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Review

How to Solve Your Own Murder.

by Brian Kenney

Very British, very country, and a whole lot of fun. Back in 1965, when she was 17, Frances was told by a fortune teller that her future “contains dry bones. Your slow demise begins when you hold the queen in the palm of one hand. Beware the bird…But daughters are the key to justice.” While most teens would shrug it off, Frances became obsessed with the prediction, and devoted much of her life to warding off the prophecy. Jump to today—the story flips back and forth—and meet 25-year-old Annie, an aspiring mystery writer and Frances’s great niece. She’s been summoned to the village of Castle Knoll for a meeting with Great Aunt Frances and a discussion about “the responsibilities that will come with being sole benefactor of her estate and assets.” So off Annie heads to Castle Knoll, meets up with a motley crew of relatives, and quickly manages to arm herself with Great Aunt Frances’s extensive diaries that she discovers in the library. This novel is marvelously well-balanced, humorous, and lighthearted while at the same time dark and macabre, with two great characters—Frances and Annie—who share the narrative from opposite ends. Fans of Anthony Horowitz and Richard Osman will find much to enjoy here

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Review

The Lost Van Gogh

by Henrietta Thornton

Artist Santlofer’s previous novel, The Last Mona Lisa, saw Luke Perrone, great-grandson of the man who stole the Mona Lisa, digging into his ancestor’s thievery, with Interpol also on the case. Perrone and the organization are back and chasing a painting that has long been rumored to exist: Vincent van Gogh’s last self-portrait. The work is mentioned in a letter by a friend of van Gogh’s as having been displayed at the artist’s funeral, but was it the mistake of a grieving friend? At the outset of the book, what may be the painting turns up, but greed and the less-savory machinations of the art world soon see it disappear. The book combines fiction and nonfiction, as explained by Santlofer in an absorbing interview that’s a coda to this fast-moving work. A real aspect is the sad dispersal across the world of Nazi-looted art, the tireless work by descendants of the real owners to retrieve it, and the equally tireless work of dishonest art collectors to keep it from being returned. Beauty and horror are wonderfully contrasted by Santlofer, both in the sad life of van Gogh compared to the incandescent art he produced, and in the clash of the love of art and the pursuit of wealth that takes advantage of that passion. Details of post-impressionist art and busting of myths around van Gogh (he wasn’t unknown as an artist during his life) are bonuses. A great accompaniment to this would be Mark Roskill’s Letters of Vincent van Gogh, as van Gogh’s correspondence with his brother Theo is often referenced by Santlofer.

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Review

Ways and Means

by Brian Kenney

It’s thrilling to discover a debut this brilliant, full of wonderment, humor, and above all, love. Alistair McCabe, gay and handsome, smart and funny, arrives at New York University from upstate to pursue his destiny as a financial whiz kid. He’s got the talent, the obsessiveness, the drive—and the desire to help his Mom, who has done so much for him. Sweet, right? But being a brainiac isn’t quite enough—you need to fit in with the finance bros—and a much coveted banking internship leads to, well, nothing. Except for more debt. Fortunately, there’s Mark and Elijah, a couple ten years or so older who take him in as their third paramour (we’re spared “throuple”). Mark, a sort of small-time trust funder, and Elijah have their own set of troubles, which they’re happy to cast aside whenever Alistair visits. Alistair is eventually offered an opportunity to work for an elusive, sinister billionaire and he jumps at it while continuing to investigate the mogul’s wealth. What he discovers catapults him out of the life he had come to know into one both terrifying and wildly anxiety producing. Lefferts moves around the narrative with ease, visiting family and friends, picking up a character or two then setting them down. Slowly these scenes fall together and this expansive novel becomes far greater than the sum of its parts. Comparisons to Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life are inevitable, and in both books there is plenty that horrifies. But also, like A Little Life, it’s ultimately friendship that saves the characters. And us as well.

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Review

Young Rich Widows

by Henrietta Thornton

Krystle, Meredith, Justine, and Camille are thrown together when their law-firm owning husbands, and in the case of Meredith, her girlfriend, are killed in a plane crash. The wives already knew and hated one another; the lone female partner in the firm was in the closet (it’s 1985), but is now firmly out, and Meredith joins in the animosity and puzzlement that’s freely flowing. Why were the partners on a plane back to Providence, Rhode Island from New York City, when they were supposed to be working in Providence that day? The reasons slowly become clear as the women are targeted by the town’s mafia for money that the deceased owed. Just when that danger wraps up, a twist hits the widows and readers as another…and another…perilous situation bears down on them. This book began life as an Audible original and its backbiting humor mixed with love and loathing makes it easy to see why it was such a hit and was brought to print. The authors’ note (there’s also a reading-group guide) explains that ‘90s humor-laden novels such as Married to the Mob and The First Wives Club provided inspiration; grab Young Rich Widows for some nostalgia, but it’s also just a fun romp for any thriller lover.

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Review

You Know What You Did

by Henrietta Thornton

“Her mother’s approval was everything, her rejection absolute annihilation.” A daily does of annihilation is Anh Le’s lot as the child of a Vietnamese immigrant mother who is “from the ‘I criticize because I care’ culture.” Today, Mẹ, the mother, lives in the carriage house next to her artist daughter, now called Annie, who’s married with a sullen teen daughter, whom Mẹ calls a whore. After Annie finds Mẹ dead, things start to get even more difficult. Despite her OCD related to cleanliness, Annie must clean out the carriage house where her mother refused to throw out anything, even rotten food. At the same time, she takes on a new commission for her local benefactor, an elderly lady who doesn’t acknowledge Mẹ’s death (“China dolls needn’t have troublesome backstories”) and who promptly goes missing. At first, the police refuse to believe there’s any issue, but as further crimes come to light, they and Annie herself, who’s once again crippled by her compulsions, begin to wonder if she’s to blame. Nguyen delves deep into the trauma caused by war and the generations-spanning destruction it can unleash, but anyone who grew up feeling othered will recognize themselves here. A debut to remember, and what a gripping ending.

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Review

Extinction

by Jeff Ayers

Erebus is a resort for the extremely wealthy, and those who visit the sprawling grounds in the heart of the Colorado Rockies get to experience Earth’s distant past. Using cutting-edge technology, scientists have been able to de-extinct mammals like woolly mammoths and plant life from the Pleistocene era. A young couple pays for a camping trip in the sprawling complex and is kidnapped and killed by what appears to be a group of ruthless hunters. Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Frances Cash and county sheriff James Colcord lead the investigation. As the mystery creates national headlines, Cash and Colcord meet resistance from both the team at the resort and their own supervisors. What happened to the couple is only the beginning, and the shocking truth will threaten lives and the history books. Preston creates a Michael Crichton level of thought-provoking science and thrilling intrigue while avoiding writing a Jurassic Park clone. Extinction goes beyond the simple question of whether man should play God, and with a terrific cast of characters, Preston has a guaranteed bestseller.

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Review

The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2023

by Brian Kenney

It wasn’t until I began reviewing for firstCLUE that I read mystery anthologies. Now I’m a firm believer that everyone needs an anthology such as this one on their bedside table. The many stories collected here provide the perfect opportunity to relax, unwind, and travel near and far. As Unger writes in the introduction: “…this form [short fiction] has a special kind of magic, the ability to transport you quickly, intensely, to capture character, time, place, and story with immediacy and deliver it all with a punch.” And where our expectation of crime novels is that everything will be resolved in the end, short stories often finish more enigmatically, giving readers something to ruminate about. Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier, for example, transports us, in “Ripen,” to the Virgin Islands, where a politician’s arrogance leads to his dramatic downfall. A. J. Jacono’s “When We Remember Zion” tells the intensely chilling tale of a mentally ill abductor who delivers his hostage’s baby. We accompany an older veteran—now a professional criminal—who tries to escape from a botched job by returning to his childhood cabin in James A. Hearn’s “Home is the Hunter.” “New York Blues Redux,” by William Boyle, depicts a Brooklyn dive bar that becomes the setting for a night of tragedy. Congratulations to editors Unger and Cha for producing a volume as rich in diversity as it is compelling in its narratives.

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Review

Exit Black

by Jeff Ayers

A floating space station, the Imperium, was once a laboratory but has been crafted into a hotel for the extremely wealthy in Pitkin’s thriller. The first group arrives, and the team onboard is ready to show off the unique features of a stay, including a view of Earth and a supervised spacewalk. Chloe, a biophysicist who misses having her work be the focus of the station, assists in making the visitors feel welcome. It doesn’t help that her boyfriend, the CEO of the hotel, can’t make it at the last minute. She quickly learns that something sinister is happening and that some of the staff she thought she could trust are part of a global terrorist group called The Reckoners. While Chloe remains in hiding, the visitors are taken hostage, and the demand is eight billion dollars. With no hope of rescue and no way to communicate with anyone on Earth to send help, Chloe takes matters into her own hands. This mashup of the films Die Hard and Gravity is an action-adventure reader’s dream. The pacing is relentless and claustrophobic, making it impossible to stop turning the pages. Pitkin has written a winner.

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Review

The Princess of Las Vegas

by Henrietta Thornton

Though there’s a year between them, sisters Crissy and Betsy Dowling are so alike they could be twins. And they don’t only resemble each other, they also look very like one Diana Spencer, the late, lamented Princess of Wales. The resemblance is so strong that Crissy performs as Di in a long-running Las Vegas residency. The casino that hosts the emotional cabaret, the Buckingham Palace, or BP, has seen better days, as has Crissy’s relationship with her lookalike sister. Crissy claims that Betsy killed their mother, the circumstances around that a mystery for most of the book. But that doesn’t stop Betsy from re-entering her sister’s life by leaving her social worker job for her new boyfriend’s cryptocurrency firm that’s setting up shop in Vegas. When the owner of the BP is found dead, and Crissy doesn’t believe the police’s finding that it’s a suicide, it starts a chain of subterfuge and violence that makes the sort-of-royals wish that what happens in Vegas didn’t involve them. Bohjalian has intriguingly veered into a much more noir path than his usual, with the darkness complimenting his typical tight plotting and absorbing family drama. This is one for fans of campy fare mixed with family shenanigans and of Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan.

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Review

The Best Way to Bury Your Husband

by Brian Kenney

It’s early into lockdown in the UK, and Sally can’t take any more physical and psychological abuse from her husband—thankfully the kids are grown and out of the house. So she does the only thing she can do: she fights back, smashing him on the head with her iron skillet. But killing is the easy part. It’s disposing of the body that’s the challenge. Fortunately, Sally soon discovers that she’s not the only woman in the neighborhood with a husband rotting away in the basement, packed in cat litter (did you know? It absorbs both odors and fluids). Slowly, these women come together and create quite the self-help group, dubbed the Lockdown Ladies’ Burial Club, which is tasked with disposing of four bodies…and getting away with it. As impossible as this may seem—these women aren’t exactly hooked up with organized crime—they revel in their newly created freedom, gaining the strength to take on seemingly any challenge. As Sally says, “For too long I let a small man steal my joy and potential.” What’s remarkable is how Casale—with a decade of experience in the field of male violence against women—succeeds at moving between the women’s experiences with domestic violence in the past and the dark humor of their present situation, tacitly giving us permission to laugh at times. Well-written with plenty of surprises, twists, and turns to keep readers engrossed. Pair it with Bella Mackie’s How to Kill your Family.

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