Tag:

Mystery & Detective

Review

The Collector

by Henrietta Thornton

Hancock’s series debut, The Corpse Flower, which featured in this newsletter’s debut, introduced Danish journalist Heloise Kaldan and police officer Erik Schäfer. The somewhat jaded friends don’t work together per se—it’s more that they investigate the same crime in parallel while throwing each other tidbits that help move the case along. Their unusual arrangement swings into gear again when a child goes missing. Lukas Bjerre goes to the same Copenhagen school as Heloise’s friend’s daughter, so the journalist has an in, but that doesn’t make the search any easier. Lukas seems to have simply vanished, with the whole school day having passed before anyone noticed. At the same time, Heloise is going through personal turmoil as she’s unwillingly pregnant, the father “a crummy wolf in permanent press trousers,” according to Schäfer. Adding to Kaldan’s anguish is her inability to remember where she saw a barn that the missing boy might be held in—one that features in Lukas’s collection of photos illustrating his pareidolia, or tendency to see faces in inanimate objects. As the search continues, a suspect’s PTSD forms part of the tale, adding to the feeling that this whole case hinges on mental instability, with the danger to Lukas the one constant in a storm of fear. Kaldan and Schäfer form a realistic and entertaining if gruff duo, one whose work readers will gladly jump into again.

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Review

The Wheel of Doll

by Brian Kenney

This is turning out to be one of the most unique, captivating, and above all emotionally engaging crime fiction series being published. Happy Doll—yes, that’s his real name—is 50-ish, ex-military, and a former LAPD cop who lost his PI license and now calls himself a “security consultant.” Yes, Doll has many of the noirish trappings of your classic LA detective, from his worn-down office to his status as a regular at a dive bar. But he’s also a fledgling Buddhist who’s in love with George, a half-Chihuahua, half-terrier mix, is in psychotherapy, and is incredibly generous to those he comes across—provided they’re not trying to kill him. In this story, Doll is approached by a young woman to search for her mother, Iris Candle, who’s likely to be homeless. Candle and Doll, it turns out, were lovers years ago, and Doll can’t turn down an opportunity to see her again. After a week of searching, Doll finally locates Candle—worn down by drugs and years of living on the streets—and their reunion is one of the most poignant passages I’ve read in years. It also sets off the book’s real narrative, complete with some horrific, but highly entertaining, violence and a quest that brings Doll to the edge. As much as I love Ames’ novels and comic memoirs, Happy Doll is his most innovative and successful character yet. Fans of aged, semi-hard-boiled, humorous Los Angeles detectives will also enjoy Andy Weinberger’s The Kindness of Strangers.

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Review

Abiding Conviction

by Henrietta Thornton

Manchester, NH judge Carlos Garcia is in an unexpected and uncomfortable spot: the defendant’s seat, accused of murdering his wife by adding an overdose of Vicodin to her dinner. In every way, he’s one of lawyer Dutch Francis’s least-favorite clients. The judge is not open to any advice, thinks he still has the upper hand in the courtroom, and is clearly withholding information about his wife’s death. Francis is already thinking he shouldn’t have taken this case when he gets two sharp shocks: his famous newscaster wife, Ginnie—they’ve been married a good five minutes—tells him she’s pregnant and not sure she wants to keep the baby, and, later that day, she goes missing. Francis believes she’s been kidnapped, a suspicion that’s borne out as he begins to receive oddities, such as her fingernail clippings, in the mail. The suspense is in high gear throughout this thriller as we follow the twists and turns of the courtroom drama and the chase when Francis hounds the cops to find his wife, but also joins his legal investigator on their own sometimes-scary bid to rescue Ginnie. A startling ending is in store, and getting there is an enjoyable trip through memorable characters, love-fueled desperation, and the exasperations of the justice system.

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Review

Someone Had to Do It.

by Brian Kenney

Publishers: Wondering how to keep crime fiction relevant, cutting edge, and appealing to younger millennials and older Gen Z? Then take a page out of the impressive debut Someone Had to Do It. Brandi may have landed her dream job unpaid internship at the fashion house Simon Van Doren, but she wasn’t planning on the microaggressions and reminders that as a young, Black woman she doesn’t fit into the culture (“code for we-can’t-handle-your individuality but-since-we-don’t-want-to-seem-racist-we’ll-invent-this little loophole”). But Brandi’s tenacious—she’s also putting herself through fashion school—and with a little help from dreamboat boyfriend Nate, an up-and-coming football star, she manages to hang in there. When Nate offers to put in a good word with Taylor Van Doren, Simon’s daughter—they go back to prep school—Brandi can’t say no. Taylor’s an it-girl, a model and fashionista who has it all and then some. While Brandi hopes that friendship with Taylor will help launch her career, the opposite happens. Taylor—the absolute best villain I’ve read this year—sets Brandi up for a fall where she risks losing everything she’s worked so hard to achieve. This is one smart, hot, bingeable read that’s got Attn: Netflix stamped all over it.

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Review

The Christmas Murder Game

by Henrietta Thornton

The backbiting Armitage family has a Christmas tradition at their country mansion, Endgame House: the matriarch of the family creates cryptic riddles for them to solve. Lily was best at the game in the past, until her cousins were so mean to her that she let them win. Now Lily is returning from London to Endgame for the first time since she found her mother dead in the house’s garden maze years before. The family is gathering for a final game, one that’s stipulated in their Aunt Liliana’s will: they’re competing to win the house, and must solve one riddle per day over the 12 days of Christmas. Liliana’s letter to Lily enticed the young designer—known for making exquisite corsets—to the showdown by promising that she would find out who killed her mother. That’s not to be the last grisly death at Endgame, because as soon as the play is on, so is the killing, with Yorkshire’s worst snow in years keeping the miserable contestants trapped. Paralleling the corsetry details are many other kinds of entrapment—in the house, in childhood-throwback behavior that emerges when the cousins get together, and in Lily’s feeling that she can never escape that moment in the maze. But there’s love trapped in this house too, and the word puzzles posed to the family (and anagrams listed in the foreword for readers to solve as they read the book) provide an intriguing and engrossing way to get to that warmth. Just the ticket for next winter, alongside Mark Dunn’s wordgame novel Ella Minnow Pea.

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Review

Knock Off the Hat

by Brian Kenney

It’s summer in post-World-War-II Philadelphia. The temperature is rising, and so too is the gay bashing, thanks to the police department and the City’s hugely corrupt judicial system. Tough-talking, but also hugely funny, Clifford Waterman—a former police detective who received a dishonorable discharge from the Army for being caught in the act in Cairo—is trying to make a go as a noirish PI. He’s hired to get the charges against a young man caught up in a bar raid dismissed and his $500 bribe reduced. Shake-downs of lesbians and gay men are nothing new, but Waterman begins to realize that the scope of the attacks and the size of the bribes are escalating hugely—along with the psychological damage and suicides that the publicity is causing among the LGBTQ community. Waterman’s search is a broad one, taking him throughout the greater Philadelphia area and up and down the social ladder. Sex and lovers, the relationships between Black and white queer men—expect the racist language of the day—and jazz and the blues all contribute to creating a memorable time and place. It’s great to have the author of the ground-breaking Don Strachey novels back with what we can only hope will be as prolific a series.

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Review

Lavender House

by Brian Kenney

It’s 2 p.m., and Evander “Andy” Mills is sitting alone at a bar, suicidal ideations dancing in his head. And for a good reason. A detective with the San Francisco police, his world was ripped apart when he was caught in flagrante delicto during a raid on a gay bar and thrown off the police force. This is, after all, 1952, and until now Andy has succeeded in keeping his sexuality locked away from the rest of his life. As he reaches for his fifth martini, he’s interrupted by a society woman who has a proposal for him: investigate the mysterious death of her wife, Irene Lamontaine, who died in Lavender House, the family estate. Did she say “wife?” Indeed she did. And off we go to Lavender House, home to the Lamontaine family, who own a soap dynasty, and where nearly everyone, from family members to the help, is absolutely queer. Their world is a fascinating one, as free as it is safe—until, that is, Irene was murdered. No reader who’s made it through the first chapter could ever think of abandoning this magical novel as it morphs into a sort of locked-room mystery with culprits everywhere. But as engrossing as the Lamontaines may be, it’s Andy who centers the narrative, and who emerges from the story—to use contemporary jargon—beginning to heal, both physically and emotionally. Here’s hoping this is just the beginning of Andy Mills’ investigations.

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Review

Light on Bone

by Henrietta Thornton

In real life, artist Georgia O’Keeffe began in 1929 to spend part of each year at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiú, New Mexico, and eventually moved there. When we join her at the ranch in 1934, she’s settled into an artistic rhythm in the desert landscape that so inspired her. O’Keeffe regularly drives into the desert to paint, enjoying a life that’s much looser than she lived with her rich, philandering husband back in New York. (In an amusing scene, the beat-of-her-own-drum-living O’Keeffe must genuinely have explained to her what a speed limit is.) On one of her excursions, the artist finds the vulture-attacked body of a priest, and the mystery only deepens when the man’s luggage contains decidedly unholy objects; it also has a map of the area with O’Keeffe’s house marked. As she investigates the strange man’s death, outsiders who visit Ghost Ranch, including Charles Lindbergh and his wife, Anne, add to the puzzles facing O’Keeffe. Neighbors’ lives, with their own difficulties, also feature prominently in the artist’s day-to-day life, with Lasky unobtrusively showing the twistedness of the Native’s subjugation. For example, white visitors who have spent their lives in this country have unfamiliar Native myths explained to them by reference to more familiar Greek myths and must be told not to take notes at a Native ceremony because “we are not museum artifacts.” While it’s apt for the time, the n-word features twice, and child sexual abuse is also a theme. Readers who enjoy this intriguing, emotional series debut could try another featuring celebrities: Erin Lindsey’s A Golden Grave, in which Nikola Tesla is a character; or for more New Mexico-set mysteries with a female sleuth, pick up Amanda Allen’s Santa Fe Revival series.

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Review

The Body Falls

by Henrietta Thornton

Lovers of classic mysteries will be familiar with the locked-room trope, in which a finite set of characters is stuck in one place with a murderer in their midst, à la Murder on the Orient Express. Here the “room” is the real northern Irish town of Inishowen, which is cut off from the outside world when a month’s worth of rain falls in 24 hours, with all roads and bridges leading out of town destroyed by floods. The townspeople come together well enough, including the protagonist, solicitor Benedicta (Ben) O”Keefe. When readers last met Ben,, in Murder at Greysbridge, she was heading off to New York for six months, partially to get a break from her confused relationship with a local police sergeant (he hasn’t gone anywhere and the fate of the on-again, off-again relationship is an enjoyable subplot). She returns to find her hometown awash but her small law firm ticking along nicely, even if her replacement didn’t know how to leave any surface paper-free. Not moving along so well is a charity cycling event that’s supposed to run from nearby Malin Head, Ireland’s most northerly point, to Mizen Head, it’s most southerly, with weather keeping the cyclists restlessly bound to Inishowen. Then the rain brings a more macabre result: on a late night call, the local vet’s car is hit by a falling body. Ben once again gives her Sergeant beau a run for his money in the investigation stakes, uncovering family secrets, local scandals, and contentment with her Inishowen lot along the way. Lovers of grittier cozies are the audience for this one.

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Review

An Honest Living

by Henrietta Thornton

Take a trip back to early 2000s Brooklyn in this work of literary noir that lurks on the edges of the art world. Noir novels present an investigator who’s down on his or her luck, and here it’s Dwyer Murphy—yes, the main character has the same name as the author—a former corporate lawyer who couldn’t take the hours, the billing in six-minute increments, or the colleagues. Now he’s going it alone, but he needs the odd lucrative job (even the odd shady one) to stay afloat. He takes a sad case: one party in an acrimonious divorce wants him to try to buy books off her husband; she suspects that he’s selling some of her valuable, inherited volumes and needs the proof. Two things are strange: the “books” are esoteric, early American legal pamphlets such as “Confessions of Tom Mansfield who Corrupted and Murdered His Servant,” which Dwyer had no idea were collectibles, let alone worth taking risks over. And then he faces being sued by the wife because he’s ruining her husband’s reputation. There’s no end to the rich-people twistedness here, which is both incredible and all-too believable. That’s enjoyable enough, but best is the slow-burn, quirky trip with the steadfast Dwyer, who puts one foot in front of the other until he figures out what’s going on. A kinda, sorta Thelma-and-Louise ending caps the saga, but leaves room to wonder what’s next for the lovable Dwyer.

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