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Review

Review

The Mitford Vanishing

by Henrietta Thornton

The Mitford sisters, six eccentric socialites and political renegades in the interwar years in England, encountered a frightful number of murders in their day, at least as told in Fellowes’s glamorous historical series, now in its fifth installment. This time, Decca, second-youngest daughter of patriarchal Lord Redesdale and his long-suffering wife, Sydney Bowles, is missing. The family suspects that the 18-year-old has run off with her second cousin, Churchill’s nephew Esmond Romilly, to marry him and fight on the side of the anti-facists in the Spanish Civil War (which Decca and Esmond did in real life). Enter the Mitfords’ former maid Louisa and her husband, Guy, proprietors of the Cannon & Sullivan detective agency. Hired to look for Decca, Louisa nervously embraces the fledgling rights of women in 1937, using her maiden name for work and leaving the couple’s baby with sitters. Indeed, she’s far more advanced than the Mitford “girls,” whose blithely colonial ways color their every move. Fellowes’s at times very sad, often funny story stands out for its unusual, Spanish Civil War backdrop; it also offers pleasingly scathing treatment of Nazi sympathizers, exciting chases from England to Spain and back (repeatedly!), and an extraordinarily tense closing scene. While this works as a standalone, go back to the earlier books for a treat.

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Review

The Book of Cold Cases

by Brian Kenney

A medical receptionist by day, Shea Collins operates a popular true-crime website that specializes in cold cases. Single, a loner, and herself a victim—she was abducted as a child—Shea reserves her passions for her blog. Until the day that Beth Greer comes to Shea’s office. Back in 1977, Greer was tried and acquitted in the Lady Killer Murders, in which two men were killed, seemingly for the fun of it, by a female serial killer. Since then, the beautiful, sophisticated, and super-rich Beth has spoken to nearly no one—making it all the more remarkable that she agrees to be interviewed by Shea. Beth slowly opens up to the interviewer—inviting her into her super creepy mansion and deeply introspective life—as Shea struggles to put together the fragments Beth shares. This novel is beautifully written and perfectly paced. It creates a powerful sense of place in its depiction of an Oregon coastal community, and doesn’t shy away from tackling larger social issues, such as the sexism Beth experienced throughout her trial. Finally, its use of the paranormal—something I typically shy away from—is as terrifying as it is credible

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Review

Secret Identity

by Henrietta Thornton

Anyone who’s worked in publishing will recognize the low pay, deadline whirlwind, and scramble for recognition facing Carmen Valdez, a Miami transplant in New York. Worse, she’s a secretary trying to advance in a man’s world within a man’s world—comics publishing in 1975. Male colleagues sometimes show up drunk and their work is barely passable. Still, Carmen’s boss, whose father started the company, reminds her that “in the real world, we grant jobs based on experience and merit” when she gives him her comics scripts. Then her smoking buddy at work, Harvey, proposes to help by submitting a project by the two of them, but mainly by her, as his, and to reveal her authorship once it’s a success. Things don’t go according to plan, with not only Carmen’s professional future but also her safety jeopardized by a killer targeting her circle. Complementing this puzzling whodunit is a major plus for comics and graphic novel readers: Segura’s insider view of the comics industry and its history, as well as his spot-on chronicling of the too-frequent backstabbing among striving artists. For fans of Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl, another look at a young woman trying to make it in publishing

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Review

The Secrets We Share

by Brian Kenney

A bold, ambitious novel with a big, multigenerational story line, a busload of characters, and a smart balance between mystery and suspense. Natalie Cavanaugh and Glenn Abbott are sisters, but not the least alike. Natalie is a tough-as-nails Boston cop, while Glenn is a food blogger and now a book author. What they have in common is what they never talk about: the murder of their father, who was bludgeoned to death in the woods behind their house. But through a series of incidents in Glenn’s life today, the women are drawn back into their shared past, and the story line opens up to include Glenn’s husband, her tween daughter, Natalie’s colleagues on the police force, and many more. It’s remarkable that Hill can keep so many subplots afloat while at the same time creating such a level of suspense that the reader feels as though they are being catapulted to the knock-out conclusion. Hill is the author of the more cozy-ish Hester Thursby series, and librarian Hester makes a few delightful cameos in this book. For fans of Robert Bryndza and Karin Slaughter.

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Review

My Darling Husband

by Henrietta Thornton

Get ready to care far more than you thought you could about fictional strangers. The three in question are Jade, the busy, pampered wife of Atlanta celebrity chef Cam Lasky; and her children, Beatrix and Baxter. This book wastes no time on background, and we get to know these characters as they enter a domestic horror scene. Arriving home from violin-prodigy Beatrix’s music lesson, they are met in the garage by a masked gunman who takes them hostage for a day of psychological terror. He wants $734,296, an odd demand that Jade gives her flashy husband when she can get a word in over the phone, starting him on a desperate quest. The overextended, secretly broke businessman, who’s not the most sympathetic character, is brought to his knees while his family’s love and strength are pushed to the limit. Each character is meticulously drawn, and presented from multiple angles, as the story plays out from the alternating viewpoints of Jade, Cam, and for a short time, the kidnapper. In a clever device, much of Cam’s narrative involves him answering questions in a post-event sensationalist TV interview, which allows Belle (Dear Wife, The Marriage Lie) to parcel out information bit by tantalizing bit. Read something mellow after this, you’ll need it.

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Review

The Key to Deceit

by Henrietta Thornton

Á la Anna Lee Huber’s Verity Kent and Stephanie Graves’ Olive Bright, Electra (Ellie) McDonnell has taken on a “man’s job” while much of the male workforce is away fighting World War II. Ellie is a heroine with a difference, though: she’s a former thief, from a London family that has called its safe-cracking ways to a halt. They’re now working as locksmiths and, in Ellie’s case, using those skills to aid the war effort. Ellie’s government handler, posh Major Ramsey, comes calling again in this second in the series (after A Peculiar Combination, 2021) when a young woman is found dead wearing an unusual, locked bracelet. Locksmithing again comes into play when a key turns up as part of the case, but it soon takes a back seat to Ellie’s other skills. This memorable, tough sleuth continues her investigation into the young woman’s death and her own mother’s long-ago imprisonment as the Blitz starts and a cousin at the warfront hasn’t been heard from. Happily, romance enters the picture, with Ellie pursued by both the major and a more down-to-earth family friend, Felix Lacey. The mysteries, danger, and emotional hills and valleys that are life in wartime will keep readers rapt here and wanting more from this almost-honest woman and her loving, protective circle.

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Review

The Darkest Game

by Brian Kenney

One of the most fascinating detectives to have come along in years, Tully Jarsdel isn’t your typical cop. He abandoned a doctoral program to attend the police academy. He was raised by two dads, one of whom escaped Iran as a refugee. And he’s a brainiac—with so much trivial knowledge that his partner, detective Oscar Morales, calls him Rain Man. But he’s perfectly suited to investigate the death of Dean Burken, who was violently murdered in his own home. Burken, it turns out, was a registrar at The Huntington, a museum, library, and garden. Registrars can be powerful people, and Tully is quick to realize that Burken was abusing his position—in a big way. From deep inside The Huntington to Catalina Island, off the coast of Los Angeles, Tully and Jarsdel pursue a narrative of fraud, corruption, and greed. Fortunately, the detective work is offset with family issues, as one of Tully’s parents has a serious health crisis and the other struggles to deal with his past in the Iranian revolution. Throughout, Tully remains introspective, elusive, and unsettled—making the prospect of a fourth book all the more compelling.

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Review

Who Took Eden Mulligan

by Henrietta Thornton

Perhaps inspired by the real-life disappearance of Northern Ireland mother Jean McConville, Dempsey invites us inside two crimes. The first is a murderous attack on five roommates, and then there’s the cold case resurrected by the message scrawled on their wall: Who Took Eden Mulligan? Eden’s children, now adults, have been adamant in the decades since her disappearance that she wouldn’t leave them, but the woman was an enigmatic outsider in “a pit of savagery and subterfuge.” A Protestant living in a Catholic area of Belfast, she looked a mite too good for neighbors to care about her fate. Detective Danny Stowe has lots to lose in his inquiries—he’s on thin ice after smashing a perpetrator’s head against a wall and needs this win. For that, and more personal reasons, he persuades his best friend from college, a forensic psychologist who’s enduring her own issues, to join the investigation. The old and new cases, and the broken families involved, bring forth the weariness of living in sectarian strife, a mundanity that’s broken by moments of horror. Dempsey excels in portraying the anger that emerges when the dreamy veil of struggle lifts to reveal political violence as “a cover for psychopaths.” Read this for both a satisfying puzzle and an inside look at a culture turned sour.

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Review

The Resting Place

by Henrietta Thornton

When young Swedish woman Eleanor finds her manipulative, angry grandmother Vivianne dying of a stab wound, she’s more depressed and bewildered than sad. Vivianne raised Eleanor on a steady diet of scorching belittlement after the girl was left an orphan. Eleanor’s now working to overcome the hurt while learning to cope with prosopagnosia, or face blindness (she can’t recognize faces, even her own in the mirror). The story quickly moves to Solhöga, Vivianne’s country mansion, where Eleanor, her boyfriend and aunt, and Vivianne’s lawyer aim to inventory the contents. The chore becomes a terrifying ordeal when various members of the party come to mysterious harm; the somber house and sad diary entries detailing the lonely days of a long-ago maid at Solhöga add to the forbidding atmosphere. Sten’s character-driven, psychologically immersive puzzle will keep readers guessing until the end about who killed Vivianne and what’s behind the mysteries at the house. Eleanor’s face blindness adds an interesting and thankfully not overused element to the tale; an apt complement to this is Sarah Strohmeyer’s Do I Know You? (Harper, November), which features a “super-recognizer” who remembers for years the faces of people she sees even once in a crowd.

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Review

The Anomaly

by Henrietta Thornton

As well as offering a peculiar and captivating story, this winner of France’s Prix Goncourt prize, for the “”best and most imaginative prose work of the year,” stands out as wonderfully French. Le Tellier describes his characters in gutting detail while maintaining a distant nonchalance, inviting readers to share in his weariness at how emotionally finished these people are. Among them is Victor Meisel, who resembles “a healthy Kafka who made it past forty” and is writing a book called The Anomaly; André, an architect who’s desperate to hold onto the love of his much-younger girlfriend, and Lucie, that girlfriend, who’s drifting away; David, who’s facing a deadly illness; and Slimboy, a famous singer who spends all his energy maintaining the facade that he’s straight. Their shredded emotions are on display in the lead up to a Paris-New York trip, with each then depicted as one of a handful of strangers on, and the pilot of, a flight that experiences near-lethal turbulence with a bizarre aftermath. Emotions are just one of the problems faced by the survivors, who find themselves captive in a situation that involves not only the CIA and FBI but even the President of the United States (“a fat grouper with a blond wig”). Viewers of Netflix’s hit series Manifest will recognize some elements of this story, but the book and the show are unrelated and the aftermath of the flight is different enough to enthrall fans of the show and to keep them reading to the end.

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