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Doc Savage: The Sinister Shadow

Hank Wagner

High adventure is the first order of business in The Sinister Shadow, Will Murray’s wonderful mash-up featuring the legendary Street & Smith pulp heroes Doc Savage and The Shadow. Writing as both Kenneth Robeson and Lester Dent, Murray relates the tale of the first meeting of the two comic titans, as the Knight of Darkness and the Man of Bronze square off against each other, and, ultimately, the macabre villain known as The Funeral Director.

Reading this expansive pulp novel, you have to wonder why this hasn’t happened before. Maintaining continuity established in the original novels, Murray perfectly captures the respective worlds of both characters, taking full advantage of the fact that they both operate out of New York City. He also hits all the proper grace notes, mentioning The Shadow’s eerie radio broadcasts, and capturing all the tics and quirks of each hero’s supporting cast, such as The Shadow’s New York City Detective Joe Cardona, and the members of Doc’s team Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks. Innocents are endangered, bullets fly, saps are swung, mysteries unravel, and heroic deeds are accomplished, all conveyed in florid, pulpy prose—in short, it doesn’t get any better than this, kids.

Daisies for Innocence: An Enchanted Garden Mystery

Lynne F. Maxwell

Bailey Cattrell (aka Bailey Cates, aka Cricket McRae) begins a promising series in Daisies for Innocence: An Enchanted Garden Mystery. This compelling cozy features Elliana “Ellie” Allbright, proprietor of small-town California-based shop Scents & Nonsense, where she creates perfumes and practices aromatherapy. Ellie is also a skillful gardener and herbalist who, because of her intimate connection with nature and innate empathy, can sense emotions and provide the precise “scentual” remedy to abate the woes of her clients. The perfume shop, along with the Enchanted Garden that Ellie has nurtured behind it, provide joy and solace to those who visit, including Ellie herself. After all, her divorce from philandering husband Harris and the loss of the restaurant they co-owned is relatively recent, and small-town life constantly provides unwelcome reminders of the past. Still, all of this pales when Ellie discovers the body of her part-time employee Josie in the garden. To complicate matters, Josie had just confessed to Ellie that she was dating Harris. And one of the investigating officers, not a friend of Ellie’s ex, fixates on Ellie as the prime suspect. Determined to unearth her friend’s killer, Ellie becomes a sleuth, aided by her superpowers of sentience.

Daisies for Innocence is masterfully composed, and Cattrell enchantingly infuses the novel with lessons on the language of flowers and the lore of perfumery.

Trumbo

Dick Lochte

Though I didn’t see much mention of it, the recent enjoyable film in which everybody’s favorite meth manufacturer, Bryan Cranston, smartly portrays the blacklisted Academy Award-winning screenwriter and novelist Dalton Trumbo was based on this fascinating biography by the late Bruce Cook. Under the pen name Bruce Alexander, Cook wrote 11 historical mystery novels set in the late 18th century featuring blind magistrate Sir John Fielding, who, with his half-brother, Henry, created London’s first police force. Cook also wrote four novels about Los Angeles private detective Antonio “Chico” Cervantes and I think Trumbo reflects elements of the PI novel. Primarily, Cook uses a first-person approach in presenting the material. It is he, listening, as director Franklin Schaffner describes Trumbo learning about his lung cancer during the filming of Papillon. It is he giving his Philip Marlowelike on-scene description of the Utah town where Trumbo was raised or interviewing friends of the screenwriter to fill in the blanks on his unusual courtship and eventual marriage to his wife Cleo. No doubt owing to its subject’s quick wit, flamboyance, and grace under fire (i.e., his choosing jail rather than taking the Fifth or cooperating with the House Un-American Activities Committee), there’s a swift-paced, novelistic quality to the writing. This is enhanced by reader Luke Daniels, whose delivery is as fresh and breezy as when he’s giving voice to Elvis Cole. Though rich in fascinating vignettes involving Trumbo and his famous friends and enemies, the book is at its most enlightening in its depiction of both Hollywood and American history, particularly during the era of the blacklist. The book was first published in 1977, but this audio sounds as contemporary as Ace Atkins’ latest addition to the Spenser chronicles.

The Promise

Dick Lochte

The reason for the dual narrators is that Robert Crais has populated this thriller with a dream team of crime fighters: Elvis Cole, Joe Pike, LAPD canine officer Scott James, and his loyal and lovable German Shepard Maggie, along with Pike’s pal Jon Stone, who may be fiction’s most honorable black ops mercenary. To justify the gathering of this literary Justice League, Crais has fashioned a splendidly nasty and formidable villain, an assassin named Rollins (presumably not a shout-out to another popular thriller writer, but one never knows). There’s enough solid plotting and strong characterization here to satisfy any suspense fan—with Scott James being the only witness who can link Rollins to a murder scene and all of the others, including Maggie, trying to keep the astonishingly elusive and effective hit man from taking him out. The added fun, for audio aficionados, is in trying to guess which of the versatile readers is interpreting which of the novel’s short, punchy scenes. What follows are my best guesses. I think it is reader MacLeod Andrews kicking things off with a hardboiled description of the murder that ignites the novel, with Scott and Maggie interrupting perfectionist Rollins’ clean getaway.

Then Luke Daniels takes over with Elvis’ breezy first-person account of how he becomes involved in the investigation. When Joe Pike joins Elvis, it’s Daniels again, shifting to a whispering croak. Andrews follows Rollins’ progress, as the hit man reports to a higher-up and the murder case expands to a much more complex, more potentially devastating crime. I’m pretty sure Andrews is also the voice of Scott’s chapters, and Maggie’s. (The latter are dog-point-of-view depictions as believable as those of the master’s, Dean Koontz.) But I’m only half-confident that he’s the reader of the Jon Stone chapters. Bottom line: by whichever reader, this is an entertaining package that’s all too easy to binge on.

Lisa Lutz on a Love of J.D. Salinger and the Unexpected

Lisa Lutz

lutz lisa I have trouble encoding short-term to long-term memory. This is a psychiatrist’s way of explaining that I have really crappy recall. When I read a novel I can follow the story, but afterward the details generally elude me. Character names, major plot points, I’ll usually forget. I often can’t tell you anything about a book I’ve read other than the general feeling I had when it was over. As you can imagine, this makes writing about my reading life a tricky endeavor. But there are a few things, a few moments of magic that I may never forget. And they’re always connected to a very strong emotional reaction.

I couldn’t tell you the first book I read (although I recall being a huge Dr. Seuss fan), but I do retain one indelible memory from when I was 11 or 12. It was late at night, my parents were out, and I was reading J. D. Salinger’s Nine Stories, specifically “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.”

Seymour Glass, returning from an ocean swim, entered an elevator with a woman. And this is the conversation that transpired:

"I see you're looking at my feet," he said to her when the car was in motion.

"I beg your pardon?" said the woman.

"I said I see you're looking at my feet."

"I beg your pardon. I happened to be looking at the floor," said the woman, and faced the doors of the car.

"If you want to look at my feet, say so," said the young man. "But don't be a God-damned sneak about it."

I don’t think I ever laughed so hard at anything before that quiet night on the couch. I finished the story and was gutted. Then I fell asleep on my parents’ couch, and when my mother woke me, I tried to describe to her the scene in the elevator. And I began laughing hysterically all over again as I quoted Seymour Glass: “If you want to look at my feet, say so. But don’t be a God-damned sneak about it.” My mother didn’t find the exchange nearly as funny as I did. I’m sure I appeared loopy and overtired; she nodded politely and suggested I go to bed.

At the time, I didn’t understand how or why this moment in the story was important to me. And it’s still tough to articulate. I recognize that what I responded to as a reader back then bears more than a passing resemblance to what I respond to now: I like to be surprised. I like to feel off-balance. I like to see humor used to undercut—but never eradicate—darkness.

But none of this quite explains what destroyed me that night. And maybe it’s this elusiveness itself that hooked me into a life of reading—the sense of tapping into something inexplicably stronger and weirder and funnier than the sum of its parts. I didn’t know it yet, but I wanted to make something like that, too.

Lisa Lutz is the New York Times bestselling author of the Spellman Files series, Heads You Lose (with David Hayward), How to Start a Fire, and The Passenger. Lutz won the Alex Award and has been nominated for the Edgar Award for best novel. She lives in upstate New York.

This “Writers on Reading” essay was originally published in “At the Scene” enews March 2016 as a first-look exclusive to our enewsletter subscribers. For more special content available first to our enewsletter subscribers, sign up here.

The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words

Jon L. Breen

The creator of Philip Marlowe never wrote an autobiography, but Day (a scholar of Wodehouse, Coward, Wilde, Dorothy Parker, and Conan Doyle) reconstructs the next best thing through quotes from Chandler’s letters, essays, fiction, and other sources. Apart from the biographical details are chapters on the character of Marlowe, the author’s relationship with Los Angeles and Hollywood, his female characters, and the writing craft. Much of the material will be familiar to Chandler devotees, but its reorganization here makes for a highly readable and entertaining volume.

The Spectrum of English Murder: The Detective Fiction of Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher and G. D. H. and Margaret Cole

Jon L. Breen

In Masters of the “Humdrum” Mystery (2012), Evans considered three writers from the British Golden Age of Detection (John Rhode/Miles Burton, Freeman Wills Crofts, and J. J. Connington) consigned to the reductive label of “humdrum” by Julian Symons. Originally that book included chapters on Sir Henry Lancelot Aubrey-Fletcher, who wrote as Henry Wade, and the husband-wife team of G. D. H. and Margaret Cole, but these chapters were cut for length by the publisher and now are published in a sequel volume.

Wade, per Evans’ description, is a major figure on British crime fiction, though one who has fallen below the radar of most contemporary writers on mystery fiction despite being championed by notable critics like Charles Shibuk and the team of Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor. Wade’s John Poole actually preceded Ngaio Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn as an upper-crust gentleman cop, and Wade is seen to have more in common with P. D. James than with the Crime Queens or the “humdrums” of the Golden Age.

The Coles are less historically significant and consistent in quality, but equally interesting subjects. They were not so much collaborators as authors of individual books (18 by G. D. H., 10 by Margaret) published under the joint byline. Evans discusses their output separately and notes some of their differences in approach, and strengths and weaknesses. He places them with “academic farceurs” like Michael Innes. That the Coles were humorists or satirists is not hinted at by the two major historians of detective fiction, Symons and the earlier Howard Haycraft. (Haycraft found them dull writers; Evans finds them anything but.) The extent to which the left-wing politics of the Coles is reflected in their fiction has also been downplayed in previous accounts.

Evans is the ideal scholar/critic/historian of the detective story. While he considers the political and social significance of the writers he studies, and their characterization and style, he writes about detective fiction as detective fiction with attention to qualities that make it a distinctive genre.

Jack the Ripper—Case Solved, 1891

Jon L. Breen

I have read many Jack the Ripper books, some very well written and argued, but this is the first to convince me the 1880s case has been definitively solved, and, in fact, could have been laid to rest 124 years ago. The author, an Australian high school history teacher, does not have a new suspect—barrister and schoolmaster Montague John Druitt, who committed suicide by drowning in the Thames, has been accused in at least two earlier book-length accounts by Tom A. Cullen and Daniel Farson—but he explores how CID chief Melville Macnaghten and his friend, journalist George R. Sims, conspired to cover up the truth after Druitt’s death for a benign reason: to protect family connections of the serial killer, specifically a relative by marriage who was an important police official, from undeserved public ignominy. The book serves to rehabilitate somewhat the reputation of Macnaghten, celebrated for his acumen and faultless memory in his day, but discredited for vagueness and carelessness by Ripperologists ever since.

Sims, whose fame and influence in his own time was immense, created the female fictional sleuth Dorcas Dene. Though J. J. Hainsworth finds the heroine charming, he finds the stories are “marred by a tiresome lack of narrative ingenuity.” He notes that some of them mirror aspects of the Druitt case, as does Sims’ 1892 short story “The Priest’s Secret.” Two other contemporary fictional works reflect some inside knowledge of the truth, one very obscure and of low quality (The True History of Jack the Ripper by Guy Logan), and the other famous and highly regarded (Marie Belloc Lowndes’ The Lodger). Also discussed is Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, of which some aspects were adapted by Macnaghten and Sims to help in their misdirection. The book is carefully documented (a dozen close-packed pages of notes), and agreeably written, with many interesting details about the times and the key players. It’s highly recommended despite multiple instances of a linguistic atrocity: the misuse of the concept “begging the question.”

The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O’Keeffe

Robin Agnew

In The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O’Keeffe, author, J. Michael Orenduff introduces the oddly named Hubie Schuze, a proprietor of a shop in downtown Albuquerque that sells ancient, antique pots. Hubie doesn’t make a lot of sales, but when he does, the pots he sells fetch tens of thousands of dollars. But the way Hubie acquires his antiquities isn’t exactly honest, a fact he justifies by his belief that putting them in a museum is “killing” their spirit—he would rather “rescue” them and place them in a homes where they are loved and touched from time to time.

Hubie is most interested in the work of the Tompiro Indians, a Pueblo tribe absorbed into other tribes and cultures in the 1670s. He feels an almost spiritual connection to the pots, imagining the nameless women who created them long ago. A scout gets in touch with Hubie with a buyer willing to pay upwards of $30,000 for one, and so Hubie and his buddy Susannah sneak onto the Trinity Site at the White Sands Missile Range, a government site open to the public only once a year, where just such a relic is to be found. Once they’re in, finding the pot is almost too easy. Hubie has even brought along a fake to make the switch, but it all goes south at the end of the day when they are stopped by a military police officer.

Orenduff is a former president of New Mexico State University, and he loves the state and the treasures that can be unearthed within it. The Pot Thief Who Studied Georgia O’Keeffe could be a direct descendant of Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr books (The Burglar Who Counted Spoons, The Burglar in the Closet, etc.), long a favorite series of mine, and I couldn’t have been more delighted to make the connection as I read. Orenduff is a mystery fan who alludes to various mysteries, including of course Block’s, throughout the text, but the twist he brings to his story is all his own.

The travels and travails involved in reuniting Hubie with the pot he seeks result in the best kind of caper mystery—one filled with great characters, a resonant setting, and a wonderful MacGuffin. The book also finds Hubie beginning a new romance, and taking on a tenant in his retail building, a Brit named Gladwin Farthing. Glad’s British expressions often mystify Hubie, but when Glad is willing to watch the shop in a pinch, he immediately comes in handy. There’s also the matter of a possible Georgia O’Keeffe painting found by his buddy Susannah. Through several twists and turns, all is made right by the end of the book in this wildly enjoyable and satisfying read.

Where It Hurts

Ben Boulden

John Augustus “Gus” Murphy is a shadow of his former self. He is a retired Suffolk County police officer working at the Paragon, an aging airport hotel on Long Island, as a van driver and sometime house detective. His life unraveled two years earlier when his son, John Jr., died. He lost his wife, Annie, to divorce and he is losing his daughter to drugs and alcohol. His world is empty with grief and self-pity. It is an emptiness that erupts as anger when a petty crook named Thomas Delcamino shows up at the Paragon asking Gus for help. Tommy D.’s son, TJ, was murdered five months earlier and the police haven’t shown any interest in solving the case. Gus thinks Tommy D. is using his grief over John Jr.’s death to manipulate him, and he doesn’t let Tommy D. get far before tossing him out of the hotel.

The murder simmers for Gus, and the next day he visits the vacant lot where TJ’s broken body was found. A stirring curiosity—the first Gus has felt in two years—prompts him to help, but before he can approach Tommy D. with an apology and his offer of help, the petty crook is murdered, too. Gus is warned off the investigation by nearly everyone, police and criminals alike, but it has the opposite of its intended effect. It gives Gus purpose, and a sense of duty.

Where It Hurts is a dark, brooding, private detective novel. Its perpetual gloom deepens the atmosphere and generates an unnerving angst in the narrative that is both alluring and repulsive. Reed Farrel Coleman’s Long Island is far from the coastal tourist towns, and is as deadly and bleak as any impoverished urban area. Gus is bitter, doomed, and appealing, working-class tough, and intelligent. This is the first in a planned series and it is not for the faint of heart, but if hardboiled noir appeals, it will not disappoint.

The Shut Eye

Robin Agnew

Belinda Bauer’s career in the United Kingdom has apparently been much celebrated, but she’s not as well known in the United States, and that’s a real shame. This thriller is everything a good thriller should be, and more. Bauer immediately gets the reader emotionally invested in her characters by taking the reader inside the heads of two bereaved parents, and she then proceeds with her no-holds-barred story, which often, to my delight, went to places I did not expect.

The story concerns the little family of James and Anna Buck, whose small son, Daniel, has disappeared. Threaded through their story is the path of Inspector John Marvel, who has an obsessive need to solve the case of a missing young girl, Edie, but who is instead assigned the task of finding the missing poodle of his boss’ wife.

Anna Buck has become nonfunctional. She takes out her grief in the form of cleaning their tiny apartment, where she can sense germs festering; she even makes James take off his shoes and work overalls (he works at a garage) before he comes into the house. The only time she leaves the apartment is to obsessively polish the tiny footprints Daniel left in the wet cement in front of James’ garage. And it’s James she blames for Daniel’s disappearance—on the day he vanished, James had left the apartment door open. This does not make for a happy marriage.

Marvel is also deeply unhappy about having to look for a lost dog, a search he takes as seriously as possible to his own disgust. But he’s still thinking about, and looking, for Edie. Also woven in to the narrative is the point of view of Edie, who is a captive somewhere, surviving by pretending to be her favorite thing, an astronaut lost in deep, dark space.

As the three story threads converge, Bauer takes an unexpected turn when Anna decides to try a psychic to see if he can help her find Daniel, who she is sure is not dead. The Shut Eye is a term referring to a true psychic, one who can “see” the truth. It’s unclear if the psychic Anna finds is authentic or not, but the twist seems to be that Anna herself has some psychic sensitivity of her own.

I have always been a sucker for psychics in mysteries—Martha Lawrence’s short-lived Elizabeth Chase series from the ’90s is one of my favorites—and this novel was just as pleasing to me. Anna is both bewildered by, and uncomfortable with, the things she is “seeing” and it makes her act in all kinds of off-putting and bizarre ways.

I was surprised by the way Bauer wrapped up the story, which was unexpectedly not as dark as I supposed, and I loved the way she drew her plot lines for Anna, Marvel, and Edie together. She is a real narrative master, but she also has a great hand with character. These people and this story did not leave my head quickly; I thought about both after I closed this book for the last time. This is an exceptional thriller.

Mr. Splitfoot

Katrina Niidas Holm

17-year-old foster siblings Nat and Ruth spend their free time channeling the spirits of other kids’ dead parents in the basement of upstate New York’s Love of Christ! Foster Home, Farm, and Mission. They’ll soon age out of the system, but since the duo have no desire to wind up penniless and living on the streets, they team up with a con man named Mr. Bell and start holding séances in people’s homes. Fleecing grieving adults is easy money—until they run afoul of the wrong man and are forced to go on the run.

Jump ahead in time and Cora is a 25-year-old insurance adjuster with a mean married boyfriend and a baby on the way. She hasn’t seen her Aunt Ruth in 14 years, so it’s a bit of a shock when the woman appears in her bedroom one night and mutely demands that Cora accompany her on a trip. Ruth provides no clue as to where she’s headed or why, but Cora’s so desperate to escape her current situation that she complies—even after their car breaks down and the pair is forced to continue on foot.

At once a crime novel, a ghost story, and a dialogue about faith, Samantha Hunt’s stunning third novel (after 2008’s The Invention of Everything Else) challenges while it entertains. The plot resists easy summary. The narrative structure is unusual, with Ruth telling the story of her past, and Cora their present. Hunt’s characters are vividly sketched and realistically flawed. Her prose is edgy, evocative, and reads like a literary fever dream: horror is juxtaposed with beauty and grace, and philosophical musings share space with absurdist humor and insanity-fueled rants. The story barrels along like a freight train while filling the reader with a queasy sense of impending doom. And though it may feel as though Ruth and Cora are getting further from reality and resolution with every passing chapter, Hunt’s ending provides both closure and clarity. Then and now are linked, patterns are revealed, and heartbreak and hope are dealt out in equal measure.

The Ex

Craig Sisterson

This courtroom whodunit in which a top New York City attorney feels compelled to defend a man accused of triple murder—because she broke his heart 20 years ago—is an engaging, smoothly told tale.

Three years after Jack Harris’ wife was one of several people gunned down by a disturbed teenager, the teen’s father—who many blame for the massacre—is one of three people shot in a New York park. When Jack, a successful novelist, is arrested for the crime, his daughter calls Jack’s former fiancée, top defense lawyer Olivia Randall, for help. Olivia is certain Jack would never kill anyone, but all the evidence seems stacked against him. Is someone setting Jack up or is Olivia’s faith in the ‘nice guy’ she once knew more about her own guilt? How much can people change? How well do we know them in the first place?

Alafair Burke, a law professor and former prosecutor, does a great job setting the “Did Jack really do it?” hook and crafting a propulsive narrative in this courtroom thriller. There is some interesting parry and thrust between cops, prosecutors, and the defense team, but I felt more like a semi-interested observer than someone fully invested in the characters, most of whom are a bit narcissistic and dislikable.

Overall, a slickly told legal thriller that is worth a read.

The Locker

Eileen Brady

The Locker, a new thriller by well-known British author Adrian Magson, grabs readers on the first page and doesn’t let go. A London mom finds a note in her gym locker that describes the kidnapping of her young daughter. When Nancy Hardman races home, she finds the nightmare is real. From that point on, the intriguing and inventive plot takes the reader on an out-of-control roller-coaster ride. Why do the kidnappers only want Nancy to tell her husband Michael, an international aid worker? A secret phone number Michael left for emergencies leads to Cruxys Solutions, an expensive private security company adept at hostage situations, often hired by companies whose executives are targets for kidnappings overseas.

The Cruxys investigators hired to protect Nancy and find her daughter Beth are an interesting team, not altogether trusting of each other. Andrei Vaslik, an American of Russian dissent, formerly working for Homeland Security, is new to private security. Ruth Gonzales, a seasoned Cruxys employee, has much more experience and proves to be a hard-nosed investigator with pit-bull tenacity. I found the interplay between these two very different characters compelling, especially since each one is hiding something from the other.

The writing and tension in The Locker stays high until the end. My one complaint is that this scenario sometimes reads like an article from a newspaper. And as in real life, readers should not expect this book to tie everything up in a nice package at the end.

The Waters of Eternal Youth

Annie Weissman

In the 25th Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery, set in Venice, Italy, a friend of his wife Paola’s family, Contessa Lando-Continui, asks Brunetti to reopen her granddaughter’s 15-year-old case. Manuela nearly drowned in a canal at the age of 15. She survived, but not before oxygen deprivation left her with permanent brain damage. It was ruled an accident, but the contessa has her doubts. Manuela, now 30, is beautiful, but remains the mental age of a seven-year-old child. When the only person to have witnessed Manuela’s “accident” is murdered, Brunetti looks deeper, leading him to a murderer who raped and nearly killed Manuela years ago.

Brunetti is an unusual character for a detective novel in that he doesn’t suffer a major character flaw or have trouble with relationships. He is happily married to Paola, a university literature professor. His teenage children are mostly uncommunicative, but not deviant or damaged in any way. He’s a solid, nice guy who also happens to have excellent intuitive powers.

As Brunetti’s cases take him around the city, Leon’s observations about the conflicts between the new and the old are played out against her setting of modern Venice, an ancient place where young people cannot afford to live, and where new immigrants try to make it. Venice is being developed for the rich and powerful from many nations. Donna Leon has also managed to drag her main character into the 21st century, albeit kicking and screaming, thanks in part to the beautiful and glamorous Signorina Elettra, the assistant to Brunetti’s boss Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta. Elettra is savvy about the Internet and off-the-grid connections. Even so, longtime readers won’t be surprised that the commissario does “revert to his Luddite ways” and sometimes uses a phone book.

Donna Leon is masterful in creating intriguing mysteries with enough clues along the way that by the end the reader feels satisfied with the solution, which a careful reader may have intuited.

The Newsmakers

Vanessa Orr

The Newsmakers starts with a very interesting premise: What if the people reporting the news were actually making the news happen? That is the question facing Erica Sparks, a promising reporter who joins the Global News Network, where she suddenly finds herself becoming a pivotal part of the story every time breaking news happens.

While this is wonderful for her career and for the news station, she soon begins to question the coincidences surrounding what at first seem to be unrelated events—a ferry crash and the death of a presidential candidate. It leads her to try and discover if there is something more going on behind the scenes. The paranoia begins to build, and Erica can’t figure out whom to trust, from a fledgling love interest to her megalomaniac boss, Nylan Hastings.

Author Lis Wiehl, who serves as a commentator for the Fox News Channel, seems to have a good feel for what goes on in a hugely competitive newsroom where everyone is out for the lead story. Her characterizations leave something to be desired, however. From Erica, the dirt-poor reporter who is full of self-doubt despite her success, to Nylan Hastings, a sexual sadist who seems more creepy and delusional than evil, the characters lack depth. Throw in the good-guy love interest, jealous ex-husband, backstabbing star reporter, and brilliant computer geek, and you’ve got a nice cast of caricatures. One aspect of Erica that helps is her battle with alcoholism. Erica was fired from a previous job for her drinking problem, and her constant struggle to stay sober while working in a high-pressure field provides some of her most authentic moments.

I was intrigued by the idea of creating the news in order to profit from it, which in today’s media climate does not seem to be that far of a reach. As this is the first book in a new series, I’m interested to see if we’ll get to know Erica better, and where Wiehl will take her intrepid reporter next.

The Night Charter

Craig Sisterson

Moving on from his acclaimed Borderlands trilogy, Sam Hawken may have struck crime series gold with this gritty thriller centered on Harley-riding Florida fisherwoman Camaro Espinoza.

In the past, Hawken dangled former warzone medic Espinoza before readers’ eyes in a few short stories and novellas, but The Night Charter shows his heroine has got the freshness, charisma, and layers to backbone not just one great novel, but an ongoing series. Trying to live a simple life on the water after too many years of dodging bullets abroad and at home, Espinoza is pulled back into the crosshairs when a fishing client’s dodgy money-making scheme goes horribly wrong. Blood flows as Miami cops, crooks, and Cuban paramilitaries collide, and Espinoza must stem the tide before it claims her and a young girl.

Hawken has crafted a fascinating character in Espinoza, a kick-ass heroine with depth. Staccato chapters and page-turning action may evoke the likes of James Patterson or Lee Child, but Hawken also layers in plenty of fine characterization as well as a nice touch for dialogue, the sweltering Florida setting, and the complex history of Cuba and its relationship with the United States, too. A great read.

River Road

Jordan Foster

Nothing says “happy holidays” like learning you’ve been denied tenure. Creative writing professor Nan Lewis may have downed a few glasses of wine at the Acheron College faculty Christmas party to numb the pain of the decision, but she thinks she’s fine to drive home, even in snowy upstate New York. That is, until she hits a deer on the titular river road in the same spot her four-year-old daughter, Emmy, was killed in a hit-and-run accident seven years earlier. When Nan goes to find the deer, there’s no carcass or half-dead doe to be found. Confused, she drives her battered car home, determined to forget the whole thing, until Sergeant Joe McAffrey arrives the next morning to inform her that one of her best students, Leia Dawson, was hit by a car and killed the previous night. And Nan’s car shows suspicious damage. Soon Nan, who admits she has a drinking problem but won’t go so far as to say she’s an alcoholic, is embroiled in the both the police investigation and a tangled mess at the college involving feuding faculty members, all of whom seem to have their own reasons for wanting budding writer Leia dead. Memories of Emmy, as well as her killer, a local woman named Hannah Mulder—fear not, X-Files fans, there’s a Scully thrown in later, too—color Nan’s life and her career. Such as it is, she’s been unable to write another novel since the accident, a factor in Acheron’s tenure decision.

While it’s not wholly clear in the beginning that Nan didn’t, in a drunken jerk of the wheel, run over Leia and not a deer, it becomes increasingly apparent that someone else in the isolated community committed the crime. Carol Goodman does a fine job maintaining an aura of frosty suspense, and by making the scene of Leia’s death the same as Emmy’s, the reader must wonder if it’s just a tragic coincidence or something more sinister. The inevitable love story, however, that accompanies Nan’s slow healing, as she pokes around unofficially into Leia’s death, is less organic and is, ultimately, something the characters don’t need. Overall, though, Goodman crafts an eerie tale of psychological suspense set against a secluded collegiate backdrop in the dead of winter, using the abundant ice, snow, and feisty faculty to her advantage.

The Hourglass Factory

Joseph Scarpato, Jr.

It is 1912 in London, shortly after the sinking of the Titanic, and young female cub reporter Frankie George is sent out to a corset shop to interview noted trapeze artist Ebony Diamond, who has been active in the growing suffragette movement. When her interview doesn’t go as planned, Frankie decides to try again that night at a club where Ebony is scheduled to perform, but she isn’t able to get her story before Ebony disappears.

Meanwhile, Detective Inspector Frederick Primrose, newly assigned to Scotland Yard’s Suffragette Squad, is called upon to help deal with a large riot where throngs of suffragettes are breaking store windows to bring attention to their cause. Not long after, a woman who looks like Ebony and is dressed in her corset is found brutally killed on the street.

Thus begins an entertaining mystery that involves politics, corset fetishists, circus performers, and murder.

Frankie is aided in her quest by Millicent, a fellow performer and friend of Ebony, and by a young street urchin, Liam. Inspector Primrose, on the other hand, is mostly thwarted in his attempts to solve his murder case by a boss who is determined to prove that suffragettes are behind the killing.

This is a fascinating look at the everyday life of Edwardian England by first-time novelist Lucy Ribchester, who has thoroughly researched the era, as shown in the historical notes of this 500-plus page saga.

Out of the Blues

Ben Boulden

Out of the Blues is Trudy Nan Boyce’s first novel, and a promising start to a series featuring homicide detective Sarah “Salt” Alt. Salt is a second-generation Atlanta cop fresh off the beat. A year earlier, she was shot by a gang member named Curtis Dwayne Stone, who, coincidentally, is now the source of new information on her first homicide case, a ten-years-cold death of a blues musician. Mr. Stone, hoping for a reduced sentence, claims noted bluesman Mike Anderson, who was thought to have died by accidental overdose, was actually murdered by a dealer named Tall John. The overdose was an intentional “hot pop,” or high potency heroin hit.

Salt is assigned the case without consideration of her relationship with Stone and without a partner—and it brings up old ghosts. Her father, an Atlanta beat cop who killed himself on Salt’s tenth birthday, listened to blues music, including Mike Anderson’s. The musician’s murder fuels her personal demons. Salt is burdened by dreams of a hellhound, a symbol of death, and her father’s ghost.

Salt is something of a supercop, admired by police and criminals alike, but with enough vulnerability—her history, self-doubts, fear—to be accessible and likable. Salt’s case is bigger than it first appears, and interlocks with another more recent, and high-profile, investigation that reaches far outside the blues clubs and projects where her case begins. Out of the Blues is a procedural with a mythical bent fitting the blues perfectly; both authentic and allegorical. The allegory is Salt’s emotional journey from confusion, the little girl whose father died in her arms, to an uneasy understanding. The narrative has moments of strain—some minor chronological confusion and Salt’s near superhero status, but these are overshadowed by the city, its richly rendered inhabitants, blues music and legend, and Salt’s likability.

No Cure for Love

Betty Webb

The first thing to know about Peter Robinson’s “new” book is that it was first published in Canada in 1995, but not in the United States. Knowing this will be important for readers, because Robinson references events that took place 20 years ago as if they are current. For instance, his detective watches a “new” Murphy Brown episode (the series was canceled in 1998), and complains about Jane Fonda’s marriage to Ted Turner (they divorced in 2001). This seldom detracts from the book’s pleasures, though, and those pleasures are many.

Robinson’s ability to delve deeply into his characters’ interior lives never flags. While not an Inspector Banks novel, Robinson’s LAPD detective Arvo Hughes is a man whose personal life is almost as troubled as Banks’. And while most of the book is set in sunny Los Angeles instead of Banks’ storm-swept Yorkshire dales, the author’s gift for storytelling remains strong. Rising TV star and British expat Sarah Broughton is being stalked by someone who, as tokens of his affection, leaves dismembered bodies for gifts instead of flowers. The former girlfriend of drug-addled rock star Gary Knox (now dead), Sarah has survived her own drug problems, but a subsequent mental breakdown has left much of her early adult life a blank.

At one point during the investigation, Arvo believes the lovestruck killer may be a holdover from Sarah’s past, and thus widens his investigation from Tinsel Town to Yorkshire, her original home. Sarah and Arvo aren’t the only major characters in this extraordinary tale of love gone bad. We also get to know the killer through his letters to Sarah. The letters are creepiness squared, alternating from gushing declarations of love to images of sheer horror.

Robinson’s descriptions of life in La La Land are frequently funny, with many of its denizens, including Arvo, unable to decide whether they love the city or loathe it. When Sarah travels back to Yorkshire to visit her sister for the Christmas holidays, we are also treated to superb descriptions of the Yorkshire coast. At the same time, we gain a greater understanding of why Sarah wound up in Hollywood in the first place. I’ll admit I was a bit leery of reading a “Hollywood” story by a bred-and-born Yorkshireman. From tone to detail, it’s easy to make mistakes about a place you’ve never lived, but Robinson pulls it off. As Los Angeles-based author Michael Connelly writes in the forward, “No Cure for Love works.”

Try Not to Breathe

Jean Gazis

In her first novel, former journalist Holly Seddon has penned a gripping tale of intense psychological suspense that features memorable characters while shifting deftly among points of view and points in time.

One of the two main characters in this intriguing novel is in a persistent vegetative state, the other is a seemingly irredeemable alcoholic. Yet, the story quickly draws the reader in. Amy Stevenson, briefly front-page news in 1995 when she was abducted and nearly beaten to death at age 15, is now all but forgotten, lying comatose in a hospital ward. Journalist Alex Dale is barely holding herself together, having destroyed her marriage, her career, and her health with her excessive drinking. The two grew up in neighboring small towns. When Alex encounters Amy while working on a profile of a prominent brain scientist, she somehow senses a kindred spirit and begins to delve into the mystery of who committed the horrific crime that left its only witness alive, but unable to communicate. Together, Alex and Amy’s high-school sweetheart, Jake, piece together the loose ends until they finally discover the shocking truth behind the 15-year-old crime. Along the way, they grow into sympathetic and memorable characters who are able to face life head-on. Each character unfolds like a bud in a time-lapse nature film, while the suspense builds until the surprising end and touching epilogue.

The breezy writing style and quick cuts among several different points of view make a page-turner out of a “cold case” mystery in which almost all of the action is internal. This is an impressive debut and it will be fascinating to see what Holly Seddon comes up with next.

After the Crash

Craig Sisterson

A fiery plane crash in the Swiss Alps sparks two decades of wreckage in the lives of those left behind in this clever tale that became a smash-hit literary sensation in Michel Bussi’s native France.

It is 1998, and dispirited private eye Crédule Grand-Duc is ready to punch his own ticket after failing to solve a mystery that has eaten at him for almost 18 years. He’d failed in his task—his search for someone who wasn’t missing physically, but whose identity vanished. A newborn baby girl, the plane crash’s sole survivor, was a miracle that became a nightmare as two families, one rich and one poor, warred over her, each claiming she was their granddaughter. Before he can pull the trigger on himself, however, Grand-Duc makes a discovery that changes everything, only to be silenced before he can share it.

Bussi leads us on a tumbling journey of switching narratives as Mark, the girl’s maybe-brother, reads Grand-Duc’s casebook, eager to uncover the truth the detective left behind. Past and present blend, but how much can we trust what Grand-Duc wrote? Full of clues, twists, and red herrings, After the Crash is an absorbing read that dances with issues of identity, media coverage of tragedies, and what makes a family. At times the characters feel like moving parts, but Bussi delivers a thought-provoking read that hooks early and powers through some dark and disturbing themes with a few surprises along the way.

Karma’s a Killer

Eileen Brady

Wonder what a “doga” class is? As described by author Tracy Weber in her newest Downward Dog Mystery, Karma’s a Killer, it is a yoga class for dogs. Drop a rabbit into your doga and chaos ensues when dogs give chase while their owners try to salvage what’s left of the class. Yoga teacher Kate Davidson is persuaded by her boyfriend, Michael, to teach what is supposed to be a fun course for a local animal shelter charity event. Instead, the day is dogged with tragedy, from a fire to the drowning of Raven, a vegan animal activist involved in a animal advocacy organization called HEAT.

When everything calms down a bit, Weber throws in a big twist. Dharma, a member of HEAT, pulls Kate aside and drops a bombshell: she is Kate’s mother, who abandoned her as a child. They barely get to speak before Dharma is arrested for Raven’s murder. Shortly thereafter, someone breaks into Kate’s apartment searching for something. But what?

Weber keeps readers guessing and populates the action with plenty of kooky characters, such as handsome Eduardo (who seems to have been romancing several of the animal activists all at the same time), and a pair of rich sisters behind the local no-kill animal shelter, Maggie and Sally. Kate is assisted in her search for the truth by her friend Rene (hugely pregnant with twins), and her super-loyal rescue dog Bella.

The revelation and the investigation force Kate to delve deep into her painful past to discover who Dharma really is. If you enjoy a fast-paced animal mystery with a little yoga mixed in, then this third book in the Downward Facing Dog series might be a Spot-on read.

The Plague of Thieves Affair

Robin Agnew

Married authors Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini have both had long and successful careers with their own series (PI Sharon McCone and The Nameless Detective, respectively), but in no way, I think, have they had as much fun as they do with their coauthored Carpenter and Quincannon novels set in the 1890s in San Francisco.

Each writer has his or her own persona in this series, which features Sabina Carpenter (I assume, penned by Muller) and John Quincannon (I assume, penned by Pronzini), who together run a detective agency. The chapters alternate narration between Sabina and John, a simple and logical solution to telling a shared story.

In The Plague of Thieves Affair, book four in the series, each detective has his and her own case: Quincannon is working undercover at a brewery, trying to find who has stolen a recipe for steam beer (a cheap lager made without the use of refrigeration or ice to cool it off), and Sabina is tasked with guarding “Reticules Through the Ages,” an art exhibit at a fancy gallery, as well as with trying to find the missing Charles P. Fairchild III, a man who believes he is Sherlock Holmes.

Sabina and John have little interaction until the wrap-up scene, giving each writer free rein in telling their own stories. Quincannon’s plot line is a little heavier on action, and involves some gun play and a couple of close calls; Sabina’s depends more on pure deduction. Though she knows Fairchild is delusional, she also likes him and eventually finds his help invaluable in solving her cases. I found her professional dilemma added to the emotional impact of her story.

What makes reading both narratives a seamless experience is Muller and Pronzini’s devotion to traditional detection methods, illustrated most obviously here by their homage to Sherlock Holmes in their storyline. And like Doyle, the authors are masters at plot, clues, red herrings, and action sequences. They are such pros, the pace and plot lines are nicely modulated with just the right number of twists.

Historical detail is another shared passion, although they restrain themselves from throwing too much of it into the story. There were a few phrases I was unfamiliar with (a man’s pot belly being called a “corporation” was a new one for me), and I was happy to make their acquaintance. A reader can imagine the twinkle in the authors’ eyes as they wrote this story.

What I also found delightful was the romance between Sabina and John. The characters are obviously slowly falling in love. How much fun must it be to write that kind of story with your own spouse? I found myself with a twinkle of my own as I finished this fun read.

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