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Review

The Cottage

by Brian Kenney

Suspense fiction for those who enjoy character-driven stories, plenty of dialogue, and simple, straightforward prose. Single parent Kate is awoken by noise in her backyard, but it’s just deer. Then she sees some teens running from the cottage at the end of her property. Days later she starts getting anonymous texts—which are vaguely threatening—then a window is smashed and a knife is found embedded in the cottage’s wall. This would be enough to set anyone on edge, but Kate is especially vulnerable; she survived a home invasion two years ago in which her husband, a cop, was murdered. Fortunately, the former police chief is her father-in-law, and her sister —they’ve been estranged for 20-plus years—agrees to move in and help raise Kate’s two kids. As the terror slowly escalates, and the list of potential suspects grows, Kate has to go deeper into her past to understand who wants to kill her today.

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Review

Secrets of Our House

by Henrietta Thornton

This is one of those books that makes you want to befriend the characters, or at least get annual updates on how it’s all going. It’s a family story with two couples as focal points: Desiree (Desi) and Peter, whose marriage seems to be ending, due in part to a mysterious past event; and their daughter Jules and her boyfriend Will, crazy-in-love teenagers. While the young couple’s romance is just starting, it also seems doomed, as Jules is a rich, summertime-only visitor to Will’s rural North Carolina town and is leaving soon for college while less-well-off Will stays put. Both relationships are tested by tragedies and bring each character’s most extreme emotions to the forefront, feelings that are poignantly described by Frey (Until I Find You, 2020). Desi is a particular highlight, with her flawed parenting lending a rawness and realness to the book; the strain induced by tragedy brings her to drop a bombshell revelation that shocks family and readers alike. After this, you may feel like no other characters can measure up and head straight to the TV; once that has passed, try a book I’ve recommended in First Clue before, but I’m doing it again! Paullina Simons’s The Girl in Times Square; those characters almost ruined me for other books.

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Review

Repentance

by Brian Kenney

It’s 1981 and Inspector Joaquín Alzada has one goal: to keep his head down and avoid trouble. Not so easy when you are a cop in Buenos Aires during a period of extreme political turmoil, with Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo bearing daily witness to the thousands of citizens who have been made disappeared. But when his activist brother Jorge is among the missing, Joaquín has no choice but to use his political chips and try to save his brother. Flip to twenty years later, when Argentina is facing a serious economic crisis, with middle-class citizens going hungry and taking to the streets. Again, Joaquín’s reaction is to lie low—he’s close to retirement, after all—but circumstances won’t allow it. For one thing, the body of a woman is found, dumped near the morgue, while at the same time one of Buenos Aires’s wealthiest women has gone missing. Are they a match? Then, the twenty-something son of Jorge—raised by Joaquín and his wife—joins the protestors. Repentance isn’t so much crime fiction as it is fiction embedded in crime, and Díaz skillfully uses Joaquín’s inner voice—poignant, dryly witty, anxious—to move the narrative along. A powerful first novel that brilliantly illuminates a country, a historical period, and an individual.

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Review

Devil’s Chew Toy

by Brian Kenney

Life could be better for Hayden McCall, a diminutive, red-headed (don’t call him cute!) eighth-grade teacher in Seattle. The bad news: While hanging out at a gay bar, he manages to get kicked in the eye by Camilo, a beautiful go-go boy. The good news: Camilo invites him home for the evening and turns out to be quite a gentleman. The worse news: Hayden wakes up the next morning to find Camilo gone, his bull terrier needing to be fed, and the police knocking at the door. With that, we are off and running as Hayden searches for Camilo, accompanied by two of Camilo’s best friends, both lesbians: Hollister, who’s African American, a risk taker, and in possession of an impressive mohawk; and Burley, who’s a giant, a baker, and a total stoner. Both women are keenly aware that the cops are not going to take the disappearance of a young Latino man seriously, a go-go boy at that, and it is up to them to save their friend. This novel is a wonderful mix of lightheartedness—no surprise, sidekicks Hollister and Burley provide plenty of laughs—and seriousness, as we learn that Venezuelan-born Camilo is a “Dreamer” whose stay in the U.S. is precarious. Congratulations to Osler for creating a mystery set in the LGBTQ community that is both compelling and heartfelt. Bring on the next installment!

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Review

The Cottage

by Brian Kenney

Poor Jan. In her late twenties, she’s lost both her job and her boyfriend at the same time. Pretty much directionless, she rents a remote cottage on the edge of a forest and settles down to start that novel she’s always wanted to write, and to try to sort out her future. All would be wonderful were it not for the tapping on the windows every night, the dog barking at something—or someone?—in the garden, and the continual feeling that she is being observed. Cut away to Ian and Emma, a young couple in the area, who have lost a second child to stillbirth, with both babies born deformed. Although they decide to no longer seek having children biologically, Ian becomes obsessed with trying to understand the cause of their misfortunes. These two narratives really crank up the suspense as Jan seeks to discover the nature of her nocturnal visitors while Ian slowly uncovers disturbing facts about his and Emma’s parentages. Eventually the two story lines converge, making for a super creepy, but satisfying, ending. Kudos to Stone for a thriller that relies on neither violence nor murder and manages to treat a medical condition with compassion, not exploitation. Reading groups will enjoy discussing the many moral dilemmas the novel presents.

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Review

A Thousand Steps

by Henrietta Thornton

Matt Anthony, a high-schooler in 1960s San Francisco, has the weight of the world on his skinny shoulders. His conservative father abandoned the family and writes only to rail about the “queers and communists” who have taken over the city. Matt supports his family with a punishing paper route while living off fish he catches and foraging restaurant leftovers, all because his mother claims to have a curiously long-lasting flu but is actually using their grocery and rent money on drugs. Worst of all, right after Matt sees a teen girl’s body washed up on the beach, his sister Jasmine goes missing. Matt’s mother doesn’t take Jasmine’s disappearance seriously for days and the police are little help, leaving Matt to investigate the seedy human infrastructure of the city’s drug scene, which wears a veneer of peace and love but underneath is cut-throat capitalist. Matt’s story is akin to an ancient epic that sees the hero tested and battered (his lengthy skirmish with a giant fish—two week’s worth of food for a hungry boy—is terrifying). But ultimately he triumphs as he fights for what’s right. The prolific Parker has 27 other novels to back this up, most recently Then She Vanished (2020); readers who like a modern epic should turn to Michael Hughes’s Country, a version of The Iliad set in present-day Northern Ireland.

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Review

The Accomplice

by Brian Kenney

Everyone has secrets. But in The Accomplice, even the secrets have secrets. Luna and Owen, who meet in college, aren’t lovers. They’re BFFs, despite their many differences. Owen is handsome, preppy, and privileged. Luna is overly honest and direct, but when it comes to her life, quite mysterious. Owen in a way adopts Luna, who ends up spending her holidays with Owen’s mad, drunken family—and eventually seduces Owen’s older brother. When Owen’s ex-girlfriend dies—suicide, murder, or accident?—the campus turns on him. All except for Luna. And when, fifteen years later, Owen’s wife is violently murdered—yes, he and Luna live in the same town—again Luna takes Owen’s side. Or does she? Because Luna has her own secrets she needs to protect. This is crime fiction in which conversation far outweighs the action, but that’s O.K. You’ll never regret the time you spend with this dysfunctional group of frenemies.

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Review

Just Thieves

by Henrietta Thornton

Frank’s day job is as a thief, but he believes himself a philosopher at heart, and uses his constant learning and contemplation to justify his ways. Ownership isn’t real anyway, he tells his partner, Rick, during their long stakeouts. There are hints that the two are a couple, but love or any kind of emotion seems beyond Rick, whose ennui and lack of agency sees him take on a life of crime because, whatever, it’s all the same. Mr. Froehmer, a crime boss who will remind readers of Breaking Bad’s Mr. Fring—aloof, sparing of details—assigns the partners seemingly meaningless things to steal, and they’re off on a trajectory that eventually sees Rick forced to take hold of the reins when his mentor can no longer make their decisions. Readers will love to hate Denise, Rick’s shifty ex, and will cheer Rick as an unlikely hero when he shakes off the blahs and takes charge of what matters. Fans of dialog-rich novels are the audience for this thoughtful noir from Galloway (Careful and Other Stories; The 39 Deaths of Adam Strand).

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Review

Wish You Were Gone

by Henrietta Thornton

Nancy Thayer meets Liane Moriarty in this mystery starring Emma, Gray, and Lizzie, three friends who must pick up the pieces when one is tragically widowed. Well….two friends and a frenemy. And OK, it’s not that tragic either, as the dead husband is an abuser who dies when he drunk-accelerates into his own garage wall. In fact, nothing is as it seemed when Emma’s now-dead husband, James, was making megabucks with Gray’s husband at their sports-star PR firm. After James meets his boozy end, the sports world and the family’s Hamptons-in-Jersey town is shocked, and so are Emma and her children. But as the days pass, the fear and shock recede, only to reveal mysteries that Emma can’t ignore. The stronger-than-she-knew mother starts by following a clue that the crash may not have been an accident; investigating, she finds out more about her husband and his sordid life, but mostly allows Scott (the True Love and Non-Blond Cheerleader series; and writing as Kate Brian, the Shadowlands trilogy) to reveal that life after toxic secrets is always better. Come for the friendship story, stay for the startling twists.

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Review

They Can’t Take Your Name

by Brian Kenney

A beautiful, powerful novel that is as simple in its telling as it is deep in its emotions. Eli Stone is a shell of a man, undone by the death of his beloved wife and desperate to find an excuse to keep on living. Renovating The Roz, a landmark jazz club in the center of Denver’s African American community, is his latest effort to give his life meaning. The club is about to open when in walks Liza, a law student who has dedicated her life to saving her Dad, Langston, who sits on death row, falsely accused of robbery and murder. Eli and Liza recognize the need in each other, but put aside their feelings to focus on clearing her father. When Langston is sentenced to be executed in 30 days, the tension ramps up and the suspense becomes unbearable. Throughout, Eli turns to memories from his past, especially that of a priest who helped raise him and gave him the skills to survive as a Black man in a racist world. Wrongful conviction is one of the greatest injustices in our legal system, and crime fiction provides a perfect tool for exploring it. I can’t wait to read more about Eli and Liza. In the meantime, this book would make a great choice for book groups that want to use fiction as a springboard to discuss racism, anti-racism, and incarceration.

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