Tag:

Mystery & Detective

Review

The Big Empty

by Jeff Ayers

Traci Beller is a popular influencer with millions of followers inspired by watching her bake. It’s been ten years since her father, Tommy, never returned home, with the local police attributing it to him abandoning his family. Now, Traci wants answers. She reaches out to the best detective to learn the truth, Elvis Cole. Elvis has his work cut out for him trying to track down someone missing for a decade, but he’s willing to give it a shot, though he’s doubtful he will uncover anything more than what the police could find. But the detective stumbles upon a mystery involving the last person who saw Tommy alive and refuses to talk about it. He starts seeing the same dark-colored vehicle following him and soon learns that people don’t want him to discover the truth and are willing to kill anyone to keep everything secret. This case started as a simple missing person case for Elvis, but becomes the one that could be his last. Crais masters compelling crime fiction by blending humor, terrific main characters, and suspense into a phenomenal package. Empty might be in the title, but this story is far from it.

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Review

Loose Lips

by Brian Kenney

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. This book will have you quickly rearranging your life so that you can get to the all-so-worth-it ending ASAP and without any distractions. A classic closed-circle mystery, it features nearly 300 women and practically no men on a literary cruise to nowhere called the “Get Lit Cruise.” The cruise has been organized by best-selling author and writing guru Payton Garrett, who’s brought along some friends to lead the seminars. These include an MFA frenemy known as the ghostwriter who, under the pseudonym Belle Currer, is a well-known mystery writer (we first met her in Donovan’s The Busy Body). Belle is hands-down one of the most wickedly droll narrators in mysteries these days—hip, full of fun, yet still capable of being terrified. And terror there is, when murder visits the high seas, leaving corpses in its wake. It’s easy to compare this novel to those from Agatha Christie and Anthony Horowitz, but Loose Lips is very much its own thing, and Belle very much her own unique character. I can’t wait to feature this book in next spring’s book discussions.

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Review

Head Cases

by Henrietta Thornton

Gardner Camden has found his perfect home in the FBI’s PAR, or Patterns and Recognition division. Like the department itself, Camden is thought of by other agents as weird, and it doesn’t help that he almost had PAR disbanded by making a terrible mistake that’s kept secret till near the end of the book. Still, he’s brilliant at noticing what nobody else does and relentless at finding the worst of the worst of criminals. He found one of those years before, dead in a fire. But in the case that opens this fascinating thriller, the same man is found dead at a crime scene, with numbers scrawled on his body. Next more killers are found murdered, also with messages to PAR, or maybe to Camden, at the scene. Finding out who is killing serial killers, and why, takes Camden and his lovable team on cross country treks and through psychological torture as the suspect won’t hesitate to go after all the team holds dear. Camden’s first-person narration brings readers inside the head of a steadfast but quirky man (“I’ve been called…Unconcerned. On the spectrum. A weirdo”) as he puzzles out wicked and tangled crimes and the minds behind them. McMahon’s debut novel, the first book in his P.T. Marsh series, was a New York Times Top 10 Crime Novel and a finalist for both the Edgar Award and the ITW Thriller Award, and his other books have been lauded as well. This is more great stuff and a must for your TBR pile.

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Review

The Case of the Missing Maid

by Brian Kenney

A wonderful foray into turn-of-the-19th-century Chicago, with women entering the workforce, immigrants transforming the city, and the LGBTQ community tucked away in hidden nightclubs. Harriet Morrow, all of 21 years old, is the first woman hired as a detective by the prestigious Prescott Agency—a decision that pleases almost no one, neither the male detectives nor the female typing pool. But working as a detective has always been a dream of Harriet’s, and now, with her parents dead and her younger brother to support, it’s a necessity. So too are the pants she wears, giving her the freedom to comfortably bike around Chicago while also exploring her identity as a lesbian. Within an hour on the job, Harriet gets her first assignment: to find a maid who has disappeared from one of the posh mansions on Prairie Avenue—and Harriet has only a few days to locate her. It’s magical how Osler transports us around Chicago, from the the large Polish community to queer social spaces to the ritzy homes of Chicago’s elite. Harriet is a wonderful lead character, and Osler brilliantly combines his protagonist’s growth into adulthood and Chicago’s emergence as one of the nation’s largest cities. This book is asking to be the first in a series

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Review

Young, Pamela Samuels and Dwayne Alexander Smith. Sounds Like a Plan.

by Brian Kenney

A fun, fast-reading thromance (that’s thriller+romance) with echoes of the old TV Show Moonlighting (if Cybill Shepherd were carrying around an assault rifle in her trunk.) Mackenzie and Jackson are two Black private investigators who are hired by the same client to track down a missing young woman. The first one to locate her will receive a cool $50,000. The two PIs are as different as can be. Princeton-grad Mackenzie comes from a seriously affluent family, with a mother who can only register disgust at her daughter’s choice of career. Jackson grew up in tougher circumstances and came up through the LAPD before hanging out his own shingle. Mackenzie is struggling to get her business off the ground, while Jackson is highly successful but can’t stop indulging in fancy cars and an even fancier wardrobe. The narrative flips between the two personalities, chapter-by-chapter, which gives the authors a chance to explore their characters’ personal lives while keeping the story moving briskly along. As their paths cross, the tension between Mackenzie and Jackson builds, while their struggle to survive becomes paramount. Smith and Young have laid out everything that’s necessary for the making of a wonderful series.

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Review

Schooled in Murder

by Brian Kenney

It’s wonderful to be back in the graves of academe, especially when we are in the expert hands of Victoria Gilbert, series serialist (meaning she writes several series!). This book launches a new series, and it’s just a wee bit meta. Jen Dalton, mystery author and English professor, gets tangled in a real crime—the murder of a colleague—while, of course, writing her own mystery. If she doesn’t manage to solve the crime happening in real life, then one of her students, a talented writer in her own right, will likely be proclaimed guilty. Lucky for Jen, she has a gang ready to help her out—who needs the police?—from a cafeteria manager to a librarian to Zachary Flynn, the incredibly annoying campus shrink whom Jen can’t help but find attractive (it’s right out of Smart Women, Foolish Choices. Wonderfully paced, brimming with great characterization, and with a terrific lead in Jen, this novel will appeal to many mystery readers, from cozy lovers to those just seeking a good, traditional read.

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Review

Alter Ego

by Henrietta Thornton

Comics-creator Segura is back with another mystery that takes a penetrating look at the comics industry, particularly its treatment of women creators. In Secret Identity, the 1975-set prequel to Alter Ego, Carmen Valdez was a struggling artist at Triumph, a small comics publisher. She was promised by a male coworker that if she wrote a new female character, the Legendary Lynx, he would pretend he was the lone creator and reveal her work once the character was successful. You can imagine how that went, only add some murder to the shadiness to get the full picture. This book is set in the present and finds another Cuban American woman artist, Annie Bustamante, going through career struggles. She’s had some success, and she longs to bring back the Lynx, even drawing the character in her spare time. When she’s approached by the son of Triumph’s previous owner to bring the character to the big screen and more, she’s nervous that he’s clueless and she has a hard time getting real details on the project. But when, like Carmen before her, she encounters far more sinister elements of the business, including messages from someone only calling themselves Apparition, things turn very scary. There’s no need to read the previous book to enjoy this one, but readers should grab both for an immersive look at this industry, the muddled ego/fear feelings it engenders, and a great set of murder mysteries.

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Review

Haunting and Homicide

by Jeff Ayers

“Lou” Thatcher runs a ghost-tour company in New Orleans, and it’s popular with both the residents and tourists. The tours are so in demand that Lou is contemplating hiring help to run two per night. Lou has the perfect resume for the job, since she can see ghosts. A competitor who consistently clashes with Lou, Adam Brandt, declares her a fraud and wants nothing more than to shut her down and steal her clients. When he’s found murdered, she’s not surprised, but that’s when her life turns upside down. The cute cop considers her the prime suspect, and the ghosts she can see are not very talkative. You would think that Adam would steer her in the right direction of the person responsible for killing him, but he didn’t see who it was, and he also thinks Lou is responsible. The backdrop of New Orleans shines in this fun and chaotic tale of Lou, her gift, and her efforts to prove her innocence without looking like she needs to be hospitalized for talking to folks who are “not there.” This reviewer is dead serious that this haunting and homicide is a terrific series start.

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Review

This Ends Now

by Henrietta Thornton

With a shooting in her past, Liverpool Police detective Sheridan Holler is already known to new chief inspector Hill Knowles when the no-nonsense woman takes the job. Sheridan’s first assignment under the new boss is related to a cold case: Ronald Parks was accused of killing his son, but was acquitted. Now two bodies have been found on the local beach. One is tied to a statue, the other buried so that he drowned when the tide came in. Sheridan must inform the victims’ next of kin, a young bookshop owner, of the deaths, and she becomes central to the case, suffering further losses and dreading the police’s next knock on the door. Given the circumstances, but also because of her doggedness at the job, Sheridan relentlessly pursues all the tenuous clues that come up. Nevertheless it seems that this case may go unsolved. While readers soak in the rich details of life as a year-rounder in an English seaside town, and Sheridan’s loving wife who’s sometimes exasperated at her partner’s dedication to the madness that is police work, Sheridan continues to pick away at the case, leading to a shocking conclusion. Note that there is particularly awful sexual abuse here. A startling and engrossing whodunit.

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Review

Murder in the Dressing Room

by Brian Kenney

By day, Joe is a dreary accountant in a hotel, but by night they (Stars uses “they” pronouns when mentioning Joe) are Misty Divine, one of London’s leading drag queens. Joe’s wonderful life is thanks to Lady Lady, their drag mother, who discovered them, set them up in the right sequins and heels, and pushed them out onto the stage. Until the night Joe drops by Lady Lady’s dressing room and finds her dead, sprawled out on the floor, her fingers clutching half a truffle, her mouth oozing foam. Joe’s life is upended as they and the other drag queens become the prime suspects. But unlike the other girls, Joe won’t let only the police handle the investigation, especially when it means Joe could end up behind bars. Maybe I’ll find out who did it, said a voice somewhere in the back of Joe’s mind. Maybe I could catch the killer.” So we’re off and running, despite the fears of Joe’s boyfriend, Miles, tracking down the drag queens and kings who perform at the club, and some suspicious-looking hangers on as well. There’s plenty of humor in the novel—check out a side story about a very important Judy Garland dress, as well as the continual banter between Joe and Miles—but at its essence, this is a serious work of crime fiction, wonderfully executed and leaving unanswered some important questions. It has all the makings of a great series.

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