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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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Review

A Blizzard of Polar Bears

by Brian Kenney

Alex Carter is just winding down a research project in Montana—she’s a wildlife biologist—when a fellow scientist calls to see if she would like to lead a study of polar bears. Within weeks she’s at a scientific research center in Churchill, Manitoba, polar bear capital of the world. Accompanied by a research assistant and a pilot, Carter flies over the frozen terrain of Hudson Bay in a helicopter, seeking bears. When she locates one, she shoots it with a tranquilizer from the helicopter then descends to quickly tag it and take samples. Henderson does a terrific job in describing life in Churchill, especially the effort to survive in such a hostile environment, but even more compelling is the information about the polar bears, struggling to live despite climate change, loss of prey, and increased exposure to toxins. Slowly Alex’s study is undermined—someone breaks into the lab and steals her samples, her supplies are tampered with, her pilot disappears—until on one mission the plane itself sets on fire, leaving Alex and her team stranded on the ice, miles from anywhere. Henderson manages to marry both suspense and mystery in this book, featuring a classic, suspense-driven fight-and-flight with several overarching mysteries. It’s even better than the excellent first book in the series, A Solitude of Wolverines. Fans of Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon novels may well enjoy this.

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Review

A Valiant Deceit

by Henrietta Thornton

There’s no shortage of WWII novels, but this second in a duology is happily in the less-crowded subgenre of the women behind the scenes. It stars Olive Bright, a kind, loyal, and sometimes-brash young woman who keeps even family in the dark about her work. Pre-war, she inherited her father’s loft of racing pigeons, and now lends them to the war effort as carriers. They’re brought from England to mainland Europe by government agents, then fly home bearing maps and letters that Olive and her gruff supervisor, the dashingly named Jameson Aldridge, hope will help beat the Nazis. Olive’s avian work isn’t the only deceit here; as cover for her job at the Bletchley Park-like Brickendonbury Manor, she and Jamie pretend to be in a relationship, but she hopes for more between them (as will readers). The mystery here concerns a body found in nearby woods, but the worldbuilding, characters, and details of espionage-assisting pigeons make the tale. Graves’s afterword discusses the real Operation Columba, which saw the allies drop thousands of pigeons from Denmark to France from 1941 to ‘44. Readers can go back to the first book in the series, Olive Bright, Pigeoneer; also try Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code, which features women codebreakers at Bletchley Park

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Review

Girl in Ice

by Brian Kenney

Val Chesterfield, a scholar of ancient Nordic languages, lives a sheltered life. Suffering from depression and anxiety, she relies on medicine, and the occasional drink, to get through the day. The apparent suicide of her twin brother, Andy, a climate scientist conducting research on an island off the coast of Greenland, leaves her bereft and suspicious. But then Wyatt, one of her brother’s research colleagues, calls with the unbelievable news that they have discovered a girl frozen in ice, likely for hundreds of years, who has thawed out and is now alive. Would Val come to Greenland and try to communicate with her? Despite her phobias, Val agrees, as much to learn about Andy’s death as to meet the girl. Sigrid, as the girl comes to be called, is a medical anomaly; humans can’t survive being frozen. Typically, this is the point when I would put the book down and walk away. But Ferencik does such a stellar job of selling us on Sigrid, creating a relationship between the girl and Val, and depicting the growth of language between the two that I read on, riveted. All is not well on their little island, it turns out. Wyatt acts more like a cult leader than a scientist, two other researchers meet unanticipated challenges, and Val realizes that Sigrid is sick, possibly dying—and it’s up to Val to figure out how to save her. Ruth Ware fans will appreciate both the tension and the claustrophobia.—Brian Kenney

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