Article With Intro

Underground Airlines

Betty Webb

Readers of Ben Winters’ Edgar-winning Last Policeman series know he is not afraid to tackle the Big Subject. Now, with the scathing but brilliant Underground Airlines, he has upped the ante. In the former trilogy he wiped out the entire human race. In this one, he may make readers wonder if an apocalypse might not actually be merciful.

Fair warning: this alternate history does not make for beach reading. Underground Airlines is set in an alternate America where president-elect Abraham Lincoln is assassinated before reaching the White House, and the Civil War is never fought. Rather, the North and South broker an agreement to preserve the Union and confine legal slavery to the “Hard Four” Southern states—while the North otherwise turns a blind eye to slavery’s horrors. The decades march by and the Hard Four plantations evolve into mega-corporations that deal in everything from bath towels to electronics—all produced by a slave economy.

In this not-so-brave new world, the word slave is no longer politically correct. In polite conversation, African Americans born in the Hard Four are referred to as “persons bound to labor,” or peeb for short. God help any peeb who dares to escape: he will be returned, then tortured, then sold into worse conditions than those he already endured. In order to “save the Union,” but in reality to keep prices low, federal policy is to return any escaped slave who is captured in the so-called “free states.” Many of the government agents tasked with policing escapees are themselves escaped slaves, maintaining their hard-won freedom only by hunting other escapees.

One such agent is Victor, an agent with 209 captures to his credit. Kept in check by an electronic tracker placed in his body, Victor has numbed himself to his morally repugnant job. He knows that if he refuses to work, he will himself be returned to the hellish Hard Four. But when he is ordered to hunt down a runaway named Jackdaw, Victor finds himself in the middle of the abolitionist movement and multiplying questions of conscience. Victor is fierce, brave, sly, and conflicted. By turns hero and villain, he is a man who will drag another man back into chains in order to save himself, yet he also repeatedly risks his freedom to help the book’s other key character, Martha. The tenderly drawn Martha Flowers is a white single mother with a mixed son sired by an escaped (and ultimately captured) slave. She is on a quest to find the man she loves, and after a chance meeting with Victor, her fate becomes entwined with his.

Alternate history novels are nothing new, but Winters does an exceptional job in Underground Airlines (a play on the Underground Railroad) of weaving brief portraits of real people and real institutions into his imagined world: the bondage of his brothers adds to Michael Jackson’s depression, Jesse Owens and James Brown are former slaves escaped to the freedom-loving arms of Canada. And many of the issues raised in Winters’ fiction are very real: maintaining low gas and energy prices at the cost of exploiting others, a belief that if an injustice does not happen to you or someone you love, it doesn’t count. Once again, Winters has given readers a moral think piece in the package of a suspense novel. To be sure, there is plenty of plot and action here, escape after escape, betrayal after betrayal, but ultimately, Underground Airlines asks hard questions about the human soul, questions that perhaps we should all be asking ourselves on a daily basis.

End of Watch

Kevin Burton Smith

For years, Stephen King has threatened us with a straight crime novel, but nothing could have prepared us for Mr. Mercedes (2014), his first real foray into the genre. No telekinetic teens battling their hormones, no haunted sedans or family pets who won’t stay dead—just a relentlessly chilling read. It was the first salvo in a trilogy that introduced retired homicide detective Bill Hodges, lonely and almost suicidal, and still troubled by an unsolved case, that of a man who deliberately drove a stolen Mercedes into a crowd of innocent bystanders, killing eight of them and wounding countless others. Unbeknownst to Bill, though, he’d become the obsession of the still-at-large killer, Brady Hartsfield, a young whack job with a thing about suicide. The cat-and-mouse battle between the two nabbed a well-deserved Edgar for best novel, and was quickly followed by Finders Keepers (2015), which found a newly revitalized Hodges, now working as a skip tracer. It was another nail-biter, brilliantly staged, with just a whiff of the supernatural beginning to creep in from the edges.

But by that point, who cared? King nails the essence of his often broken and damaged characters with such unerring ferocity and razor-sharp compassion that it is hard to disbelieve anything that subsequently happens to them. Which brings us to End of Watch, the highly anticipated conclusion of the trilogy. Any attempts at playing it “straight” are long gone. The woowoo is here.

But fear not: Hodges is here, too—getting on in years, but glad to be alive, running his small skip-tracing agency with his partner Holly Gibney. His own obsessions with Brady have passed—he no longer feels compelled to regularly visit the local mental ward where Brady’s been in a coma for years. But Brady isn’t quite as brain-dead as everyone thinks, and he’s definitely not finished with Bill. He’s got plans. Big plans. Almost unbelievable plans that merge thought control, the internet, our own worst angels, and obsolete game consoles.

This is Stephen King, after all, inveterate pop-culture watcher, chronicler of all our worst fears and obsessions, and unrepentant master storyteller. The crime fiction clothes may be new, Steve, but you wear them well. Please don’t let them hang in the closest too long.

Widowmaker

Oline H. Cogdill

Maine game warden Mike Bowditch’s fractured relationship with his late father has always been a major plot point in Paul Doiron’s series. Jack Bowditch was, when he was on his best behavior, a rage-filled poacher given to fights and humiliating law enforcement. He wasn’t much of a father, paying attention to Mike when it best suited him. But, oh boy, was Jack Bowditch charming, especially to women, and he had numerous affairs.

Yet Mike at first doesn’t want to believe Amber Langstrom, a stranger who shows up late one night at his Sebago Lake home claiming he has a half-brother, Adam, who is missing. Adam was serving 18 months in a minimum-security prison for the statutory rape of his young girlfriend. Adam was on a work release, but he hasn’t shown up for work or to report to his parole officer. Mike sees a bit of resemblance in Adam’s photo: his “anger was as familiar as the color of his eyes. I had seen it too many times in my father’s face and, sometimes, in my own bathroom mirror.”

Initially, Mike refuses to help. But he reconsiders when an on-the-job injury brings an enforced leave of absence. The investigation takes him to a down-at-the-heels ski resort called Widowmaker in Maine’s Rangeley Lakes region, and to a logging camp staffed with paroled sex offenders.

Widowmaker’s brisk plot showcases the beauty of Maine from its economically depressed areas to its prosperous tourist regions to its remote vistas where a person can easily disappear. A subplot involving Mike’s attempts to save a wolf-dog further illustrates Doiron’s appreciation of the great outdoors. But it is the vagaries of family that drive Widowmaker. The legacy of Mike’s father continues, influencing how the 28-year-old warden conducts his life, as well as how others view him. In his seventh entry in an always gripping series, Doiron continues to excavate more sides of his young game warden.

Roots of Murder

Jean Gazis

Newly widowed by a drunk driver, Nell McGraw tries to hold herself together while running the Pelican Bay Crier, the small-town weekly newspaper that her late husband’s grandfather founded in Pelican Bay, Mississippi, and mothering her two bereaved children, Lizzie and Josh. Then a friend on a morning hike stumbles upon old human bones buried on state park land that was donated decades ago by the current mayor’s family. The evidence points to murder, possibly dating back to the civil rights era.

No shrinking violet, Nell is determined to get to the bottom of the story and see justice done, however belatedly. But the investigation threatens to expose long-forgotten evils that the town’s elite would rather stay buried. Nell, a Yankee transplant, can’t be sure whether it is safe to trust anyone in authority as she navigates the local politics of her adopted home in Dixie. The jailed drunk driver’s redneck family is pressuring her to drop all charges, and the powers that be are pressuring her to drop the murder investigation—at least until after the upcoming mayoral election. But Nell and her small team of junior reporters are determined not to back down, even in the face of clear and mounting danger.

Roots of Murder offers colorful—yet wholly believable—characters in an atmospheric setting, as well as a richly nuanced treatment of racial relations that doesn’t settle for easy answers. Nell’s imperious mother-in-law, the good ol’ boy sheriff, the buffoonish police chief, the diverse mayoral candidates, the young journalists, and even the children are memorable. Nell’s grief and anger are palpable, and so is the suspense as the threats escalate and serious violence is finally unleashed. Roots of Murder combines a gripping mystery with well-honed literary fiction.

Missing, Presumed

Katrina Niidas Holm

At the start of this methodically paced, intricately plotted police procedural from British author Susie Steiner (Homecoming), Will Carter arrives at the Huntingdon apartment he shares with pretty Cambridge postgrad Edith Hind to find the lights on, the door open, and Edith gone. Edith’s car is parked outside, and her coat, keys, phone, shoes, and passport are all accounted for, but there are two wineglasses in the kitchen—one of them broken and bloodied—and blood on the floor, so he consults her parents, who instruct him to call the police.

By the time Detective Sergeant Manon Bradshaw and the rest of the Cambridgeshire Major Incident Team arrive on the scene, Edith has already been missing for 20 hours. Adding to the pressure the team is under is the fact that Edith is the daughter of Sir Ian Hind, physician to the royal family. The police beat the bushes, drag the river, and review countless hours of CCTV footage, but turn up nothing. As the days pass and the tenor of the investigation changes, the case begins to wreak havoc on the lives of everyone involved.

Steiner’s latest is a solid mystery that shines a light on the evils of sensational journalism, cautions against keeping secrets, and reflects thoughtfully on love and loss. Police, friends, and family members take turns narrating, which results in an immersive and deeply affecting tale with a strong sense of place and an emotionally gratifying conclusion. To a character, the cast is nuanced and fully fleshed, conferring heft and depth to all that transpires. Manon—a single, childless, career-oriented woman in her late 30s who’s desperate to find a mate and have a family—and Edith’s mother Miriam—a married women with a grown child who never got to have a career and now feels rudderless and cast aside—are particularly well drawn. A subplot involving Manon’s efforts to help a young boy facing the loss of his family provides a nice counterpoint to Miriam’s struggles with her daughter’s disappearance. The two women are different sides of the same coin, and through them, Steiner makes keen observations regarding sexism, feminism, relationships, and self.

Not Dead Enough

Benjamin Boulden

Not Dead Enough is Warren C. Easley’s fourth novel featuring retired Los Angeles prosecutor turned rural lawyer Cal Claxton. Cal is a widower with a painful past and a daughter attending Berkeley. He lives alone in Dundee, a town south of Portland, Oregon, where he practices law and fly-fishing. His friend and fishing mentor Philip Lone Dear invites Cal to the 50th-anniversary commemoration of the flooding of Celilo Falls, a sacred Wasco Indian fishing ground lost to the rising waters of the Columbia River when the Dalles Dam was completed in 1957.

Philip’s invitation to the commemoration is more than it appears. He wants to introduce Cal to his cousin Winona Cloud, whose grandfather, Nelson Queah, disappeared the night Celilo Falls was flooded. Queah was an outspoken critic of the dam, and its impact on the landscape and the Wasco tribe. A perfunctory police investigation at the time determined that Queah, who was not known to drink excessively, fell drunkenly into the rising tide of the river and drowned. His body was never found. Now, 50 years later, Winona, who works for an activist group seeking the removal of several dams on the Columbia, wants Cal to investigate her grandfather’s death.

Not Dead Enough is an entertaining and smoothly written mystery with a charming and likable protagonist in Cal Claxton. It nicely interconnects Native American cultural struggles, politics—both national and local—greed, and murder. A bevy of suspects—an aging tough guy who is now living in a senior care center, the dam’s original concrete contractor, and the dam’s general contractor—makes things interesting. A sniper taking shots at nearly everyone Cal wants information from keeps it lively, and the conclusion hits with a believable twist.

SoHo Sins

Hank Wagner

The murder of Amanda Oliver creates quite the stir in Manhattan’s insular art world, primarily because of the sheer number of suspects to speculate over. Was it her husband, businessman Philip Oliver, or his current mistress, up-and-coming artist Claudia Silva? Amanda’s lover, the unsavory Paul Morse? Philip’s first wife, Angela? Art dealer Jackson Wyeth, the world-weary, seen-it-all narrator of this sordid tale? Or, perhaps, someone less obvious, someone who is apt to fly under everyone’s radar, while hiding in plain sight? That is the conundrum at the black heart of SoHo Sins, a dark, thoroughly depressing, but nonetheless fascinating and eminently readable first novel from Richard Vine, managing editor of Art in America, one of the world’s leading fine art publications.

Vine’s fictional tour of the dark corners of this unsavory scene will leave you enervated, but will also keep you fascinated, as he plumbs the depths of human behavior—everyone has sins to hide in this novel, even though most can’t be bothered to do so. One senses that Vine’s influences are wide and eclectic; savvy readers will detect hints of The Great Gatsby and Lolita, even as they stumble across scenes straight out of Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler. Fortunately, the capable first-time author is able to blend these disparate influences into a satisfying, seamless whole, creating a gripping, noirish hardboiled mystery that will leave readers questioning their conclusions well after the curtains come down on this tragic, twisty, and unrelenting debut.

Murder Most Fowl

Sharon Magee

This is the fourth installment in Edith Maxwell’s cozy series, Local Foods Mysteries, featuring Cameron “Cam” Flaherty, an introverted organic farmer with a penchant for solving murders. Cam is content to spend time on her Attic Hill Farm tending her coop of 40 hens and her new batch of chicks, preparing the earth for the spring planting of her much sought after veggies, and pruning her fruit trees. And, of course, there’s that hunky State Police Detective Peter Pappas, who’s been warming her sheets, to think about.

But as luck would have it, a kindly chicken farmer, Wayne Laitinen, is found dead, and as much as Cam is warned to stay away from the investigation by Pete and others, she cannot. Clues just keep falling in her lap, and what’s a naturally curious girl to do but follow up on them? There is the snobbish Judith Montgomery, who has been after Wayne to sell her a piece of his land; the old friend of Wayne’s who appears to share a horrendous secret with the mild-mannered farmer; and the Animal Rights Front (ARF), whose members recently vandalized Wayne’s barns. And what, if anything, does the human arm bone and gold bracelet Cam uncovers in her compost pile have to do with Wayne’s murder? As Cam digs deeper into the secrets of the small town of Westbury, Massachusetts, she begins to fear her own life may be in danger.

Maxwell, an Agatha-nominated author and former organic farmer, is a prolific writer with four mystery series in print. Cam is a fun protagonist, as are her quirky friends. If there’s any quibble, it is that Maxwell loads the books with many minor characters, apparently from previous books in the series, which is distracting. All in all, though, an enjoyable read with delicious-sounding recipes included.

Dark Horse

Matthew Fowler

Rory Flynn’s Dark Horse, part of the Eddy Harkness series, finds Detective Harkness in the middle of a narcotics case in a hurricane-torn Boston. Without homes or shelter, many of the Boston refugees have taken up residence in Eddy’s hometown, citing an outdated regulation that remains on the books to this day and allows them to live on property they don’t own. Along with this migration, a new brand of heroin is hitting the streets, leaving people dead, all while the local government and crooked mayor are trying to underhandedly obtain property in the places the hurricane hit the hardest. All of it, as Eddy learns, may be tied together.

Flynn is extremely comfortable in the world he has created. It makes sense then that Eddy Harkness would be as comfortable walking into a Harvard dormitory as he is downing drinks in the dodgiest dive bars Boston has to offer. Eddy never seems to lose his cool. He’s always one step ahead of the action, not unlike the author’s relationship to the reader. Though part of a series, Dark Horse feels like its own self-contained novel. Of course, there are times when the reader will meet characters in Eddy’s life that may have played larger roles once upon a time, but the way Flynn describes his world only makes the mystery behind these former flames, allies, and family members feel more tangible and real. Dark Horse works on many levels, the most obvious of which is how well Flynn knows the people that populate his and Eddy’s universe.

The Devil’s Cold Dish

Robin Agnew

I haven’t checked in with Eleanor Kuhns’ post-Revolutionary War-era farmer and itinerant weaver Will Rees since Kuhns’ fine first novel, A Simple Murder. In that novel Will meets his future wife, Lydia, a former Shaker, and finds his missing son, David. Fast-forward to The Devil’s Cold Dish and Will and Lydia are married, she is pregnant, and David is almost grown with a real knack for farming.

A trip to town turns distressing when Will hears rumors that Lydia is being called a witch. Things only get worse for the Rees when a dead body is discovered and most everyone thinks Will is guilty of the murder.

Some people don’t read historical novels for fear they will be dull, but that is rarely the case. The Rees may have to get around on horseback, live by candlelight, and endure the backbreaking work that was involved both in farming and housework in 1797, but in every other way, this is a straight-up thriller. As a return reader, I was already fond of Will and Lydia, and as they are persecuted to the point where Lydia and the children must flee and Will is forced into hiding, I had to read straight through to find out how their lives were saved.

While A Simple Murder had a more meditative and peaceful quality, this one is all breathless plot. The parts I missed from the first novel were the scenes of Will weaving, which sound dull, but are not, and give Will himself a measure of peace in his daily life. There is one such scene included in Kuhns’ latest, but I wished for more. That is a small caveat, however, as this is a well told and engrossing story.

Kuhns’ stories often have a high body count and this novel is no different, with several deaths and bloody fights, but the heart of the story is family and the ways in which the Rees take care of one another. I really love Kuhns’ central characters, and I like the post-Revolutionary War-era setting, one not much delved into by historical mystery writers. The well-laid mystery with the clues apparent after reading the solution was a joy as well. This is a series well worth discovering.

Willnot

Kevin Burton Smith

James Sallis is probably best known for his six novels featuring New Orleans private eye Lew Griffin, and for his dark, brooding 2005 novel Drive (later made into the acclaimed 2011 film). But what distinguishes all his work is a bare-bones compassion, a pervasive attention to detail and setting, and richly textured characterizations—often thrown against sudden outbursts of shocking violence.

But Willnot is something else entirely. Oh, the small Southern town of the title is rendered beautifully, the live-and-let-live aura of this rural community rises off every page like early morning fog, and the writing, as expected, is achingly beautiful. But what violence there is occurs mostly offstage, most notably the discovery by a hunter of the remains of several bodies in a gravel pit outside of town. The novel’s protagonist, local general practitioner Lamar Hale, is called in by the local cops to take a gander, and that’s about where you would expect this thing to start rolling—with Hale, the determined amateur, drawn into a mystery that will rock this small town.

But that is not quite what happens. Instead, Hale surveys the scene, reminisces a little about how Andrew, the ambulance driver who gave him a lift to the crime scene, has been his patient since he was 12, and discusses with the sheriff the postponed gall bladder operation of Ellie, another local, before noting “the tiny shushing sounds as raindrops hit leaves high in the trees.”

And so it goes, unfolding as the months pass. The local cops are baffled by the mass grave, and Bobby, an old acquaintance of Hale’s with a mysterious past (was he a black op?), shows up for some reason or another, drawing the attention of the FBI. Meanwhile, the good doctor and his longtime partner Richard (a local school teacher) go about their lives, swapping stories back and forth: “You live with someone year after year, you think you’ve heard all the stories, but you never have.”

Yeah, I know. Doesn’t sound like much of a ripsnorter. The investigation itself, while constant, gets little more attention than the ongoing discussions of upcoming dinner parties, promising students, medical calamities, and local gossip. But just try to put this sucker down.

Is it a cozy? Noir? Is it even a mystery? I’m not sure. What I do know, though, is that I could not stop reading. It is the untold tales—of life and death, the trivial and profound, buffoonery and wisdom—and how in the sharing of them we are both defined and connected that this story really celebrates. Willnot is a porch swing of a book; you’re not really going anywhere, but on a fine evening, with a drink and a good friend close at hand, gently rocking and watching the sun set, where else would you want to be?

Dr. Knox

Hank Wagner

The main story driving the first-person narrative of Peter Spiegelman’s latest novel involves a patient, a young boy suffering from anaphylactic shock, who visits Dr. Adam Knox’s barely solvent, LA skid row clinic. During the visit, Knox discovers that the boy’s mother has fled, apparently trying to avoid capture by persons unknown. Knox decides to take the child under his wing, and soon discovers that multiple parties are after mother and son, including Russian mobsters and the minions of an extremely powerful local businessman. Knox and his associates come to suffer for his altruism, as they all become embroiled in a hellish nightmare involving the custody of the child.

At turns comedic (mostly during several set pieces wherein Knox and his lethal sidekick, ex-Special Forces operative Ben Sutter, minister to the colorful denizens of LA, whose desperate needs for secrecy—one client, for example, has been shot in the ass—create some amusing situations) and then as serious as a heart attack, Dr. Knox is an admirable piece of work that successfully walks a fine line between high adventure and noir, simultaneously evoking the best of Robert Townsend and Donald E. Westlake. Shamus-winner Spiegelman delivers compelling, well-rendered entertainment that will elicit a vast array of emotional responses from his audience, which will certainly demand sequels.

Swimsuit Body

Eileen Brady

Feisty Tish Ballard packs a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson in her designer jeans and manages several high-end rental properties in the Northern California seaside town of Cypress Bay. The most luxurious, Casa Blanca, is about to be rented to an actress whose feature film is being shot nearby. Delilah Ward is young, gorgeous, and recently out of rehab. When Tish finds the oceanfront mansion trashed the first day, she reads the riot act to the Hollywood starlet. Delilah, to her surprise, is contrite, and promises it won’t happen again. Indeed, it doesn’t, because Delilah is dead by the end of the week, sprawled out on a lounge chair in a bikini with a bullet in her head.

Determined to find out what happened, Tish uses Delilah’s personal assistant, Briana Sweeney, to obtain access to the movie set, where she meets the crew and cast who were closest to the victim. Director Karol Bartosz’s mourning period is brief, and he immediately casts another actress, Taylor Ramsey, in Delilah’s role. The only one genuinely upset seems to be Greta Nyland, Delilah’s sister-in-law and director of the actress’s charitable foundation. Meanwhile, Tish discovers Delilah may have been romantically involved with actor Brent Harding (whose wife is expecting twins), as well as leading man Liam Brady. Even when suspicion falls on Tish’s brother, Arthur, the detective on the case, Spence Breedlove, wants her to stay out of his investigation. Breedlove and Tish have an unpleasant history together that dates back to their high school days.

Swimsuit Body is the second in the Cypress Bay Mysteries by author Eileen Goudge, and it packs a big punch with a surprising ending. Lead character Tish Ballard is engaging and never lets up, even when everything conspires against her. It is a fun read as well as a little peek into the crazy world of moviemaking.

Walt

Jean Gazis

“I’m Walt and she was Mary, and she’s somewhere else now.”

Walt is an unusual psychological thriller told mainly from the point of view of the title character, a seemingly ordinary, middle-aged grocery-store janitor, who lives in a small Canadian city, loves fly-fishing, and collects discarded shopping lists. The lists are surprisingly revealing, fascinating, and sometimes even heartbreaking to the lonely janitor, as he vividly imagines the private lives of the people who wrote them.

Walt’s wife, Mary, vanished more than a year ago, and the two officers of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary’s newly formed cold-case squad are suspicious. So is Alisha, the author of some of Walt’s treasured lists, an attractive young woman who can’t shake the uneasy feeling that she is being watched. Was Walt responsible for Mary’s disappearance after years in an increasingly rocky marriage? Is he stalking Alisha— and other single women? The tension builds and the mystery deepens as we learn each new detail of Walt’s activities. Bit by bit, a chilling picture emerges that never quite settles into perfect focus.

Walt is beautifully written, clearly portraying each character’s mental state and the minute details of their everyday lives, without ever straying from each character’s distinctive voice. The language is plain, but vividly descriptive and psychologically insightful, with memorable lines such as “It’s smart to be as honest as you can—the best lies are packed full of truth,” and “You always, always make exceptions for yourself when you’re judging what’s right and wrong.”

Walt’s story becomes increasingly complex as new facts and hinted-at possibilities keep the reader wondering where it will lead next. Did Mary have a lover? Was she preparing to leave? Will Walt slip up and reveal too much? Will the police finally pin down conclusive evidence? The guessing game continues as Walt’s stalking behavior escalates and the police slowly close in. Readers won’t soon forget the eerie atmosphere of this mesmerizing novel—and they’ll think twice about casually tossing a grocery list aside ever again.

We Were Kings

Benjamin Boulden

We Were Kings is a well-written, bleak, and violent noir. The year is 1954 and Boston is suffering through a brutal heat wave. A dead body, tarred and feathered, is found on the shore of Boston Harbor and the crime, along with a tip about an arriving boatload of stolen guns, gives Detective Owen Mackey an uneasy feeling. The murder is eerily similar to the Irish Republican Army’s method for dispatching snitches, and the gun shipment’s ultimate destination, if the tip is accurate, is Ireland.

Detective Mackey enlists the help of his cousin Cal O’Brien—widower, former cop, and owner of an unprofitable security company—to keep his ears open for any talk in Boston’s Irish neighborhoods. Cal brings his friend, recovering heroin addict and nightclub piano-player Dante Cooper, along to help on the assignment. The investigation crawls through the neighborhoods and nightclubs of South Boston, where a gangland-style war between the IRA and Irish Loyalists threatens to erupt.

We Were Kings is Thomas O’Malley and Douglas Graham Purdy’s sequel to their first novel, Serpents in the Cold. The oppressive Boston heat, descriptions of the mid-20th-century Irish neighborhoods, and overt violence envelop the story in tragic hopelessness. The protagonists, Cal O’Brien and Dante Cooper, are as broken as the IRA’s ill-conceived scheme, with little hope of repair or redemption. The violence is written with verve, and the story is, if at times slowed by excessive dialogue, strikingly visual with a very readable style.

Buffalo Jump Blues

Robin Agnew

Buffalo Jump Blues plunges straight into the action with a herd of buffalo hurling themselves over a cliff, and subsequently having to be put down by the local Montana Hyalite County sheriff’s deputy. It is a heartbreaking and memorable beginning to a story set in the wilds of Montana and told at an otherwise leisurely pace. The main character is not the deputy or even the sheriff, Martha Ettinger (a fine character), but rather the fly fisherman, artist, and sometime-detective Sean Stranahan.

We meet Sean at a bar where “mermaids” swim in a tank while patrons drink and check them out. One of the mermaids asks Sean for a little help; she’s seen a man through the glass who she thinks was a childhood love, but she is not sure since she hasn’t seen him since he was 12. Sean, enchanted by her two different colored eyes, agrees to assist her.

It turns out the young man, John Running Boy, is tied somehow to the dead bison. Apparently someone, or a group of someones, has tried to re-create a Native American bison run, in which bison are driven off a cliff and killed for meat and hides.

Like C.J. Box or Craig Johnson, Keith McCafferty is telling a Western version of a private eye story, but he takes a while to get where he’s going. However, when he finally arrives, it is worth it, as the denouement is excellent. This storytelling style, with its interesting sidebars about fly-fishing, Montana landscapes, and Native culture may appeal to some and not to others. It is the difference between a road trip where you drive straight to where you are going on the fastest highway possible, and one where you pull off the highway to meander. McCafferty likes to take in the sights.

The Hemingway Thief

Matthew Fowler

Shaun Harris’ The Hemingway Thief looks to seamlessly blend action, pop-culture savvy, and a true-life literary mystery in his debut novel.

Writer Henry Cooper (“Coop” to his friends or whoever is around while he is downing adult beverages) is in the midst of a bender, searching for himself and his next novel at a beat-up motel in Mexico when he witnesses a couple of goons attack a drunk. After helping to fend off the attackers with the help of the hotel owner, Coop quickly learns that the drunk is a thief named Eddie, whose family is linked to Ernest Hemingway’s missing briefcase, famously written about in Hemingway’s memoir A Moveable Feast. Together, this unlikely band of misfits race against time to get to the briefcase before a powerful and unscrupulous book collector gets there first.

While the plot occasionally meanders due to a number of encounters with aggressive, gun-toting baddies, it shines when Harris plays up the humor of the story. He is not afraid to have fun in a genre that oftentimes takes itself far too seriously. Highlights include a running gag about Coop’s alter ego, a romance novelist no one believes is him, as well his irrational hostility toward John Grisham. And while the numerous gun run-ins and the pop-culture asides don’t always quite work, Coop’s cavalier attitude about continuing this journey for the sake of resuscitating his own name from the proverbial literary graveyard is refreshing and fun.

Another One Goes Tonight

Joseph Scarpato, Jr.

When Detective Peter Diamond is called to a tragic roadside accident where one police officer is dead and another severely injured, he also discovers an elderly man, barely alive, who had been riding a motorized tricycle and was thrown just above a dirt embankment at the site. Diamond immediately performs CPR until medics arrive to take the comatose victim to a nearby hospital.

Investigating what the man was doing on the road late at night, Diamond searches his computer, where he learns that the man is a railroad buff. He also has a website dedicated to ways of committing undetectable murders in his browser’s search history. Further investigation shows that several of the victim’s elderly fellow railroad enthusiasts have recently died in their sleep. Is the man Diamond saved a serial killer? Because of his irregular methods (search and seizure of materials from the man’s house without a warrant), Diamond has to work the case off the books.

Along with two of the younger members of his staff, Keith Halliwell and Ingeborg Smith, Diamond finds himself on a circuitous path that becomes more confusing and more dangerous the closer it moves to a solution. Fortunately, there’s enough humor in the interplay between the three detectives to offset the seriousness of the situation. I particularly enjoyed the byplay between the computer-challenged Diamond and the computer-savvy Inge.

Peter Lovesey is a master of the intricately plotted murder mystery and Detective Diamond, for all his faults, is a stickler for getting the job done, even if he has to bend a few rules to achieve it. This is easily one of the best and most entertaining mysteries I’ve read in a long time.

The Secret Language of Stones

Robin Agnew

While not technically a mystery, The Secret Language of Stones is a completely enjoyable read that does have a crime. It is the second in a series that features women with psychic powers. The first, The Witch of Painted Sorrows, was about Sandrine, the mother of the protagonist in this novel, which centers on Opaline Duplessi and is set in 1918 Paris. Opaline has left home and is apprenticed to a Russian jeweler. She loves her work, but is uncomfortable with her psychic gift, one she is trying to figure out how to either control or give back.

Opaline’s gift is related to making talismans. She’ll take a strand or two of a dead man’s hair, encase it inside a crystal that she carves and wraps with gold wire, and then she’ll have the mother or loved one of the deceased hold it in their hands while she places her hands over theirs. In this way, the sons, husbands, and brothers lost to war speak to her and give her messages to pass along to their loved ones. Her most recent talisman, however, seems to be speaking to her directly, and she has a sort of romance with the dead man, making a duplicate talisman for his mother, and keeping the original one for herself.

Despite the hardships of the period, there is something romantic about WWI Paris, with its mix of Russian émigrés, intellectuals, and artists. Rose sets her scene well and makes it clear that living in a city full of grieving widows and mothers with German artillery trained on them was far from romantic—still, it’s hard to pry the romantic veneer off completely, and I sensed Rose didn’t truly want to.

So, Opaline’s in love with a dead man, she’s struggling with her psychic abilities, and she lives in the shadow of war. Then her boss asks her to help solve a mystery relating to a Russian dowager and the fates of her grandchildren, who may or may not have been executed by the Bolsheviks along with their father, the tsar of Russia.

This is a true coming-of-age story as the young Opaline sorts through her feelings about love, her job, her skills, and her loyalty to her boss, who has asked this huge, heartbreaking favor of her. I kind of figured out the bad guy, but I have to say I didn’t really mind. The plot is ingenious and I was swept up in the delicious narrative. The Secret Language of Stones is a truly delightful read in every way.

Arsenic With Austen

Jean Gazis

Unassuming, old-fashioned, and middle-aged, Emily Cavanaugh, a recent widow, is getting bored with her mundane life as a literature professor in Portland, Oregon. Unexpectedly, she inherits the multimillion-dollar estate of her great aunt and becomes the largest property owner in the small, sleepy seaside town of Stony Beach, Oregon. Soon after arriving at her aunt’s stately Victorian mansion (complete with secret passages), Emily encounters a deadly conspiracy to develop the quaint village into an expensive, tourist-trap beach resort. Her own life possibly in danger, Emily must join forces with her long-lost first love, Luke Richards, who is now the town sheriff, to discover the truth behind her elderly aunt’s sudden demise and put an end to the development schemes. Was Great-Aunt Beatrice poisoned by the proponents of “progress”? Will Luke and Emily put their heartache behind them and reunite? How are Emily’s handsome would-be cousin Brock Runcible and real estate shark Vicki Landau involved?

This cozy mystery is peppered with literary references, from Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy to C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling, and features an array of engaging and memorable characters, both human and feline. The picturesque setting captures the small-town atmosphere authentically, and is full of eccentric personalities—from a tattooed, fan-fiction- writing yarn store proprietress to the buffoonish mayor—who are by turns humorous and poignant. Even the food (arsenic notwithstanding) sounds delicious. The vivid, breezy style keeps the story moving briskly, while numerous plot twists build the suspense (both romantic and mysterious) until the village’s—and Emily’s—long-buried secrets are finally revealed. Arsenic With Austen is a refreshingly updated take on the classic country-house mystery genre. Readers will no doubt look forward eagerly to future installments in this new series.

Go-Between

Vanessa Orr

Big-money politics, shell nonprofits, privately run prisons, shady government deals, and the cannabis trade come together in Lisa Brackmann’s timely Go-Between. And who is in between? The unfortunate protagonists Michelle Mason and her boyfriend Danny, who are on the run from ex-CIA agent Gary, an eerily creepy villain who plays them like pawns in a Machiavellian game of chess. Gary’s willingness to use people, and his uncanny ability to find them wherever they may hide, creates an intense, unrelenting pressure that drives the action.

Despite their brushes with criminality, Michelle and Danny are very likable, and the reader wants to see them escape from under Gary’s control—though that seems almost impossible. Michelle’s sense of paranoia is palpable and leaves both her and the reader second-guessing every decision she makes. If you believe in conspiracy theories, this is the book for you. And if you don’t, it might make you a believer.

While I don’t want to give away the ending, suffice it to say it opens up the opportunity to see some of these characters again, and to experience more of the cat-and-mouse pursuit that makes this story so fascinating. I’m hoping that Brackmann pens a sequel soon.

Burn What Will Burn

Sharon Magee

In his second novel after his 2014 Edgar-nominated Bad Country, C.B. McKenzie takes his readers on a wild ride with the self-described diminutive, bald, small-handed, and mentally unstable Bob Reynolds. Bob has inherited a whole lot of money he really doesn’t want. So instead of living large, he’s moved into a shabby old house in Doker, Arkansas, and is raising chickens, chasing away the rowdy neighbor kids and livestock, and lusting after Tammy Sue Smith, a foulmouthed, really bad auto mechanic.

Out one morning for a walk, he finds a body floating in Little Piney Creek. Unsure of what to do with Buck (so identified by the name on the drowned man’s knife scabbard), he pulls the body out of the water, and reluctantly calls his nemesis, Sheriff Sam Baxter (the sheriff also has a thing for Tammy Sue). But the body disappears, and Baxter begins giving Bob the skunk eye, and maybe, Bob fears, begins thinking the crime may be a way to rid himself of romantic competition once and for all. With proving his innocence in mind, and Tammy Sue in his heart, Bob sets out with his buddy, a slow-witted teenager named Malcolm Ray Pickens, to track down the murderer before the sheriff can pin Buck’s murder on him.

Author McKenzie is a true renaissance man. He’s lived everywhere and has led a varied life as a lifeguard, waiter, Giorgio Armani fashion model, organic farmer, and, finally, a professor of creative writing and writer of quirky noir mysteries. Every one of his characters is tilted just a little to the left of normal. That, along with his poetic but gritty writing, will capture readers at first sentence.

Murder on the Quai

Robin Agnew

After 15 books featuring the kick-ass Aimée LeDuc, her creator has decided to gift readers with a prequel. I really loved learning about how Aimée meets Miles Davis and René Urtreger, and I enjoyed the brief encounter with her parents and grandfather. For the uninitiated, Aimée is a private detective in Paris who has taken on her father’s business. As Murder on the Quai opens, however, Aimée is not a detective but a frustrated medical student who is unhappy with her studies.

While visiting her father’s office, she overhears his conversation with a distant relative seeking help to uncover why her father was murdered a few days previously. Aimée’s father turns the woman down and leaves town, but Aimée is intrigued and decides to try a spot of investigation on her own.

As she digs into the murdered man’s life—one told partially through flashbacks of occupied France—she discovers she enjoys investigative work much more than medical studies. While her grandfather is on her side whatever her calling, Aimée frets about telling her father of her new passion for detecting (and lack of same for becoming a doctor).

As always in a Cara Black novel, the setting of Paris is part of the charm. While Black never overwhelms the reader with detail, you still feel as if you are in Paris as you read. I always long for a baguette and a strong cup of good coffee, and maybe a shot at the vintage Chanel jacket Aimée wears with such panache.

And while fun, this series is far from fluffy—and this book is no exception. The violence in the series is often graphic and there are many victims, but it’s never gratuitous. If you haven’t read any of these books, Murder on the Quai would be a good place to start. I won’t give away what happens, but Aimée’s fans will know what’s coming. And while I knew, the ending of the book was still a shock. Origin stories are almost without exception powerful, and so is this one. It is perhaps one of Black’s best and most memorable efforts.

Guilty Minds

Oline H. Cogdill

Joseph Finder is best known for high-energy standalone thrillers that often delve into the financial world, and he brings that high-octane approach to his mini-series about private intelligence operative Nick Heller.

In his third appearance, the Boston-based detective tackles tabloid journalism, politics, and power moguls in a case that takes Heller to Washington, DC.

The website Slander Sheet is about to run a story accusing Supreme Court Chief Justice Jeremiah Claflin of regularly hiring a young prostitute. Claflin’s attorney, Washington insider and power broker Gideon Parnell, wants Heller to prove the story false before it is published. Slander Sheet has agreed to wait 48 hours before it will go with the story.

Heller finds the young prostitute and proves the story false—but then events take a fatal turn and Heller tries to find out who owns Slander Sheet and why the Chief Justice was targeted.

Guilty Minds balances its thriller tenets with solid characters (including the villains), razor-sharp dialogue, and a breathless plot that careens from one realistic twist to another. Heller is a super sleuth on his own, but he also employs many high-tech toys and tricks in his covert surveillance to uncover the truth, all of which add to the plausibility of Heller’s success.

Misery Bay (Chris Angus)

Matthew Fowler

Located on the shore of Nova Scotia, the small fishing town of Misery Bay has some dark secrets hidden in its seedy underbelly (as one might guess given its nefarious and on-the-nose name). Special Constable Garrett Barkhouse has worked 20 years fighting crime and is looking forward to retiring, but his boss persuades him to take one more job out in the town where Garrett spent his formative years. But what is supposed to be a routine assignment reveals Garrett’s hometown to be a nexus of child prostitution, unlawful immigration, and drug trafficking.

Despite its almost 400-page length, Misery Bay reads like a novel half its size. This is a blessing and a curse: the world of Misery Bay is expansive and allows the reader into the homes of many unique characters, including many people from Garrett’s past, but the haste at which the plot progresses never allows one to truly get a sense of the town. The smells, the sounds, the things that Garrett has a history with aren’t disclosed as plainly as they should be. The way the novel moves from plot twist to plot twist doesn’t allow for the writer to truly mine the scenario of returning Garrett to his hometown.

That being said, Misery Bay never feels slow. Its tertiary characters are artfully constructed, local news reporter Kitty Wells being a standout, and the plot moves at a pace that keeps the reader wanting more. Though some twists and reveals feel tacked on, the overarching story does not suffer for it.

Page 183 of 276

Current Issue

Newsletter Sign-up

Latest Tweets

Most Popular

Our Awards