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African American & Black

Review

Jackal

by Henrietta Thornton

Liz Rocher hasn’t been to her hometown of Johnstown, PA, in 14 years, but now her childhood best friend is getting married and it’s time. She’s got her bridesmaid dress and one other outfit, just enough to attend the event and then get the hell out. Liz faces s two main problems back home: her strict Haitian mother, who doesn’t hide her disappointment about her daughter’s single lifestyle, and the woods behind the wedding venue, where a little girl vanished years ago. While the wedding is in full swing, history seems to repeat itself, and soon Liz is fighting Johnstown’s racism-tinged apathy as she discovers that many of the area’s Black girls have gone missing over the years, each one vanishing on the summer solstice. Haitian American Adams’s thoughtful language first drops us into the private phobia of a damaged young woman and slowly pulls back to reveal wider horrors: the sudden taking of the girls and the lingering physical and social markers of the infamous Johnstown flood, which largely killed poor Black families in the valley while white residents lived in the hills. Adams’s exciting conclusion finds us in the grip of supernatural terror that makes this debut novel a great recommendation for horror fans who like a side of mystery.

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Review

Race : A Caleb Moon Thriller

by Henrietta Thornton

Reflecting the dark days of summer 2020, this book opens with Black reporter Caleb Moon covering the police killing of a Black boy and the local anger that has ensued. His editor is tiptoeing around the coverage and wants to cut the inflammatory detail that the police also shot the boy’s pet (“It’s just a fucking dog.”) He knows it’s relevant, though, when Caleb explains that the animal that three police officers found such a violent threat could fit in a colleague’s tiny purse. This is a case of overkill, and Caleb wants justice. He’s at first naïve enough to think that it might be in the cards, but then he attends the police chief’s speech about the situation, where white interlopers throw a bottle at the cops and disappear. Hope is close to vanishing; it evaporates entirely when a Black colleague is lynched. Things can hardly get worse, but Caleb soon finds himself in jail when he won’t plead guilty to causing trouble at the speech. His experiences in jail, coupled with the growing mystery of who’s behind the racist corruption eating away at his unnamed small town, paint a stark picture of a world built on greed and white supremacy. Readers will be eager to meet this understated, determined young protagonist in further mysteries. The book doesn’t reveal SLMN’s identity, but notes that he is a New York Times best-selling author and a movie producer.

Originally reviewed as Race: A Black Lives Matter Thriller

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Review

Someone Had to Do It.

by Brian Kenney

Publishers: Wondering how to keep crime fiction relevant, cutting edge, and appealing to younger millennials and older Gen Z? Then take a page out of the impressive debut Someone Had to Do It. Brandi may have landed her dream job unpaid internship at the fashion house Simon Van Doren, but she wasn’t planning on the microaggressions and reminders that as a young, Black woman she doesn’t fit into the culture (“code for we-can’t-handle-your individuality but-since-we-don’t-want-to-seem-racist-we’ll-invent-this little loophole”). But Brandi’s tenacious—she’s also putting herself through fashion school—and with a little help from dreamboat boyfriend Nate, an up-and-coming football star, she manages to hang in there. When Nate offers to put in a good word with Taylor Van Doren, Simon’s daughter—they go back to prep school—Brandi can’t say no. Taylor’s an it-girl, a model and fashionista who has it all and then some. While Brandi hopes that friendship with Taylor will help launch her career, the opposite happens. Taylor—the absolute best villain I’ve read this year—sets Brandi up for a fall where she risks losing everything she’s worked so hard to achieve. This is one smart, hot, bingeable read that’s got Attn: Netflix stamped all over it.

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Review

Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder

by Brian Kenney

Maddy Montgomery is in need of a major reset. Spoiled rotten—Daddy’s an admiral—the recent Stanford grad and social-media-marketing maven loves her Laboutins and Jimmy Choos, as well as her doctor fiancé . Until he abandons her at the altar. And the ceremony was being livestreamed. Time for #FreshStarts #NoLookingBack. As luck would have it, Maddy has just inherited her great-aunt Octavia’s estate in New Bison, Michigan, a quaint town on Lake Michigan. The catch? She needs to live in the town, run her aunt’s bakery, and care for Babe, a 250-pound English mastiff—I defy any reader not to fall in love with him—for one year. Octavia was one smart, independent woman, and it seems like she also knew that Maddy needed a reset. Maddy’s willing—does she really have a choice?—and before you can say Hicksville, she’s making new friends, learning to crack open an egg, and even dating. Until the much-maligned Mayor gets killed, and Maddy’s fingerprints are found on the murder weapon. Help comes from the Baker Street Irregulars, a group of her great-aunt’s friends, who help her navigate the treacherous waters of Great Bison and present a different set of values, values that Maddy finds herself adopting. A great start to a series that is part poignant, part humorous, and part suspenseful while introducing a wonderful, new, African American heroine.

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Review

Murder in Westminster

by Brian Kenney

Vanessa Riley is known for her several series—both historical fiction and regency romances—often featuring diverse casts; her deep research into 18th-century communities of color; and her strong storytelling skills. Roll it all up, add a criminal element, and you have a delightful murder mystery—a first, for Riley— that entertains but also educates. Young Lady Abigail Worthing, of African and Scottish descent, is one strong leading lady, and when her next door neighbor is murdered while Abigail is on her way to an pro-abolitionist meeting, Abigail decides she had better take on the search for the killer—before being accused of the murder herself. Because Abigail, with her skin tone and family history, is all too easy to blame. Abigail’s complex world, a mix of family, Caribbean immigrants, and the ton, is exactly the world readers today are eager to discover—and to return to. Calling all regency enthusiasts, historical mystery fans, and Bridgerton devotees—this one’s for you.

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Review

Miss Aldridge Regrets

by Brian Kenney

We’re in 1936 London and Lena Aldridge has had her share of troubles. Alfie, her beloved father and only parent, has recently died. Alfie was a gifted musician, and Lena has followed in his footsteps, eking out a living as a nightclub singer. Until a gig in a worn down Soho nightclub, when her best friend’s husband, also the club owner, is poisoned and dies right in front of her. Time to get out of town! Fortuitously, Lena has been approached by a stranger, who claims to represent an old friend of Alfie’s, with a remarkable offer: come to New York and headline in a Broadway musical. With nothing to lose, days later Lena’s traveling first class on the Queen Mary. But she hasn’t left all her troubles behind. As a mixed-race woman (Alfie was African American, unknown Mom was white) who passes as white, Lena is anxious about her reception in the U.S., and when there’s another murder on the boat that’s all too similar to the nightclub homicide, her anxiety really ramps up. Hare does a wonderful job of depicting the era, including the big themes—like the rise of Nazism and the pervasiveness of institutionalized racism—as well as the small details, like Lena’s wardrobe. And in Lena, she has created a compelling and empathetic hero whom I would love to follow as she disembarks in NYC. Readers of female-led, historical mysteries from Rhys Bowen, Victoria Thompson, and Mariah Fredericks will be pleased to meet Lena Aldridge.

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Review

Like a Sister

by Henrietta Thornton

From the outside, Desiree Pierce had it all. Famous hip-hop producer father, starring role on a rich-kid reality show, a huge audience following her every diamond-studded move on Instagram. But her sister, Melina, or Lena, has waited years for the phone call saying that drugs have finally killed Desiree, and that moment is here. Fed up as she is with donning her metaphorical Super Black Woman cape, Lena drags it on, again, to start picking up the pieces. But the background to Desiree’s supposedly accidental death starts to look off. For starters, she was terrified of needles and never would have injected heroin like the police say. And what was she doing in Lena’s residential Bronx neighborhood, miles from her glitzy lifestyle? Lena’s fast-paced investigation of what she believes to be a murder takes her back to painful episodes with her family, a clan tight-knit enough to care deeply about one another but that at the same time can get exasperated to the point of estrangement. Twists combine with deft writing and compelling characters—especially the relatable Lena—to create a memorable novel that’s perfect for those who like tales of flawed love and strong women.

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Review

Body and Soul Food

by Henrietta Thornton

What’s better than a bookstore? Hardly anything, unless it’s a bookstore with a fabulous soul-food café, the business venture, and adventure, embarked on here by twins Koby Hill and Keaton Rutledge. The two are just getting to know each other, having been raised apart when Koby was put in foster care and Keaton adopted. Many twins in popular culture are portrayed as either freakishly similar or freakishly different, not that I’m bitter as a twin or anything, but these are regular siblings who get along while tiptoeing around their new relationship. Koby is protective of his sister and nervous that the flirting going on between Keaton and his best friend, Reef, will turn to more, a fear that ends when Keaton finds Reef dead on the subway. Reef knew he was in danger, it seems, and left his friend a legacy that leads the twins on a well-plotted quest for justice that’s filled with the quirky characters and yummy-food references readers expect in a cozy. I wished for recipes at the end, and those will be in the book when it’s released. After that, you can look forward to more books about Koby and Keaton, as this is the first in a new series. Collette’s (aka Abby L. Vandiver) work is sure to appeal to fans of Cleo Coyle’s Coffeehouse Mystery series, the Singaporean Mystery series by Ovidia Yu, and Mia P. Manansala’s Arsenic and Adobo.

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Review

The Harlem Shuffle

by Henrietta Thornton

With two Pulitzer prizes for fiction under his belt, it’s not surprising when Colson Whitehead writes a character for the ages, but beleaguered everyman Ray Carney is a standout even for Whitehead. “Living taught you that you didn’t have to live the way you’d been taught to live,” says Carney, a young Black man who’s barely making ends meet in his Harlem furniture store while dreaming of more. The pressure’s on, too: his parents-in-law think their daughter could have done better, and Carney longs to be admitted to his father in law’s “paper-bag club,” but with skin darker than said brown bag, he’s not allowed. Loyalty to his own family leads Ray to help his cousin Freddy; always sketchy, Freddy convinces Carney to help him in a can’t-go-wrong robbery scheme that, yes, goes wrong, starting Carney on a heartbreaking trajectory. This character’s relentless efforts to make good in a world that expects and revels in his failure will remind readers of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. Shadowing Colson’s terrific crime tale are the final throes of Jim Crow and the claw-your-way-up culture of early 1960s Harlem, but most of all, Carney will grab readers’ hearts and stay with them.

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