Tag:

Mystery & Detective

Review

A Long Time Gone

by Brian Kenney

The third in Moehling’s Ben Packard series is far and away the best. Deputy Packard is off work—he’s on leave, pending an investigation into a shooting—which gives him the time to investigate some new information about the disappearance of his older brother, Nick, who left their lakeshore family home when they were just kids, never to be seen again. The new information attracts his mother, Pam, to northern Minnesota, as much to check in on Ben as to explore where Nick may be buried. Pam—one of Moehling’s greatest creations—is a New Age, crystal wearing, sex-positive, Wiccan practitioner who would like nothing more than to see Ben find a boyfriend and does everything in her powers to hook him up. While the search for Nick takes a bit of a back seat, Ben can’t help but pursue a far more expansive and contemporary investigation that exposes corruption among County officials. See why so many people were happy to see Ben out of the picture? Add to this another story, brief but hugely meaningful, that provides yet more information about Nick. It’s amazing how Moehling keeps all these narrative balls in the air, but even more amazing is how they eventually come together. For those who love classic mysteries, police procedurals, and family drama.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
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.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer

by Brian Kenney

Middle-aged, mid-divorce (although she is still in love with her husband), and mid-pregnancy, Kathy Valence is a no-nonsense, shoot-from-the-hip type of character. She keeps busy working for S.C.Y.T.H.E. (Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences), helping transport the souls of the recently departed on to their next phase, until the soul of one of her clients, hip and happening 17-year-old DJ Conner, gets misplaced. Conner insists he was murdered by someone at S.C.Y.T.H.E., and that it is up to Kathy to track down the murderer and find Conner’s soul. All within forty-five days, or else he’ll become a ghost, destined to wander the Earth (no pressure!). What’s so lovely here are the overlapping needs of the characters. Kathy, whose fears and anxieties hold her back from accepting love. Simone, Kathy’s husband, whose only desire is to be allowed to love Kathy and their baby. And Conner, who wants to identify his murderer, be saved by Kathy, and find the love he missed on Earth. Poignant and pleasing, this successful supernatural mystery will long be remembered.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
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.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
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.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Saint

by Henrietta Thornton

The fourth in Gerhardsen’s best-selling Hammarbyeries reveals a horrible history in a Swedish town that on the surface seems to revolve around soccer games, poker nights, and kindness to those less fortunate. The first break in the idyll, and the opening of the book, is the shooting of Sven-Gunnar Erlandsson, a man whom everyone knows as a tireless soccer coach, helper of the homeless, and devoted father. If the investigators begin to think that maybe he’s a little too saintly, well, that’s probably just their long years encountering the worst of society. As the police look in ever-widening circles at the dead man’s family, friends, and acquaintances, it starts to seem like he might have been the only good person around, surrounded as he was by dark secrets that are slowly and shockingly revealed. (Even the last sentence drops in a twist.) Every character, including those who are missing for years, is given a fully rounded personality here, and it’s quite the large cast. Gerhardsen’s masterful plotting takes us around multiple metaphorical corners, possible killers, and surprise victims in her character- and emotion-driven saga. Maybe it’s time to get back into Scandi noir–and you don’t have to have read the previous books in the series to enjoy this one

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Knife Skills for Beginners

by Brian Kenney

Cooking as entertainment, from reality shows to competitions to documentaries, couldn’t be more popular, and Murrin’s decision to set Knife Skills in the heart of a London cooking school is a smart one. Located in an old mansion in the super-posh Belgravia neighborhood, the school—which is residential—offers week-long classes for small groups of a dozen or so. The students, a bit of an odd crew, are super excited at meeting their instructor Christian Wager—he’s sort of a Gordon Ramsay type. When Christian shows up, one arm in a cast, and announces that he’s passing the class on to his good buddy Paul Delamare, the class groans in disappointment. Paul isn’t a celebrity like Christian, but he’s a darn good chef, and slowly the class warms up to him. Until there’s a murder as gruesome as you can imagine (hint: cleaver) and the class rather ghoulishly wants to continue the course—corpse be damned!—and with Paul the number-one suspect. From here, the book spirals out—there are red herrings galore, and nearly everyone seems to be a suspect at one point or another. Lots of fun to be had, especially with the characters Murrin creates.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
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!

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Rough Pages

by Brian Kenney

The third volume in Rosen’s Evander Mills series is the most powerful to date, going deeper into the community “Andy” Mills has created for himself while taking on the power of secrecy in post-World War II San Francisco. Former cop, currently a PI—without the documentation—Andy is called upon in this book to locate Howard Salzberger, a queer bookseller who has a little brown book that documents all of his customers, and who has loose ties to Andy. Howard has a book he is planning to sell—perhaps about the Mafia?—when he suddenly disappears. While this is historical fiction, set in the ’50s, readers of Rough Pages will surely reflect on the harassment and persecution of librarians, teachers, and students who seek or make available LGBTQ content in present-day America.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Christmas Jigsaw Murders

by Henrietta Thornton

Benedict’s many fans know that her Christmas mysteries (The Christmas Murder Game and Murder on the Christmas Express, both 2022) offer layers: they’re great cozy-adjacent mysteries (a bit more violent than many cozies) that involve word and jigsaw puzzles, and they include puzzles that the reader can solve along the way (or not; the stories are complete without the “side” activities). In this title, Benedict tells readers to look for the titles of Fleetwood Mac songs sprinkled throughout the text (in honor of bandmember Christine McVie’s 2002 death). Despite its lovable-grump protagonist, Edie O’Sullivan, being a “Christmisanthropist,” the author has also tucked anagrams of Dickens’ novels and Christmas stories into her family tale. The family is crossword setter and jigsaw enthusiast Edie’s—her current family, police-officer great-nephew, Sean, and his husband, who throughout the book are interviewing to be adoptive parents; Edie’s former partner, Sky, around whom she has great regrets; and family from the past, whose loss has paralyzed Edie’s Christmas spirit ever since. This year, she’s forced out of her Scrooge zone when six jigsaw puzzle pieces are delivered to her home with a warning that “Four, maybe more, people will be dead by midnight on Christmas Eve, unless you can put all the pieces together and stop me.” Our heroine is on her toes as killings and more pieces ensue, as is Benedict’s clever plotting and her writing’s emotional heft. A great story for any time of year.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail