Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men to Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling. There’s even an exchange about foreshadowing!

There’s some irony in his literary hard sell: nowadays, Pelecanos is a TV writer-producer on the kind of premium cable programs, such as HBO’s The Deuce, that lure people away from reading. Now that’s a crime!

Teri Duerr
2018-10-18 11:43:46

Crime, retribution, redemption...and libraries. A gritty new thriller from Pelecanos has it all.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Reading: A Call and Response

"For me, the books I read were the call—the call to adventure, to thinking, to acknowledging other points of view. But to complete the ritual, I needed to respond." 

My dad was a voracious but indiscriminate reader. He didn’t go to the bookstore and spend all afternoon painstakingly picking through the shelves in search of the perfect tome. He just marched down to the local used bookstore and bought books by the pound. Like hamburger. That meant that we had a large variety of books on every conceivable subject laying around the house.

Whenever I would ask my dad a question about anything, be it personal or about the world, instead of sitting me down for a Hallmark moment of father-son bonding, he would point at a book on the shelf and then go back to his own reading. Not so great for building our relationship, but awesome for making me read a vast spectrum of diverse voices about subjects I might never have otherwise even noticed.

Because of his Silent Librarian routine, I grew up with a keen interest in history, science, journalism, and fiction. I saw reading as a way to be part of this large community of people wanting to share their knowledge and their perspectives. As if the authors were all sitting in a circle talking to each other and I was overhearing the conversation. But reading didn’t allow me to fully engage with this community of voices because I was only listening.

“Call and response” is a tradition in African culture that goes back to tribal religious and civic ceremonies. It followed Africans to America and became embedded in slave songs in America and even in the black version of Christian services. For me, the books I read were the call—the call to adventure, to thinking, to acknowledging other points of view. But to complete the ritual, I needed to respond. The response would mean others would hear my voice and that would make me part of the community.

My response became my writing. In high school, I participated in a journalism program that led to me interviewing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. What I wrote about didn’t shake the world, but it shook my world. My voice had joined the social choir that sang from those books: songs of love, hope, knowledge, kindness, and compassion. I felt forever bound to the voices in those books as part of their circle and have hoped with each new work, I am calling others to join us and add their voices.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a huge Holmesian—7”2”, NBA’s all-time leading scorer, six-time MVP, Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom as well as a New York Times bestselling author, and a regular contributor to The Guardian and The Hollywood Reporter. He has written fifteen books, including children’s stories, three autobiographies, several historical works, and essays.

This "Writers on Reading" essay was originally published in "At the Scene" enews October 2018 as a first-look exclusive to our enewsletter subscribers. For more special content available first to our enewsletter subscribers, sign up here.

Teri Duerr
2018-10-18 14:48:21

"For me, the books I read were the call—the call to adventure, to thinking, to acknowledging other points of view. But to complete the ritual, I needed to respond."