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Mystery & Detective

Review

They Can’t Take Your Name

by Brian Kenney

A beautiful, powerful novel that is as simple in its telling as it is deep in its emotions. Eli Stone is a shell of a man, undone by the death of his beloved wife and desperate to find an excuse to keep on living. Renovating The Roz, a landmark jazz club in the center of Denver’s African American community, is his latest effort to give his life meaning. The club is about to open when in walks Liza, a law student who has dedicated her life to saving her Dad, Langston, who sits on death row, falsely accused of robbery and murder. Eli and Liza recognize the need in each other, but put aside their feelings to focus on clearing her father. When Langston is sentenced to be executed in 30 days, the tension ramps up and the suspense becomes unbearable. Throughout, Eli turns to memories from his past, especially that of a priest who helped raise him and gave him the skills to survive as a Black man in a racist world. Wrongful conviction is one of the greatest injustices in our legal system, and crime fiction provides a perfect tool for exploring it. I can’t wait to read more about Eli and Liza. In the meantime, this book would make a great choice for book groups that want to use fiction as a springboard to discuss racism, anti-racism, and incarceration.

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Review

A Valiant Deceit

by Henrietta Thornton

There’s no shortage of WWII novels, but this second in a duology is happily in the less-crowded subgenre of the women behind the scenes. It stars Olive Bright, a kind, loyal, and sometimes-brash young woman who keeps even family in the dark about her work. Pre-war, she inherited her father’s loft of racing pigeons, and now lends them to the war effort as carriers. They’re brought from England to mainland Europe by government agents, then fly home bearing maps and letters that Olive and her gruff supervisor, the dashingly named Jameson Aldridge, hope will help beat the Nazis. Olive’s avian work isn’t the only deceit here; as cover for her job at the Bletchley Park-like Brickendonbury Manor, she and Jamie pretend to be in a relationship, but she hopes for more between them (as will readers). The mystery here concerns a body found in nearby woods, but the worldbuilding, characters, and details of espionage-assisting pigeons make the tale. Graves’s afterword discusses the real Operation Columba, which saw the allies drop thousands of pigeons from Denmark to France from 1941 to ‘44. Readers can go back to the first book in the series, Olive Bright, Pigeoneer; also try Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code, which features women codebreakers at Bletchley Park

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Review

Her Perfect Life

by Henrietta Thornton

Lily Atwood has the titular perfect life. She’s an Emmy-winning journalist, the kind who wants to be hard-hitting but mostly presents human-interest stories from the comfort of a studio. Every evening, Lily gets to return to her designer Boston home to spend time with her daughter, Rowen, the center of her single-mom existence. Some of Lily’s stories, the juicer ones, are fed to the journalist and her behind-the-scenes right-hand, Greer, by a man calling himself Mr. Smith. They’re sure it’s a pseudonym, but are content to idly wonder about Smith’s identity and motives as long as the tips keep coming. Then he starts getting sinister—at least, Lily thinks it’s Smith who’s behind anonymous flower deliveries to her home, though she’s never given him her address. He also seems overly familiar with events at her daughter’s school. Lily is afraid that he may reveal private details that could finish her career, but she soon has far more to fear. An author’s note reveals that Ryan wrote this during COVID, and the feeling of being trapped and at the same time wanting to hide away permeates the novel. The surprises keep coming, and the tightly woven storytelling closes with a deft, satisfying twist. Fans of the author should add this to their library hold lists as it’s not going to sit on shelves. While waiting, they can try Belinda Bauer’s The Beautiful Dead, which also features a journalist in peril.

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Review

My Annihilation

by Henrietta Thornton

Remember the reactions to Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life? People either loved it or flung it across the room. This promises to provoke similar adoration/ire (I’m in the former camp). As Nakamura’s strange book opens, his unnamed protagonist is alone in a Japanese mountain lodge. He begins reading a manuscript that’s been left there. It’s by Ryodai Kozuka, a man whom the narrator believes he will take the place of; he hopes to use the manuscript as a manual for living as its author. Ryodai tells of becoming obsessed with pushing his sister off a cliff, an obsession that can only be cured by completing the deed. Next is his in-depth description of the psychology of real-life Japanese serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki. Abrupt, dreamlike shifts in the author’s location and persona continue, and he is next a psychologist who attempts to hypnotize a patient into forgetting past abuse and tolerating new trauma at his hands, leading to a detached account of destroying others in her life (suicide is described). Cruel ideas are intellectual exercises for this man, with his crimes adding up to a thought-provoking picture, in Nakamura’s words, of “what it means to be human and what it means to exist in the world.” Some true crime set in Japan might be the thing after this: try Richard Lloyd Parry’s People Who Eat Darkness or Haruki Murakami’s Underground.

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Review

The Secret in the Wall

by Henrietta Thornton

Many of us grew up on a strict diet of Nancy Drew. For nostalgia in the same vein but grittier, try 12-year-old sleuth Antonia Grizzi, who’s been raised on Gilded Age San Francisco’s streets, and it shows. She’s now the “ward” of Inez Stannart, a single woman who wants to remain so. The two are perfectly matched as companions, but Antonia can’t bring herself to trust Inez, or anyone, completely. When demolition in a building Inez has bought reveals a dead man and a cache of gold coins, she and Antonia each determine to solve the mystery of who he is and what happened—solo. By playing in the house, the little girl gets deep into its secrets, while her guardian looks further afield, including in the investigation a handsome local who just might make her abandon the going-it-alone plan. Exciting switches in perspective quickly advance the plot while accessible but atmospheric dialog and cultural touchpoints impart a vivid sense of the time. Readers will want more from Parker; also try Erin Lindsey’s Rose Gallagher Mystery series.

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Review

Silent Parade

by Brian Kenney

This big, complex, sprawling, novel—complete with a large cast and plenty of backstory—is perfect for when you need to lose yourself for a few days. At the center of the book is the murder of Saori Namiki, a talented young woman who is about to launch her musical career. Jump three years to the present, when her remains are discovered in the rubble of a burnt-out shanty. Finding her murderer would seem impossible, but a similar death over 20 years ago helps Chief Inspector Kusanagi identify the killer, only to see him released for lack of solid evidence. But if the legal system won’t punish the murderer, Saori’s friends, family, and fiancé are more than willing to step up, and an immensely complex scheme is created to do away with the man. As the story unfolds, we are privy to the same information Kusanagi has, keeping the reader in an ongoing state of anxiety. But the real fun in this book is the return of Detective Galileo, last seen in the first book in the series, The Devotion of Suspect X. Physics professor by day, police consultant by night, Galileo enters near the book’s conclusion to upend everything we have come to believe, creating a new narrative that is oh so very satisfying

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Review

Something’s Guava Give

by Brian Kenney

Right on the heels of the first book in the series, It Takes Two to Mango, ex-New Yorker Plum Lockhart is trying to make a go of life on the Caribbean island of Paraiso. Having set up her own agency to rent vacation homes, she’s struggling to succeed, when she gets a call from Gerald, a former publishing buddy in New York. He wants her to look after an heiress, Arielle, his boss’s daughter, who’s vacationing on the island and gotten into a scrape with the law. Plum doesn’t have a choice, as she owes Gerald for a major profile he published about her new company. But just 24 hours after she saves Arielle—who’s accused of stealing from other guests—the poor little rich girl is found murdered. There’s a lot for readers to appreciate here, from a wonderful cast including a Keith Richards-like rock star, a reclusive billionaire, and a couple of B-list celebrities to Plum’s in-your-face, confrontative, New York City style. Add a budding romance with the dishy Juan Kevin Munoz, head of security at the nearby resort, and you have a series that cozy readers will want to return to again and again.

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Review

April in Spain

by Henrietta Thornton

John Banville invites us into the inner lives of Irish people and, through their loves and struggles, creates a composite view of modern Ireland. This eighth in the series named for retired medical examiner Quirke sees him reluctantly vacationing in Spain with his wife, Evelyn, a psychiatrist whose quiet love for Quirke is a highlight of the book. When an injured Quirke visits an ER, the Irish doctor who treats him is strangely familiar and later, at a thank-you meal she obviously loathes attending, behaves bizarrely. Back in Ireland, Quirke’s daughter, Phoebe, will frustrate readers through her relationship with superior-acting, controlling Paul. When Phoebe joins Quirke to tackle the mystery surrounding the Irish doctor, she sidesteps Paul and his aloofness only to face something much more sinister (warning: sexual abuse is involved though not graphically described). Love and fear are wonderfully juxtaposed here, and those who enjoy reading the former should try Irish author Donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart. Fans of the more dangerous elements should be steered toward the Sean Duffy novels by Northern Ireland’s Adrian McKinty.

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Review

Where There’s a Will

by Henrietta Thornton

Rowland “Rowly” Sinclair and his wealthy Australian artist friends live a life of leisure except for solving crime; in this 11th outing (after A Testament of Character, 2020), they’re taking a languid trip through Asia, stopping at British Colonial outposts that allow them to remain of the empire even on the road. Their frivolities are ended when Rowly’s friend Danny Cartwright is murdered in Boston and Rowly announced as the surprise executor of Danny’s will. What they find stateside is a greedy family waiting for the will to be read and long-simmering anger that Danny, who was gay, had any say in their family’s fortune. The will doesn’t go the Cartwrights’ way, causing danger for Rowly and friends as well as some of the best writing of the book as Gentill portrays the loyalty and love—some of it less unrequited than previously—among this gang of affable eccentrics. Be aware that a past attempt at gay conversion therapy is described “off stage.” Gentill’s fans will be delighted with this latest installment; it’s also a great readalike for Amanda Allen’s Santa Fe Revival Mystery series, which too features an artist sleuth

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