Dark Night
Joseph Scarpato, Jr.

If you like your mysteries cold, dark, and baffling, you’ll enjoy Paige Shelton’s third installment in her Alaska Wild series. Successful thriller writer Beth Rivers is still living in a small, hard-to-reach town in the interior of Alaska, far away, she hopes, from the deranged kidnapper who physically and sexually abused her for several days before she finally escaped from his moving vehicle, severely injuring herself in the process.

One night, while staying as a guest at a halfway house in town, she awakens on the floor of her bedroom to find that her door, which she was fairly sure she had locked, is now unlocked. Shortly after, she discovers that a man has been shot and killed in the center of town, not far from the halfway house. Without witnesses and with falling snow covering any tracks, the snow and the mystery deepens. Drunk and belligerent for most of his short stay in town, the dead man had made enemies quickly, including a newly arrived census taker.

Adding to the complexity of the situation, Beth finds that her mother, on the run from the police in the lower 48 after tracking down and wounding Beth’s kidnapper, is still on the loose from the authorities and has somehow managed to find her in the Alaska wilds. Together, they try to untangle the small-town murder while catching up on their recent past. In the process, Beth learns some of what happened to her father who left them when she was age seven and has never been seen or heard from again.

The author does an outstanding job of recreating the bitter cold and treacherousness of an Alaskan winter to the point where it might be advisable to keep a sweater handy while reading.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-25 19:34:33
Down a Dark River
Margaret Agnew

Even though Karen Odden’s Down a Dark River is Inspector Michael Corravan’s first adventure, the series already feels lived-in. There are points that it feels closer to a fifth jaunt than a debut, perhaps because the author already has three standalones under her belt. She sticks to her roots with historical mystery, but Corravan is a new flavor of protagonist for her. One can see how this series could go on for years.

Corravan is a familiar type for this gaslit Victorian genre. He’s a hard-edged Irish copper from a poor family who’s made good after finding his way to law enforcement. He is, in fact, one of the few survivors of a recent corruption scandal that cleaned out the police ranks. A former boxer, as physically strong as he is gruff, he’s also an honest man more concerned with the truth than personal gain. From the start, his backstory and previous cases are woven into the tale as it moves along.

At first, his focus is on looking for a missing woman. Corravan has been told by her husband, and a number of the husband’s allies, that this woman is mad. This madness, which has been slowly escalating, has caused Mrs. Beckford to flee her home and put herself in danger. Doting Mr. Beckford will do anything to get her back. Corravan, taking this entirely at face value, devotes all his time to bringing her home. But just when it seems as though the Beckford case is more than it seems, his attention is pulled in a different direction when another young woman is found murdered.

The woman is displayed in a boat floating down the river, her dress torn and her arms above her head. Beautiful and wealthy, she is identified quickly and London law enforcement shifts gears at once. When another body is discovered exactly one week later, posed in the same manner, it becomes clear that they have a serial killer on their hands. Though Jack the Ripper is never mentioned, the comparison can’t help but spring to mind, as Corravan grew up in Whitechapel and two of the victims, Rose and Emma, share names with the Ripper’s victims as well.

This is Corravan’s story, through and through. We spend a lot of time in his head, getting to know him, learning how he felt when his mother disappeared, what it was like to have to rely on her friends to survive, how he relates to the important people in his life and the toll this job takes on him. The unfolding of his resume is both the biggest strength and the biggest weakness of the book. Often, cases are referenced that the reader can’t possibly know about, since there are no other books to refer to.

Presumably these will be explored in the future, but they aren’t here. The biggest gap is the reference to Le Loup, an apparently famous and brutal French serial killer, who is used to explain why Corravan is emotional about this case in particular. Le Loup is never seen on page and his crimes are not really described in detail.

Some other emotional beats simply don’t play for similar reasons. But it’s clear that Odden is setting a foundation that, given time, could work. She is fleshing out this world with a cast of familiar faces, and a crime familiar enough to give them room to breathe. It can’t be said that the reveals in the narrative are shocking, but the pieces fit in their place, and the story resolves in a satisfying way. Corravan is likely to be around telling his story for years to come.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-25 19:37:57
Better Off Dead
Eileen Brady

Ready. Set. Action. In the first chapter of Better Off Dead, it’s six-foot-five Jack Reacher vs. four guys on the outskirts of a small Arizona border town. It looks like a setup, smells like a setup, and that’s what it turns out to be.

This is the second of the Jack Reacher tales coauthored by Lee and Andrew Child, and it sticks to what readers like most about this long-running series—retired Army MP Reacher beating up bad guys. The fight scenes have become much more detailed, I suspect thanks to Andrew Child’s contribution. No simple head butts, here, but we continue to have the copious amounts of coffee the hero is famous for.

Enter Michaela Fenton, wounded ex-Army and worried sister, searching for twin brother, Michael—a disillusioned Army vet whose expertise is land mines and chemical warfare. Her angry sibling also suffers from an unexplained illness after serving in Afghanistan, the result he believes of chemical warfare, despite government denials. The search quickly focuses on the last person seen with the missing man, Waad Dendoncker, a shady purveyor of catering supplies for private planes. Michaela has a hunch something dangerous is being transported along with the caviar and champagne.

When Michaela’s elaborate ruse to find her brother fails, it’s up to Reacher to finish the job. There’s a bit of scrambling at the end, but all the right plot ingredients add up to a satisfying read. Bringing back some of Reacher’s humorous observations would only be a plus. Better Off Dead can easily be read as a standalone if you are new to the series. But be forewarned, Reacher doesn’t play nice.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-25 19:40:29
The Left-Handed Twin
Pat H. Broeske

When is one person’s life worth more than another’s? Readers may grapple with that issue after finishing Thomas Perry’s taut and terrifically paced The Left-Handed Twin, which marks the welcome return (after a seven year absence) of rescue artist Jane Whitefield, a Native American “guide” who helps people who are in trouble to disappear.

The story opens in Upstate New York, where Jane lives quietly with her physician husband and keeps watch over the small house that was home to her Seneca ancestors and now serves as the meeting place for the troubled folks who need her. That’s where she encounters Sara, a young woman fleeing the vengeful ex-boyfriend she testified against in a Los Angeles murder trial.

Sara Doughton enjoyed a glitzy, party lifestyle that made her a frequent presence on social media. This compounds problems for Jane, who must also help her establish a new identity. More problematic is Doughton herself. Not a fully sympathetic character, she appears to be hiding information from Jane—beyond the fact that the man with whom she was involved was acquitted because he bribed the jury.

Soon, both women are being tailed by men who, it turns out, are Russian mobsters. Jane is mystified—until she realizes that she’s the one they’re stalking. As someone who has relocated a number of people with very tenacious enemies who would pay big bucks to learn their whereabouts, her capture could lead to a big pay day for a certain Russian crime lord.

Veteran crimemeister Perry (an Edgar winner for his standalone The Butcher’s Boy) adeptly weaves Native American culture, Jane’s past cases, and her investigative and survival skills, along with some breathless chase scenes—some on foot—in this fast-moving suspense novel.

Particularly exciting and insightful is Jane’s unexpected detour to Maine’s Hundred Mile Wilderness, the most challenging terrain of the famed Appalachian Trail. Like any trek, this one has moments of inspiration (Jane should do a book on wilderness survival skills) and tragedy when innocents, who have nothing whatever to do with Jane or her case, meet their end. Jane nearly does, too—we won’t divulge details, except to say that her knowledge of both the right-handed and left-handed twins (representing good and evil) of Native American lore will turn out to be as useful as those survival skills.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-25 19:45:51
Reprieve
Margaret Agnew

When Leonard Granton murders Bryan Brown, the case seems cut and dried. Leonard, a former middle manager of a small hotel chain, had recently lost his job, become obsessed with a woman who failed to return his affection, and taken up harassing the employees of Quigley House after a perceived slight from his “friend,” the owner of the haunted escape room venue. Slitting a young man’s throat in the middle of an escape room game clearly seems the work of a man driven mad by circumstance but James Han Mattson’s horror-tinged mystery Reprieve is not quite that simple.

The book follows the points of view of three characters: the perpetrator, a witness to the crime, and a relative of the victim. Leonard is by far the least sympathetic of the trio. Though the narrative humanizes him, it does not forgive or excuse his actions, even as it hints he wasn’t fully responsible for them. His descent into unhappiness is slow, but believable, driven by his own insecurities and outside toxic influences.

Jaidee Charoensuk, Bryan’s gay roommate, is a witness to the crime and a member of the ill-fated escape room team at the center of the murder. The most compelling thing about Jaidee’s sections of the book are how hard he grapples with his identity. He tries to be “American,” tries to be someone worthy of love, and struggles to live up to his own high expectations. To this point in the tale he has guided his whole life toward winning over the object of his infatuation, an unavailable English teacher whom he has followed back to Nebraska and ultimately to Quigley House to play the fatal game with Bryan, the teacher, and the teacher’s fiancee.

The third narrator, Bryan’s high school-age cousin Kendra Brown, is the emotional heart of the novel. A recent transplant to town following her father’s death, she takes a job as a parking attendant at Quigley House in the hopes her horror fan crush will come out to see the infamous haunted house for himself. It’s through her eyes we get to know her cousin, a promising young Black man putting himself through college, who ends up the victim.

In the end, the villain of the story is a middle-class, white male who takes out his social alienation on a Black man. The book doesn’t bash you over the head with this message, but it’s clear and it is well done. The reader certainly understands it. Overall, this is a unique and interesting mashup of horror and crime, that leaves behind a few topical questions about race, identity, and morality in its wake.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-25 19:49:15
Hello, Transcriber
Robert Allen Papinchak

It’s no surprise that newly hired female police transcriber, 26-year-old Hazel Greenlee, wants out of her depressing life in Black Harbor, Wisconsin, a “small city with big city crime” just outside of Milwaukee. Its most prominent landmark is Forge Bridge, the site of numerous suicides. Even she frequently considers jumping off it. Hazel thinks that secretly rewriting violent and graphic departmental notes will give her material for a novel and gain her a new career and a new life away from the stultifying town and her toxic, aquatic ecologist husband, Tommy.

She isn’t too far off the mark when one week later, during her night shift, the setup for a juicy plot line conveniently falls into her lap—or rather taps her office window. An eccentric neighbor, William Samson Jr. (aka Sam), appears in a gold hoodie and scratches an unsettling message on the glass: “I hid a body.” What’s more disturbing is that he scrawls it with a small finger “broken off below the first knuckle,” a digit that turns out to belong to 9-year-old Jordan McAllister, who seems to have died from a drug overdose before being discarded in a dumpster.

Police Investigator Nikolai Kole becomes obsessed with the case; and after Hazel eavesdrops on Kole’s interview with suspect and drug dealer “Candy Man” Tyler Krejarek, Hazel takes her own interest in the “criminally attractive” officer in a black pullover with jeans, sand-colored hair, square jaw, and “faint dimple in his chin.” He is certainly more appealing than Tommy, who is so abusive and sadistic, Hazel feels “being married to him is a game of survival.”

Kole sees her as the fastest typist in the Midwest (“111 words per minute with no errors”), who makes his reports sound “halfway intelligent.” But as they work the case together, their audio exchanges quickly become more personal than professional. They hook up to search Candy Man’s apartment for incriminating evidence, but end up finding “what ecstasy feels like” when they briefly brush against each other— before spotting a hiding place for drugs that suddenly reminds them they are, ahem, on the job. Then a call about another dead kid propels them back to their primary mission— solving crimes.

Several other drug-related deaths occur as the plot unravels and the novel continues to skid more toward romance than police procedural. Hazel returns to the bridge several times, discarding upsetting memories of her past—a corded honeymoon bracelet, glass shamrocks, teddy bears—even throwing her wedding ring into the river.

When the crimes are solved in a rather predictable way, Hazel’s final takeaway is that murder may not mix with romance, but that “truth conquers all things.” As it concerns a book with more romancing than crime-solving, it will be left to see whether fans of romantic suspense feel the same way about mixing the two after reading Hannah Morrissey’s efficient debut police procedural, Hello, Transcriber.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-25 19:52:51
Jane Austen’s Lost Letters
Debbie Haupt

Jane K. Cleland’s 14th Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery finds Josie busy filming season six of her TV show Josie’s Antiques, but she is distracted from her work when a stranger pays her a visit. Veronica Sutton tells Josie she knew her now-deceased father before handing Josie a package from him that includes two possibly “undiscovered” letters penned by Jane Austen. She then disappears as quickly as she came.

Once Josie regains her composure from the surprise encounter, she resolves to find Veronica and learn more about the letters’ provenance. She’s especially curious as to Veronica’s connection to her father, whom Josie tragically lost on 9/11. While pondering which path to take to search for the mystery woman, one of the guests on her TV show ends up murdered, leaving Josie with not one, but two mysteries to solve.

Cleland’s stable of supporting characters is impressive, and includes Josie’s Homeland Security executive hubby Ty, but it’s Josie who shines brightest. She’s genuine, smart, and compassionate with enterprising clue-deducing strategies (like using kitty therapy) and a razor-sharp analytical mind perfect for both her business persona and her amateur sleuth alter ego.

Published in the year marking the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, Cleland’s storyline is especially relevant and culminates with a bombshell of an ending. Readers will find Jane Austen’s Lost Letters hard to put down. It is a tightly plotted, sophisticated story ripe with secrets and lies. This 14th entry in the series is as fresh as the first (although new readers would benefit from series backtracking for deeper insights).

Teri Duerr
2022-01-25 19:55:06
So Far and Good
Kevin Burton Smith

This one ain’t for sissies.

A few private eyes have been excons, and any shamus worth his salt has spent at least a night or two in the local hoosegow, but John Straley’s twisted, unpredictable, and unapologetic So Far and Good, the eighth novel featuring Alaskan investigator Cecil Younger, may be the first in the genre to have the detective incarcerated in prison for the entire book.

Sentenced to 7 1/2 years (“drilled” down from 25) in Juneau’s Lemon Creek Correctional Center for his part in the murder of a man who had “trifled’ with his teenage daughter, Blossom, Cecil can only watch as his daughter goes full-on Nancy Drew without him. Blossom’s intent on helping her best friend Georgina “George” (for Nancy fans, it should be noted that

Blossom’s sometime-boyfriend is Ned), who has just discovered via a mail-in DNA test that she’s not only adopted, but she may have been the victim of a kidnapping as an infant.

The worried Cecil is limited to offering Blossom reluctant advice and guidance on her visits, while also dealing with his own problems. He’s a quietly quirky, bookish slacker—and he’s in prison! His plan is to keep his head down, serve his time, and get the hell out of there, but he’s drawn the attention—in more ways than one—of Albert “Fourth Street” Munroe, a dangerously unpredictable but powerful inmate who holds court in a bathroom stall and wants something from Cecil.

Or else.

Realizing he’s not cut out for prison, where the rules are arbitrary, the bureaucracy Kafkaesque, the violence omnipresent, the body searches full cavity, and love and gender are “fluid,” Cecil strikes a deal. In exchange for “protection,” he will help prepare the misogynist Street by teaching him (and I quote) “how to speak respectfully to these bitches” on the parole board.

This is a book that will make almost any reader occasionally squirm, no matter how hardened they are or where they camp out on the woke spectrum. Still, the hard truths and no-easy-answer questions are well worth chewing on, even as George’s case goes ballistic, with a high-priced lawyer, racism, Native and parental rights, a full-tilt media circus, questions of genetics and family, the efficacy of the entire criminal justice system, and a villain seemingly ripped from the pages of Penthouse Forum dropped into the mix. Meanwhile, the incarcerated Cecil’s efforts to protect his daughter while not becoming Street’s “bitch” (that word again!) finally prompt him to take bold and desperate measures.

If you’re only going to read one thriller this year, read So Far and Gone—it has a bit of everything in it.

Hell, I’m still trying to pick some of its shrapnel from my brain.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-25 19:59:38
The Last Guest
Vanessa Orr

Elspeth Bell, a once-famous actress, agrees to attend the 50th birthday party of her ex-husband Richard Bryant at the request of her daughter. Expecting a large turnout, she is shocked to discover that she is one of only seven guests—none of whom are particular fans of the domineering, abusive Hollywood director.

Drugs and drink flow, and when the guests wake up the next morning, Richard is dead, and they are all suspects in his murder. The story traces Elspeth’s quest to figure out who killed her ex, which forces her to revisit a history that she’d prefer to forget—and perhaps a murder that she might have committed.

The evening’s events are intertwined with Elspeth’s present-day actions; scenes from the party meld seamlessly with her police interview, for example, giving the reader an insider’s view of both the event and its aftermath. While this serves as a useful vehicle to provide clues as to what happened, having to vicariously attend this party, filled with insufferable, self-absorbed actors, cinematographers, and producers, begins to wear on the reader. In fact, the most likable character is Persephone, an octopus that Richard keeps trapped in an aquarium as a pet—holding her hostage just as he does the humans that he employs.

While it’s difficult to figure out who killed the director, there’s certainly no lack of potential reasons why, as the guests share tales of Richard’s cruelty to his childhood best friend, domestic abuse, and the sadistic way he treats actors and crews on set. Following in the footsteps of the Harvey Weinstein trial, Elspeth’s own #MeToo moment highlights just how far Richard was willing to push people to do his bidding.

While the ending comes as a surprise, what the story really leaves the reader wondering is how one person can devastate the lives of so many.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-25 20:02:40
Death at Greenway
Jean Gazis

It’s April 1941 and the London Blitz is raging. Nurse-in-training Bridget Kelly, holding back a visceral grief that threatens to overwhelm her the moment she lets herself go, makes a mistake medicating a wounded soldier. Disgraced, she is sent to accompany a group of children being evacuated from London to the countryside, where the bombing is less intense. The officious Mrs. Arbuthnot; Bridget; a beautiful, enigmatic second nurse named Gigi; and ten very young children travel to the Devon coast, with the whiny, snobbish Mr. Arbuthnot in tow. They settle at Greenway, the country estate of Agatha Christie and her husband Max Mallowan, who are away contributing to the war effort. The house is both lovely and imposing, managed by a butler and housekeeper, Mr. and Mrs. Scaldwell, who openly resent the evacuees.

Bridget is worried that she will be found out as only a trainee and not a “real” nurse, but soon realizes that those around her also may not be what they seem. Gigi’s behavior is erratic and irresponsible, there are trespassers on the grounds, and someone is stealing jars of jam from the pantry. Then a dead man is pulled from the river that borders the grounds.

Keenly observant, Bridget begins to investigate in her own quiet way as one unnerving event after another takes place. With the others continually relying on her to hold steady and pick up their slack, her self-doubt evaporates as her empathy for the children—and anyone who suffers—slowly draws her out of her lonely isolation and into meaningful connections.

The author draws her memorable characters deftly and portrays their inner lives and outward interactions with deep insight. The wartime setting feels authentic, and the story’s disparate threads ultimately connect in surprising ways. Brief cameo appearances by “Mrs. M.” (as the staff calls her) will please Christie fans.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-25 20:06:04
Wish You Were Gone
Hank Wagner

It’s 1973 in this alternate history of the U.S.-Soviet Space Race and Cold War, and the United States is busy mounting another mission to the moon, designated Apollo 18. In the middle of these proceedings, new Soviet surveillance activity has been discovered, abruptly altering the basic purpose of the mission from one of scientific exploration to one with military and national security implications.

It falls to former MOL (Manned Orbiting Laboratory) astronaut Kazimieras “Kaz” Zemeckis to hold things together, managing the abrupt change, and driving the launch forward. Things are further complicated when key personnel start to perish prior to launch, forcing Kaz and his superiors to decide whether it’s even worth proceeding. Luckily for readers, they do, but the crew still faces many challenges, some of which they can anticipate, others which they would have to be omniscient to have foreseen.

The Apollo Murders, the first novel from authentic astronaut and author of the children’s book The Darkest Dark and the nonfiction works You Are Here and An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, is a welcome, well written mix of whodunit and military techno thriller. Savvy readers will no doubt recall such past classics as Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October, Martin Caidin’s Marooned, Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, and Lost Moon by James Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger (adapted for film as Apollo 13).

The fictional characters feel real (many genuine reallife personalities make cameos), the situation is arresting, and the level of detail is stunning, almost Melvillian, without overwhelming the main narrative. Although Hadfield sometimes seems anxious to reveal his hard-won expertise, he does so in an erudite, mostly casual and incidental manner, occasionally flirting with pedantism, but never crossing that fine line.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-25 20:09:35
Five Decembers
Benjamin Boulden

Five Decembers, by the pseudonymous James Kestrel, is a sprawling and captivating crime novel set in the Pacific during World War II. Joe McGrady, a newly minted detective with the Honolulu Police Department, is assigned to investigate the murder of a young white man skinned and hung upside down in a barn. While at the crime scene, McGrady discovers another victim: a young Asian woman, brutally slaughtered and discarded beneath a pile of blankets. The male victim is identified as Henry Kimmel Willard, the nephew of Admiral Kimmel, the commander of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet headquartered at Pearl Harbor. The identification of Willard and his link to Admiral Kimmel puts pressure on McGrady and his superiors to solve the case quickly.

McGrady follows the suspect, a shadowy man traveling under the name John Smith, across the Pacific. McGrady finds another of Smith’s victims on Wake Island and when he arrives in Hong Kong he is arrested, framed by Smith, for a brutal rape. While McGrady is in police custody, Pearl Harbor is bombed and the Japanese invade Hong Kong. A few months later, McGrady is a prisoner of war on the Japanese mainland, but the murder investigation is far from over. It carries Mc- Grady through all the war’s long years before thundering into a shocking conclusion.

Five Decembers is a surprising and original mystery, but its true power is the raw and vivid portrayal of how war impacts humanity, especially noncombatants. Its sparse descriptive passages are done well enough to provide solemness and splendor at once. McGrady’s world view is altered by his experiences across the years of his captivity, by the people he meets and the places he sees. Five Decembers is an unusually good crime novel that will continue to echo in the reader’s mind long after the last page has been turned.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-25 20:12:34
The Neighbor’s Secret
Eileen Brady

Welcome to Cottonwood Estates, an upper- middle-class neighborhood, which has one heck of a book club. They’ve got murder, really potent alcoholic drinks, extramarital affairs—and that’s just the book club membership. The Neighbor’s Secret starts off strong on a sunny Thursday morning with local gossip and an overnight case of vandalism. We quickly learn that book club member Jen and Paul’s seventh grade son, Abe, has been expelled from school for stabbing a fellow student with an X-Acto knife. This isn’t his first misstep. When the book club meets Jen doesn’t share her family problems, nor does she share her son’s conduct disorder diagnosis. These are secrets best left unmentioned, even among friends.

Author Heller writes in clean modern prose, jumping from couple to couple, the action tied together by the monthly book club meetings. I did have some problems keeping some of the characters straight. There’s a Lena and a Laurel, plus a Jen and Janine—the similarity of the names being a bit of a hurdle for this reader. One of the oldest residents of Cottonwood Estates, Lena Meeker, is dragged into socializing with book club member, Annie, who befriends her for selfish reasons of her own.

No spoiler intended, but a murder has taken place long ago, a murder yet to be solved. The author does a good job portraying the angst and vulnerability of teenagers, and how clueless even the best parents can be with a child who can’t or won’t share their problems.

Eventually the plot winds down with a nice twist of justice at the end, although there is a surprising lack of tension throughout the book. There are some fun moments with the book club as it becomes apparent some of the participants don’t get around to actually reading the assigned book. After a yummy description of a Lolita Lemon Drop martini served in a giant mason jar at the meeting, I quite understand.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 14:33:58
The Unheard
Vaness Orr

Raising a child can be challenging, especially for parents who have split up and share custody and parenting responsibilities. It is especially difficult for Tess, who has to let her daughter Poppy spend time with her ex, Jason, and his new wife, Emily, despite believing that something bad happened during one of her daughter’s stays with them.

When Tess finds a violent drawing by her 3-year-old that Poppy explains by saying, “He did kill her,” Tess believes that Poppy witnessed something traumatic. While a male psychotherapist says that her daughter is merely acting out a result of her parents’ split, Tess believes something more happened under Jason’s roof, which now also harbors Emily’s brother, who recently split from his wife.

The fact that her concerns are dismissed—especially by the men in her life—may touch a nerve with female readers who understand just how hard it is to be taken seriously and are used to not having their voices heard. While you have to admire Tess’s determination to find out what happened to her daughter, her obsession comes at a cost; it not only damages her relationship with Jason, but with her new boyfriend, Aidan, and her friends who also care for Poppy.

While an enjoyable story, the plot requires some suspension of belief; the leaps Tess makes to link a child’s stick-figure drawing to a real-life murder are hard not only for the police to believe, but for the reader. When Tess does finally gets someone to listen to her, a unique twist to the resolution leaves the reader wondering whether her voice—finally heard—will be silenced.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 15:07:37
The Last Guests
Craig Sisterson

Indigenous storyteller J.P. Pomare (Ngā Puhi) is one of the most exciting new voices to emerge in Australasian thriller writing—and beyond—in recent years. The Melbourne-based Māori novelist has already made a mark with readers, critics, and awards judges thanks to his adroit blend of quality prose with keen psychological insights, fascinating heroines, and a rich sense of people and place.

He continues his ascent with his fourth novel, The Last Guests, a tense and terrifying tale of an AirBnB-style rental situation gone horribly, horribly wrong. Lina and Cain are a young married couple who are struggling to deal with past traumas and present secrets. Former Special Forces soldier Cain is feeling lost after leaving the Army, having to overcome injuries to body and mind and unable to get traction for his new fitness training business. Lina is a paramedic taking dangerous steps to fulfill her deepest desires. When an Special Air Service Regiment buddy of Cain’s suggests they list Lina’s childhood home on the beautiful Lake Tarawera for short-stay rentals, the couple are conflicted. It could ease some financial woes, but does Lina want strangers in the house where her grandparents raised her, a house that means so much? The potential for easy money outbids the risk, so Cain and Lina dive in. What could go wrong?

As it turns out, a lot. Strange things, then deadly things. Someone has been watching Lina, and her life at home and work is upturned. What can she salvage, and how far will she go to do it? Pomare conjures a deliciously tense tale that entwines domestic noir with issues of technology, voyeurism, and the coping mechanisms people may use to deal with trauma and the stresses of life. This is a ripsnorting read that hums along on fine prose, from a writer who is like a magician with his literary sleight-of-hand.

Pomare may be early in his career, but he’s already stamping his mark as a masterful storyteller.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 15:11:41
The Mystery of the Sorrowful Maiden
Robin Agnew

This is the third novel in Kate Saunders’ Laetitia Rodd series set in 1850s London. Mrs. Rodd, the widow of a clergyman, lives with her landlady in London and makes her living as a private investigator. Her brother, a barrister, generally finds the cases which she then helps to investigate and solve.

As the book opens, Mrs. Rodd is approached by a neighbor, who asks her to help out his friend Sarah Transome, the estranged wife of one of the most famous actors in London and the mother of three actress daughters (all of whom have taken different sides in their parents’ breakup). Seems Mrs. Transome needs help sorting her financial future, as her husband is refusing any support. When a body turns up in the ruins of a burned-out theater associated with Mr. Transome, the plot thickens. A second body materializes, along with a confession—but of course there is more to the story.

Mrs. Rodd has access to the investigation courtesy of a police detective known as Blackbeard (as well the influence of her barrister brother, who has taken Tom Transome’s side of things), and conducts a fascinating investigation, taking the reader all over London where she encounters all different kinds of people. The inquiry part of the story is fast-paced and intelligent.

Mrs. Rodd, unlike many other historical mystery heroines, is not royalty, nobility, or gifted in some extraordinary way. Her very ordinary respectability grants her both the useful cloak of invisibility (she’s a frequently overlooked older woman), as well as the ability to understand the motives of the more ordinary folk she interviews. She does also take advantage of her association with her barrister brother to gain a view into higher society, giving her the best of both worlds.

The denouement of the story about family, about the London theatre, and the societal restrictions of women in their time, is far more noir in tone than cozy, but the appealing characters, whose fortunes wax and wane, make this book a lighter read. Mrs. Rodd and her entertaining cast of characters make this perfectly told tale a real standout.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 15:14:51
A History of Wild Places

From the very first sentence, A History of Wild Places pulls the reader into a strange tale that seems part myth, part magic, and part mystery. Equally poetic and disturbing, it is a sublime hint of what is to come in this intriguing, spell-binding story.

Travis Wren, who has the ability to see a person’s final moments just by holding an object they owned, is searching for Maggie St. James, a children’s book author who has disappeared. His quest leads him to Pastoral, a reclusive, almost cult-like community that shuns the outside world because they believe that leaving Pastoral will result in “the rot”— a disease that will kill them all.

Travis, too, disappears, and his abandoned truck is found years later by Theo, a member of Pastoral who has dared to go beyond the compound’s gate. This discovery, and the fact that Theo did not bring back the rot, sets off a series of events that changes Theo’s life, as well as that of his wife, Calla, her sister Bee, and their insular community forever. While Calla finds comfort in the secluded refuge and never wants to leave, both Theo and Bee dream of exploring a larger world.

The characters in this story have so much depth that the reader viscerally feels their yearning to be outside, as well as the love they have for each other that keeps them bound to Pastoral. Trapped in a world that was supposed to be freeing, it is instead a prison where everyone keeps secrets from each other, despite a closeness and interdependence necessitated to survive. The story is dark and ties into our most primal fears— being scared of the unknown, mistrust of strangers, fear of disease, and fear of change. Surprisingly, it is Bee, who is blind, who truly sees the darkness at the heart of the community.

Readers will find themselves bound to this book in much the same way its characters are gripped by Pastoral; expect not to put it down until the final twist is revealed.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 15:17:53
They Can’t Take Your Name
Vanessa Orr

Set in the heart of Denver’s Black community, They Can’t Take Your Name follows the lives of Langston Brown, an innocent man on death row; his daughter, Liza, who has given up a career in music for law school as part of her mission to clear her father’s name; and Eli Stone, a widower who is trying to open up a jazz club while still mourning his beloved wife.

After Liza wanders into Eli’s not-yet-opened club and shares her sorrows—including the lack of a job and her father’s unfair trial—Eli not only employs her, but tries to help her prove Langston’s innocence. Unfortunately, they not only have to battle corrupt police and politicians, but a world in which the “children of Europe” (white people) and the “children of Africa” (Black people) never truly see each other as individuals.

This theme, and the fact that Black and white people are treated differently by the criminal justice system, is highlighted throughout the book. Despite the fact that witnesses say a white man committed the crime, Langston, who is Black, is arrested. A Black police officer is praised by white politicians, even though they know he is corrupt. After leaving the scene of a policeman’s death, Eli can’t be described accurately by a white couple who looked directly at him.

Loss also plays a major factor in this story, from Langdon’s loss of freedom to Liza’s loss of a dream, to Eli’s loss of his wife, Antoinette. Despite this, there are tender moments of hope, especially in Liza and Eli’s burgeoning relationship, and the couple’s tentative steps toward moving on from their devastating pasts.

While a good read, what truly makes the story so intriguing is that it puts a human face on a crushing reality—it is conservatively believed that 1 to 2 percent of all convictions are of innocent people, which means that there are thousands of people doing time for crimes they didn’t commit. The author shines a much-needed light on the broken criminal justice system and the need to right these wrongful convictions.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 15:22:14
Murder Under Her Skin
Benjamin Boulden

Stephen Spotswood’s second Lillian Pentecost and Willowjean “Will” Parker whodunit, Murder Under Her Skin, is a splendid historical mystery set in a traveling circus in 1946. Will is heartbroken when she learns Ruby Donner—the Amazing Tattooed Woman in Halloway’s Travelling Circus and Sideshow—is murdered with a knife in her back. Ruby’s death is personal to Will because they were friends when, years earlier, Will traveled with the circus as a performing knife-thrower.

When Valentin Kalishenko, Will’s friend and knife-throwing mentor, is fingered for the murder, she convinces her boss, the renowned New York City private eye Lillian Pentecost, to go undercover with the circus to find the real killer. Together, the two set out to prove Valentin’s innocence with style and verve, while cutting their way through duplicity, fisticuffs, firebombs, shootings, and more than a few long-buried secrets.

Murder Under Her Skin is a pleasant foray into a well-described past. The heroines are tough and likable, but a debt is owed to Rex Stout: Will is to Lillian Pentecost as Archie Goodwin is to Nero Wolfe. Will, like Archie, is a dynamo, but with a skill set all her own. Her unerring ability to accurately throw knives comes in handy, as does her brilliant ability to find ways in and out of trouble. Lillian Pentecost, much like Wolfe, is clever and physically flawed and always addressed, by Will at least, as Ms. Pentecost.

The circus setting is vivid with its oddball characters and sinister secrets. The mystery is traditional, tricky, and solvable, and, best of all, good old-fashioned fun.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 15:24:55
The Shadows of Men

This complex, well-written novel is set in 1920s Calcutta, a time of massive change in India. Ghandi is in prison, but the forces that would move the British out of India are well under way. The complicated mesh of different religions, as well as the vastness of the country makes for a read that requires close attention.

The Shadows of Men is told in alternating chapters by Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee (known as “Suren”) and Captain Sam Wyndham, a British officer who naturally has authority over Suren. Nevertheless, the two men are friends and supply the yin and yang that makes for a good mystery: the obvious—different cultures and races—and the more subtle, personal differences.

In this fifth book in the series, Suren discovers the body of a well-known Hindu theologian, a man clearly the victim of foul play. In a well-intentioned attempt to prevent religious riots in the streets, Suren sets a fire to erase evidence of the murder—and gets caught. Calcutta is overtaken by mob violence and Suren becomes a wanted man. He and Sam go undercover and head to far off Bombay to find the man they think is responsible for the murder. Even with the assistance of a wealthy Parsee woman, who provides them with cash, transportation, and access to the kind of gatherings where their suspect, a high-ranking Islamic politician, might turn up, everything that might go wrong does in this far-reaching adventure tale.

When Abir Mukherjee sticks to the personal dynamics of his characters—Suren, Sam, and their Parsee partner—and when he offers up a vision of what India must have felt like at the time, he’s at his best. The underlying political parts of the story were less successful to me, as they were so complicated. A more even balance between the two elements would have made me a happier reader.

What I did enjoy very much was the friendship between Sam and Suren and the alternating voices, taking the reader inside the thoughts and the cultures of each man. I wasn’t entirely convinced that Sam’s feelings of hypocrisy and fatalism as far as the British colonization of India was concerned were authentic, but I hoped they were—it made me like him more.

More to the point is the fact that Sam represents the British ruling class and Suren, the subjugated Indian, who must appear subservient at all times. Suren is by far the more romantic and mysterious character of the two men, though, while Sam is the pragmatic one. The practical balanced by the romantic— now that’s something that holds my attention.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 15:28:25
Diamond and the Eye
Kevin Burton Smith

Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond, star of Lovesey’s much-beloved, long-running series, seems to have a stick up his butt most of the time, but that hasn’t stopped him from grumbling his way down the touristy streets of small-town Bath, 100 miles west of London, for 20 years.

The prickly old sourpuss grumbles about his superiors, his staff, the “paper suits” of the forensic team, and his cholesterol (and being nagged about the same by his long-suffering, second-in-command, Detective Sergeant Ingeborg Smith).

Now there’s a new irritant: cocky local private eye Johnny Getz. Getz fancies himself an American-style hardboiled dick, and he’s at least a third right. Truth is, he’s about as American as a crumpet, and as for hardboiled? Well, things in the mirror may be smaller than they appear. He’s a low-rent PI with “a slight cash flow problem,” bicycling to meet clients, and not shy about cadging drinks or bumming rides.

Diamond isn’t impressed.

Normally, the two would never even cross paths. But then Getz is hired by Ruby Hubbard, a young woman anxious to locate her antiques dealer father “Seppy,” who seems to have disappeared—shortly before Diamond finds a dead man in Seppy’s shop (in an Egyptian sarcophagus, no less). The brash Getz (his business card boasts that he “Getz results”) pushes his way into the case, insisting he’d never interfere with an official homicide investigation—he’s just “looking for Seppy”—and suggests they pool their resources.

Reluctantly, Diamond agrees.

The two cases, however, are soon hopelessly snarled, as the POV switches back and forth between the two investigations (with Getz’s narrated in charmingly awkward hardboiled prose).

Getz, living by rules cobbled together from way too many private eye novels (he name drops everyone from Spade to McGee), turns out to be the perfect foil for the no-nonsense inspector.

And what a case! There are enough clues in this juicy little mystery for everyone, plus a motorcycle-riding gunman, more murders, a missing treasure, a couple of potential femme fatales (a pushy young journalist and an over-sexed do-gooder), and plenty of halftruths and outright lies to sort out—including from each other.

Longtime PI buffs will take a shine to the dodgy Getz’s wannabe ambitions, and procedural buffs should enjoy how Diamond and company work the case. It’s the mutual aggravation society of the two mismatched sleuths, however, that really has me itching for a rematch.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 15:33:08
Twenty Years Later

In 2001, writer Cameron Young’s naked body is found hanging from the second floor balcony of his country estate. When the press reveals to the public an S&M twist to the crime, his murder becomes sensationalized. There’s only one suspect, Victoria Ford, who’d been having an affair with the deceased. Just before the grand jury meets to indict her, she visits her lawyer’s office. It’s September 11, 2001, and that office is in the World Trade Center North Tower.

With that intriguing opening we jump to 20 years later.

Avery Mason, the host of television news program American Events, wants to put together a show about a 9/11 victim, and when Ford’s DNA is discovered in the rubble of the Twin towers, Mason leaps on the idea. She envisions a touching human-interest story about Ford, her life and her dreams—until Avery discovers Victoria was the chief suspect in a kinky murder.

Her research leads her to Ford’s 20-year-old criminal case and handsome, retired police detective/FBI surveillance agent Walt Jenkins (who has his own motives for cooperating with the reporter). Also eager to speak is one of Victoria’s best friends, now a bestselling author, who is convinced her friend was innocent.

Add to this a subplot about Avery’s father being a white-collar criminal who embezzled millions from investors in a Ponzi scheme and is on the run from the FBI, and it seems like a lot of plot lines, but they all merge seamlessly into a surprise ending that I didn’t see coming. Author Charlie Donlea has an easy readable style and skillfully adds depth and intrigue to this enjoyable thriller.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 15:36:30
The Hidden
Margaret Agnew

Melanie Golding’s latest standalone The Hidden opens with a little girl named Leonie appearing lost and alone near a desolate beach. She unsettles everyone by screaming without sound and the police are swiftly called. Leonie isn’t abandoned for long, though. Her mother Constance arrives and takes her away, and all seems well. This narrative starts to unravel quickly, however, when it becomes apparent that the woman who picked up Leonie wasn’t really her mother and that the girl’s father, Gregor, has just been found left for dead by someone in their family’s bathtub.

In a strange twist, when DS Joanna Harper is called to the scene, she recognizes at once the true identity of the woman pretending to be Constance—because she is Harper’s own estranged daughter Ruby, who turns out, is also Leonie’s neighbor. Though Joanna can’t believe that Ruby would ever harm someone, she also can’t deny that all signs point to her being criminally involved.

With The Hidden, Golding treats us to a rich, atmospheric story of mothers and daughters. The reader learns early on that while Joanna is Ruby’s mother, the two are only 13 years apart and have both been raised by Joanna’s parents as “sisters” their entire lives. Though she was loved, Ruby’s home life was troubled, prompting her to leave and strike out on her own several months before the incident that begins the novel.

The story switches back and forth between the present investigation and when Ruby first moved next door to Leonie’s family, her sense of loneliness leading her to make a connection with the little family. Oh, and there’s one final wrinkle—Leonie’s mother claims that she is a Selkie, a mythological being capable of changing from human to seal. It’s a story that has put a strain on the family, with Leonie’s father Gregor insisting Constance is slowly losing her mind. Who is Ruby to believe? And how much time does she really have to figure it out with Leonie stuck in the middle?

Though Golding’s magic tinged story feels like a world where Selkies could actually exist alongside the mundane without anyone being the wiser, the stakes are all too real. In this exploration of what family means, no one comes out of these hardships unscathed—and a few don’t emerge from them at all. Yet Golding manages to leave the reader with hope all the same.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 15:39:53
Brooklyn Supreme
Kevin Burton Smith

It’s become de rigueur for reviewers of a certain age (or maybe it’s just me) to compare any sprawling novel with a huge, diverse cast of characters, digging into all sorts of complex legal, political, and racial issues—particularly one set in New York City—with Tom Wolfe’s masterful 1987 novel Bonfire of the Vanities.

And I’m going to do it again.

Robert Reuland’s novel, Brooklyn Supreme (his third, my first), is a ballsy deep dive into the same toxic morass Wolfe once swam in, fast-forwarded 30 years.

But this time, although the cast is as sprawling as ever, the viewpoint remains steadfast—or at least as steadfast as the narrator, burned out, self-doubting police union rep Will Way, can make it. Turns out he’s not as steadfast—or as stable—as he’d like to be.

Will, a “recovering” alcoholic and a former cop himself, is called in when a Brooklyn police officer shoots and kills a (possibly unarmed) young Black man (How 2021 can you get?), a robbery suspect, under murky circumstances.

Just to make it more fun, the officer charged with the shooting is Georgina Reed, a young Black rookie barely out of the academy. That much is clear.

Everything else? Up for grabs. Was the dead kid Raquan Dewberry armed? Was his gun a plant? Was Georgina’s partner a reliable witness? Was the other suspect arrested at the scene even there? Were there other witnesses? Who’s lying? Who’s not?

That wobbly nature of truth that continually raises its ugly head throughout. Everyone, not just Will, apparently has a shape-shifting and generally self-serving definition. Even a powerful judge confides to Will at one point, “The facts… just get in the way.”

As the case makes its laborious way to Kings County Supreme Court (the “Brooklyn Supreme” of the title), the case, predictably enough, becomes a media circus, with all the usual suspects (The cops! The prosecutors! The defense! The press! The right! The left! The protestors! The rioters waiting in the wings!) all screaming for justice—or at least crying for attention. Anger, justification, ass covering, and self-protection (all wrapped up in various degrees of self-righteousness). Everyone, it seems, has their reasons and hashtags. The truth of what actually happened? Meh.

The hardest truths, however, may involve Will himself, the damaged center that cannot hold. As events turn and turn around him and the case spills across the city, seeping into the various nooks and crannies of everyone involved, so does Will’s troubled past: his troubled relationships with his father, his ex and his current girlfriend, as well as his troubled teenage romance with the daughter of a prominent judge, and his less-than-illustrious police career.

Is any of it relevant?

As Will, the hard-bitten but battle-weary narrator of this smoldering report from the trenches, confesses, “I wondered now if it mattered. I always believed rolling in the dog shit of the world had made me wiser in compensation, but possibly all it did was make me stink.”

Maybe, but this one’s smelling like a winner.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 15:44:04
The Dark Hours
Hank Wagner

Although it’s billed as a “Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch Novel,” The Dark Hours’ primary focus is on Detective Renée Ballard, as she continues to work the night shift, conducting herself as she sees fit, rather than in accordance with her colleagues’ concept of the job. In this, the fourth entry in the series, Ballard runs up against the so-called Midnight Men, a pair of rapists who brazenly prey on single women, striking with alarming regularity. Simultaneously, she’s investigating a seemingly accidental death that takes place on New Year’s Eve, 2020. There, a bystander is killed as citizens fire their guns in the air to celebrate the holiday. At first glance, it seems as if the victim has died due to stupidity, but Ballard soon learns that he was murdered, and the gun is linked to an unsolved killing investigated previously by her mentor, the retired, but far from idle, Harry Bosch.

The Dark Hours has everything you’ve come to expect from the prolific Michael Connelly, who continues to chronicle an LAPD where infighting and internal politics sometimes seem to take precedence over crime fighting. The hard charging Ballard follows in Bosch’s footsteps, doggedly investigating cases that get under her skin, infrequently enjoying a moment of respite while surfing, or hanging with her rescue dog, much as Bosch disconnects by listening to Art Pepper. The thrill of these books is watching them mete out justice, both legally and often extra-legally, while overcoming professional and self-imposed (inflicted?) emotional hurdles.

This book also benefits by being set in the present day, chronicling an increasingly demoralized LAPD, confronted with the collateral damage caused by the ongoing COVID epidemic, and calls from a testy public to “defund” them. Watching Ballard (and Bosch, although he is more of a supporting character here) maneuver through this increasingly treacherous terrain is a welcome pleasure for this long time Connelly fan. It’s hard to fathom that it’s been nearly 30 years since the 1992 debut of The Black Echo; it’s been a true privilege to watch both Connelly and his creations evolve and prosper.

Teri Duerr
2022-01-26 15:50:08