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Review

4 Minutes

by Jeff Ayers

Special Operations Chief Tyler Brooks gets a chance to lead a secret team of operatives in this tense and mind-blowing thriller. The Task Force Omega squad has access to a top-secret device that can move anyone on the team up to 28 days in the future for four minutes, and then they are returned. They cannot change anything they see but can gather intel to research once they return, hopefully stopping the incident from happening. Brooks does not know that a particular op that came together before his recruitment has a soldier with similar skills who is seeking vengeance and who wants Brooks dead. Events swerve drastically when the team jumps into the future and discovers a nuclear-decimated landscape. Can Brooks lead his team to find answers, even with a hidden target on his back? Andrews and Wilson are the best in the business at telling stories involving military operations while emphasizing the human side of warfare. They take a sci-fi concept and make it realistic and believable. 4 Minutes is arguably the best book they have written.

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Review

The Mountain King.

by Willy Williams

When 19-year-old Smilla Holst, a member of a wealthy local family, and her ex-boyfriend Malik Mansour disappear without a trace, Detective Inspector Leonore Asker expects to lead the investigation as section head at Malmö’s Serious Crime Command. But she is unexpectedly replaced by Jonas Hellman, a rival detective from Stockholm with a personal score to settle, and relegated to the police headquarters’s basement as temporary chief of the Resources Unit. In this obscure department, nicknamed the Department of Lost Souls, odd, cold cases and odd employees linger in obscurity. But as Asker quickly discovers, her new colleagues display unusual talents that come in handy when she probes a strange case involving a model-railway club and the ominous placement of miniature figurines that represent missing people, including the latest two victims. While Hellman pursues a kidnapping angle, Asker becomes convinced that her Resources Unit predecessor, now hospitalized in a coma, was on the trail of a serial killer who preys on urban explorers who wander into abandoned structures like factories and underground military facilities. The best-selling author of “The Game” trilogy launches an exciting, atmospheric crime series that introduces an appealingly smart and tough female protagonist with a troubled backstory in the vein of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander, although not quite as edgy. The twisty, spine-tingling mystery that unfolds is creepy and sinister, laced with a touch of dark Scandinavian folklore.

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Review

Neferura

by Brian Kenney

With a doctorate in Egyptology, it would have been easy for Malayna Evans to have fallen down the bottomless hole of historical detail. But instead, this is a beautifully balanced novel, rich in the experiences of life in the backstabbing court of Pharaoh Hatshepsut while also focused on the engaging and ultimately tragic life of her daughter, Neferura, princess and high priestess of Kemet. Neferura lives to support the people, but she is often distracted by court machinations, especially those of her misogynistic half-brother, Thutmose, who wants to end her mother’s rule, become Pharaoh, marry Neferura, and produce an heir. Neferura’s interior thinking is powerfully engaging, and setting the novel largely among women, whose struggles to lead are always under scrutiny, is incredibly refreshing. But Neferura’s own story feels nearly revolutionary: to survive, she befriends the wisewoman, a much-tattooed priestess of sorts, who is in touch with a network of women who devote themselves to supporting Neferura, even to the point of risking their own lives. Add to this several standout characters, such as Neferura’s life-long tutor who helps guide her actions, and you have a cadre ready to protest their princess. Powerful and poignant, this is a treat for fans of historical mysteries.

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Review

What Cannot be Said

by Henrietta Thornton

Atonement and The Secret Garden float to mind as children in an isolated English idyll come upon a frightening scene. Out for a walk, two young brothers find a mother and daughter dead, posed in a way that’s so peaceful it’s sinister. Magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy, a friend of the series’ main character, Sebastian St. Cyr, is called, and the scene is all too familiar to him: it’s how his wife and daughter were found murdered years before. A man was hanged for that crime. As more killings occur with frightening speed over the coming days, others speculate that a “copyist” is at work while Lovejoy fears that the wrong man was executed. Lady McInnis, the current day’s victim, was politically active, lending an intriguing angle to the story. She lobbied the government to improve the conditions of working children, some of whose sad lives are featured here; a side plot regarding workhouse babies being unscrupulously fostered for pay paints a grim portrait of early 19th-century England. In the end, the social elements and the murder mysteries knit well together to create a satisfying whodunit with a dash of historical fact.

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Review

That Night in the Library

by Henrietta Thornton

You know those cute programs where kids leave their teddy bear for a library sleepover? This is nothing like that. Instead, staying in the library overnight are student workers who have just completed a tough interview process for the one permanent job on offer in the university’s rare-books department (Jurczyk is mining a setting similar to her 2022 The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections), a toxic workplace if ever there was one. Also attending is non-student Ro, along because he can provide the drug, acid, that will kickstart a ceremony that student Davey has meticulously planned. Davey has invited Ro and five others to re-enact a Greek tradition around the Persephone myth, in which intoxicated pilgrims face either death or the thing they most fear, in order to conquer the fear. The tortured inner voice of narrator Faye, the shyest library employee, is used to wonderful effect by Jurczyk to chronicle a frenzied, terrifying night in a locked room—the library’s basement cage—that starts with a killing. The ending here is a shock, and along the way the author delivers chills that are packed with narcissistic venom and choking claustrophobia. This will be a hit with those who enjoyed Jurczyk’s previous work. If you like myth retellings, try one of the many versions of the Irish Tír na nÓg story, which mirrors elements of the tale of Persephone.

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Review

On the Horns of Death

by Brian Kenney

A wonderful sojourn into Ancient Crete of 1450 BC, told through the life of 16-year-old bull leaper Martis. In many ways, Martis is a classic teen, trying to understand the world around her and what her place in it will be. She’s also fiercely independent—training to be a bull leaper without initially telling her mother, for example—and resists many of the traditional female roles, like marriage and motherhood, that her peers are taking up. In this second novel in the series, Martis discovers the corpse of Duzi, one of her fellow bull leapers. He was murdered to look like he was gouged by a bull, when in fact he was knifed and left to die in a bullpen. Martis rebels against the wishes of her mother, as well as those of Tinos, the administrator of Knossos and the High Priestess’s consort, and takes on the investigation into Duzi’s death, a death that is followed by others, all related to the world of the bull leapers. Martis has to move quickly, with little help from the adults around her, to stop the growing violence. Kuhns does a great job of weaving Minoan civilization throughout the book, from religious practices to food preparation, from clothes and make-up to day-to-day life. Young adults will find much to enjoy in this novel as well.

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Review

The Hunter’s Daughter

by Henrietta Thornton

Subterfuge and supernatural elements infuse this dark, absorbing debut. Our protagonist is Midwestern police detective Anna Koray, who’s had a relatively staid career until she makes the mistake of confronting a violent perpetrator without backup. She kills him, but is shot herself in the process. When recovering, she’s required to undertake counseling; at the same time, she pushes herself into the investigation of a serial killer whose horrifying work resembles that of her father, who years ago was executed for his murder of multiple women as sacrifices to a forest god. Both Anna’s colleagues and the doctor she’s in a burgeoning relationship with have no idea that she spent her childhood in thrall to the Forest Strangler. Anna herself doesn’t even have all the details, which were sealed away in her subconscious by a manipulative therapist whom she now sees for the reverse process, setting in motion an emotional and dangerous roller coaster of unraveling secrets and treacherous confrontations. A cold-case podcaster adds a moral dilemma to the exciting tale—when is it better to leave the truth buried? Readers who enjoy a wilderness thriller, such as Elizabeth Hand’s Hokuloa Road or Paul Doiron’s Dead Man’s Wake, will appreciate this story.

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Review

The Chaos Agent

by Jeff Ayers

Cort Gentry, the Gray Man; and his girlfriend, Zoya Zakharova, have assumed new identities while trying to live off the grid for a few months. But they can only hide for so long. A colleague of Zoya’s arrives in the Central American town where Cort and Zoya felt safe and asks her help in rescuing a Russian scientist who is one of several engineers and computer experts with targets on their backs. Shortly after the meeting, Cort and Zoya must flee to avoid the weaponized drones and army of killers sent to take them out. One of those soldiers has a past with Cort and a reputation of being as good an assassin as Cort was in his prime. The mayhem grows in intensity as the truth unveils itself; a mystery controller named Cyrus calls all the shots and does not care about any collateral damage. Greaney combines the best of special-ops novels with a dash of James Bond, and though the page length is significant, the story never bores or lags. The Chaos Agent is another winner, and whether you are a fan or new to the Gray Man, this is a blast (no pun intended).

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Review

The Murder of Mr. Ma

by Brian Kenney

A high-energy, rambunctious tale that shares much with Sherlock Holmes—the Guy Ritchie versions, that is—as well as traditional Chinese gong’an crime fiction, in which government magistrates solve criminal cases. It’s London, 1924 and Judge Dee Ren Jie, known as Judge Dee, has just arrived in the country to investigate the murder of a colleague whom he knew during World War I, when both served with the Chinese Labour Corps. No less a personage than Bertrand Russell introduces the Judge to Lao She, a retiring London academic who quickly becomes Dee’s sidekick—they are introduced in a prison breakout, it’s complicated—and the two set off to locate the victim’s family. One murder soon becomes two, then more, all performed with the distinctive butterfly sword, putting yet more pressure on Judge Dee to find the perpetrator before he or she tries to murder him. The authors do a wonderful job of depicting the bustling London of the ‘20s, the Chinese community and the relentless racism and stereotypes it is a victim of, and absolutely fabulous displays of martial arts. There’s word that Dr. Dee may be returning to solve another case; here’s hoping he does!

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Review

Public Anchovy #1

by Brian Kenney

Delilah and the crew from her restaurant, the upscale pizzeria Delilah & Son (Son is short for Sonya, Delilah’s best friend and sous chef), are at Bluff Point, an opulent, old mansion on Wisconsin’s Geneva Bay. They’re catering the Friends of the Library’s fundraising gala—an opportunity to show off their skills and bolster the declining winter business—and the menu does look fantastic. Too bad that the guests hardly get to sample anything more than the appetizers when Edgar Clemmons, outgoing board chair—and quite bitter about his departure—falls down the staircase, landing at the bottom like a broken marionette. Murder or accident? It’s hard to say, since Edgar shared a number of vague secrets with several people before he took his tumble. The man’s demise sends many scurrying home, although a powerful storm has moved in—downed trees, exposed power lines—prohibiting law enforcement from reaching Bluff Point and keeping a dozen or so attendees, including Delilah and her staff, in the mansion for the night. Here the mystery morphs into a closed circle, with an assemblage that includes Delilah’s crush, police detective Calvin Capone; and Butterball, her cat, who takes on quite the active role in this title. As with the other books in the series, Quigley balances wonderful character development and plenty of low-key humor with the search for a killer. It’s hard to imagine a cozy fan who wouldn’t find this book to be a total delight.

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