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Book of the Week

Review

Death in Fine Condition

by Henrietta Thornton

Set in the same quirky, whatever-can-go-wrong-will world as his Vinyl Detective books, Cartmel’s new series dives deep into the world of vintage-crime-fiction-paperback collectors through the, ahem, creative endeavors of Londoner Cordelia Stanmer to find the best of the best. She’s starting to make her mark in the cutthroat field and knows what she’s looking for as she mines “charity shops, antique shops, jumble sales, book sales, estate sales, house clearances, auctions…” The list goes on, as does the effort to find prime goodies without her rivals in the trade getting there first. Then she finds a shortcut: a local house has a collection—dare she hope it’s complete?—of the Sleuth Hound paperbacks, “the finest horde of these rarities she’d ever encountered.” The hunt is on, with Cordelia tossing aside pesky details such as current ownership while also juggling local gangsters, her slimy brother, a crush on a glamorous but unattainable woman, curious demand for a bad self-published title that’s not even vintage, her weird landlod…again, the list goes on, but Cordelia is ready for it all. Her antics, which will remind readers of Elle Cosimano’s madcap sleuth, Finlay Donovan, create a fun and fast-moving romp; the cherry on top is the wealth of real detail on crime-fiction collectables

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Review

The Puzzle Master

by Henrietta Thornton

I’ll be 51 this Sunday and I read two books a week. It adds up, and this is the best I’ve ever read. As it’s very far from an ordinary read , I can’t write a review as I normally would. The plot and characters are fantastic, compelling, memorable, surprising…but the book is more than anything a magic box. Trussoni also has an unsettling ability to mention everything of interest and everything that has come up lately. I thought about making a website that would emulate the ability of a pile of transparency sheets to create a composite image, and that process is mentioned. I learned about the idea of the singularity this week–the possible future time when technological growth becomes uncontrollable–and it’s there. A central theme is a kind of mythical creature I had mentioned to me recently. And the characters, and of course the author, see into the reader in other ways, with the bizarre turns in the tale perfectly allowing every nuance of the strange folks within to emerge, but also startling the consumer of this sorcery on every page. What’s the book about? Everything, but there’s a framework. A puzzle maker, who, through a brain injury, gains the remarkable ability to see “that particular kind of order that [distinguishes] a puzzle from everything else on the planet,” meets a prisoner who hands him a drawing, a puzzle he can’t even begin to unlock. It leads him to letters and a diary that describe a dangerous quest to “lift the veil between the human and the Divine and [stare] directly into the eyes of God.” There’s homework before you read this so that you can be in the right frame of mind to take in its wonder. Read Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, Stephen King’s Pet Sematary, Aimee Pokwatka’s Self Portrait with Nothing, and Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near. And then clear a weekend.

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Review

Perfectly Nice Neighbors

by Brian Kenney

It’s the rare writer who can create an intense, well-paced thriller while taking on one of the greatest social issues of our time. And Kia Abdullah is one of those few writers. Salma Khatun, her husband Bil, and their teenage son, Zain, have just arrived at a new development in the London suburb of Blenheim. They’ve left behind the far more diverse and comfortable community of Seven Kings for fear that Zain may be getting in with the wrong crowd. Will it be a fresh start or a crash landing? Here’s the first clue: the next-door neighbor rips Zain’s Black Lives Matter poster out of the front garden, and when Salma puts it in the window, they paint over the window! Things escalate from there, but in a manner that is free of cliché and grows from the characters, who represent a range of opinions and emotions. In a nice aside, Zain and the boy next door, both budding programmers, manage to strike up a friendship that leads to the development of a software for use by those with hearing impairments. But the story doesn’t end there, and where it does lead us is shocking, tragic, and damning. One of the best books I’ve read this year; I can’t wait to discuss this with a book group

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Review

A Shimmer of Red

by Henrietta Thornton

I eagerly await the books in the Odessa Jones series, and the latest offering is better than ever. Odessa (Dessa) is a realtor/caterer in suburban New Jersey. Life is going well—housing sales are way up—until one of her realtor colleagues, Anna Lee, is killed in a hit and run while out jogging. Could it have been murder? Dessa can’t help but become involved. She goes deep into her colleague’s life, uncovering a surprising past and a present in which Anna was being stalked. But why would anyone threaten this young woman? In a brilliant move on the author’s part, Dessa ends up discovering her connection to Anna, one that extends back decades to Dessa’s first fiancé, when she was barely in her twenties. Part of the delight of this series, which is set in a diverse community, is the recurring characters, from Dessa’s family-like colleagues to restaurateur Lennox Royal—a possible love interest?—to Aunt Phoenix. Dessa’s second sight—she sometimes has the ability to see aura-like glimmers over people, among other paranormal skills—is a gift she has along with her aunts. It’s introduced deftly in the book, and even skeptics will find the protagonist’s gift wholly credible–at least while they’re wrapped up in the plot. This is billed as a cozy—there is a cat and plenty of tea—but Wesley pushes a bit beyond the genre’s traditions. Dive in with this volume, but if you have the time, start with volume one, A Glimmer of Death. You won’t be disappointed.

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Review

All the Sinners Bleed

by Henrietta Thornton

A school shooting in fictional Charon County, VA, reveals horror and catalyzes reckoning in S.A. Cosby’s eagerly awaited follow-up to Razorblade Tears. This is, unsurprisingly, a masterpiece of Southern noir, but that’s selling it short: it’s a fantastic novel, period. The first responders to the shooting are led by Sherriff Titus Crown, a Black man who won a contentious, racist battle for his seat and who now safeguards Klan members and kind neighbors alike. Titus is able for them all, alternating deep kindness with cutting, politically savvy one-liners that put racists in their place. (Appropriate, given his lack of fondness for “stand[ing] there like an extra in Gone with the Wind.”) But even he is thrown when the investigation into the school shooter—a Black man killed at the scene by white cops—uncovers a grisly secret. Join Titus and his meticulously drawn, flawed family, colleagues, and townsfolk for a deep introspection on how evil begets evil and good begets good. And watch for the gripping movie that’s sure to spring from Cosby’s pages.

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Review

Urgent Matters

by Henrietta Thornton

“The only way to survive a whirlpool is to let yourself be dragged along by it,” realizes Evelyn, the confused daughter of an accused murderer. The murderer, Hugo Lamadrid, has been missing since a Buenos Aires train crash killed and maimed scores of passengers. Readers know that Hugo escaped the wreckage, where bodies are “piled up, jumbled together, crushed against the walls of the carriage, spilling out the window, dislocated, broken, busted.” But the police don’t know and have just been to his house about the murder. What the authorities do know is that Evelyn and her mother, Marta, suddenly and mysteriously got the urge to leave town after the police’s visit, and now the national media is fixed on the shrine they’ve set up at the home of Marta’s sister that begs the wounds “ofourlordjesuschrist” to help find poor, hapless Hugo alive on the train. A whirlpool indeed, in a book whose baroque abundance of language, strange observations, and even stranger ending are memorable and striking. For those who loved Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic.

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Review

Ukulele of Death

by Brian Kenney

I hesitate to review this novel—which is quite fantastic in every sense of the word—for fear of giving away one iota of the plot. Fran and Ken Stein (get it?) are a Manhattan-based brother and sister duo, in their mid-twenties, who operate a private-investigation firm. Having lost their parents when they were babies—or did they?—they focus on helping adoptees find their birth parents.

Whether their mom and dad are alive or not, the two have good reasons to be obsessed with their parentage, since they’re not exactly 100 percent human (let’s just leave that alone for now), stand well over six feet tall, and have the physical prowess of junior superheroes. The real delight is our narrator, Fran—equal parts snarky, witty, and loving—who agrees to find a client’s missing father, with only a rare ukulele for a clue. Ken is more of a bro, a frat boy who’s packing major muscle. But as trying as he might be, the siblings stick together because, well, there’s no one quite like them in the world.

The little ukulele caper becomes so much more, and before you know it, the two are running all over New York City, whether in pursuit or in hiding. This book is a total delight. But more than that, I’m obsessed with the storyline (it ends on a big of a cliffhanger) and if the next volume in the series isn’t released soon, I’m heading to New Jersey and downloading it from the author’s computer myself.

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Review

Prom Mom

by Brian Kenney

Laura Lippman’s standalone novels are tremendously smart, descend deeply into the lives of a small cast of characters, and slowly build the readers’ anxiety to a nearly unbearable level. Prom Mom doesn’t disappoint.

Amber Glass left Baltimore decades ago, and for a good reason. The night of her prom, Amber gave birth, alone and without fully understanding she was pregnant. The baby died, and Amber, burdened with the tabloid moniker Prom Girl, was briefly incarcerated. Meanwhile, her prom date and crush, Joe Simpson, escaped largely unscathed, free to pursue the girl of his dreams.

When circumstances align to bring Amber back to Baltimore, she can’t stop thinking of Joe. Both have full lives. Married to a plastic surgeon he adores with a younger girlfriend on the side (yes, he’s that guy), Joe runs a busy commercial real estate firm, while Amber is using an inheritance to create a surprisingly successful gallery. Yet encounters are inevitable—Baltimore’s a small town—and slowly the two are drawn into a relationship they seem powerless to stop.

Set during 2020-2021, when the pandemic was at its peak and so many lives were being upended, Prom Mom brings us somewhere so shocking, yet so credible, we’re left contemplating this story for days to come.

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Review

Evergreen

by Henrietta Thornton

Edgar Award-winning Hirahara’s first novel in this series, Clark and Division, was a New York Times Best Mystery Novel of 2021, among many other accolades; this follow-up will please fans with more thoughtful, poignant, and historically accurate investigations of Japanese American life after World War II.

After leaving the Manzanar camp in the first book and moving to Chicago, nurse’s aide Aki Nakasone and her parents have returned to California, where they prospered before being imprisoned, and where her father and others desperately hope to reclaim their land and businesses. Aki’s husband, Art, gets work at the Rafu Shimponewspaper (where Hirahara has worked), but his after-work drinking with other journalists leaves Aki feeling she saw more of him when he was in the army. She’s distant from her parents, too, despite sharing their home, with Hirahara portraying the generational difference as part of the estrangement that is the central theme of the book. Her characters raised in the camps display a kinship that transcends other bonds and leaves them markedly and painfully adrift from their parents.

When Art’s army buddy Babe goes missing after his father’s battered body is found, Aki sets out to find Babe and restore balance to her own unsettled life. This quest sees her explore elements of postwar life such as the competition between returning Japanese and Black Americans for housing and the effects of “shell shock” (PTSD) on a community. A must-read.

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