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Review

The Pie & Mash Detective Agency

by Jeff Ayers

Book of the Week

What does a dating millennial couple do to add adventure to their lives? Take a class on becoming a private detective, of course! Jane Pye and Simon Mash are quirky; even their class instructor finds them a bit strange. With no job possibilities anywhere in their immediate futures, they decide to open the Pie & Mash Detective Agency after they graduate. Then they are given a class assignment that the instructor guarantees will result in a failing grade. Dev Hooper’s girlfriend, Nellie Thorne, has vanished. The police believe she’s just left him, but Dev thinks otherwise. As Jane and Simon start investigating, they stumble upon what’s either a wild coincidence or something more sinister. This Nellie Thorne is not the first woman with her name to vanish; the phenomenon has been occurring for decades. All of the women are similar in appearance, and all disappeared after around a year of dating. Is this a weird legend or ghosts? If it’s real, are others with that name safe? J.D. Brinkworth is the writing team of Jo Dinkin and Catherine Brinkworth, and this quirky, fun mystery will keep readers guessing while bringing a smile to their faces. The main characters are a hoot, and a hodgepodge of strange folks with secret agendas surrounds them. Filled with British humor, this introduction to Jane and Simon is hopefully the start of a long series. (DEBUT)

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Review

Murder Mindfully

by Brian Kenney

As hilarious as it is horrifying, this crime novel is frankly like no other. Separated from his wife—and with visits to his pre-school daughter far too infrequent—criminal-defense lawyer Björn Diemel has only one option: to clean up his work-life balance. It’s his wife who recommended he take up mindfulness. And while initially he’d rather run in the opposite direction, Björn gradually finds himself seduced by the writings and teaching of mindfulness master Joschka Breitner. (“Mindfulness means being available to your own needs. Anytime you are available to others stands in the way of this mindfulness,” says Breitner.) As Björn rises in his organization, leaving a number of corpses in his wake, he finally understands what’s important in life. And there is nothing that will get in his way to stop it. Also available on Netflix as an eight-part series.

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Review

The Dead Can’t Make a Living

by Brian Kenney

This fifth installment in the Taipei Night Market series is a heartfelt crime novel that reaches deep into the lives of a rich collection of characters, all of whom have some sort of relationship with young Jing-nan, the owner of the most successful food stand in the market. It starts off when Jing-nan is throwing out the garbage only to find a corpse propped up against the dumpsters. Who is this man? He turns out to be Juan Ramos, a Philippine national who came to Taipei to work in ZHD, a vast, exploitative food-processing plant. Within days, Ramos’s family arrives, seeking an explanation. Was his death a cover-up? Curiously, Jing-nan’s gangster uncle, Big Eye, also becomes fascinated by what could be going down at ZHD. In one of the most compelling episodes in the series, Jing-nan goes to work at ZHD undercover, posing as a migrant laborer. Serious work, but Jing-nan brings along plenty of humor while still following the lives of undocumented immigrants and their living conditions.

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Review

Booking for Trouble

by Danise Hoover

Library budgets are always under threat, but coastal Connecticut’s Briar Creek Library is under major assault from a new cost-cutting member of the town council. In a move to better integrate the library in the community, Director Lindsey Norris comes up with the idea for a book-boat. It’s like a bookmobile, only on the water, and is able to serve the small islands that surround the town. The boat’s early outings are successful until Lindsey discovers the body of a woman who’s not a friend of the library. All sorts of old family feuds; issues with a snobby, exclusive club; and artistic rivalries are brought to the forefront. Excessive meanness and greed seem to be taking over the once charming and welcoming community, and though the police are capable, the wrong person is arrested. As in many situations, it takes a librarian to save the day and bring order back to the situation. A fun, easy, and friendly read.

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Review

Such a Perfect Family

by Henrietta Thornton

Tavish Advani has found an idyllic new life. He’s newly arrived in New Zealand, having eagerly left Los Angeles to live with the love of his life, Diya Prasad, in her home country. But Tavish can’t leave behind a dogged LA cop’s suspicion that he caused the deaths of several women he was involved with there. When a fire consumes the lavish home he lives in with Diya and her wealthy doctor parents, is he responsible? The savvy local police officer assigned to the case thinks so. Case notes by that officer and the LA cop who still suspects Tavish of murder are sprinkled throughout the story of the young man’s desperate efforts to clear his name and will lead readers to think that the legal picture doesn’t look so good for him. But as the details of Diya’s earlier life with her family and their friends unspools, a toxicity emerges that makes things far less clear cut. A suffocating family is perfectly drawn here, and Tavish’s early life has its own surprises; with the brilliant twists bestselling Singh drops in, it all adds up to a gripping tale.

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Review

A Killer in the Family

by Willy Williams

Ali Azeem is a successful Mumbai wedding photographer, but, to his worried Ma, his life will only begin when he marries the right Ismaili Muslim girl. However, on his first arranged meeting with pretty and reserved Maryam Khan, the daughter of New York real-estate tycoon Abbas Khan, Ali is attracted, not to Maryam, but to her divorced older sister, the sensuous and mercurial Farhan. Still, because of his father’s financial difficulties, Ali agrees to the match with Maryam. After the wedding (a marathon, multiday affair vividly described), the newlyweds move to Manhattan, and Ali finds himself in a glamorous world of money, power, and prestige. But the naive bridegroom soon learns that beneath the glittering surface lie dark family secrets. Farhan, with whom Ali has embarked on a torrid affair, warns him against her domineering father: “Papa is a monster.” What is Abbas’s connection to the serial murders of young Indian women in Queens, as Farhan implies? Shifting between Ali’s first-person narrative and Farhan’s diary entries, Ahmad skillfully builds page-turning suspense with carefully plotted twists and red herrings that keep readers guessing until the chilling conclusion. His exceptional thriller is also a layered portrait of an immigrant family that has made it big in America and the moral costs paid for this success. With rich character development (Farhan is larger than life) and emotional storytelling, it’s hard to believe this is a first novel.

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Review

Beth is Dead

by Dodie Ownes

Readers will find all the timeless themes of Louise May Alcott’s Little Women—family, independence, selflessness, love, ambition and sisterhood—in Katie Bernet’s debut YA novel, but in a contemporary setting with all the flair and complications of modern life. Mr. March, a hopelessly optimistic writer, pens a thinly disguised novel about his family, including his four daughters Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. He feels it is his masterpiece, but the book is quickly disparaged as an unfair exposé. Most importantly, Beth dies in the novel, which results in him getting death threats; for the family’s safety, he goes into hiding. Even with all this publicity swirling, the March girls and their mother keep their heads up, and Beth and Amy even go to a New Year’s Eve party. When Jo discovers Beth’s bed empty the next morning, she and Amy soon find her—dead, with a halo of blood around her head. Nearly everyone in town is a suspect, including the March sisters, who it seems have all been keeping their own secrets. Beth may have been having second thoughts about attending the prestigious Plumfield Academy, Meg could be in love with Beth’s piano tutor, Amy and her cousin Florence’s art talent may not be the primary interest of their mentor, and Jo’s journalistic nose for clues is quite useful. Each chapter alternates among the sisters, offering “Then” and “Now” points of view, adding to the story’s layers. This has all the romance and heart of the original, with clever twists and darkness in the reimagined storyline. Readers are kept guessing until the very end as these little women find Beth’s killer

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Review

A Field Guide to Murder

by Brian Kenney

A recent widower, Harry Lancaster spends most of his time at home, nursing a fractured hip. Entertainment comes in the form of some Rear Window-like spying on his neighbors—affluent, suburban Ohio seniors have more going on than you might imagine—and his growing friendship with Emma, his millennial and funloving caregiver. Harry and Emma may not always see eye-to-eye. Harry is an anthropologist (thus the book’s title) while Emma is a nurse, but they make a powerful team. So when Harry’s neighbor Sue is murdered in her home, the two are able to quickly pair up and pursue Sue’s murderer. But the plot hardly ends there, with Harry calling up old friends for help, Emma debating whether to go ahead and marry her fiancé, and a cold-blooded killer circling Harry’s condo. This cross-generational cozy-but-with-murder is sure to delight readers of Deanna Raybourn and Richard Osman.

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Review

Antihero

by Jeff Ayers

The search for a missing young woman forces Evan Smoak, also known as the Nowhere Man or Orphan X, into a rabbit hole of dark depravity. Is he strong enough to escape? Teaming up with those he can trust most, Evan learns that the woman had a seizure on a subway train and was kidnapped by a gang that specializes in making content for an adult entertainment site. After Evan finds her and gets her medical help, she wants justice, but also wants Evan to promise that he will not kill the gang members. Promising not to put them into the ground goes against his instincts and training, but he agrees. As he pursues the gang, he also has to battle himself to balance the mix of craving violence to achieve his goals and the need to be a human with a handle on his emotions. Who knew caring could be so difficult? Hurwitz does a terrific job maintaining the fast pace while exploring the people that Evan loves and the brutal world he inhabits. This is the perfect place to start for newcomers to the series, while fans will eagerly want to see what happens next. Hurwitz and his antihero get better with each book.

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Review

The French Honeymoon

by Henrietta Thornton

Through the alternating viewpoints of the newlyweds and someone who’s watching them, we follow the unhappy Paris honeymoon of Olivier and Cassie and the time before and after it. Olivier’s time in Paris is a reluctant trip home, given that his tenuous immigration status means that he shouldn’t have left the U.S. But spoiled Cassie, who seems mainly to enjoy the trip as a chance to look glamorous on Instagram, insisted. What Cassie wants, Cassie gets, especially since their marriage is Olivier’s ticket to a life outside France and his gigantic debts there. The person following their every move and Cassie’s every social-media post can see that things aren’t as perfect as Cassie would have her followers believe and delights in the obvious discord. This look at the Paris sojourn alternates with the story of the couple’s short time dating and the aftermath of their immigration-fueled decision to wed, when they live with Cassie’s sister in the family’s former inn. It’s far from the cozy getaway spot and possible moneymaker that Cassie described, adding to the feeling that both parties here have been had. The crime-filled ending of the honeymoon, a twist readers won’t see coming, and life back home deliver on the promise of the increasingly dark relationship and save tantalizing reveals until the very end. Try The Paris Apartment while you wait for this absorbing thriller.

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