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Fiction

Review

Neighborhood Watch

by Henrietta Thornton

This book could just as well be titled When the HOA Attacks or Ring Cameras on Steroids: A How-To. Oleander Court, a street in ritzy Alpharetta, GA, has it all. The fountain with $500 apiece koi, the perfectly maintained lawns (did I mention that HOA?), the perfectly Botoxed neighbors. But a few residents keep things from being too plastic. An artist, Helen Beecham, has moved in and while she likes to observe the others, she’s doesn’t love their snooty book clubs (at which the book is never mentioned) or other tortuous gatherings. A Korean American family, the Jungs, lives on Oleander, too, amid nasty comments; one neighbor in particular spreads the rumor that the mother barely speaks English, only Chinese. Lesbian couple Ray and Laura are hiding their rocky marriage and past secrets. And then there’s Adelaide, who formerly lived in a trailer park but is now married to a doctor and struggling to feel she belongs. Closed circle meets cozy when the nastier neighbors start getting bumped off in their homes, but with little attendant grisliness and dollops of dark humor. Come for the bitchiness, stay for the deep characterization of the oddball characters as well as the puzzling whodunit.

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Review

West Heart Kill

by Brian Kenney

You could call it a meta-mystery. Or you could just call it a whole lot of fun. Gerald Ford is president, the Concorde is dominating the news, while Neil Sedaka is on the turntable. Detective Adam McAnnis accompanies a college chum to the West Heart Club, sort of an Adirondack hunting club set in the northern New York wilderness, crawling with tipsy uber-WASPS. This place is so old and insular the residents speak their own sort of slangy English. What brings a New York City detective to this rarefied compound? Hard to say, but it’s clear he’s got a motive. Comparisons to the Blades Out series are inevitable, but McDorman’s novel is a whole lot more sophisticated and a good deal more humorous. Reading this book is a bit like driving behind a school bus and a garbage truck; the narrative leaps ahead, only to pause while we’re treated to an essay on the rules of the mystery, or the nature of locked-room stories. Then we move ahead a bit, only to stop and be regaled by the disappearance of Agatha Christie, Auden on the Whodunit, and any number of references to mystery’s grand tradition. Confused at where we are? Fear not. There are narrators ready to jump into the fray and remind us we are in a detective story, and what to believe—and what not. It’s a thrill to come across a book that is at once so playful and so erudite.

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Review

You Will Never Be Found

by Brian Kenney

Classic Nordic noir: a bleak, northern Swedish town; a serial killer whose victims are each murdered in the same, horrifying way; alcohol is always the drink of choice; a mother’s mind is being stolen by dementia. In Malmberget, above the Arctic Circle, houses are being relocated by a mining company—or else they’ll fall into a huge sinkhole. But as they review the empty homes, workers discover a man locked in one of the basements, barely alive. Over 600 miles south, Detective Eira Sjodin is investigating the vanishing of a middle-aged man, a much-beloved actor, whose disappearance is inexplicable. Slowly Eira is able to connect the dots, and while the man’s identity becomes clear, motive does not. Like Tana French’s work, this novel is a richly character-driven procedural, and Alsterdal digs deeply into the backgrounds of several of the detectives—examining their lives and loves. Eira’s spare time is consumed with relocating her mother to a nursing home for memory loss while recognizing that her feelings for GG, her boss, run deeper than she would like to acknowledge. But when GG goes missing, it is no holds barred as the Detective sets off on her riskiest move yet. This novel is seriously dark but at the same time absolutely compelling. While the book works as a stand-alone, readers will appreciate reading the initial title in the series, We Know You Remember, first.

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