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Review

All the Dark Places

by Brian Kenney

Part police procedural, part domestic suspense, All the Dark Places provides mystery fans with the reading experience they crave. It’s psychologist Jay Bradley’s 40th birthday, and Molly, his wife, has planned a small get together in their suburban Boston home. By midnight, the other couples have left, Molly has teeter-totted off to bed, and Jay has checked into his stand-alone office in the backyard to work on his book. But when Molly wakes up, Jay isn’t in bed, the scent of coffee isn’t permeating the house, and the door to Jay’s office is wide open—with him dead on the floor, his neck horribly slashed. Enter Boston PD Detective Rita Myers, who leads the investigation and is convinced that Jay has been murdered by someone in their close circle. But why would one of their friends—affluent, happy, and seemingly complacent—murder everybody-loves-Jay? Parlato skillfully moves the story between Rita and the present day inquiry and Molly and what we discover is her horrible past. She also imbues the book with plenty of humanity—60-ish Rita has a bit of a love interest, Molly adopts a lovely dog to help keep her safe—and never once does the brisk narrative veer into the unbelievable. For fans of Shari Lapena and Mary Kubica.

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Review

Complicit

by Henrietta Thornton

Yeats’ haunting line about two sisters, “both beautiful, one a gazelle,” comes to mind when reading this story that deeply explores the decisions made by two women caught in the orbit of lecherous Hollywood men. Our narrator, Sarah Lai, and her boss, Sylvia Zimmerman, are similar to a point. They’re both striving film producers, with Sylvia ahead by years when she hires Sarah, a nervous ivy-league graduate whose parents run a restaurant. They both hate what women endure in the industry, from being passed over in favor of less-talented men to navigating those men’s sense of sexual entitlement. While they ruefully believe that “you have to do what you have to do” if you still want a job, it’s in their reactions to this rule that the women diverge. Via flashbacks from Sarah’s regret-filled current life teaching film at a B-list school, we visit her #metoo years as told to a journalist who’s writing an expose of that time. We know from the start that something untoward happened, but Li (Dark Chapter) reveals the facts in a tantalizing slow drip. The shock and dread build, helped along by lines such as “His British accent slithers out at me.” For those who’ve lived #metoo, you’ll find your experience put to paper, and for those who think it’s exaggerated, you might finally get it.

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Review

The Body Falls

by Henrietta Thornton

Lovers of classic mysteries will be familiar with the locked-room trope, in which a finite set of characters is stuck in one place with a murderer in their midst, à la Murder on the Orient Express. Here the “room” is the real northern Irish town of Inishowen, which is cut off from the outside world when a month’s worth of rain falls in 24 hours, with all roads and bridges leading out of town destroyed by floods. The townspeople come together well enough, including the protagonist, solicitor Benedicta (Ben) O”Keefe. When readers last met Ben,, in Murder at Greysbridge, she was heading off to New York for six months, partially to get a break from her confused relationship with a local police sergeant (he hasn’t gone anywhere and the fate of the on-again, off-again relationship is an enjoyable subplot). She returns to find her hometown awash but her small law firm ticking along nicely, even if her replacement didn’t know how to leave any surface paper-free. Not moving along so well is a charity cycling event that’s supposed to run from nearby Malin Head, Ireland’s most northerly point, to Mizen Head, it’s most southerly, with weather keeping the cyclists restlessly bound to Inishowen. Then the rain brings a more macabre result: on a late night call, the local vet’s car is hit by a falling body. Ben once again gives her Sergeant beau a run for his money in the investigation stakes, uncovering family secrets, local scandals, and contentment with her Inishowen lot along the way. Lovers of grittier cozies are the audience for this one.

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Review

An Honest Living

by Henrietta Thornton

Take a trip back to early 2000s Brooklyn in this work of literary noir that lurks on the edges of the art world. Noir novels present an investigator who’s down on his or her luck, and here it’s Dwyer Murphy—yes, the main character has the same name as the author—a former corporate lawyer who couldn’t take the hours, the billing in six-minute increments, or the colleagues. Now he’s going it alone, but he needs the odd lucrative job (even the odd shady one) to stay afloat. He takes a sad case: one party in an acrimonious divorce wants him to try to buy books off her husband; she suspects that he’s selling some of her valuable, inherited volumes and needs the proof. Two things are strange: the “books” are esoteric, early American legal pamphlets such as “Confessions of Tom Mansfield who Corrupted and Murdered His Servant,” which Dwyer had no idea were collectibles, let alone worth taking risks over. And then he faces being sued by the wife because he’s ruining her husband’s reputation. There’s no end to the rich-people twistedness here, which is both incredible and all-too believable. That’s enjoyable enough, but best is the slow-burn, quirky trip with the steadfast Dwyer, who puts one foot in front of the other until he figures out what’s going on. A kinda, sorta Thelma-and-Louise ending caps the saga, but leaves room to wonder what’s next for the lovable Dwyer.

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Review

The Guest House

by Brian Kenney

Just take all those accolades used for thrillers—unputdownable, twisty, dark, chilling, vivid, explosive, intense—and heap them on. Because this book is that good. That credible. And that terrifying. Londoners Victoria and Jamie take a brief vacation in Cumbria. Victoria’s due to have a baby in a few weeks, and the trip is a last hurrah before parenthood consumes them. They’re booked into a remote guest house—what we’d call a B&B—and are absolutely charmed by the older couple that runs it. But when they wake up the next morning, the couple is missing, the doors and windows locked. Cell phones? Gone. Car keys? Ditto. Then Victoria realizes that the mild contractions she has been experiencing are becoming much more intense and that the baby is on its way. That’s all you’ll get out of me when it comes to plot, but be warned: as soon as you think you know what this story is about, Morgan-Bentley flips the narrative, providing an even scarier turn. Unusual for crime fiction, which rarely includes characters with disabilities, Jamie has cerebral palsy, and his challenges with movement and balance give the book an even greater realism. While this novel is perfect for fans of Ruth Ware, Emma Rowley, and Lisa Jewell, really, it’s in a class by itself.

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Review

The Shadow Lily

by Henrietta Thornton

Everyone’s battling extremes in Mo’s latest Sweden-set psychological thriller-slash-police procedural. Thomas Ahlström loves his toddler son, Hugo, but has a daughter he abandoned when she was the boy’s age. That daughter, Lykke, starves herself for days on end just to have something she can control, but tenderly cares for the shadow lilies growing her in garden. Detective Hanna Duncker, back in her second installment in the series (after The Night Singer), is as determined a cop as they come but is sick of the job’s endless “death, lies, and families.” More of that is on the cards, though, when she and her partner must investigate the disappearance of Thomas and Hugo. Suspects and secrets abound, as do red herrings, and readers will be rapt as one by one, the innocent—of this crime, anyway—drop away and Hanna and Erik face danger over and over to get to the heart of a violent puzzle. At the same time, Hanna is tantalized by possible new details on an old killing; her father was convicted, but now a contact in that case wants to talk. We end on a cliffhanger—bring on #3!

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Review

Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder

by Brian Kenney

Maddy Montgomery is in need of a major reset. Spoiled rotten—Daddy’s an admiral—the recent Stanford grad and social-media-marketing maven loves her Laboutins and Jimmy Choos, as well as her doctor fiancé . Until he abandons her at the altar. And the ceremony was being livestreamed. Time for #FreshStarts #NoLookingBack. As luck would have it, Maddy has just inherited her great-aunt Octavia’s estate in New Bison, Michigan, a quaint town on Lake Michigan. The catch? She needs to live in the town, run her aunt’s bakery, and care for Babe, a 250-pound English mastiff—I defy any reader not to fall in love with him—for one year. Octavia was one smart, independent woman, and it seems like she also knew that Maddy needed a reset. Maddy’s willing—does she really have a choice?—and before you can say Hicksville, she’s making new friends, learning to crack open an egg, and even dating. Until the much-maligned Mayor gets killed, and Maddy’s fingerprints are found on the murder weapon. Help comes from the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of her great-aunt’s friends, who help her navigate the treacherous waters of Great Bison and present a different set of values, values that Maddy finds herself adopting. A great start to a series that is part poignant, part humorous, and part suspenseful while introducing a wonderful, new, African American heroine.

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Review

Kalmann

by Brian Kenney

Deeply heartfelt and gently humorous, Kalmann is as unique as its eponymous hero, Kalmann Odinsson. Self-proclaimed mayor of Raufarhöfn, a small town in Iceland’s far north, early thirty-ish Kalmann is also the town’s one remaining shark catcher and producer of hákarl, a delicacy made from fermented shark. But Kalmman’s mind works differently from most people’s. You could call him neurodivergent, but he just says that “things with me have never really gone forward.” Then one day, when hunting a fox outside of town, he comes across a large pool of blood in the snow. This leaves him completely rattled, but instead of reporting it to the police, he goes home and watches Dr. Phil. Kalmann is called in for questioning the next day; it seems that a local businessman has disappeared. While Kalmann remains sort of focused on solving the murder—while putting forth the theory that a polar bear could be the culprit—Schmidt takes us deep into Kalmann’s life, from his mixed experiences growing up to all he learned about survival from his wonderful grandfather, and from his bouts of loneliness to the challenges he has communicating with others, and vice versa. Still, the criminal element remains the rope that pulls us through the book. Schmidt’s creation of the character Kalmann is no less than masterful. Can we hope that this is just our first foray with Kalmann?

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Review

Good Husbands

by Henrietta Thornton

Bath, England strangers Priyanka, Stephanie, and Jess each receive the same letter telling them that their husbands together raped a woman decades before, with the letter writer, Holly, claiming to be the daughter of one of the men. The women think that confronting their husbands will be the end of the story. (That’s if they decide it’s true and if they can bring themselves to tell the men that they know about the rape, neither of which they find a given at all.) The husbands, too, think their troubles are over. They’re still members of the same upmarket social club where Holly says the crime took place, and still lead fine lives, unlike the victim and her daughter, with the mother now dead and the daughter near death from alcoholism. As the women meet one another and move from emotional paralysis to action, we’re brought to what seems like a definitive showdown. But it’s not the end at all. Ray’s U.S. debut reminds readers, through her storytelling and her portrayal of the women’s undulating emotions, that sometimes what we think will be the end might not even be the most significant part of the story; these women make their own ending, and it includes a startling closing twist. The sadness of lives destroyed is palpable here, but so is the healing force of friendship, not to mention determination. Psychological thriller fans who enjoy strong women characters should add this to their reading plans.

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Review

The Resemblance

by Henrietta Thornton

When a member of the Kappa Phi Omicron fraternity is killed when crossing an Athens, GA street, it at first seems like an unfortunate accident. Homicide Detective Marlitt Kaplan is first on the scene because she happens to be nearby, but it turns out that her murder-investigation skills might be needed after all, because witnesses all mention the same odd set of facts. The victim, Jay Kemp, appears to have been run over by…Jay Kemp. Although he didn’t have a twin, a person who looked exactly like him was driving the car that ran him over, and that person was smiling as he gathered speed while moving toward Jay. The victim’s fraternity is the first place Kaplan and her partner hit when gathering facts about Jay, and from the start, things don’t look right. Is the boys’ secretiveness just fraternity culture or a coverup? Nothing is clear, and it’s made even murkier by the intertwining of grudges and dramas with former fraternity members, current members who are on the outs, and the many, many girls in the wings. A slowly unfolding backstory concerning what Marlitt endured when her old friend joined a different fraternity adds to the mystery. This intriguing debut is one for fans of academia gone wrong, such as depicted in the TV series The Chair.

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