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Review

Review

The Atlas Maneuver

by Jeff Ayers

Berry’s talent for mixing nonstop action with history is in full swing in his latest. Cotton receives what seems like a simple assignment: protect a woman named Kelly Austin. When he rescues her from a kidnapping attempt, he learns that Kelly is not her real name, and before plastic surgery that was necessary due to an accident, she had a torrid past with Cotton. The truth of her background and why she is being hunted will separately take Cotton and his lady love, Cassiopeia, on a global chase that will make them unable to trust anyone but themselves. How does the creation of cryptocurrency tie in with the plundering of a vast treasure by Japan near the end of WWII? The answers will surprise and even shock even die-hard Berry fans. The truth of the Atlas Maneuver, if it comes to pass, will change the world’s economic future forever. One of the best features of Berry’s novels is the writer’s note, in which he breaks down the facts behind the fiction, and it’s essential reading since everything in this thriller seems all too real. Whether you are a long-time reader of Cotton’s adventures or a newcomer, this book is terrific.

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Review

The Dredge

by Willy Williams

“Some families are haunted. The stuff of the past, the traumas and the ghosts—they just go on and on,” thinks Caleb “Cale” Casey, a successful real-estate broker in Hawaii who has been estranged for almost 30 years from his brother Ambrose, who runs a construction company back in their small Connecticut hometown. Both are tormented by a terrible secret that they buried as teenagers in Gibbs Pond. When a real-estate developer announces plans to dredge the pond in preparation for further development, Cale reluctantly returns home. Unbeknownst to the brothers, Lily Rowe, the contractor in charge of the dredging, also suffers from a dark family history, a childhood of abuse and neglect, shared with her troubled sibling Ray, that led to a shocking act of violence. How these well-drawn traumatized characters and their secrets collide in the present day, permanently changing the course of their lives, is the theme of Flaherty’s beautifully written debut. His Connecticut is not the monied suburbia of Rick Moody and John Cheever, but a rural working-class community more reminiscent of Daniel Woodrell’s Ozark mountain towns. After a strong buildup, the conclusion felt a bit anticlimactic. Still, this sad novel about the corrosive effects of family trauma and pain will linger in readers’ minds.

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Review

Invisible Woman

by Henrietta Thornton

A filmmaker whose heyday is past, Joni Ackerman has grown used to living in the shadow of her successful TV-show creating husband, Paul, as well as accustomed to the idea that she can’t make material for the small screen herself because that’s his territory. She drinks too much and is overall unhappy, with small bursts of joy when her daughter Alex returns home and life seems complete (there’s a twist-and-a-half in store there). She often thinks of her broke, early days living with roommate Val in Los Angeles, when they attended a party full of Hollywood glitterati at which Val was raped by a celebrity. Neither told anyone and both tried to move on, growing apart in the process. But now the past is back as the rapist has been outed and whispers abound about a mysterious second man he works with. What follows is a psychologically savvy look at the many victims and the long life of sexual assault, as well as a satisfying tale of coping through taking action. Joni is a lovably flawed but determined character and her decisions and determination will keep readers rooting for her and racing through this fast and absorbing drama.

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Review

Smoke Kings

by Henrietta Thornton

When cousins Joshua and Nate view Joshua’s brother lying in the morgue, having been beaten, they swear that Darius won’t be “just another dead black boy.” Two years later, grief has solidified into a plan: Nate, Joshua, and friends Rachel and Isiah have taken Scott York, a white man, captive. They confront him about when his grandfather and three other white men threw a Black man off a bridge to his death. “Pawpaw? Impossible,” is the reaction, but the verdict is the same: Scott must each week deposit $311.54 into an account the group provides. They’re enacting a reparations program, and Scott’s nonchalance about the crime and incredulousness that the group would care about the dead man spur them on. Tensions caused by colorism and racial differences—Rachel is Black but often taken for Latina and Isiah is Korean American–and disagreements about whom to target introduce interesting ambiguities as the audacious plan unfolds and leads to mayhem. Mayfield’s foreword explains that he was inspired by Kimberly Jones’s video How Can We Win?. Readers can learn more about reparations and the history that makes them necessary by reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’sThe Case for Reparations and Bryan Stevenson’s (an author and activist who’s mentioned in the book) searing Just Mercy. A compelling and exciting debut.

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Review

Last Days in Plaka

by Henrietta Thornton

Lazaridis’s previous work, Terra Nova (Pegasus, 2022), alternated between men trekking to the South Pole and the fight by one of their wives back home to win attention for suffragists. On the surface, this title is very different, taking place in “violently hot” Athens, Greece, where a young Astoria, New York woman is shyly finding her feet in her parents’ homeland. But she’s an explorer in her own way, and an intrepid one, “[uncoiling] the spring of opportunity” that her parents created for her and traipsing toward the traditional center of Greek life: the church. Anna’s parea—her friend group—won’t understand her need to find God, she tells herself; she also (correctly) surmises that they’ll be puzzled by her new choice of friend: an 82-year-old woman whom she meets when Father Emmanouil gives her fresh figs to bring to the woman’s home. As Anna gears up to…well, commit a crime, but one that has a kind motive, readers are immersed in her longing to find out who she really is, where she belongs, and whether she will ever find her way home. What Lazaridis calls her “strange little novel” is a wonderful mix of coming of age, immigrant stories, and the pain that lurks behind crumbling facades.

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Review

The Night of Baba Yaga

by Brian Kenney

The novel opens with the abduction of a young woman, Shindo—a butch, menswear-wearing, expert fighter—who is taken away by the yakuza, a crime syndicate. After turning several henchmen into minced meat (it’s very Kill Bill), and nearly raped and brutalized herself, she’s given permission to live, providing that she agrees to work as the bodyguard and driver of Shoko, the only child of the gang’s leader. Shoko, who’s around Shindo’s age, is a revelation: doll-like, dressed in strange, old clothes (it’s the early 1980s), a student at a women’s junior college that is more like a finishing school, with courses in French pastries. And while Shindo misses her old life delivering for a florist, she and Shokow slowly begin to hit it off as Shindo ferries her back and forth from school. Shoko’s life, it turns out, is no picnic, including her upcoming marriage to a complete and utter sadist. How the two women manage to escape from this uber-violent world, confront the patriarchy, and create an alternate existence is as thrilling as it is fast paced. This novella was nominated for a 2021 Mystery Writers of Japan Award

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Review

One of the Good Guys

by Henrietta Thornton

I want to be a fly on the wall when this explosive drama is discussed in book clubs. The “good guy” whose behavior they will pick apart is Cole Simmonds; he’s recently separated and has left London for the rural English coast. There he’s picking up the pieces from a marriage that went wrong when the couple’s attempts to have a child, including the trials of IVF, were all for nothing. Cole’s wife Mel—he’s dragging his feet on the paperwork that will tie up all the loose ends—now seems to hate him and he can’t understand where it all went wrong. Mel’s point of view, meanwhile, only coincides with Cole’s in that both would agree that they’ve split up. He’s trying to move on and meets Lennie (he insists on calling her Leonora, our first hint at his controlling ways), an artist who also seems like a lonely soul. Both are pulled into the fray when young women on a nationally publicized walk to highlight the problem of male violence go missing near Cole’s home. The social-media firestorm ignited by all this will be matched by the conversations in those book clubs I want to lurk in, as Hall looks at toxic masculinity from every angle: the oh-so-innocent man who’s only controlling because he cares so much, the enraged men commenting about the case online, the system that ridicules women if they wait too long to report a sexual crime while torturing them once they do report. A gripping and controversial suspense.

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Review

The Bin Laden Plot

by Jeff Ayers

The USS Stethem is cruising in international waters when it is bombed and sunk by a torpedo. Evidence leads to the Iranians, but what Captain Murray Wilson of the USS Michigan is informed by his superiors is that the actual culprit is a top-secret unmanned vehicle. The vehicle’s programming has somehow been corrupted, and Wilson must take his team to destroy the craft before it does more damage. But what he’s been told is not the truth, instead, he’s embroiled in a conspiracy to murder the soldiers who were part of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. The assassin, who has personal motives, is pursued by Jake Harrison, a former CIA operative who wants nothing more than to stay retired and spend time with his family. That’s not going to happen. In this fast-paced thriller, Campbell juggles a large canvas and a fun cast of characters that pivots between being trustworthy and untrustworthy. Fans of the previous novels will be thrilled and upset by what transpires, while newcomers will have enough details to enjoy. Readers expecting a novel with a Tom Clancy vibe will discover this is more of a Brad Thor meets Yellowstone experience. Campbell needs to hurry and write the next one.

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Review

Has Anyone Seen Charlotte Salter?

by Brian Kenney

A richly drawn, deeply felt novel in which every one of its 544 pages is absolutely enthralling. It’s Alec Salter’s fiftieth birthday—just days before Christmas, 1990—and scores have come together to celebrate, dance, and drink the night away. All except for his wife Charlotte, who planned to attend, but never shows up. While Alec shrugs away her absence, anxiety takes hold of their four children, especially Etty, fifteen years old and the only girl. It’s largely Etty’s perspective we experience, as day follows desolate day and she searches the countryside for her mother. It just tears your heart apart. When, days later, the body of neighbor Duncan Ackerley is found floating in the river—he’s a good friend and possible lover of Charlotte—the police are quick to conclude that Duncan killed Charlotte and then himself. Jump ahead to 2022, when the two Ackerley sons are back home, busy making a podcast about the deaths, the Salters have returned to pack up the family home and put Dad in a nursing facility, and the police have reopened both of the cases. This second part of the novel is driven by Maud O’Connor, a brilliant, young detective inspector obsessed with finding the truth. It’s she who is able to put together the pieces and in turn, the characters as well. A powerful example of crime fiction at its best.

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Review

Death of a Master Chef

by Willy Williams

In his ninth outing, Commissaire Georges Dupin is reluctantly attending a team-building police seminar with his officious boss in the Breton port city of Saint-Malo, in France’s northwest. The packed four-day schedule, however, offers the consolation of a restaurant visit every evening, and Dupin uses his lunch hour to explore “the culinary heart of Brittany.” As he samples cheeses and sausages in the market hall of Saint Servain, bloodcurdling screams capture his attention. A woman has been stabbed to death in one of the stalls. Dupin quickly gives chase to the fleeing culprit, even “borrowing” a car from a local resident before losing the object of his pursuit. When he returns to the police station, Dupin learns that both the victim and the murderer have been identified: Blanche Trouin, a well-known chef and owner of a Michelin-starred restaurant, was killed by her younger sister, Lucille, also a successful chef. The two had engaged in a sibling rivalry that could outshine the famous Joan Fontaine-Olivia de Havilland feud in its vicious bitterness. When Lucille is quickly arrested, she refuses to confess or discuss a motive. Although Dupin’s colleagues back in Concarneau advise him to stay out of the case, the murder of Blanche’s husband indicates a second killer is at work, and the seminar participants are quickly organized into investigative teams. As Dupin probes with his teammates, the caffeine-addicted sleuth makes time to enjoy petit cafés and savor the beauty of the Emerald Coast. Once again Bannalec (the pen name of German-born Jörg Bong) has written an intriguing and tasty mystery with surprising twists in a beautiful, charming setting that will appeal to Louise Penny fans. It is also a good starter for readers new to the series. Do not read the mouthwatering descriptions of Breton delicacies on an empty stomach!

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