She ain’t lying! All the moms do hate her. Because Florence Grimes is quite the unrepentant good-time girl who gets all the side-eye from the moms and smirks from the dads. She has a collection of lovers that’s like a deck of cards. Her get-ups are designed to provoke, at the very least. And her last, and only, job—years ago—was in a girl band that ended in humiliation. The one ray of light is her ten-year-old son, Dylan, who is a radical environmentalist and attends a fancy London all-boys school. But when Alfie Risby, Dylan’s bully and heir to a frozen-food empire, suddenly disappears during a class trip, and Dylan is the prime suspect, Flo starts to wake up and realizes that she is the only one that can save Dylan. Rich in satire, hugely funny, with a running wink-wink to the reader, this novel is pure comedic gold.
Humorous
Middle-aged, mid-divorce (although she is still in love with her husband), and mid-pregnancy, Kathy Valence is a no-nonsense, shoot-from-the-hip type of character. She keeps busy working for S.C.Y.T.H.E. (Secure Collection, Yielding, and Transportation of Human Essences), helping transport the souls of the recently departed on to their next phase, until the soul of one of her clients, hip and happening 17-year-old DJ Conner, gets misplaced. Conner insists he was murdered by someone at S.C.Y.T.H.E., and that it is up to Kathy to track down the murderer and find Conner’s soul. All within forty-five days, or else he’ll become a ghost, destined to wander the Earth (no pressure!). What’s so lovely here are the overlapping needs of the characters. Kathy, whose fears and anxieties hold her back from accepting love. Simone, Kathy’s husband, whose only desire is to be allowed to love Kathy and their baby. And Conner, who wants to identify his murderer, be saved by Kathy, and find the love he missed on Earth. Poignant and pleasing, this successful supernatural mystery will long be remembered.
Here’s a trend out of the U.K.: fun-loving, female serial killers. From doing away with the relatives (Mackie’s How to Kill Your Family) to offing abusive husbands (Casale’s The Best Way to Bury Your Husband) British women are ignoring old school, female solutions like poison or a tumble down the staircase and packing some heat, or, in the case of You’d Look Better as a Ghost, relying on a hammer to the back of the head. Claire, our serial killer and hero, is always planning her next kill, typically of someone who crossed her, starting back in childhood with her murder of her mother, who made Joan Crawford seem like Mother Theresa. Today the 30ish Claire is mourning (a real emotion!) her father’s death, while plotting the murder of Lucas, an arts administrator who rejected one of her paintings. But no sooner is Lucas diced and planted in the back garden—it makes you think twice about the Chelsea Flower Show—when one of the ladies in Claire’s weekly bereavement group let’s on that she knows all about Claire’s special hobby, and if she wants to live, Claire has to give in to blackmail. Is threatening a part-time, but highly successful, serial killer ever a good idea? That would be no. Witty and sophisticated, funny and fast-paced, this dark masterpiece is pure pleasure.
It’s early into lockdown in the UK, and Sally can’t take any more physical and psychological abuse from her husband—thankfully the kids are grown and out of the house. So she does the only thing she can do: she fights back, smashing him on the head with her iron skillet. But killing is the easy part. It’s disposing of the body that’s the challenge. Fortunately, Sally soon discovers that she’s not the only woman in the neighborhood with a husband rotting away in the basement, packed in cat litter (did you know? It absorbs both odors and fluids). Slowly, these women come together and create quite the self-help group, dubbed the Lockdown Ladies’ Burial Club, which is tasked with disposing of four bodies…and getting away with it. As impossible as this may seem—these women aren’t exactly hooked up with organized crime—they revel in their newly created freedom, gaining the strength to take on seemingly any challenge. As Sally says, “For too long I let a small man steal my joy and potential.” What’s remarkable is how Casale—with a decade of experience in the field of male violence against women—succeeds at moving between the women’s experiences with domestic violence in the past and the dark humor of their present situation, tacitly giving us permission to laugh at times. Well-written with plenty of surprises, twists, and turns to keep readers engrossed. Pair it with Bella Mackie’s How to Kill your Family.
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.
I love mysteries that feature the famous, from Walt Whitman to Dorothy Parker to Eleanor Roosevelt. But featuring a living celebrity—in this case, Bernie Sanders—is even more of a challenge, one that Shaffer succeeds at wonderfully. Gen Z intern Crash Robertson is our wisecracking intern and narrator, and after months of answering phones in the DC office—from constituents who don’t know how to text?—she gets to accompany the senator on a fall-recess trip to Vermont. By chance, they head to Eagle Creek, Crash’s hometown, and end up staying in her mother’s B&B. But what has the makings of a low-key visit with constituents, and plenty of apple griddlecakes, suddenly gets upended when Crash finds the body of the local banker floating in Lake Champlain. Crash’s running commentary on Bernie—who’s always ready to deliver a lecture on the declining honeybee population, or the cozy series he’s reading, set in a cannabis bakery in the Northwest—makes for a good part of the humor in the book. But when a second citizen goes missing, it’s time for our team to get down to work. The biggest suspect is a tech-obsessed one-percenter, think Elon Musk, who’s buying up acres of maple trees, driving out local farmers, and monopolizing maple syrup production in a move Bernie dubs “Big Maple.” Unmitigated fun for everyone, no matter where they might fall on the political spectrum. Shaffer is also the author of the Obama mysteries, Hope Never Dies and Hope Rides Again.
Damani Krishanthan’s life is drudgery. Her Amma, or mother, is housebound and expects to be waited on hand and foot, even leaving food all over her face for that extra touch of martyrdom. When not on Amma duty, Damani drives for an Uber-like service that’s taking an ever bigger cut of her proceeds, even her tips, as time goes by, so that she takes every customer who pops up, sleeping only at red lights. A few times in the book the character directly addresses the reader, telling us for example that the city that this story takes place in will remain nameless because cities are all the same now; the effect is to telegraph that she’s so tired that she can’t even maintain the façade of fictionality and will just talk to us, OK? The non-stop grind lifts a bit when Damani gets a cute customer, Jo, who then shows up at a club the cabbie goes to with friends. She’s unlike anyone Damani has dated, but the same is true for Jo, who is not used to being in spaces where she’s a minority, a situation with results that push Damani over the edge. This protagonist’s life is a slow-motion train crash that you won’t be able to look away from, and Guns paints a scathing portrait of the gig economy, both in literal terms and in terms of those considered a temporary novelty in relationships. A debut with shades of Elle Cosimano’s Finlay Donovan series, but also memorably and refreshingly unlike anything else.
Ever feel like you’ve lost your reading mojo? Spending too much time consuming mediocre series on Netflix? Then this fun, female-driven narrative featuring a grifter/psych student, a terrifying serial killer, a cool and elegant femme fatale, and a handful of Las Vegas ladies is sure to get you back into the reading groove. A serial killer is stalking Amber’s college campus, and despite all her street smarts he manages to kidnap her, dragging her off to his lair. Just when things start to get serious, Amber is liberated by this cool and aloof woman who promptly disappears. But when the cops, and then the FBI, show up, Amber gets jittery—she and law enforcement don’t mix—so she heads out of town, randomly picking Vegas. It would be foolhardy to try to summarize this story; it’s got more twists and turns than the Tour de France. Let’s just say that Amber’s voice—witty with a side of snark—is just everything, the dialogue is pumping, and the characters are, strangely enough, completely credible. And how refreshing is it to read a thriller without any male leads? Turns out you don’t miss them at all. An absolute delight from beginning to end.
Meet the confidence man (or woman), also known as the scammer, the grifter, the swindler. He’s long been a part of our national identity. Don’t believe me? Go back 175 years and take a peep at Melville’s last novel, Confidence-Man. Here, Frumkin updates our national passion—American dream, by any means!—in an epic tale of betrayal, at once gloriously hilarious and heartbreakingly sad. Ezra and Orson meet up one summer as teens at Last Chance Camp, the final stop before juvenile detention. They become lovers of sorts, with homely Ezra in love and gorgeous Orson in like. They’re equally poor, already petty criminals as well as small-time dope dealers. This is a clear case in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, because Ezra and Orson don’t just succeed at digging their way out of poverty. In ten years, they propel themselves into absolutely incredible wealth all through lying, scheming, and cheating. It’s a delight to watch. Eventually, they reach a sort of zenith with NuLife, a kind of wellness practice involving magnets—sort of a cross between L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics and Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop. This fast-paced, wonderfully unique novel holds a mirror up to American culture and asks all the right questions. It’s the answers that are so disturbing.
After Andie Stern’s debut in Suburban Dicks—in which she solved a shocking murder in her New Jersey town—you’d think the former FBI employee would be ready for a little R&R. Or at least as much relaxation as a mother of five can get. But when the husband of Molly, a member of her mom’s group—which Andie secretly calls The Cellulitists—unexpectedly dies, Andie strongly suspects Molly is to blame. The hard part, but also the fun part, is proving it. Helped out by disgraced journalist Kenny Lee, a buddy from Suburban Dicks and the only man in the book who isn’t a complete, well, dick, along with new friend Sathwika, Andie follows the many leads, which eventually bring her and Kenny far too close to home. Nicieza, the co-creator of Deadpool, is a wonderful satirist, and the friction brought about his women characters’ multiple lives as mothers, wives, professionals, and even criminals is pure pleasure and more than just a little bit realistic. Towards the end there’s the hint that Andie and Sathwika may set up their own detective agency. Pray God this is so.