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At the Scene, Spring Issue #144

Hi Everyone,

Tidal waves in popular culture invariably leave their mark on crime and mystery fiction. Catriona McPherson notes that it was the wildly popular TV series Downton Abbey that persuaded a US publisher to take on her 1920s-era Dandy Gilver novels. The rest is history—literally, since the novels take on many social issues and events in England of the 1920s and ’30s. Oline Cogdill chats with the author in this issue.

The youth revolution of the 1960s was the inspiration for TV’s The Mod Squad (1968-1973) with its trio of hippies-turned-undercover cops. Rita Lakin was on the set as a scriptwriter—one of the very few women writers at the time—and she has some interesting tales to tell in this issue. The Mod Squad was one of my earliest exposures to the mystery genre as a kid. I still remember the banner day I got my Mod Squad lunch box. It was far out!

A dark time in recent history left its mark on Adrian McKinty’s writing. His series featuring Sean Duffy, a Belfast cop during The Troubles (1969-1997), is partly based on his own childhood memories of that tumultuous period in Irish history. Technically, the Sean Duffy books are historical mysteries, but, as McKinty notes, “Drive around Belfast and look at the murals saying ‘Remember 1916’ or ‘Remember 1690’ and you’ll appreciate that the past is very much alive” in Ireland.

The business of book publishing itself was the inspiration for Judith Flanders’ witty novels. Flanders was once a book editor and has bestowed her expertise and experience on her series character, Samantha “Sam” Clair. Before my life in crime magazines began, I was a book editor in New York. Sam’s acidic observations on interminable editorial meetings, recalcitrant authors, and woefully inept editorial assistants, had me laughing out loud. Cheryl Solimini chats with Flanders in this issue.

Megan Abbott’s interesting essay, “Girls Like Us,” has this to say on the rise of ordinary women in current crime fiction such as The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl: [I]t’s strange to call these books “escapist.” Their settings, so close to home, are places most readers find more familiar than the world of the mob, or spycraft, or the high-stakes drug trade. The domestic sphere is a world where knowledge is always only partial, where power in any relationship is fleeting, and where marriage—at least most of them—is always a bit of a masquerade. And this is a world that readers understand intimately and struggle with daily.

Other authors also have their say in this issue as they discuss their current books. Reece Hirsch, an attorney specializing in privacy and cybersecurity, finds technology hot on the heels of his imagined plots. Jon McGoran recounts a service trip to Haiti that involved him in a farmers’ political uprising. Reporter Andrew Welsh-Huggins puts his years covering Ohio’s state government to good use in a political thriller, and Tara Laskowski considers how people are affected by the misfortunes of others in her short story collection.

Kate Stine
Editor-in-chief

Spring Issue #144, 2016

Devil’s Pocket

Hank Wagner

John Dixon’s Devil’s Pocket is a direct sequel to his Bram Stoker Award-winning debut, Phoenix Island. In that novel (which F. Paul Wilson, the mind behind the beloved Repairman Jack series, aptly described as “Lord of the Flies meets Wolverine and Cool Hand Luke), Dixon’s hero, teenager Carl Freeman, has microchips forcibly implanted into his body, which grant him enhanced mental and physical capabilities. These improvements come in handy, given that he has been forced into serving as part of a ruthless group of mercenaries known as the Phoenix Force.

A worthy successor to Phoenix Island, Devil’s Pocket finds Carl and two other grunts nominated by their commander to represent their unit in a Hunger Games-type combat tournament, one where survival equates with winning. Dixon, a former Golden Gloves boxer, provides hair-raising action sequences, most stemming from the brutal, no-holds-barred nature of the competition. He also convincingly conveys Carl’s growth as a leader, as the boy grows into a man before our eyes, struggling with the more savage side of his nature. Through his savvy characterization, and through the introduction of some intriguing subplots, Dixon cannily sets the stage for future installments in this well-written, fast-moving saga.

Hap and Leonard

Hank Wagner

Set for the most part in East Texas, many of the stories featured in Joe R. Lansdale’s collection Hap and Leonard also feature scenes of brutal violence and mayhem, offset by Lansdale’s trademark humor. Thus, readers are treated to several winning tales wherein Lansdale’s lovable series characters (featured in such outstanding novels as Savage Season, The Two Bear Mambo, and Vanilla Ride) crack wise even while righteously kicking ass. These louder tales, which include “Hyenas,” “Dead Aim,” and “Bent Twig,” are offset by several quieter stories, such as the moving “The Boy Who Became Invisible,” “Not Our Kind,” one of the duo’s first adventures, and the laugh-out-loud courtroom saga “Veil’s Visit,” featuring the George C. Chesbro character Veil Kendry. While each story is entertaining on its own merits, taken together, they provide a perfect jumping-on point for new readers, while also serving as a way for longtime fans to whet their appetites in anticipation of the premiere of the Hap and Leonard series debuting on Sundance TV in March 2016.

These Shallow Graves

Dick Lochte

Young Adult suspense is not exactly my subgenre of choice, but Jennifer Donnelly’s yarn, set in New York City at the turn of the century, is entertaining enough for any mystery lover. Far from hardboiled, but decidedly noirish, it focuses on beautiful and wealthy Jo Montfort, who is about to graduate from finishing school and marry a handsome, equally privileged young stockbroker. But, like many best laid plans, this one goes awry. Society be damned, Jo wants to follow in the footsteps of groundbreaking female journalist Nellie Bly, and when her father dies suspiciously, she and Eddie Gallagher, a young newshawk from the city’s shadier side, set out to solve the mystery. As familiar a plot as this may seem, Donnelly adds a sinister Dickensian layer involving an evil crime master and his young “wards,” an assortment of gruesome deaths, and an asylum where quite sane but inconvenient people are kept. The author has also created an assortment of unique characters (including an assistant coroner named Oscar whose cheery wit and deductive prowess are impressive enough for him to merit his own mystery). Kim Bubbs’ narration, which includes a vocal range that runs from young debutante to gruff, snarling villain, is, in a word, spellbinding.

A Fool for a Client

Dick Lochte

When an audiobook like this comes along—with Heller’s breezy, pleasantly wiseguy delivery getting every bit of suspense and humor out of Hall’s breezy, pleasantly wiseguy prose—you start wondering why there aren’t more of these perfect matches of reader to material. The prolific Hall’s novel, No. 20 in his Stanley Hastings series, finds the usually hapless private investigator in a particularly difficult situation: his lawyer-employer, Richard Rosenberg, is the primary suspect in the murder of his girlfriend, and Stanley keeps finding evidence that adds to Rosenberg’s presumed guilt. Hall’s characters manage to have dimension without wasting their time navel-gazing. They’re too busy demonstrating the pacing and wit of a screwball comedy. Here’s a typical three-liner in which the unruffled, sardonic Rosenberg explains his situation to Stanley: “I supposedly killed my girlfriend.” “You have a girlfriend?” Stanley asks.“Not anymore,” the lawyer replies. Heller performs that bit, and the rest of the novel, with Howard Hawks-like timing. It’s not just that his voice is ideal for conveying fast patter; he’s always in character, totally in tune with Hall’s style, and it shows.

Where It Hurts

Dick Lochte

Reed Farrel Coleman’s new novel is a reminder of how much and how little hardboiled detective fiction has changed since Mike Hammer went on his first crusade for justice in I, The Jury. Gus Murphy, in the debut of a series (presumably alternating with the author’s very smart continuation of Robert Parker’s Jesse Stone series), is a former Suffolk County cop whose son’s natural but unexpected death sent him into a downward spiral. It destroyed his marriage and cost him his job. He’s now living in The Paragon, definitely not a four-star hotel, earning bed and board by multitasking as house dick and driver of the hotel’s airport courtesy bus. His bad luck backstory and present gloom are very much in today’s tough, lone hero mode. But the case that shakes him loose from his torpor is one that would have fit quite easily in Hammer’s wheelhouse. A sleazy ex-con named Tommy Delcamino asks Gus to look into his son TJ’s brutal murder, something the Suffolk cops have ignored. Annoyed at what he perceives as Tommy’s attempt to “use” his own son’s death, Gus refuses. Then, just a few paragraphs later, Tommy suffers a fatality similar to TJ’s. What’s a Catholic guilt-obsessed sleuth to do? And when he’s warned off by his cop pals, his associates, drug dealers, his former wife, and even his childhood priest (who’s no longer a man of God), this only makes him more determined to run down the culprits. Gus narrates the novel and reader Chris Andrew Ciulla is very good at providing him with a low-key, rough-edged Long Guy-land accent. He also manages several passable female voices, among them Gus’ angry, sharp-tongued ex-wife, a sweet, fairly normal young woman whom Gus feels is too good for his lifestyle, and a beautiful club dancer whom he feels may not be. The plot, involving crooked cops, long-hidden secrets, two or three MacGuffins, and several debts owed and paid, isn’t always easy to follow, but Ciulla’s ability to emphasize the important info is a clarifying influence.

Writing the Novel From Plot to Print to Pixel

Jon L. Breen

This is an expanded and updated edition of the author’s 1978 manual Writing the Novel from Plot to Print, an excellent work about the writing life that is covered in the first edition of What About Murder? (Scarecrow, 1981). Noting the advice and encouragement he offers aspiring writers, I also found it “such an entertaining piece of writing, it could be enjoyed by fans of Block’s other books even if writing a novel were the farthest thing from their minds.” Lawrence Block has kept the original text of the earlier edition—he continues to use his then-current novel The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling as a case study—but he has added considerable new material on changes in the writing and publishing world, bringing the total wordage from 66,000 to 93,000. Self-publication, easier and less expensive than ever in the ebook and print-on-demand era, gets three new chapters. Block presents the new material with the same mix of clear thinking and irrepressible humor found in the original book. In his introduction, he admits he may have grown more garrulous with age, but Block is the kind of writer who can be as garrulous as he chooses without losing the reader.

He’s also enough of a grammatical purist to risk political incorrectness and reject a sentence like “Everyone has a right to their own opinion.” Some will celebrate this.

Reviewed from the ebook edition.

False Starts: A Memoir of San Quentin and Other Prisons

Jon L. Breen

This autobiography, originally published in 1976, is a superb piece of writing and reportage. The reprint edition has a valuable 16-page introduction by Rick Ollerman. Malcolm Braly (1925-1980) ranks near the top of the considerable number of convicts and ex-convicts who have contributed to crime and mystery fiction. His On the Yard (1967) was called by Kurt Vonnegut “the great American prison novel.” He was inspired to write mysteries by reading Raymond Chandler. Also a talented painter, he chose to pursue writing instead because he believed he could establish himself in that field before he left San Quentin, where a number of other novelists or would-be novelists were at work.

Braly approached genre fiction seriously, noting its potential problems: “The art lies in controlling the pseudo-naturalism. If the characters become too real, their actions, necessarily dictated by an arbitrary plot, begin to seem implausible.... If, however, the characters are sketched too thinly, too falsely, they quickly join the gallery of mechanical types who populate true hack writing. Plot...must rise from character.”

There were special problems to writing crime fiction under the strict rules of prison authorities. His first novel, Felony Tank (1961), published while he was still at San Quentin, caused complications when publisher Fawcett/Gold Medal began to publicize it as a prison novel.

Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me

Jon L. Breen

While Lee Child was writing his most recent Jack Reacher novel, Make Me, he allowed a British academic to chronicle the process, sometimes even in the same room as he typed. Each Reacher book is completed on a strict schedule, beginning on September 1 and finishing the following April for publication that September. The novels, tightly structured and so carefully clued they sometimes recall the Golden Age of Detection, are actually written with no knowledge by the author of what is coming next. It’s amazing Child could perform this pressure-filled high wire act with a Boswell looking over his shoulder. Along the way, it becomes clear that, far from being a purely instinctive writer, he has a clear understanding of plot mechanics and narrative devices and the ability to explain them eloquently. He is also very particular about nuances of language and the sounds of words.

Child has a wide knowledge of non-literary arts: at one point he traces the origin of a song from West Side Story to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. He is so interesting as a writer and as a person, and so entertaining and quotable in conversation, this book could scarcely fail to be worth reading. Most should read Make Me first, since as the front jacket’s spoiler warning indicates, its plot secrets are revealed along the way. For those who have read the book, the biggest mystery will be why one main character had a last-minute name change. Be warned that there is a great deal of padding and tangential nonsense. Inevitably given the format, the author, who is not as interesting as his subject, inserts himself throughout. Arguably, a substantial magazine article might have done the job.

A couple of minor errors: Anthony Boucher never “started” Bouchercon. It was named after him posthumously. And it’s not true that the British Child and the Belgian Georges Simenon were the only European presidents of Mystery Writers of America. Another British writer, John Creasey, also served a term.

Redemption Road

Craig Sisterson

An achingly beautiful, disturbing tale of damaged people scrabbling about in a world of secrets, betrayals, and tough decisions marks the long-awaited return of one of America’s finest authors.

After a five-year absence, two-time Edgar Award-winner John Hart has gifted us Redemption Road. And it is a gift—a literary thriller powered by elegant, evocative prose and remarkable characters. We follow three people with tragic pasts, each lingering like a scabbed wound. Gideon is a boy looking to kill the man who killed his mother, Adrian Wall is a good cop who might be twisted by years in prison for a crime he did not commit, and Elizabeth Black is a damaged detective refusing to help herself as questions swirl about her rescue of a kidnapping victim. Is Elizabeth a “hero cop” or an “angel of death”? Killing the perpetrators mid-rescue is understandable, but 18 bullets, well-placed for torturous effect? Meanwhile, a killer stalks the highways and byways of North Carolina, a wraith kidnapping and torturing women.

Redemption Road is a potent concoction of tense, atmospheric storytelling. Hart eschews staccato chapters or ticking clocks, and instead crafts suspense in an organic way via the intersecting lives of his richly drawn characters. Sultry and superb, Redemption Road had me spellbound as Hart’s poetic prose uncovers the truth beneath the trauma.

A Brilliant Death

Ben Boulden

A Brilliant Death is a coming-of-age story told by Mitchell Malone, but focused on Mitch’s childhood friend Travis Franklin Baron. Travis is intelligent and stubborn. He lives with his father, Big Frank Baron, a widely feared bully who has little time for his son. Travis’ mother, Amanda, was killed in a boating accident on the Ohio River when Travis was an infant. The popular story of Amanda’s death is that she and a lover took Big Frank’s boat out on the river and drifted into the path of a barge. The boat was crushed. A man and woman were seen jumping into the river, but no bodies were found and Amanda was never seen again.

Big Frank refuses to speak about Amanda and the townspeople of Brilliant, Ohio, are strangely secretive about her death. During their freshman year of high school, Travis asks Mitch to help him find out more about his mother, a task they dub Operation Amanda. It is a seemingly easy project, but the roadblocks are many, the adventure high, and the outcome is less than ideal for the boys. It includes staking out a cemetery in wait of the mysterious man leaving flowers at Amanda’s memorial, contacting the disgraced detective who once investigated Amanda’s death, and keeping their research secret from Big Frank.

A Brilliant Death’s rural 1970s setting is vividly drawn and populated with interesting characters. Mitch is an ordinary boy with loving parents and friends, and Travis is an underdog from a broken home. The boys’ personal experiences—family, home—are different, but their shared adolescence, with its inherent angst, creates a recognizable landscape and captures an alluring image of humanity. The story is powerful, but as a mystery it is flawed. There is little doubt about Amanda’s fate, and the final climactic twist, while unexpected, is bewildering.

The Last Good Girl

Robin Agnew

I powered through this unforgettable read in four or five hours. Trust me, you won’t be able to put this book down.

Series protagonist Anna Curtis walks into a frat house toward the beginning of The Last Good Girl and thinks she “was used to being underestimated. She’d learned to use that. Being underestimated was a power in itself.” Clearly, Anna, an assistant US district attorney, has learned to use others’ gender biases to her own advantage. It is a fitting way to start Allison Leotta’s latest novel, which centers on student culture at the fictitious Tower University in Michigan (roughly modeled after the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor), and the very real statistic that one in five women are raped or sexually assaulted during their time as college students.

One of the things Leotta does very well in her novels is to take a particularly sensitive and timely topic and shine a light on it. She brings her own professional background as a sex crimes prosecutor to the table, and the recipe for a chilling, well-told tale is all there.

This specific and indelible story is of one woman, Emily Shapiro, who wakes up in a strange bed next to a strange man one morning, unable to remember how she got there. When Anna’s ex-fiancé, Jack, asks her to help with Emily’s case, she jumps at it, despite the tensions of working with him again.

Anna remained in her home state of Michigan following the break-off of their engagement and other events in A Good Killing. She is living with her new boyfriend, Cooper, on a farm in the middle of a ruined Detroit. While the personal side of Anna’s life is pretty compelling, even more compelling is the story of Emily.

Emily has disappeared. But before going missing, she recorded her impressions of her freshman year in a video blog made for one of her classes. Her assault occurred on her first night on campus, and the entries become more and more disturbing as she struggles to deal with it. Complicating matters are the facts that Emily is the daughter of the university’s president, and that her attacker is the son of a powerful alumnus, whose family is one of the university’s biggest donors. Leotta ably takes apart and examines the culture of privilege and entitlement that led Emily’s assailant, Dylan, to attack her, and then exploit the system to his own advantage. The way Emily is treated by the very people at her university who are supposed to be helping and protecting her—they advise her that nothing can be proven—is nothing short of shocking, and in 2016, shameful. Emily’s story is heartbreaking, but the casual assumption of the powers that be that Emily somehow played a part in her own attack is even more horrifying.

The suspense of the story builds as the different story threads—Cooper and Anna’s relationship, Anna and Jack’s relationship, and, of course, Anna’s investigation—play out, making for a story readers won’t soon forget. As the novel goes on, readers will root for Emily to be found, and to also, like Anna, find a way to get the better of those who would underestimate or dismiss her. This is a rare thriller and a great read with something important to say. You will be thinking about it long after you finish.

June

Sharon Magee

The title of this latest offering from Miranda Beverly-Whittemore is a creative play on a single word: June. The story alternates between dream sequences featuring June Watters set in June 1955, and the world of the dreamer, June’s granddaughter Cassie Danvers, in June 2015. Cassie has left her New York boyfriend and is holed up in Two Oaks, the old family mansion in St. Jude, Ohio, that she inherited from June. Cassie has dreams, dreams she is sure the house, which is crumbling around her, is the source of: dreams about June, about the summer when handsome actor Jack Montgomery and Hollywood came calling, dreams about a starstruck town.

Cassie is summoned one morning from these dreams by the sound of her doorbell and a man named Nick Emmons at her door. He tells her that Jack has died and left his $37 million estate to her. Incredulous, she asks why. Because of June, he tells her, and because Cassie might very well be Jack’s granddaughter. But then Jack’s two famous daughters come calling, and demand that Cassie take a DNA test to prove she’s entitled to this inheritance. She refuses unless the women and Nick help her to find out more about June and Jack’s relationship. Through the dreams, letters they find in the house, and some very interesting neighbors, they discover a summer of love, lust, blackmail, betrayal, and ultimately, murder. But will they discover the answer to the question they are really looking for? Is Cassie Jack’s granddaughter?

Beverly-Whittemore has written a doozy of a story. Just when readers think they have figured it out, she hits them with another twist, and then another. Her depiction of small-town middle America in the 1950s is spot-on. Her characters, such as June’s friend Lindie, who is struggling with her sexuality, and Apatha, the black maid who is much more than she seems, are poignant and richly drawn. A book not to be missed.

Panther’s Prey

Katrina Niidas Holm

Lachlan Smith’s fourth Leo Maxwell mystery (after 2015’s Fox Is Framed) finds the San Francisco lawyer working as a public defender. When the book opens, Leo and his co-counsel, Jordan Walker, are in court defending Randall Rodriguez on rape charges. Rodriguez has autism, schizophrenia, and a long history of false confessions, so Leo is relatively certain he’s innocent—until near the end of the trial, when the man’s strange behavior sows doubt. The jury acquits Rodriguez, though, and an affair with Jordan helps push Leo’s misgivings to the back of his mind.

A week later, Jordan is found murdered and the circumstances leading to her death bear a strong resemblance to the crime for which their client was just tried. Rodriguez is arrested and confesses, but there’s no physical evidence linking him to the scene. Leo wonders whether he inadvertently paved the way for Jordan’s murder by freeing Rodriguez or if there’s a serial rapist at large in the city. A forced leave of absence gives Leo the time to investigate, but in trying to uncover the truth, he draws suspicion to himself.

Longtime readers of Smith’s work will find much here that’s familiar; many of the complications facing Leo in Panther’s Prey stem from the events of previous books. To call Leo’s backstory complicated would be an understatement, but Smith does his best to make his latest accessible to the uninitiated, and he (mostly) succeeds.

Smith’s prose is smart and stylish. The central mystery is breathtakingly complex; feints, twists, double crosses, and red herrings abound. And what at the outset feels like a highbrow procedural settles into the rhythms of a gritty detective novel after just a few chapters. Leo transitions from courtroom gladiator to down-on-his luck gumshoe without breaking stride, and legal proceedings and law offices quickly give way to blackmail, beatdowns, and seedy hotel rooms. The result is an intricately plotted, adrenaline-fueled tale that intrigues from page one, and ends with an epilogue that will leave fans hungering for Leo’s next misadventure.

Death at Breakfast

Joseph Scarpato, Jr.

When two women of a certain age decide to attend a weeklong master cooking class at a rustic Maine inn, little do they know that murder is on the menu. While retired school head Maggie Detweiler and her longtime friend Hope Babbin, may not be actual detectives, they are enthusiastic snoopers who pay attention to detail after the charred body of an obnoxious guest is discovered in his bedroom with a poisonous snake for company. It also helps that Hope’s estranged son, Buster, is the town’s deputy sheriff.

Unfortunately, Buster’s investigation is soon taken over by state police who almost immediately determine that the murder was committed by a young woman in her early 20s who had just been fired from her job at the front desk because of a run-in with the wealthy, overbearing deceased. At that point, the real police investigation is basically over, but Maggie and Hope’s search for the truth is just beginning.

This unlikely pair of pseudo-detectives are as likable as they are determined, a quality that not only helps in their questioning of the manager and other guests of the inn, but also endears them to the reader. Together with Buster and other friends, the intrepid duo talk to enough people and uncover enough information about past and present events to turn the state attorney’s case on its head. Although I can sometimes ferret out who the guilty party is in other books, I have to admit I was way off on this one.

The author has written nine previous novels and numerous film scripts, including the Academy Award–nominated The Children of Theatre Street.

Mortal Fall

Eileen Brady

Glacier National Park might look idyllic, with beautiful hiking trails and canyons, but in Mortal Fall it is hiding a nasty secret. When the body of biologist “Wolfie” Sedgewick is found, park police officer Monty Harris suspects foul play but cannot prove it. His superiors want the investigation closed quickly so the park can reopen trails for peak tourist season, but Monty needs answers. When a second body is discovered, there is even more pressure from the higher-ups to call both deaths unfortunate accidents. With partner and fellow officer Ken Greeley assisting, Monty follows the trail of illegal poachers intent on sabotaging the biologist’s study of wolverines. However, as they push on, the trail leads directly to Monty’s estranged older brother Adam. What follows is a complicated and very human plotline that pushes Monty right to his emotional edge.

The descriptions of Glacier Park are powerful, but the real strength of Mortal Fall is its well-drawn characters. The author, Christine Carbo, takes her time, infusing each character with his or her own life. The grief of widow Cathy Sedgewick is palpable, and the separation between Monty and his wife Lara is almost unbearably sad. The deeper into the investigation that Monty goes, the more images from long ago haunt him. Is his brother Adam the bully he remembers from his childhood, or someone far worse? The past reaches out to influence the present as the team presses on to prevent a third fatality. I found this book more and more engaging as it moved along a dark and dangerous path to a surprise conclusion.

A Murder in Time

Jean Gazis

A crack 21st-century FBI agent on the trail of an evil billionaire enters a secret passageway in an ancient castle, and stumbles out into the year 1815, where she must stop a vicious serial killer. The difficulty of solving a series of brutal crimes without any modern technology—or even an organized police force—pales in comparison to the challenges of navigating early 19th-century society.

Fast-paced and tightly plotted, this debut novel draws the reader in and does not let go. Kendra Donovan, a brilliant young FBI profiler, survives a botched raid and multiple gunshot wounds. As soon as she recovers from her injuries, she goes rogue, intent on avenging her fallen colleagues. Tracking her quarry undercover in a British castle, she somehow falls through a time vortex or wormhole (the exact mechanism remains a mystery), and finds herself in the midst of an elegant Regency house party, where a murdered girl soon turns up. Not fitting in as either servant or lady, Kendra must persuade the Duke of Aldridge, a powerful man of scientific mind, to trust her instincts and methods even though she cannot fully explain them in terms he is familiar with. Soon Kendra, the Duke, his handsome nephew and heir Lord Sutcliffe, and the free-thinking, intelligent Lady Rebecca Blackburn are working as a team to discover the identity of a brutal serial killer before he can strike again.

A vivid setting, interesting characters, sustained suspense, and even a hint of romance make this thriller hard to put down for long. Although often frustrated by the social restrictions of Regency England, Kendra, a loner in her own time, comes to trust and rely on her new 19th-century friends. A Murder in Time is a very enjoyable read that paints a vivid picture of how remarkably the world has changed over the past 200 years.

Quiet Neighbors

Katrina Niidas Holm

Award-winning author Catriona McPherson’s engrossing new standalone, Quiet Neighbors (following 2015’s The Child Garden), is the story of Jemimah “Jude” Hamner, a 40-year-old librarian who, upon hitting rock bottom, decamps from London to Wigtown, a remote Scottish village she remembers fondly from a visit with her ex-husband. Wigtown is home to Lowland “Lowell” Glen, an eccentric yet kindly used bookseller with whom Jude had bonded over an O. Douglas novel, and Lowell’s shop is where she heads upon her arrival. Exhausted and desperate, she pours her heart out to the man, and in return, Lowell offers her a job and a place to stay while she gets her legs back under her.

Just as Jude starts to get comfortable in her new life, 19-year-old Eddy Preston shows up at Lowell’s door, pregnant and claiming to be the product of a one-night stand that Lowell had with her mother. Jude suspects the girl is a grifter, but Lowell welcomes Eddy with open arms, displacing Jude to a rental cottage he owns at the edge of an old graveyard. There she becomes fixated on a collection of books owned by her new home’s previous occupant—ones containing handwritten clues to a decades-old murder mystery.

Quiet Neighbors is a cleverly conceived, skillfully executed, decidedly nontraditional small-town mystery that is bursting at the seams with warmth, wit, moxie, and menace. McPherson’s prose is by turns cheeky, charming, and full of grace. Her vibrantly sketched characters and their quirky relationships ring 100 percent true, adding texture, depth, and verisimilitude. Her storytelling style is immersive, the book’s sense of place is strong, and the ending shocks and satisfies in equal measure.

What really elevates Quiet Neighbors, though, is the way McPherson uses character to create tension and uncertainty. Jude may suspect Eddy of lying to Lowell, but Lowell himself is cagey about parts of his past and aspects of his business, and there is no question Jude is being less than completely honest about her reasons for fleeing London. Readers are left wondering whom to trust, what is true, and whether their narrator can be relied upon, adding additional layers of mystery to an already complex tale.

The Drowned Detective

Kevin Burton Smith

Acclaimed filmmaker Neil Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview With the Vampire, etc.) began his career as a short-story writer and novelist, and it shows. Packed with evocative, almost cinematic visual cues, The Drowned Detective is a murky, haunting tale, shrouded in the shadows of noir.

Jonathan (no last name) is a former British intelligence agent (no specifics given), quiet and methodical, now running a small detective agency in a gloomy, unnamed “post-Gorbachev wasteland” somewhere in Eastern Europe. Jonathan specializes in tracking down counterfeit Gucci handbags and missing persons.

Much is deliberately left unclear. Questions lie unanswered, and truths unexpressed. Misunderstandings abound. Even the quotations marks are missing, leaving the reader to decide whether first person narrator Jonathan is speaking or thinking to himself.

What is certain is that Jonathan is drowning. Paranoid and suspicious by temperament and profession, he’s lost in a city whose language he still struggles with. Sarah, his sensitive and dissatisfied wife, is an archeologist working on a controversial local dig. And caught between them is their lonely young daughter, Jenny, who has filled the widening marital gap between her parents with a slew of imaginary friends.

Jonathan’s family are not the only ones up to their necks in heartbreak and confusion. There’s the aging couple who have hired Jonathan to find their daughter, lost for nearly 20 years—a cold case that weighs heavily on the detective, far heavier than it should. There’s the cynical and acerbic psychic, Gertrude, an aging beauty and self-confessed charlatan who professes to speak to the deceased. There is Jonathan and Sarah’s ineffectual marriage therapist who likewise considers himself a charlatan. There’s Jonathan’s partner, Frank, the charming ladies’ man who may—or may not—have slept with Sarah. But most enigmatic and shadowy of all is the suicidal young woman whom Jonathan rescues from the filthy, toxic river that cuts the city in half, and with whom he becomes unwisely involved. But did he really rescue her? Or did she rescue him? Or did it even happen? Such is the powerful, disorienting undercurrent of unexplained coincidences and unanswered questions that threatens to pull Jonathan down, down, down.

Jordan has created something new here: an unsettling but ultimately satisfying blend of the supernatural and noir; a troubling and moving treatise on alienation and love and guilt disguised as a crime novel; a bittersweet, dreamlike journey into “the dead business” that serves as a reminder that we’ll all have to sleep with the fishes one day. I can hardly wait for the film—in black-and-white, of course.

The Defense

Craig Sisterson

With an opening that is pure Hollywood, debut author Steve Cavanagh kick-starts the adrenaline on the very first page of this courtroom thriller: hustler-turned-attorney Eddie Flynn, who’s been circling the drain for a year after a harrowing trial, is abducted by the Russian mob. It is not all bad, as Eddie’s given three things: a bomb strapped to his back, instructions to get into a New York courthouse and stop a witness testifying, and a promise that his daughter, also kidnapped, will be released if he succeeds. OK, so it is all bad. Especially as Eddie knows it’s likely neither he nor his daughter will survive even if he does what the mob boss wants.

Such a high-concept premise runs the risk of overwhelming a story (we see it all the time in movies), but Cavanagh does a good job balancing style and substance. He both uses and upturns classic legal-thriller tropes, adroitly blending action-thriller elements with finely crafted courtroom scenes. Eddie is surrounded by a cast of intriguing characters who feel fresh even in expected courtroom roles. There are moments which stretch credulity, but overall, The Defense is a top-quality crime debut that is fun and rips along. Both the hero and the author are gems.

Orchids and Stone

Vanessa Orr

Daphne Mayfield encounters an elderly woman in a park who pleads with her for help. Despite the fact that a woman claiming to be the lady’s daughter insists that her mother is just suffering from dementia and doesn’t need assistance, Daphne can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. She walks away, but can’t let the issue rest. Her struggle to understand what happened, and to help the woman, drives the action of Lisa Preston’s debut novel, Orchids and Stone, which begins with an interesting premise: When do you get involved in something that is not really your business?

In Daphne’s case, she takes greater and greater risks to get to the truth, from tracking down the woman’s address and getting accosted by a man staying there to becoming involved in a car chase and accident. While I appreciated her character’s tenacity, her actions were a little too over the top to be believed at times, considering that the only thing driving her was a gut instinct. That said, her desperation to find an answer is explained by the fact that her sister, Suzanne, was murdered when Daphne was 11, and her father, not able to take the loss, later killed himself. His mantra, “Someone saw something. Someone should have done something,” pursues Daphne in her thoughts as she pursues the elderly woman’s trail.

At first, I found it difficult to like Daphne—her off-putting manner shuts out the reader as it does the people who love her, including her live-in boyfriend and her widowed mother. But as she begins to take risks, her protective shell begins to crack, and I found myself starting to understand why she was so driven, almost obsessively, to help a stranger. At the end, I was cheering for her to succeed—not only to solve the mystery, but to finally be able to move on from a lifetime of loss.

Capitol Punishment

Ben Boulden

Andy Hayes is a disgraced former Ohio State quarterback working as a private detective. His finances are less than sturdy, and when freelance political reporter Lee Hershey offers Andy work as his bodyguard he wants to say no, but a stack of $20 bills makes it a firm yes. Lee Hershey is feared and disliked by Ohio’s political class and he is working on a story about a state school funding bill called Fair Funding Focus (“Triple F” to its detractors). It is the governor’s marquee legislation, and if it becomes law, his nomination as the running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket seems assured.

The bodyguard job turns ugly when Andy’s drink is drugged and Lee is bludgeoned to death at the Ohio Statehouse. The suspect list is long—politicians, staffers, jilted former lovers (or their husbands), and a state supreme court justice—but the police focus their investigation on a state senator whose blood-soaked Triple F binder is found in the garbage dumpster of the motel where he is staying. Andy has a professional interest in finding the killer when the accused senator’s lawyer hires Andy as his investigator, but even more than that, Andy feels guilty about Lee’s death.

Capitol Punishment is an entertaining private eye novel, and the third featuring Andy Hayes. Andy is a likable, cynical, at times humorous, and always witty protagonist with a penchant for trouble. The narrative includes a bunch of interesting Ohio political history and anecdotes (e.g., a Republican has never won the presidency without taking Ohio) while never slowing the story.

A Front Page Affair

Rachel Prindle

In A Front Page Affair, the first novel of a new mystery series, Radha Vatsal introduces readers to an intelligent, resourceful heroine. It is 1915 in New York City. The First World War is in full swing, and the United States is under increasing pressure to abandon its neutrality. Nineteen-year-old Capability “Kitty” Weeks is a reporter for the Ladies’ Page of the New York Sentinel, but she has bigger aims than stories about parties and fashion. Her chance arrives when, while covering the story of a swank Fourth of July party, one of the less-liked guests is found murdered. Kitty’s evidence from her own reporting fails to add up with the police findings, leading her to pursue her own investigation. Along the way, she learns more about politics, war, and hidden pasts.

Vatsal has taken great care to authentically re-create Kitty’s world. The novel contains real news articles from 1915, passages from books popular at the time, and actual quotations from historical figures such as President Woodrow Wilson and the female philanthropist Anne Morgan. Kitty faces stringent societal rules about gender roles and equality, and, as a young woman, is often seriously underestimated by others. Discrimination toward women working “men’s” jobs or demanding suffrage is a big theme. Kitty’s determination to not let ignorance stop her is inspiring, and her independence is admirable.

The novel builds a good amount of suspense with some well-placed shocking moments. Several subplots add additional depth to other characters, such as Kitty’s feminist friend Amanda Vanderwell, who is training to become a nurse for the war effort, and Kitty’s father, Julian Weeks, a wealthy businessman who becomes quite secretive about his ventures. This is a well-thought-out mystery novel, combining historical fiction and feminism with a determined and brave protagonist ready to chart new mysteries and new paths for herself.

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