Author

Henrietta Thornton

Review

Secrets of Our House

by Henrietta Thornton

This is one of those books that makes you want to befriend the characters, or at least get annual updates on how it’s all going. It’s a family story with two couples as focal points: Desiree (Desi) and Peter, whose marriage seems to be ending, due in part to a mysterious past event; and their daughter Jules and her boyfriend Will, crazy-in-love teenagers. While the young couple’s romance is just starting, it also seems doomed, as Jules is a rich, summertime-only visitor to Will’s rural North Carolina town and is leaving soon for college while less-well-off Will stays put. Both relationships are tested by tragedies and bring each character’s most extreme emotions to the forefront, feelings that are poignantly described by Frey (Until I Find You, 2020). Desi is a particular highlight, with her flawed parenting lending a rawness and realness to the book; the strain induced by tragedy brings her to drop a bombshell revelation that shocks family and readers alike. After this, you may feel like no other characters can measure up and head straight to the TV; once that has passed, try a book I’ve recommended in First Clue before, but I’m doing it again! Paullina Simons’s The Girl in Times Square; those characters almost ruined me for other books.

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Review

A Thousand Steps

by Henrietta Thornton

Matt Anthony, a high-schooler in 1960s San Francisco, has the weight of the world on his skinny shoulders. His conservative father abandoned the family and writes only to rail about the “queers and communists” who have taken over the city. Matt supports his family with a punishing paper route while living off fish he catches and foraging restaurant leftovers, all because his mother claims to have a curiously long-lasting flu but is actually using their grocery and rent money on drugs. Worst of all, right after Matt sees a teen girl’s body washed up on the beach, his sister Jasmine goes missing. Matt’s mother doesn’t take Jasmine’s disappearance seriously for days and the police are little help, leaving Matt to investigate the seedy human infrastructure of the city’s drug scene, which wears a veneer of peace and love but underneath is cut-throat capitalist. Matt’s story is akin to an ancient epic that sees the hero tested and battered (his lengthy skirmish with a giant fish—two week’s worth of food for a hungry boy—is terrifying). But ultimately he triumphs as he fights for what’s right. The prolific Parker has 27 other novels to back this up, most recently Then She Vanished (2020); readers who like a modern epic should turn to Michael Hughes’s Country, a version of The Iliad set in present-day Northern Ireland.

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Review

Just Thieves

by Henrietta Thornton

Frank’s day job is as a thief, but he believes himself a philosopher at heart, and uses his constant learning and contemplation to justify his ways. Ownership isn’t real anyway, he tells his partner, Rick, during their long stakeouts. There are hints that the two are a couple, but love or any kind of emotion seems beyond Rick, whose ennui and lack of agency sees him take on a life of crime because, whatever, it’s all the same. Mr. Froehmer, a crime boss who will remind readers of Breaking Bad’s Mr. Fring—aloof, sparing of details—assigns the partners seemingly meaningless things to steal, and they’re off on a trajectory that eventually sees Rick forced to take hold of the reins when his mentor can no longer make their decisions. Readers will love to hate Denise, Rick’s shifty ex, and will cheer Rick as an unlikely hero when he shakes off the blahs and takes charge of what matters. Fans of dialog-rich novels are the audience for this thoughtful noir from Galloway (Careful and Other Stories; The 39 Deaths of Adam Strand).

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Review

Wish You Were Gone

by Henrietta Thornton

Nancy Thayer meets Liane Moriarty in this mystery starring Emma, Gray, and Lizzie, three friends who must pick up the pieces when one is tragically widowed. Well….two friends and a frenemy. And OK, it’s not that tragic either, as the dead husband is an abuser who dies when he drunk-accelerates into his own garage wall. In fact, nothing is as it seemed when Emma’s now-dead husband, James, was making megabucks with Gray’s husband at their sports-star PR firm. After James meets his boozy end, the sports world and the family’s Hamptons-in-Jersey town is shocked, and so are Emma and her children. But as the days pass, the fear and shock recede, only to reveal mysteries that Emma can’t ignore. The stronger-than-she-knew mother starts by following a clue that the crash may not have been an accident; investigating, she finds out more about her husband and his sordid life, but mostly allows Scott (the True Love and Non-Blond Cheerleader series; and writing as Kate Brian, the Shadowlands trilogy) to reveal that life after toxic secrets is always better. Come for the friendship story, stay for the startling twists.

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Review

A Valiant Deceit

by Henrietta Thornton

There’s no shortage of WWII novels, but this second in a duology is happily in the less-crowded subgenre of the women behind the scenes. It stars Olive Bright, a kind, loyal, and sometimes-brash young woman who keeps even family in the dark about her work. Pre-war, she inherited her father’s loft of racing pigeons, and now lends them to the war effort as carriers. They’re brought from England to mainland Europe by government agents, then fly home bearing maps and letters that Olive and her gruff supervisor, the dashingly named Jameson Aldridge, hope will help beat the Nazis. Olive’s avian work isn’t the only deceit here; as cover for her job at the Bletchley Park-like Brickendonbury Manor, she and Jamie pretend to be in a relationship, but she hopes for more between them (as will readers). The mystery here concerns a body found in nearby woods, but the worldbuilding, characters, and details of espionage-assisting pigeons make the tale. Graves’s afterword discusses the real Operation Columba, which saw the allies drop thousands of pigeons from Denmark to France from 1941 to ‘44. Readers can go back to the first book in the series, Olive Bright, Pigeoneer; also try Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code, which features women codebreakers at Bletchley Park

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Review

Her Perfect Life

by Henrietta Thornton

Lily Atwood has the titular perfect life. She’s an Emmy-winning journalist, the kind who wants to be hard-hitting but mostly presents human-interest stories from the comfort of a studio. Every evening, Lily gets to return to her designer Boston home to spend time with her daughter, Rowen, the center of her single-mom existence. Some of Lily’s stories, the juicer ones, are fed to the journalist and her behind-the-scenes right-hand, Greer, by a man calling himself Mr. Smith. They’re sure it’s a pseudonym, but are content to idly wonder about Smith’s identity and motives as long as the tips keep coming. Then he starts getting sinister—at least, Lily thinks it’s Smith who’s behind anonymous flower deliveries to her home, though she’s never given him her address. He also seems overly familiar with events at her daughter’s school. Lily is afraid that he may reveal private details that could finish her career, but she soon has far more to fear. An author’s note reveals that Ryan wrote this during COVID, and the feeling of being trapped and at the same time wanting to hide away permeates the novel. The surprises keep coming, and the tightly woven storytelling closes with a deft, satisfying twist. Fans of the author should add this to their library hold lists as it’s not going to sit on shelves. While waiting, they can try Belinda Bauer’s The Beautiful Dead, which also features a journalist in peril.

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Review

My Annihilation

by Henrietta Thornton

Remember the reactions to Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life? People either loved it or flung it across the room. This promises to provoke similar adoration/ire (I’m in the former camp). As Nakamura’s strange book opens, his unnamed protagonist is alone in a Japanese mountain lodge. He begins reading a manuscript that’s been left there. It’s by Ryodai Kozuka, a man whom the narrator believes he will take the place of; he hopes to use the manuscript as a manual for living as its author. Ryodai tells of becoming obsessed with pushing his sister off a cliff, an obsession that can only be cured by completing the deed. Next is his in-depth description of the psychology of real-life Japanese serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki. Abrupt, dreamlike shifts in the author’s location and persona continue, and he is next a psychologist who attempts to hypnotize a patient into forgetting past abuse and tolerating new trauma at his hands, leading to a detached account of destroying others in her life (suicide is described). Cruel ideas are intellectual exercises for this man, with his crimes adding up to a thought-provoking picture, in Nakamura’s words, of “what it means to be human and what it means to exist in the world.” Some true crime set in Japan might be the thing after this: try Richard Lloyd Parry’s People Who Eat Darkness or Haruki Murakami’s Underground.

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Review

The Secret in the Wall

by Henrietta Thornton

Many of us grew up on a strict diet of Nancy Drew. For nostalgia in the same vein but grittier, try 12-year-old sleuth Antonia Grizzi, who’s been raised on Gilded Age San Francisco’s streets, and it shows. She’s now the “ward” of Inez Stannart, a single woman who wants to remain so. The two are perfectly matched as companions, but Antonia can’t bring herself to trust Inez, or anyone, completely. When demolition in a building Inez has bought reveals a dead man and a cache of gold coins, she and Antonia each determine to solve the mystery of who he is and what happened—solo. By playing in the house, the little girl gets deep into its secrets, while her guardian looks further afield, including in the investigation a handsome local who just might make her abandon the going-it-alone plan. Exciting switches in perspective quickly advance the plot while accessible but atmospheric dialog and cultural touchpoints impart a vivid sense of the time. Readers will want more from Parker; also try Erin Lindsey’s Rose Gallagher Mystery series.

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Review

The Other Me

by Henrietta Thornton

When struggling artist Kelly enters an art gallery bathroom on her birthday, she turns into a different version of herself. In this life she’s no longer single, but is married to Eric, who is waiting outside for her. Her tattoos have vanished, and she never went to art school. Bewildered as to which existence is real, she plays along. Memories from this life’s past suddenly appear, along with a returning, comfortable attraction toward Eric, who, in the other life, she turned down when he asked her out in high school. Over time, odd moments tell Kelly that the new life might be no more stable than the old—her tattoos flash back onto her skin at times, for example—and she discovers that some in her new life might know what’s going on. A stellar choice for book groups and classes on ethics, this debut brings up a wealth of questions about possibilities other than the linear progression of life that we take for granted, and about the wisdom of trying to start over. Kelly and Eric’s insta-relationship is a mind-bender of its own, the does-he-know and does-he-know-that-I-knows perhaps reminding readers of the mysteries in any partnership. Sure to be a hot title this fall.

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Review

The Warriors

by Henrietta Thornton

Defense lawyer Raquel Rematti, whose arguments are used as law school how-tos, has met the first client she truly hates, Angela Baldesteri, a former First Lady and current senator. Angela might be lying on the stand in her trial on fraud and tax evasion charges and seems determined to alienate the judge. Raquel is torn. She could lose her license if she fails to rein in Angela’s behavior, but it’s hard to find a more high-profile client. Meanwhile, outside forces frighten her into staying: she’s followed in the street by men who claim to be FBI but aren’t; a former drug-dealing client targets a member of the jury and even the lawyer’s loved ones; and the body count starts to climb. Batista (Manhattan Lockdown) skillfully intertwines psychological and legal drama here, with the protagonist struggling to best an adversarial client while fighting against those who will do anything to keep the senator in the upcoming presidential race. The cutthroat politics and shadowy money behind super PACs also feature heavily. Trial lawyer Batista’s fast-paced read is a must for fans of John Grisham and Scott Turow.

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