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Book of the Week

Review

The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco

by Brian Kenney

Readers in search of a classic mystery need look no further, and if you have a fascination with San Francisco, as I do, then you’re doubly in luck. Capri Sanzio is the granddaughter of one of the City’s most famous serial killers: William “Overkill Bill” Sanzio, who’s now deceased. So named because “he bashed his three victims on the head, stabbed them to death, then sliced their throats after the fact.” A thorough kind of guy. Capri’s parents are shamed by their relationship to Bill, but Capri—who believes he was innocent—has a far more complicated response: she runs a highly successful business providing tours related to San Francisco’s serial killers (with herself, as Bill’s granddaughter, one of the prime attractions). But suddenly there’s a copycat of Bill murdering San Francisco women—one of whom is closely related to Capri—and the cops have made it clear that Capri or her daughter (herself a doctoral student in criminology) are their two prime suspects. With excursions from high society to the working class, and richly detailed portraits of San Francisco, this fascinating, fast-paced novel should find a broad readership. More, please?

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Review

Return to Blood

by Willy Williams

Following his acclaimed debut, Better the Blood, Michael Bennett’s compelling sophomore outing in his crime series starring Māori detective Hana Westerman proves the New Zealand screenwriter and author is no one-hit wonder as a mystery writer. In the wake of the traumatic events recounted in the first book, Hana has resigned from the Auckland CIB (Criminal Investigation Branch) and returned to her hometown of Tātā Bay, where she helps her father, Eru, prepare local Māori teens to get their driver’s licenses. But the calm Hana is trying to rebuild is shattered when her 18-year-old daughter, Addison, discovers the skeleton of a young woman in the sand dunes. Investigators suspect the bones may be those of Kiri Thomas, a Māori teenager who disappeared four years earlier. Although Hana is no longer in the police force, she begins to probe the possibility that Kiri’s death may be connected to the 21-year-old unsolved murder of Paige Meadows, whose body was found in the same dunes. Likewise, Addison becomes obsessed with Kiri’s fate, threatening her friendship with her non-binary flatmate and musical partner, Plus 1. In a nod to Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, the storyline is interspersed with the dead Kiri’s haunting first-person narrative. Bennett, who is Māori, immerses readers deeper into Māori culture and traditions as he expands on Hana’s loving relationship with her father and tense interactions with her chilly second cousin, Eyes. An atmospheric thriller that will have readers booking flights to New Zealand. Bennett is adapting Better the Blood into a six-part TV series for Taika Waititi’s production company.

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Review

The Five Year Lie

by Henrietta Thornton

When nasty boss Edward Cafferty hires his spoiled, beautiful daughter, Ariel, to work at Chime, the video-doorbell business he runs with his much calmer brother, the rest of the staff keeps back. That maniac’s daughter? No thank you. But one colleague, Drew, isn’t afraid, and before you can say digital privacy invasion, the two are falling hard for each other. Fast forward five years and Drew is long gone, having abandoned Ariel and the job, ending the affair through email. Ariel later found his obituary and it seemed that was that. She’s now raising the child he never knew he had and struggling…well, not financially, given that Chime is a household name, but to keep up with the ubermoms at school and to give her sweet son the happiest upbringing possible. Then the bombshell: a text from Drew asking her to meet, a message that leads to an upending of everything she thought she knew about the man and a dangerous journey to find out the truth and save her family. The marriage of surveillance technology and the legal system is closely examined here to thought provoking results, as are the effects of technology on our personal lives. Ariel is a character who readers will root hard for, and they’ll follow her narrow escapes until late into the night on a just-one-more-page quest to see her to safety. A satisfying rollercoaster.

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Review

Wordhunter

by Henrietta Thornton

Many of us remember an early teacher fondly, and for Maggie Moore it’s Ms. Barker, the seventh-grade teacher who taught Maggie to diagram sentences. Maggie’s now studying forensic linguistics—the kind of analysis that allows researchers to determine if Shakespeare was the real author of a given work—and is by far the best student in the program. She’s thrilled when Professor Ditmire invites her to be his research assistant and recommends her to the local police, whose broke department can hire only a student to uncover the author of vicious notes that are being left at crime scenes. Maggie is glad of the work: she’s facing graduation soon with no job prospects, and more importantly to her, she might now be able to get the police to investigate the disappearance of her best friend years before, a case they never took seriously. Grammar lovers and anyone who likes a quirky protagonist—Maggie’s no stereotypical nerd, she’s a foulmouthed, tattooed diner waitress who drinks way too much—will find Maggie’s sentence-diagramming habit and her brilliant mind fascinating while following her to a linguistic triumph. Sands’s other books are true crime, and fans of that genre who want a fictional readalike can do no better than picking up Wordhunter.

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Review

What You Leave Behind

by Brian Kenney

A beautifully balanced novel that includes a foray into the world of the Gullah-Geechee people, the experience of grief, and the uncovering of a land grab, all wrapped up in an edge-of-the-seat thriller. Deena Wood is back in her hometown in coastal South Carolina. A 40-something lawyer, she had been living in Atlanta until her husband divorced her, she lost a court case—and her job—and her beloved mother died. It’s time to start over, which means moving in with Dad and his new wife. To unwind, Deena likes to drive along the coast, and one day she comes across a cantankerous, elderly African American man who states that he is fighting to keep his valuable land. Suspicious of Deena’s motives—has she been sent to make him move?—he chases her off his property. But Deena can’t forget him, and when she returns a week later, she discovers he’s gone, with no trace left behind. Deena becomes obsessed, and sets out on a fascinating but deadly search that takes her deep within her community as she goes after a conspiracy that has been exploiting the rural poor for decades, right up to today. Morris (All Her Little Secrets) has written a perfect novel for a book group, and it’s sure to be one of the best books of 2024.

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Review

Smothermoss

by Henrietta Thornton

Alering’s striking, dark debut novel mixes magical realism with crime and dire poverty. Sheila, 17, and Angie, 12, are sisters living on the absolute edge in 1980s Appalachia. Their father is dead, their brother in prison, and they and their mother live with an elderly relative, growing vegetables and keeping rabbits for food. Sheila keeps her side of the room neat, Angie very much doesn’t, and the differences only begin there, with the most significant being in their dubious magical gifts: Sheila is burdened and chafed by a rope around her neck, visible only to her, that grows thicker and longer over time. Angie draws sinister tarot-type cards that she carries everywhere, with figures like “A creature made of root and sinew [with] a crooked crown of worms” that give her frighteningly accurate messages. Outside the squalor the girls live in are the hikers, whom they think of as impossibly rich, trekking the nearby Appalachian trail with their fancy equipment and cluelessness. When two of them are killed, Angie takes on the investigation, much to her sister’s exasperation. This is one of those novels whose setting and characters take the front seat—readers won’t soon forget Sheila and Angie and the lengths they go to to survive and find peace.

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Review

Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder

by Brian Kenney

A masterpiece, this is the dazzling tale of a gourmand and con-woman whose life opens up because of an intrepid, brilliant reporter. Manako Kajii is behind bars thanks to her multiple murders of forlorn businessmen whom she seduced with her cooking and promises of a traditional life together. As she famously states: “There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.” And you can add a third: journalists, as she refuses to ever give any interviews. Until reporter Rika Machida comes along, herself a bit forlorn, and writes to Manako requesting her beef bourguignon recipe—just don’t call it beef stew!—without any reference to Manako’s lurid and extravagant past. Soon, Rika is visiting Manako in prison, where they cook and devour imaginary meals together, becoming totally immersed in gastronomic fantasies until we can only wonder: who is changing whom? While Manako provides the novel’s spine, we also delve deep into Rika’s world, the misogyny of her workplace, the loneliness of both men and women, her troubled family, the challenge of aging parents. Remarkably enough, this novel is based on a true story, “The Konkatsu Killer;” check out more information on Murderpedia. I cannot wait to discuss this in a book group.

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Review

Eleven Huskies

by Brian Kenney

It’s great when a series keeps getting better and better, and this latest in the “Vet Mystery” series does exactly that. Veterinarian Peter Bannerman is on vacation with his family in northern Manitoba—lots of hiking and canoeing, mosquitos and dogs. But things quickly go wrong. The gorgeous sled huskies owned by the proprietor of the lodge are poisoned. Then a floatplane crashes into the lake; the pilot, it turns out, has been shot from the ground on the plane’s descent. And if human misbehavior weren’t enough, nature provides a terrifying forest fire that nearly kills the Bannerman family. They seek safety in the lodge along with the other tourists and staff. Here Schott’s (Fifty-Four Pigs) book turns into a locked-room tale as the outside world grows more fearsome while it becomes clearer that the murderer is likely in their midst. Wonderful, unique characters (including Peter’s sniffer dog, Pippin), a dramatic setting, and a brisk plot all make for an excellent mystery.

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Review

The Trials of Lila Dalton

by Henrietta Thornton

This brilliantly disorienting debut takes place on Assumption Island, a cold, rocky British outpost in the north Atlantic. Lila Dalton finds herself in an island courtroom being addressed by an impatient judge who clearly expects her to argue for her client. Lila has no idea how she got to this courtroom, how to be a barrister, what the case is…she doesn’t know anything, including who the stranger in the mirror is. Things take a turn for the (even) worse when she gets anonymous notes telling her that she’d better win acquittal for the murderer she’s representing if she ever wants to see her daughter again (that would be the daughter she didn’t know she had). The various characters working for and against Lila (we’re often unsure which direction a character is leaning, adding to the dark, compelling tale) are well drawn, with each adding complications and drama. Spare but gripping dialog propels the strange story to an appropriately dizzying conclusion. For fans of Hervé Le Tellier’s The Anomaly.

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Review

Assassins Anonymous

by Brian Kenney

In this remarkable thriller full of heartbreak, humor, and bone-chilling violence, Mark—the world’s most dangerous, and best, killer-for-hire—is trying to get out of the assassin business. Known worldwide as the Pale Horse, he inspires fear among his fellow contract killers wherever he goes. But as the book opens, Mark isn’t going anywhere except for a 12-step group on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Assassins Anonymous (he’s just received his six-month chip). And Mark has some major amends he needs to make. But at the end of an AA meeting—he’s alone, having stayed to clean up—he’s attacked by a vicious Russian assailant. Who is the attacker, and why is he pursuing Mark? The only way to find out is to track him down, and in no time, Mark, accompanied by his cat, P. Kitty, is off to Singapore then London then back to New York. Is Mark being lured back into the Agency, the organization he previously worked for? Is the attack just revenge, pure and simple? And how will he defend himself and eliminate his perpetrator—without killing him or her? A high-speed thriller that manages to burrow deeply into Mark’s past and present—and the future he dreams of. A wild and hugely entertaining ride.

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