An Altadena, California “geologist-slash-paleobiologist” sublimates his grief by obsessing over a mystery in Percival Everett’s Telephone. When Zach Wells’ 12-year-old daughter, Sarah, complains of vision problems, he and his wife, Meg, assume she needs glasses. The optometrist finds nothing wrong with her eyes, however, and it’s not until they’ve seen three more doctors that they learn the truth: Sarah has a rare neurological disease that will soon kill her. Unable to cope, Zach fixates on a plea for help that he discovers stuffed in the pocket of a jacket he bought on eBay. A shirt ordered from the same vendor comes packaged with a similar note. As his daughter’s health deteriorates—and his marriage along with it—Zach falls further down the rabbit hole, desperate for a riddle with a satisfying solution and victim he can save. This quietly devastating, deeply philosophical tale beautifully illustrates the psychological appeal of crime fiction while also functioning as a compelling puzzle in its own right. Zach’s first-person narration neatly captures both the inner turmoil that accompanies such a tragedy and the human mind’s capacity for compartmentalization.
Inspired by a real-life tragedy, Lee Martin’s Yours, Jean begins in September of 1952 with Miss Jean De Belle preparing for her first day as Lawrenceville High’s new librarian and English teacher. Unbeknownst to Jean, her domineering former fiancé, insurance salesman Charlie Camplain, is also headed for the small Illinois town, where he plans to persuade Jean to take back his ring. What transpires radically alters the lives of everyone with whom Jean and Charlie interact that fateful morning, from Jean’s landlady and fellow English teacher to the clerk who checks Charlie out of his hotel room to the student who reveals Jean’s whereabouts to Charlie, and others. Equal parts elegiac meditation and suspenseful slow burn, Yours, Jean uses a kaleidoscopic narrative to illustrate the ripple effects that a horrific crime can have on a close-knit community. Although the history of Jean and Charlie’s relationship is the mystery that initially drives the plot, it’s the uncertainty surrounding the fates of Martin’s masterfully drawn ancillary characters that keeps the pages turning. Melancholy and full of grace, this is a story that lingers long after it’s through.
Rosalie Knecht’s Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery—the 1967-set sequel to Who Is Vera Kelly? (2018)—finds the ex-spy in New York with a job editing film for WKNY. Near the book’s start, a male coworker overhears Vera begging her ex-girlfriend to reconsider their recent breakup. He reports Vera’s sexual orientation to their supervisor, who fires Vera for violating her employment contract’s character clause. Strapped for cash and inspired by her collection of Raymond Chandler novels, Vera opens a one-woman PI firm. Her first big case comes courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. Ibarra—an elderly couple searching for their great-nephew, Félix, who vanished after his dissident parents sent him to NYC during the American invasion of the Dominican Republic. Vera goes undercover as a caseworker at Saint Jerome’s School for Boys—Félix’s last known location—but the closer she gets to finding him, the more she questions the Ibarras’ true movies. Knecht intersperses Vera’s witty, incisive narration with occasional scenes from Félix’s perspective, granting him agency and investing readers in the investigation’s outcome. Action and intrigue share the page with poignant social commentary, spotlighting the poisonous politics of the 1960s and capturing the era’s zeitgeist.
If you prefer spooks of the spectral variety, check out Nancy Cole Silverman’s The House that Vanity Built. This second-in-series supernatural cozy (after 2019’s The House on Hallowed Ground) sees gray-haired former Hollywood psychic-to-the-stars Misty Dawn and her resident “shade,” deceased set designer Wilson Thorne, investigating the death of Conroy Cosmetics heir Jared Conroy. When Jared’s fiancée, Amy Hendersen, asks Misty to help find her missing engagement ring, Misty assures Amy of the ring’s impending return, but doesn’t mention the wedding’s likely cancellation. Then Jared suffers a fatal allergic reaction during his bachelor party, and Jared’s father, Conroy Cosmetics’ founder Elliott Conroy, accuses Amy of murder. Amy turns to Misty, who regrets her earlier silence and vows to uncover the true cause of Jared’s untimely demise. Danger and melodrama ensue. Colorful characters, snappy dialogue, and a zippy pace elevate this spirited whodunit, which oozes with moxie and charm. The vengeful spirits of Elliott Conroy’s wife and mistress (both of whom haunt his mansion) impart comedy, while Misty’s sweetly antagonistic partnership with Wilson adds heart.
Dial ‘M’ for Maine Coon is the second in a series from the prolific Alex Erickson. Liz Denton, owner of a pet rescue business, gets ready to tote the massive Maine Coone cat she’s been fostering to his new owner. Unfortunately when the pair arrive at the man’s house they find that he’s been shot, and a quick glimpse of his study reveals that he’d been frantically searching for something or someone before his death.
As the story unfolds, we learn that the victim was a suspect in the killing of his wife, whose body has never been found. When it turns out the local private eye has been helping the man search for his missing wife, Liz is drawn even further into the investigation because her daughter, hoping to earn her own license, has been interning with said PI.
The layered backdrop of this book is nicely managed. Liz is married to a vet, Manny, which comes in handy when she needs someone to examine the pets she rescues. Their children, Amelia and Ben, are on the verge of leaving home and starting their adult lives, leaving Liz slightly unsettled, which gives our heroine a believable emotional background, making her character and behavior very relatable. The pet rescue component threads through the book, but the main story is a well-told tale about the victim and the search for his wife, mysteries which reverberate all through Liz’s small town.
Liz’s involvement in the investigation is believable—the tiny police force needs help, and her daughter is training to be a PI. Her part consists largely of asking fairly harmless people for information, but as the action ramps up toward the end of the novel, she and her daughter take risks that don’t exactly seem prudent. This is still a good story and well worth a read. I’m looking forward to seeing how Liz and Manny deal with their empty nest.
Dead in the Doorway, the second book in a nascent series by the prolific Diane Kelly, finds her Nashville house-flipper protagonist Whitney Whitaker on the way to her latest project accompanied by her cat, Sawdust, only to discover a slight hitch—there’s a dead body blocking the door.
The corpse turns out to be that of a neighbor, and while Whitney is freaked out at having discovered a body, she still has to get on with her house flip. After being questioned by the police, she and Buck, her partner and cousin, return to begin the demo. They break to attend the dead woman’s funeral, meeting the living neighbors at the wake, creating a nice suspect pool for Whitney to work with.
She and the local lawman on the case have good chemistry and she readily agrees to monitor the neighborhood for him, reporting on what she picks up from her weekly poker game with the ladies. It becomes clear that the victim wasn’t exactly well liked, even by her own children, and although Whitney doesn’t like to admit it, it’s equally clear that the killer is probably one of her new friends.
This is a pleasant and comfy read, particularly for dedicated HGTV fans familiar with the concept of flipping houses. I hope Kelly might include more details on the subject in future installments, as I always think specificity adds to the interest and originality of any book. Also, I have a major bone to pick—a great deal of this story concerns a missing peach pie recipe which, though eventually recovered by the fictional sleuths, is never provided to the reader! I’m hungry for some pie, darn it....
Hardly a column has gone by this past year without some mention of the estimable Ralph Dennis, but this might be last, unless publisher Lee Goldberg uncovers other caches of lost Dennis material. This time out, Goldberg’s published a thin but intriguing volume entitled Tales of a Sad, Fat Wordman, a collection of ephemera by and about the creator of the much beloved series of Hardman Men’s Adventure/PI novels, originally issued back in the 1970s. It’s a must-read for Dennis completists, featuring a couple of biographical pieces and some odds and ends from his sadly abbreviated writing career.
If you’ve ever wondered what Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag might be like as the heroine-narrator of a smartly crafted whodunit, novelist Elizabeth Little gives us a pretty good idea. And reader Julia Whelan’s semi-snarky rendition of the first-person, present tense narration, nicely gilds the lily. Their Marissa Dahl is a painfully-awkward, socially inept yet acerbic movie-referencing nerd who also happens to be an excellent film editor. Most of her work has been with her closest friend, award-winning director Amy Evans. But when Amy’s deepening romance with an ex-beau of Marissa’s temporarily sidetracks the friendship, the editor takes an assignment on a remote island off the Delaware coast where ultra-demanding living legend filmmaker Tony Rees is helming a meticulous re-creation of the murder of a young woman back in 1994. Marissa has barely arrived at the island’s only hotel when she’s met with rumors of production problems, accidents, scandals involving the cast, and the startling news that the murder was never solved—even more startling, the main suspect is living nearby. Naturally, the suspect is innocent, a new murder and mayhem are just a beach umbrella away, and it’s up to Marissa to stay alive long enough to find the real killer. Little has fun with her self-selected sleuth’s bemused and befuddled reaction to the reality of the movie set and the weirdness of the real world. She adds to that amusement by interrupting Marissa’s narration with short segments from future podcast interviews hosted by a two teen girls, Suzy and Grace, who are stuck on the island with nothing better to do. In addition to underlining the peculiar popularity of true crime podcasts, the Q&A snippets, well-performed by Whelan, are frequently hilarious.
Lee Goldberg’s new procedural-thriller focuses on Deputy Eve Ronin, whose videoed and virally YouTubed takedown of a drunken macho TV star has prompted a job hop from lowly, anonymous deputy to homicide detective in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. She’s young and relatively inexperienced. Her fellow deputies, mainly male, resent her arrival, knowing she’s there primarily to enhance the department’s press appeal. She understands their resentment and is determined to prove to them, and to herself, that she’s got what it takes. The opportunity arrives when she’s sent to an obvious crime scene—an empty home with walls and floors awash in blood. A mother and two children lived there, probably murdered, but where are the bodies? Eve throws herself into the strange case, minimally assisted by her partner Duncan “Doughnuts” Pavone, an old-timer weeks from retirement. Goldberg’s smooth way with a yarn is in evidence here, as is his ability to mix mayhem with mirth, but the particularly well-crafted plot with its hardboiled action, forensic detail, and, especially, it’s fully dimensional heroine, move it a step up and away from his previous fiction. Reader Nicol Zanzarella does a fine job of telling the tale, convincingly conveying Eve in all her ambitious, uncertain, annoyed, anxious, and ebullient moments. It’s not a bad way to kick off a series.
Since this is only Joe Ide’s fourth novel about Isaiah Quintabe (aka IQ), East Long Beach, California’s street- and sleuth-smart unlicensed private eye, the titular numeral must refer to something else. That would be Christiana Byrne, in whom a quintet of personalities is continually vying for predominance. The reason for her unusual condition could be her life with father, Angus, a sadistic arms dealer and white supremacist. That unlovely specimen hires IQ to solve the murder of his favorite employee without involving Christiana who was at the crime scene and seems to be the obvious killer. If IQ fails, Angus vows to break the fingers of the sleuth’s violinist girlfriend. Ide, whose prose is fresh, lively, and razor sharp, sets a relentless pace, testing the mettle not only of his hero but reader Robinson as they both are made to deal with the five faces and phases of Christiana, warring gangsters, a moody homicidal underling of Angus’, and the surprising return of a woman IQ has never stopped loving. The smartly performed elements of an active plot, dimensional characters (in Christiana’s case multi-dimensional), and the down-to-earth relationship struggles of IQ and his sometimes partner, Dodson, an ex-gangsta and new daddy, add up to pretty irresistible entertainment.
Sam Wasson’s fascinating, relentlessly researched “biography” of the film noir masterpiece Chinatown is both a study of its makers and a longing reminder of a time in Hollywood history—the late 1960s, early 1970s—when the major studios’ control wavered and movies were created by people driven by more than mere financial success. His focus is on four colorful characters. Screenwriter and script doctor Robert Towne created the original script, set in 1930s, in which divorce-case private detective Jake Gittes gets caught up in a powerful land developer’s crooked plan of diverting water from the farms of Owens Valley to the city of Los Angeles, several murders, and a nasty bit of incest. Robert Evans, head of production at Paramount, decided to produce the movie. Jack Nicholson was set to play Gittes and Roman Polanski, five years after his wife Sharon Tate was murdered by followers of Charles Manson, agreed to direct. Even without the cooperation of Nicholson and Towne, Wasson has gathered an impressive collection of facts, interviews, and gossip including Evans’ battles with Paramount’s Manhattan bosses, Towne’s uncredited, secret use of his friend Edward Taylor in crafting the script and the blowout between Towne and Polanski over the script’s ending. The screenwriter wanted it to be, well, happier. Considering that the book is pretty much a tale of four guys—not a lot about Nicholson’s costar, Faye Dunaway—one wonders why Aaron was selected to narrate it. Her deep, slow, slightly smokey voice does have a noirish quality, but frequently seems at odds with Wasson’s fast-paced factual style.
Of the two long-lived publishing imprints called Crime Club, Doubleday’s in the United States began and ended first (1928-1991), while Collins’ in Great Britain lasted slightly longer (1930-1994). In 1992, well-known fan and critic Ellen Nehr produced a massive coffee table book, Doubleday Crime Club Compendium 1928-1991 (Offspring Press), offering a history of the imprint, book-by-book descriptions and jacket blurbs, and a color section of dust jacket illustrations. Now John Curran has done the same service, with some differences, for the Collins line. Curran is a prominent Agatha Christie scholar, and she was one of the Crime Club’s stalwarts, along with Julian Symons, Ross Macdonald, Patricia Moyes, Nicolas Blake, and many others.
Following a brief introduction about Collins the publisher and their association with mystery novels leading up to the Crime Club, the coverage is divided by decade, beginning with the 1930s, each with a short summary of developments affecting the imprint and statistics on titles published followed by a large color section of jacket covers (much more numerous but smaller than those in Nehr), interspersed with short squibs on few major writers. A postscript titled “65 Years of Brilliant Crime” summarizes the achievement, including totals of titles, writers, anthologies, award nominations, and honors to contributors; followed by sections on “phantom” titles (i.e. advertised but never published), reprint lines and anniversary volumes, Crime Club card games, and the bumpy history of an “Only for Dons” (i.e. university faculty) crime novel competition. The final “Murder They Wrote” section lists all the Crime Club books, alphabetically by author, providing the jacket blurb for each title. Finally, there are listings of short story collections and anthologies, omnibuses, duplicate titles, an index of locales outside the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada, broad topics (e.g. academia, historical, legal), titles in the White Circle reprint line, and selected references. In summation, Curran’s work is stronger on history, appendices, and odds and ends than Nehr’s, but both are important works of crime fiction reference. (Does any other mystery line also deserve this treatment? The only other with comparable longevity that comes to mind is Dodd, Mead’s Red Badge.)
Dorothy L. Sayers and her contemporaries were pioneers in numerous ways, first as female students at Oxford University, entering Somerville College in the pre-World War I era when women could take courses but were not eligible for Oxford degrees. Sayers and some of her fellow members of the Mutual Admiration Society, a loosely organized group of students with literary aspirations, were included in the first group of women to receive retroactive degrees in 1920.
A list of “main characters” and “supporting cast” helps the reader keeps the personnel straight. Sayers (1893-1957), best known of the group for her detective fiction featuring Lord Peter Wimsey, plus her religious drama and translations of Dante, had a short life compared to most of her fellow MAS members. Most familiar of the other three main subjects was Muriel St. Clare Byrne (1895- 1993), a Tudor Era historian and Sayers’ collaborator on the stage version of Busman’s Honeymoon, which preceded the novel. Longest lived was Dorothea Rowe (1892- 1988), a lifetime English teacher and a major figure in Britain’s community theater movement, founding the influential Bournemouth Theater Club. Charis Ursula Frankenburg (1892-1985), who worked at times as a midwife and a magistrate was a prominent spokesperson for birth control and the author of books on parenting. At a time that feminism and attitudes about the roles of women, sexuality, and definitions of family were in flux, all four of these MAS members held some views that would be out of step with today’s political correctness. But there’s no doubt they were important influencers from their college days through two World Wars and after. Some of the battles they fought still are not fully won. All of these women come alive for the reader in this exhaustively researched book, which includes over 40 pages of source notes.
Of particular interest to detective fiction fans is the account of the Sayers/Byrne collaboration on Busman’s Honeymoon. The reader also gets a good idea of what Sayers’ religious plays on stage and radio were like and an insight into the religious impulse they came from.
In an unusually strong year for Edgar nominations in the biographical/critical category, this outstanding work of feminist history and collective biography may well be the winner. (By the time you read this, you’ll know if I was right or wrong.)
The original edition of Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes was published in 1978, the work of British fan, anthologist, and scholar Robert C.S. Adey. In the annotated bibliography of novels and short stories involving apparently impossible crimes, the problem was presented in the main numbered entry and the solution revealed in a separate numbered listing. Thus, the spoiler was there if you wanted it, but it was almost impossible to stumble on it by accident. In 1991, Adey presented a revised and expanded edition, with the number of entries increased from 1280 to 2019. Bob Adey died in 2015. In 2018, John Pugmire’s Locked Room International brought out a new edition of the 1991 expansion, including corrections and updated information but no new entries. This new supplement adds about 1,150 entries, picking up the numbering where Adey left off.
The new entries, many since 1991 and others earlier but not included by Adey, signal a broadening of coverage by Adey’s successor, Brian Skupin. For example, feature films and episodes of television series like Monk, Banacek, Jonathan Creek, Death in Paradise, and Murder, She Wrote are included, as are self-published or internet-only stories by writers like Michael Grost; Japanese manga, comic books, and books for the juvenile market, such as the 1950s Ken Holt series by Bruce Campbell. Skupin also includes more comments in the main listings, e.g. a suggestion not to read Dana Chambers’ Death Against Venus “solely for the locked room mystery,” a recommendation he makes on several other stories; and a charge that Agatha Christie’s early short story “The Million Dollar Bond Robbery” does not play fair with the reader. Like Adey, he has also included books that have misleading titles or are inaccurately blurbed to suggest they are locked rooms but are not, e.g. Lori Rader-Day’s Under a Dark Sky.
Obviously every locked-room buff will want this book.
In this third in a loosely connected string of novels set in Georgia’s McFall County, we finally get to meet Dane Kirby, briefly described as “a good guy” in an earlier book.
Now more properly introduced, this part-time consultant for the state’s Bureau of Investigations does seem like a good guy—calm and even-keeled in a world of excitable good ol’ boys, minor criminals, and major creeps. But Kirby’s life is, of course, far darker and more complicated than it seems.
Like all good “Southern noirs,” there’s a miasma of broken dreams, lost loves, and regret hovering over the characters like vengeful ghosts, and Kirby is no exception.
He’s still haunted—literally—by the love of his life, Gwen, killed along with their young daughter several years earlier while riding in the back of his pickup. Nonetheless, Gwen still shows up to chide Kirby over some of his poorer life decisions.
It’s clear they’re trying to market the author as being in the same league as such masters of “Southern noir” as James Lee Burke, Daniel Woodrell, or even William Faulkner, but Panowich can’t quite pull it off—his vision of the South (so far) lacks the fire and poetry of those giants.
Still, he’s a great storyteller, and by the time we meet Kirby for real, his years as a sheriff, arson investigator, and fire chief are over and done with. He’s content to be the GBI’s occasional “invited spectator,” and can even put up with a little spectral nagging from Gwen. But all in all, though, he’d rather be fishing.
Kirby’s line wetting is postponed, though, first by the arrest of an old friend, found drunk and pants-free at a murder scene. Then, before he can even begin to sort out that mess, he’s summoned by the “big dogs” of the FBI to help with the particularly savage murder of a small time criminal who may have local connections, way over in Jacksonville. Whisked by helicopter to the Sunshine State, Kirby is reluctantly teamed with ambitious, abrasive Special Agent Roselita Velasquez. The investigation soon leads the misfit duo back to Georgia, and a desperate hunt for the victim’s kid brother, an 11-year-old with Asperger’s Syndrome.
There’s a lot of subplots bouncing back and forth, as Kirby and the increasingly obnoxious Roselita rush to save the boy, and a parade of thwarted lovers, treacherous drug dealers, knucklehead thugs, rednecks, cock fighters, and the like head toward a big showdown/ conclusion, that takes a few too many denouements to sort out.
It’s clear Panowich has grit, and a true sense of place and character. Now he just needs to hone his blade.
I’ve long been a fan of Mary Logue, author of the Claire Watkins mysteries. I think it’s her background as a poet that lends her books a concise crispness not always to be found in today’s overly long novels. While this book clocks in at a little over 200 pages, it’s packed with character and action from the first page to the last.
It’s the story of Brigid Reardon, who escapes the Irish potato famine in 1880 and heads to America with her brother Seamus. In the first 12 pages, Brigid leaves home, takes the ocean voyage, is almost raped on board, and forms a friendship with Seamus’ shipboard friends Paddy and Billy.
When the pair hit New York, Seamus heads west with Paddy and Billy to seek his fortune, and Brigid works as a housemaid, eventually finding a spot in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the home of the wealthy Hunt family. The family is kind and generous and Brigid is happy with them until the young man of the household, Charlie, returns for Christmas. He’s a handsome rake and anyone can see where that might be heading—but Brigid is no wilting flower and fends off his advances. However, she no longer feels comfortable in the Hunt household, and decides to head west to reunite with her brother.
Her brother has claimed a mine out in Deadwood, a lawless place in Dakota Territory. The siblings are no sooner reunited at a raucous Christmas party than Seamus’ fiancée, a “sporting girl” (aka prostitute), Lily, is found dead. Suspected of the killing, Seamus takes off for parts unknown, leaving Brigid behind with Paddy, Billy, and his stake in the mine.
While a whole literature has been written to describe our cultural move west, not much of it is from the perspective of a young Irish woman trying to puzzle out the intricacies of frontier life. Brigid keeps house for the men, but also joins them at the mine and tries to figure out where she might fit into the culture of Deadwood without resorting to becoming a sporting girl or “streel” herself. Deadwood is curiously sophisticated in some ways—there’s lots of money to be had—but also remote and backwards in other ways. And because of the location and the brutal weather, it’s isolated. It might as well be its own country.
Brigid, of course, tries to solve Lily’s murder and clear her brother’s name, while also working on selling her claim to her former employer for a fair price. Meanwhile, Charlie Hunt has shown up in Deadwood and he puts the rush on Brigid, who, while a strong woman, is still only 17 and sometimes naïve.
Brigid is a strong, fearless young woman, as I imagine most women who lived on the fringes of the west in the 1880s were strong and fearless. They had to be. At the resolution of the book, it’s obvious that Brigid’s path ahead is an upward one. This was a vastly enjoyable read, and as in all the best books, I effortlessly learned much as I read. I also despaired of the rapidly dwindling number of pages—I didn’t want it to end! I loved Brigid and hopes she makes another appearance in the future.
After losing her husband and baby daughter in a Nazi attack on the Orkney Island naval base where her husband was stationed, Kate Rees has nothing left to live for—until she meets a spy who gives her a reason. The British Secret Intelligence Service puts Kate, a sniper, through an abbreviated training program to prepare her for a mission into Nazi-occupied Paris to kill Hitler. But with Hitler in her sights, she hesitates when he picks up a little girl who reminds her of her daughter. When she pulls the trigger a fraction of a second too late, it’s another Nazi officer, not Hitler, whom she kills. Knowing that she’s blown the mission, her only thought is to get out of Paris, but the more she learns from her resistance contacts as she attempts to escape Nazi Paris the more she wonders if she was supposed to fail all along.
Thanks to Cara Black’s superb storytelling, this quick and tangled web of a plot, and an action-packed narrative chock-full of French and German terms, still feels genuine in this standalone WWII thriller. Readers follow Kate, one of the most intriguing, ingenious, opportunistic, and ruthless women protagonists readers will ever meet, through the Nazi-filled streets of Paris as she tries to escape.
Black’s characterization is such that readers can’t help but empathize with Kate’s main adversary, a German homicide cop and reluctant Nazi, who proves a worthy opponent with an honorable sense of duty in a world gone mad.
Fans of Susan Elia MacNeal, Pam Jenoff, Kristan Hannah, WWII fiction, and strong women protagonists—as well as readers of Black’s beloved Aimée Leduc mysteries—will find this book hard to put down.
Famous photographer Miranda Brand was notorious, hounded by scandal and worth more dead than alive—prices go up when the artist dies. Her searing images included many vivid self-portraits of self-harming and cutting. After all, she said, “Photography is violent.” When Miranda commits suicide, her husband abandons her notes, correspondence, and remaining photos and negatives, leaving them to slowly rot in place. So begins this stunning debut novel by Sara Sligar.
Trying to settle the estate after his father’s death, Miranda’s only son, Theo, hires journalist Kate Aitken to archive the collection. It is through Miranda’s correspondence and her diary that the artist’s colorful, emotional voice begins to emerge. As Kate becomes more enmeshed in Miranda’s life, similarities and differences in the two women’s experiences emerge. How they dealt with abusive men, mental illness, and sexism at work both binds and separates them. Kate’s punishment for digging into Miranda’s life is being forced to scrutinize her own life.
Meanwhile, attraction between Theo and Kate, both now living on the Brand estate, starts to deepen as they see each other every day. But Miranda’s diary reveals some disturbing clues. Kate wonders if the photographer was murdered, and what’s more, could the son have been her killer? This book reminded me of a modern Rebecca, the classic by Daphne du Maurier. Take Me Apart is a dark tale, in which Miranda’s vibrant voice is more compelling than those who have survived her. Author Sligar’s prose is lush and evocative and the themes of family, motherhood, and demands on the artist are never far from the surface. This is a must-read for those who enjoy a good psychological mystery. The story line is captivating, the characters complex, but Miranda—Miranda is the one who will pull at your heart.
Lifelong Carmel-by-the-Sea resident Courtney Kelly recently left her father’s successful landscaping business to launch her tea room and fairy garden shop, Open Your Imagination. It’s a place where customers can take a class on building their own fairy gardens, and, if they’re real believers, may just come face-to-face with the resident fairy, Fiona.
When the unthinkable happens and Mick Watkins, owner of a neighboring dog grooming business, is murdered in Open Your Imagination’s fountain, the cops think Courtney did it. But with a plethora of suspects, including Mick’s mistress and wife, Courtney is convinced she, Fiona, and a group of close friends can find the real killer—and she isn’t above using a sprinkling of fairy dust to do it.
Daryl Wood Gerber’s new fantasy cozy series debut is full of fun, whimsy, and a baffling whodunit, set in the real tourist town of Carmel, California. The author, whom cozy fans may know from her series such as Cookbook Nook, French Bistro, and (as Avery Aames) Cheese Shop mysteries, includes several bona fide Carmel establishments, street names, and locations. While meeting all the town’s quirky residents and watching Courtney build fanciful fairy gardens and butt heads with the law, readers also get schooled on all things fay, such as the four types of fairies: intuitive, righteous, water, and air.
Courtney makes a fantastic leading lady and narrator, Fiona is fabulous, and multiple red herrings are effective in leading the audience astray—though the case does get tied up with a neat bow at the end. After finishing the book fans might want to try their hand at making their own fairy garden, or taste test the delectable recipes in the back of the book. And of course, readers will be already impatiently waiting for book number two. Fans of fantasy cozy series and this author will absolutely love this bestseller-bound tale.
Nina Karim is a cop in Queens, New York, with a secret—she not only wants the bad guys off the streets, but she wants at least one of them dead. And while she’ll lose it all if she makes that happen, her need for vengeance drives her far more than her desire to protect and serve.
Nina is a tough character, but she’s also smart, funny, and completely fixated on killing the man who killed her father. Her loyalty to those she cares for is absolute, which sometimes makes it difficult for her to do her job; while undercover in a battered women’s shelter investigating two murders, she has to determine if some of the women, now her friends, are responsible for the deaths of their abusers.
The story interweaves these two plotlines with a couple of other cases, including a man who wants to confess to a murder—though he can’t remember who the victim is—and a lost cat. Add to this Nina’s love affair with a loan shark, and her life is like watching a train wreck; you just can’t look away.
While there is a lot of humor in the story, there is sadness as well, and the author does a skillful job of guiding the reader through Nina’s backstory, which includes the execution of her father, a doctor, by an anti-abortion zealot. While Nina might not always follow the law, she never wavers from her own moral code, and while you may not agree with all of the choices she makes, you have to admire her commitment.
I whipped through this book because I couldn’t wait to find out what Nina would do—and I wasn’t disappointed. While I rarely find myself rooting for the antiheroine, in this case I’m willing to make an exception.
A panicked father calls his daughter in the middle of the night to say the police suspect him of the murder of Mandy, an old neighbor gone missing. His daughter, 35-year old Isla Green, lives in London, far from her parents in Sydney, Australia. She hasn’t been home in over a decade, but she arranges a three-week leave from work and prepares to return to her hometown of Agnes Bay to help.
This novel moves smoothly between the past and present. Author Susan Allott takes the reader back to Christmas of 1966 and the lives of two couples living next to each other in the oceanside suburb of Isla’s childhood. Steve and Mandy socialize with neighbors Joe and Louisa, the women sharing much more than the men. Both couples have issues they hide from each other. Isla remembers Mandy only as her playful babysitter.
That summer Steve, a policeman, comes home and openly sobs in his backyard. His anguish is ignored—something not to be talked about. Why is he getting so upset about removing aboriginal children from their families and placing them into white foster homes? It requires a stiff upper lip. The same with Joe’s drunken rages. Don’t talk about them, especially around his young daughter, Isla. As the superficial silence cracks under pressure, each character’s true nature is revealed.
The grown-up Isla has to face what really happened during the summer of 1967 when Steve and Mandy suddenly moved. Isla begins to understand how much her past impacts her present life after old memories surface—and now she’s not so sure her father isn’t capable of murder. The Silence is a well-written debut novel that saves an unexpected surprise for last.
Ella Shane is an opera singer, known as a “trouser diva” because she sings men’s roles. As Kathleen Marple Kalb’s sparkling debut novel opens in 1899 New York, Ella’s singing Romeo to an overeager Juliet, but unfortunately Juliet actually dies at the end of the penultimate scene.
And from there, A Fatal Finale hits the ground running, with lively storytelling, a great milieu, and wonderful characters.
When the Duke of Leith, the victim’s cousin, turns up wanting to know more, Ella and the Duke form a sort of detection alliance to try to puzzle out exactly what happened to Juliet (aka Violette), who was officially presumed to be a suicide. Little pieces of the puzzle fall into place throughout the book, and the mystery unfolds slowly.
But while Ella is making her investigative discoveries, what’s so interesting about this book is the music, Ella’s love of it, and the mechanics of running an opera company. Opera companies were still focused on touring in 1899, as the Met was still new. There are backstage lotharios bearing sweaty bouquets, society matrons wanting Ella to sing “Ave Maria” at their musical afternoons, and a whole array of dressers, managers, and of course, other singers.
In addition to its mystery and its music, this book is an examination of the changing roles of women in 1899. Women’s suffrage is in the air and there are musings on the movement by most of the characters. Ella herself is unusual in that she has a successful career (playing men, no less) and no desire to marry (although she’s fond of children). Another interesting character, a female reporter who yearns to cover sports or news but is forced to write about hats, plays a helpful role in solving the mystery of Violette’s death.
Meanwhile, Ella and the Duke draw closer and closer as friends and maybe more. Ella’s determination to stay married to her career seems to be wavering, but she still wants a mate who would accept her career.
This is all told in the freshest, most delightful manner possible. Kalb may be a debut author, but her storytelling skills are already top-notch. The characters, from landladies to cousins to dukes, are all memorable. The mystery and method of Violette’s death is original. There’s even some swashbuckling swordplay. (Ella keeps in shape through fencing and riding her velocipede—that’s bicycle to you.)
The book ends with a magnificent theatrical scene that ties the story threads together in a very satisfactory fashion. Fun, romance, swordplay, music, and a well-done mystery take the stage for an outstanding debut. Brava!
No one is safe from the numerous twists and turns in the pseudonymous S.K. Barnett’s mind-boggling psychological thriller Safe. Though the first major reveal may be somewhat obvious to most readers familiar with the genre, several other unexpected disclosures (and there are many of them) prove to be jaw-dropping, especially the book’s final stunning revelation.
The novel starts out looking like a standard child kidnapping story. Six-year-old Jenny Kristal of Long Island, New York, is sent for a playdate down the block—but she never gets to her schoolmate’s house. Is Jenny dead? Or isn’t she? Will she be found? Or won’t she?
The plot jumps to 12 years later when a grown-up Jenny—or an imposter—returns disheveled, unkempt, and emotionally distraught to the Kristal family. Laurie Kristal welcomes the girl with open arms. After all, what mother wouldn’t know her own child? Jake, a Manhattan film producer, is more reluctant to accept the teen as his daughter. Their son, Ben, eight when his sister disappeared, isn’t buying it. Ben seems to have suffered the most from the traumatizing event. He’s had recurrent nightmares of burning rooms filled with snakes, and endured tortuous psychotherapy treatments and EMDR (an eye movement desensitization process) in a religiously based clinic. Now 20, he is still in high school, and strung out on dope.
It becomes clear soon enough that there seems to be a great deal of lying going on. “Memories”—of trips to Disney World or to a family cabin—can be recollected from photo albums and the internet. More than one of the family members is harboring potentially destructive secrets. Whatever the “truth,” whoever this 18-year old is, she has a painfully grotesque backstory—and an uncertain future in this chilling new novel. Safe should unsettle even the most avid mystery reader.
Have you ever experienced the daunting (and scary) thought that, at least metaphorically, your entire life is contained on your cellphone? A young man named Zack Yellin discovers the painful truth behind that concept when he inadvertently swaps devices with ruthless hit man Joey Richter, who, for reasons unique to his professional life, stores damning evidence on his phone. The swap, which happens innocently enough in a coffee shop, triggers a high-stakes battle of wits between Zack and Joey, each deeply concerned about getting their lives back on track without putting themselves in further jeopardy. The resolution of their dilemma is just the beginning of their interactions, however, as Stone has plenty of jarring twists, turns, and reversals in store for his winning and varied cast.
A book that calls to mind the novels and stories of Jeffery Deaver, and the films of director Alfred Hitchcock, Stone’s latest successfully exploits many proven tropes of the thriller genre, such as the common man out of his element, identity swaps, racing against time, and countdowns to disaster. A sly commentary on our modern obsession with phones and celebrity, Die Next is truly a high-octane thriller, one that will keep you madly flipping pages, defying your expectations at every turn, as Stone delivers handily on not only one, but two “high concepts” in one very well-crafted adventure.
When a young boy finds the burned body of Adam Merkel, Lovelock’s new middle school math teacher, in the Nevada desert, the neighboring communities of Lovelock and Marzen become consumed by news of the outsider’s murder. The Distant Dead focuses on Sal Prentiss, the sixth-grade student who finds the body; Nora Wheaton, his social studies teacher; and Jake Sanchez, the volunteer firefighter who was once in love with Sal’s now-deceased mother. Written in chapters that alternate points of view between Sal, Nora, and Jake, Heather Young’s story reveals itself incrementally, as readers dig through the strata of her characters’ lives, revealing fragments of secrets and stories, and returning to the inescapability of one’s past.
Besides the central mystery of who killed Adam Merkel—and who hated the newcomer enough to burn him alive—Nora and Jake try to answer the following questions: Why did Adam suddenly leave his university professorship in Reno to teach middle school in Lovelock? Does Sal know something more about Adam’s death than he’s telling? And what kind of illicit activity is going on at the Prentiss place, where Sal lives off the grid with his antisocial uncles?
The Distant Dead is a novel populated with angels and demons. Throughout this engrossing examination of home and family, forgiveness and revenge, Young skillfully weaves in the devastation of America’s opioid epidemic and the claustrophobia of small-town life. Moreover, The Distant Dead is also an enjoyable character-driven murder mystery that is emotionally poignant and empathetic.
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