Author

Brian Kenney

Review

48 Hours to Kill

by Brian Kenney

A gripping thriller that is begging to be made into a motion picture. Ethan Lockhart, serving time in a Nevada jail for armed robbery, is released on a 48 hour furlough to attend the funeral of his younger sister, Abby. Ethan is devastated—he and Abby were super tight—but he’s also suspicious: his sister Abby was clearly assaulted in her home, but her body was never found. Ethan suspects Shark, his former boss, a one-time minor loan shark who’s now a major Reno crime boss. Ethan teams up with Abby’s best friend, Whitney—sparks fly!—and they descend into the criminal underground he had hoped to have left behind. The plot never wavers, and the few subplots all add to the story. Bourelle really cranks up the pace—the book just flies—and each chapter is ingeniously named after how many hours are left before Ethan needs to turn himself in. Netflix, please get on this!

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Review

The Village

by Brian Kenney

Every few weeks I get a hankering to visit the scariest place on earth: A British country village. And this standalone from Caroline Mitchell—the author of several series, including DI Amy Winters—more than does the trick. Naomi, a London journalist, is making the move to the rural village of Nighbrook along with her new husband, Ed, a filmmaker; and Ed’s daughter Morgan, the teenager from hell. Except Naomi has a secret. She’s long been obsessed with the story of the infamous Harper family, the members of which mysteriously disappeared from their Nighbrook cottage a decade ago, leaving the TV on, the stove ready for a batch of cookies, and no sign of a struggle. Now, not only is Naomi moving her family to Nighbrook but she’s bought Ivy Cottage, the Harper family’s old home, which has been empty this past decade. No one in her family knows its background, but what, after all, can go wrong? Let’s start with the villagers, who could teach a master class in glaring and whispering, and are united in withholding all information. Add to this the police who are in cahoots with the villagers, creeps from the Internet, a dangerous snowstorm, and so much more. Naomi will be lucky if she can get her family out alive, while readers will be happy to read this book in one, terrified, sitting.

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Review

Nine Lives

by Brian Kenney

Nine people receive an envelope in the mail that contains one piece of paper, a list, with just nine names on it, including their own. They don’t know each other, live all over the country, and, superficially at least, have nothing in common. The group includes a musician, an aspiring actor, an oncology nurse, and an FBI agent. Most pay the letter scant attention—a chance occurrence, perhaps?—and toss it aside. Then, one by one, they are murdered, often in the most extraordinary of ways. This sort of over-the-top plotting can seem completely unrealistic or completely suck you in, and in Swanson’s talented hands, it’s the latter. The author alternates the chapters among the potential victims, but does so with such deftness we never lose track of who’s who. And despite the many characters and locales, this book doesn’t have an ounce of fat on it—every fact and every detail adds to the story, propelling it forward. Unlike many suspense novels that slam into the conclusion, we discover our murderer gradually and the poignant back story emerges slowly. For fans of Jo Nesbø and Tess Gerritsen.

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Review

Catch Her When She Falls

by Brian Kenney

After college and a stint in Chicago, Micah Wilkes returns to her hometown of Calvary, PA. She ends up settling down with Ryan, a former high-school classmate, and opens Stomping Grounds, a coffee shop. All is well, except Micah can’t quite get past the murder of Emily, her best friend back in high school, especially since the murderer was Alex, Micah’s boyfriend, who’s now in jail. Then Micah receives a threatening text—“It should have been you, not Emily”—which propels her into the past, and slowly her well-constructed world starts to crack. She gets drawn into true-crime blogs and forums that rehash the murder and speculate about Micah’s motives. Her house is broken into, and remnants of Emily’s diary are left behind. Ryan, it turns out, has been in touch with Alex this whole time, visiting him in jail. No matter which way she turns, something or someone pops up, forcing her to question the night Emily was murdered, her own role in the crime, and who could have murdered her friend. In the end, Micah—totally unhinged—heads off to confront the one person who can help her understand that night ten years ago. A real slow burn, this book will please readers who appreciate deep character development, little violence, and plenty of suspense.

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Review

Front Page Murder

by Brian Kenney

Yes, another cover featuring a woman in a period outfit with her back turned towards us—except this time the book is a rollicking good mystery. It’s World War II, the U.S. has just entered the war, and Irene Ingram’s fiancé and father have both enlisted, leaving Irene to step into her father’s shoes as editor-in-chief of the Progress Herald, the local paper. Young—she’s in her early twenties—and female, Irene has to continually prove herself, whether it’s to her mother who doesn’t believe women belong in the workforce or to the newspaper staff who bridle under a woman’s leadership. When her star reporter, Moe Bauer, is discovered dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs, Irene has more pressing matters to attend to than the grousing among her staff, all the more so when she figures out that Moe was likely murdered. Then Sam Markowicz, owner of the local hardware store, becomes the victim of anti-Semitic harassment, and another man, also Jewish, is attacked in a local factory. Irene puts aside features about victory gardens and the like and dives into a criminal investigation. The setting—small time life during World War II—is a brilliant choice, and the language and references are pitch perfect. Fans of Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs, Rhys Bowen’s Molly Murphy, and Mariah Frederick’s Jane Prescott will enjoy meeting Irene Ingram.

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Review

The Harbor

by Brian Kenney

When 15-year-old Oscar Dreyer-Hoff goes missing on his way home from school, the Copenhagen police assume he’s yet another teenager who’s run off and is likely at a friend’s house. But his well-connected, affluent family thinks otherwise. They’re art dealers with a somewhat shady past and a history of receiving threats. In fact, they receive an ambiguous message the day after young Dreyer-Hoff disappears. Time to bring in detectives Jeppe Kørner and Anette Werner, who pursue Oscar’s disappearance as though it were a kidnapping. Kørner and Werner encounter a wonderful range of characters—from pouty, insolent teens to engineers in a recycling plant and the caretaker of an island in the harbor—and we learn about Copenhagen in the process. Engberg is a genius at balance, going deep into the lives of Kørner and Werner, as well as some of the suspects, while never forgetting that this is a murder mystery, and the clock is ticking. The third in a series that just keeps getting better, this book also succeeds as a standalone. For wherever Nordic noir is appreciated.

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Review

The Houseboat

by Brian Kenney

A lyrical, moody crime novel—there’s no mystery and just a smidgen of suspense—set in small-town Oscar, Iowa in 1960, a town “as plain as a white wall.” When a young couple, spending the night on the banks of the Mississippi River, are attacked—and the young man is murdered—local sheriff Amos Fielding knows he needs help, so he calls for regional backup. He’s rewarded with Edward Ness from Minnesota, a stylish detective who hasn’t put down the bottle since his wife and young son were murdered seven years earlier. We follow Ness as he discovers and flirts his way through Oscar. But soon enough the narrative turns to Rigby Sellers, a terrifying, angry recluse—with coke-bottle glasses and a “jutting brow and a bent nose, a patchy beard and an incomplete set of long jaundiced teeth”—who lives on a decrepit houseboat moored on the river. Still not convinced of Sellers’s creepiness? His lovers are mannequins that he dresses and paints for their date nights. Days go by without a confirmed suspect but with plenty of rain, and a long-standing drought gives way to a swollen Mississippi that rips through the town, upending it. When more bodies are found, the townspeople are, literally, up in arms, and Sellers is directly in their cross-hairs. Hard to put down and even harder to forget, The Houseboat is a poignant rendering of a place and time.

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Review

A Flicker in the Dark

by Brian Kenney

A brilliant debut, as well written as it is well-conceived. No one should have 12-year-old Chloe Davis’s childhood. In the course of one summer in her small Louisiana town, six teen girls go missing. As terrifying as that is, it gets worse: the murderer, it turns out, is her father, who is promptly tried and sent to prison. Two decades later, Chloe is an adolescent psychologist in Baton Rouge, living with Daniel, her handsome and loving fiancé. The horror of the past seems to be behind her, happiness is in her grasp, when a teen girl goes missing. And then another. These are no random killings. They bear an uncanny resemblance to the murders of 20 years ago, and it turns out that both girls have a connection to Chloe—in fact, one is her patient. Willingham’s genius is the ability to keep so many balls in the air. From Chloe’s intense relationships with Daniel, her brother Cooper, her institutionalized Mom, a New York Times reporter, to ricocheting between the past and the present yet still keeping the narrative moving briskly ahead, this book is so much more than your typical serial-killer novel. Fans of Karin Slaughter, Harlan Coben and Gillian Flynn will love this novel, which has been optioned by actress Emma Stone for a limited series.

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Review

A Deadly Bone to Pick

by Brian Kenney

Live in Massachusetts and need to reinvent your life? Move to a small seaside town on the California coast. Molly Madison, ex-cop, former PI, and dog wrangler, does just that, wanting to put behind her the murder of her husband, for which she was never fully exonerated. Fortunately, Pier Point is a welcoming community that is perfect for Molly; her golden retriever, Harlow; and Noodle, a neighbor’s enormous, slobbering Saint Berdoodle that Molly semi-adopts. On a morning beach walk, Noodle digs up a woman’s hand, setting in motion a search for the victim and the murderer that again has Molly on the police’s radar. Rothschild has created the first in what could be a wonderful series. Molly is quirky and totally believable. The community is engaging. And Harlow and Noodle, rooted in real-dog behavior, make great co-stars who lend a great deal to the story. I’m hooked.

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Review

The Stalker

by Brian Kenney

nitially, this novel seems weighed down by clichés: the weak, timid wife; the macho, type-A husband; the island rumored to be haunted. But keep going and you will be rewarded with a top-rate thriller which is nothing as it seems. Liam and Laura chose to spend their honeymoon on a remote Scottish island, empty except for the two of them. Their lovely cottage is stuffed with a week’s worth of fine foods and wine, and all they plan to do is explore the island’s ancient burial sites and ruined castle. Until things start to get weird—is someone in the bushes watching them?—and they wake to find a message scratched into the window. Clearly they aren’t alone, and their one way of contact with the mainland, a satellite phone, is missing its charger. Then the electricity goes out. From there, it’s clear that their stalker isn’t playing trick or treat, he’s out to murder them. You would expect this book to end with a face-off between the newlyweds and the villain, but a 180-degree twist ends up rewriting the whole book, leaving readers absolutely stunned.

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