Bruce Tierney

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An 81-year-old woman versus a little boy: It sounds wholesome, but just wait till the bodies start to pile up

Feature by Bruce Tierney

You Better Watch Out

In the checkout line of an upstate New York convenience store, opportunistic small-time thief Eddie Parker spots a purse overflowing with cash. As the elderly owner finishes her transaction, Eddie maneuvers himself into position to relieve her of her stash. It does not go according to plan; within arm’s reach of his prize, Eddie feels a sharp scratch on his neck and, moments later, his world goes black. He wakes up in a small deserted town that looks like a movie set: buildings with false fronts, shops filled with empty containers, no food or water in sight and Christmastime temperatures dropping below freezing. The title of this thriller by James S. Murray and Darren Wearmouth is almost prophetic: You Better Watch Out. Eddie soon discovers that a handful of other folks have met a similar fate. And although they don’t entirely trust one another, they know that their lives depend on getting out of this place, and the best means to that end is teamwork. But, in true Agatha Christie fashion, one by one they meet their untimely demise, and most graphically. Here is the funny part, though (to me, at least): Fairly early in the book, I thought I had figured out who the villain was. Turns out, I was right—but I had no inkling whatsoever of the diabolical twist that would reveal itself in the final pages. 

Havoc

In Christopher Bollen’s Havoc, octogenarian and self-confessed do-gooder Maggie Burkhardt narrates a tale of obsession, deceit and worse at a riverside hotel in Luxor, Egypt, during the height of COVID-19 restrictions. Following the death of her husband, Maggie is far afield from her Wisconsin homeland. Egypt was not her first choice for her retirement, but it is one of the few places welcoming tourists, and she has grown acclimated to the heat and the easy pace of life in the Royal Karnak, a hotel that exemplifies the term “faded glory.” Over time, she has become something of a fixture there, reveling in her role as “doyenne of all she surveys.” And then Otto shows up with his mother, and quickly establishes himself as Chief Nemesis to Maggie and all she holds dear. His childish pranks escalate to blackmail after he surprises Maggie doing something she clearly should not have been doing, and his demands seem to have no end in sight. That said, Maggie is rather duplicitous herself, both in her interactions with other characters and with the reader, as she tries to play the virtuous victim. The narrative is by turns creepy, snarky, humorous and every bit as atmospheric as you would expect from a story set somewhere like the Valley of the Kings. Oh, and there are a couple of murders: nothing too graphic, but quite definitely an affectionate nod to the sweeping, international mysteries of the 1940s.  

Robert B. Parker’s Hot Property

After a popular series writer passes away, they often leave legions of fans clamoring for more adventures of their fictional heroes. Ian Fleming’s James Bond and Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander jump to mind. Other writers often take up the challenge, albeit with decidedly mixed results. But when Mike Lupica took over Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, it was a seamless transition. It’s as if he channels Parker from beyond the grave: setting, prose, dialogue—the works. In the latest installment, Robert B. Parker’s Hot Property, an attempted murder hits close to home. Ace criminal defense attorney Rita Fiore has been shot and is clinging to life but tenuously. She had been romantically involved with a young up-and-coming politician until his recent accidental (?) death, and now it appears that he may have been involved in some property shenanigans with mob overtones. For Spenser, Rita Fiore is family, as surely as if they had been related by blood, and he will leave no stone unturned in bringing her assailant to justice. Speaking of stones, another Parker protagonist, Police Chief Jesse Stone, makes a cameo appearance, and the two play off each other exceptionally well. Hot Property is a must for longtime Spenser fans and a terrific entry point for newcomers as well.

The Collaborators

If you are in the mood for a high-stakes global espionage novel, with secret agents jet-setting all over the world, you have come to the right place. Michael Idov’s The Collaborators doesn’t waste any time setting up locations or easing into the narrative. In the first sentence, a Russian MiG-29 fighter jet pulls up alongside an Antalya Airlines commercial flight from Istanbul to Riga, Latvia. They are in Belarusian airspace, and the MiG pilot clearly plans to force the Antalya 737 down or shoot it down. On board are a dissident blogger, a pair of fugitives in disguise and heaven only knows what other manner of dodgy characters. Meanwhile, in Riga, CIA agent Aria Falk waits anxiously for the blogger, initially unaware of the flight’s unplanned stop in Minsk. In other news, a financier who has been laundering Russian money for years has apparently killed himself by leaping off a yacht in the open sea, and the multibillion dollar fund he managed seems to have vanished along with him. The connection point for all these disparate events is Falk. Soon enough, he will become involved with Maya Chou, the daughter of the missing (and presumed dead) financier, and things will get very convoluted indeed. The Collaborators devotes little space to pyrotechnics, chase scenes and the like, but cleverness and subterfuge abound, followed by a believable, real-world sort of denouement. PS: Idov is a screenwriter in addition to being a novelist, and this book has silver screen written all over it.

Plus, a wicked holiday delight and a ripped-from-the-headlines espionage thriller in this month’s Whodunit column.
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Inspector Gamache, John Rebus and Bruno Courrèges are back—and they’re all in top form

Feature by Bruce Tierney

A Grave in the Woods

The typically unflappable Bruno Courrèges is annoyed. While he was on medical leave, his position as chief of police was taken over by an overbearing new hire, and she has no intention of vacating it until he has been cleared to return to service. Moreover, she has lectured him regarding his general untidiness and inept record-keeping. For the time being, it is better for everyone concerned if Bruno beats a hasty retreat to somewhere else, anywhere else. So, for A Grave in the Woods, Martin Walker’s 17th installment in the popular series, Bruno is tasked with investigating (wait for it . . .) a grave in the woods. Three bodies are in the grave, all dating back to World War II: two German women and one man, an Italian submarine captain, oddly distant from his expected undersea context. Oh, and while we are on the topic of water, Bruno’s hometown of St. Denis—a sadly fictional village in the Périgord region of France—is bracing for an epic, climate change-fueled flood. The dams have held thus far, but it’s getting dicey. As Bruno digs deeper into the grave situation (sorry), questions dating back some 80 years are unearthed. Thus, there is perhaps more history than mystery in this episode of Bruno’s adventures, but there is nothing wrong with that. There is plenty of what readers come to St. Denis for: the food and wine; the camaraderie; and of course, Balzac the basset hound, surely one of the most engaging four-legged supporting characters ever to grace the pages of a mystery novel.

Midnight and Blue

Wow, you miss one book in a series, and the protagonist transforms from the number one cop in Scotland to a prison inmate. As Ian Rankin’s latest mystery, Midnight and Blue, opens, John Rebus is cooling his heels in the slammer. His crime: attempted murder, which is under appeal, but the wheels of justice are turning slowly. At first, he is incarcerated in the relatively safe Separation and Reintegration unit, where prisoners in danger (such as ex-cops) are assigned, but he is soon to be rehoused in the general prison population, in part thanks to a safe-passage guarantee from Edinburgh’s reigning crime lord, who credits Rebus for his ascent to the underworld throne. When a murder takes place in a nearby two-person cell, Rebus’ detecting instincts bubble to the surface, although he must be somewhat more circumspect than if he was out on the streets. In a parallel narrative, Rebus’ onetime colleague Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke is investigating the disappearance of a teenage girl, a case that will come to have a tangential—or perhaps more than tangential—connection with the aforementioned prison murder. Author Rankin is in top form as he reinvents his flawed hero by having him navigate an equally flawed milieu, in what must be one of the most original locked-room mysteries ever.

Murder Takes the Stage

One of my favorite plot devices for a mystery—or really any sort of novel—is the revisiting of a familiar tale through the perspective of a different character, such as Gregory Maguire’s retelling of the Cinderella story, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. Colleen Cambridge has mined this vein exceptionally well with her series featuring Phyllida Bright, housekeeper to Agatha Christie. This time out, the Christie entourage moves to London for Murder Takes the Stage, in which one of the author’s stories has been made into a West End play. Unfortunately, however, an actor whose surname began with the letter A turns up dead at a theater beginning with the letter A. Then, the body of an actor playing Benvolio is discovered at a theater beginning with a B. You can see where this is going, right? It’s a clever and delicious spin on one of Christie’s better known works, The A.B.C. Murders. Exactly one year ago, I opined that Cambridge’s previous installment in the series, Murder by Invitation Only, “straddles the line between historical fiction and intricate, Christie-esque suspense quite well, without the cloying cutesiness that can sometimes plague mysteries on the cozier side of things. And Phyllida Bright is simply a gem.” I stand by that assertion 100%.

★ The Grey Wolf 

An old legend tells of two wolves that battle inside each of us: a black wolf that represents anger, greed, arrogance, resentment, envy and ego; and a gray wolf that represents kindness, generosity, compassion, empathy, love and hope. Which one will win, you may ask? The answer is simple, yet profound: The one you feed. The Grey Wolf also serves as the title of Louise Penny’s 19th entry in her critically acclaimed series featuring Chief Inspector Gamache of the Sureté du Québec. The Grey Wolf is far and away Penny’s most ambitious novel to date, landing Gamache and his team squarely into the middle of ecoterrorism on a scale hitherto unimaginable in typically tranquil Canada. But as data begins to trickle in, it becomes apparent that the plot’s tentacles are farther reaching than anyone could reasonably have predicted, involving an order of Québécois monks who have taken a vow of silence, the highest levels of the Canadian federal government and even the Vatican. Equally troubling is evidence suggesting that key members of the Sureté may have been compromised, leaving the core team of Gamache, Beauvoir and Lacoste twisting in the wind as the stopwatch ticks away the minutes. The Grey Wolf is 432 pages long, and I read it in one sitting, because I could not put it down.

Plus, Colleen Cambridge gifts readers with another clever mystery starring Phyllida Bright, housekeeper to none other than Agatha Christie.
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Andy Mills is back—with a case set in the world of 1950s queer booksellers.

Feature by Bruce Tierney

The Seventh Floor

In David McCloskey’s latest thriller, The Seventh Floor, the CIA team dedicated to eradicating moles is hilariously referred to as the “Dermatologists.” (I will never be able to unthink that.) There is no gentle introduction in this book, no setting of scene, no lulling the reader into a false sense of security. By the end of page six, a Russian agent is dead, having bitten down on his poison-filled Montblanc pen scant seconds before a team breaks into his office. A bit later, American agent Sam Joseph hangs upside down in a Russian black-ops site, pleading ignorance to a group of unbelieving interrogators. The heart of the matter seems to be that there is an extremely high-placed Russian mole in the CIA, with one team of facilitators dedicated to seeing that said mole remains securely in place, and a second team equally dedicated to ferreting them out. But this is the world of espionage, after all, and alliances are fluid at best and downright lethal at worst, with no handy brochure that lists true affiliations. The two main characters are Sam and Artemis Procter, the latter a no-nonsense CIA operational chief who irritates most people simply by walking into a room. Together, these two must navigate the minefields and expose the mole, or very likely die in the attempt. The Seventh Floor is not really about these heroes as much as it is about the process of flushing out a traitor, but it proves remarkably difficult to put down either way. PS, McCloskey knows whereof he speaks: He is a former CIA analyst who delivered classified briefings to congressional oversight committees, and he regularly wrote for the President’s Daily Brief, the top secret intelligence summary that appears on the desk in the Oval Office every morning. It shows.

Rough Pages

Lev AC Rosen’s Rough Pages is the third installment in his historical mystery series featuring gay detective Evander “Andy” Mills, a former San Francisco police officer who was outed and fired, and has now launched a private investigation firm serving the queer community in the City by the Bay. These postwar noir novels are set in the 1950s, when gay bashing was not only tolerated, but encouraged, even—or especially—by those sworn to “protect and serve.” Andy is drawn into a case involving the disappearance of Howard Salzberger, a bookstore owner who supplies a select clientele with queer books by subscription, and who may have run afoul of postal regulations prohibiting the distribution of “obscene materials.” At the center of the case is Howard’s missing notebook, which lists his subscribers: If the government gets hold of that, there will be hell to pay. The Mafia is also interested in obtaining the notebook, and among the mobsters, there is perhaps even less tolerance of queerness than there is by the government or general public. Rosen’s Evander Mills books are unsettling to read; like Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series, they unflinchingly depict historical—and in some ways, ongoing—discrimination against minorities. And like Mosley, Rosen takes his shots at the establishment by simply telling the day-to-day stories of marginalized people, the people who those in power tried to shove off into the shadows, but who persisted in living vibrant lives all the same.

Death by Misadventure

To begin with, a small confession: While reading Tasha Alexander’s latest Lady Emily mystery, Death by Misadventure, I happened upon the word “snarky.” As her novels are written in the vernacular of the time (in this case, 1906), “snarky” seemed to me to be very out of place. So I Googled the word, only to discover that its first recorded usage was in the year (wait for it . . .) 1906. I should have known better than to doubt Alexander. Lady Emily relates the story in the first person: A high-society murder takes place in the shadow of Neuschwanstein Castle, a killing that has roots dating back a generation, to the days of the castle’s creator, Bavaria’s Mad King Ludwig. Death by Misadventure is an Agatha Christie-esque locked-room mystery, with the victim and the cast of potential perpetrators snowbound after an Alpine storm renders the roads impassable. Lady Emily will investigate the murder, as she has done in the 17 previous novels; she easily rivals Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote in terms of acquaintances lost to untimely and violent demise. As is typically the case with locked-room mysteries, there are secrets and motives galore, but good luck figuring out “whodunit” before the big reveal. I certainly did not.

★ The Drowned

In the 1950s, in a field adjacent to the rocky Irish coast, a Mercedes SL sits idling. The driver’s door is open, but no driver is in sight. A local outcast happens upon the car while walking his dog, and is in turn happened upon by the car owner’s distraught husband, who cries out that his wife has thrown herself into the sea. Thus begins John Banville’s atmospheric mystery novel The Drowned. The local constable, a lout and a drunkard with no love for the aforementioned outcast, is first to investigate, but the situation requires an altogether more delicate and thorough touch. So Detective Inspector St. John (pronounced “sin-jun”) Strafford is called in from Dublin to preside over the case. And where Strafford goes, it is pretty much a foregone conclusion that his colleague/adversary, pathologist and medical examiner Quirke, will not be far behind. As the investigation moves forward, Stafford and Quirke expose some troubling connections to an earlier case, a case that everyone thought had been solved, but now seems to have a few loose threads that require pulling. This is a book that deserves to be read slowly, not simply for the plotting and the characters (which are quite good in their own right), but for the sheer richness of the prose. The Drowned is genre fiction that rises to the level of full-on, capital L literature.

Lev AC Rosen’s critically acclaimed series has another win, plus new reads from Tasha Alexander and John Bancroft in this month’s Whodunit column.
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Fiona Barton blows the police procedural wide open

Feature by Bruce Tierney

The Dark Wives

I’m a latecomer to the Vera Stanhope series: I’m not a total newbie, but I definitely have some back catalog to catch up on, especially as author Ann Cleeves’ latest, The Dark Wives, is a crackerjack mystery. Rosebank Home is a halfway house for troubled teens. At the moment, it is also the center of an investigation into the disappearance of one of the aforementioned troubled teens, Chloe Spence, as well as the site of the grisly murder of staff member Josh Woodburn. The question at hand is whether Chloe committed the deed and then made good her escape, or if she witnessed the murder and has now gone into hiding. Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope would like to believe option number two, not least because the girl’s diary strongly suggested that she had quite the crush on Josh. Vera’s colleagues on the force are somewhat less persuaded. And then another corpse is discovered, and there’s still no sign of Chloe. Matters come to a head during the annual pseudo-pagan Witch Hunt, an enormous game of hide-and-seek which takes place in the dead of night next to the titular Dark Wives, a Stonehenge-like rock formation in northern England. Cleeves’ opinion on for-profit children’s facilities and their potential to harm society’s more vulnerable members is clear, but whichever side of the political fence you occupy, The Dark Wives is a hell of a good story.

Spirit Crossing

You would think from his name that Cork O’Connor was Irish: You’d be half-right. But he’s also Ojibwe, and the ex-sheriff and ex-PI is deeply steeped in the traditions of his mother’s northern Minnesota tribe. Spirit Crossing is number 20 in William Kent Krueger’s long-running series, and it draws heavily upon Ojibwe legends of the recently deceased who have become lost on the Path of Souls. While foraging for wild blueberries, Cork’s grandson, Waaboo, happens upon a makeshift grave site and experiences a vision of one such lost soul. Two young women, one of them Ojibwe, the other the daughter of a state senator, have recently gone missing. The investigations could not be more different: The senator’s daughter is high priority; the Ojibwe girl, not so much. But Waaboo is adamant that the lost soul is neither of those girls. So, of course, the powers that be are happy to turn the less headline-grabbing investigation over to the Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police. The supernatural element is subdued, similar to how Tony and then Anne Hillerman treat such matters in the Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series; it’s simply a part of the narrative, and the reader can decide for themselves whether Waaboo’s insights contribute materially to the solving of the case, or are just superstition. It’s a fine line to walk, but Krueger does it rather seamlessly, in my estimation.

Death at the Sanatorium

Icelandic author Ragnar Jónasson can always be counted upon for fast-paced, cleverly plotted mysteries, and his latest, Death at the Sanatorium, is no exception. The 1983 murder of hospital nurse Yrsa was never exactly solved, but when her employer apparently died by suicide shortly afterward, the investigation fizzled out, with most assuming that he had taken his own life in atonement for taking the life of another. Before that happened, the hospital’s caretaker was a prime suspect; he was a strange character, the odd man out in a facility that employed mostly well-educated professional staff. Fast-forward 30-odd years, and a new character is added to the mix: Helgi Reykdal, a master’s degree candidate studying the deaths at the hospital (which was once a sanatorium, hence the title) and the investigation that followed for his thesis. Helgi intends to critique the initial investigation methodology, not reopen the case. He’s under pressure both from his partner and his potential employer to accept a position with the Reykjavik police, but the more he delves into the 1983 crime, the more Helgi suspects there was some malfeasance at play . . . and some of the players are still alive and influential. Death at the Sanatorium is a solid addition to Jónasson’s already impressive body of work, with a final-pages surprise that I totally did not see coming.

★ Talking to Strangers

This month’s star goes to Fiona Barton’s Talking to Strangers, a police procedural like no police procedural you have ever read. The story centers around two murders in Knapton Wood, England: one well over a decade old, one in the present day. The three protagonists have little in common except for their dogged determination to get at the truth: Lead detective Elise King, who is slowly recovering from breast cancer surgery; Kiki Nunn, a gifted investigative reporter trying to make a name for herself, but stuck in a dead-end gig; and Annie Curtis, the mother of the first murder victim who is seeking answers about her young son’s death and its possible connection to the current case. Barton jumps back and forth, chapter by chapter, among her protagonists, with Elise’s and Annie’s sections recounted in third person, while Kiki’s are told in first. As evidence begins to mount that the latest murder may involve a group of anonymous social media predators, Kiki decides to go undercover to investigate. Not to give too much away, but this decision will be exceptionally costly, even as it brings the case closer to a solution. Elise, Kiki and Annie pursue their separate lines of inquiry, each drawing on information not available to the others, sometimes stepping on one another’s toes along the way, all moving relentlessly toward the deeply satisfying and surprising “Perry Mason Moment” of a denouement.

Plus, the latest from Ann Cleeves, William Kent Krueger and Ragnar Jónasson round out this month’s Whodunit column.
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Charlotte Vassell’s mysteries are served with a side of ruthless class satire

Feature by Bruce Tierney

★ Death on the Tiber

In 2013, Lindsey Davis, the author of the Marcus Didius Falco mysteries set in ancient Rome, embarked on a new series featuring Falco’s daughter, Flavia Albia, who learned the sleuthing craft at her father’s knee. In the 11 years since, Davis released the same number of well-crafted puzzlers, but her 12th installment, Death on the Tiber, represents a series high mark. As the story opens, the body of a woman is discovered floating in the Tiber River, setting off a gang war the likes of which Rome has not seen in quite some time. The victim was a British woman named Claudia Deiana, who had traveled to Rome in search of the man she believed to be her husband, Gaius Florius Oppicus, a previously exiled Roman mobster who has ostensibly returned to the fold, eager to resume his nefarious activities. Flavia is intrigued by Claudia and the manner of her death, and worms her way into the official inquiry—albeit quite unofficially. There is no dearth of suspects: the anonymous but exceptionally effective assassin from a rival gang; Florius Oppicus’ actual wife in Rome, or someone doing her bidding; and any number of opportunists looking to sow some chaos in the underworld. This is easily the most entertaining of the series to date. Flavia Albia is smart, independent, snarky and brutally funny, while the supporting characters are eminently relatable. Pro Tip: Davis begins the book with a list of characters, major and minor. Don’t gloss over it. It is very helpful for keeping the many characters straight; it’s also absolutely hilarious.

★ The Lost Coast

Clan Kellerman, I gotta say wow, just wow: I cannot recall another family of novelists quite so prolific and uniformly excellent. The Lost Coast, the fourth collaboration between pere et fils Jonathan and Jesse, finds PI Clay Edison conducting a routine investigation into the assets of the recently deceased Marisol Salvador. It does not stay that way long, as each newly unearthed discovery leads Clay deeper into the rabbit hole as he uncovers a series of cons that date back decades and continue, unabated, to the present day. His client bails upon seeing the complexity of the situation—and realizing the unlikelihood of a satisfactory resolution to the case—but Clay is intrigued and carries on pro bono. He journeys north to a mysterious California seaside community called Swann’s Flat, which is anything but flat: It’s borderline inaccessible even by four-wheel-drive. The residents are an odd lot; there are only 13 of them, and all but three or four are trouble waiting to happen. Problem is, neither Clay nor the reader can readily identify who falls into which camp. Clay eventually enlists the aid of Regina Klein, a PI who had once been involved in a peripheral part of the case, and who shares his curiosity. (An aside: I hope we see her again; she is potential series-star material.) Of all the Clay Edison books, this one is easily the most suspenseful—don’t miss it.

★ Murder at the White Palace

One of the more unusual professions for a mystery protagonist has to be running a lonely hearts club, but that is basically the job held by Gwen Bainbridge and Iris Sparks, the amateur but very talented sleuths of Allison Montclair’s Murder at the White Palace. The milieu is postwar London, circa 1947, and the holiday season is coming up. The pair decide to throw a New Year’s Eve party, but the venue situation is grim: All the large halls that survived the Blitz are booked solid. Iris, however, has connections; Her gangster boyfriend, Archie Spelling, owns a nightclub that, with any luck, will be renovated in time for their New Year’s bash. But repairs on a war-damaged wall unearth (or rather, “unbrick”) a dead body. Turns out the dead man was one of a group of suspects in a major crime against the mob, and although it happened before the war, there are those who would still like some answers as to where the swag from that crime ended up.  And others would equally like to keep that answer buried deep in the past. Which faction will outmaneuver the other, and how many people will die in the process? This is a terrific series, one that rockets to the top of my reading list whenever a new installment arrives, and Murder at the White Palace continues that tradition in fine fettle.

★ The In Crowd

Floating bodies seem to be a running theme this month, first in the Tiber, and now in the Thames in Charlotte Vassell’s police procedural thriller The In Crowd. This body, discovered by a rowing team out for their weekend exercise, is that of Lynne Rodgers, a suspect in an unsolved £10,000,000 embezzlement case. Fastidious DI Caius Beauchamp (pronounced the French way, “Bo-shom,” never “Beecham”) gets tapped by a prominent politician to take point on the investigation, although it is unclear what the politician’s motivation may be. Meanwhile, across town, an attractive young milliner named Callie is helping out with preparations for her friend’s high-society wedding. That she will meet Caius will come as no surprise to anyone who ever reads mysteries, but the interplay between the two moves the narrative forward in unexpected ways. Vassell skewers the ruling class and their pretensions exceptionally well, and you will cheer every time one of them receives their comeuppance. There is comedy, there is suspense and the dialogue is witty and incisive. And I didn’t guess the ending, always a plus for me.

Plus, standout new titles from Lindsey Davis, Allison Montclair and Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman in this month's Whodunit column.
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Meet the beyond-cool Japanese writer you’ve never heard of

Feature by Bruce Tierney

A Refiner’s Fire

Hard to believe though it may be, Commissario Guido Brunetti has survived 32 hair-raising adventures thus far, and is back for number 33 in Donna Leon’s sophisticated police procedural series set in Venice, Italy. As A Refiner’s Fire opens, members of two rival gangs have been herded into the police station following a late-night dust-up in a town square. One by one, the parents of the teenagers pick up their unruly offspring until only one boy is left. Orlando Monforte explains to Commissario Claudia Griffoni that his father never answers his phone when sleeping. In the interest of expediency, Griffoni decides to accompany the boy home; it is a decision that will come back to bite her. Meanwhile, Brunetti has been tasked with the vetting of one Dario Monforte, a onetime hero of the Carabinieri, the Italian military police, and, coincidentally, the father of the aforementioned Orlando. As his investigation proceeds, Brunetti is troubled by the ambiguities of Monforte’s supposed heroism, most particularly by the fact that he never received any sort of medal or commendation, seemingly because he was under investigation for antiquities theft. Tangentially, Brunetti’s friend and co-worker Enzo Bocchese, a collector of antiquities, is badly beaten and his collection is vandalized, likely by a particularly nasty gang member who lives in his building. The cases begin to dovetail as Brunetti and Griffoni uncover disturbing connections to the highest levels of the government. The grand finale is truly inspired, explosive in every sense of the word and perhaps the best of Leon’s long career. 

★ The Night of Baba Yaga

The Night of Baba Yaga, the English language debut of Japanese writer Akira Otani, features all the elements you could hope for from a crime thriller set in the Land of the Rising Sun: a heroine spiritually descended from samurai stock; two pairs of lovers on the run; a beautiful and spoiled young woman treated like a hothouse flower by her doting father; and a yakuza presence that is gloriously, gratuitously violent, well beyond the traditional chopping off of a pinky finger for perceived insubordination. Both the dialogue and the prose, translated by Sam Bett, are staccato and to the point; there are no wasted words. In that regard, the story is very akin to Japanese illustrated novels (only without the illustrations, which would almost certainly be too graphic for Western sensibilities). Baba Yaga, for those of you unfamiliar with her, is a legendary Russian witch who lives in the forest, in a house built on gigantic chicken legs that would raise and lower upon her command. She is noted for her cruelty, her rather bizarre sense of humor and her occasional kindness to those who are pure of heart, few though they may be. She figures strongly in Otani’s narrative, which is nicely done, indeed.

Think Twice

When the feds pay a visit to sports agent Myron Bolitar, he is more than a little surprised by the reason: They want to know the whereabouts of Myron’s nemesis-turned-friend, former basketball star Greg Downing. Problem is, Greg Downing has been dead for three years; Myron delivered the eulogy. The second problem is that Downing’s DNA has been found under the fingernails of someone who was just murdered, so now Myron is a person of interest in the investigation. Think Twice is the 12th installment of Harlan Coben’s popular series featuring Myron and his uber-wealthy and mysterious sidekick, Windsor Horne Lockwood III (aka “Win”), and the mystery is much more than a possible case of a faked death. The authorities suspect that the recent murder was but one of a series of homicides all perpetrated by the same person, a serial killer who then artfully and seamlessly framed someone close to the victim. The difference with this latest case is that the perp apparently got a bit sloppy and left DNA at the scene: Greg Downing’s DNA. And now the FBI is closing in on Downing (who may indeed be dead) and his known associates. First-person accounts by the as-yet-unidentified murderer appear here and there throughout the narrative, with “How I did it” details that are both inventive and jarring. Cool story, cool characters, tasty twist ending. What’s not to like?

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Anyone who ever had issues with a controlling and overprotective mother will empathize with Cleo, and anyone who ever had issues with a rebellious teenage daughter will certainly empathize with Cleo’s mother, Kat. But their fraught relationship is about to change in ways neither could predict, within pages of the opening of Kimberly McCreight’s new thriller, Like Mother, Like Daughter. It’s been a while since they met; they’re not exactly estranged, but are nonetheless distant. Kat has extended an olive branch, however, in the form of a homemade dinner and a promise not to be contentious. But when Cleo arrives, Kat is nowhere to be found. Food is burning on the stovetop and in the oven, and a bloody canvas shoe suggests foul play of some sort. Chapters alternate between Kat’s and Cleo’s perspectives, sometimes in flashback to each of their childhoods, but more often cutting back to the week leading up to Cleo’s discovery that her mom has gone missing, and then moving through the investigation. We learn that Kat’s law firm job was quite a bit more convoluted than she lets on, that Cleo was a part-time drug courier, that several million dollars have mysteriously gone missing from Kat’s bank account, and that Cleo’s exceptionally bad choices in lovers threaten to bring things to a very unpleasant denouement. And we also learn that Kat’s rigidity has at times been tempered by a dangerous rebellious streak, while Cleo’s fierce individuality can be overshadowed by an equally fierce protective urge, given the right circumstances. Like Mother, Like Daughter is intense, thought-provoking and completely unputdownable.

Akira Otani makes her English language debut with The Night of Baba Yaga, plus the latest from Donna Leon and Harlan Coben in this month’s Whodunit column.
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Walter Mosley is still doing it better than almost anyone else

Feature by Bruce Tierney

The Last Murder at the End of the World

In Stuart Turton’s post-apocalyptic thriller, The Last Murder at the End of the World, the world as we know it came to a cataclysmic end some 90 years back, when a malevolent insect-infested fog engulfed the globe, killing everything in its amorphous path. Only a handful of survivors on a remote Greek island are still alive. The leader of the island is an older (17 decades’ worth of older) woman named Niema, who developed the means to keep the fog at bay, albeit too late for everyone in the world save for the island’s 122 villagers and two of her fellow scientists. And there they sit, living out the peaceful existence that somehow eluded humanity in all the millennia leading up to the end times. But there is trouble in paradise, as the narrator (a disembodied female voice eerily reminiscent of HAL the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey) lets the reader know from early on. The unthinkable is about to happen on the island—a murder, the resolution of which is key to saving the island from the fog, which has begun to penetrate the defenses that Niema set up all those years ago. If you like some sci-fi with your murder, or conversely, some murder with your sci-fi, you have come to the right place. It’s a locked-room mystery expanded to island-sized dimensions, with a narrator who may be putting a finger on the scale that will determine the continuing existence of humankind: Y’all ain’t seen nothin’ like this before.

The Last Note of Warning

Call it the Jazz Age, the Prohibition era, the Roaring ’20s; whatever you call it, it’s Vivian Kelly’s golden ticket to the naughtiness and revelry denied by her strict Irish upbringing before she emigrated to America. Her venue of choice is the Nightingale speak-easy, where she works pouring drinks for the high society clientele. The Last Note of Warning marks Vivian’s third appearance in Katharine Schellman’s popular series, in which atmosphere doubles as a character and murder abounds. This time out, the murder hits rather closer to home: The prime suspect is none other than Vivian Kelly herself, the damning evidence being wealthy businessman Buchanan’s dried blood on her hands. Luckily for her, some well-placed friends come to her rescue, but the best deal they can broker puts Vivian in the unenviable position of having to serve up the real killer within seven days’ time. The mystery grows, um, mysteriouser when Vivian starts to suspect that someone intentionally framed her for Buchanan’s death. And heaven knows there is no shortage of shady types hanging around the Nightingale. The characters are colorful, the story is deliciously well-spun and the ambiance will make you wish that you too had been a-struttin’ in the Jazz Age.

★ When We Were Silent

Auspicious debut alert: Fiona McPhillips’ When We Were Silent is the strongest first novel I have read in ages, right up there with Attica Locke’s Black Water Rising, my go-to example of first-timer excellence. If you attend Dublin’s prestigious Highfield Manor private school, the first thing you learn is “What happens at Highfield stays at Highfield,” even if it involves episodes that border on the unspeakable. Louise Manson is haunted by one such episode, even though it’s been nearly 40 years since her time at the school. By most measures, she didn’t really belong at Highfield. She was working class, inhabiting the same hallowed halls as the elite by virtue of a scholarship, not old money and familial connections. And she was not there for the prestige: She was there to exact revenge for her best friend’s suicide and to take down those she deemed responsible. Not to give away anything here, but this endeavor did not go too well. Spectacularly badly, in fact, and decades later Louise is still dealing with the fallout. But now in the modern day, thanks in part to that unwritten Highfield code of silence, she may have a second chance at retribution—or she may face fallout that far surpasses that first time around. When We Were Silent is not always a comfortable read, but you didn’t come here for comfortable, did you?

Farewell, Amethystine

Easy Rawlins is 50?? How the hell did that happen? When we think of him, we think of a young Denzel Washington from the film Devil in a Blue Dress, adapted from the book that introduced Walter Mosley’s iconic private investigator to the world way back in 1990. But hey, even Denzel is past 50 now. As Farewell, Amethystine opens, the 50-year-old Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins of 1970 is, by comparison to his younger days at least, less the firebrand and more the respectable businessman. That said, when a gorgeous young Black woman with a sad story enters his office, an event that has taken place with some regularity over the years, he can still be coaxed into action, and it is a fair bet that he will acquit himself much as he did in his younger days. Amethystine Stoller is missing one husband, and she appears convinced that Easy Rawlins is the go-to guy to find him. Which, of course, he does in short order, but the husband is sadly quite dead. Normally, Easy would tap his cop buddy, Melvin Suggs, to give him a hand with the parts of an investigation that only the police have access to. But at the moment, Suggs is in the wind with problems of his own. Do those problems include another beautiful woman? Well, yes. And will those disparate story lines have some points of connection? Seems likely. And will Mosley wrap it all up better than pretty much anyone else in the field? A resounding yes on that.

The iconic author’s latest Easy Rawlins mystery is another winner, plus our mystery columnist crowns the best new thriller writer since Attica Locke.
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Kellye Garrett’s thriller is coming for true crime fans’ throats

Feature by Bruce Tierney

Missing White Woman

Kellye Garrett’s stark Missing White Woman offers a Black woman’s perspective on the investigation of, and public reaction to, the disappearance and subsequent murder of a white woman. Jersey City, New Jersey, may not sound like a dream destination for a romantic weekend with your sweetheart, but it does serve up some lovely views of the Manhattan skyline after dark. At first, it is idyllic for Breanna Wright and her boyfriend, Tyler Franklin, offering Bree a break from her humdrum daily life in Baltimore. And then on the last day, the idyll is totally ruined: Bree pads downstairs and finds the bloodied, badly battered and quite dead body of a blond white woman, and Tyler is nowhere to be found. Then the investigation begins, recounted to us by Bree, and it becomes painfully clear that a) the attention and dedication put in to solving the disappearance and subsequent murder of a white woman is quite intensive, much more so than if the victim had been Black, and b) when there are Black people central to—or even peripheral to—the investigation, they receive a lot more unwanted attention from the police than white people. Clear-headed and opinionated, Breanna is a compelling guide through the morass. The troubling, eye-opening but still highly entertaining Missing White Woman would be a superb choice for a book club, guaranteed to stimulate lively discussion among the participants.

★ Death and Glory

One would not necessarily expect a detective novel set in 1894 London to be concerned with unfinished business regarding the U.S. Civil War, a conflict that had been over for the better part of 30 years. But author Will Thomas does not let any of that stand in his way in his latest historical mystery, Death and Glory. Private enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn have been called in by Scotland Yard and the crown. Their assignment? Arrange face time with the prime minister and four former Confederate leaders. Elements of the Confederacy are still alive and well in Central America, itching for a chance to rewrite history, and the four representatives hope to hold the prime minister to a past promise. In the closing months of the war, the Confederacy ordered and paid for an ironclad warship along the lines of the Merrimack and the Monitor; Great Britain was officially neutral, so it presented no diplomatic problems to take the order. However, the war drew to a close before delivery could be made. Now these so-called envoys must be dealt with in some form or fashion—a task riddled with pitfalls, some of which are deadly and not the least of which is determining if they truly are who they say they are. Fans of Thomas’ depiction of Victorian-era London and his delightful use of surprising, off-the-wall cameos by historical figures will have their expectations repeatedly exceeded.

★ Lost Birds

Anne Hillerman took over the Leaphorn & Chee mystery series after the death of her father, renowned Western author Tony Hillerman. The title of her latest, Lost Birds, refers to hundreds of Native American children who, under the midcentury Indian Adoption Project, were adopted by white families and separated from their tribal communities and heritage. Retired Navajo Tribal Police Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, now a private investigator when the mood strikes him, has been retained to find the family and birth identity of a woman who possesses nothing more in the way of clues than an old photo of a Southwestern rock formation and a hand-woven baby blanket. (Note: Have a box of tissues ready. Seriously.) Meanwhile, married Navajo cops Jim Chee and Bernadette “Bernie” Manuelito pursue an investigation of their own: a huge explosion at a school and the concurrent disappearance of its caretaker, a longtime acquaintance of Leaphorn. Subplots abound, weaving the main characters together and displaying their near-supernatural bonds with one another, with their Navajo Nation home and with their history. Hillerman has shown endless respect for the work of her father in her writing, but also brings a female perspective to the stories, featuring Bernie more prominently and offering a look at the issues facing Native American women today. Tony’s legacy is in safe, loving hands.

★ Death of a Master Chef

Police Commissaire Georges Dupin returns in Jean-Luc Bannalec’s latest mystery, Death of a Master Chef. Dupin is visiting the Breton port town of Saint-Malo to attend an meeting about advancing cooperation among various local police forces (yawn). In a local food market where Dupin is judiciously sampling the wares, a murder takes place virtually right under the commissaire’s nez. Although he gives chase, he quickly loses sight of the suspect. But no matter; everyone knows that the murder victim was well-known chef Blanche Trouin, and everyone also knows that the killer was Lucille Trouin, Blanche’s sister and a famed chef in her own right. The pair had long stoked the fire of the longest running sister-feud since Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland. This will not be the last murder: The victim’s husband meets his untimely demise soon after, followed in short order by a close friend. The case(s) will give the various Breton police departments a textbook opportunity to test out their skills at working together—let’s just say that Commissaire Dupin is not best pleased about that element of the investigation. French mysteries are like French cars (I know this from experience via my elderly but well-loved Peugeot convertible), cushy and tres confortable, a bit slow from a standing start, charmingly quirky. With Death of a Master Chef, Bannalec delivers on all counts.

A Black woman discovers the internet’s latest obsession dead in her vacation home in Missing White Woman. Plus, excellent new entries from Will Thomas, Anne Hillerman and Jean-Luc Bannalec in this month’s Whodunit column.
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Nova Jacobs returns with another brainy, brilliant murder mystery

Feature by Bruce Tierney

The Mystery Writer

I tend to be skeptical of conspiracy theorists—wait, let me rephrase that: I think most conspiracy theorists are bat-guano-crazy, howl-at-the-moon wingnuts. So it was with some trepidation that I embarked on the reading of Sulari Gentill’s The Mystery Writer. One of the main characters is a dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist caught up in an online matrix of resistance, revolution and heaven knows what else, who is led by a character named Primus, who for all we know may be a 42-year-old who still lives in his mom’s basement. Rent free. But let’s put that aside for a moment, and focus on the protagonist, Theodosia “Theo” Benton. Theo has made her way from Tasmania to her brother’s house in Kansas in hopes of becoming a writer. Against all odds, she befriends her literary idol in a local coffee shop, published author Dan Murdoch, whose presence in the corporeal world is, unbeknownst to him, racing toward a violent close. Oh, also, he may have been the aforementioned Primus. Or not. Conspiracy theories are notoriously flexible that way. But when Theo begins to look into the death of her friend/mentor, she will be forced to come to terms with the real-world consequences of internet rants. Gentill’s follow-up to The Woman in the Library is an original and entertaining read with likable characters (even some of the wingnuts), although it may put me off Kansas for a while.

The Stars Turned Inside Out

It’s been six years since author Nova Jacobs’ debut, The Last Equation of Isaac Severy, hit the bookstands, garnering an Edgar Award nomination for best American debut. And then we waited, and waited some more. I am quite happy to report that her second novel, The Stars Turned Inside Out, is well worth the intermission. Deep underground, in a secret location somewhere outside Geneva, the Large Hadron Collider goes about its business of smashing subatomic particles, allowing scientists to conduct all manner of experiments regarding the nature of the universe. When the body of physicist Howard Anderby is found in one of the tunnels, having apparently been exposed to lethal levels of radiation, security consultant Sabine Leroux is called in to determine the cause. Her investigation unearths several troubling situations that lend credence to the idea that Anderby’s death was not accidental. Sabine conducts interviews with other physicists and staff on-site, volleying scientific jargon back and forth, but it is all clearly explained, never overwhelming and will engender curiosity in the non-scientist reader. In Jacobs’ first book, the murder mystery was overlaid with mathematics; in this book, the murder mystery is overlaid with physics. I live in hope that the next one will feature chemistry or biology, and that I can further my education while doing what I enjoy—reading murder mysteries. 

★ Cast a Cold Eye

If violence is your cuppa oolong, look no further than Cast a Cold Eye, installment two of Robbie Morrison’s Depression-era, Scotland-set Jimmy Dreghorn series. His first, Edge of the Grave, won the 2021 Bloody Scotland Debut Prize for Crime Novel of the Year and I wouldn’t be surprised if the sequel carries on in that grand tradition. Violent crime in 1930s Glasgow tends to be domestic abuse or the result of gang-related scuffles, with fists, knives or razors as the weapons of choice. So when a boatman is executed with a single bullet to the back of the head, it is a shock. Inspector Jimmy Dreghorn and his sidekick, “Bonnie” Archie McDaid, get the case. The pair is awash in contrasts: Dreghorn is complex and unlucky in love, a John Rebus-like character out of place in the era; McDaid is a onetime Olympian wrestler who employs his martial arts skills to great advantage, often with humor that will be appreciated by readers, if not by his opponents. Morrison paints the Glasgow milieu in somber shades of gray and brown, often water-streaked and more than occasionally blood-streaked as well. The dialog is spot on, which is to say that there is a good case to be made for having a Scots-English dictionary near at hand. If you’re here for the action, the history, the brothers-in-arms camaraderie and a cracking good story, you’ve come to the right place, laddie.

Pay Dirt

V.I. Warshawski returns for her 22nd adventure in Sara Paretsky’s latest mystery, Pay Dirt. In this installment, the PI is not in her usual digs in Chicago, but rather in Lawrence, Kansas. That will not keep her out of trouble, though; she manages to find that pretty much anywhere. This time it’s in the form of Sabrina Granev, a teenage soccer player barely clinging to life after being found in a drug house, and a second woman who was not so lucky—found dead in the same house a few days later. The mystery explores financial greed; closely held family businesses; the mutual back-scratching of corporate interests, politicians, law enforcement officials and jurists; and a bunch of ripped-from-the-headlines points of contention: critical race theory (and ongoing racism in general), the specter of reparations, conspiracy theories, “wokeness” and more. And of course there are a couple of murders, and if the bad guys have their way, they will add Warshawski to that (growing) list. Warshawski remains in top form as she ages; battered some by life, perhaps a bit more acerbic and wryly cynical, but still a keen observer and first-person chronicler. As was the case with the 21 volumes that preceded it, Pay Dirt is unputdownable, a worthy addition to one of the finest series in modern suspense fiction.

Plus, the latest whodunits from Sulari Gentill, Robbie Morrison and Sara Paretsky round out a great month in suspense fiction.
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Spain’s answer to Lisbeth Salander is back

Feature by Bruce Tierney

The Boy Who Cried Bear

Building on the success of her Rockton series, Kelley Armstrong’s Haven’s Rock series is about a secret town in Canada’s Yukon wilderness, where people fleeing a dangerous situation can hide safely in the company of other, similarly afflicted residents. Think of it as a private witness protection program, with security provided by remoteness rather than hiding in plain sight. The latest installment, The Boy Who Cried Bear, has an absolute doozy of a setup. As you’d expect from the title, one of the residents, a preteen boy, sees a bear while on a hike. Or perhaps a yeti. Or perhaps it is just a tall tale, because he swears the bear had human eyes. But when the boy disappears into the forest, and bear fur is found near where he went missing, the search becomes a race against time to find him before the cold and the wildlife finish him off. His mother remains unconvinced.. She knows her son would not go off into the forest on his own, and she strongly suspects that one of the other members of the community is a pedophile. The truth of the matter is slightly more complicated. OK, a lot more complicated. And dangerous enough that a couple of folks will die violently before it becomes evident.

Hard Girls

J. Robert Lennon’s thriller, Hard Girls, is the story of Jane and Lila Pool, a pair of twins dealt a bad hand in life early on. When they were youngsters, their mother left one day and never came back. There were rumors about her departure, perhaps a clandestine lover or something altogether darker. Their distracted professor father didn’t keep much of a rein on them after that, and in fact paid them as little attention as possible. It wasn’t abuse, exactly, but it was certainly benign neglect. And as is often the case with twins, Jane and Lila were competitors as well as sibs, further egging each other on with each passing year, until one night a series of escalating events culminated in homicide. Justifiable? Arguably, but the actions they took after the fact muddied those waters significantly. They parted company with some recriminations, but with little choice in the matter. And so they remained for quite some time until out of the blue, their missing mother reappears in their lives, leading them on a merry chase across the continent and deep into Central America. I am just scratching the surface here: There are CIA-related complications, deadly expats, car chases, first-rate skulduggery and the weirdly resilient family ties that bind. All in all, Hard Girls is an original, multilayered and quite engrossing thriller.

★ Little Underworld

You could make a case for the prosecution that PI Jim Beely doesn’t mean to murder Vern Meyer in the opening scene of Chris Harding Thornton’s Little Underworld. It would be a hard sell, though, as Meyer molested Beely’s 14-year-old daughter, and Beely does, after all, hold Meyer’s head underwater rather longer than the world record for holding one’s breath. He thinks long and hard about how to dispose of the remains, and finally throws the body into the backseat of his car and heads back to town, with a plan to meet his undertaker friend who, for a fee, will help him dispose of the evidence. There he happens upon crooked cop Frank Tvrdik, who greets him with “Hate to break it to you—You got a dead guy in your backseat.” But Frank doesn’t much care about the body, except perhaps as leverage to get Beely’s help in taking down a corrupt politician. And nobody cares that the politician is corrupt, except that his corruption seems to be getting in the way of their corruption, and that cannot be allowed. Little Underworld is set in 1930s Omaha (of all places), with period-correct dialogue that is often darkly hilarious, reminiscent in tone of black-and-white gumshoe movies from the golden age of Hollywood. 

★ Black Wolf

The big news in mystery circles these days is Juan Gómez-Jurado’s Antonia Scott series, which has sold like panqueques (hotcakes) in its home country of Spain. Volume two of the trilogy, Black Wolf, has just been released. The temptation is strong to compare central character Antonia Scott to Stieg Larsson’s antihero Lisbeth Salander, but a) that has been done already by pretty much every reviewer up to now, and b) I think a much more apt comparison is to Keigo Higashino’s uber-talented police consultant Dr. Manabu Yukawa, aka Detective Galileo. Both Scott and Yukawa visualize connections that others miss, and both are in high demand with the police for their brainiac skills. Scott’s police contact is Jon Gutiérrez, a strong but slightly less than graceful gay man from the Basque Country. While Gutiérrez is trying (and failing) to fish a dead body out of a river in Madrid, a mafia figure is murdered in his home a half-day’s drive away on the south coast. The man’s wife is targeted as well, but she escapes, albeit barely. In hot pursuit is an assassin known as the Black Wolf (in Spanish, la loba negra). It falls to Antonia and Jon to track her down before the killer locates her. There is one area in which a comparison to Larsson is warranted: The Antonia Scott series is hands-down the best suspense trilogy to come along since Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy. Nothing else even comes close. The third one needs to arrive soon—make it so.

Our mystery columnist hails Juan Gómez-Jurado’s Antonia Scott novels as the best suspense series since Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy.
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Edith Wharton: Pulitzer Prize-winning author—and detective?

Feature by Bruce Tierney

The Clinic

Celebrities in rehab: Newsworthy, if not especially surprising. Celebrities dying in rehab: front page, above the fold for at least a day, maybe even a week. But what about celebrities murdered in rehab? That’s the “what if” at the center of Cate Quinn’s deft new thriller, The Clinic. Let’s start with The Clinic itself, which is easily the creepiest setting for a suspense novel since the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s The Shining. The luxurious rehab center is set atop a remote oceanside cliff somewhere along the Oregon coast, awash in salt mist and mystery. When pop star Haley Banks dies of a heroin overdose at the facility, her sister, Meg, doesn’t believe the official story. Meg is a casino cop of sorts and, after some soul-searching, decides to launch an investigation of her sister’s death by posing as a patient seeking treatment. This will not be much of a stretch for Meg, as she is addicted to both alcohol and Oxycontin. If she is wrong about Haley’s death, she may get clean; if she is right, she may get killed. The story is told in the first-person perspectives of two different narrators: the aforementioned Meg and Cara, the manager of The Clinic. As they alternate chapters, Quinn tightly ratchets up the suspense. And the big reveal? I never saw it coming.

The Wharton Plot

Before starting Mariah Fredericks’ The Wharton Plot, I decided to read up a bit on Edith Wharton. I knew she had been the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her 1920 novel The Age of Innocence. Still, I had essentially written her off as the poor man’s Dorothy Parker, sharp of tongue but lacking in humor. But The Wharton Plot showed me how very wrong I was. Fredericks’ mystery reads like a story from an earlier time, as it should. It conjures up the ghosts of American aristocracy in much the same manner as an F. Scott Fitzgerald or a Nathanael West novel, and is filled with historical figures such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and his extended family, and muckraking writer David Graham Phillips, whose real-life murder is investigated by Wharton in the novel. It may take a chapter or two to settle into the narrative, which is written a la one of Wharton’s own novels, but once that hurdle is cleared, the book is simply unputdownable. And as with a healthy meal, at the end you feel a sense of accomplishment, as you have done something good for yourself.

The Busy Body

It is, I think, not the easiest thing for a man to write a story from the perspective of a woman. That said, author Kemper Donovan has done that so well in his fun and entertaining mystery The Busy Body that I was totally convinced he was a woman until I read his bio. (I get it that as a male reviewer, I am not the definitive authority on the accuracy of his portrayal, so I will simply say that I never questioned it. Not even once.) The story begins with Dorothy Gibson, a former senator who has arranged for a ghostwriter to pen her autobiography. While they are together at Dorothy’s home in Maine, a neighbor dies under mysterious circumstances, and the politician and her ghostwriter (who is an engaging and offbeat character, even though she is never given a name) launch an amateur investigation into the death. There are overtones of Agatha Christie and Knives Out, both in the unlikeliness of the mystery and the cleverness of its solution. This is, I guess, no surprise as Donovan hosts the podcast “All About Agatha.”

The Ghost Orchid

Psychologist Alex Delaware is back, along with his sidekick, Los Angeles cop Milo Sturgis. Their arrangement is somewhat odd in that it is exactly the opposite of the typical setup in which a cop is the central character and a specialist serves as foil for the heroics. But boy, does it ever work. Author Jonathan Kellerman has created one of the most enduring and acclaimed series in suspense fiction, the latest installment of which is The Ghost Orchid. The tony LA enclave of Bel Air provides the setting for the story, which begins with the murder of Gio Aggiunta, a wealthy Italian high-society ne’er-do-well, and Meagin March, his older—and married—mistress. Both have been shot, and the police cannot determine whether one was the primary target, or if it was just a burglary gone wrong. Nothing seems to be missing, so initially they fixate on March’s husband, a multimillionaire investor, because hey, it’s always the husband, right? But as it turns out, Gio has been the “correspondent” in several affairs with married women, which raises the question: If it is the husband, which husband? Kellerman’s prose is fast-paced without being in any way hurried or abrupt, and Delaware and Sturgis play off one another exceptionally well. The characters are as comfortable as old slippers, fictional friends whose company and adventures readers have enjoyed for decades. The Ghost Orchid is another excellent addition to a series full of excellent editions.

Mariah Fredericks’ new historical mystery turns the magisterial author into a gumshoe and the latest Alex Delaware novel wows our mystery columnist.
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When a woman loses her memory, her twin sister is the only person she can trust—or can she?

Feature by Bruce Tierney

★ Ilium

As Lea Carpenter’s Ilium opens, the unnamed narrator feels not unlike an actor in a play: “I had no sense of what scene would come next, but as each scene evolved, I could start to see the way I would handle it. . . . It never occurred to me that the life you have is only in part the life you choose, because the moment you start to think you know what’s coming next, that’s when lightning strikes, shatters those windows, and rain starts to pool on the floor.” This is a heavy thought for a 21-year-old who has just wed a man 33 years her senior, and she will come to find out it is deeply portentous. Her new husband is a man of many secrets, not the least of which is that he is grooming her for a major role in a joint CIA-Mossad operation, a task she had been chosen for well before their “chance” meeting and subsequent engagement and marriage. All that said, Ilium is not merely an espionage novel, although there is a certain amount of subterfuge, to be sure. It is rather a story of relationships in which the good guys are neither especially good nor especially bad, and pretty much the same can be said for the bad guys. Ferreting out the truth of who someone truly is must be secondary to achieving the operation’s desired outcomes, and “therein,” noted the Bard, “lies the rub.” Ilium is a masterful literary novel posing as a spy novel, and succeeds brilliantly on both levels.

Northwoods

There’s precious little bucolic woodland ambience to be found in Northwoods, Amy Pease’s debut mystery set in Shaky Lake, a resort town in northern Wisconsin. Sheriff’s Deputy Eli North is plagued by a host of debilitating issues that date back to his military service in Afghanistan. He is about as beaten down as a man can be, yet he still possesses some sparks that make the reader root for him. As the tale begins, Eli is well on his way toward being drunk. He receives a call about a noise disturbance at a lakeside cabin and stumbles (almost literally) upon the lifeless body of a teenage boy. Murder is somewhat outside the purview of a rural sheriff’s department, so when it is discovered that a teenage girl has gone missing as well, the sheriff—who just so happens to be Eli’s mother—calls in the FBI to investigate. The winding road to the crime’s solution involves everyone’s favorite boogeyman, Big Pharma, and touches on the tension between townies and wealthy “summer people.” I strongly hope that Eli will be afforded a sequel or 10, and that he will find his way back to something resembling a normal life.

Two Dead Wives

It is unsurprising, I suppose, that a spate of recent crime novels have been set during the first COVID-19 lockdown. You would think that time would be the perfect milieu for a locked-room mystery, but Adele Parks’ Two Dead Wives is anything but. Once upon a time, there was a woman named Kylie Gillingham. Somewhere along the way, she took on two identities—one named Kai, one named Leigh (Ky-Lie, get it?)—married two different men and lived two separate lives. Now, she has been missing for two weeks. Statistically, that suggests she is dead, and conventional wisdom pegs the husband as the likely perpetrator. But which husband? One is currently in lockdown in his London apartment, and the other has done a runner to his native Netherlands. Meanwhile, a separate narrative unfolds about a woman named Stacie Jones, who is recovering at her dad’s seaside cottage after surgery to remove a brain tumor. She has lost a lot of her memory post-operation and, naturally, that suggests that a key to an important lock or two is buried somewhere in her mind. The investigators—one by the book, the other impetuous—play off one another well, and the two-pronged storyline is bound to engage fans of twisty thrillers and police procedurals alike.

★ Where You End

Where You End, Abbott Kahler’s debut novel, reads like the work of a seasoned writer. There is a reason for this: She has published a number of works of historical nonfiction as Karen Abbott, and boasts an Edgar Award nomination for Best Fact Crime for The Ghosts of Eden Park. As her first thriller begins, Katherine “Kat” Bird is not at all sitting in the catbird seat. She barely survived a car accident a couple of weeks back, and her memory has virtually been erased. She can form sentences and understand when people talk to her, but the only person she recognizes is her twin sister, Jude. Jude is Kat’s mirror twin—she parts her hair on the other side from Kat; her dimple shows up in the opposite cheek when she smiles. Slowly, Jude brings Kat up to date on the events that helped shape their lives for better and for worse: their father’s disappearance when they were young, their mother’s death, their post-high school backpacking trip to Europe. But there are nagging inconsistencies in Jude’s narrative. As Kat learns more about herself and as bits of memory fall into place, she begins to harbor doubts that Jude is being truthful. Couple this with newfound evidence of her own propensity for (and expertise at) violence, and Kat is shaken to her core. However much Kat thinks she knows, however much she is able to relearn, there is one person who knows her better: Jude, for better or worse. Don’t miss this scary, tense and provocative thrill ride!

Abbott Kahler’s debut thriller delights our mystery columnist, plus Lea Carpenter’s latest literary espionage novel impresses.
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A new “eat the rich” mystery has a cast of characters you’ll love to loathe

Feature by Bruce Tierney

The Final Curtain

For those of you who have followed Keigo Higashino’s Kyoichiro Kaga series since its inception, I bear sad tidings: The fourth installment in the series, The Final Curtain is also its last. If you haven’t read the previous three, don’t fret; the author brings you up to speed on everything you need to know in order to fully appreciate Tokyo Police Detective Kyoichiro Kaga’s final case. The story, partly told in flashbacks, explores the possible connections between a pair of present-day murders and the strange disappearance of Kaga’s mother, Yuriko Tajima, who vanished when he was a teenager. Kaga didn’t hear a peep from or about her until he was summoned to pick up her ashes from a club owner who had once employed her. As a longtime police detective, Kaga dislikes unanswered questions by nature, particularly when the questions are ones that have haunted him since childhood. But the mystery of his mother’s disappearance has persisted. Ten years later, however, another woman dies in an eerily similar manner: alone in an apartment, far from home. The narrative is complex and there are many names to keep track of, requiring the full attention of the reader; that said, Higashino has thoughtfully provided a list of characters at the beginning of the book. Japanese police investigations unfold in a rather different way than their counterparts in the West, which adds a layer of novelty for those who aren’t familiar with the series on top of the satisfaction of watching a clever, methodical detective get the job done.

The Fourth Rule

The fourth entry in Jeff Lindsay’s popular Riley Wolfe series, The Fourth Rule finds the thrill-seeking thief considering a heist of epic proportions: stealing the Rosetta stone from the British Museum. Never mind that it weighs the better part of a ton and is likely the most heavily guarded treasure in the U.K. after the crown jewels. This would be an over-the-top caper for even the most cunning James Bond villain, but for Riley, it actually borders on the believable. As he smugly notes early on in the narrative, “It’s just me, alone on top . . . Riley Wolfe, top of the heap, the best there ever was. End of discussion.” Um, hubris much? And we all know what happens to people in the iron grip of hubris. Comeuppance, that’s what happens. The grander the self-aggrandizement, the grander the comeuppance. Despite all this, Riley is something of a realist, mostly obeying the rules—Riley’s Laws—he has set out for his life of crime. Riley’s Fourth Law states: “Even if you’re the best there is, watch your back. Because somebody better is coming.” This rule should probably doubly apply when an attractive stranger enters the picture, but hey, even Achilles had a heel, right? The Fourth Rule offers up a tasty combination plate of humor, deception, suspense and villainy—and that is just on the part of the protagonist. Wait until you meet the villain(s).

Murder Crossed Her Mind

Ace private investigator Lillian Pentecost and her sidekick Willowjean “Will” Parker are back in Stephen Spotswood’s fourth mystery starring the duo, Murder Crossed Her Mind. The year is 1947; the location is New York City. The pair has been hired to look into the disappearance of retiree Vera Bodine, who has embarked on a late-in-life mission to expose Nazis hiding in postwar America, an uncommon and dangerous avocation for an 80-year-old. Bodine is reputed to have a photographic memory, and there are some villainous characters who would like to pick her brain or silence her forever. Perhaps both. Lillian, the senior member of the duo, has been somewhat sidelined by advancing multiple sclerosis, but she is as intuitive (and as crusty) as ever. She may do most of her detecting from an armchair these days, but she’s still very invested in securing the well-being of the heroic yet vulnerable Bodine. Will is the action figure, the Archie Goodwin to Lillian’s Nero Wolfe; like Goodwin, she is the narrator (and also like Goodwin, she’s a smartass). The feel is very much of the period in terms of lexicon, fashion and all the other minutiae that make for authentic storytelling. However, as Will and Lillian are both women and Will is gay, they have different perspectives on life as hard-boiled detectives in the 1940s than their forebears in the genre.  

★ The Other Half

I have long been a fan of English bad-boy writers of the mid-20th century: Kingsley Amis, et al. There is something about the boredom and superficiality of the posh and their hangers-on that appeals to my decidedly middle-class upbringing, and their humo(u)r is of the understated but wickedly delicious variety that I could feast on for hours. Fast forward to 2023, and their spiritual heir—or I should say heiress—is Charlotte Vassell, author of The Other Half, an equal parts modern and traditional English murder mystery chock-full of the rudderless overprivileged, trendy social media influencers and those drawn inexorably to their flame. As the book opens, socialite Rupert Beauchamp is hosting a somewhat ironic 30th birthday party for himself: replete with coke (not of the capital-C variety) and champagne—at McDonald’s. He is about to finish things with his girlfriend, Clemmie, and throw her over in the hopes of winning his longtime inamorata, Nell, who, it must be said, is less than thrilled with that prospect. When Clemmie turns up murdered the following morning, the partygoers comprise the primary suspect pool. Unsurprisingly for regular readers of mystery novels, everyone has an alibi, but trust detective Caius Beauchamp (no relation to Rupert, which becomes something of a running joke) to get to the bottom of things. Blisteringly funny, full of twists and turns, and featuring a cast of characters you will love to loathe, The Other Half deserves to be on your “read now” list.

Plus, the Kyoichiro Kaga series comes to a close and master thief Riley Wolfe tries to steal the Rosetta stone in this month’s Whodunit column.

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