Author

Henrietta Thornton

Review

Malibu Burning

by Henrietta Thornton

You’ll find it hard not to root for both sides in two-time Edgar winner Goldberg’s latest, which pits arson investigators against a Robin Hood-like ex-con who sets a wildfire to consume what his enemies hold most dear: their possessions. The investigators are Walter Sharpe, a veteran of California fires who’s nicknamed Sharpei for his don’t-care physique and his newbie partner, Andrew Walker, who’s eight-months-pregnant wife begged him to take this job so that he will get home for dinner every night. But things get, ahem, hotter than the duo plans when con-man Danny Cole is released from his time in prison, which he spent as a firefighter, with years of nothing but planning under his belt. While this is a series debut, the fire depicted is the same one that featured in the author’s Lost Hills; fans of that book should know that this one looks at the inferno from a different perspective and involves a different crime story. Both fans and newcomers to Goldberg’s work will enjoy the fast-moving, at times terrifying, tale and its close look at firefighting and arson-investigation techniques. A bonus is the companion buddy story featuring likable new police-procedural partners and their unusual focus

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Review

This is How We End Things

by Henrietta Thornton

A toxic workplace implodes as Jacobs (Always the First to Die) puts deception and its fallout under the microscope. The workplace, which darkly echoes the setting of the recent Netflix series The Chair, is North Carolina’s Dorrance University, but more specifically a six-person project within its psychology department. A professor and five graduate students, who embody the worst of what happens when coworkers see one another as family, are conducting an odd experiment. They fool students into thinking they are missing credits and must participate in an (unknown to them, mock) psychology study to graduate. The real purpose of the interaction is to gauge how willing students will be to lie when under pressure. That deception is just the beginning of the lies and manipulations that emerge in this story after one of the too tightly knit group is murdered, with further violence not far behind. Jacobs succeeds wonderfully in portraying a hothouse-type atmosphere in which everyone’s a suspect and the suspicions are just the latest inspiration for backbiting, accusations, and pettiness. Readers won’t see the ending coming and will relish the red herrings and twists along the way.

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Review

Blood Betrayal

by Henrietta Thornton

Khan’s latest features extremes: fast moments of violence and the long years of condemnation and recriminations that follow, and found families—good and evil—in contrast with those we’re born into. Blackwater Falls, CO, Community Response Officer Inaya Rahman is facing a ghost from her Chicago PD past: John Broda, an officer who badly beat her. Now he wants a favor. Broda’s son, another officer, is accused of shooting an innocent young man, and Broda knows that Inaya is both smart and caring enough to find out the truth. In return, he’ll give her a recording she’s long wanted of another officer implicating himself in a racist crime. It’s not Rahman’s case, and she clashes with her boss, Qas Seif. Inaya and Qas’s feelings for each other, and the family ties that are a highlight here, only complicate matters. Further difficulties are added by a parallel crime, this time one Inaya is officially working on: a white officer who’s near retirement shoots a young Black man, and the community is seething. Khan excels in creating multifaceted characters whose engrossing stories bring up social questions to which there are no easy answers. As in the best crime fiction, the solution here is both satisfying and unexpected.

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Review

Veil of Doubt

by Henrietta Thornton

Terrible accusations against women who lack a man to give them standing are mainstays of history and literature, and Virts’s spellbinding work brings to mind related tales by Anita Shreve, Margaret Atwood, and, of course, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Emily Lloyd is a widow and childless since her children have died; the last one, Maud, was the final straw for her Reconstruction-era Virginia neighbors. She’s now accused of killing little Maud, Annie, George, and Henry, as well as her husband and aunt. What transpires is a medical and legal drama, based on a true story, that pits affable lawyer Powell Harrison against a prosecutor and a town that hates his client. It doesn’t help that Lloyd’s uncle was an outspoken abolitionist, nor that she lives next door to two mysterious sisters, one of whom is known to take gentlemen callers. But Powell just might be able to free Emily using his wiles and openness to scientific methods of finding the truth, both of which contribute greatly to creating an excellent read.

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Review

Rabbit Hole

by Henrietta Thornton

Theodora, or Teddy, Angstrom’s father, died by suicide at the 10-year anniversary of her older sister, Angie’s, disappearance as a teenager. Her mother is now to be found lying on the floor with her ancient dog, “Two commas facing one another, small nothing between them.” It’s up to Teddy to make arrangements, exhausted though she is with her teaching job on top of this unwanted task. While doing so, she discovers that her father was on a relentless quest to find Angie, and his failure seems to have been the last straw. Learning that Angie’s disappearance is a hot topic on the message-board site Reddit, where Teddy also finds details about another young woman who disappeared and was found to have run away from her abusive family, sparks curiosity in Teddy. It soon turns to obsession as the amateur sleuth meets a strange, needy young woman who was helping Teddy’s father with his detective work and starts getting messages from a stranger who might know more about Angie’s fate, if she can only find him. As the twisting tale unwinds, unsavory details about fans of true crime, and of message boards where vicious and glib voyeurs can anonymously post intimate questions and tacky rumors about crime victims, will open readers’ eyes to survivors’ reality. A gritty, realistically ambivalent look at how insiders and outsiders experience crime, with a realistic main character to boot.

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Review

Sing Her Down

by Henrietta Thornton

“Kill someone and she becomes part of you…Take her life and where do you put it?” Trying to rid yourself of your victim’s voice is “A rubber band you can never snap.” The women doing time in an Arizona prison in Pochoda’s latest, including our downtrodden hero, Florida, are firmly stuck, mentally and physically. Until COVID hits and some are released to allow for social distancing. Florida was due for release soon anyway, and the early liberty doesn’t seem much like a gift when she’s stuck in Arizona with no way to get home to Los Angeles. Life’s been cruel to Florida (real name: Florence, but prison nicknames stick), and the first setback—the Department of Corrections forgetting to feed her when she’s enduring quarantine in a dead-end motel—sets her on the road, fleeing parole restrictions. On the bus to freedom, she runs into her nemesis Dios, another former inmate, and the Orange is the New Black comparisons start to stack up, with former rich-kid Florida taking Piper’s role and Dios Red’s. But this transporting tale is much more a coming-of-age saga than an OITNB spinoff. With Officer Lobos—Florida’s doppelganger in haplessness and hard luck—on her tail, can Florida outgrow her prison persona and find freedom?

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Review

The New Mother

by Henrietta Thornton

Having a new baby is hard for anyone, but for lawyer Natalie the daily grind of keeping up with baby Oliver while her husband goes to work seems like both thankless drudgery and the most important job in the world, one at which she’s failing miserably. All Oliver wants to do is nurse, leaving Natalie little time to sleep, and when she does collapse into bed, she lies awake fretting about her failures. So when Paul, a kindly neighbor and a stay-at-home dad, slowly gains her trust and seems to be the only one who understands—Oliver even likes him!—Natalie is quickly drawn into his care. Erin, his wife, a stern, perfect woman whom he has come to loathe, is not a fan of Natalie. The young woman’s presence, and her growing relationship with Paul, brings back painful, humiliating memories for Erin, including his transgression with the woman who lived in Natalie’s house before, whose family, readers learn, moved in an odd hurry. The hormonal, messy, and puzzling time warp of the first months of life with a new baby are the perfect backdrop for a psychological thriller, and this one will keep parents especially rapt. While you wait for it, try Murphy’s The Favor, another absorbing domestic drama.

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Review

The Beautiful and the Wild

by Henrietta Thornton

Liv is imprisoned in a rusting shipping container in rural Alaska, her captor her ex-husband, whom she’s tracked down after he faked his death and ran from their marriage and disabled son. He’s now living with a new partner in a proto-cult based on the writings of a guru who espouses pleasure above all else and is happy to philosophize endlessly while harsh conditions threaten his family. Over time, as Liv gains entry to Mark’s house and to some of his more sordid secrets, she plots her escape, one that it seems impossible being phone- and car-less as she is. Townsend takes us on a tense ride through family and cult dynamics, along the way treating us to a memorable look at female and parental resilience; the up-close look at a narcissistic patriarch who’s setting himself up to fail is a bonus. For fans of wilderness thrillers such as Karen Dionne’s The Marsh King’s Daughter.

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Review

The Sight

by Henrietta Thornton

Faith Harrington’s mother is dying. It’s no surprise to Faith, who can see others’ deaths when she looks in their eyes, though she can only guess at the timing of the demise. This ability revealed itself when Faith was a child and she saw her brother’s drowning ahead of time, an event that left the members of her family’s circus thinking that the girl, like her grandmother who had even more such powers, was cursed. Since then, Faith’s been pushed to the periphery of her family’s traveling and performances. But when she enters the big tent and accidentally sees a performer collapse, and reassures his daughter that she’s seen his death and it’s when he looks much older, it’s the beginning of chaos and danger surrounding the strange talent. The question of whether fate can be changed will linger with readers after this thoughtful, atmospheric book that features a startling twist at the end. Remember Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus? This is for fans of that who are ready for something darker, as well as readers who like to learn about intriguing subcultures.

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Review

In the Dark I See You

by Henrietta Thornton

Neighbors, amirite? Audrey has some of the worst: Bob, who won’t stop dropping in unannounced, and, worse again, Sarah, a new mom who expects Audrey to babysit regularly for free. Adding to her stress is that the neighbors are going through a spate of frightening break-ins, with odd things of only sentimental value targeted by the thief. What only Audrey and readers know is that a different kind of crime might be going on, as Audrey, who is blind, uses her considerable hacking skills, and her hacker comrades, to spy on Sarah. Her activities become suspect when she finds Sarah murdered in her home and is hauled in for questioning as the last known person to visit the murdered woman. This is Narayanan’s debut thriller, and her background in short-story writing serves her well, as the scenes here are structured as neat packages that leave readers wanting more. The author herself is not blind, but used a consultant reader who is, and the protagonist’s disability is thankfully more a fact of her life than a plot device. Readers who enjoy tension and twists are the audience for this Alice LaPlante readalike.

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