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Thrillers

Review

This is Why We Lied

by Jeff Ayers

Will Trent and Sara Linton’s honeymoon gets cut short in Slaughter’s latest page-turner. Will surprises his new bride with a trip to an idyllic lodge isolated from people and technology. At first, it’s lovely, and they tell the other guests that Will is a mechanic and Sara’s a teacher. That ruse dissipates quickly when the manager of the lodge, Mercy, is stabbed to death, and Will accidentally impales his hand on the knife. Everyone staying there is an immediate suspect, whether it’s the other guests with secrets or Mercy’s family, who all have a shady past. Verbal and physical abuse is as common as drinking water to these depraved individuals, and all of them had a motive to kill Mercy. Will finds a phone connection and gets his partner at the GBI, Faith, to help discover the true killer. The ABC show Will Trent was renewed for a third season, to premiere in January 2025. While fans wait for the show to start again, they can dive into this intense, disturbing, and fascinating story of depravity, betrayal, and hope. The surprise ending shocks and satisfies, and the next Will Trent novel cannot come fast enough.

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Review

The Last One at the Wedding

by Brian Kenney

I’m going to call it like it is: this is one of the best books of the year. Frank Szatowski—widower, UPS deliverer, and all-around good guy—gets a call from his daughter, mid-twenty-something Maggie, inviting him to her wedding in rural New Hampshire. The two have been estranged for several years, so this invite is a big deal for Frank, who brings along his sister (she’s practically Maggie’s mother). But from the moment they arrive at the incredibly lavish estate, nothing is what they expect. Maggie, it turns out, is marrying into a vastly rich tech family—think the Dells—and Frank’s attempts to connect to Maggie’s new family only succeed in making both him and the family members increasingly suspicious. Son-in-law Aidan Gardner is a recluse, accused by the locals of murder; Mom is hiding up in the main house, a drink- and drug-addled shadow of a woman; Dad is a complete control freak who enforces his own time system (seriously); and Maggie is the cheerleader, backing the families’ crazy decisions. Frank’s dialog—both internal and external—is one of the joys of the book, and Frank keeps discovering new forms of evil, like so many nesting Babushka dolls, as he investigates the Gardners. But will he be able to convince his daughter to leave? Strong characterization, a fascinating environment, and a good wallop of suspense makes for one compelling read. Relish it.

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Review

The Devil Raises His Own

by Willy Williams

From the sexually explicit frescos of ancient Pompeii to today’s risqué sites, pornographers have always embraced the latest technology to create and distribute their erotic materials. In 1916 Los Angeles, the new tool was the motion-picture camera. Phillips’s noir novel offers a bawdy, violent, funny, and affectionate fictional take on how the “blue movie” industry developed in the shadow of a budding Hollywood. Years after the events of Cottonwood and Hop Alley, photographer Bill Ogden, now in his 70s, has opened a portrait studio in the City of Angels. He is assisted by his granddaughter Flavia, who came to California for a fresh start after fatally bludgeoning (in self-defense) her abusive husband, and naive 20-year-old Henry Seghers, who fled the coal mines of West Virginia. Bill’s business is legit but he occasionally takes stereoscopic stills of naughty sapphic/homosexual productions overseen by George Buntnagel, a gay director moonlighting from Provident Studios, and his lesbian wife, Irene. Revolving around these well-drawn central characters is a colorful supporting cast: aspiring actress Purity Dove-turned-film star Magnolia Sweetspire; homicidal ex-con Ezra seeking his missing family; Ezra’s wife, Trudy, who supports her two children by working in stag films; comedian Tommy Gill, who is not as funny as he thinks he is; and ex-postal inspector Melvin van de Kamp, who is desperate to break into the adult-movie business. Phillips’s narrative gradually connects these diverse personalities in a series of fast-paced alternating scenes until they collide in a violent Day of the Locust climax. With its high body count (at least eight murders are committed) and ribald language, this scandalously juicy tale of early Hollywood will appeal more to Fatty Arbuckle devotees than demure Mary Pickford fans.

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Review

Dead Money

by Henrietta Thornton

Dead money is slang for wealth that’s held up by a clause in a will, and after Elon Musk-type Trevor Canon is found dead in his San Francisco tech-bro office, investigator Mackenzie Clyde finds that he recently had just such an amendment inserted into his will. A lawyer who now works as a sort of fixer at a venture capital firm, Mackenzie isn’t the most likely candidate to help the FBI with their case, but she’s ambitious and jumps at the chance when her boss wants to know what happened. Investigating Trevor’s associates is much more complicated than it should be. She’s also subjected to more exposed ankles in mens suits than she’d like, not to mention corporate babble like one associate’s drive to “leverage the leader that lays dormant within clients…to manifest a corporate identity in ways they’ve never crystallized” (snort). The FBI agent she works with, a rich kid who bucks the stereotypes of his upbringing, is having none of it, and together the duo relentlessly digs to the center of a technical and political tangle. Get ready for some startling revelations along the way. Lawyer and debut author Kerr was one of the first employees at Airbnb, and his absorption of the BS is our gain.

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Review

Death at the Sanatorium

by Henrietta Thornton

An excellent standalone that reaches back into Iceland’s history, prying open a past many would like to keep hidden. At the center of the story is criminology student Helgi Reykdal, who is back from studies in the UK and ready to join the Reykjavik police. Helgi is finishing his dissertation, which is focused on the famous murder of a nurse at an old, little-used Icelandic sanatorium some forty years ago. In all, there were six suspects at the sanatorium and two detectives. The case was never truly closed, and Helgi uses his dissertation to quietly investigate the remaining suspects, encountering only suspicion and hostility along the way. It’s a tight cast, and Helgi keeps his inquiry moving rapidly between 2012, the present day action; 1983, when the murder was committed; and 1950, when the sanatorium was home to tuberculosis patients. Despite the seriousness of the story, and some horrific depictions of domestic abuse, Helgi’s passion for Golden Age mysteries lends the novel some unexpected humor and fun. Highly recommended for a large swath of crime-fiction readers.

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Review

You Shouldn’t Be Here

by Henrietta Thornton

Like Thoman’s also excellent I’ll Stop the World, this will be a great crossunder, meaning that it’s written for adults but will also find young adult appeal. Also like the previous book, it strongly features the supernatural affecting teenage characters in an authentically written relationship. Madelyn Zhao has moved to East Henderson, PA, to try to find out what happened to her disappeared cousin who worked for a local real-estate developer, an aggressive character who basically runs the town. At her job as choir teacher at a high school, she meets and begins to fall for Alex, the dishy Spanish teacher. We also meet East Henderson teenagers Bas and Angie, BFFs who are now, at Angie’s insistence, ghosthunters. Living with her devastated dad since her mom took off, Angie hears singing in the shower, only nobody’s there. How Madelyn and the teens interact, and the sleuthing they each undertake to get to the bottom of goings on in this sinister-tinged town, are both touching and gripping.

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Review

Den of Iniquity

by Jeff Ayers

After a long gap, Jance brings back former Seattle Homicide Detective, now Private Investigator, J.P. Beaumont, and, like a fine wine, Beaumont ages well. He lives in Bellingham with his wife, and when his grandson arrives out of nowhere and wants to live with them to finish school, Beaumont realizes that his family is not living the idyllic life he thought. His daughter and her husband are separated, his son-in-law has a new girlfriend, and the living arrangements were too much for his grandson to handle. When a friend from his past asks for help, he can’t say no. A death ruled accidental due to a fentanyl overdose was officially closed by the authorities, but those who knew the victim say he would not touch drugs. As Beaumont investigates, he discovers that there are more “accidental” deaths, and the truth is more complicated than he can imagine. It doesn’t help that he’s also investigating the new girlfriend who broke up his grandson’s parents, and records show she is not who she claims to be. All of this plays out in February 2020, as the world is about to shut down, creating an impending doom in which the reader knows what is about to happen and longs to warn Beaumont and his family. Jance’s mysteries are like comfort food, guaranteeing readers a great story with authentic and realistic characters that will leave them wanting more after the last bite.

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Review

The Resurrectionist

by Willy Williams

As the third son of a modestly landed family, James Willoughby has been told from an early age that he must earn a living befitting his station. Being of “a diminutive stature,” James decides the military is not for him. Nor is the Church of England an appealing option. Despite his family’s opposition, the young man abandons his clerical studies at Oxford and heads north to Edinburgh to become a physician. It’s 1828, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scottish city is a “shining beacon of medical discovery.” But James quickly learns that if he wants to develop anatomical knowledge and surgical skills, he must join one of the private schools in Surgeon’s Square. Unable to afford the additional tuition, James makes a bargain with his professor’s secretary and dissectionist, the charismatic Aneurin “Nye” MacKinnon, to serve as a lookout to prevent possible grave robbing in the Greyfriars kirkyard (graveyard) beneath James’s chamber window. The naive student soon discovers that he is aiding a gang of body snatchers who steal fresh corpses from churchyards for anatomical study at the medical schools. Nye explains to a horrified James that he is a Resurrectionist: “Our motivation is not in the value of the bodies we steal, but in the second life we give them.” Bedazzled by Nye’s scientific passion (and his dark sexiness), James plunges into this illicit, gritty underworld. However, their rivals in the body-snatching game, the sinister Burke and Hare, will murder anyone to corner the corpse market. Mixing a macabre gothic mystery with a sensitive coming-of-age tale and a touching queer romance, Dunlap has written an exciting, well-researched debut historical adventure. Bizarre, authentic details, like the mortsafes, or cages, that grieving families installed to protect the graves of their loved ones, make for an unforgettable read.

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Review

Bad Liar

by Henrietta Thornton

I could have sworn that Tami Hoag had an Oprah Book Club pick years ago. That’s what spurred me to pick this up–I usually like Oprah’s picks, and if one of those authors has something new, I’m intrigued. It seems I was wrong, but the happy mistake led me to meet the steadfast Sheriff’s Office Detective Annie Broussard and watch her doggedly investigate three maybe-interlinked crimes in her small south Louisiana town. Local fishermen find a body in the water, its face shot off. There are soon two possibilities as to whom it could be, as two local men are found to be missing. One, Marc Mercier, is a former high-school football star in a town where the sport is everything, who’s returned from time away to his doting mother’s embrace. His Yankee wife is none too happy to be stuck in “Ass Crack, Louisiana,” and might be getting “comforted” by a suave coworker. Also nowhere to be found is Robbie Fontenot, a doctor’s son who has gone off the rails due to Oxycontin addiction. His own doting mother believes he’s on the mend and is desperate for someone to care about where he could be, but not having much luck till she storms the sheriff’s office and meets Annie. Rural loyalties, mothers’ love, sibling rivalries, a hefty dose of Cajun language and slang (glossary provided), and swampy humidity steaming off the pages combine to make a memorable and affecting read. Oprah, take note!

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Review

The Note

by Henrietta Thornton

Friends Lauren, Kelsey, and May call themselves the Canceled Crew. Each has been vilified in the media, Lauren, who’s Black, because it’s assumed that she slept her way to her job as director of the Houston Symphony; May, who’s Chinese American, for a terrible incident on a subway platform that was filmed and went viral; and Kelsey, who’s white and rich, for being suspected of killing her husband. The women are now on a girl’s weekend in the Hamptons, trying to put it all behind them and let their hair down a bit, but the note of the book’s title throws them back into chaos. It’s a prank that isn’t so funny after the recipient goes missing and the three women are firmly back in the spotlight, a situation that widens every crack in their relationship with one another and their partners and families. Burke makes every character hyper real here, portraying the effects of privilege, thoughtlessness, and poor decisions with deft precision. The strong ties we feel to old friends, no matter current circumstances, are also shown in sharp relief. Add to this a page-turning whodunit element and it all adds up to a cracking read.

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