Author

Willy Williams

Review

Make Me Famous

by Willy Williams

At age four, Cléo Louvent tells her father that she wants to be as famous as Céline Dion. The only child of Franco-American academics, she is determined to become a celebrated pop singer against all odds. Despite her father’s warning to be careful of what she wishes for, Cléo ruthlessly climbs the ladder to musical success. As the novel opens, she is 32 and a global superstar. (Think Taylor Swift.) Cléo is also exhausted from fighting to stay on “top of the pyramid,” and is taking her first real vacation (costing her a half-million dollars) alone on a remote South Pacific island away from prying eyes, cell phones, the paparazzi, and her team’s incessant requests. In her solitude, she reflects on the journey that brought her here. French author Ventura’s first novel, My Husband, depicts a wife’s unhealthy obsession with her spouse. Her second portrays the making of a fame monster. The narcissistic and sociopathic Cléo is an awful person, an unreliable narrator extraordinaire, but she is also fascinating and darkly funny in her observations of celebrity culture. (“You have to reach a certain level of fame before you are allowed to be rude.”) Her eventual comeuppance is chilling but oh-so-satisfying. An intense and compelling psychological study on the costs of fame and ambition.

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Review

The Understudy

by Willy Williams

It’s loathing at first sight when trained opera singer Kit (stage name Katerina) Margolis meets her understudy, the sexually alluring Yolanda Archambeau, on the first day of rehearsals for Barbarella, a new opera based on the 1968 film. Kit, struggling to prove she is right for the titular role, her first leading part, is taken aback when her director introduces Yolanda to the cast, something not done until later in the rehearsal process. “I felt a flash of irritation, uncharitable yet valid. She didn’t need to be there. She shouldn’t be there.” Kit’s unease rises when Yolanda yawns during Kit’s big aria and later confesses her operatic ambitions, despite her lack of training. Regarding underhanded scheming, Eve Harrington (of the film All About Eve) has nothing on the ruthless Yolanda, whose weapons against Kit include poisoned tea and dead rats. But before her plotting can escalate to a deadlier level, Yolanda is fatally stabbed in her apartment. Kit, who briefly falls under suspicion because of a violent incident in her past, turns sleuth to uncover her late rival’s dark secrets and identify her killer. Offering an entertaining look at the backstage world of New York City opera, Richter’s second novel (after The Divide) skillfully mixes the tropes of a psychological thriller with the conventions of an amateur sleuth mystery. Especially compelling is Kit’s growing self-confidence as a singer and a woman as she pursues the truth.

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Review

Dirty Little War: A Crime Novel

by Willy Williams

Taking a dive is not Huckabee Waller’s style, much to the displeasure of the gangsters taking bets on the bare-knuckle fights near Chicago’s stockyards. It’s 1920, and Prohibition is the law of the land. Huck, who hopped a boxcar heading north after killing a pimp in New Orleans, turns to earning a living in illegal boxing matches. Impressed by Huck’s pugilistic skills and his past as a Louisiana moonshine runner, Dean O’Banion, head of the notorious North Side Gang, recruits Huck into smuggling booze across the Canadian border. Huck also runs a sideline as security for John D. Hertz’s Yellow Cab Company, which is involved in a vicious and violent competition with Morris Markin’s Checker Taxi. Soon Huck is rolling in dough, but his new luxurious lifestyle comes at a cost. When his new wife, Karla, urges him to find more legitimate employment, hitman Gypsy Doyle reminds Huck that the only way out “is feet first and horizontal.” Winner of the 2022 Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence for Best Crime Novel (for Under an Outlaw Moon), Kalteis has written a tough, epic historical noir that covers the most tumultuous decade in Chicago’s mob history. The Zelig-like Huck encounters infamous mobsters of the era (O’Banion, Johnny Torrio, Vincent Drucci, Al Capone) and becomes tangentially involved in some of the most notorious killings (St. Valentine’s Day massacre). As the body count rises, Kalteis’s punchy, hard-boiled prose vividly captures the brutality behind the glitz of the Jazz Age. Fans of Max Allan Collins’s Nathan Heller historical mysteries and The Road to Perdition will enjoy this gritty novel.

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Review

The Wolf Tree

by Willy Williams

Eight months after a traumatic on-the-job accident almost killed her, George (Georgina) Lennox has been assigned her first case as a newly promoted Glasgow DI: to investigate the suicide of 18-year-old Alan Ferguson on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides. A disappointed George protests to her boss: “Because nothing happens out there. These islands are medieval time capsules with a population of relics.” Arriving on the stark and barren Eilean Eadar with her partner, Richie Stewart, she finds an isolated community that still clings to its ancient Catholic faith (in Protestant Scotland) and that is deeply suspicious of outsiders. As George and Richie interview the locals, George senses that something is off about the place and its people. Mysterious double spirals are engraved into the village houses and farm crofts. The long abandoned lighthouse where Alan fell is also the site where three lighthouse keepers disappeared mysteriously a century ago. Late at night, George hears the howling of a wolf and spots a masked figure outside her window. Who is trying to thwart the investigation? At the same time, George and Richie clash over the DI’s use of prescription pain medication and her reckless tendency to charge into risky situations without backup. George is a compelling sleuth, tough yet also vulnerable and not always likable, but she has great chemistry with the fatherly Richie. Debut author McCluskey has written a compellingly spooky and creepy mystery with a hint of folk horror à la The Wicker Man. Fans of Ann Cleeves’s Shetland crime novels and Peter May’s Lewis Trilogy will delight in this atmospheric thriller.

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Review

The Girl from Greenwich Street: A Novel of Hamilton, Burr, and America’s First Murder Trial

by Willy Williams

On the chilly evening of December 22, 1799, a young woman named Elma Sands, wearing her best calico dress, slipped out of her Quaker cousin’s boarding house on Greenwich Street, ostensibly to elope with her lover (as she told her cousin, Hope). Eleven days later, Elma’s body was found floating in the Manhattan Well, and Elma’s family accused Levi Weeks, a young carpenter and a fellow boarder, of killing her. The subsequent trial, which featured the powerhouse defense team of political rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, became the first sensationalized murder trial in American history; it was also the first U.S. trial for which there is a recorded transcript. Willig (The Pink Carnation series) draws on this transcript to bring the historical personalities involved brilliantly to life in all their human complexity. Especially fascinating are her depictions of Hamilton and Burr and their contrasting legal strategies. The impulsive, idealistic Hamilton wants to identify the true killer; the Machiavellian Burr is only interested in exonerating his client (even if he might be guilty). In her closely observed details, Willig also vividly recreates a growing New York City in a newly independent America. With an epilogue that reveals what happened to the principal characters after the trial and a historical note that details the author’s research, this compelling novel will appeal to true crime fans, aficionados of legal thrillers, and readers of historical mysteries. [Fun fact: The notorious Manhattan Well, which is an actual well, still exists at 129 Spring Street in lower Manhattan.]

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Review

The Forger’s Requiem

by Willy Williams

Literary forger Henry Slader unexpectedly finds himself in an Edgar Allan Poe story when he, concussed and bruised, awakens in a shallow grave. Shakily digging himself out, Slader gradually remembers that Will, his old rival, and his daughter, Nicole, assaulted him with a shovel after a deal involving the forgery of a rare Poe book went bad. Determined to avenge himself on Will (20 years of bad blood between the two men includes a violent attack that landed Slader in prison) and needing to raise cash, Slader blackmails Nicole, a budding artist and a talented forger, threatening to expose her father’s role in the unsolved murder of her uncle. After forging inscriptions by such authors as Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, Nicole is tasked with creating a cache of letters by Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, a valuable trove that will enable Slader to retire permanently from the forgery business. But even the best-laid plans can go astray. A shocking climax at Mary Shelley’s grave in Bournemouth, England, leads a stunned Nicole to wonder what “drives people to such lunacy.” Toggling between Slader’s third-person perspective and Nicole’s first-person narrative, Morrow offers fascinating insights into the literary forger’s art. Although this is the concluding volume to the author’s trilogy (The Forgers, The Forger’s Daughter), it can be read as a dark, twisty standalone thanks to plenty of backstory.

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Review

Gabriel’s Moon

by Willy Williams

In his 2013 James Bond novel, Solo, Boyd sent the iconic secret agent to 1969 Nigeria. While the protagonist of his new book shares Bond’s love of good liquor and beautiful women, he is a reluctant spy, and the author here is interested in exploring the morally murky world of Cold War espionage, double dealings, political murders, and defections. It is August 1960, and British travel writer Gabriel Dax is interviewing Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister of the newly independent Republic of the Congo. Lumumba, who insists the interview be recorded, mentions that certain foreign powers aim to assassinate him. On the flight back to London, Gabriel notices an attractive older woman reading one of his travel books. Other odd incidents occur. Gabriel’s editor cancels the Lumumba piece and demands his notes and tapes, which is not standard journalistic practice. Instead, Gabriel buries the tapes in his garden. The woman on the plane, Faith Green, turns up at Gabriel’s door and asks him to do “small favors” for MI6, similar to the ones he does for his elder brother, Sefton, in the Foreign Office. Gabriel initially refuses but falls under Faith’s seductive spell and embarks on his first assignment in Spain. The writer is soon caught in a twisty labyrinth of lies and betrayals, and, like Michael Corleone in Godfather, Part III, gets pulled back into the spy game each time he tries to extricate himself from the manipulative Faith’s machinations. At the same time, Gabriel struggles to understand, through analysis, the childhood trauma—his mother’s death in a fire—that has scarred his life. This first-rate complex and suspenseful historical thriller will resonate with fans of John le Carré and Alan Furst.

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Review

Love the Stranger

by Willy Williams

Queens native son and former high-powered Manhattan attorney Ted Molloy is rebuilding his once-stellar legal career. His fancy office is now Gallagher’s Pub, where he partners with LesterYoung McKinley on foreclosure investment deals and represents his activist girlfriend, Kenzie Zielenski’s, organization in its battle to stop the construction of “the Spike,” a mega-development project threatening Corona’s immigrant communities. As the campaign against billionaire real-estate developer Ron Reisner heats up, someone attempts to sabotage Ted’s legal efforts and undermine Kenzie’s reputation. At the same time, Kenzie worries that a shady immigration lawyer is cheating Mohammed, a recent Yemeni immigrant who chauffeurs Kenzie in his cab. Dropping by the lawyer’s office one morning, she stumbles upon his body and spots a shadowy figure fleeing the scene. Could it be Mohammed’s 14-year-old stepson, Haidir? In the entertaining follow-up to his 2022 Nero Award winner Tower of Babel, Sears vividly captures the corrupt seediness of local real estate development dominated by big money and embraces the “kaleidoscope of colors, classes, and ethnicities” that marks New York’s largest borough. Fans of Dennis Lehane’s Boston-based Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro series will enjoy following the gritty adventures of a flawed but appealing sleuthing couple.

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Review

Betrayal at Blackthorn Park

by Willy Williams

It’s November 1940, and Evelyne Redfurn has returned to her London boarding house after six secretive, grueling weeks of training to be a Special Investigations Unit (SIU) agent for the British government’s Special Operations Executive (SOE). But before she can relax with her roommate and best friend, Moira, she’s called up for her first assignment. Hoping to be parachuted into occupied France (her mother was French), Evelyne is disappointed when she is sent instead to investigate the possibility of theft at a weapons research and development facility in rural Sussex. Worse, her handler is her old sparring partner, David Poole. On Evelyne’s first night, however, a routine probe becomes a murder case after she stumbles upon the body of Sir Nigel Balram, the leader of the engineering team at Blackthorn Park. His death appears to be an act of suicide, but drawing on the sleuthing skills she honed in A Traitor in Whitehall, Evelyne and David race to identify a killer before Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s impending visit. The clever and resourceful Evelyne is an appealing protagonist, who struggles to maintain her close friendships without revealing her double life as a spy. Her budding chemistry with David is obvious but doesn’t distract from the main plotline. Fans of Susan Elia MacNeal’s Maggie Hope series will delight in following the adventures of a promising new World War II spymaster.

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Review

Against the Grain

by Willy Williams

Thirty-two years ago, curmudgeonly, old-school Detective Superintendent Peter Diamond of the Bath CID made his literary debut in the Anthony Boucher Award-winning The Last Detective, exonerating a woman accused of murder. Three decades later, the seasoned cop, much to his dismay, is under pressure to retire. For Diamond, whose identity is tied to his job, “retirement is the waiting room for death.” But his partner, Paloma, convinces him to accept his former colleague Julie Hargreaves’s invitation to visit her in the quaint village of Baskerville. Leaving the mean streets of Georgian Bath for rural Somerset, Diamond soon learns that Julie has an ulterior motive for his visit; unable to proceed further in her inquiries due to a physical disability, she wants her old boss to reexamine (unofficially) the manslaughter conviction of farm owner Claudia Priest for the suffocation death of a man in a grain silo. Julie suspects that the fatal accident was murder and that someone other than Claudia was responsible. Embarking on a busman’s holiday as an undercover detective, Diamond aims to solve his first village mystery, even if it means mucking in real mud (including reluctantly helping a cow give birth). As he tries on different amateur sleuthing hats (bumbling Columbo, nosy Miss Marple), he begins to learn things about himself that reveal there might be a possibility of a good life after retirement. MWA Grand Master Lovesey bids a fond farewell to his protagonist with this bittersweet series finale that mixes a cozy Midsomer Murders setting with colorful characters, surprising twists, and plenty of heart and humor.

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