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Mystery & Detective

Review

Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies

by Brian Kenney

This series debut is sure to delight fans of traditional mysteries as well as those who prefer a good CWC (cozy with corpses). Successful author Eleanor Dash is off on a publicity tour of southern Italy with a rather motley crew of fellow mystery writers; her sister, who is also her manager; a busload of fans; two ex-lovers; a stalker; and a few hangers-on. No sooner does the reader pour a refreshing limoncello than there is an attempt on one of the characters’ lives: that of Charles, one of the exes and a rather suave ladies’ man whom Eleanor has featured in her novels and who receives royalties from her books (what? it’s complicated). In fact, Eleanor would love nothing more than to see Charles dead, although she’s more likely to kill him off in her next book than in real life. As the group ambles about Sorrento and Positano—having fantastic meals and dishing on the publishing industry while managing to dodge the occasional murder attempt—we are treated to the best feature of the book: Eleanor’s witty, droll, and sophisticated voice, on display in dialog, interior monologue, and, best of all, the many footnotes that pepper the text. As roles are upended, and the crime writers become detectives, we also learn more about Eleanor’s personal life, from her complicated relationship with her sister to her remaining passion for Oliver, the other ex. Perfect for fans of The Magpie Murders; the Finlay Donovan series; and Only Murders in the Building.

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Review

The Deepest Lake

by Willy Williams

Noted for her historical and speculative fiction (The Spanish Bow; Annie and the Wolves), Romano-Lax ventures into suspense territory with this atmospheric, entertaining thriller about a grieving mother investigating her daughter’s mysterious death. Three months after her 23-year-old daughter was presumed to have drowned in Lake Atitlán, Central America’s deepest lake, Rose arrives in Guatemala. Although a six-week search failed to recover Jules’s body, Rose is unsatisfied with the official investigation’s conclusion. She wants to learn more about her daughter’s final hours and why Jules, who had a lifelong fear of water, was last seen swimming in the lake. A key but uncooperative witness is Eva Marshall, the best-selling memoirist and Jules’s literary idol, for whom the aspiring writer had just started working as a personal assistant before her disappearance. Frustrated with Eva’s refusal to schedule a visit or a phone call from Rose and her ex-husband Matt, a determined Rose signs up under her maiden name for an upcoming memoir-writing workshop taught by the charismatic Eva at her Guatemalan lakeside retreat. “Rose has no ambitions whatsoever as a memoirist, not even the tiniest desire to be published.…But you do what you must, after you’ve already tried everything else.” Despite the glamor and natural beauty of her surroundings, Rose senses something off both in Eva and in how she runs her workshop. Did Jules uncover a dark truth that led to her death? While crafting a taut tale of suspense, Romano-Lax also turns a gimlet eye on the sometimes-toxic writing-workshop industry and the social media demands that turn authors into marketers and branders. In spite of an epilogue that feels a bit forced, the author has written a satisfying tale about the sometimes-strained but always unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters.

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Review

The Hunter

by Henrietta Thornton

French made her name in crime fiction by exploring the underbelly of Irish life in her Dublin Murder Squad series, which blew the lid off any leprechauns in the mist-type views of Ireland. Here the little people are dragged back out, but for good reason: the locals in the west of Ireland mountain village of Ardnakelty lay the superstitions and rural naivete on thick when an Englishman comes to town and promises to make them rich. Meanwhile, their real game is, as the book says in a different context, “offensive and defensive weapons as well as broad-spectrum precautionary measures” (I’m from an Irish mountain area myself and French has us pinned to a board like a butterfly). Playing up the stereotypes is working great, with the Englishman, Mr. Rushborough, lapping up stories of his sainted ancestors while the locals plan to scam him. Come to find out, it’s not a one-sided game. There are three great characters here: Johnny Reddy, a local huckster who left his family for London and is now back expecting a hero’s welcome, with Rushborough in tow; Trey, his daughter, who has started to make an honest name for herself as a talented carpenter, and who is seething with rage against her father and the world; and Cal Hooper, a former Chicago cop who’s lived in Ardnakelty for a few years and is having none of Johnny’s bluster. French fans will love reacquainting themselves with these characters, whom they met in The Searcher (2020); newcomers to the author or this series will be glad they tried this emotional saga.

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Review

To Slip the Bonds of Earth

by Henrietta Thornton

Katharine Wright, a teacher when we meet her in 1903, has her work cut out at home as well as at the high school where she teaches Latin and Greek (but not advanced classes, because “we can’t have a woman teaching upperclassmen”). At home, her father has forbidden her to marry, as her mother has died and he and his sons need a woman to take care of them. Two of those sons are Wilbur and Orville, who at the outset of this informative, fun, and absorbing mystery are in North Carolina attempting to be the first to achieve powered, heavier-than-air flight. After the triumphant telegram, the mysteries start: accompanying his sister to a society dinner, Orville has his jacket stolen, and in its pocket are the men’s notes and drawings of their not-yet-patented work. At the same event, a guest is found stabbed in the heart (you can guess which crime concerns Orville more). The siblings must get to work at finding the papers before Wilbur knows they’re gone and finding the killer before an innocent teen is tried for the crime. The few details about aviation here are interesting and easy for lay readers to navigate; the brothers’ agony over their ideas being stolen is palpable and more germane to the plot. Yet more central, happily, is their sister, the only Wright sibling to attend college and “a teacher, feminist, scholar, and extrovert,” per the author’s note. While waiting for this, try another aviator-related crime novel, Mariah Fredericks’s The Lindbergh Nanny.

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Review

Peril in Pink

by Brian Kenney

We’re in New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley where Jess and her business partner, Kat, are opening the Pearl, a B&B in their hometown that they’ve been working on, and investing in, for months. Headlining the opening is Lars, an ex-boyfriend of Jess’s who went on to win an American Idol-like reality competition and has morphed into a full-blown celebrity (and a bit of a jerk). He’s back home to help kick the celebrations into high gear, and generate plenty of press. Except when Lars’ stepdad-now-manager is found drowned, Lars becomes the prime suspect, the press starts acting more like TMZ than E! News, and the guests quickly get sick of being under lockdown. To save the weekend, their reputation, and keep Lars out of jail, Jess goes into overdrive, investigating every possible lead. Featuring a whole lot of twenty-somethings, plenty of integration with technology, lots of lovemaking, and a very busy bartender, this is a cozy for and about a new generation of readers—but appealing to most everyone. A charming town, quirky friendships, and plenty of intrigue will keep readers on their toes.

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Review

The Meiji Guillotine Murders

by Willy Williams

It’s 1869 in the newly renamed capital of Tokyo, a year after the political revolution known as the Meiji Restoration overthrew the ruling Tokugawa shogunate that kept Japan in feudal isolation for over 200 years. It’s a time of rapid social change and political turmoil; not everyone is happy with the new government’s policy of Western modernization. Law enforcement, such as it is, is represented by five corrupt rasotsu (police officers) who are more interested in lining their pockets than in protecting the public. But they are reluctantly enlisted into the services of two chief inspectors from the Imperial Prosecuting Office as they investigate government corruption and a string of impossible-seeming murders. One inspector is the elegant and handsome Keisherō Kazuki, who cuts an odd figure in his old-fashioned clothes that make him look like “a courtier who had stepped out of the Heian period.” He is also obsessed with making the new government a just one and has imported a French guillotine as a more humane means of execution. His older colleague,Toshiyoshi Kawaij, is more down to earth, but he too is an outsider. The two men share a friendly rivalry as they probe several gruesome, supernatural-like killings. They are aided by Esmeralda, a beautiful Frenchwoman who followed Kazuki back to Japan (much to the dismay of Kazuki’s fiancée and her father) and who now is studying to become a miko, a Shinto shrine maiden with shamanistic powers that enable her to speak for the dead. How these crimes connect to the book’s title is resolved surprisingly and cleverly in the final section. Although the plethora of Japanese names can at first be confusing (a glossary of Japanese terms would also have been helpful), Karetnyk’s stylish and witty translation (there’s a lot of humor in this dark, bloody tale) quickly draws readers into Yamada’s atmospheric world. And Kazuki and Kawaij (a historical figure considered the father of the modern Japanese police force) make for a memorable sleuthing duo. Noted for his ninja novels, Yamada has written an engrossing, twisty tale that will appeal to fans of well-designed puzzle mysteries and international crime fiction with a fascinating historical setting.

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Review

Paper Cage

by Henrietta Thornton

Rural New Zealand police records clerk Lorraine (Lo) Henry isn’t supposed to get involved in cases. But when children in her town start to disappear, and it’s clear that she knows more than the officers about local families and goings on, and cares more than her colleagues do, the big-city cops who’ve been deployed ask her to step in. It’s not a popular move, but Lo is determined, especially after her nephew becomes one of the missing. Complicating the investigation is town politics that pits poorer Maori residents against white or “Pakeha” ones. Family histories, the drug trade, and gang activity also muddy the case and keep Lo busy (“everything feels pushed together like too much washing in the machine”) as she doggedly tries to find the children. Things move fast but reach calamitous speed in the last quarter of the book, a gripping showdown leading to a last line that won’t leave a dry eye. Baragwanath’s language throughout just won’t stop with a verisimilitude that deeply immerses readers in small-town life and this particular town’s warmth, sadness, and terror. Paper Cage won the Michael Gifkins Prize for best unpublished novel by a New Zealand author and has been shortlisted for both the Ned Kelly Award for Best International Crime Fiction and the New Zealand Ngaio Marsh Award for Best First Novel. It’s no wonder.

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Review

Resurrection Walk

by Jeff Ayers

Connelly’s stellar effort, which brings together defense attorney Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer; and retired LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, explores a case of an incarcerated woman claiming innocence. She was coerced into a no-contest plea of a lesser sentence of manslaughter by her sleazy attorney, who told her if she didn’t agree to this deal, she would face life in prison for killing her sheriff’s-deputy husband. Every attempt by Haller and Bosch to find answers is met with either disdain or tainted evidence and testimonies. Connelly is a master of taking a straightforward case and compellingly revealing the details while throwing in a few twists and turns. Laws are questioned and Bosch and Haller soon determine they are David and this Goliath is too strong for them. Whether you are a fan of the books or the Netflix and Amazon Prime series, this latest entry is another gripping winner from the master of crime fiction, and with the great popularity of the TV series, expect huge interest in this title.

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Review

The Last Word

by Brian Kenney

Thirty-something Winter Snow—yes, that’s her real name—is self-employed as an obituary writer, a pretty genius career for a cozy hero and a nice break from bakeries, cafes, and fromageries. Based in posh Ridgefield, Connecticut, Winter is no stranger to loss, and believes that her obituaries “facilitate acceptance for the grief-stricken.” But when Leocadia Arlington—one of Ridgefield’s grand dames, and very much alive—asks Winter to compose her obituary by the week’s end, Winter is surprised but agrees to take her on. But surprise turns to horror when Winter finds Mrs. Arlington dead, and Winter, naturally, is the prime suspect. When reading a new cozy, I’m on the lookout for two things: character and community. I’m happy to report that Winter is a wonderful leading character: quirky, disarmingly frank, with a touch of irony. The delightful community includes Winter’s foodie Uncle Richard; journalist Scoop; Officer Kip, “tall, good-looking in a brooding way, with dark wavy hair and a trim fit body”; Mrs. Arlington’s family members; a corrupt book club (it happens!); along with neighbors and friends. Lewis has created a fun, playful world—despite a murder—that many cozy readers will love to return to. And did I mention Diva, the Great Pyrenees puppy? Totally adorable.

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Review

Sweet Thing

by Henrietta Thornton

Washington, DC homicide detective Alex Blum is an in-between sort of cop. He’s not jaded, but he’s used to the horror he sees on the job. He knows that, unsexy as it is, procedure gets things done, although he can cut corners when it suits. But after he’s called to a murder scene and finds that the dead man, Chris Doyle, knew one of Blum’s informants, Artie Holland, Blum throws procedure and even personal beliefs to the wind. The informant is missing—in his world as a drug dealer, probably dead, but we’ll see—but his girlfriend, Celeste, is still in his home. She and Blum take up a dangerous relationship, one that must be hidden from both his job and Artie’s cohort, who wouldn’t like a cop taking Artie’s place. Swinson’s dialog is a highlight here. The characters, from the medical examiner and cops to desperate Celeste and the dancers at a topless bar—one of Artie’s haunts—all talk us through seedy and horrible events while the rumored Y2K disaster looms and Blum edges further toward his own destruction. Swinson’s unusual ending tops the surprises in this rough, realistic noir.

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