Author

Henrietta Thornton

Review

Wednesdays at One

by Henrietta Thornton

This unexpected and brilliant work examines the work of life: self love, self forgiveness, and the need to have others see us as we really are. Cambridge, MA psychologist Dr. Gregory Weber’s life is chugging along, grumpy teenager daughter notwithstanding, despite Gregory living every day with a horrible mistake he made when he was 17, something he’s told nobody about and that stops every relationship from being whole. All is turned upside down when a patient who claims he asked her to start therapy shows up, a woman he could swear he never encountered before. In no time, he’s deeply in love this intriguing woman and desperate to see every Wednesday at 1:00, even though from the beginning she takes his seat at each session and insists that he’s in the patient role. What happens over time, with old and new secrets increasingly working their way toward the surface, threatens to destroy Gregory’s life as he knows it. The ending here, which includes a startling twist, is both satisfying and teaches readers profound lessons about the nature of what we owe others and ourselves. A must read.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Dead Man’s Wake

by Henrietta Thornton

Both fans and newcomers to the series can sink deep into the pages of Doiron’s latest Mike Bowditch adventure, which sees the Maine game warden’s family vacation upended by what at first appears to be a boating accident. A man’s arm is found floating in the lake, clearly torn off by a boat propeller. Finding the related body opens a new scenario that Mike, local police, and the local forensic examiner puzzle to solve while also navigating the behavior of the rich. They live on the lake where the arm was found and aren’t keen on having their vacations interrupted. Law-enforcement politics are also to be maneuvered around, a tricky task when the lake constable wanted a game warden’s job but was considered too erratic. At the center of the maelstrom is the calm circle of Mike’s family, whose love and stability provide a stark contrast to the nail biting scenes facing the warden. Wilderness thrillers provide a great break from the real world—get this one on your list.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

A Shimmer of Red

by Henrietta Thornton

I eagerly await the books in the Odessa Jones series, and the latest offering is better than ever. Odessa (Dessa) is a realtor/caterer in suburban New Jersey. Life is going well—housing sales are way up—until one of her realtor colleagues, Anna Lee, is killed in a hit and run while out jogging. Could it have been murder? Dessa can’t help but become involved. She goes deep into her colleague’s life, uncovering a surprising past and a present in which Anna was being stalked. But why would anyone threaten this young woman? In a brilliant move on the author’s part, Dessa ends up discovering her connection to Anna, one that extends back decades to Dessa’s first fiancé, when she was barely in her twenties. Part of the delight of this series, which is set in a diverse community, is the recurring characters, from Dessa’s family-like colleagues to restaurateur Lennox Royal—a possible love interest?—to Aunt Phoenix. Dessa’s second sight—she sometimes has the ability to see aura-like glimmers over people, among other paranormal skills—is a gift she has along with her aunts. It’s introduced deftly in the book, and even skeptics will find the protagonist’s gift wholly credible–at least while they’re wrapped up in the plot. This is billed as a cozy—there is a cat and plenty of tea—but Wesley pushes a bit beyond the genre’s traditions. Dive in with this volume, but if you have the time, start with volume one, A Glimmer of Death. You won’t be disappointed.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

All the Sinners Bleed

by Henrietta Thornton

A school shooting in fictional Charon County, VA, reveals horror and catalyzes reckoning in S.A. Cosby’s eagerly awaited follow-up to Razorblade Tears. This is, unsurprisingly, a masterpiece of Southern noir, but that’s selling it short: it’s a fantastic novel, period. The first responders to the shooting are led by Sherriff Titus Crown, a Black man who won a contentious, racist battle for his seat and who now safeguards Klan members and kind neighbors alike. Titus is able for them all, alternating deep kindness with cutting, politically savvy one-liners that put racists in their place. (Appropriate, given his lack of fondness for “stand[ing] there like an extra in Gone with the Wind.”) But even he is thrown when the investigation into the school shooter—a Black man killed at the scene by white cops—uncovers a grisly secret. Join Titus and his meticulously drawn, flawed family, colleagues, and townsfolk for a deep introspection on how evil begets evil and good begets good. And watch for the gripping movie that’s sure to spring from Cosby’s pages.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Curse of Penryth Hall

by Henrietta Thornton

Devil-may-care heiress Ruby Vaughn has just sent the latest of her boss’s housekeepers running, with the woman on the way out muttering something about “a den of sin and vice.” Ruby does like to knock back a few drinks and scarcely cares about propriety, having planned, while a nurse during the Great War, to set up home with her fellow nurse and lover, Tamsyn. When that antiquarian-bookseller boss announces, “I’ve been thinking,” Ruby knows it doesn’t usually bode well, but this time there’s an upside. The trip he wants her to undertake, delivering mysterious books to a Ruan Kivell in Cornwall, brings her back in contact with Tamsyn, now Lady Chenoweth. Penryth Hall, Tamsyn’s miserable home with her abusive husband, only makes Ruby long all the more for the life she could have had with Tamsyn. When awful Lord Chenoweth is found dead, his body slashed as though by animals, the area’s depths of superstition and past misdeeds begin to reveal themselves, as do the powers of Ruan, the local Pellar, a powerful folk healer. Ruby refuses to believe in the curse that the locals say Chenoweth perished from, pursuing instead the help of the fledgling science of forensics to figure out what happened and restore Tamsyn’s happiness. This debut won the Mystery Writers of America/Minotaur First Crime Novel Competition, a well-deserved honor for a book whose gutsy main character and immersive world-building will remind readers of Margaret Dove in Evie Hawtrey’s And By Fire.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Don’t Forget the Girl

by Henrietta Thornton

First, there were three. Now only two women are left, estranged but still desperate to know what happened to their college friend Abby, who disappeared years ago. They might never know, as serial killer Jon Allan Blue, who killed other young women in the area around the same time, is about to be put to death. The two remaining friends can’t be more different. Bree is a college professor who’s having an affair with an underage student, which sets in relief the unending turmoil caused by Abby’s death. Chelsea is an Episcopal priest whose collar and steadfast demeanor hide an inner longing to break out of her marriage to a man who “looks like a photo of himself that [has] been left too long in the sun.” The two must interact again when a true-crime podcast covers Blue’s killings. The producer tries to convince Bree and Chelsea that their friend’s case deserves to be investigated, but with the show breathlessly feeding the media frenzy with comments like, “Friends don’t let friends get murdered” and Blue himself relishing the spotlight, participation seems counterproductive, not to mention tacky. While Abby’s fate is debated, we flash back to the three friend’s lives in the run up to her disappearance. This and the carefully posed exposé of podcast politics will leave readers looking differently at the spectacle that is the true-crime world, especially when it comes to women victims.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Urgent Matters

by Henrietta Thornton

“The only way to survive a whirlpool is to let yourself be dragged along by it,” realizes Evelyn, the confused daughter of an accused murderer. The murderer, Hugo Lamadrid, has been missing since a Buenos Aires train crash killed and maimed scores of passengers. Readers know that Hugo escaped the wreckage, where bodies are “piled up, jumbled together, crushed against the walls of the carriage, spilling out the window, dislocated, broken, busted.” But the police don’t know and have just been to his house about the murder. What the authorities do know is that Evelyn and her mother, Marta, suddenly and mysteriously got the urge to leave town after the police’s visit, and now the national media is fixed on the shrine they’ve set up at the home of Marta’s sister that begs the wounds “ofourlordjesuschrist” to help find poor, hapless Hugo alive on the train. A whirlpool indeed, in a book whose baroque abundance of language, strange observations, and even stranger ending are memorable and striking. For those who loved Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Rescue

by Henrietta Thornton

Parker, author of one of last year’s most memorable crime novels, A Thousand Steps, is back with something different, but with echoes of the best of that book. It opens with a gunfight between Tijuana, Mexico drug cartels that ends in human loss but, more importantly for this story, the shooting injury of a dog who’s rescued by a passing boy. Later, waiting for adoption in a shelter, the dog becomes the unexpected star of a viral video made by Bettina Blazak, a California journalist who can’t resist him; she names him Felix after the vet who saved the dog’s life and takes him home. Bettina quickly sees that this might not be the street mutt everyone thinks. He is used to being on a leash and understands commands in both Spanish and English. Enter the multiple characters who have seen the video and want Felix for themselves. The dog is a former drug and currency sniffer for the DEA, and lately his superior skills have been used by a drug gang to find and steal their rival gang’s wares, hence the opening shootout. They want him back, and another previous owner, the child who first discovered Felix’s superior ability to find anything by scent, has also seen the video and is sending Bettina heartbreaking emails. Who will win? It takes some violent scenes to find out, and along the way we’re treated to a look at the world of sniffer dogs—it’s fascinating!—and, even better, a look at love, loyalty, and resilience through canine eyes. Sounds odd? It is, but it’s also heartwarming with a side of fear and thrills.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Dirty Laundry

by Henrietta Thornton

An unnamed village in Cork, Ireland, is a social-media-fueled soap opera in Bose’s suspenseful debut. Ciara lives for her own camera, with her rich husband and three perfectly-dressed-at-all-times children supporting actors in an Instagram fiction. The mostly fawning comments from the neighbors include some from her Indian neighbor, Mishti, who left love in India for an arranged marriage to cold, miserly Parth. Her only joy is her daughter, Maya. Decidedly not fawning is neighbor Lauren, who inherited her home in the wealthy enclave that Ciara rules. Lauren doesn’t fit in and doesn’t care to. She carries a child in a sling almost constantly, while Ciara’s Instagram-approved parenting involves virtually no contact. Lauren’s house is dirty, her clothes are too, and her husband is the furthest man from Parth imaginable. The women’s sniping relationships with each other and their families build to a boiling point, one whose violent outcome is revealed near the beginning of the story in a scene that lingers mysteriously in the background as the drama festers. Mishti’s struggles are a highlight here, sad though they are, with Bose’s writing of a desperate character sadly reminiscent of Parini Shroff’s The Bandit Queen.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Without Saying Goodbye

by Henrietta Thornton

Cerys and Lily have fled their homes for very different reasons, but they end up in the same place, both emotionally and physically: at their wits’ end in a miserable Wales park, where together they embark on restarting their lives.

Lily might be the most terrified young mother Cerys has ever seen. She grew up in foster care and had only a drug-addicted mother as a role model before that. That doesn’t explain her terror, though, but Cerys sidesteps the whys—she has enough to deal with, having left her husband and grown children and attempted suicide the day before. The pair, along with Lily’s little boy, finds housing with a curmudgeonly old lady who threatens to shoot them if they steal anything, but becomes their refuge, and slowly build a new family.

All isn’t rosy though, and readers will remain in suspense, always waiting for the danger that Lily ran from—a verbally and physically abusive husband—to reappear. Jarratt maintains the tension throughout and does a superb job of portraying a victim who’s on the edge. If you enjoy a tale of triumph, along with perhaps throwing a book across the room when a character is that much of a bastard, this one’s for you.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail