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Literary

Review

6:40 to Montreal

by Brian Kenney

Kudos to Jurczyk (The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, That Night in the Library) for providing a closed circle mystery that avoids the tropes of the subgenre while still offering some charming nods to closed trains of the past. Here, bestselling author Agatha (albeit suffering a bit from writer’s block) is sent off by her husband on a roundtrip from Toronto to Montreal for the sole purpose of finishing her new novel. With a first class ticket in hand, and only a few residents in her car, Agatha is slightly optimistic, imagining the train as a writers’ retreat and with the hope of turning out a few pages. But then she discovers a woman lurking about the train—someone, it turns out, whom she knows all too well—who believes that Agatha stole her success. As the snow thickens, the train slides to a halt somewhere in the Canadian wilderness, and then the passengers discover the horrifying news: one of their own has died. It’s brilliant how much Jurczyk packs into the book, moving back and forth between the present and Agatha’s personal history, while always sustaining a steady pace. But by the time the 6:40 makes it to the Montreal area hours later, it’s pure carnage.

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Review

Ruth Run

by Jeff Ayers

Ruth has an unconventional way of making money, and her method of robbing banks through a code in a hacked chip has finally caught up with her in Kaufman’s debut thriller. Taking cash in small amounts from transactions has made her a very rich cybercriminal. When alarms signal she’s been discovered, she grabs her accomplice, and they take off. A government agent named Mike has been watching her for some time and knows everything about Ruth since he feels he launched her career. Mike has planted tracking devices in her home, car, and a bag that never leaves her side, so he knows her every move. When his superiors want her eliminated since her bug is inside the government’s network, Mike agrees to help. However, he seems to have feelings for the woman he considers his protégé, so what is his objective? When Ruth realizes that the authorities are close and her usual tricks won’t be enough, she must improvise. But even though she is elusive and clever, her methods might put her in even more danger than she’s in from the law. Kaufman has created a compelling and complex character in Ruth, and watching her outwit and coordinate her surroundings to stay alive while being in control will endear her to readers. The motivations behind the people after this protagonist, and her inability to trust those she enlists for help, keep the paranoia above a level ten. Hopefully this terrific debut will launch a series featuring Ruth and her adventures.

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Review

The Betrayal of Thomas True

by Brian Kenney

It is 1715, and young Thomas True has managed to escape from his parent’s home, arriving in London, where he takes up residence with his uncle, a candlemaker to whom he becomes apprenticed. But that’s hardly the story. Eighteenth-century London was home to a flourishing, if risky, gay subculture, a world that seduces Thomas and that was centered around the molly houses. “Molly was a slur used for effeminate, homosexual men and the term was adopted to describe the clubs, taverns…where they met up in secret”, according to The British Newspaper Archives. And although the houses were called mollies, they attracted a range of men, from workers to aristocrats. It was a world where Thomas felt a sense of belonging, made all the more immediate with his discovery of beefy carpenter Gabriel Griffin (AKA Lotty), the doorman at Mother Clap’s Molly House. But when a young molly is found murdered, Gabriel goes in search of the rat who is exposing the men to the judicial system. Could it be someone he is close to? This book is that rare thing: both a strong historical novel that drops you into a richly rendered early 18th century and a powerful mystery that remains at the center of the book.

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Review

The Wolf Tree

by Willy Williams

Eight months after a traumatic on-the-job accident almost killed her, George (Georgina) Lennox has been assigned her first case as a newly promoted Glasgow DI: to investigate the suicide of 18-year-old Alan Ferguson on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides. A disappointed George protests to her boss: “Because nothing happens out there. These islands are medieval time capsules with a population of relics.” Arriving on the stark and barren Eilean Eadar with her partner, Richie Stewart, she finds an isolated community that still clings to its ancient Catholic faith (in Protestant Scotland) and that is deeply suspicious of outsiders. As George and Richie interview the locals, George senses that something is off about the place and its people. Mysterious double spirals are engraved into the village houses and farm crofts. The long abandoned lighthouse where Alan fell is also the site where three lighthouse keepers disappeared mysteriously a century ago. Late at night, George hears the howling of a wolf and spots a masked figure outside her window. Who is trying to thwart the investigation? At the same time, George and Richie clash over the DI’s use of prescription pain medication and her reckless tendency to charge into risky situations without backup. George is a compelling sleuth, tough yet also vulnerable and not always likable, but she has great chemistry with the fatherly Richie. Debut author McCluskey has written a compellingly spooky and creepy mystery with a hint of folk horror à la The Wicker Man. Fans of Ann Cleeves’s Shetland crime novels and Peter May’s Lewis Trilogy will delight in this atmospheric thriller.

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Review

Runaway Horses

by Brian Kenney

And now for something completely different. Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini were well-known Italian authors who co-authored several mysteries, throughout the 1980s and ‘90s, under their surnames of Fruttero & Lucentini. Their best-known works are The Lover of No Fixed Abode, set in Venice, and The Sunday Woman, which was made into a film starring Marcello Mastroianni and Jacqueline Bisset. Runaway Horses takes place in Siena during the Palio of Siena, the biannual horse race that the Sienese have been celebrating since the 13th century. It features lawyer Enzo Maggione and his wife, Valeria, who are traveling from their home in Milan to Siena, visiting Valeria’s brother along the way. But the two never make it to the farm; instead, they encounter a violent storm and take refuge in a nearby, sprawling estate. Here they find a most idiosyncratic group, including Puddu, the best known of the Palio’s jockeys. Fruttero and Lucentini take the reader deep into the arcane practices of the Palio, which are full of plots and counterplots, while Enzo and Valeria discover their attraction not only to each other but to other residents on the estate as well. Readers with an interest in Siena may enjoy the exhibit Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350, which is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum and will travel to Britain’s National Gallery in spring 2025.

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Review

The Forger’s Requiem

by Willy Williams

Literary forger Henry Slader unexpectedly finds himself in an Edgar Allan Poe story when he, concussed and bruised, awakens in a shallow grave. Shakily digging himself out, Slader gradually remembers that Will, his old rival, and his daughter, Nicole, assaulted him with a shovel after a deal involving the forgery of a rare Poe book went bad. Determined to avenge himself on Will (20 years of bad blood between the two men includes a violent attack that landed Slader in prison) and needing to raise cash, Slader blackmails Nicole, a budding artist and a talented forger, threatening to expose her father’s role in the unsolved murder of her uncle. After forging inscriptions by such authors as Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, Nicole is tasked with creating a cache of letters by Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, a valuable trove that will enable Slader to retire permanently from the forgery business. But even the best-laid plans can go astray. A shocking climax at Mary Shelley’s grave in Bournemouth, England, leads a stunned Nicole to wonder what “drives people to such lunacy.” Toggling between Slader’s third-person perspective and Nicole’s first-person narrative, Morrow offers fascinating insights into the literary forger’s art. Although this is the concluding volume to the author’s trilogy (The Forgers, The Forger’s Daughter), it can be read as a dark, twisty standalone thanks to plenty of backstory.

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Review

Nesting

by Henrietta Thornton

Even during her sly, vicious husband Ryan’s “good” moments, Ciara feels “part of her body (toe tips, ear lobes, the backs of her knees) is listening, tense, on high alert.” And in his bad moments, “The toppled chair. The smashed bulb. The broken handle. Her bones and blood.” She’s left before, but his rage at her absence was too dangerous to endure. But when she sees a new opportunity, she takes her two small daughters and flees. Here the reader will begin to understand the naivete of “why doesn’t she just leave?” (Why doesn’t anybody ever ask why he doesn’t “just” leave?). Dublin’s rental market is impossible, so Ciara and the children are homeless, forced to stay in a cramped hotel room provided by the city. Ciara, who is pregnant with her third child, has no job, at controlling Ryan’s insistence, of course. Her mother-in-law tells her that she’s going to hell for treating “poor Ryan-Patrick” this way. Child support is non-existent, and Ryan is determined to take full custody of the children even though he appears to hate them and has never lifted a finger to care for them. Watching Ciara claw her way out of this is a gripping view of endurance, terror, bravery and the small and large kindnesses that make her life bearable. The characters here are superbly drawn, the dialog spot on, and I can’t wait for more from this debut novelist.

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Review

This Book Will Bury Me

by Henrietta Thornton

The world of amateur true-crime investigators—and what a populous world it seems to be!—is given its own investigation in Winstead’s (Midnight is the Darkest Hour, 2023) latest, with the author using murders at a sorority house to show who benefits from and who’s destroyed by the trend of podcasters as police. Readers enter through the screen of Janeway Sharp (Star Trek fandom plays a big role here), the youngest of a group that calls itself the Real Crime Network. She’s drawn to the work after the sudden death of her beloved father and grows an obsession with true crime even though she feels it is wrong. In the Network, she finds forgiving and encouraging brethren who are only too happy to accompany her into the frightening details surrounding the murder of three sorority sisters who were stabbed and left in a bloodbath. Jane, now called Searcher, and her companions can’t stay away from the college town in question, Delphine, Idaho. Readers are taken to new viewpoints along with them, meeting the families in question, the townspeople who are suddenly besieged by murder groupies, and the police and FBI, who are willing to take the help when the Network starts to be successful. Suspects, twists, and danger add to the media-cult side of the tale, adding up to a smart whodunit with a side of contemplation.

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Review

The Stolen Queen

by Henrietta Thornton

The very ancient and the more recent past, the glamor of the fashion world and the dust from excavating for antiquities meet in Davis’s thrilling saga of female determination. In the 1936 part of the story, novice archaeologist Charlotte Cross braves searing temperatures, colonial snobbery, and sexism on a dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, when she unexpectedly finds both treasure and love. In 1978, we find Charlotte working on Egyptian artifacts in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and bristling when jewelry from the vast collection is earmarked for use on a mannequin at the Met Gala. (No Kardashians were harmed in the making of this book.) On the fashion side of the gala loan is Annie Jenkins, a young woman who’s under her lazy mother’s heel until her life starts to open up after a chance meeting with Diana Vreeland. Happenings on the night of the gala fuel the rumor that female Pharaoh Hathorkare, a subject of Charlotte’s work in the ‘30s and now, brings destruction to anyone who deals with her. (An author’s note explains that Hathorkare is loosely based on Hatshepsut.) Finding out who’s really behind an audacious crime at the gala reveals why Charlotte hasn’t been able to face visiting Egypt all these years. It also shines a light on the real-life debate around repatriation of art to its country of origin. A thought-provoking and exciting read.

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Review

The Blue Hour

by Brian Kenney

A beautifully rendered story of deceit and ambition, lies and mysteries. Well-known artist Vanessa Chapman lives on an island off Scotland that’s accessible only 12 hours a day, during low tide. When the sea returns, it creates its own, albeit temporary, closed circle. Twenty years ago, Vanessa’s sometime husband disappeared, which was a bit of a surprise, although he seemed to regularly come and go. When Vanessa eventually dies as well, she leaves her estate in the hands of the Fairburn Foundation; young curator James Becker; and Grace Haswell, a doctor who is the executor of Vanessa’s estate, companion of twenty years, and perhaps lover. It’s all antipathy and snark between James and Grace until a discovery comes to light that forces a reexamination of power and ambition. A poignant and thoughtful examination of a life and a death.

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