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Thrillers

Review

A Good Family

by Henrietta Thornton

Katie Kuhlmann lives in an Edina, Minnesota, neighborhood called Country Club, and it’s like what you would imagine. Katie didn’t grow up rich, but she married old Minnesota money and now lives among neighbors who might “chip in on a private jet” so they can all vacation in the same luxurious place. Having endured a sad upbringing with her grandparents after her parents and brothers were killed in a car crash, Katie’s happy to roll with the pampered oddness that is her new life as long as she’s got her family close. But her safe haven is beginning to show signs of rot. When he’s not ignoring his family or disappearing for lengthy stretches, Katie’s husband, Jack, is angry and tense. Out of the blue, a wayward college friend of his arrives and takes up residence in the family’s garden apartment, and Katie fears that things are going from bad to worse. She has no idea how dire things will get and the gut-punch of betrayal that’s in store. When her husband confesses a crime to her—is it even true?—it’s just the beginning. Goldman writes a woman’s inner voice perfectly, and his background as a TV writer (Seinfeld, Ellen) shows on the page, with tense and thrilling scenes quickly alternating with romantic interludes and domestic entanglements. Jodi Piccoult readers will enjoy Katie’s climb out of a painful trap.

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Review

Bad Summer People

by Brian Kenney

Yes, it’s only October. But my money is on Bad Summer People as the best beach book of the summer of 2023. Set in Salcombe, a made-up community on Fire Island—not the like the gay Pines, more the reclusive and ritzy Saltaire—this book, in the great literary tradition of Peyton Place, has it all: adultery, fashion, tons of gossip, backbiting, lying, hot sex with the tennis pro, tasteful plastic surgery, alcoholism, and even a corpse. Plus the sort of casual racism and classism liberal one-percenters indulge in. It opens with a prologue, set at the end of August, in which a body is discovered face down off the boardwalk. The book then backs up to late June, as the all-white residents arrive from the Upper East side and Scarsdale for the start of a new season. From there we follow the tumultuous summer in chronological order, moving quite handily among a group of narrators, from the above-mentioned Stanford tennis coach to the Filipino nanny to the gay Yale student/bartender and many more. At the gravitational center of the book are Jen Weinstein and Lauren Parker, the “it moms” who married into Salcombe—their husbands are best friends—and oversee the social action. Not another word from me, lest I spoil any of the fun, except to say the identities of both the victim and the murderer pack quite the punch. This book really hits the sweet spot for popular fiction and will appeal to a broad swathe of readers.

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Review

Small Town Sins

by Henrietta Thornton

“I can trace so much of my life back to a summer night when I was seventeen,” opens main character Nathan, and right away you’re reading through your fingers like watching a horror film. Nathan’s a good boy until that summer night, when racy LeeLee takes him to a party. One thing leads to another and next thing he gets The Phone Call: LeeLee’s pregnant and needs $1,000 to fix the problem. Nathan has $100. He has tough decisions to make and no perfect options, a problem faced by the other struggling characters in this book, all of whom are scraping by in Locksburg, PA. Years later, Nathan comes upon a chance to leave his troubles behind: when he rescues a man from a burning building, he finds a sack of money that he impulsively puts in his truck. Then we meet the other main characters, whose narratives alternate and overlap with Nathan’s: Paula, Nathan’s wife, a nurse who wants nothing to do with the money; Callie, a nurse who works with Paula and who wants to give a dying young patient one last chance at happiness, defying the girl’s fundamentalist Christian parents in the process; and Andy, a recovering heroin addict who, facing bottomless grief, puts his remaining days into punishing an evil man. New York Times editor Jaworowski’s characters are so real, their struggles so palpable, you won’t want to leave them. A must for fans of This Is Us.

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Review

Murder in Times Square

by Henrietta Thornton

his series debut features a woman who’s so glamorous and strong she has a superhero persona, complete with the superhero’s inner conflict. Deirdre Flanagan is a model, a beautiful 19-year-old who purposely makes herself uglier in daily life so she can pass unnoticed. While she loves clothes and the drama of a professional fashion shoot, modeling is very much her nine to five. In her spare time, she works with her doting father and his brother—they’re a former world-champion boxer and an NYC police captain, respectively, and the only parents she has known—to solve crimes against young women. When a woman in a striking red dress falls to her death from the roof of 1 Times Square, Deirdre hits the scene, finding another body as well as unexpected emotions upon viewing the remains. Why this case has hit her so hard and whether she can escape the escalating danger facing those involved with the victim and the case is a mystery that will keep readers rapt—although they’ll also enjoy being dropped into the world of New York City haute couture. Baer, who worked briefly in that world and is the author of the successful Jack Colt series, also offers a gritty contrast to the ritziness of fashion in his protagonist’s personal life: home is her father’s boxing gym, and between that setting and her life as an NYPD sidekick, the sarcasm and bullets keep flying. A fast, absorbing introduction to a daring star.

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Review

The Other Mistress

by Henrietta Thornton

In the introduction by Williams (The Wife Before, The Perfect Ruin), readers are forewarned, that child abuse and sexual assault feature in this novel; they should still be prepared for whiplash when this turns from a “girl’s night in” kind of story to something much, much darker. Black couple Adira and Gabriel are living the high life—at first appearance. Adira’s an entrepreneur, the successful owner of a luxury clothing brand, Lovely Silk. Gabriel isn’t as successful—Adira’s keeping them afloat—but she doesn’t mind. She’s crazy about her husband and is shattered to see an email pop up on his phone that makes it clear he’s seeing another woman, Jocelyn. Actually, make that two women, Jocelyn and Julianna, with the former woman, when confronted by Adira, offering to join ranks with the wronged wife to make Gabriel pay. Thus starts the darkness, with stalking, lies, and desperation taking turns with another story, of two little girls, one of whom is being sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. Williams ramps up the tension and the mystery from the first page so that as the stories converge and a terrible truth is revealed, readers will be both enthralled and aghast. One for all those who’ve done what they had to do and lived to tell the tale.

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Review

Death of a Bookseller

by Brian Kenney

A dangerous obsession, true crime, bookselling, alcoholism, and trauma—add some dark humor—and you have the ingredients for this utterly unique tale set in Spines, a present-day-London bookstore. Young, post-punk Roach has only ever worked as a bookseller at Spines, where she can indulge in her obsession with true crime—female victims only, please—and way overstock the true-crime section. Her Mom runs a bar and basically ignores Roach, while Roach’s boyfriend is an unwashed brute in a death metal t-shirt. But things aren’t going so well at this branch of Spines these days, and the corporate office has transferred some seasoned employees to bolster sales. This includes Laura, who’s all vintage dresses and rose oil, berets and hand-rolled cigarettes. She’s what Roach would call a “normie,” until Roach hears her give a poetry reading in which she references many of Roach’s favorite true-crime victims. Roach becomes obsessed with Laura, eventually going full-on stalker. But while Roach is fascinated with the perps, Laura is disgusted by the true-crime genre for glorifying these creeps. Instead, she pays homage to the victims, and does so from a very personal perspective. As Laura’s drinking becomes more and more out of control, it becomes easier and easier for Roach to take over, playing with Laura’s sense of reality and leading to an ending as dark as it is credible. The novel includes a wonderful cast of booksellers who bring some humorous subplots to the book. Readers who enjoyed Laura Sims’ How Can I Help You, reviewed here last week, will be ecstatic to meet these women.

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Review

The Last Word

by Brian Kenney

Emma Carpenter is house-sitting in near-total isolation on the Washington coast. For company there’s Laika, her Golden Retriever; a retired alcoholic author a half-mile up the coast with whom she exchanges brief messages; and the occasional delivery person. Something’s bugging Emma. After all, you don’t take a gig like this unless you’ve got a project you’re working on or some issues you need to resolve, and for Emma it’s the latter. She keeps herself occupied by walking Laika and reading thrillers, plowing through two ebooks a day until she comes across a novel so misogynistic, so poorly written, she can’t help but give it a negative review, setting off an online dialog with the author, who demands the review be retracted. That’s when things start to get weird—and tension starts to heighten—as every evening the security lights switch on and off, or Emma hears footsteps in the house, or the CCTV catches an intruder outside her door—complete with ghoulish mask. Could it possibly be the author Emma has been arguing with? Whomever, it is, Emma is no damsel in distress, and she’d rather fight than run. From there the narrative speeds up, the terror mounts, and the layers of plot begin to unfold until the reader feels like they’re strapped to a one-person luge, runners greased and no way to get free. Perfect for the nail biters.

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Review

How Can I Help You

by Henrietta Thornton

Clear your calendar, silence your phone, and settle down to enjoy Laura Sims’ latest book in one joyous sitting. You deserve it and I guarantee you’ll thank me. Set among library workers in a small public library—no author has ever gotten library culture as right as Sims—this book is as unsettling as a Shirley Jackson novel with the same crazy stalker energy of a Patricia Highsmith tale. It’s time to move on for ex-nurse Margo, who leaves in her wake scores of suspicious deaths in a handful of hospitals. A library clerk position at the Carlyle Public Library gives her a chance at redemption, along with a new name, hair color, and wardrobe. And she can still help people, “not the way I helped them before, at the hospital, but still.” She’s able to keep the lid on her urges, for the most part, until two years later when Patricia, a new reference librarian, is hired. The two strike up a friendship of sorts—they live in the same apartment building—but when an elderly patron dies in the bathroom, and Margo becomes way over-excited, Patricia finds herself becoming obsessed with Margo and begins documenting her actions. The narrative alternates between the two women as the novel grows deeper, darker, and creepier, ending in a stunning, perfect climax.

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Review

Gone Tonight

by Henrietta Thornton

Catherine Sterling’s personal and professional worlds are beginning to collide: she’s a nurse who cares for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and her mother is starting to show classic symptoms. The two live together, making the forgetfulness hard to miss, with Ruth Sterling looking very confused when recent events are discussed and forgetting words—calling ice cubes “water squares,” for example. Ruth is reluctant to get any scans that could confirm the likely diagnosis—her mother died of Alzheimer’s, she says, and she knows what’s ahead. But then Catherine makes a discovery that causes her to doubt that her mother’s problems are real. As the point of view shifts between the two women, readers get Ruth’s first-person point of view; her odd behavior is hiding an explosive past that Catherine knows nothing about. Readers are in for a wild cat-and-mouse game as this tight duo (boundaries, what are they?) faces terrible odds when Catherine delves into her mother’s past and Ruth hides the pair from an encroaching threat. There are some very sad moments here, related to dire poverty and child sexual abuse. Overall, it’s an eye-opening look at how “our minds…talk us out of things we don’t want to know.”

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Review

The Boys from Biloxi

by Henrietta Thornton

The 48th novel from the biggest name in legal thrillers is a departure for him, with the book taking place over generations and lots more of it outside the courtroom than usual, all to great effect. The boys of the title are two sets of fathers and sons on very different sides of the law in Biloxi, Mississippi. Their saga starts with a look at the founding of the hardscrabble city by Croatian fishermen. By the time we reach the 1950s and meet Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco, the sons in question, the city has thriving clubs with prostitution, gambling, and all the violence and intimidation that go alongside. Hugh’s father, Lance, is the head of organized crime in Biloxi, able to grow his awful interests with the help of corrupt police. Fighting against him and his ilk is Keith’s father, Jesse, a lawyer whose education and climb we’ve witnessed and who dreams of becoming DA and cleaning up his city for good. As the two sides becomen entrenched, Grisham takes us on side trips that follow the various small-time and not-so-small-time criminals whose work feeds the Rudy-Malco divide, with the story building toward an epic legal showdown that pits honor against evil. There are no major female characters here, and the book may not pass the Bechdel test, but readers who can overlook that will be treated to vintage Grisham: a great story, characters to cheer for and loathe, and gripping legal drama. Fans of Jeffrey Archer as well as of Grisham will love this.

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