Tag:

Thrillers

Review

Cougar Claw

by Henrietta Thornton

This is one of those thrillers that opens with a full view of the crime—in this case, two men ambushing a Savage, Minnesota CEO and attacking him with real cougar claws and teeth. There was recently a sighting of one of the big cats in the area, so it’s easy for investigators to believe the businessman became a meal. The local sheriff who’s running for re-election has no objection to chalking the death up to wildlife rather than crime stats….but then Sam Rivers shows up to complicate his life. Sam, special agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, doesn’t care for bureaucracy or the sheriff, and persists in finding out what’s behind this event that looks suspicious to his expert eye. Just what looks off to Sam will teach readers about things like the structure of all cats’ paws, which parts of a person a cougar would eat, what one of the creature’s teeth embedded in a person’s spine should look like, and other juicy tidbits. In the human world that Sam deals with somewhat reluctantly, things are more complicated, as his investigation is a tangled web of an about-to-be-very-rich widow, her nosy neighbor, a journalist who’s also Sam’s love interest, and always that blustery sheriff. Sam Rivers is akin to Emily Littlejohn’s character Gemma Monroe—a likable, steadfast investigator whose work takes readers into the outdoors and the crimes it hides. He’s a character worth getting to know.

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Review

The It Girl

by Brian Kenney

Talk about a slow burn. If you’re a reader, like myself, who delights in a deep, deep character dive, then you’ll enjoy Ware’s latest. Oxford fresher April Clarke-Cliveden is the ultimate “It girl”—beautiful, fashionable, rich, loving but mean, a party girl yet super-smart, a staple in the pages of the Tatler. In no time she gathers around herself a constellation of friends, with her roommate Hannah Jones at the center. Life couldn’t be more delightful in their privileged, Oxbridge fantasy world, until that night when Hannah comes home to their medieval digs and finds April strangled to death. But ultimately this is Hannah’s story, and the chapters alternate between Hannah in college—building up to the murder—and her life today, ten years later. Despite a move to Edinburgh, marriage, and now pregnant, Hannah has never been able to forget April’s death and move on. When new facts emerge about April’s murder, and Hannah’s interest blossoms into full-blown obsession, she heads off to question members of their friendship circle and even to revisit Oxford and the murder scene. As the final piece of the puzzle falls into place, readers will be rewarded by a whirlwind of suspense.

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Review

Things We Do in the Dark

by Henrietta Thornton

After marrying Jimmy Peralta, an old-time comedian who’s making a comeback, much younger yoga-studio owner Paris is content to live in her husband’s shadow. Then his assistant sends out a press release that includes the odd couple’s wedding photo. Paris hates life in the spotlight, and it’s turned on her full glare when the police are called to the couple’s home and find Paris with a bloodied straight razor in her hand and Jimmy dead in the tub. It’s hardly a good look for someone assumed to be a gold digger, but there’s much more to Paris’s background than she reveals. The odd romantic story here is often poignant and always unexpected, and it effectively contrasts with the much worse physical and mental treatment of Paris in her younger life, an existence that promises to end in an extreme one way or the other. It doesn’t disappoint. Hillier excels in portraying more than one woman who’s been beaten down by life and how it’s possible to react to the blows in strikingly different ways. The language here maintains a tone of low expectations shot through with hope and devastation, making this perfect for noir fans.

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Review

Privacy

by Brian Kenney

Dr. Laina Landers is the sort of shrink anyone would want. She’s super smart, wonderfully compassionate, and completely devoted to her patients. So when the husband of a couple she is working with holds his wife hostage at gunpoint—an incident broadcast on live TV—Laina quickly gets to the scene. She saves them both, while also meeting investigative journalist Cal Murray. Empathetic? Check. Handsome? Oh, yes. Reliable? Totally. Which comes in handy, as Laina really needs a friend/lover she can depend on as her patients are receiving deeply unsettling “presents,” like a plastic fetus in a bottle of fluid, each with the same message: Watching you. More disturbing, the gift giver is relying on knowledge about the patients that can only be found in Laina’s notes from her sessions. But who would want to destroy Laina and kill her practice in the process? As Laina and Cal search for the possible culprit, the stakes get higher as the therapist herself is targeted. The I-didn’t-see-that-coming conclusion is guaranteed to make your head explode.

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Review

Nameless Acts of Cruelty

by Henrietta Thornton

Returning from vacation to London with his family, Jeremy, or Jez, Horton sees from the plane a figure running in a field. Without knowing why, he’s suddenly in the grip of a panic attack, certain that it’s a girl being pursued and she’s in terrible danger. Back home, he remains obsessed with the strange sighting and what could have happened to the girl, stressing himself and his wife as he retreats further into dark thoughts. His slide into an abyss of fear accelerates when he visits his dying mother, a cruel woman who’s treated him terribly, especially since his young sister’s death. As he returns to the family home that he’s now inherited, a place he hasn’t been since the tragedy, murky memories and renewed contact with boyhood friends force Jez to confront his past and deal with odd, dangerous characters who are all too present. Cameron masterfully develops those around Jez even as we are stuck in his increasingly frantic thoughts and actions. Her depiction of a tired, scared mind grasping for childhood memories is immersive and affecting, with the psychological suspense matched by a continuous ramping up of real-life drama. Fans of Helen Monks Takhar’s Precious You should add this to their TBR stash.

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Review

The Ghosts of Paris

by Brian Kenney

Part historical fiction, part mystery, this sweeping novel picks up the reader and transports them on a whirlwind trip from Sydney to London to Paris, where the long and compelling search finally comes to an end. It’s 1947, and the Second World War has been over for two years, although its impact remains enormous. Detective Billie Walker is hired by a well-to-do woman to find her husband, who’s been missing in Europe these past two years, and before you can say Qantas, Billie is up in the air, accompanied by Sam, her handsome assistant. Funny thing is, Billie also has a husband lost in Europe—a wartime photographer—providing the story with a double plot. But the greatest pleasure in this book comes from all the rich history and social commentary: the experiences of the Australian Aboriginal peoples with the police, the legal persecution of Australia’s gay men, Dior’s new look, London as it climbs out of from the Blitz, Paris as it tries to recoup, and so much more. The author has done her research, and it shows—in the best possible way. Moss does slam on the brakes, and the book rattles to a quick close, but that’s O.K. We’re happy where we’ve landed, and would follow Billie Walker anywhere.

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Review

What Can’t Be Seen

by Henrietta Thornton

What’s stranger than an eight-year-old Gretchen White standing over her murdered Aunt Rowan holding a knife dripping with blood? That child growing up to be a sociopath who works for the Boston police department and uses her access to investigate the crime, which she can’t remember. There’s a lot to learn here, and part of it is Dr. White’s lesson that her sociopathy is a neurodivergence, not a moral failing. Its core element—the inability to empathize with others—makes Gretchen an unlikely but effective psychologist, as her feelings don’t get in the way, as well as an oddly endearing villain. She’s highly aware of her emotional shortcomings, but others are too, and her vulnerability to the possible machinations of those surrounding this crime keeps the psychological twists coming. From the warped, rich family to the local woman desperate to find who murdered her sister—a separate crime that might be related to Aunt Rowan’s death—everyone’s a mess here, and everyone has motives and history that are painstakingly revealed and entwined. One for fans of Dexter and other characters we should loathe, but don’t.

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Review

The Perfect Neighborhood

by Henrietta Thornton

On the surface, Oak Hill, New Jersey, is, yes, a perfect neighborhood. Perfect lawns, perfect homes, perfect families. A crack appears when we see local high-schooler Cassidy on a clandestine outing, running late to meet Billy, the kindergartener she babysits for when he walks home from school. He doesn’t show, and his disappearance reveals the hurt, deception, and toxic boredom lurking behind many of the tony town’s facades. Billy’s mother, Rachel, is overprotective; his father resents his younger wife for trapping him in this second marriage by becoming pregnant; his older stepbrother, a small-time drug dealer, barely acknowledges Billy. Cassidy, reviled in the papers as The Babysitter, is having an affair with a much older man. The local celebrities, has-been musician Chris and his actress wife, Allison, have just split up and she’s moved away with no explanation. As the investigation into Billy’s disappearance continues, his shattered family is the nexus of a town in turmoil, allowing Alterman to show how pressure and desperation can manifest in very different ways and result in vastly different outcomes. Billy’s disappearance isn’t the only crime, and the interpersonal stories as well as the crime-centered mysteries will keep readers shaking their heads in disbelief as they keep the pages turning, hoping for justice.

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Review

The Self-Made Widow

by Brian Kenney

After Andie Stern’s debut in Suburban Dicks—in which she solved a shocking murder in her New Jersey town—you’d think the former FBI employee would be ready for a little R&R. Or at least as much relaxation as a mother of five can get. But when the husband of Molly, a member of her mom’s group—which Andie secretly calls The Cellulitists—unexpectedly dies, Andie strongly suspects Molly is to blame. The hard part, but also the fun part, is proving it. Helped out by disgraced journalist Kenny Lee, a buddy from Suburban Dicks and the only man in the book who isn’t a complete, well, dick, along with new friend Sathwika, Andie follows the many leads, which eventually bring her and Kenny far too close to home. Nicieza, the co-creator of Deadpool, is a wonderful satirist, and the friction brought about his women characters’ multiple lives as mothers, wives, professionals, and even criminals is pure pleasure and more than just a little bit realistic. Towards the end there’s the hint that Andie and Sathwika may set up their own detective agency. Pray God this is so.

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Review

Stay Awake

by Henrietta Thornton

Goldin’s (The Night Swim) startling work immerses readers in the disorientation and vulnerability that is amnesia. Every time Liv Reese wakes up, she has no memory of the previous two years. Notes that she writes on her hands and Post-its on her doors and walls guide her to contact friends who can help and to find the precious journal that details each vanished day. She repeatedly learns afresh that she was injured two years ago, leading to her memory problems, while other terrible events from that time are slowly revealed. In the present, the awakening that opens the book sees her running from an apartment with a bloody knife. Did she hurt someone? Whose apartment was that? Why does it seem like a different season? Then the point of view switches to a dead body being found, and a chase is on that sees us switching back and forth in time from before the injury, when Liv was a nightlife-loving young New Yorker who worked at a high-status magazine, to a few days before the bloody-knife incident, when the past catches up to her with a vengeance. The displacement caused to Liv by her condition is visited on readers to fast-paced and thought-provoking effect here; the story is gripping too, all adding up to a top-shelf psychological thriller for fans of Alice LaPlante.

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