Dugoni (One Last Kill, Her Deadly Game) takes a detour into Seattle’s past in his latest legal thriller. In 1933, in a world worried about the rise of a German Chancellor named Adolf Hitler and the United States feeling the crunch of the Great Depression, a young man named William “Shoe” Shumacher leaves home to take a position at one of Seattle’s newspapers. Shoe receives assistance from a homicide detective and is given special access to a murder at a social club. A former boxer named Frankie Ray is killed by the club owner, George Miller, who claims self-defense. Shoe begins to suspect there is more to the story as he writes his daily updates for the Seattle Daily Star. Dugoni juggles a compelling crime story with a sweet romantic tale as Shoe falls for a young woman who works at a bakery, and they begin to fall in love, even as he spends every day in the courtroom watching the case unfold. The case is compelling, the characters are stellar, and the prose takes the reader back to a time when DNA and technology were not available to make a slam-dunk prosecution. Is it too early to say that this will be remembered as the best legal thriller of the year?
Historical
Berry’s talent for mixing nonstop action with history is in full swing in his latest. Cotton receives what seems like a simple assignment: protect a woman named Kelly Austin. When he rescues her from a kidnapping attempt, he learns that Kelly is not her real name, and before plastic surgery that was necessary due to an accident, she had a torrid past with Cotton. The truth of her background and why she is being hunted will separately take Cotton and his lady love, Cassiopeia, on a global chase that will make them unable to trust anyone but themselves. How does the creation of cryptocurrency tie in with the plundering of a vast treasure by Japan near the end of WWII? The answers will surprise and even shock even die-hard Berry fans. The truth of the Atlas Maneuver, if it comes to pass, will change the world’s economic future forever. One of the best features of Berry’s novels is the writer’s note, in which he breaks down the facts behind the fiction, and it’s essential reading since everything in this thriller seems all too real. Whether you are a long-time reader of Cotton’s adventures or a newcomer, this book is terrific.
Hard to imagine, but this sophomore offering in the American in Paris series, set in 1950, is even better than the debut (Mastering the Art of French Murder). It is wonderfully detailed in its description of Paris during the Occupation and subsequent Liberation; rich in characterization, especially of the larger-than-life Julia Child (Les oeufés brouilles with fresh tarragon! Magnifique!) and her buddy, the intrepid expat and amateur investigator Tabitha Knight; and driven by a strong mystery that takes us from L‘Ecole de Cordon Bleu to the unsettling world of the Paris catacombs. Did I forget the suave Inspecteur Merveille of the ocean-gray eyes, whom Tabitha is, I assure you, in no way attracted to? In this volume, the crime comes in the form of rare and expensive bottles of wine that have been poisoned with cyanide then delivered as presents to unwitting recipients. To unearth the criminal, Tabitha must learn about France’s wine industry and the efforts to hide the best vintages from looting by the Germans, all while managing to work with Merveille, who has little more than disdain for Mademoiselle Knight. The end comes as a quick surprise. A perfect match for fans of cozies, traditional mysteries, or fiction set in the post-war years.
With a doctorate in Egyptology, it would have been easy for Malayna Evans to have fallen down the bottomless hole of historical detail. But instead, this is a beautifully balanced novel, rich in the experiences of life in the backstabbing court of Pharaoh Hatshepsut while also focused on the engaging and ultimately tragic life of her daughter, Neferura, princess and high priestess of Kemet. Neferura lives to support the people, but she is often distracted by court machinations, especially those of her misogynistic half-brother, Thutmose, who wants to end her mother’s rule, become Pharaoh, marry Neferura, and produce an heir. Neferura’s interior thinking is powerfully engaging, and setting the novel largely among women, whose struggles to lead are always under scrutiny, is incredibly refreshing. But Neferura’s own story feels nearly revolutionary: to survive, she befriends the wisewoman, a much-tattooed priestess of sorts, who is in touch with a network of women who devote themselves to supporting Neferura, even to the point of risking their own lives. Add to this several standout characters, such as Neferura’s life-long tutor who helps guide her actions, and you have a cadre ready to protest their princess. Powerful and poignant, this is a treat for fans of historical mysteries.
Atonement and The Secret Garden float to mind as children in an isolated English idyll come upon a frightening scene. Out for a walk, two young brothers find a mother and daughter dead, posed in a way that’s so peaceful it’s sinister. Magistrate Sir Henry Lovejoy, a friend of the series’ main character, Sebastian St. Cyr, is called, and the scene is all too familiar to him: it’s how his wife and daughter were found murdered years before. A man was hanged for that crime. As more killings occur with frightening speed over the coming days, others speculate that a “copyist” is at work while Lovejoy fears that the wrong man was executed. Lady McInnis, the current day’s victim, was politically active, lending an intriguing angle to the story. She lobbied the government to improve the conditions of working children, some of whose sad lives are featured here; a side plot regarding workhouse babies being unscrupulously fostered for pay paints a grim portrait of early 19th-century England. In the end, the social elements and the murder mysteries knit well together to create a satisfying whodunit with a dash of historical fact.
A wonderful sojourn into Ancient Crete of 1450 BC, told through the life of 16-year-old bull leaper Martis. In many ways, Martis is a classic teen, trying to understand the world around her and what her place in it will be. She’s also fiercely independent—training to be a bull leaper without initially telling her mother, for example—and resists many of the traditional female roles, like marriage and motherhood, that her peers are taking up. In this second novel in the series, Martis discovers the corpse of Duzi, one of her fellow bull leapers. He was murdered to look like he was gouged by a bull, when in fact he was knifed and left to die in a bullpen. Martis rebels against the wishes of her mother, as well as those of Tinos, the administrator of Knossos and the High Priestess’s consort, and takes on the investigation into Duzi’s death, a death that is followed by others, all related to the world of the bull leapers. Martis has to move quickly, with little help from the adults around her, to stop the growing violence. Kuhns does a great job of weaving Minoan civilization throughout the book, from religious practices to food preparation, from clothes and make-up to day-to-day life. Young adults will find much to enjoy in this novel as well.
A high-energy, rambunctious tale that shares much with Sherlock Holmes—the Guy Ritchie versions, that is—as well as traditional Chinese gong’an crime fiction, in which government magistrates solve criminal cases. It’s London, 1924 and Judge Dee Ren Jie, known as Judge Dee, has just arrived in the country to investigate the murder of a colleague whom he knew during World War I, when both served with the Chinese Labour Corps. No less a personage than Bertrand Russell introduces the Judge to Lao She, a retiring London academic who quickly becomes Dee’s sidekick—they are introduced in a prison breakout, it’s complicated—and the two set off to locate the victim’s family. One murder soon becomes two, then more, all performed with the distinctive butterfly sword, putting yet more pressure on Judge Dee to find the perpetrator before he or she tries to murder him. The authors do a wonderful job of depicting the bustling London of the ‘20s, the Chinese community and the relentless racism and stereotypes it is a victim of, and absolutely fabulous displays of martial arts. There’s word that Dr. Dee may be returning to solve another case; here’s hoping he does!
Katharine Wright, a teacher when we meet her in 1903, has her work cut out at home as well as at the high school where she teaches Latin and Greek (but not advanced classes, because “we can’t have a woman teaching upperclassmen”). At home, her father has forbidden her to marry, as her mother has died and he and his sons need a woman to take care of them. Two of those sons are Wilbur and Orville, who at the outset of this informative, fun, and absorbing mystery are in North Carolina attempting to be the first to achieve powered, heavier-than-air flight. After the triumphant telegram, the mysteries start: accompanying his sister to a society dinner, Orville has his jacket stolen, and in its pocket are the men’s notes and drawings of their not-yet-patented work. At the same event, a guest is found stabbed in the heart (you can guess which crime concerns Orville more). The siblings must get to work at finding the papers before Wilbur knows they’re gone and finding the killer before an innocent teen is tried for the crime. The few details about aviation here are interesting and easy for lay readers to navigate; the brothers’ agony over their ideas being stolen is palpable and more germane to the plot. Yet more central, happily, is their sister, the only Wright sibling to attend college and “a teacher, feminist, scholar, and extrovert,” per the author’s note. While waiting for this, try another aviator-related crime novel, Mariah Fredericks’s The Lindbergh Nanny.
Well-known for her excellent historical crime fiction—including the Jane Prescott series and, more recently, The Lindbergh Nanny—Fredericks surpasses even those efforts with this dazzling, magical foray into the life of Edith Wharton. It’s 1911, we are in New York City, and Wharton, nearly 50, is down in the dumps. Yes, she’s the witty, acerbic, and a brilliant conversationalist we imagine her to be. But it’s been six years since the publication of her last bestseller. Husband Teddy is mentally ill. Buddy Henry James is aging quickly. Her affair with Morton Fullerton would seem to be over. And all she really wants is to get back to Paris. In short, things aren’t so gilded. When David Graham Phillips, a handsome young novelist, is shot and killed in front of the Princeton Club, it piques Wharton’s interest. She had just met him the day before at tea in the Palm Court, and while her immediate reaction was disdain, as a corpse, Phillips is far more interesting. Who would want to kill a novelist, and why? What is so very brilliant about this novel is that Wharton’s search for the truth—which takes her from the publishing industry (hilarious) to New York society (terrifying)—is skillfully enmeshed with the challenges she faces as a woman, a writer, and a wife. In a particularly poignant scene, Wharton is walking home and realizes she is being followed. She finally turns to confront the perpetrator, only to discover it’s her feeble, slipper-clad husband, following her for fear she’ll abandon him. Sure to be one of the best books of the year, and a perfect choice for book groups that appreciate a rich context.
Artist Santlofer’s previous novel, The Last Mona Lisa, saw Luke Perrone, great-grandson of the man who stole the Mona Lisa, digging into his ancestor’s thievery, with Interpol also on the case. Perrone and the organization are back and chasing a painting that has long been rumored to exist: Vincent van Gogh’s last self-portrait. The work is mentioned in a letter by a friend of van Gogh’s as having been displayed at the artist’s funeral, but was it the mistake of a grieving friend? At the outset of the book, what may be the painting turns up, but greed and the less-savory machinations of the art world soon see it disappear. The book combines fiction and nonfiction, as explained by Santlofer in an absorbing interview that’s a coda to this fast-moving work. A real aspect is the sad dispersal across the world of Nazi-looted art, the tireless work by descendants of the real owners to retrieve it, and the equally tireless work of dishonest art collectors to keep it from being returned. Beauty and horror are wonderfully contrasted by Santlofer, both in the sad life of van Gogh compared to the incandescent art he produced, and in the clash of the love of art and the pursuit of wealth that takes advantage of that passion. Details of post-impressionist art and busting of myths around van Gogh (he wasn’t unknown as an artist during his life) are bonuses. A great accompaniment to this would be Mark Roskill’s Letters of Vincent van Gogh, as van Gogh’s correspondence with his brother Theo is often referenced by Santlofer.