I often hear the refrain “How will I catch up?” from readers who have just discovered an author in mid-series. After all, not every reader is with an author from book one, and sometimes it seems daunting to catch up.

Plus, sometimes readers are leery about starting a series midway for fear that new book will give away plots in the previous novels.

Jane K. Cleland, who writes a lovely series about antiques dealer Josie Prescott, offers her readers a solution.

Because Josie deals in antiques, Cleland’s plots revolve around all things old. Cleland’s 11th novel, Glow of Death, has several guides to previous novels that readers will appreciate.

In Glow of Death, Josie is asked to assess a Tiffany lamp owned by a wealthy couple. The knowledgeable Josie knows that most such lamps are actually excellent duplicates. While a good copy can fetch up to $50,000, the real thing can bring in more than $1 million.

Naturally, Josie is more than thrilled to discover the lamp is real, and that she will earn an extra commission by selling it for the couple. My review of Glow of Death is here.

So when Josie has a conversation about the time her shop bought vintage clothing, Cleland supplies a handy asterisk referring the reader to her previous novel, Deadly Threads.

A reference to sneaking GPS devices into items will lead readers to Dolled Up for Murder. 

And a bit about an heirloom ring will have readers wanting to find out more in Deadly Appraisal.

These little references are smoothly added in and do not give away any previous plots.

Lady Phoebe Renshaw is back, along with her long-suffering lady’s maid, Eva Huntford, in Alyssa Maxwell’s second offering in the Downton Abbey-esque series Lady and the Lady’s Maid (the first was 2016’s Murder Most Malicious). Post-WWI England is still feeling the effects of the Great War and Lady Phoebe and Eva are busy collecting clothing, grooming, and household items for the returning vets.

At a thank you luncheon at Phoebe’s alma mater, the venerable Haverleigh School for Young Ladies, the headstrong Lady Zara has baked a miniature cake especially for the headmistress Henrietta Finch. When Miss Finch collapses and dies immediately after eating the cake, and testing shows it contained cyanide, Lady Phoebe and Eva are on the case, determined to sniff out the dastardly killer.

And there are suspects aplenty. Besides Lady Zara, there is the addled handyman, Elliott Ivers, with his lightning rod temper; Miss Verity Sedgewick, the assistant headmistress, who seems to dress above her means and wear expensive perfume; Olivia Delacy, the school nurse who is hesitant to actually nurse anyone; and the Reverend Amstead, head of the school’s governing body who is acting rather strangely. All of them seem suspect, and all have secrets they’d kill over rather than reveal.

In this delightful early 20th-century romp, Maxwell spoon feeds readers not only a good mystery, but just enough interesting facts and customs from the time period to keep the reader entertained. A nice cozy read.

The Death of Kings is Rennie Airth’s fifth novel featuring former Scotland Yard detective and current gentleman farmer John Madden. The beautiful actress Portia Blake is murdered after a dinner party at the Kent estate of Sir Jack Jessup in the summer of 1938. Within hours, violent ex-convict Owen Norris is arrested and confesses to the crime. At his trial, Norris recants his confession, but he is convicted and hanged.

Eleven years later, Owen Norris’ guilt comes into question when a jade necklace surfaces, accompanied by a note claiming it to be the necklace Portia Blake wore on the day of her murder. The senior officer of the original investigation, Angus Sinclair, now retired, asks Madden to speak with the Metropolitan Police on his behalf to reopen the case. Sinclair ardently opposes the death penalty, and his concern is that an innocent man went to the gallows. The police are receptive to Madden looking at the murder on his own, but unwilling to officially disturb a long-closed case without additional evidence, especially a murder investigation involving the powerful and wealthy attending that long-ago dinner party.

The Death of Kings is a traditional British whodunit with an exquisite puzzle and satisfying solution flawed only by a sluggish pace, a symptom of narrative repetition as John Madden discusses, with witness after witness, and detective after detective events revealed earlier in the story. The conversations add nuance to Madden’s understanding of the crime, but dampen the story’s momentum. Once the initial ground work is laid—crime examined, Norris’ innocence determined, suspects identified—and Madden begins the chase after the culprit, the narrative sparks to its surprising, but inevitable conclusion.

Two for one! That’s what you get with this novel. Two different detective stories rolled into one by the only living couple who are both recipients of the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

Their fictitious San Francisco detective agency, circa 1896, is concerned with two cases here. In the first, Sabina Carpenter is hired to discover who is sending threatening letters to a wealthy woman who is a leader in the Women’s Suffrage Movement in California. Meanwhile, her partner, John Quincannon, is asked on the behalf of an unfaithful banker to discover the identity of a blackmailer and to retrieve embarrassing letters and the extorted money.

The first case becomes even more critical when someone takes a shot that narrowly misses the suffragette outside her mansion, forcing Sabina to try to solve the case as quickly as possible, particularly since the potential victim does not want to remain in hiding. It’s a well-conceived whodunit with a number of potential suspects, clues to discover and follow up on, and a surprise conclusion.

The second case is more that of dogged detection as Quincannon learns fairly quickly that the blackmailer is an accomplished actress and chameleon. Stymied in several attempts to capture her and retrieve the money she extorted, Quincannon finally follows her to an isolated island backwater in northern California for an exciting denouement.

Although the detective pairing of Sabina and John initially began as a straight business arrangement, over time it begins to develop into something more, which adds a little spice to the adventures.

Norwegian writing star Agnes Ravatn’s first novel to be translated into English is an elegant chiller, absorbing and atmospheric. The Bird Tribunal may be short in length, but it packs a powerful punch.

Allis Hagtorn starts a menial job tending to a remote house on an isolated fjord. Her old job was far more glamorous. She was the face of television programs about history—now she just wants to escape her own. But nothing is as it seems. Her employer isn’t the elderly man she expects, but middle-aged Sigurd Bagge, a gruff man of set expectations and few words. His wife is away; it is unclear when she’ll return. Allis helps keep the house and garden in order. They’re two strangers in voluntary exile. As Allis settles into the uneasy rhythms of her new life, the weeks pass, and the questions mount. How long will she stay? How long does Sigurd want her to stay? Does he appreciate her presence? Where did his wife go?

Ravatn creates a creeping sense of unease, crocheting suspense as Allis goes about her new day-to-day life, a life of manual labor and plenty of alone time for questions to swirl in her skull. Ravatn elegantly brings the peace and menace of the setting to vivid life, the isolated house on the fjord a character-like shadow in this tale of obsessions. Domestic suspense with a twist—creepy and wonderful.

April Smith’s historical mystery novel, based on a real crime, begins in 1985 when protagonist Jo Kusek, a landscape designer, arrives at a small-town South Dakota hospital where her brother Lance and his young son are in critical condition following a vicious home invasion that also killed Lance’s wife. Jo, who fled South Dakota for Oregon years earlier, is certain she knows the killer’s identity, and at times we suspect we do, too, as Smith leads us on a long, meandering journey from the novel’s present back to the 1950s.

There we see Jo’s parents, attorney Cal and social activist Betsy, meet in New York City during Senator Joe McCarthy’s rise to power. Betsy, partially because of her aversion to McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and her strong union leanings, was briefly a member of the Communist Party. After Cal helps Betsy and a friend out of legal difficulties, Betsy and Cal marry, have two children—Jo and Lance—and give up the New York rat race. Astoundingly, although neither of them has ever owned a cow, they move to South Dakota in the hopes of a more peaceful life raising cattle. Once there they make friends, but the liberal couple also makes enemies among the town’s solid Christian, born-in-America, “no Negroes” community. Their enemies emerge full-tilt when, after several more-or-less peaceful years of cattle raising, Cal runs for the US Senate and Betsy’s “pro-red” past is revealed. Almost overnight, the Kuseks become pariahs in the town they have grown to love. Years later, when Jo sits vigil at her dying brother’s bedside, she mentally replays those painful years, and vows to bring her family’s attacker to justice.

The mixture of red-baiting and cattle raising is an unusual one, and it is vibrantly effective during a scene where Cal Kusek helps brand his first calf. Attending the branding are a mixture of wealthy ranchers, rodeo riders, and teenage punks—as well as an elderly elephant trucked in by right-wing radio host Thaddeus Haynes. In a way, the portrayal of Haynes typifies some of the problems author Smith runs into in Home Sweet Home. Not content to let Haynes’ stunt with the elephant speak for itself, Smith gives us three solid pages of his whackadoodle radio rant. But after the first page of his rabid spouting, even the most inattentive reader will get the message that Haynes is totally, 100 percent, dyed-in-the-wool evil, not just crazy. Too many characters in the book are like Haynes: cartoonishly bad or unbelievably good. Such broad strokes forestall more delicately nuanced characterizations that could have helped Home Sweet Home achieve its lofty aim to shine a light on the ever-present dangers of racial, religious, and political prejudice.

Yet there is still a lot to learn here. By switching back and forth from the McCarthy era to the ’80s, the reader can see how times have changed. Speech and behavior that was acceptable in the ’50s are considered unacceptable by the ’80s. This gives rise to a weighty question that Home Sweet Home does not overtly ask but hints at: Are the rough lessons America learned from our past relevant in today’s sociopolitical atmosphere?

On the morning of July 14, 1965, Ruth Malone, an attractive, strawberry-blonde cocktail waitress and single mother, wakes to find her two children, four-year-old Cindy and five-year-old Frankie, have vanished from their shared bedroom in their Queens, New York apartment, not far from the World’s Fairgrounds. In a panic, she calls her estranged husband, who reports the children missing. The police descend, then the press, and Ruth is soon swept up in forces beyond her control. When the children are found murdered, Ruth’s multiple boyfriends, tight clothing, impeccable makeup, and trash bag full of empty liquor bottles make her guilty in the court of public opinion, and in the mind of the lead detective—whatever the facts of the case.

The sensational news story is a lucky break for rookie reporter Pete Wonicke, a Midwestern boy hoping to make it as a big-city journalist. Pete begins by writing the femme fatale stories his jaded editor wants, but becomes more and more caught up in his lovelorn attraction to Ruth and his increasingly desperate hopes to save her. Throughout, the mystery of what really happened to the “little angels” deepens. Did Ruth murder her own children rather than let her ex get custody? Was it one of her boyfriends—the flashy mobster, or the seedy cop? Pete’s investigations, and a sensational trial with several surprise witnesses, raise as many questions as answers.

Said to be inspired by real events, Little Deaths offers vivid, psychologically convincing portraits of memorable, multifaceted characters. Ruth’s combination of toughness and fragility, and above all, the pride that won’t allow her to play the conventional role of grieving mother, no matter the consequences, make a deep impression. Even minor details and characters are fully realized. This impressive debut novel is as much literary fiction as it is a compelling mystery.

The past’s hold on the present is an evergreen theme in mystery fiction—and the past of Birmingham, Alabama Detective Cooper Deveraux returns in False Friend when he and his partner, Tommy Garretty, investigate arson at a Birmingham school Cooper once attended. The product of a disturbing childhood with a violent father, Cooper became a petty criminal as a teenager before finally going straight: “He was struck by the irony. Today he was being sent to investigate the fire. Back when he was a student, he’d have been the first one the police would have blamed for it.”

More fires are set. Cooper and Tommy’s investigation takes a turn when bones are found at one scene that have nothing to do with the string of arsons.

Much of False Friend, including a compelling subplot, deals with a focus on families, specifically the trials of parenthood. Cooper knows how to be a detective, but he is just learning how to be good father. His previous girlfriend Alexandra reenters his life with his seven-year-old daughter, Nicole, whom he previously never knew he had. Nicole’s disturbing behavior has Cooper wondering how much of his criminal leanings were passed down to his daughter. Cooper is further distracted when questions about his father’s identity again rise. Was Dad a violent cop or a mobster? Meanwhile, across town, reporter Diane McKinzie, who is covering the fires, deals with the increasingly erratic behavior of her intelligent 15-year-old son, Daniel.

While Cooper is a thoughtful investigator, it is never clear if he is completely honest. His murky motives and occasional criminal leanings make this complex character even more intriguing. Andrew Grant’s second novel about Cooper excels with its myriad twists and turns, not all of which are resolved. False Friend definitely requires a sequel.