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Thrillers

Review

For the Last Time

by Brian Kenney

At first, this novel seems to be a predictable, mildly entertaining thriller. Erin and Will take themselves off to marriage counseling because something has gone wrong, at least for Erin, who is suddenly putting her husband at arm’s length. But what’s the source of the problem? Even their counselor, Maggie, becomes consumed trying to understand what has gone awry in their marriage, especially when Will is, annoyingly, nearly the perfect man. Then, out of nowhere, Perks drops a clue that made my head spin, cranks up the narrative’s pace, and pulls us deeper into the disturbing past of Erin and Maggie. Since this is from multiple perspectives, and jumps skillfully around the narrative time-line, readers will have fun trying to put this complex, fractured and totally compelling story together. A perfect read for fans of Lisa Jewell and B.A. Paris.

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Review

Bright and Tender Dark

by Henrietta Thornton

2019 bookends this murder mystery. In that year, student KC, a trans man, is the weary caretaker of a college dorm, picking up after his lazy peers and saving them from their drunken worst selves. The dorm he works in has a rumor-clad oddity: a young female student was killed there years ago, and the true-crime frenzy has made the building a magnet for professional and amateur sleuths. Their work sends us back to just before New Years Eve 1999, where we meet the victim, Karlie Richards. Karlie seems to have it all but, like everyone she meets, has dragged a weight of hopes, loves, and past mistakes to her new life in college. It’s the pre-#MeToo era as Karlie faces what turns out to be her final days, and readers will love to hate the professor who has a way too close relationship to his female students, and long to jump into the pages to warn the young women away. But there’s nothing we can do as Karlie’s doomed world comes to life and Pearson skillfully introduces several more characters who could have killed Karlie and more reasons why they would have done so. The divergent lives of the haves and have nots in college towns, and the experiences of evangelical students taking their first foray into a more secular world, are starkly painted in this dark debut novel by an author to watch.

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Review

What Mother Won’t Tell Me

by Henrietta Thornton

This debut novel should come with blood-pressure pills. The tension at first comes from strangeness: Mother; Father; their daughter, Juno; and son, Boy live a harsh, homesteading life alone on an island. Is it the present day? What part of the world are they in? Is the mortal danger from outsiders that the parents warn about real? The timing element is all that’s clear for a good portion of the book: it’s the current day, but apart from visits from the mailman who comes from the mainland, during which Juno and Boy must hide from view, the rest is unknown. Bit by bit, teen Juno’s desire for freedom and her determination to find out more about their situation despite her sinister, violent parents’ “seven commandments” (including “We must always kill quickly and painlessly”) ramp up the fear to a terrifying do-or-die scene. Readers will be rapt as they race to the end to find out who survives this nightmare that’s effectively mixed with a fairytale motif echoing one of Juno’s favorite stories. Menger’s previous work is in film, TV, and audiobooks: try his Audible Originals Monster 1983 and Ghostbox while you wait for this gripping thriller.

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Review

Blood Sisters

by Henrietta Thornton

“Where there’s pain, there’s blame,” which is why Syd Walker lives far from her Oklahoma roots and hasn’t seen her family in years. As a teen, Syd; her sister, Emma Lou; and her best friend, Luna, were attacked by a pair of masked Tsigilis, the Cherokee word for devils. Syd, who is Cherokee, shot one of them dead, but his gang killed Luna and her parents. She can’t forgive herself for not saving Luna, and the small town of Picher can’t decide, even all these years later, what she should have done that night. That past is now coming back with a vengeance as the epidemic of missing young Native women now seems to have swallowed Emma Lou, and the body of another young woman has been found, with Syd’s old work ID card in her mouth. Syd’s return home immerses the reader in the difficulty of returning to a place and people you’ve outgrown, the bitter choices we must sometimes make—Syd is now an archaeologist for the same Bureau of Indian Affairs that has cost her people so much—and the strength that love and loyalty bring. Lillie (an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma) adds to the story details of Native history and current day life, with sardonic wit both tempering and highlighting the pain that pierces both times. A dark and propulsive thriller for fans of Kelly J. Ford.

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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

Dead Man’s Hand

by Jeff Ayers

A secret meeting between a rogue team of Ukranians desperate for peace and military intelligence officers from Russia sparks the chaos in Taylor’s latest Taskforce novel. The plan they concoct involves assassinating Putin, but Putin already knows of their plot. His solution is to have his most trusted officer run a counterattack once he commits an act of violence to keep Sweden from joining NATO. Pike Logan and his Taskforce team learn of the Swedish offensive, and soon, they are wrapped in an operation with massive complications. What they don’t realize is that Putin’s contingency, if he’s killed, involves launching the Perimeter Nuclear System known as the Dead Hand. Logan and his team must confront how someone can be the enemy when they have the same goals. Whether this is your first time with the Taskforce or your eighteenth, this series remains intense, timely, and worthwhile. Taylor is one of the best in the special ops world. Brad Thor and Jack Carr fans should already have Taylor on their mandatory reading list.

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Review

Providence

by Brian Kenney

Mark Lausson is a young English professor at an elite, liberal arts college (think of Kenyon) in Ohio. Yes, he’s incredibly fortunate to have landed the job. But that does little to lift his mid-grade depression and his raging sense of ennui. While he should be enmeshing himself in the life of the college, publishing articles, and working on his book—“cultural discourses of gay sex and murder” is his topic—instead he lets time slip away, unaccounted for. Until the third week of the fall semester, when sophomore Tyler Cunningham walks into his classroom, like some sort of louche meteor entering his atmosphere. Soon, Mark’s fascination turns to obsession, and the two become lovers, with secrecy serving to ramp up the intensity of their affair. This book builds slowly, gracefully, and we’re nearly three-quarters into it when that magical thing happens and readers begin to realize that nothing is what they thought it was. Wonderfully paced and terrifying in its conclusion, this is a book meant to be devoured, not read. I absolutely cannot wait for Willse’s next work.

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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

The Teacher

by Brian Kenney

Poor Addie. Her relationship with a teacher last year—when nothing even happened!—has made her the most loathed student at Caseham High. Now it’s September, and not a day goes by that she isn’t bullied by one of her fellow classmates. Thank goodness for Nate Bennett, her uber-handsome English teacher, who acts like she’s the next Sylvia Plath and invites her to join the poetry club, offers her lifts home, and arranges mini-conferences with her after class. But shouldn’t Nate be a little more careful? Poor Eve, Nate’s wife and a mathematics teacher at Caseham. The Bennett’s marriage has pretty much disintegrated—lovemaking is scheduled monthly, although excuses are readily produced. Her one pleasure? Fondling the Louboutin pumps (she’s a full-on fetishist) at the local mall while rolling around in the shoe boxes with the salesman. Secrets are everywhere in this sparkling narrative that moves like a Japanese bullet train, offering plenty of surprises along the way. For fans of B.A. Paris and Shanora Williams.

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Review

When We Were Silent

by Henrietta Thornton

When Louise (Lou) Manson, a professor at Trinity College, Dublin, goes after a predator from her former school, there are serious repercussions…for her. Of course, says her boss, she must understand that she can’t work while this is going on. And it’s unthinkable, says her daughter’s swim coach, that the teen will be allowed at a swimming competition that meets at the school in question. Moving back in time, swimming plays a prominent role in this debut that mirrors the histories of sexual abuse of some athletes that have come out in recent years, this time focusing on the athletes themselves and their desire for justice. Lou, a great student but whose family is poor, was motivated to get a scholarship to Highfield Manor, the school where her friend killed herself as a result of abuse. As a student, Lou believes, she can catch the culprit red-handed and bring him to justice. But it’s a foolish plan, one that enmeshes her immediately and for years in mental and physical torture and that brings all involved to a courtroom nailbiter. That’s when we think it’s over, but McPhillips has twists in store in this absorbing psychological drama that examines the relative strengths of loyalty, revenge, and truth. A spot-on depiction of the maelstrom that is teenage friendship is a plus. Try this one if you like a story of a woman who’s had enough and isn’t afraid to show it anymore.

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