Tag:

Mystery & Detective

Review

The Body in the Back Garden

by Brian Kenney

Growing up, Luke Tremblay loved being sent off to spend his summers with family on a small hamlet on Vancouver Island. Until high school hit and his parents learned he was gay and disowned him. Even his beloved Aunt Marguerite, a full-time island resident, refused to see him. So decades later, when his aunt dies and leaves Luke her estate, including a charming cottage and antique business, it’s a shock. He returns to the island with one goal: sell the properties and get back to Toronto. But when he’s attacked at the cottage by a seemingly random guy, who’s making crazy claims about his aunt, and when that guy is discovered the next morning dead in the garden, Luke can’t help but get pulled deeper into island life. Thanks also go to the Mountie, Sergeant Munro, aka Officer Beefcake, who, wouldn’t you know, was a childhood friend of Luke’s and still harbors a grudge for Luke disappearing all those years ago. There’s plenty to enjoy in this qouzy, from a budding romance to more crimes that need unearthing. And while Luke may not be the most charming of protagonists—he’s just a wee bit bitchy and somewhat of a snob—he’s certainly realistic. For anyone needing a quick vacation, this is it.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Death in the Dark

by Brian Kenney

The Dublin Drag Mysteries, of which this is Book 2, is a bit like the TV shows “Friends” combined with “Cheers.” Except it’s contemporary, set in Ireland, everyone is a drag queen—except for our narrator and lead, a 20-something woman named Fiona (Fi) McKinnery—and the bar is a nightclub called TRASH. It’s sort of the B-list—or maybe even the C-list?—of Dublin drag venues.

As in the first book, Death in Heels, Murphy is quick to get to the action. Here it’s the disappearance of Sparkle McCavity, a vivacious young drag queen and assistant to the renowned bridal couturier, and queen in her own right, Miss Merkin. Merkin turns to Fi, asking for her help in finding Sparkle. Reluctantly, Fi agrees, only to be caught up in a murder at TRASH that’s absolutely ghastly.

Centered on Fi, her best buddy and roommate Robyn, and their tight circle of friends, the bon mots fly despite the tragedies that surround them. As the situation grows direr, and another queen disappears—with the Gardaí (police) increasingly looking at Fi & Co. with suspicion—the pressure is on for Fi to do what the detectives can’t do: solve the case. Death in the Dark is an exceptionally engaging read leaving this reader wondering: where will Murphy go next with this crew?

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Hollow Beasts

by Henrietta Thornton

This propulsive series debut from the author of The Dirty Girls Social Clubsees the filthy, heavily armed, and none-too-bright Zebulon Boys arrive in rural New Mexico to take on a mix of Mexican Americans, Native Americans, and interracial locals, all of whom the would-be terrorists see as Mexicans who have to go. The leader, General Zeb, gets his hateful fans from around the country to come to his camp. They keep kidnapped “Mexican” women in a hole in the ground and take them out to be hunted. They’re also planning to bomb local sites to stop the Reconquista, the reclaiming of culture and land by those who lived in the area when it was part of Mexico.

The Zebulon Boys meet their match in Jodi Luna, a former poetry professor who’s returned to her roots in the area, taking over her retiring uncle’s job as the local, and sole, game warden. It’s a dangerous job—the most perilous in U.S. law enforcement, we learn. But Jodi is ready, using her intelligence, humor, and compassion to take on the men—one of whom starts to stalk her—and protect her daughter, her growing circle of friends, and two admirers.

Game warden is an unusual and interesting take on a police-procedural set up, and Valdés can surely tell a story, making this a winner all round.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Evergreen

by Henrietta Thornton

Edgar Award-winning Hirahara’s first novel in this series, Clark and Division, was a New York Times Best Mystery Novel of 2021, among many other accolades; this follow-up will please fans with more thoughtful, poignant, and historically accurate investigations of Japanese American life after World War II.

After leaving the Manzanar camp in the first book and moving to Chicago, nurse’s aide Aki Nakasone and her parents have returned to California, where they prospered before being imprisoned, and where her father and others desperately hope to reclaim their land and businesses. Aki’s husband, Art, gets work at the Rafu Shimponewspaper (where Hirahara has worked), but his after-work drinking with other journalists leaves Aki feeling she saw more of him when he was in the army. She’s distant from her parents, too, despite sharing their home, with Hirahara portraying the generational difference as part of the estrangement that is the central theme of the book. Her characters raised in the camps display a kinship that transcends other bonds and leaves them markedly and painfully adrift from their parents.

When Art’s army buddy Babe goes missing after his father’s battered body is found, Aki sets out to find Babe and restore balance to her own unsettled life. This quest sees her explore elements of postwar life such as the competition between returning Japanese and Black Americans for housing and the effects of “shell shock” (PTSD) on a community. A must-read.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Mrs. Plansky’s Revenge

by Henrietta Thornton

Just try not to fall in love with Loretta Plansky, the plucky, 70ish hero of this sweet, feel-good mystery. A widow—she regularly chats with her deceased husband, Norm—Loretta keeps busy in Florida with friends, family, and a mean game of tennis. She and Norm invented the Plansky Toaster Knife, which toasts as you slice—is that that genius or what?—and they managed to accumulate quite the nest egg. Which is helpful, since Loretta’s kids seem to be forever circling, seeking investments and loans for their hair-brained schemes. So when her grandson Will calls from college, and needs to be bailed out because of a DUI, it’s Loretta to the rescue—or at least Loretta’s bank account. Of course, the caller wasn’t Will, and the normally savvy Loretta wakes the next morning to find herself divested of savings, investments, and worse of all, her self-respect. After reviewing her finances and discovering that to get by, she’d need to do the unthinkable and move her 96-year-old father in with her, Loretta makes the shocking decision to head off, track down the thieves, and recoup her funds. This second part of the novel is a real delight. Yes, there is quite a bit of coincidence and luck, but there’s also a wild cast of characters, some surprising relationships, and real evolution on Loretta’s part. For fans of Simon Brett’s Feathering novels and Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Where the Dead Sleep

by Brian Kenney

In this second in the series, Assistant Sheriff Ben Packard is juggling two major incidents. One is the death of his mentor, Sheriff Stan Shaw, which raises the question of whether Ben should run to replace Shaw as Sheriff of Minnesota’s Sandy Lake County, several hours north of the Twin Cities and a popular vacation spot. For someone who’s lived in the county for only a year or so, Ben’s got plenty of supporters, but he isn’t sure he’s ready to give up being a detective. Plus, he’s anxious about how being gay is going to play out at the polls. The other incident is the death of Bill Sanderson, shot multiple times in his bed. Nobody loved Bill—except maybe his ex-wife, who’s the sister of his new widow—but nobody seemed to hate Bill enough to actually kill him. Not his business partner, not his gambling buddies, not his spouse. To solve Bill’s death, Ben goes even deeper into the Sandy Lake community than ever before, peeling off the many dark and gritty layers, deciphering the complex family relations, and at one point putting his own life at risk. This novel works fine as a stand-alone, but readers of the first in the series, And There He Kept Her, will appreciate seeing Ben’s development and piecing together the disquieting world of Sandy Lake.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Last Songbird

by Henrietta Thornton

Addy Zantz is like a cold-blooded animal, taking his emotions from his environment as some creatures take their body heat from the sun. He’s an Uber driver, working what he calls the River Styx, the loop from LAX to various hotels, all the while investigating the fully clothed-drowning death of Annie Linden, music legend and a customer who turned into a friend. Annie was a contemporary of Joni Mitchell, and seemed to resemble Mitchell in feeling shut off from the world, taking tentative steps into reality through music and trips in Addy’s car, when she sampled humanity in tiny sips. At first, Addy’s investigation seems borne of nothing else to do. But when a friend, an orthodox Jew who’s too much of a stoner to save himself from the accusation, is accused of the crime, with Addy as an accessory, the cabbie must hit the road hard to find out what really happened to Annie. As the best noirs do, The Last Songbird stays inside the mind of its investigator even while the case casts its glance from distant acquaintances to distant times and decisions. This one keeps returning to the same questions even as it explores the possibilities: who was Annie really? And if Addy finds that out, can he find himself? If you liked T. Jefferson Parker’s A Thousand Steps, try this.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Benevolent Society of Ill-Mannered Ladies

by Brian Kenney

An absolute delight, wonderfully written and with enough plot to keep the reader zooming through the book then quickly asking for more. Regency London is the setting and the twin Colebrook sisters, Lady Augusta (Gus) and Lady Julia, are our amateur detectives. Unusual for women of this period, they were left with personal incomes by their late father, allowing them independence and the ability to thumb their noses at their useless younger brother. In their early forties and unmarried, the two can’t bear the injustices they see heaped on the women around them, and Gus is determined to do something. When word reaches them that a friend’s goddaughter has been locked away by her husband with the intent to kill her—as she’s unable to have children—the sisters head off to spring her from her country house. Along the way, they pair up with an old interest of Gus’s, Lord Evan Belford, back from exile in Australia—it’s a long story—and hotter than ever.  What’s unusually successful about this book is that instead of focusing on one case, the sisters take on a series, including one case in which Gus, disguised as a man, infiltrates a brothel. While their identities as detectives grow, several themes emerge, including Julia’s struggle with breast cancer, their need to surrender their home to their brother and his fiancé, and, of course, what to do with Lord Belford. The Regency era, feminism, and romance all work together to create a book that will delight many. And how about that cover?

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

I’ll Stop the World

by Henrietta Thornton

It might be a while since you read a book with teenage protagonists. It’s time. This coming-of-age story has characters who are adolescents to the core, spending their too-fast days on intense friendships, pulling away from parents, and fearing that their high school woes are their destiny. Small-town Warren High School in 2023 is the setting, and the story centers on Justin Warren, whose name is no coincidence: the school is named after his grandparents, who were killed in a fire at the school years before, his mother an infant in the car outside. Things haven’t gone well for Justin. He’s not going to college and he’s in love with his best friend, Alyssa Vizcaino (while they’re seatmates in every class because their last names “function as the alphabetical equivalent of an arranged marriage,” she’s not interested). Then there’s a bizarre twist: an accident throws Justin over a bridge and into…1985. He’s not born yet, his grandparents are still alive, and he still has a chance to change his 2023 lot in life. He meets fellow teen Rose Yin (he’s her pen pal who’s come for a fun visit!), and the two set out to solve a mystery that could mean the world to Justin. Romance is thrown in of course, including a sweet same-sex relationship; combined with the mystery and the tricky logistics of time traveling back to your own town and family in the past, this is one to recommend to book groups and all who like an emotional saga.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Trouble

by Henrietta Thornton

Hella Mauzer, 29, is both very much of Finland—she’s a dour private investigator who seems made from her country’s six-months of darkness —but completely not what her fellow 1950s Finns want her to be. Put flowers under your pillow on midsummer night and you’ll dream of your future fiancé, they hint, with marriage and motherhood then all but guaranteed. Hella wants none of it. She keeps both her ex-boyfriend, who can’t grasp that things are over, and her new, interested neighbor at arm’s length while immersed in two investigations. One is a favor to her father’s former secret-police colleague: a background check on the prospective head of Helsinki’s homicide squad. The other is more personal. Hella is desperate to find out who killed her parents, sister, and nephew, all of whom died when hit by a truck when Hella was a teen. Getting the courage to read the police file on her family’s deaths is a big step, and one that immediately leads her to suspect that there was much more to the tragedy than an accident. The background check is far from straightforward either, adding up to a tale that brings to mind Game of Thrones, with all that story’s evil and power-hungry machinations. If Scandinavian mysteries are your thing, try this, as well as Ann-Helén Laestadius’s Stolen, and Joachim B. Schmidt’s Kalman for great stories that take place outside the more common urban settings in Sweden and Denmark.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail