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Mystery & Detective

Review

A Cryptic Clue

by Henrietta Thornton

A former university librarian, forced into early retirement, takes on a new job cataloging a book collection, only to find herself spending more time solving a crime than applying the Library of Congress subject headings. Jane Hunter is making lots of changes in her life. She’s downsized her home, is living alone—her actress daughter is off on a national tour—and is about to bring in some much-needed funds by cataloging 33-year-old Cameron “Cam” Clewe’s vast crime fiction collection. But on the first day at the job, at Cam’s sprawling mansion, she discovers—wouldn’t you know it?—a corpse on the floor of the library. And not just any corpse. Cam’s latest ex-girlfriend. To make matters worse, several people saw the couple arguing the night before. With handsome Cam the number one suspect, if Jane wants to keep her job, she’s got to keep her boss out of jail, so the two team up to find the real perp. The fun here is in what an odd couple they make. Sherlock Cam has “anxiety, OCD, occasional depression, and a general lack of social awareness.” And while Watson Jane may not have been diagnosed with anything listed in the DSM-5, she’s darn nosey, quite pushy, a bit of a rumor monger, and has some dubious professional ethics (she brings items home, and shows them to a neighbor, without Cam’s permission.) Everything is in place here for a successful series sure to delight traditional cozy readers for years to come. Now let these two go at each other.

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Review

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers

by Henrietta Thornton

A wonderful, moving stand-alone in which Sutanto, author of the Aunties series, is at the absolute top of her game. Sixty-year-old Vera Wong is lonely, although she’d never admit it. A widower, she’s the mother of a lawyer consumed by work—he rarely returns her texts, even though she offers such good advice!— and her days consist of a 6 am brisk walk through San Francisco’s Chinatown—she needs to get her steps in!—then opening her tea shop which, on the best of days, has only one customer. Extraordinarily opinionated, quite a bit eccentric, yet utterly charming, Vera’s voice is captivating. But readers will be completely beguiled after she comes downstairs one morning (she lives above the shop) and discovers a young man lying on the floor. She does call the cops, and tries her very, very best not to disturb the crime scene, but not before prying a flash drive out of the man’s very dead hands. Then the novel takes off as Vera—believing the cops are incapable of solving the crime—assumes the role of detective. In the process, she befriends several young people, including both the victim’s wife and his brother, and while Vera still considers them all to be prime suspects, she can’t help but care for them. Initially this protagonist may seem like the cliché of the dominating Chinese mom. But Vera, it turns out, is pretty damaged herself, much like her new, thirty-something friends. Come for the mystery, but stay for the healing. One of the best cozies I’ve read this year.

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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

Murder at an Irish Bakery

by Henrietta Thornton

We don’t normally review the 11th book in a series, because typically after a few titles the series needs no further introduction. But I grabbed this one from the (virtual) pile because 1. It’s set in Ireland, my former home; 2. It’s set in a bakery, my spiritual home; 3. Murder. The Ireland here is a thoroughly modern one, with the tale set around a baking-competition reality show. Famous cookbook author Aoife McBride is the one to beat, as the contestants vie to impress the judges with elaborate chocolate constructions, fancy layered creations, and to-die-for tea cakes, all to win twenty-thousand Euro and a boost to their baking-career ambitions. The producers throw in reality-show-required conflict, of course, but get more drama than they bargained for when a protester (“Sugar kills! Stop the show!”) outside the studio mysteriously drops dead. His is not the last face to fall in the flour, so to speak. Gardaí (police officers) Siobhán O’Sullivan and Aretta Dabiri and Siobhán’s new husband, Detective Sergeant Macdara Flannery, must solve the mystery while the cameras roll and the baking puns fly. This has more than the contestants’ groan-worthy puns, though, with O’Connor (No Strangers Here) giving readers a healthy balance of whodunit and bitchy competition, not to mention a cute relationship in still-in-the-honeymoon-phase Siobhán and Macdara. The closing recipe for Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate Guinness Cake alone is worth the book price.

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Review

Killingly

by Brian Kenney

A haunting tale set in the rarefied world of Mount Holyoke college, the oldest of the Seven Sisters, and inspired by a true story. It’s 1897 and Bertha Mellish, a quiet and rather odd junior, has gone missing, last seen walking into the woods that surround the college. As days go by, her disappearance draws to campus her sister and father—an enfeebled minister from Killingly, Connecticut—the police, and a private investigator hired by the family. But the one person who likely knows what happened to Bertha is Agnes Sullivan, and she’s being incredibly circumspect. Agnes is poor and Irish, a promising scientist, and Bertha’s closest friend…or lover? At a time when women in an environment like Mount Holyoke could establish romantic relationships, and display affection, Agnes and Bertha were such a couple—in fact, they planned after graduation to live in a Boston Marriage, the name for two women who set up a household together. So why is Agnes so tight-lipped? Rape, incest, abortion, vivisection, and insanity swirl around the narrative, as does the imagining of the precarious lives of women, even when privileged. Beutner does a wonderful job of pulling the reader into this world then locking the door behind us, keeping us engaged until the very last page.

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Review

The Last Grudge

by Brian Kenney

A classic police procedural that does a miraculous job of balancing the investigation on the one hand and the complex personal lives of the detectives on the other. One of Helsinki’s most successful business leaders is murdered in his home, by a kitchen knife to his heart. He was on his way to a dinner celebrating his company’s fiftieth anniversary, an event overshadowed by protests because of recent layoffs he’s authorized. Yusuf, one of the leading detectives throughout this series, is put in charge of the investigation, which leads inward, with a meticulous examination of the apartment, and outward, contacting many of the executive’s colleagues and just individuals with whom he may have had contact. Unnerved at his leadership position, Yusuf brings on Detective Jessica Niemi, his partner in the earlier books, who’s now on leave trying to escape from her personal demons—literally, not metaphorically. As the story briskly unfolds—Seeck keeps the plot moving—the past and the present collide in a terrifying way. While this can be a stand-alone, it’s best to read it as part of a series. For fans of Camilla Läckberg and Jo Nesbø.

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Review

Murder Book

by Henrietta Thornton

It’s no wonder Harry Duncan’s ex-wife, Ellen, a U.S. Attorney, calls him when her cases need some extrajudicial help. Former cop Harry is an expert at getting himself into trouble—just the kind that suits his investigations—and getting back out, with each leg of the journey equally satisfying. His current murder book, or record of a crime investigation, opens when Ellen asks him to hit the road on her behalf to look into what might be a new criminal organization setting itself up in Indiana. Arriving in Parkman’s Elbow, a town identified as one focus of the possible gang, Harry stops for lunch, the action finds him immediately, and his combination MacGyver/James Bond maneuvers are decidedly ON. The investigation often takes a back seat as readers get lost in Harry’s vigilante moves—defeating bumbling bad guys in ways that ridicule them, saving a woman the gang is trying to extort—and his smart evasion and tracking methods. But the case is almost beside the point when such exciting chases and devastating put-downs of criminals are on the menu. Would the police really ignore the wild things Harry does? Probably not, but you won’t care. One for a late-night binge.

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Review

Feel the Bern

by Brian Kenney

I love mysteries that feature the famous, from Walt Whitman to Dorothy Parker to Eleanor Roosevelt. But featuring a living celebrity—in this case, Bernie Sanders—is even more of a challenge, one that Shaffer succeeds at wonderfully. Gen Z intern Crash Robertson is our wisecracking intern and narrator, and after months of answering phones in the DC office—from constituents who don’t know how to text?—she gets to accompany the senator on a fall-recess trip to Vermont. By chance, they head to Eagle Creek, Crash’s hometown, and end up staying in her mother’s B&B. But what has the makings of a low-key visit with constituents, and plenty of apple griddlecakes, suddenly gets upended when Crash finds the body of the local banker floating in Lake Champlain. Crash’s running commentary on Bernie—who’s always ready to deliver a lecture on the declining honeybee population, or the cozy series he’s reading, set in a cannabis bakery in the Northwest—makes for a good part of the humor in the book. But when a second citizen goes missing, it’s time for our team to get down to work. The biggest suspect is a tech-obsessed one-percenter, think Elon Musk, who’s buying up acres of maple trees, driving out local farmers, and monopolizing maple syrup production in a move Bernie dubs “Big Maple.” Unmitigated fun for everyone, no matter where they might fall on the political spectrum. Shaffer is also the author of the Obama mysteries, Hope Never Dies and Hope Rides Again.

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Review

Swann’s War

by Brian Kenney

We’re deep into the Second World War, and Archie Swann—the police officer on Fourth Cliff, a fishing island off the Massachusetts coast—is fighting in the Pacific theater. But his wife, Mary Beth, herself a cop trained by the Boston Police Department, has stepped into his position. While Archie was beloved, Mary Beth is loathed, largely because of her gender, and the easiest of tasks is a struggle. While the island has traditionally seen little crime—settling fights between drunk fishermen and resolving domestic disputes seemed to be the bulk of the work—things have changed under Mary Beth’s watch. The body of a soldier, who lived in a camp for Italian POWs on the island, is hauled up from the sea by fishermen, a murder that creates unrest among both islanders and prisoners. When that murder is followed by others, Mary Beth, whose supports are a doctor who is untrained as a coroner and a deputy who is intellectually disabled, turns to the only real help she can find: organized crime from the mainland. But the real story here is the internal one: Mary Beth’s loneliness, her longing for Archie, her need to always maintain a tough outer shell, her battle against feeling like a failure. Novels about women in the War have blossomed in the past few years, but few have the grittiness, honesty, and authenticity in emotion, language, and detail of Swann’s War.

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Review

The Golden Spoon

by Brian Kenney

Bakers, cozy fans, and those who just love a fun, traditional mystery will want to abandon whatever they’re doing to read this novel to its very bloody end. A mashup of the TV series The Great British Bakeoff and the film Knives Out, the book stars Betsy Martin, “American’s Grandmother,” who’s sweet as pecan pie on the outside but tough as overmixed batter on the inside. Betsy created the show Bake Week, which is filmed at her Grafton, Vermont mansion—no fear of Spotted Dick in New England, TG— which also houses the six well-drawn contestants. For years, Betsy has ruled supreme over the show, but this season she’s being forced by the producers to take on another judge to—shudder—sex things up. What could go wrong? First, someone switches the sugar and salt, then a burner “accidentally” gets set on high. In the end, the whole show comes crashing down like some deflated meringue. But you’ll hear no spoilers from me—getting to the resolution on your own is too much fun.

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