Tag:

Mystery & Detective

Review

The Day He Left

by Henrietta Thornton

The straight and not-so-straight lines connecting people and events, thoughts and dreams, form the framework of Weisel’s second book, after The Silenced Women (2021). The story starts with the disappearance of Paul Behrens, a staid middle-school teacher who leaves a message stating that allegations about him and a student aren’t to be believed. When a parent who shouldn’t be at the school is seen leaving Paul’s classroom, and the teacher’s brain-damaged veteran brother tells police that Paul is in the ocean, things rapidly turn scary. While puzzling over the head-scratching case, which enmeshes multiple families, betrayals, and secrets, police officer Eden Somers learns that a serial killer she pursued in the past has her home address and other personal details. Both cases, and the related victims, perpetrators, and investigators—especially the melancholy, philosophical Lieutenant Mahler—will keep readers wondering why love so often goes wrong and how split-second decisions can reverberate far beyond their origins. Philosophy gives way to a lengthy, gripping chase that leaves questions open for the next installment. Mahler will remind Donna Leon’s fans of Detective Brunetti, and those readers should try Weisel’s thoughtful series.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

A Line to Kill

by Brian Kenney

The third in the series featuring the former detective Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, Anthony Horowitz—yes, he’s written himself into the series—sees our duo heading off to a literary festival on Alderney, the northernmost of the Channel Islands off England’s south coast. Joined by a best-selling children’s writer, a well-known chef who’s now a cookbook author, a psychic, a French poet, and more, they expect a weekend of literary chit-chat and bookselling. But the residents of Alderney are up in arms over a power line that will cross the island, threatening to wreak havoc. Things have reached such a pitch that the island’s leading citizen, a proponent of the power line, is found murdered, and the island is locked down. Inevitably, Hawthorne and Horowitz are drawn into the case. From the array of characters to the relationship between Hawthorne and Horowitz, from the many riddles and clues to the denouement, this novel is sure to delight fans of the traditional mystery, especially lovers of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Jane Austen’s Lost Letters

by Brian Kenney

Here’s a conundrum. Series readers love returning to the familiar: the nosy next-door neighbor, the long-term fiancé, the super intelligent dachshund, and, above all else, our detective. At the same time, readers expect the newest book to shake things up, presenting our hero with changes and challenges. Authors looking to pull this off would do well to consult Jane Austen’s Lost Letters—the 14th book in the Josie Prescott series—a textbook on how to balance the old and the new. Josie, an extremely successful antiques dealer, meets an elegant older woman who presents her with a box, then disappears. The box, from Josie’s father, dead these twenty years, contains two of Jane Austen’s letters. The missives set off a series of events that pulls us into the worlds of academia, rare manuscripts, television production, historical-autograph authentication, and Josie’s relationship with her dad. At a point, the book shifts, and Josie is no longer just investigating, she’s fighting for her life. A traditional mystery with a soupçon of the thriller, this book will appeal to a large swath of mystery readers. And despite the many previous volumes, it works beautifully as a stand-alone

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Gone for Good

by Henrietta Thornton

At first it seems some well-worn police procedural tropes will dominate the latest novel by bestselling Schaffhausen (Ellery Hathaway series). Our protagonist, a detective, is determined to find the serial killer that eluded her cop father, while wondering if she’ll ever find love in this relationship-destroying career. But some twists make the author’s turbulent latest different. The detective in question, Annalisa Vega, dated the son of one of the victims as a teen; the connection to her first heartbreak drives Vega to uncover the truth—and sometimes to go too far. Adding intrigue is that one of the killer’s last victims, Grace Harper, is an avid, insightful member of an amateur cold-case investigation club, the Grave Diggers, which at the time of Harper’s death was focusing on her killer. “Grace Notes,” journal entries on her investigative findings, will give readers the feeling of turning the case around in their hands as the narrative shifts back and forth in time and between Harper and Vega’s differing knowledge and motivations. Schaffhausen’s writing brings readers right into shadowy Chicago streets and family secrets from page one. This first in a new series is a must for readers of innovative police procedurals as well as fans of true crime shows.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Hawthorne School

by Henrietta Thornton

Since Claudia Vera’s mom died, it’s just Claudia and her four-year-old son, Henry. She struggles to pay for the cheapest daycare in her Illinois town and is overjoyed when the exclusive Hawthorne School gives Henry a full scholarship, asking the awestruck mom only to volunteer at Hawthorne in return. Things soon turn decidedly odd. Claudia never sees any other parents, and the principal is increasingly insistent on Hawthorne’s unorthodox ways and on Claudia spending hours at the school doing unnecessary tasks. Oddness soon turns to a frightening effort to control—as the publisher’s discussion questions note, this book can be read as an allegory on narcissistic abuse—and Claudia finds herself in the most confusing and terrifying situation of her life. Scary, gothic schools are often found in mysteries, but this one differs in only featuring psychological horror (author Perry is a psychologist), no ghostly terrors. It also differs in presenting a Latinx mom and the use of Spanish (which you don’t need to understand to read the book) to both propel the narrative and help the protagonist. Perry excels in getting inside the head of an unsure mom and has written one of the most unusual and best mysteries of 2021. Fans of psychological mysteries and of the movie Get Out are the audience for this.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

Deadly Summer Nights

by Brian Kenney

A midsize Catskill resort in the 1950s provides a rich setting for Delany’s latest series. Elizabeth Grady manages the resort, while her mother, Olivia—a retired theater and film star who inherited the venue—loafs about, deigning to occasionally show up at cocktail hour to dazzle the guests. Keeping the Haggerman’s Resort profitable is serious work, and Grady doesn’t think things can get any busier, when the body of one of the guests—loner Harold Westenham, a former college professor—is found floating in the lake. If that doesn’t cause enough of a ruckus, the police find a copy of The Communist Manifesto in Westenham’s cabin, bringing in the FBI and fueling a red scare among the guests. Faced with a hostile police force, Grady ends up taking on the investigation herself. While the detective work is low-key, and the resolution falls pretty much in Elizabeth’s lap, the real pleasures of this book lie in its setting, period, and characters, all of which are wonderfully realized. Cozy readers will be happy to return to Haggerman’s Catskill Resort any time.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Heron’s Cry

by Brian Kenney

Subtle and nuanced, this novel is the prolific Cleeves at the top of her game. Detective Matthew Venn is called to a sort of artist commune, where a body has been found in one of the studios with a large shard of glass protruding from its neck. The victim, Dr. Nigel Yeo, is the loving father of Eve, a glassmaker who lives and works in the commune. This sets in motion an investigation that gains urgency as the days pass and the bodies begin to stack up. Cleeves takes on some tough issues here—including suicide—and it’s one of her darker books. But as always with this author, the murder narrative is delightfully punctuated with insights into the lives of Venn—still recovering from his evangelical upraising—his husband Jonathan, fellow detectives, and even several of the suspects. Cleeves is the author of the hugely popular Vera and Shetland series, the latter now finished. Broadchurch viewers should appreciate Cleeves’ wide-angle lens and focus on community.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

All Her Little Secrets

by Henrietta Thornton

Ellice Littlejohn’s Atlanta corporate-lawyer wardrobe of Louboutins and luxury dresses hides a background in down-and-out Chillicothe, GA, with her addict mother and the mother’s sleazy boyfriend. Also a secret is Ellice’s affair with married lawyer Michael at Houghton, the fancy firm where she’s almost the only Black employee. As this fast-moving novel opens, Ellice shows up to work early for a meeting with Michael, only to find him dead, a discovery that becomes her newest secret. Houghton’s boss likes to refer to the company as a family, but after Ellice is promoted to Michael’s job, racism, always an undercurrent among the pompous colleagues, becomes overt, and it grows obvious that the board is up to no good. As Ellice investigates both her lover’s death and goings on at Houghton, yet more secrets are revealed to readers, both about Ellice’s past and about the cutthroat world she endures. Debut author Morris, herself a corporate lawyer, masterfully layers family struggles, racism, and corporate greed to create an exciting legal thriller that’s tempered by a hint of romance.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Return of the Pharaoh

by Henrietta Thornton

It’s controversial, but I often enjoy reincarnations of classics more than the originals. For example, Sophie Hannah’s Agatha Christie novels feature the same kinds of characters and plots as the originals but leave out the originals’ antisemitism. Arthur Conan Doyle’s works are less cruel than Christie’s, but they’re still steeped in an English class system that, at best, dismisses women and anyone not white. Nicholas Meyer’s revival, à la Hannah’s Poirot, features the best of the old and makes the stories kinder, yet still imparts the flavor of the beloved detective and his admiring sidekick. In this tale, which follows Meyer’s The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols, Watson again narrates, taking readers to Egypt, where his wife is recovering from TB while the intrepid detectives seek the Duke of Uxbridge, who has gone missing while seeking a pharaoh’s gold. Meyer explores the politics of Egyptology and of nineteenth-century Egypt, where local, Ottoman, and British interests met and clashed, while serving the expected crackling mystery and haughty characters waiting to be brought down. A must for fans of the series and of thoughtful historical fiction.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Review

The Corpse Flower

by Henrietta Thornton

Although I’m on a break from Scandinavian authors, I tried Hancock’s debut anyway, attracted by the no-girl-in-the-title title and the promise of a journalist sleuth. It was the right decision, as the violent rage that seeps out of Stieg Larsson’s work and its ilk is here mostly transformed into determination with dashes of scathing honesty, friendship, and love. The misogyny is tempered too: the woman journalist who’s investigating a murderer in parallel with the police is middle-aged (refreshing!), sometimes weary, but realistically tough when it counts. The target of her investigation is also refreshing: a woman on the run for the murder she committed years before of a wealthy young man who, as far as investigators can tell, was a stranger to her. Letters from the fugitive mention a rare flower that smells like death; how this connects to her crime and why she’s remorseless are revealed in an understated way that stops short of the bleakness we’ve come to expect from Scandinavian works. Sure to leave readers wanting more from Hancock.

0 comment
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail