Author

Willy Williams

Review

Glen Affric

by Willy Williams

The best-selling French author of psychological suspense makes her U.S. debut with an intense and heartbreaking homage to an American literary classic, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. For 16-year-old Léonard, who suffered brain damage as an infant, there is no place in the village of Granviller to escape the school bullies who torment him daily. The only people kind to the powerfully built but mentally challenged teen are his adoptive mother, Mona, who discovered the abused toddler in a ditch; his best friend, 13-year-old Victoria, the daughter of Mona’s boss; and furniture restorer Sacha. Léonard finds consolation in nature (“no animal or tree has ever made fun of him for being different”) and dreams of joining his older brother in beautiful Glen Affric in the Scottish Highlands. But Jorge has not been in Scotland, as Mona had told her son; for the past 16 years, his brother has been in prison, convicted of the brutal rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, a crime he claims he didn’t commit. After Jorge is paroled, the siblings finally meet for the first time, but Jorge’s attempt to rebuild his life is hobbled by a hostile community. As the brothers endure mounting cruelties and injustices, their tentative relationship blossoms into a tender and abiding love. When both are accused of another murder, readers will cheer on Jorge and Léonard’s flight to Glen Affric. Will they make it? Giebel has written a haunting, dark, and tough read that in its emotional brutality may remind some readers of Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life.

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Review

Christmas at Glitter Peak Lodge

by Willy Williams

Traumatized by a Himalayan avalanche that nearly killed her and that took the life of a close friend, renowned climber Ingrid Berg has returned to the charming Norwegian mountain hotel that has been her family’s home for 130 years. Putting away her crampons and ice ax, the 33-year-old has taken over managing Glitter Peak Lodge from her octogenarian grandmother. Christmas is coming, and it’s make-or-break time for the financially struggling inn. For the first time in years, the lodge will be open through tne New Year. “We will both continue the traditions of the past and introduce new ones,” Ingrid optimistically tells her staff. But as the days count down to Christmas Eve, Ingrid finds running the business as challenging as climbing Heaven’s Horn, the peak that looms over the hotel and the nearby village of Dalen. And strange things are happening, from last-minute cancellations to a noisy, late-night drive-by car parade of local teens. Is someone trying to sabotage Ingrid’s holiday plans to force her to sell the lodge? And is there a connection to the long-ago disappearance of a young bride? As old secrets are gradually revealed, Ingrid also finds her bruised heart opening up to a childhood sweetheart. With its 24 chapters organized like an advent calendar for daily reading, Johnsen’s second novel and first to be translated into English is a delightful, warm-hearted cozy about the healing power of family and community. Its magical winter setting; appealing, colorful characters; fascinating details on Norwegian Yuletide traditions; and recipes for such regional specialties as Pinnekjøtt (smoked lamb ribs) and krumkaker (cone-shaped Christmas cookies) will have readers booking their next holiday vacation at Glitter Peak Lodge.

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Review

The Devil Raises His Own

by Willy Williams

From the sexually explicit frescos of ancient Pompeii to today’s risqué sites, pornographers have always embraced the latest technology to create and distribute their erotic materials. In 1916 Los Angeles, the new tool was the motion-picture camera. Phillips’s noir novel offers a bawdy, violent, funny, and affectionate fictional take on how the “blue movie” industry developed in the shadow of a budding Hollywood. Years after the events of Cottonwood and Hop Alley, photographer Bill Ogden, now in his 70s, has opened a portrait studio in the City of Angels. He is assisted by his granddaughter Flavia, who came to California for a fresh start after fatally bludgeoning (in self-defense) her abusive husband, and naive 20-year-old Henry Seghers, who fled the coal mines of West Virginia. Bill’s business is legit but he occasionally takes stereoscopic stills of naughty sapphic/homosexual productions overseen by George Buntnagel, a gay director moonlighting from Provident Studios, and his lesbian wife, Irene. Revolving around these well-drawn central characters is a colorful supporting cast: aspiring actress Purity Dove-turned-film star Magnolia Sweetspire; homicidal ex-con Ezra seeking his missing family; Ezra’s wife, Trudy, who supports her two children by working in stag films; comedian Tommy Gill, who is not as funny as he thinks he is; and ex-postal inspector Melvin van de Kamp, who is desperate to break into the adult-movie business. Phillips’s narrative gradually connects these diverse personalities in a series of fast-paced alternating scenes until they collide in a violent Day of the Locust climax. With its high body count (at least eight murders are committed) and ribald language, this scandalously juicy tale of early Hollywood will appeal more to Fatty Arbuckle devotees than demure Mary Pickford fans.

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Review

The Resurrectionist

by Willy Williams

As the third son of a modestly landed family, James Willoughby has been told from an early age that he must earn a living befitting his station. Being of “a diminutive stature,” James decides the military is not for him. Nor is the Church of England an appealing option. Despite his family’s opposition, the young man abandons his clerical studies at Oxford and heads north to Edinburgh to become a physician. It’s 1828, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scottish city is a “shining beacon of medical discovery.” But James quickly learns that if he wants to develop anatomical knowledge and surgical skills, he must join one of the private schools in Surgeon’s Square. Unable to afford the additional tuition, James makes a bargain with his professor’s secretary and dissectionist, the charismatic Aneurin “Nye” MacKinnon, to serve as a lookout to prevent possible grave robbing in the Greyfriars kirkyard (graveyard) beneath James’s chamber window. The naive student soon discovers that he is aiding a gang of body snatchers who steal fresh corpses from churchyards for anatomical study at the medical schools. Nye explains to a horrified James that he is a Resurrectionist: “Our motivation is not in the value of the bodies we steal, but in the second life we give them.” Bedazzled by Nye’s scientific passion (and his dark sexiness), James plunges into this illicit, gritty underworld. However, their rivals in the body-snatching game, the sinister Burke and Hare, will murder anyone to corner the corpse market. Mixing a macabre gothic mystery with a sensitive coming-of-age tale and a touching queer romance, Dunlap has written an exciting, well-researched debut historical adventure. Bizarre, authentic details, like the mortsafes, or cages, that grieving families installed to protect the graves of their loved ones, make for an unforgettable read.

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Review

May the Wolf Die

by Willy Williams

Before heading to her evening shift as an investigator for Phoenix Seven, an Italian liaison unit that works with the U.S. military in Naples, Nikki Serafino is relaxing on the sailboat she co-owns with her friend, undercover cop Valerio Alfieri, when they rescue a woman who has been abandoned in the bay by her abusive boyfriend. As they head back to port, the Calypso’s keel strikes a decomposing body; Nikki notes the ligature marks on the man’s neck. The next day, while assisting a U.S. serviceman and his family in the wake of a traffic accident, she discovers another murder victim, this time one who’s been shot to death. After the bodies are identified as American naval officers, Nikki must conduct a tricky balancing act of partnering with both NCIS Special Agent Durant Cole and the Italian police in the investigation of possible links between the killings. Could the Camorra Mafia be involved? At the same time, Nikki’s intense family drama, involving the recent loss of her American mother, a loser brother in deep debt to local gangsters, and a tumultuous relationship with her controlling boyfriend, Enzo, threaten to derail her probe. Heider, who lived in Naples for several years and deployed as a civilian analyst aboard U.S. and European naval ships, makes an impressive debut with this engrossing thriller that captures both the baroque beauty and gritty danger of Italy’s third-largest city. It also introduces a tattooed, kick-ass female protagonist (“Nikki was short and compact and muscular with a dynamic, interesting face”) who may remind some readers of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander but without that character’s severe asocial tendencies. If there is a minor flaw, it’s that the Heider’s vividly drawn Italian characters far outshine her dull American counterparts. An enjoyable summer read.

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Review

Deadly Animals

by Willy Williams

Fourteen-year-old Ava Bonney has a curiosity about dead things. She keeps a secret roadkill body farm in an abandoned garden near the local motorway and likes to sneak out of her flat in the dead of night to note the decomposition rates of her finds. But on this particular evening in May 1981, she discovers the putrefying body of her classmate Mickey Grant, who disappeared from a local disco two weeks ago. “Ava knew him as an unpleasant boy, a bully you couldn’t walk past without him saying something spiteful. When he went missing, Ava hadn’t cared.” But she telephones the police and, not wanting to reveal her unusual hobby, disguises her voice as Mrs. Poshy-Snob, a woman with a low voice and flawless diction. When he interviews Ava during his inquiries, Detective Sergeant Seth Delahaye is impressed by the teen’s intelligence and self-possession. Signs point to a monstrous serial killer at work after Ava and her best friend John find another mutilated corpse, that of a six-year-old boy. In alternating chapters, Tierney’s compelling narrative follows Ava’s and Delahaye’s separate investigations until the two threads braid into a chilling climax. Ava’s precocity may remind readers of Alan Bradley’s 11-year-old amateur sleuth, Flavia de Luce, but Ava uses her morbid studies to escape an unhappy home life, and her territory is not a cozy English village but the gritty, impoverished suburb of Rudery, South Birmingham. Selected as a finalist in the Daily Mail First Novel competition, this astonishing, beautifully written debut is creepy, gruesome, and heartbreaking. One of the best thrillers of the year.

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Review

Silent are the Dead

by Willy Williams

Mary Higgins Clark Award-finalist Rowell’s second mystery featuring Kiowa professional storyteller Mae “Mud” Sawpole opens in media res as she attends a cleansing and blessing ceremony at the Kiowa Tribe Museum in Carnegie, Oklahoma. As recounted in Never Name the Dead, Mud and her cousin Denny thwarted the attempted theft of the precious Jefferson Peace Medal given to the Tribe during the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804. Earlier in the day, they had also found a body and identified the killer. Now, it is time to return the medal to the museum and for Mud to go back to Silicon Valley, where her PR client has an important event. First, she needs to confront tribe chairman, Wyatt Walker, and tribe legislator Anna ManyHorse about the illegal fracking on her grandfather’s land but when the dealer involved in the theft of the Jefferson Peace medal and other Kiowa artifacts is murdered and a respected tribal elder falls suspect, Mud and Denny must race against the clock on the longest night of their lives (Mud has a noon flight to catch the next day!) to find the real culprits behind the fracking and the dealer’s killing. As a gay woman of mixed race, Mud has always felt a bit of an outsider (“a large minority in the Tribe didn’t think I was Kiowa enough…because I didn’t look Indian enough”), but her great-aunt’s wisdom and a ceremonial sweat bath set her on the path to finding the truth. Rowell, whose Kiowa name, “Koyh Mi O Boy Dah”, means “She Is A Traditional Kiowa Woman”, provides enough backstory for newbies to slip easily into the storyline. Her details about Kiowa history, culture, and spiritual traditions are respectful and fascinating. She also knows how to write an intense fight scene complete with menacing rattlesnakes. Tony Hillerman fans will enjoy discovering a promising mystery writer and her intriguing protagonist.

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Review

The Noh Mask Murder

by Willy Williams

First published in 1949 and now elegantly translated into English for the first time, this award-winning atmospheric puzzler by a celebrated author from Japan’s golden age of detective fiction is both an intricate locked-room mystery and a metafictional take on how to write such a crime novel. In the summer of 1946 at a bathing resort, Akimitsu Takagi, a devotee of mystery fiction and an aspiring amateur sleuth, runs into Koichi Yanagi, an old school friend who has just returned to Japan after serving in Burma. Koichi now works for the respected Chizui family, whose members appear to be as cursed as Edgar Allen Poe’s Usher siblings. Ten years earlier, the patriarch, Professor Chizui, died of an apparent heart attack, although Koichi suspects foul play; his wife was institutionalized in an asylum; and recently their daughter also lost her sanity. One night, an eerie figure wearing a demonic hannya Noh mask is spotted in the upstairs window of the Chizui mansion; Taijiro, the professor’s brother, asks Akimitsu to investigate. By the time the sleuth arrives on the scene, Taijiro has been found dead in an armchair in his locked bedroom, with the mask on the floor beside him and the scent of jasmine lingering in the air. When Akimitsu learns that someone has ordered three coffins, he fears that the worst is yet to come. The author cleverly structures his plot like a Russian nesting doll, with one puzzle embedded within another puzzle inside another puzzle, until it is resolved in a surprising and satisfying conclusion. Agatha Christie and S.S. Van Dine fans will enjoy this twisty tale.

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Review

The Drowned

by Willy Williams

Spotting a sleek Mercedes SL sports car parked in a sloping field below a house, its engine still running and the driver’s door left open, Denton Wymes, on his way home from fishing, pauses to investigate. It’s a moment that the isolated loner will soon regret as he becomes caught up in a missing-person case that will turn his life upside down. Before Wymes can retreat, a man named Armitage approaches, claiming his wife has thrown herself into the sea. Together they walk up to the house to telephone for help. Armitage’s behavior is odd (“he seemed more excited than distressed’) and Wymes senses that the tenant answering the door, Charles Rudduck, recognizes Armitage. Called in from Dublin to investigate is Detective Inspector St. John (pronounced “Sinjun”) Strafford, who is also juggling a complicated personal life (an estranged wife and a lover who is the daughter of his colleague, state pathologist Quirke). In late 1950s Ireland, divorce is illegal, and Anglo-Irish social tensions remain strong. Banville deftly captures the prejudices and suspicions between the groups. “You’re not a Paddy, then” says Armitage to Wymes, who stiffly corrects him that he is Irish, but not “bog Irish.” In a mostly Catholic police force, Strafford stands out as the rare Protestant. His investigation gradually uncovers secrets that go back years and into previous series installments, but enough back information easily guides new readers through the complex plot. Banville ends his fourth Strafford/Quirke crime novel (after The Lock-Up) on a haunting, ambiguous note. With its complicated, not always likable protagonists, this beautifully written book will appeal to fans of literary mysteries in the vein of Kate Atkinson’s and Tana French’s works.

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Review

Return to Blood

by Willy Williams

Following his acclaimed debut, Better the Blood, Michael Bennett’s compelling sophomore outing in his crime series starring Māori detective Hana Westerman proves the New Zealand screenwriter and author is no one-hit wonder as a mystery writer. In the wake of the traumatic events recounted in the first book, Hana has resigned from the Auckland CIB (Criminal Investigation Branch) and returned to her hometown of Tātā Bay, where she helps her father, Eru, prepare local Māori teens to get their driver’s licenses. But the calm Hana is trying to rebuild is shattered when her 18-year-old daughter, Addison, discovers the skeleton of a young woman in the sand dunes. Investigators suspect the bones may be those of Kiri Thomas, a Māori teenager who disappeared four years earlier. Although Hana is no longer in the police force, she begins to probe the possibility that Kiri’s death may be connected to the 21-year-old unsolved murder of Paige Meadows, whose body was found in the same dunes. Likewise, Addison becomes obsessed with Kiri’s fate, threatening her friendship with her non-binary flatmate and musical partner, Plus 1. In a nod to Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, the storyline is interspersed with the dead Kiri’s haunting first-person narrative. Bennett, who is Māori, immerses readers deeper into Māori culture and traditions as he expands on Hana’s loving relationship with her father and tense interactions with her chilly second cousin, Eyes. An atmospheric thriller that will have readers booking flights to New Zealand. Bennett is adapting Better the Blood into a six-part TV series for Taika Waititi’s production company.

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