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Mystery & Detective

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.

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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

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

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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.

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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

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.

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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.

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Review

Olive You to Death

by Jeff Ayers

South Cove, the number one tourist trap on the Pacific Coast Highway, becomes a haven again for mystery and intrigue. Jill learns that the venue where she and her police detective boyfriend, Greg, will get married, is unavailable, and she begins to sweat. Another wedding between local antique dealer Josh and his younger girlfriend, Mandy, goes awry when she vanishes without a trace. Was she kidnapped, or did she bail on the wedding and run away, like most of the locals think? An old journal that Josh discovers proves problematic when a professor he was conferring with dies under mysterious circumstances that appear to be related to the journal, which just might contain a treasure map. Jill wants to solve both the disappearance of Mandy and who killed the professor, but she’ll have to do it behind her fiancé’s back. Cahoon juggles a lot of details, but it all works with her charming town and compelling characters. The multi-layered mysteries keep the reader both guessing and turning the pages. Even 16 books in, the series still seems fresh and engaging. Whether your first visit to South Cove or your 16th, it’s a town where you will want to stay for a while.

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Review

The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society

by Brian Kenney

Take a bit of Buffy, throw in some of Murder, She Wrote, let a very officious cat, Lord Thomas Cromwell, channel an ancient demon—that bit is a trifle frightening—set it all in rural New York state under the auspices of local librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle, and you have a novel both fun-loving and poignant. Sherry realizes that something is a bit off in Winesnap, NY. Namely, people are regularly being killed, and she typically ends up helping the cops track down the murderer. But when a friend’s husband is found dead, Sherry ups her game, assembling a small group, the Demon Hunting Society, including the new town priest (good for exorcism!). No interest in the supernatural? Don’t be silly. This book has a big enough reach to appeal to any cozy reader, with Sherry delivering a riveting denouement in the manner of Dame Agatha.

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