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Mystery & Detective

Review

Worse than a Lie

by Henrietta Thornton

When Chicago Metra rail system police officer Hollis Montrose is pulled over by the city’s regular police the night of Barack Obama’s first presidential win, he follows every order. He tells the officers repeatedly that he’s a police officer himself and begs them repeatedly to look at his ID, but it does no good. Hollis, a Black man, is shot 10 times in the back by the white officers. Enter Beau Lee Cooper, a Black lawyer who has made a name for himself as a tough, smart winner. He can see that Hollis, who’s now hospitalized and accused of being the aggressor in the roadside encounter, desperately needs help, the first challenge being the enormous bail that’s engineered to send the badly injured man to jail. From the beginning, and later in court, it looks like Chicago PD and the legal system are targeting Hollis, and it takes everything Beau has to push back. The supporting characters—especially Hollis’s and Beau’s wives, Gigi and Rocky—create a loving backdrop for this tense legal thriller, and readers will be as invested in the lives of Hollis and Beau as they are in the outcome of Hollis’s trial. Gripping court proceedings lead up to a brilliant and satisfying ending. Get this on your reading list!

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Review

Robbie McNeil’s Hit List.

by Danise Hoover

A characteristic that makes mysteries such a popular genre is that the concept of right and wrong is so often very clear. Not so much here. Robbie, our heroine, and Dee, her queerplatonic partner in a gay karaoke bar in a nothing Indiana town, are both successful contract killers. Their jobs are done quickly, cleanly, and without emotion, except for Robbie’s latest one. The information on the local target is sketchy and the target himself suddenly disappears. She can’t afford to return the deposit because she and Robbie have sunk all their money into a theatrical venture, and besides, it feels all wrong. Instead of ignoring who the target is, she works hard to find out the exact opposite. We have local politicians, Robbie’s musical ambitions, and the lively karaoke scene all tangled up with a client who just won’t quit in his effort to have this target done away with. Heath provides a fun story with a great deal of gender and identity fluidity. There is a happy ending of sorts, but is it right?

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Review

Three Bengal Kittens

by Brian Kenney

An absolute joy from start to finish. In this fourth book in the series, veterinarian Peter Bannerman finds his brother Sam living in a Winnipeg apartment house, with a dead neighbor whom the cops believe has passed on as a result of accidental autoerotic asphyxiation. But once the cops have hauled Sam in for questioning, their focus shifts, and he is eventually arrested for the murder. Sam has more than his share of mental health issues, and having him as a brother is challenging to say the least. For starters, Sam’s more concerned with finding one of the kittens who has gone lost—it belongs to his dead neighbor—than finding the real criminal and maybe springing himself from jail. But, luckily, Sam has Peter, who may be incredibly frustrated by his brother, but is certain that he would never hurt anyone, beast or human. Unfortunately, it becomes Peter’s job to prove to the cops Sam’s innocence, discover the murderer, and locate the missing kitten. Fortunately, he has assistance from Pippin, his dog and a Western Canadian champion sniffer; and his wife Laura, who provides Peter with some useful critical thinking. In the end, we are taken down a path rife with ghosts and murderers and that resolves the past by investigating the present.

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Review

The Bush Tea Murder

by Brian Kenney

St. Thomas makes a perfect environment for a mystery: rich in history and culture with plenty of family drama to go around and some longtime friendships to rely upon. Culinary journalist Naomi Sinclair spends most of her time off-island, although St. Thomas, and a budding romance, keep tugging at her to come home and invest herself full-time in the island. ”Thing about history, Naomi—about any kind of story—is that how it’s told matters,” she is reminded by her former Foods and Nutrition teacher, Mrs. LaPlace. But even if Naomi returns to St. Thomas regularly, she doesn’t expect she will be returning to unleash one troubling case after another, culminating in a story of murder. Fans of Joanne Fluke, Vivian Chien, and Mia P. Manansala will delight in this mystery-plus-food concoction.

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Review

The Midnight Taxi

by Danise Hoover

Book of the Week

Driving a taxi is often the first job for a new immigrant, as it was for the father of Siriwathi, or Siri, as her friends call her. She drives the cab now as a family obligation. A brown woman doing this job late at night is not exactly ideal or safe, nor is it what she planned to do with her life. At the court building in lower Manhattan, she fortuitously picks up a fare: another brown woman, another Sri Lankan, a public defender. In the short time it takes to drive to Brooklyn, they bond somewhat. That’s good, because Siri’s next fare, one to JFK airport, is dead on arrival. Siri is arrested and really needs a lawyer; Alex, a wealthy friend from private-school days (Siri was a scholarship student) helps bail her out, and he and the two women do a deep investigation into the victim, finding more than any run-of-the-mill police inquiry would. This is an ultra-complicated story, but what makes it special is a view of immigrant New York that few see. Deep family ties, strong food culture, and love and longing for a better future build a picture that one can only hope isn’t quashed by today’s political chaos.

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Review

A Zoom with a View

by Brian Kenney

This is one packed piece of crime fiction, certain to bedazzle any and all mystery readers. Blue Oak is a unique small town on the border of Austin, committed to “Keep Blue Oak Weirder.” Which, it turns out, isn’t all that hard. It starts with the return of Leo (Leonora), who has been back on the East Coast completing her Ph.D. in English, but has yet to find a tenured position. Let’s just say that Blue Oak wouldn’t be her first choice, especially with her challenging mother, Karina, a real estate agent whose motto should be “the higher the hair, the closer to god.” But no worries, Leo has a whole team of friends from her BFF, Emily, to Mack, high school sweetheart and now local detective. But a fire during the annual Fourth of July celebration leads to all sorts of crazy accusations…and when Leo comes across the body of dead rival real-estate agent and social media influencer, Chaz, things really start to fall apart, and Leo has no choice but to dive in the deep end to try to save her closest friends. And when did Mack get so handsome?

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Review

The Keeper

by Henrietta Thornton

We have been fooled. In Tana French’s previous two books following former Chicago PD detective Cal Hooper’s new life in rural Ireland, The Searcher and The Hunter, Cal seemed to be settling down in small-town Ardnakelty. He found love in steadfast local woman Lena, took unruly teenager Trey under his wing and is fast making a skilled woodworker out of her, and even managed to figure out the local pub etiquette rules. But it’s all upended in this latest entry in the series when a local young woman is found dead in the river. She was in a long-term relationship with the son of Tommy Moynihan, a sly man who unofficially runs Ardnakelty, and whose pitting of locals against one another after the tragedy makes Cal wonder if he will ever understand this town and his place in it. Though the novel could have been pared down, readers will find this often darkly funny visit with Cal and his neighbors a satisfying look at the undercurrents of rural life as observed by an astute outsider. A piercing death scene near the book’s end is a highlight of the series. A must for French’s fans and all who enjoy a simmering rural mystery.

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Review

Last One Out

by Henrietta Thornton

Book of the Week

Ro Crowley is making a tough, reluctant trip to her former home of Carralon Ridge in Australia’s New South Wales. It’s a trip she makes annually, marking both her son Sam’s birthday and the day he disappeared five years ago at age 18. The town supports Ro and her family—her husband Griff, whom she’s now separated from, and their daughter, Della—although those remaining in Carralon, a town slowly being bought out by a mining company, are barely doing much better emotionally than the bereft Crowleys. Harper dives deep into the fear and loneliness of having a missing child and how disparate ways of dealing with grief can tear a family apart. Equally strong is her chronicle of a dying town and the eating-itself-from-the-inside culture created by deep pockets offering a way out. Readers will long to know what happened to Sam and will be satisfied by the ending of this haunting exploration of loss.

 

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Review

Monster in the Moonlight

by Danise Hoover

A cryptozoologist’s views are not exactly recognized by the whole of the scientific community. But a dead woman in small-town Wisconsin brings law enforcement to cryptozoologist Morgan Carter, as they know her as a source of assistance. Lydia Palmer was found in a rural area with a broken neck and her throat ripped open by what could be the “Beast of Bray Road,” a local legend that has been capturing imaginations for years. Morgan is pretty sure from the outset that there is some human source to this mystery. Lydia, a widow with an adult son disabled from the car accident that killed her husband, was always looking for a way to make money. She wasn’t particularly wise about her methods, but there is still no good reason for her to have been in dark woods in the middle of the night. Sightings of the beast seem realistic, but Morgan has a good idea of what caused the deep scratches in Lydia’s car and body, and it’s not what people think. Another dead body and faked historic documents, among other things, lead Morgan to a conclusion that is worse than any beast. Though part of a series, this is nicely framed so that the back story stays in the background and readers new to Morgan and trusty hound Newt can keep up.

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Review

What Happened Next

by Brian Kenney

Taut and intense, this novel is sure to set every reader who picks it up on edge. Charlie Kilgore was an infant 25 years ago when, at Idlewild, their family camp, his father murdered a man, went on to stab Charlie’s mother, left her for dead, then drifted off into the White Mountains of New Hampshire, never to be seen again. It’s a legacy of horror that Charlie hears from time to time as he grows up, including how his older brother saved them both by hiding them in an ancient rowboat on the lake. But soon enough, WASPY, old Idlewood returns to its annual summer silence and secrets. Until Charlie, an aspiring journalist, blows everything up. While writing and editing a podcast about the camp, Charlie weaves together various narratives that point to an even greater story than the murder, exposing the truth, awakening the past, and placing himself in danger. What Happened Next is certainly one of Hill’s best works with its sharp analysis of families and powerful presentation of the individual in an environment where no one can be trusted.

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