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Review

Very Bad Company

by Brian Kenney

A delightful satire—fun, fast, and furious—of the high-flying tech industry. Every year adtech start-up Aurora brings together its top executives for a weekend retreat (think PowerPoint presentations and Jet Skis), this year, it’s in Miami Beach. It’s quite a cast of characters: for starters, the CEO models himself on Churchill. In the hands of other novelists, the cast could become a messy menagerie. But each character here is so well-defined, beginning with the company’s latest hire, Caitlin Levy, Head of Events (curious since Aurora has never sponsored an event). But just when the second day has started and everyone is beginning to sober up, there’s the announcement that the company has been sold, and suddenly everyone is if not very, very rich, then quite rich. It would be time to celebrate, except that one of the high-level executives has disappeared. And the entire retreat is under surveillance by the tech media, who can sniff a good story. Like Rosenblum’s first novel, Bad Summer People, this novel delights in exploring what lies under the surface. The adtech folks would call that a deep dive.

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Review

I Will Ruin You

by Jeff Ayers

Richard Boyle teaches 11th-grade English, and during class one morning, he looks out his window and sees a former student walking toward the entrance with a bomb strapped to his chest. He takes matters into his own hands and ends up confronting the bomber, who wants to see three specific individuals so he can complete his mission. Richard ends up saving everyone, but the bomber trips and blows himself up. Now a hero, Richard learns that his actions have made some people angry, including the bomber’s parents and a blackmailer with dirt on Richard, though he has no idea what that might be. In his case, good deeds are punished. To reveal any more of the story would spoil some neat surprises. Barclay immediately turns up the intense narrative and creates a page-turner that could quickly turn toward uncomfortable territory due to its subject matter, but since he is a master, he avoids that realm completely. Instead, we have a psychological and paranoid thriller that fires on all cylinders.

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Review

If Something Happens To Me

by Jeff Ayers

A trip to lover’s lane ruins lives in Finlay’s latest thriller. Ryan Richardson was with his girlfriend, Ali, when they were attacked. He receives a blow to the head and is thrown out of the car while Ali screams and vanishes along with the vehicle. Five years later, Ryan has changed his name to escape the constant pressure of suspicion in Ali’s death. Abroad, attending law school, he learns that the car has been found in a lake, and inside were two dead men and an envelope with the words, “If something happens to me” written on it. Inside are a series of numbers. Is it a code to reveal the truth about that night? Ryan seeks closure, but trying to get the answers he seeks ends could put him in the crosshairs of a killer. The twists are nonstop, and the story falls into surprising territory. Finlay’s name on the cover guarantees a great read, and this one will end up on many best-of-the-year lists.

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Review

Agony Hill

by Brian Kenney

A classic mystery that pulls the reader in and doesn’t let go until there’s a resolution. It’s the mid-1960s, and Franklin Warren arrives in small-town Bethany, Vermont to join the state troopers as a detective. It’s a time of change: as young men head to Canada to escape the draft, the state is developing highways that, many fear, will change Vermont irrevocably, while the echoes of the Cold War continue to reverberate. Warren is also escaping his own demons, a tragic occurrence he left behind in Boston but is unable to forget. But before he can unpack—literally!—he’s called to investigate a fire; Hugh Weber, a hippie farmer, has burnt down his barn and likely killed himself, although evidence of suicide is scant. Warren digs deep into the community, from Weber’s widow to Warren’s elderly next-door-neighbor, a retired intelligence agent. Secrets abound, but which one will unveil the murderer? Fans of Kay Jennings and Jeff Carson will appreciate this new series by the author of The Drowning Sea.

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Review

What Have You Done?

by Henrietta Thornton

Lapena’s psychological thrillers never disappoint. In her latest, set in Fairhill, Vermont, a farmer investigating vultures over his field finds the dead body of a young woman. This kind of thing never happens in Fairhill, and when the horrified local police realize that the victim is a local teen, Diana Brewer, the town reels in shock and grief. “Trying to make sense of something that will never, ever make sense” are Diana’s bereft single mother, who worries others by telling them she still communicates with her daughter, and the young woman’s best friends, Riley and Kelly, who are determined to find the killer. But even in a small town, it’s not easy to figure out who could have done this awful thing, and readers will enjoy sleuthing along with the characters as suspects emerge, each with something dark to hide. Supernatural elements enter in several ways here, adding to the edginess and puzzlement. If you like Chris Bohjalian, this one’s for you, not just because of the Vermont setting but also the small-town drama.

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Review

One of Our Kind

by Henrietta Thornton

In many ways, Kingston and Jasmyne Williams are living their dream life. Their little boy, Kamau, is thriving. They have another baby on the way. And Kingston, or King, is making oodles of money in finance. But King is eager for a next step: moving them to Liberty, a controversial suburban Los Angeles community of very, very rich Black people that comes with all the trappings. A sumptuous spa—sorry, wellness center. Lavish homes with three living rooms each (one for everyday, one for company, and a den, of course). And an excellent school for Kamau where every teacher is Black and they won’t have to worry about him fitting in. From the moment she reluctantly agrees to this transformation of their lives, Jasmyn is nervous about abandoning her community and her belief in giving other Black people a hand up. And she’s right: Liberty turns out to be one sinister place, in ways readers will never guess and that will keep them on edge right up to the last gasp of surprise. Yoon’s first adult novel has some of the hallmarks of her YA background: a character who feels like it’s her against the world, a shifting sense of who can be trusted, and a feeling of not fitting in. This will be a great crossunder read for young adults as well as a hit with fans of Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl.

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Review

What You Leave Behind

by Brian Kenney

A beautifully balanced novel that includes a foray into the world of the Gullah-Geechee people, the experience of grief, and the uncovering of a land grab, all wrapped up in an edge-of-the-seat thriller. Deena Wood is back in her hometown in coastal South Carolina. A 40-something lawyer, she had been living in Atlanta until her husband divorced her, she lost a court case—and her job—and her beloved mother died. It’s time to start over, which means moving in with Dad and his new wife. To unwind, Deena likes to drive along the coast, and one day she comes across a cantankerous, elderly African American man who states that he is fighting to keep his valuable land. Suspicious of Deena’s motives—has she been sent to make him move?—he chases her off his property. But Deena can’t forget him, and when she returns a week later, she discovers he’s gone, with no trace left behind. Deena becomes obsessed, and sets out on a fascinating but deadly search that takes her deep within her community as she goes after a conspiracy that has been exploiting the rural poor for decades, right up to today. Morris (All Her Little Secrets) has written a perfect novel for a book group, and it’s sure to be one of the best books of 2024.

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Review

The Queen City Detective Agency

by Willy Williams

On New Year’s Day 1985, as the countdown to Ronald Reagan’s second presidential inauguration begins, Turnip Coogan, in custody for the murder of real estate developer Randall Hubbard, falls from the roof of the courthouse in downtown Meridian, Mississippi. It may be morning in the rest of America, but that Reaganite optimism has bypassed the state’s “Queen City,” where strip malls developed by the late Hubbard have “sucked the life out of the city’s downtown” and its convenient location between New Orleans and Atlanta has made Meridian “a vital pit stop in the loosely affiliated crime belt of the Deep South.” Knowing of her son’s connection to the notorious Dixie Mafia, Lenora Coogan is convinced that his death was neither an accident nor a suicide and hires Black cop-turned-private investigator Clementine Baldwin and her white partner, Dixon Hicks, to find the “sons of bitches who killed him.” Complicating the investigation is the still-jailed Odette Hubbard, who had recruited Turnip to kill her husband and then canceled the hit job. She wants Clem and Dixon to identify the real killer, a request that puts a target on Clem’s back. Jim Crow laws may be a thing of the past, but Clem still must battle old-fashioned racism as she goes after the city’s powerbrokers. Wright’s (American Pop) Southern noir introduces a compelling, complex, bourbon-loving sleuth who both loathes and loves her hometown. Her budding friendship with Dixon will have readers anticipating their next crime-solving adventure.

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Review

Smothermoss

by Henrietta Thornton

Alering’s striking, dark debut novel mixes magical realism with crime and dire poverty. Sheila, 17, and Angie, 12, are sisters living on the absolute edge in 1980s Appalachia. Their father is dead, their brother in prison, and they and their mother live with an elderly relative, growing vegetables and keeping rabbits for food. Sheila keeps her side of the room neat, Angie very much doesn’t, and the differences only begin there, with the most significant being in their dubious magical gifts: Sheila is burdened and chafed by a rope around her neck, visible only to her, that grows thicker and longer over time. Angie draws sinister tarot-type cards that she carries everywhere, with figures like “A creature made of root and sinew [with] a crooked crown of worms” that give her frighteningly accurate messages. Outside the squalor the girls live in are the hikers, whom they think of as impossibly rich, trekking the nearby Appalachian trail with their fancy equipment and cluelessness. When two of them are killed, Angie takes on the investigation, much to her sister’s exasperation. This is one of those novels whose setting and characters take the front seat—readers won’t soon forget Sheila and Angie and the lengths they go to to survive and find peace.

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Review

Rhythm and Clues

by Brian Kenney

As always, Blacke (Vinyl Resting Place, 2022) does a fabulous job of keeping several balls in the air, from romances to murder, from seeking likely perpetrators to fighting off a pair of predatory investors. Small-town Cedar River, where gossip spreads like warm butter, provides the setting, while the three Jessup sisters—the youngest, Juni, is our narrator—are still struggling to keep their cafe/vinyl record store alive. When a crazy storm rips through town—this is Texas, after all—it washes out the roads, knocks out the electricity, and leaves a corpse in a parked car near their shop. He turns out to be one of the predatory investors—Juni knew him from college—who was hoping to make a deal with the sisters. But more importantly, with the town now isolated, where is the murderer hiding? The characters are wonderful, with Juni’s voice and sense of humor especially fresh, and the storyline is completely absorbing. A real treat for cozy fans.

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