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Review

The Butterfly Trap

by Henrietta Thornton

On the surface this is a he-said, she-said crime tale, but there’s much more going on in this darker departure from Simon’s previous work. It’s a close examination of what happens when one partner is completely smitten—the reader will be waiting for the yearning to tip over into obsessive stalking—and the other not only believes themselves not right for this love, but unworthy overall. The partners are Greg and Anya, Greg a research scientist who later enters a medical residency program and Anya a painter who hasn’t yet made it in Boston’s cutthroat art scene. The hippy veneer on vicious creative-world competition is perfectly portrayed here, as is Anya’s pushy mom, who holds her riches over her broke daughter’s head while practically mandating an arranged marriage to Greg, MD. On the sidelines are friends of the couple who become involved in a crime that’s almost an afterthought to the relationship struggles but that serves to tie up the tense alternating narratives in a shocking way. Simon’s fans will appreciate this swerve; it’s also a must for readers who enjoyed the dueling male and female narrators in Araminta Hall’s One of the Good Guys.

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Review

Kill Your Darlings

by Brian Kenney

Here are two people I certainly will never invite to Thanksgiving. Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over 25 years. Academics, they’ve long been settled in Updike territory along the North Shore of Boston with a cat and a nearly full-grown kid. She’s barely published as a poet while he is an English professor and full-on drunkard. The two might seem a bit dull were it not for how sinister we slowly come to realize they actually are. Swanson (The Kind Worth Saving, Nine Lives) gradually unveils their marriage by going backwards, all the way back to the tragic incident the two plotted and committed in their early twenties. But years of secrecy have taken their toll, and not everyone is willing to keep up the original bargain. Swanson can always be trusted to deliver novels that are rich in intellectual suspense and provide a narrative that is refreshingly new. Here he delivers on both.

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Review

A Case of Mice and Murder

by Brian Kenney

Attention anglophiles, lovers of dazzling historical fiction, and fans of a good draught of droll humor. This book is for you. Set in the Inner Temple, the heart of legal London for centuries, with its own degree of independence (not unlike the Vatican), the novel features Gabriel Ward KC, a brilliant legal mind who moves each day at the same measured pace between his chambers, which are crammed with books on nearly all topics; his office; and the dining hall. But on May 21, 1901, he emerges from his room only to discover a body on his doorstep. In fact, Ward is quick to identify it as the corpse of the Lord Chief Justice, who now has a Temple carving knife in his chest. But what is even more shocking isn’t that he is clad in evening wear, but that his feet are bare. How delicious is this plot? Appointed by the Temple’s Treasurer to investigate the murderer, Ward is paired with the eager and charming young Constable Wright, whose street knowledge turns out to be quite an asset, gaining Ward’s respect. The investigation drags the pair from the upper classes to the homeless, with an entirely separate court case—in children’s publishing, no less—providing some entertainment of its own. Quite simply, this is one of the very best debuts I’ve read in a long time; it’s sure to delight the Osman and Thorogood crews and readers of Sarah Caldwell’s legal murder mysteries as well.

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Review

Death in the Dressing Room

by Brian Kenney

One of the great pleasures of reading any of Simon Brett’s (A Messy Murder, Death and the Decorator) four series is that you can just pick a volume and get going. No need to worry about which book comes first. Brett’s a strong enough writer that he knows to provide just a bit of earlier information, but never so much as to overload the reader with backstory. Death in the Dressing Room is in the Fethering series, which means that readers will meet (or be reintroduced to) Carole and Jude. The former is an uptight, former Home Office type now retired, and Jude is a professional “healer” and every bit the former hippie. The two would never have hit it off if they weren’t neighbors in the lovely town of Fethering. In this story, the women are investigating the murder of one of the leading stars, Drake Purslow, whose body was found in the theater. While she’s no friend of actors, it’s nevertheless Carole who becomes a volunteer at the theater, if only to unearth the most salient facts about Drake and the whole crew. Fun, fast, and totally credible.

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Review

A Dead Draw

by Jeff Ayers

An interrogation with suspect Erik Schmidt haunts Detective Tracy Crosswhite, and his connection to her sister’s killer brings back painful memories in Dugoni’s latest thriller. Tracy’s reaction to Schmidt triggers her PTSD, and when she makes a mistake during a training session, the detective realizes she needs to destress. When Schmidt is released on a technicality, Tracy convinces her family to spend some time in her hometown of Cedar Grove so she can step away, relax, and put Schmidt out of her mind. But Schmidt has other ideas. A thriller author can rarely take an obvious cat-and-mouse game with the established final battle setup and turn it on its head to create a tense and unexpected confrontation, but Dugoni (Beyond Reasonable Doubt, A Killing on the Hill) pulls it off. He realizes his characters are first-rate and readers will follow them anywhere, so he amps up the suspense and crafts a page-turner that will cause carpal tunnel from tight gripping of the book. This eleventh entry is one of the best in the series, and Dugoni continues to tell great stories while expanding our love of Tracy and her world. Whether Tracy’s new or a regular addition to your reading pile, sketch out some time for this.

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Review

All the Words We Know

by Brian Kenney

Nash offers the wonderfully unique perspective of 80-something Rose, who has dementia yet wrestles for clarity as she careens around her senior care home. Words and people are fluid in Rose’s mind. Incontinence pants become incongruence pads. Care Manager becomes Scare Manager. Management provides lengthy presentations, discussing “Duty of Care” and “Best Practice.” Then he uses the terms “Person Centered,” and “Facilitating a Holistic Therapeutic Environment.” Rose is adept at identifying lies, and liars, and she keeps returning to the room where her friend lived before she was found dead after a fall—or was it really a push out of the window? This sets Rose off on an investigation that annoys the staff and upsets her children, who only wish that their mother were more docile. Instead, she fears the Angry Nurse, who enters her room carrying a pillow…for smothering? As the book draws to a close, we see many of Rose’s deepest fears being exposed, as police cars surround the building, escorting some of the staff away. Could Rose’s campaign have finally freed the patients?

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Review

A Murder for Miss Hortense

by Henrietta Thornton

If you’re hankering for bulla cake, coco fritters, gizadas, or other Caribbean foods, Miss Hortense has you covered, with recipes for those dishes and more provided throughout this introduction to the steely “pardner lady.” Readers can learn the ins and outs of the pardner while meeting Hortense’s frenemies and neighbors—who are mostly one and the same—in millennium London and flashbacks to the city in the 1960s, but the basic premise is that it’s the kind of money club often used by those who are unbanked. English banks won’t let Hortense and other members of her Black community have accounts, so the pardner sees them each contribute money every week, with members taking turns to get the whole pot. Over the years, the club has allowed its contributors to “become the person they wrote back home and boasted that they were.” But now all the funds have disappeared at the same time that there are several deaths in the community. Even the supposedly natural demises get Hortense thinking, but some of the deaths bear the hallmarks of attacks that happened years ago, when a man the community called the brute beat several women to death and left biblical messages with their bodies. Is he back? Hortense and the other pardner members will have to do their “Looking into Bones,” which is what they call their investigations. These have the habit of “creating more dots than perhaps connections,” but allow readers to explore a tangle of love, loathing, and buried secrets that leads to a delightful Christie-like ending in which fingers are pointed and confessions made. Zadie Smith fans should pick up this winner.

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Review

Plays Well With Others

by Brian Kenney

You won’t find any members of organized crime here. Nor are the characters locked on a Scottish island or seeking a cozy murderer who has their community petrified. In fact, men have practically no roles in this book. And who needs them? The small group of suburban women who populate this novel are terrifying enough. Let’s start out with Jake, who a year ago endured her then-bestie posting their most intimate correspondence on social media. The result? Jake lost everything: job, house, and, most importantly, her husband. After a bit of sulking and trying to live down her past, Jake is back—she settles into a charming bungalow—and gets ready to retaliate. But this time she has a new friend with her, Mabel, who has her own set of problems. The two join up to seek revenge, although the real victims turn out to be the kids, who find themselves in the cross-fires (for real!). Is anyone in this terrifying community without a grievance? A compulsive domestic thriller that is as dark as it is dangerous.

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Review

Battle Mountain

by Jeff Ayers

Nate Romanowski lost everything thanks to Axel Soledad’s murderous spree (in Three-Inch Teeth), and in Box’s latest thriller. Nate will do anything to find and kill Alex. Joe Pickett and his wife are watching Nate’s daughter while he’s off-grid seeking justice. At the same time, the governor asks Joe to find his son-in-law, Mark, and an initial search doesn’t look promising. Mark is alive, but he saw something he shouldn’t have; now he’s being held captive by Axel and his accomplices and needs medical help. Nate and Joe have no idea that their separate journeys will lead them to a final confrontation on Battle Mountain, and that their lives will never be the same again. Box is the master of landscape writing, with the reader feeling the chill of the outdoors and smelling the pine trees. He has delivered a gut-punching thriller that is both compelling and brutal in this cataclysmic war between good and evil. This series gets better with each installment.

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Review

Hidden in Smoke

by Henrietta Thornton

Whip-smart, odd-couple arson investigators Andrew Walker and Walter Sharpe are back, this time probing a string of fires across LA. The worst is a blaze that has taken out part of a major highway. In a city that lives in its car, traffic that’s even more snarled is a disaster, and the investigators relish the chance to travel by helicopter while they sniff out—sometimes literally—clues and, at least on Sharpe’s part, exasperate all around them. Fans of the series will enjoy reacquainting themselves with a lovable criminal from the previous books (Ashes Never Lie, 2024; Malibu Burning, 2023), Danny Cole, who is continuing his revenge against a corporate monster. Tense scenes, some (awesome!), Mission Impossible-type capers, and the wonderful arson-fighting duo of Walker and Sharpe make this an exciting, absorbing addition to the series. Readers need not have read the previous books, but it adds to the experience.

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