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Review

Calico

by Jeff Ayers

A missing-person case becomes a possible homicide investigation, and an ex-LAPD detective becomes tangled in a bizarre mystery in Goldberg’s latest thriller. Beth McDade was forced out of the LAPD, and the only place willing to hire her is in the isolated area of Barstow, California. Everyone knows everybody in this area of the state, and even though there are few people spread out over many miles in the desert, she hopes to escape her past and find a second chance. The disappearance of a man on the way to visit his daughter and an accident involving a motor home running over someone keep her busy. Still, the more she investigates, the more she will question her sanity. Goldberg also takes the time to explore the life of Ben, who becomes a chef in the mining town of Calico in the late 1800s. What Ben uncovers in the past could very well help Beth in the present. The journeys of both Ben and Beth are complicated and compelling, and what Goldberg has crafted is a page-turning novel that has surprises up to the final page. Calico is arguably one of his best.

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Review

While We Were Burning

by Henrietta Thornton

Elizabeth is in a rut. Her job isn’t so satisfying, and her marriage is on the rocks. Her every move seems to trigger a report by her husband, David, to their therapist. She feels ganged up on and adrift, which is bad enough. That descends into depression, which others believe is paranoia, when she finds her neighbor Patricia dead. Others say it’s suicide, but Elizabeth is sure it was murder and is determined to find the culprit. She has a willing sidekick in her sleuthing in Brianna, the assistant that David insists his wife take on to help out at home. Brianna, who is Black, is all too willing to be white Elizabeth’s new best friend, Watson to her Sherlock, and de facto therapist, given that Brianna has a strong motivation to insert herself into her employers’ upscale Memphis neighborhood: someone there called the cops on her son and they killed him. As the plot twists and turns, deceptions build, and though readers have the benefit of a birds’ eye view of the story, surprises are in store. This is reminiscent of Elizabeth Day’s Magpie, with its suburban setting and overcrowded marriage; the effects of gentrification and racism also loom large. For fans of Magpie Murders and novels that pack in the psychological drama.

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Review

Nightwatching

by Brian Kenney

A superb novel of suspense that alternates between the terrifying present and the complex past that led up to this moment. A woman, sleeping near her two young children in a Colonial home in Massachusetts town, hears what she thinks are footsteps. Could there be anything scarier? Except this is an old house, always creaking. Perhaps it’s her imagination. Then, thanks to the nightlight, she sees a man, a huge man, slowly climbing the stairs, as “his fingers wrap the banister like white spider legs.” What should she do? A blizzard rages outside, making escape impossible. Then she remembers that the house has a tiny, hidden room, and she hustles the children and herself into it, while still worrying how they will be able to survive. Sierra keeps the adrenaline pumping, but takes breaks from the primary narrative to explore the woman’s life, from a less than happy marriage to an abusive relationship with her father-in-law to a patriarchal society that refuses to believe her. This unique, thinking-person’s thriller would be great for a book discussion, there’s so much here to unpack.

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Review

The Bliss House

by Henrietta Thornton

In the rural Ontario Bliss House live 17-year-old Cam; his cousins Wes, who’s in his late twenties; and Dorie, who’s five and is a distant relative Gramp and Gran took in. Gran died a few months ago and her abusive, alcoholic spouse not long after, but Gramp is not quite gone, his corpse hidden under a tarp in the house’s cold room. With no will leaving the house and farm to the remaining family, what else can they do? Wild-child Dorie is able to keep Gramp’s death a secret, as well as her knowledge of the game Cam and Wes play in Wes’s bedroom, the same one, she thinks, the nasty neighbor boy, Kyle, wanted to play with her in the barn. The ramshackle family is just starting to believe things are safe when Kyle’s mother sets the Misses Gurney on them. Beulah and Audrey Gurney are with Bethel Baptist and Dorie’s attire—or lack of it—when she plays in the yard is, they say, “the Lord’s business.” They brush Kyle’s behavior aside (“They’re Pentecostal”) but cannot see their way to ignoring Wes and Cam’s “sin,” launching the Bliss boys on a startlingly violent and engrossing path to keep their family and love safe from the state. Young adults as well as adult readers who aren’t squeamish (terms like “corpseooze” stand out) will root hard for this loving family and stay up to find out how their bizarre, Murphy’s-law-ridden odyssey turns out. Playwright Bartley’s previous fiction is set in Balkan war zones, making this memorable work a fresh start.

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Review

Death by Demo: A Home Renovation Mystery

by Brian Kenney

In cozies, we often meet our hero when they are in a state of flux, and Death by Demo is a classic example. Jaime is recently divorced—her husband was having an affair—and the prenuptial she signed without reading has left her nearly broke. She and her ne’er-do-well ex-husband ran a highly successful construction and interior design firm in Charlotte, NC, but now all she’s left with is a dilapidated Queen Anne style house and her best friend’s couch. While everyone expects Jaime to sell the house, she takes a certain liking to it and decides to renovate it on her own. That’s part of what makes this book so interesting, watching Jamie—who’s a real carpenter—put the historic home back together while she ruminates on how her life fell apart. But in the midst of some serious demolition, she comes across a body walled up in her new home. Tragic, for sure. But also annoying, as the house is now declared a crime scene and Jaime is forced to abandon the one thing that’s keeping her sane. Until it dawns on her that maybe law enforcement needs a little help. Well-written, nicely plotted, with great insights into the renovation industry and a cute and sensitive next door neighbor. Cozy readers will delight in this discovery.

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Review

The Secret Hours

by Willy Williams

It’s not all Aston Martin sports cars and martinis (“shaken, not stirred”) In Herron’s (Slow Horses) spy world. The reality is more mundane and bureaucratic in post-Brexit London, where British intelligence services have been the subject of a two-year inquiry, codenamed Monochrome and launched by a vengeful, now ex-prime minister. Thanks to the best efforts of First Desk, the agencies’ top banana, the panel headed by civil servants Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle has been unable to uncover any wrongdoing. But as the probe is about to be shut down, Malcolm mysteriously receives a classified file exposing a long-buried operation in post-Cold War 1994 Berlin that ended in tragedy. How does this connect to a recent botched attack on a retired “joe” in rural Devon? Herron skillfully ties the loose threads together in a satisfying, yet melancholy conclusion that reflects upon the collateral damage caused by betrayals that are the lifeblood of espionage: “The cost of heroism—of betrayal—was high; it was the same cost, seen from opposite sides. And the same cost applied, it seemed, if you were neither hero nor traitor, but simply occupied the same neighbourhood.” Billed as a standalone, this smartly written, funny, and complex thriller is a good introduction for newbies, but fans of Herron’s “Slough House” books will recognize a few crossover characters.

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Review

Lone Wolf

by Jeff Ayers

The usually solid Evan Smoak, a former government assassin in the Orphan program, is not at the top of his game. His sharp senses and training are gone, and to get back into shape and help those with nowhere else to turn, Evan agrees to find a missing dog. A mission not worthy of his skills quickly becomes deadly when he stumbles upon a dead body and is almost shot by a female assassin, The Wolf. She is formidable and focused on completing her assignment with training similar to his own, even if that means eliminating Evan and everyone he cares about and feels responsible for keeping safe. It’s jarring seeing Evan be “ordinary” at first, but his journey back to being himself is both intense and satisfying. The series has always been a blend of Batman, the Equalizer, and Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp, and Lone Wolf reinforces why it continues to be great nine novels in. Newcomers to Evan’s adventures should feel fine starting here before diving into the others.

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Review

The City of the Living

by Brian Kenney

A deep, dark descent into one of Italy’s most disturbing true crimes, drawing on actual documents, news reports, and interviews to tell the story. Billed by the publisher as a “spellbinding literary thriller”—it’s certainly spellbinding, but no one’s definition of a thriller—this is a slow, methodical, layered journey into the murder of 23-year-old Luca Varani. The method? Torture. The perpetrators? Manuel Foffo, who confesses to his father, while driving to a family funeral, that he killed someone—three, four, five days ago?—he’s too drugged out to know. And Marco Prato, also from a “good family,” a nightclub promoter, gay and considering transitioning. Manuel and Marco barely know each other, although after several drug-and-alcohol fueled days holed up in Manuel’s apartment they develop an intimacy that’s somewhat sexual but more a twisted sort of friendship. “So-called psychic contagion, like a racing engine, brought the two young men close to the point of fusion.” What do they share, besides a love of drugs and alcohol? For starters, an inability to mature, jealousy of the rich, and complete irresponsibility. Lagioia intertwines the descent of Manuel and Marco with the descent of Rome itself—drug filled, rat-infested, garbage strewn, home to wild animals, yet ultimately, he claims, freeing. This story begs for comparison with the Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb murder of Bobby Franks in 1924 Chicago. Brilliantly translated.

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Review

This Plague of Souls

by Henrietta Thornton

This dark, introspective work, which unexpectedly reveals a golden-hued motivation on the part of its main character, reads like Scandinavian noir. But this gem is by an Irish author and follows his Booker Prize-longlisted Solar Bones. McCormack brings us to the west of Ireland, home of Nealon, a man returning from prison, though at first all we know is that he’s been away. He finds his home unexpectedly empty, the electricity switched off, and his wife and child gone. Right away, he gets a call from a stranger who, in a tone so jaunty it’s sinister, congratulates Nealon on his homecoming and offers to tell him where his family is in return for a meeting. As Nealon whiles away the days—after firmly declining the meeting—in a strange limbo, contact with the stranger continues and the former prisoner finds that the motivations for his crime may come to light. West of Ireland weather sets the tone, as “a huge, bruised cloud moves across the sky, with leaden sheets of rain peeling from its underbelly.” But it’s the anonymous, yet intimate, comments from the needling stranger that keep the writing on its toes and Nealon facing “a massive cessation of all that passes for the run of things.” For fans of Donal Ryan and David Malouf.

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Review

Shadowheart

by Jeff Ayers

Gardiner shakes up the serial-killer genre with her latest thriller. FBI profiler Caitlin Hendrix visits serial killer Efrem Judah Goode in prison. He shows her detailed drawings of the women he has killed, but none of them are the victims he’s incarcerated for killing. He claims innocence for those women’s murders but is not innocent of being a murderer. There is a copycat called the Broken Heart Killer, and somehow Goode and this UNSUB are connected. Caitlin dives into the case and will once again put her career and life on the line for justice, while bringing closure to the families of the women Goode killed. What she uncovers will surprise even the most jaded reader. Gardiner has a gift for tackling gruesome and uncomfortable topics and giving the prose a literary spin. While other authors might wallow in the ugly, Gardiner makes it beautiful. Fans of true crime and the television show Criminal Minds should make Gardiner mandatory reading.

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