his series debut features a woman who’s so glamorous and strong she has a superhero persona, complete with the superhero’s inner conflict. Deirdre Flanagan is a model, a beautiful 19-year-old who purposely makes herself uglier in daily life so she can pass unnoticed. While she loves clothes and the drama of a professional fashion shoot, modeling is very much her nine to five. In her spare time, she works with her doting father and his brother—they’re a former world-champion boxer and an NYC police captain, respectively, and the only parents she has known—to solve crimes against young women. When a woman in a striking red dress falls to her death from the roof of 1 Times Square, Deirdre hits the scene, finding another body as well as unexpected emotions upon viewing the remains. Why this case has hit her so hard and whether she can escape the escalating danger facing those involved with the victim and the case is a mystery that will keep readers rapt—although they’ll also enjoy being dropped into the world of New York City haute couture. Baer, who worked briefly in that world and is the author of the successful Jack Colt series, also offers a gritty contrast to the ritziness of fashion in his protagonist’s personal life: home is her father’s boxing gym, and between that setting and her life as an NYPD sidekick, the sarcasm and bullets keep flying. A fast, absorbing introduction to a daring star.
Women Sleuths
We don’t normally review the 11th book in a series, because typically after a few titles the series needs no further introduction. But I grabbed this one from the (virtual) pile because 1. It’s set in Ireland, my former home; 2. It’s set in a bakery, my spiritual home; 3. Murder. The Ireland here is a thoroughly modern one, with the tale set around a baking-competition reality show. Famous cookbook author Aoife McBride is the one to beat, as the contestants vie to impress the judges with elaborate chocolate constructions, fancy layered creations, and to-die-for tea cakes, all to win twenty-thousand Euro and a boost to their baking-career ambitions. The producers throw in reality-show-required conflict, of course, but get more drama than they bargained for when a protester (“Sugar kills! Stop the show!”) outside the studio mysteriously drops dead. His is not the last face to fall in the flour, so to speak. Gardaí (police officers) Siobhán O’Sullivan and Aretta Dabiri and Siobhán’s new husband, Detective Sergeant Macdara Flannery, must solve the mystery while the cameras roll and the baking puns fly. This has more than the contestants’ groan-worthy puns, though, with O’Connor (No Strangers Here) giving readers a healthy balance of whodunit and bitchy competition, not to mention a cute relationship in still-in-the-honeymoon-phase Siobhán and Macdara. The closing recipe for Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Guinness Cake alone is worth the book price.
What do you remember most about a Simon Brett novel? The characters. Brett, a genius at writing traditional mysteries, has created several series over the years, all based on personalities that draw readers back again and again. These days, Brett has two series in the works, the long-standing Fethering mysteries—featuring two sort-of best friends in a very English village—and a newer series featuring professional declutterer Ellen Curtis. Having a declutterer as your protagonist is inspired: they allow for easy access into other people’s lives—through their stuff—whether those people are dead or alive. Here, Ellen has been hired to work with Cedric Waites, an octogenarian who hasn’t left the house since his wife died years ago. Yes, there are mountains of empty frozen-dinner containers, but Ellen is slowly making headway with Cedric. Only to find him, one day, dead. And not just dead, but likely murdered, with Ellen one of the suspects. The novel goes deeply into Cedric’s past, marriage, and his dealings with his awful son and even worse daughter-in-law. But more compelling is Ellen and her relationships with her two adult children, both of whom are deeply troubled, and both of whom end up moving home at some point. The publisher describes this as a light-hearted mystery. It’s not. It’s actually a darn good novel about families—the good, the bad, and the ugly—set against a murder inquiry.
We’re deep into the Second World War, and Archie Swann—the police officer on Fourth Cliff, a fishing island off the Massachusetts coast—is fighting in the Pacific theater. But his wife, Mary Beth, herself a cop trained by the Boston Police Department, has stepped into his position. While Archie was beloved, Mary Beth is loathed, largely because of her gender, and the easiest of tasks is a struggle. While the island has traditionally seen little crime—settling fights between drunk fishermen and resolving domestic disputes seemed to be the bulk of the work—things have changed under Mary Beth’s watch. The body of a soldier, who lived in a camp for Italian POWs on the island, is hauled up from the sea by fishermen, a murder that creates unrest among both islanders and prisoners. When that murder is followed by others, Mary Beth, whose supports are a doctor who is untrained as a coroner and a deputy who is intellectually disabled, turns to the only real help she can find: organized crime from the mainland. But the real story here is the internal one: Mary Beth’s loneliness, her longing for Archie, her need to always maintain a tough outer shell, her battle against feeling like a failure. Novels about women in the War have blossomed in the past few years, but few have the grittiness, honesty, and authenticity in emotion, language, and detail of Swann’s War.
This is one richly drawn mystery that does a great job of introducing us to a wonderful protagonist, a compelling group of characters, and a fascinating community. Poor 28-year-old pastry chef Chloe Barnes. Not only does her engagement end up in smoke, she gets panned in a review, then learns that her beloved grandmother is being treated for cancer. Time to leave Paris and head home to Azalea Bay, California. But what to do with herself? Fortunately, her Aunt Dawn has an idea: take her fancy, pastry-making skills and apply them to cannabis to create edibles so good they can hold their heads high in the best pâtisseries. Together they begin to plan for a store, Baked by Chloe, when there’s a murder—of a creepy guy who’s loathed by most of the female population of Azalea Bay—and Aunt Dawn ends up the number one suspect. Clearing her aunt’s name draws Chloe further into the past and the community as she creates a list of suspects. The book also goes deep into the weeds (see what I did there?) as Chloe learns the complexity of cooking with cannabis. And did I mention Jake? Cute, single, and lives next door. In this debut, author George has laid the foundation for a series that feels fresh, young, and full of surprises.
This is an espionage story with a difference, featuring not a dashing ladies’ man but a young CIA operative, Melvina Donleavy, who knows her bureaucracy and sticks to it, offering an interesting look at modern-day tradecraft. Mel appears to her CIA colleagues to have no special skills, but when she’s in danger, top levels of government get involved. Readers are in on the picture, learning from the get-go that Mel has lifelong recall of every face she sees. It freaked out a middle-school crush when she mentioned having seen him at a sports event that had thousands in attendance, but when she’s sent to Byelorussia in 1990 to see if particular Iranian nuclear scientists can be spotted it’s a handy talent indeed. Mel and her colleagues are undercover, the others posing as accountants who are sent ahead of a U.S. donation to make sure none of it is earmarked for nuclear activity, she as their secretary. The stultifying Soviet observation machine moves into place, with the spies watched everywhere they go and a rigid air of we-know-you’re-spies-and-we-know-that-you-know-we-know coming off their hosts in waves. The group soon hears that a serial killer, the Svisloch Dushitel, or Svisloch Strangler, is at work in Minsk, but as its illegal to even mention the crime of serial killing, Mel has her work cut out to get to the bottom of it. Espionage, a love story, and murder mystery, all by a Department of Defense contractor assigned to the former Soviet Union in the ‘90s? Yes, please.
Crimes and investigators that could not be more different collide in Donlea’s immersive thriller. The first crime is the obscure possible suicide, possible murder of a man who’s found hanging off his balcony in the Catskills area of upstate New York on July 15, 2001, and the other the murder of thousands in downtown New York City 27 days later. The investigators are Avery Mason, a glamorous, up-and-coming TV journalist and Walt Jenkins, a burned-out, former FBI agent who’s now living in Jamaica and steadily becoming an expert on rum. Fate brings the crimes and sleuths together when, twenty years later, a stunned medical examiner finds a match to a body part from the wreckage of the World Trade Center. It’s from a woman who was under investigation for the killing of the hanged man, and Walt, who investigated that hanging in 2001, and Avery, who’s breaking the story of the 9/11 victim and hoping to prove the woman’s innocence, are pushed together (not exactly against their will, it turns out) to get to the bottom of the decades-old case. There are many twists here, both in the backgrounds of the characters and in the secrets that are revealed. The tragedy of 9/11 is not taken lightly, rather it forms a fittingly sober backdrop to the torment faced by the characters in the past and today. For a readalike, try a series character who on the surface is nothing like Walt Jenkins, but who has the same kind of rock-steady kindness and intelligence: Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie
More than most other kinds of mysteries, successful cozies rely on a strong community that we would like to return to and a cast of characters we would like to know more about—and Blacke’s first in this new series succeeds delightfully at both. Juni Jessup is back in Cedar River, Texas after six years in the Pacific Northwest. Laid off from her tech job and a bit homesick, she’s returned mainly to join her two sisters as partners in Sip & Spin, a record store and cafe. But at their blow-out opening party, the body of a young woman is found in the supply closet. Very dead. That’s bad enough, but she’s also clutching Uncle Calvin’s card. Calvin is arrested, the sisters put their shop up for collateral, then Calvin skips bail and disappears. This leaves the sisters with a double-headed mystery: who killed the victim and where in the world did Calvin get to? This is your sort of poke-around mystery, in which Juni bikes around town asking questions, although the way gossip flies in Cedar River, all you really need to do is stand in one place long enough and listen. But Juni’s a great storyteller, the small-town Texas-ness of it all is lots of fun, and there’s not one but two possible romances. What else could you ask for?
We’re in the mad, mod, mini-skirted world of London, 1968—the height of the swinging sixties. Where better to catch all the action than from a perch at the world-famous Savoy Hotel? Nowhere, unless you are young Priscilla Tempest, head of the Savoy’s press office, and arrive at work only to discover that your date from the previous night—Mr. Room 705—has been found quite dead. Odd, since when you left him he was a little too alive. Plus, it turns out that he’s a bit of an arms dealer, and not the caviar dealer he claimed. So begins Prudence’s crusade to clear her name, if not her reputation, keep her job, and maybe even stay alive. This book is outrageously funny, peppered throughout with all-too-realistic cameo appearances from the likes of Noël Coward, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and even a member of the royal family. Add to the mix a Soviet spy, a louche but handsome reporter, a fanatical monarchist from Scotland Yard, a Spanish gigolo, and serve it all accompanied by a nice flute of Bucks Fizz—that’s what the British call a Mimosa. And who said you don’t learn from fiction? Anglophiles, lovers of comic crime fiction, and anyone in need of a break from the present day will adore this book. I’m off to The Carlyle for a Fizz myself, don’t bother ringing until Book 2 is out.
A high energy foray into cryptocurrency and government corruption. At the center of the novel is petite, running-suit clad, 75-year-old Ethel Crestwater, a former FBI agent who operates a boarding house in Arlington, VA for law enforcement folk who need a temporary home in the DC area. Never married and with no kids, Ethel starts every morning in her basement with a round of RBG’s exercises. The latest addition to her clan is Jesse, a remote relative, but her only relation, who’s moved to DC for graduate work in computing. When one of “her” agents is gunned down in front of her house, Ethel, assisted by double-first-cousin-twice-removed Jesse, catapults into action. It helps that Ethel knows—and is owed favors by—a range of characters, from the director of the FBI to the Secret Service to the local Arlington detective; part of the fun of the book is watching the territorial struggles among the different agencies. Yes, wise-cracking Ethel is highly entertaining, but to de Castrique’s credit, she’s no cutesy stereotype of a gun-wielding grandma. She’s got her own story, and it’s a complex one. Ethel and sidekick Jesse make a great team; how about Jesse drops out of school and they take up sleuthing full time? Bonus: this book is a helpful primer for the uninitiated on cryptocurrency and how it works. Readers who enjoy this novel will also appreciate Deanna Raybourn’s Killers of a Certain Age.