Since 1995’s Naked in Death, Nora Roberts, writing under the Robb pen name, has given us 48 futuristic crime novels featuring New York City homicide detective Eve Dallas. I’ve read and enjoyed a few, though I find the mid-21st century setting a bit off-putting. For me, the progress, both on the investigative front and Eve’s romantic involvement with the fabulously wealthy, fabulously Irish master of the universe Roarke, halts at the mention of interplanetary space travel or some yet unknown or unavailable weapon. The new novel, however, seems interested in matters more contemporary than futuristic. Eve and Roarke, now wed, are building a new school/youth shelter. When their consultant’s brother, a recovering addict, dies from poison disguised as a drug overdose, Eve begins a journey through an underworld of homicidal gangs, rapists, druggies, youth slavers, and the like. As the plot rockets along, abruptly shifting between the gritty crime investigation and the beyond-perfect married life and lifestyle of Eve and Roarke, reader Susan Ericksen doesn’t miss a beat. She easily hits the hardboiled notes as well as the steamy romantic interludes, smartly capturing Eve’s alternating tough-and-tender attitudes and Roarke’s Emerald Isle brogue, all the while paying homage to the author’s breathless pacing.
This new audio of Leon’s book six in her series about Commissario Guido Brunetti, published in the US in 1998, pits the Venice police detective against the Opus Dei, a powerful far-right group within the Catholic Church. Dan Brown would later use a member’s homicidal fanaticism to launch The Da Vinci Code into bestsellerdom. Here, while investigating a claim of suspicious deaths in a religious nursing home, nearly everyone Brunetti meets—priests, nuns, even his own boss—seems to belong to the secret organization. This means trouble for him and even more for the whistleblower, a former nun who used to care for the detective’s ailing mother. Though the procedural aspects are more predictable than other entries in the series, the shrewd, honorable and determined Brunetti is as charming and likable as always, circumventing a dictatorial, incompetent superior while, at home, enjoying the company of a loving wife and believable adolescent children. The American-born Leon, who lived in Venice for three decades before moving to Switzerland, combines the best aspects of two subgenres of crime novels into a winning cozy-noir mix. David Colacci, a popular, versatile reader, has no difficulty following the author’s purposely shifting atmospheres or building on her dimensional images of the characters. His Italian accents seem impeccable, providing Brunetti with a sort of old world cordiality and his boss with sinister guile hiding behind booming pomposity. The former nun speaks softly with concern about the lately departed, and the detective’s wife, Paola, sounds intelligent, witty, and well-tuned to her husband’s moods. The novel has a whodunit element and Colacci’s enactment of the murderer’s reaction to exposure and failure is truly chilling.
In the 1970s, Dennis wrote a dozen hardboiled action thrillers with the titles and general appearance of the paperback hero series then trying to match the success of Donald Pendleton’s The Executioner. Like the exploits of The Butcher, The Death Merchant, The Penetrator, and poor old Nick Carter, dragged from the early pulps with the new sobriquet “Killmaster,” the Hardman books were mass-marketed as men’s adventure yarns. At face value, the leading characters seemed to enforce that impression. Jim Hardman is an unlicensed PI, embittered by his unjust dismissal from the Atlanta Police Department while his “associate,” Hump Evans, is a powerful black ex-NFL defensive end with bad knees who does most of the heavy lifting. So what led Joe Lansdale, in his Atlanta Deathwatch introduction, to compare Dennis to Chandler and Hammett in his effort “to do something different with what was thought of as throwaway literature,” or the late Ed Gorman to call Dennis “the most-beloved obscure private eye writer who ever lived”? Well, Hardman is too human to be your standard hero. Balding and slightly overweight, he’s not terribly likable. He does dumb things and he’ll bend the law if the price is right. Hump is shrewder than Hardman, as well as being cool and sardonic. More than that, the author’s style is lean and mean, with punchy descriptions and sharp-edged dialogue used in lieu of proselytism to convey the politics and racial intolerance of 1970s Atlanta. In Deathwatch, book one in the series, Hardman is hired by a power-broker to get a fix on his Georgia Tech co-ed daughter’s activities. The investigation leads, surprisingly, to a black mob boss and assorted other crooks and connivers, all well-drawn and well-enacted by reader Shawn Compton, whose Southern accent is effectively subtle and whose use of Ebonics subdued. He seems to understand, like Lansdale and Gorman, that Dennis knew what he was doing, and he performs the material with appropriate fidelity to the text. The results should go far in calling attention to a crime writer whose work has been criminally undervalued.
Alafair Burke explores the ties of family, in particular sisterhood, in her latest domestic thriller, The Better Sister. Chloe and Nicky Taylor were close growing up, but not so much anymore. Chloe, a feminist and successful editor of a prominent women’s magazine that’s heavy into the #MeToo movement, has been married to Adam, a well-respected attorney, for 15 years. Together they’re raising his 16-year-old son, Ethan. The thing is, though, Adam was previously married to Chloe’s sister Nicky, who is also Ethan’s mother.
When Chloe returns to her and Adam’s East Hampton beach house late one night after a party, she finds Adam lying dead in a pool of blood, apparently the victim of an intruder. But as the police investigate the day-to-day lives of Adam, Chloe, and Ethan, their focus begins to shift from an unknown intruder to their family. Chloe is well-alibied, but Ethan is not, and as the police investigation swings in his direction—he can’t seem to give a believable or consistent account of where he was that night—she knows she will do anything to clear him.
When Nicky appears on their doorstep, Chloe reluctantly lets her back into their lives—Ethan is her son after all; Chloe never adopted him. The sisters come to an uneasy truce to help the boy they both love as they try desperately to discover the truth, only to discover that the killer may be closer than they think.
Author Burke gives readers a blockbuster ending in a story that shows what people are willing do—even to those they love—as well as how far they will go to protect them. An excellent journey into family dynamics of the dysfunctional kind.
At the start of Samantha Downing’s disquieting debut, teenagers partying in an abandoned Florida motel find a female corpse wrapped in plastic. Her fingerprints are filed off, but dental records identify her as a missing young woman named Lindsay. Police reveal that she’s only been dead a few weeks—a disclosure that surprises the story’s unnamed narrator, given that he and his wife, Millicent, kidnapped her a year ago to inject some excitement into their relationship.
When he asks Millicent why she failed to kill Lindsay in a timely fashion and then dump her in a swamp as agreed, Millicent explains that she was trying to mimic the MO of Owen Oliver Riley, who strangled nine women 18 years ago this month. Riley was arrested, but then disappeared after being released on a technicality, making him the perfect scapegoat—not just for this murder, but for as many as they please. At first, the narrator is delighted by Millicent’s ingenuity and begins hunting for their next victim; as it happens, though, he finds her plan more fun in theory than execution.
My Lovely Wife is a bleak and twisted take on the modern marital thriller. Downing traps readers in her protagonist’s head for all that transpires, lending the tale a queasy, claustrophobic air. Flashbacks detail the couple’s history and the origins of their psychopathic pastime, while current events unfold courtesy of a smarmy first-person, present-tense narrative.
By placing Millicent—a 39-year-old mother of two—in the driver’s seat with regard to the couple’s criminal endeavors, Downing subverts stereotype, conferring unpredictability and compounding depravity. Deliberate pacing heightens tension and unease, and a macabre, bombshell-laden plot keeps readers riveted until the deeply disturbing conclusion. This is a book that will linger like a nightmare long after the final page is turned.
Australian journalist Trent Dalton’s debut novel, Boy Swallows Universe, is a marvelous coming-of-age novel with a confused and (mostly) reliable narrator. Eli Bell is 12 years old and growing up without much supervision in an unsavory suburb of Brisbane, Australia, in the 1980s. His life is less than wonderful. His mom is in prison, his stepdad is a small-time heroin dealer, his father is an anxiety-ridden alcoholic, and his older brother—and Eli’s only real friend—is a genius who prefers to “finger-write” cryptic messages in the air rather than talk.
Eli’s primary adult presence is an elderly crook called Slim. An escape artist, Slim holds the national record for prison breaks. He insists Eli can handle the “hard” stories since he has “an adult mind in a child’s body.” And the hard stories are prison tales: rapes and drugs and beatings. He teaches Eli the finer points of life and crime.
Eli breaks into the prison where his mother is jailed to wish her a Happy Christmas, but he is mostly good, and as he grows, his dreams do, too. In his late teens, Eli fakes his way into a journalism internship that puts him at odds with Brisbane’s most successful drug dealer, Tytus Broz.
Boy Swallows Universe is a dark and disturbing novel made palatable with humor and genuine characters. Eli is rambunctious and often trouble-making, or at least in trouble, but his heart is pure and he sees the world with a rare clarity. The grim setting is offset by Eli’s ability to find humor in his less-than-ideal life.
Dalton presents his narrative in an episodic fashion, starting when Eli is 12 and ending when he’s 19. Boy Swallows Universe is beautiful and ugly, uncomfortable and poignant. At its center, it is the story of a young boy starting life in a dead-end town and a miserable family, but striving to build something for himself in this great, grand universe.
Lynne and Valerie Constantine, sisters who write under the pen name Liv Constantine, follow up their debut thriller, The Last Mrs. Parrish, with The Last Time I Saw You. Set in the world of high society, the mystery is so immersed in a glittering, servant-filled milieu that it may not be apparent at first that it is set in the present day and not the Victorian era. After the buzz of the main character’s cellphone a chapter in, however, contemporary tech plays a major part.
The narration is split between two women, Kate English and Blaire Barrington, former boarding school friends who were once as close as sisters, but have now been estranged for over a decade. Kate was born into wealth and seems to have a perfect life with a career as a surgeon, a handsome husband, and an adorable daughter. Blaire, once a nouveau riche outsider when she arrived at boarding school, has found her own success as a bestselling mystery novelist with her cowriter husband.
When Kate’s mother, Lily, is murdered, Kate invites Blaire back into her life. Anxious to prove herself to her old friend, Blaire eagerly accepts. By virtue of her writing, Blaire’s also something of an amateur sleuth, Jessica Fletcher style, and the two women investigate Lily’s death, unearthing secrets and conflicts from the past along the way. Kate begins to receive creepy warnings in the form of sinister nursery rhymes, and as the source is clearly close, she becomes more and more paranoid, with Blaire the only person in her life that she can trust.
At times neither character is totally sympathetic. Blaire has a chip on her shoulder and proves to be willing to do just about anything to find the killer—at least as long as it’s the person she wants it to be. Kate is consumed by paranoia and anxiety and lashes out at those around her. Is someone really out to get her, or is she losing her mind?
The murder itself is less the focus of the story than it initially appears to be. What this novel is really about is female friendship, how two intimates can become estranged, and whether that estrangement can ever be truly repaired. The ending, which skillfully ties up most of the loose ends, redeems the often-frustrating middle portions. It’s a surprise in more ways than one and trying to figure out what happened will keep the reader guessing—and reading.
Immersing oneself in a Greg Iles thriller is like reconnecting with an old friend with wonderful tales to tell. In his latest, Cemetery Road, Washington, DC, journalist Marshall McEwan, a celebrated Pulitzer Prize winner and the darling of the cable news networks, has returned to his hometown of Bienville, Mississippi, situated on the banks of the Mississippi River. He swore he’d never return when he left at 18, but his father, who blames him for his brother’s death, is in the final stages of Parkinson’s and alcoholism, and his mother is finding it difficult to keep the family newspaper afloat. He tries hard to do what’s right, but as he says, “…it’s not easy to be good.” And now he’s about to be tested even further.
Bienville, which is run by a ruthless cabal of mostly older white men called the Poker Club, is experiencing an economic resurgence; a Chinese company is planning to build a billion-dollar paper plant in their community. But when amateur archeologist Buck Ferris finds ancient artifacts while digging on the plant site and is murdered—indigenous remains would mean a construction delay—Marshall sets out to find the killer. He enlists the aid of his childhood sweetheart, the exotic Jet Matheson. He and Jet have revived their love affair; problem is, she’s married to his childhood friend Paul, who suffers with PTSD and whose father is a member of the Poker Club. As they dig deeper into the murder, they find that the Poker Club will do literally anything to see that Buck’s murder is classified an accident and that nothing stops the construction of the paper plant—or the lining of their pockets.
New York Times bestselling author Iles likes to write long books—this one runs close to 600 pages—but it doesn’t feel overlong. Filled with murder, dysfunctional family dynamics, long-buried secrets, betrayal, and lots of sex, Iles gives his readers a sense of small-town life in the Deep South. And begs the question: Does everyone have a price?
Nordic noir has been around for more than 50 years, though its global profile has skyrocketed in the last decade. A side effect of the Scandi crime wave phenomena is that many readers and critics talk about crime tales from the multinational region as if they were some kind of homogeneous offering of bleak landscapes, brooding detectives, and socially conscious crime, when in truth, there’s a huge variety of styles, settings, and stories told. Award-winning Icelandic author Lilja Sigurdardóttir is a terrific example.
The second in her Reykjavik Noir trilogy following Snare, the book Trap is an edgy tale of international drug running and financial crimes centered on a cast of rather unlikable but fascinating miscreants with nary a pensive alcoholic copper in sight. Sonja, a former drug smuggler, is now living (hiding) in Florida with her son Tomas, only to be hauled back to Iceland when he’s snatched. Maneuvering between a scheming ex-husband, her lesbian lover who’s awaiting sentence for financial misconduct, and some vicious drug lords, Sonja turns to a former nemesis, customs officer Bragi, for help. Desperate and in debt, Trap is about how far a woman will go to get her son back and start anew.
Sigurdardóttir delivers a slick tale imbued with substance. In a way, Trap leans to noir in its truer sense (rather than the synonym for any crime writing it’s become in recent years). Many characters are cynical or fatalistic, there’s lots of moral ambiguity. There are nasty deeds and nasty people. This contributes to a sense of freshness and fascination, while also creating a bit of a buffer: at times I found myself admiring the storytelling more than being enveloped. Perhaps because I wasn’t particularly onside with any of the characters—more just witnessing the traps set and the carnage unfold. But it is delicious carnage.
A pacy, tense read with an underlying layer of humanity and the messiness of life.
It’s 1912, the Titanic has just sunk, and lady’s maid Jane Prescott is assisting her employer, Louise Benchley, in preparing for her newsworthy society wedding to William Tyler. The nuptials are to take place on the Long Island estate of William’s uncle Charles Tyler, the deputy police commissioner and a well-known crusader against organized crime and the Italian mob known as “The Black Hand.”
The mob has continually threatened Charles, which is why when Jane, Louise, and Louise’s mother arrive at the estate they find the place swarming with bodyguards. When the Tylers’ young nanny is found with her throat slit, lying next to the Tyler’s youngest child (thankfully alive, but screaming) in the nursery, the Black Hand is automatically assumed to be responsible for the heinous crime. But Jane, who has a nose for crime-solving, isn’t so sure and thinks the murderer may be closer to home.
Mariah Fredericks’ unforgettable sophomore offering in her Jane Prescott mysteries takes place in an interesting time in American history. It’s a kinder time when kissing is considered “making love” in polite society. This perceptive author gives an accurate accounting of the period, a skillful sketch of the division between the haves and the have-nots, between old money and the nouveau riche, and the incredible obstacles against and prejudices toward the so-called “New Americans” of all persuasions flooding the borders.
Jane is a credible witness to what’s happening around her, an anomaly, a domestic worker who is both incredibly insightful and someone who possesses amazing powers of deduction. Readers will enjoy the authentic period dialogue, and will undoubtedly need to Google a few unfamiliar words as they step back in time with this well-paced, intuitive page-turner that proves the good-old days aren’t so different from the present. The novel stands well alone, but reading book one, A Death of No Importance, fills in some important character and plot blanks.
Diane Les Becquets’ psychological thriller The Last Woman in the Forest is filled with beautiful imagery of a wilderness few will ever experience in real life. Twenty-six-year-old Marian Engström, a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, has been offered her dream job as a field technician in a research program in northern Alberta, Canada. As an orienteer, she will gather specimens while working with a dog-handler team. Although she prefers the well-trained rescue dogs to the humans, she’s happy to be mentored by team leader Tate Mathias. Marian finds their mentorship turning into attraction, and soon Tate is lover, confidante, her everything. But has Marian trusted the wrong person?
After Tate dies in a bear attack, Marian begins to remember odd things he boasted about, like finding one of the four murder victims in one of Edmonton’s most infamous crimes, the Stillwater murders. After meeting his sister, she discovers he told even more lies. Who was this man she desperately loved? Unable to reconcile her memories with reality, she contacts Nick Shepherd, a retired profiler who worked the still-unsolved Stillwater cases. If she can only verify her boyfriend’s Stillwell story, maybe she can move forward with her own life.
Deft characterizations all around of Marian, Tate, and profiler Nick Shepherd and his wife Cate help build tension and empathy. The many details of a conservationist’s life and the way rescue dogs can help endangered species are fascinating. But make no mistake—woven throughout the plot is a powerful story of betrayal, as woman after woman is drawn into the path of a charismatic killer with no conscience and no mercy.
Those of you who love Elly Griffith’s series character Ruth Galloway, snuggle up—you’re going to love the standalone novel The Stranger Diaries every bit as much. The same voice that brings Ruth to life—the funny, intelligent, eminently readable voice of Griffiths—is also on full display in this wonderful novel. The story centers on Clare Cassidy, a divorced mom who teaches at a high school in a British town.
As the book opens, it’s Halloween and Clare is taking her class through a reading of a well-known ghost story, “The Stranger.” The author of the story, R.M. Holland, once lived in the “old” part of Clare’s school where his study is still kept intact. After class, Clare gets the terrible news that her colleague and fellow teacher Ella has been killed. Thus begins a spooky murder mystery that Griffiths, a lover of Victorian fiction and specifically Wilkie Collins, imbues with the hint of a gothic. There are ghost stories inside of ghost stories, creepy notes left for Clare in her journal, fog, spookily isolated homes (Clare’s specifically), the mystery of R.M. Holland’s life, and the creepiness of his preserved study—and it all goes down like butter.
Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur, a fierce young Indian woman who is investigating the case, also has a voice in this tale and readers get to see that Kaur suspects Clare of the crimes. As a reader, you really have to put your mind to work to try and figure out who has the more valid point of view. The back-and-forth narration, which sometimes also includes Georgia (Clare’s daughter), really ratchets up the tension.
The suspect pool is actually rather small, but in true Golden Age style, Griffiths manages to make each suspect and character interesting and suspicious all at once. The ultimate reveal of the killer was a surprise and, to me, that’s the true sign of a master plotter. After a couple of solid scares and another death, Clare is more or less at her wits’ end. It’s also noted that in Victorian ghost stories things happen in threes, so after the second death, readers are waiting for the next body to drop.
This book is full of atmosphere and Griffiths’ pure skill as a writer is so adept, so flexible, so fascinating, and yet so clear that I can never put one of her books aside once I pick it up. This is a bravura standalone from a modern master of the genre.
Rachel Howzell Hall’s They All Fall Down is a disturbing and entertaining psychological thriller. It’s a modern replay of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, but with a pinch of modern horror akin to Richard Matheson’s Hell House pulsing and grinding at its foundations. Miriam Macy is a luckless woman. She is recently divorced (she caught her husband in flagrante delicto with his assistant), she has legal problems, money problems, and a daughter who despises her for reasons that become clearer as the story develops.
Miriam gladly accepts an invitation to participate in a reality game show on the exclusive Mictlan Island, a few miles off Mexico’s western coast. It’s an opportunity that seems the perfect solution to Miriam’s problems. The producers guarantee a fee of $10,000—more if she wins—a national platform to show the world (and her daughter) that she’s a good person, and, perhaps most importantly, a respite from uncomfortable police questioning.
On her arrival, Miriam discovers an oddball cast: an elderly man with cancer, a young and amorous widow, a reclusive and disheveled nurse, a hardcore former policeman, an overweight chef, and a stuck-up money manager. When Miriam’s companions begin dying in violent ways, she turns detective as a survival method rather than any curiosity about the crimes.
They All Fall Down is an atmospheric, at times humorous, and always beguiling mystery. Miriam is perfectly unreliable with an overactive desire for empathy, from the reader and her fellow characters alike. Her troubled life is effectively revealed in bits and pieces, keeping the reader off balance. The plot’s similarities to And Then There Were None are played well, and tend to keep the reader guessing at the setup rather than knowing.
I have to confess that part of the reason I enjoyed this book so much is that it takes place in and around Mt. Etna in Sicily, less than 50 miles from where my father was born and where I spent several weeks visiting many years ago.
Although the Auntie Poldi of the title is a 60-year-old Bavarian by birth, her deceased husband was Sicilian and she has returned to his homeland for her golden years. Unlike most women of her age, however, she is a wild and wanton sexagenarian whose favorite activities are heavy drinking, solving mysteries, and sex (not necessarily in that order). Her number-one lover of the moment is the local homicide chief, Inspector Vito Montana, which comes in handy in her detecting adventure.
A deliberate poisoning of a neighbor’s dog leads Poldi to a nearby vineyard in search of clues, whereupon she meets the attractive owner of the vineyard and is invited to lunch. The other guests include the famous female clairvoyant Madame Sahara, and Italo Russo, the local mafia head with whom Poldi is already acquainted, but not in a good way. After a few too many drinks, and before the next morning rolls around, she awakens in the bed of the attractive vineyard owner, with little memory of what happened the night before. On her way home, she comes across the dead body of Madame Sahara, lying in the vineyard field.
So begins an intriguing mystery slowly unraveled by Auntie Poldi, with the help of the local parish priest (who’s an expert locksmith) and one of his parishioners (who knows her way around computers). As Auntie Poldi closes in on the solution to the puzzling mystery, an attempt is made on her life, but it only increases her determination to unmask the killer.
Most of the novel is told from the standpoint of Poldi’s nephew, a thirtysomething aspiring novelist who has yet to get anything published—or even finished. Part of the fun of the novel is the amusing interaction between the narrator and his aunt, and between Poldi and her loving-but-feisty Sicilian in-laws.
Trouble on the Books, by Essie Lang, is the first in a new cozy series featuring Shelby Cox, a professional book editor turned professional bookseller. Shelby moves from her home in Boston to help her Aunt Edie operate Bayside Books in upstate New York’s Alex Bay. The town’s main attraction is Bly Castle, built on a river island in the 19th century by a wealthy family and later purchased by a Prohibition-era smuggler. Now the castle is operated by the town as a lure for tourists, and its latest feature is Bayside Books’ second store location.
As the tourist season begins, Shelby is stocking the store and getting comfortable with the area. Her life gets complicated when she finds the troublemaking castle volunteer coordinator Loreena floating dead in the island’s grotto. The obvious suspect is a true-crime writer turned castle caretaker named Matthew Kessler. Alex Bay’s police chief doesn’t have any other suspects, nor does she seem to want any. The small-town rumors swirl, and when a Coast Guard officer starts investigating, the townsfolk whisper about a renewed smuggling operation on the island.
Trouble on the Books is breezy and enjoyable. Shelby’s mixture of self-doubt (can she fit in to the community and actually run a bookstore?), curiosity, and independence makes Shelby Cox a beguiling series character that should appeal to most readers. A mysterious subplot about the death of Shelby’s mother, and why no one will tell Shelby where the grave is, adds depth and character to the story. The clues are well placed and there are enough twists to add energy to this airy and entertaining cozy.
When mystery writer Charlee Russo arrives at the Portland Airport for her friend Viv Lundquist’s mystery writers’ conference, Viv’s first words upon picking her up are: “Charlee, my daughter’s been kidnapped!”
Charlee finds herself unexpectedly saddled with conference administration while her friend attempts to raise the ransom money rather than risk her daughter’s life by telling the police. So begins a wild and wacky week where just about everything that could go wrong at a convention does: a bout of ptomaine poisoning effectively eliminates all but three of the conference volunteers; the chef is fired, leaving the food service in temporary chaos; and the hotel has mistakenly double-booked a dog show for the same week. While trying to juggle all of these problems, Charlee inadvertently comes across several clues that lead her to believe that the kidnapper may be an employee or guest at the hotel. But who?
What follows is a sometimes funny, sometimes suspenseful story of a witty and likable amateur sleuth battling against all odds to solve a mystery and salvage a convention. I enjoyed the dog show elements interspersed throughout the novel, particularly the “obstacle course” the dog owners set up with makeshift hotel furniture to run their dogs through agility training. Charlee’s favorite dog there, Scout, runs circles around most of the other dogs and even presses the correct button on the elevator to get to his floor.
This is the second novel in the Charlee Russo series after Fiction Can Be Murder and it is recommended for lovers of humorous mysteries and cute dogs.
Loch of the Dead is Oscar de Muriel’s fourth novel featuring Inspector Ian Frey—an educated and upper-class Londoner passing time in Edinburgh for personal reasons (involving a woman)—and his superstitious, Scotsman boss, Inspector Adolphus McGray. McGray’s nickname is “Nine-Nails” because he is missing a digit, and, unrelated to his absent finger, most everyone believes he has lost his sanity, too. The inspectors’ office is in the cellar of the Edinburgh station house, and their regular cases are those involving the odd and the supernatural.
Millie Fletcher, a woman who has spent her life working as a maid for the wealthy Koloman family, convinces McGray to protect her illegitimate son, Benjamin, from an anonymous death threat in exchange for a cure to McGray’s sister’s mental illness. As a girl, Millie was raped by the younger Koloman brother, Maximillian, and Benjamin was the result. With Maximillian’s recent death, the Kolomans welcome Benjamin into the family as his father’s heir. But nothing is what it seems and the simple bodyguard job turns into a murder investigation and then into something else entirely.
Loch of the Dead is atmospheric, intriguing, and, in places, outright funny. It’s a traditional mystery with an alluring mixture of The X-Files (right down to the basement office), a brooding gothic (the romance turned on its head in this case), and a well-drawn and plotted detective story. The dark and gloomy setting—moors and endless lakes, goat-sucking bats and hungry peasants—plays a role as important to the mystery as do the characters. Frey and McGray are perfect opposites: Frey is educated and scientific, McGray is impulsive and superstitious. Their odd-couple act is comical, adding light to an otherwise dark and gloomy tale.
T. J. Martinson’s The Reign of the Kingfisher opens with a violent prologue set in 1983 Chicago, featuring two of its protagonists, and, though not specifically seen or described, the title character, a vigilante dubbed ‘The Kingfisher” by the media. It then segues to the present, to a video featuring a masked madman menacing bound hostages and threatening their lives if the police don’t release the medical examiner’s report on the hero’s mysterious death decades before.
From there, Martinson delves into the mystery, alternating time lines, re-creating telling incidents from the past, and detailing the race against time to save the hostages, all the while tussling with the book’s main question of whether the Kingfisher might still be alive, despite telling evidence to the contrary.
Martinson’s gripping first novel provides a stunningly realistic take on superheroes and vigilantism, veering widely from idealism to pessimism. It’s also a gripping crime novel, exploring the people who break the law and those who uphold it, as well as those who report on it, and those who suffer from its collateral damage. It’s also about love, loyalty, hero worship, and the search for the truth, which is always more shaded than it first appears.
Martinson holds the reader rapt from the book’s opening lines to its very last, delivering a novel that should resonate with fans of thrillers and comic books alike.
Eccentricities abound on Paris police Commissaire Anne Capestan’s team of “undesirables.” They play snooker in the office, suffer from assorted personal tragedies and comical delusions, and bring their pets to work. One member, a punch-drunk computer wiz, keeps a Post-It on his monitor reminding himself to “delete illegal hacks.” But despite their eccentricities, under Capestan’s tactful-but-firm leadership, their unorthodox methods are effective and their teamwork is seamless when it matters most.
This sequel to The Awkward Squad finds the intrepid group of misfits on the outs with their colleagues on the Paris police force. Their first successful case exposed the wrongdoing of a fellow officer, making them traitors in the eyes of the rank and file. Morale in the unit is at an all-time low as its members bicker among themselves, review cold cases, and deal with petty bureaucratic snafus.
As the Christmas season begins, Capestan is called to the scene of a new murder. The victim is a retired senior officer from the anti-gang squad. The top investigative units of the police judiciaire are already on the case, and clearly reluctant to share their turf with Capestan. She wonders why the director (who hasn’t spoken to her in a month) is insisting on assigning her team to such a high-profile investigation. There’s one compelling reason: the deceased, Serge Rufus, was the father of Capestan’s ex-husband.
The Awkward Squad’s better-staffed and better-equipped rivals are eager to wrap up the murder of one of their own as soon as possible, and frequently omit important details from the information they share. Capestan struggles with conflicting feelings about her work and her ex. Despite these difficulties, the zany unit manages to stay one step ahead of its more straight-laced rivals. They quickly link Rufus’ killing to two other murders, suggesting the case is not as simple as it first appeared. However, the team’s involvement becomes complicated when it’s revealed a member of their team may be hiding personal ties to the case and a motive for revenge.
Stick Together offers a lively and humorous take on the police procedural. Combining painstaking evidence-gathering with madcap chase scenes, this lighthearted and breezy tale dives right into action and never slows down.
There are some historical stories that get under your skin, and each time you read an account, you hope for a different ending. If only Anne Boleyn and Mary Queen of Scots were not beheaded, Prince Albert didn’t die early…you get the idea. In The Poison Bed, I encountered a new-to-me story, which is one of those I will now always hope unfolded differently.
Elizabeth Fremantle has taken the love story of Lady Frances Howard and Robert Carr in 1615 England and made it indelible. Carr was a favorite of James I, who is suspected by historians to have been gay, and who surrounded himself with beautiful young men. Carr was one of these, and he rose high and fast, ending up as a supremely unqualified secretary of state.
Frances Howard, as the story opens, is Lady Essex. The Howards are a very powerful and influential family well known for their skills at brutal and effective political intrigue. When Frances catches the eye of Robert—she was reportedly lovely—Frances’ uncle senses an opportunity to take advantage of Robert’s favor with the king. He goes about attempting to get the two married and soon a tale is spun that Frances and Essex never consummated their marriage.
Frances and Essex’s annulment trial, hugely political, drags on and on, but Robert and Frances eventually end up together despite the drama and the fly in their ointment, Thomas Overby, a friend of Robert’s who detests Frances and doesn’t trust her. When Overby turns up poisoned in a castle tower and Frances is found guilty of his murder, it seems Overby had quite good reason to dislike her.
Fremantle’s gift is in reimagining the emotions and circumstances of Frances and Robert. Her narrative goes back and forth. We are with Frances in the tower where she is imprisoned, but we go back in time to her marriage to Essex and her eventual marriage to Robert. Frances, a classic unreliable narrator, relates her story with herself as a virginal innocent, madly in love with Robert, and perfectly innocent of murder.
As the story progresses, the scales fall away from the reader’s eyes and every statement and action of Frances is called into question. Overby’s death becomes heartbreaking, as does the pure love Robert seems to have for Frances. Robert seems nothing more than the trusting dupe or the besotted lover. It’s clear he’s outclassed by the Howard family when it comes to political machinations. Robert’s heart is on his sleeve, and Frances’ heart is buried very, very deep.
Life may have had its pleasant moments for the favorite of the king, but the circumstances of court were nothing but brutal. While some historical novels make you long for the gift of time travel, this one might make you grateful to live in the 21st century. Carr and Howard and the haunting death described in detail by Fremantle will stick with you long after you turn the last page.
Bluff is not fluff. It starts out looking like that—despite its explosive opening—but don’t be fooled by Jane Stanton Hitchcock’s taut, cleverly plotted, head-spinning scheme for revenge. Instead, follow the money and cherchez les femmes.
The wry novel begins with 56-year-old privileged former socialite Maud Warner sauntering past several mid-Manhattan landmarks—the Knickerbocker Club, F.A.O. Schwarz, The Plaza, Tiffany’s—and ends during lunchtime at the elegant Four Seasons restaurant.
Maud stops at “the best table in the house—a banquette against the wall” which is occupied by the billionaire “Pope of Finance” Sun Sunderland and accountant to the stars Burt Sklar. Without hesitating, Maud takes a gun from her purse, shoots Sun, drops the weapon on the floor, and walks out as confidently as she walked in.
No one stops her. As Maud says, “older women are invisible.” This is especially true for a “middle-aged lady of means with a conservative sense of style”: a tailored St. Laurent black wool suit, a gold and sapphire pin, and black patent leather Louboutin (albeit secondhand) shoes. She heads directly to Penn Station, boards a train to DC, and disappears (at least for the narrative moment).
What appears to be a standard domestic drama subtly, slowly morphs into a cold, calculating social noir thriller. The femmes here—besides Maud—are a coterie of confidantes. Greta Lauber is a “grand acquisitor of paintings, porcelains, and people.” Her salons are legendary. They are often attended by Magma Hartz, a grandiose gossip who happened to be an eyewitness to the “high-class carnage.”
Then there is Jean, Sun’s widow, and the illegal wife, a stripper named Danya. Their story is fodder for the tabloids—the billionaire, the bigamist, and the bimbo. You don’t have to look far to find a scavenging journalist digging deeply into the dusty realm of betrayal, greed, salacious sex, and cunning killers.
The novel takes its title from a poker reference, a game with its “own moral universe [in which] lying is called bluffing [and] deception is the norm.” Maud’s accomplished skills with cards spills over into the plot, in which “the important thing is not what happens but what people think happens.”
It’s not necessary to be a poker fan or to know anything about the flop, the turn, or the river to go all in and thoroughly enjoy the unsavory characters and the several shifting plot twists of Hitchcock’s Bluff. There is a great deal of fun in this rollicking read.
For those who like their action and steak somewhere between raw and rare, we’ve got Glen Erik Hamilton’s latest thriller featuring ex-Army Ranger Van Shaw to gnaw on.
Caught somewhere between the quixotic bent of Lee Child’s trouble magnet drifter Jack Reacher and the icy cold pragmatism of Richard Stark’s professional criminal Parker, Mercy River offers up plenty of macho derring-do for carnivorous readers. But it doesn’t stop there. The town-taming that lies at the core of Shaw’s latest adventure comes off as a lock-and-load version of Hammett’s Red Harvest as filtered through a stack of old Sgt. Rock comics. There are plenty of guns, fisticuffs galore, soldiers (both former and active), broken bones, and squawk about esprit de corps. There are even Nazis of a sort, white supremacist skinheads and biker types who are definitely not “fine people.”
Not that the skinheads have a monopoly on the villainy here—there’s plenty to spread around. It all comes to the surface when Shaw, a former professional thief allegedly retired from a life of crime, receives a frantic call in his Seattle home from Leo Pak, an old Ranger buddy, who needs help. Pak has been arrested on suspicion of murder of a gun shop owner in the podunk town of Mercy River, Oregon.
But by the time Shaw shows up in the isolated burg, Leo’s already confessed to the crime. Van suspects Leo is protecting his girlfriend Dez, but Leo’s clammed up. Meanwhile, the whole town is gearing up for the annual swarm of Rangers coming to The Rally, an annual blowout put together by local hero General Macomber to raise money for vets struggling after their release from service. The entire cast seems to have been marinated in PTSD, from the lowliest thugs right up to Shaw himself.
As Shaw digs deeper into Leo’s case, Shaw discovers there’s a secret war for control of Mercy River being waged by someone dealing in some serious heroin-grade opiates; those pesky white supremacists who want their town back; and a visiting gang of brutal armed robbers (also vets), who will stop at nothing to get what they want—a trait they apparently share with Shaw himself.
There are serious questions raised here about loyalty, courage, and friendship, but at the book’s core lies the age-old question: What happens after you train people to kill, and the war’s over?
After the difficult delivery of her twin boys, new mother Lauren Tranter is feeling stressed and disoriented, trying to shake off her anesthesia and adjust to the fact that she is now responsible for two new human beings who seem somewhat exotic and alien to her. She is further stressed when a strange woman appears before her, demanding that Lauren trade one of her newborns for one of the strangely quiet babies she has carried into the maternity ward. Lauren acts quickly, locking herself in the bathroom, hysterically summoning the hospital staff and the police. Unfortunately, they find no evidence of the woman’s presence and dismiss her story as a hallucination, an explanation that seems likely until, a few weeks later when Lauren’s twins are kidnapped as she dozes in a local park. Although they are quickly returned, Lauren comes to the sickening realization that her babies have been replaced.
Little Darlings is as at once a powerful thriller and a disturbing, dark fantasy, spiced with a hint of police procedural, fairy tale, and folklore. Deeply unsettling and decidedly unsentimental, it focuses like a laser on the strangeness and awesome responsibility of motherhood. Golding walks a fine line in her narrative, laying the groundwork for two entirely different conclusions, one leaning toward the supernatural, the other suggesting a more rational explanation, such as mental instability coupled with postpartum depression. Either way, she’s created a compelling, hard-hitting, and moving piece of fiction that can be enjoyed by fans of many genres.
How far would you go for your child? That’s the question at the center of Harlan Coben’s novel Run Away. It starts when Simon unexpectedly encounters his drug-addicted, runaway daughter, Paige, playing the Beatles to a not-so-adoring audience in Central Park. The family reunion does not go as Simon hopes, instead ending with him hitting the man with Paige, a fellow junkie Aaron Corval, whom Simon blames for taking Paige from his family.
When a video recording of the attack goes viral and Aaron is shortly thereafter found murdered, it restarts Simon’s hunt for his daughter. But like the opening first scene, pretty much nothing goes as planned in Run Away, a novel about a family that goes to great lengths to find and protect a daughter who doesn’t want to be found.
Together with his wife, Ingrid, Simon visits the crime scene in hopes that this will lead to Paige. It doesn’t. Instead, Simon’s wife ends up shot and in a coma. Over the course of the novel, Simon’s attempts to locate his daughter dovetail into two separate subplots that lead to a bigger mystery.
Coben is not afraid to hang a personal story within the frame of a bigger narrative. Even when some of the plot mechanisms are too identifiable and the balancing of story lines undercuts the conflict, Simon’s story remains engaging. This tale about family carries an emotional weight that serves to underscore the final twist.
The Edgar® Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2018, were presented by Mystery Writers of America during its 73rd Gala Banquet, April 25, 2019 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.
Those who took home an Edgar are in bold with ** in front of their names.
Congratulations to all of the winners and nominees. Each of these categories is comprised of strong nominees so we consider everyone a winner.
BEST NOVEL
**Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley (Hachette Book Group - Mulholland)
The Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard (Blackstone Publishing)
House Witness by Mike Lawson (Grove Atlantic – Atlantic Monthly Press)
A Gambler’s Jury by Victor Methos (Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)
Only to Sleep by Lawrence Osborne (Penguin Random House – Hogarth)
A Treacherous Curse by Deanna Raybourn (Penguin Random House – Berkley)
BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR
**Bearskin by James A. McLaughlin (HarperCollins Publishers - Ecco)
A Knife in the Fog by Bradley Harper (Seventh Street Books)
The Captives by Debra Jo Immergut (HarperCollins Publishers - Ecco)
The Last Equation of Isaac Severy by Nova Jacobs (Simon & Schuster - Touchstone)
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens (Penguin Random House – G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
**If I Die Tonight by Alison Gaylin (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
Hiroshima Boy by Naomi Hirahara (Prospect Park Books)
Under a Dark Sky by Lori Rader-Day (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani (Penguin Random House – Penguin Books)
Under My Skin by Lisa Unger (Harlequin – Park Row Books)
BEST FACT CRIME
**Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge First and the Rise of Gay Liberation by Robert W. Fieseler (W.W. Norton & Company - Liveright)
Sex Money Murder: A Story of Crack, Blood, and Betrayal by Jonathan Green (W.W. Norton & Company)
The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure by Carl Hoffman (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson (Penguin Random House - Viking)
I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara (HarperCollins Publishers - Harper)
The Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women Who Took on the World's Most Powerful Mafia by Alex Perry (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow)
BEST CRITICAL/BIOGRAPHICAL
**Classic American Crime Fiction of the 1920s by Leslie S. Klinger (Pegasus Books)
The Metaphysical Mysteries of G.K. Chesterton: A Critical Study of the Father Brown Stories and Other Detective Fiction by Laird R. Blackwell (McFarland Publishing)
Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin (HarperCollins Publishers – William Morrow Paperbacks)
Mark X: Who Killed Huck Finn's Father? by Yasuhiro Takeuchi (Taylor & Francis - Routledge)
Agatha Christie: A Mysterious Life by Laura Thompson (Pegasus Books)
BEST SHORT STORY
**“English 398: Fiction Workshop” – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Art Taylor (Dell Magazines)
“Rabid – A Mike Bowditch Short Story” by Paul Doiron (Minotaur Books)
“Paranoid Enough for Two” – The Honorable Traitors by John Lutz (Kensington Publishing)
“Ancient and Modern” – Bloody Scotland by Val McDermid (Pegasus Books)
“The Sleep Tight Motel” – Dark Corners Collection by Lisa Unger (Amazon Publishing)
BEST JUVENILE
**Otherwood by Pete Hautman (Candlewick Press)
Denis Ever After by Tony Abbott (HarperCollins Children’s Books – Katherine Tegen Books)
Zap! by Martha Freeman (Simon & Schuster – Paula Wiseman Books)
Ra the Mighty: Cat Detective by A.B. Greenfield (Holiday House)
Winterhouse by Ben Guterson (Macmillan Children’s Publishing Company – Henry Holt BFYR)
Charlie & Frog: A Mystery by Karen Kane (Disney Publishing Worldwide – Disney Hyperion)
Zora & Me: The Cursed Ground by T.R. Simon (Candlewick Press)
BEST YOUNG ADULT
**Sadie by Courtney Summers (Wednesday Books)
Contagion by Erin Bowman (HarperCollins Children’s Books - HarperCollins)
Blink by Sasha Dawn (Lerner Publishing Group – Carolrhoda Lab)
After the Fire by Will Hill (Sourcebooks – Sourcebooks Fire)
A Room Away From the Wolves by Nova Ren Suma (Algonquin Young Readers)
BEST TELEVISION EPISODE TELEPLAY
**“The One That Holds Everything” – The Romanoffs, Teleplay by Matthew Weiner & Donald Joh (Amazon Prime Video)
“The Box” - Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Teleplay by Luke Del Tredici (NBC/Universal TV)
“Season 2, Episode 1” – Jack Irish, Teleplay by Andrew Knight (Acorn TV)
“Episode 1” – Mystery Road, Teleplay by Michaeley O’Brien (Acorn TV)
“My Aim is True” – Blue Bloods, Teleplay by Kevin Wade (CBS Eye Productions)
ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD
“How Does He Die This Time?” – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Nancy Novick (Dell Magazines)
THE SIMON & SCHUSTER MARY HIGGINS CLARK AWARD
**The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey (Soho Press – Soho Crime)
A Death of No Importance by Mariah Fredericks (Minotaur Books)
A Lady's Guide to Etiquette and Murder by Dianne Freeman (Kensington Publishing)
Bone on Bone by Julia Keller (Minotaur Books)
A Borrowing of Bones by Paula Munier (Minotaur Books)
THE G.P. PUTNAM’S SONS SUE GRAFTON MEMORIAL AWARD
Shell Game by Sara Paretsky (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
GRAND MASTER
Martin Cruz Smith, best known for his eight-novel series featuring Arkady Renko, who first appeared in Gorky Park
Previous Grand Masters include William Link, Peter Lovesey, Jane Langton, Max Allan Collins, Ellen Hart, Walter Mosley, Lois Duncan, James Ellroy, Robert Crais, Carolyn Hart, Ken Follett, Margaret Maron, Martha Grimes, Sara Paretsky, James Lee Burke, Sue Grafton, Bill Pronzini, Stephen King, Marcia Muller, Dick Francis, Mary Higgins Clark, Lawrence Block, P.D. James, Ellery Queen, Daphne du Maurier, Alfred Hitchcock, Graham Greene, and Agatha Christie.
The Raven Award
(recognizes outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing)
Marilyn Stasio, the mystery critic for the New York Times Book Review (and other magazines) for 30 years, since 1988.
Previous Raven winners include the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas, Dru Ann Love, Kris Zgorski, Sisters in Crime, Margaret Kinsman, Kathryn Kennison, Jon and Ruth Jordan, Aunt Agatha’s Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Oline Cogdill, Molly Weston, The Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Chicago, Once Upon a Crime Bookstore in Minneapolis, Mystery Lovers Bookstore in Oakmont, PA, Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge, MA, and The Poe House in Baltimore, MD.
The Ellery Queen Award
(established in 1983 to honor “outstanding writing teams and outstanding people in the mystery-publishing industry.”
Linda Landrigan, editor since 2002 of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
Previous Ellery Queen Award winners include Robert Pépin, Neil Nyren, Janet Rudolph, Charles Ardai, Joe Meyers, Barbara Peters and Robert Rosenwald, Brian Skupin and Kate Stine, Carolyn Marino, Ed Gorman, Janet Hutchings, Cathleen Jordan, Douglas G. Greene, Susanne Kirk, Sara Ann Freed, Hiroshi Hayakawa, Jacques Barzun, Martin Greenburg, Otto Penzler, Richard Levinson, William Link, Ruth Cavin, and Emma Lathen.
The EDGAR (and logo) are Registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by the Mystery Writers of America, Inc.
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