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by Bruce Tierney

Thomas Perry makes his long-awaited return to the acclaimed Butcher's Boy series in this month's Whodunit column.

Snowdrift

Nightmares about the abduction of her childhood best friend, Lollo, have bedeviled police officer Embla Nyström for half of her 28 years. One of those jarring nightmares opens Helene Tursten’s latest thriller, Snowdrift. The dreams always follow the same script: Three shadowy figures huddle over a curled-up Lollo, then one turns and spots Embla, bolts across the room and hisses menacingly, “Say a word to anyone, you’re dead.” Fourteen years pass with no word about Lollo, until Embla gets a phone call from her missing friend. The connection is quickly broken, however, with no further contact. After a fitful night’s sleep, Embla is summoned to the scene of a homicide. The victim turns out to be well known to her: It’s one of the three brothers she believes were responsible for Lollo’s abduction. Embla eagerly embarks on the investigation, though her goal is perhaps not so much to find the killer as to uncover some further trace of Lollo. It soon becomes a case of “be careful what you wish for. . . .” As always in Tursten’s books, the well-drawn characters and first-rate suspense provide fine examples of the dark delights of Scandinavian noir.

The Art of Violence

Cold open: A man walks up to a private investigator, accosts him with a gun and demands that the investigator prove the man’s guilt in a series of murders—not his innocence, note, but his guilt. Unusual request, but it makes some sense. Years back, after being slipped a strong hallucinogen, Sam Tabor killed a woman, stabbing her, by his count, “seven billion times.” Faced with the choice of a temporary insanity plea and an unspecified sentence to psychiatric lockdown, or a defined length of time in the slammer, Sam pleaded guilty and went to jail. Now he’s out, and he’s convinced that he’s killed again. The Art of Violence is the latest in S.J. Rozan’s excellent series featuring PI Bill Smith and his partner, Lydia Chin. I almost don’t want to say more; there are too many nuances and red herrings, and I don’t want to inadvertently give anything away. But here are a couple of freebies: The client is a well-known artist who is often described as “tormented,” the flavor of the month in the fickle Manhattan art milieu. A blackout alcoholic, he doesn’t remember killing anyone, but the crime scene “signature” is eerily evocative of his first crime.

Eddie’s Boy

Thomas Perry’s debut, The Butcher’s Boy, earned him the coveted Edgar Award for Best First Mystery Novel back in 1983. At the time, the book virtually defined a new subgenre of thriller: the “Hired Killer Summoned Out of Retirement by Someone Trying to Kill Him.” Eddie’s Boy, Perry’s latest novel, opens with not one but four would-be assassins trying—and failing miserably—to take out the Butcher’s Boy. Retired, and known these days as Michael Shaeffer, he is still savvy enough to know that if someone sent four trained killers, there will be more in the wings waiting for their turn. So he scoots from England to Australia, but it will not be far enough. Michael has one ace in the hole, though, in the form of a tenuous relationship with a Justice Department official who tips him off to the impending parole of a career criminal who once hired the Butcher’s Boy, then reneged on the payment. Soon afterward, our hero neatly framed him for a murder, watching as the innocent man (well, innocent of this killing at least) was carted off to jail. There’s a lot more backstory and a lot more innovative executions along the way as Michael tries to stop the attempts on his life. A new Butcher’s Boy book arrives only once every decade, if that, and this one is well worth the wait.

★ How to Raise an Elephant

Over the course of its 21-volume run, Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series has become one of the best-loved series in its genre. In some ways it is defined by what is absent: murders or essentially violence of any sort. But the tiny African country of Botswana holds its own in the suspense department, its small mysteries strangely compelling and never descending into treacly sweetness. In this latest outing, How to Raise an Elephant, our intrepid sleuth, Precious Ramotswe, must rescue—no surprise here—a newborn elephant left orphaned by poachers. Said little elephant has a mind of its own, with results both comedic (imagine a 300-pound baby pachyderm rolling around delightedly in the back of a minivan) and tragic, with a look into the cruelty of the ivory poaching trade. There’s also a noisy neighbor who angrily calls her philandering husband an “anteater”; a sketchy relative who will impart a life lesson we can all benefit from; and the ongoing adversarial relationship between Grace and Charlie, the two opinionated employees at Mma Ramotswe’s agency. I have read all of this wonderful series, reviewed most and wholeheartedly look forward to each and every one.

Thomas Perry makes his long-awaited return to the acclaimed Butcher's Boy series in this month's Whodunit column.

Mystery

Mystery

Murders in merry old England

Feature by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

A mystery can unfold anywhere at all, but there’s something about England—with its fascinating history, class divisions, that ever-present fog—that makes it a consistent favorite setting. Two books cover three eras in England between them, and you can be confident that things get dark and stormy throughout.

Moonflower Murders, Anthony Horowitz’s sequel to Magpie Murders, opens with Susan Ryeland living on Crete and running a hotel with boyfriend Andreas, having retired from her career in publishing and with England well behind her. She’s done and happy. Or is she? When a couple visit the hotel and ask her to investigate a disappearance that may be linked to a novel by her old client Alan Conway, she agrees to travel back to England. She needs the money, and the job includes a stay in a much fancier hotel than her own. From there, this nested mystery only gets more twisted.

The neat trick of clues to a current dilemma being salted away in a fictional novel is as delightful here as it was in Magpie Murders. This split narrative keeps the reader hyperalert as they bounce between Susan’s investigation and the Conway mystery that might hold the key to it all. Susan has mixed feelings about Crete, the hotel, maybe even Andreas, and is nostalgic for the world of publishing. Revisiting her old haunts and connecting with friends lifts her spirits, and that high sometimes blinds her to red flags. Alan Conway based the Atticus Pünd mystery in question on the owners and guests at the hotel where Susan is now staying—and where a grisly murder once sent a young employee to prison. His brutal caricatures of an already twisted cast of characters made nearly everyone angry, and Susan makes a handy target for that rage, since her edits to the novel did not soften the blow.

Both stories play dead straight, but there’s glee under the surface in the way Horowitz uses the tropes of modern and cozy mysteries. The pursuit of justice gets rather messy, but in both stories, unraveling means and motives leads to satisfying, highly traditional reveals, one by a seasoned fictional detective, the other by a woman in midlife, weighing her future options.

In Death and the Maiden, Adelia Aguilar, Mistress of the Art of Death, has also comfortably retired and is teaching her daughter, Allie, the trade—a combination of anatomy, forensics, and the subtleties of detection, medieval-style (1191, to be exact). Allie excels at the work and bristles at her parents' pressure to marry. When a family friend becomes ill, she’s honored to be able to help and unaware of a matchmaking scheme that leads her to meet the dashing Lord Peverell. There’s scarcely time for romance, though, as the village is being terrorized by the serial kidnapping and murder of young women. Masterfully written, this series closer is a creepy wonder.

Samantha Norman has finished the series begun by her mother, Ariana Franklin, based on ideas Franklin had laid out prior to her death. The story has some poignant mother-daughter moments that resonate even more powerfully in context. But even beyond that, it’s a stellar bit of storytelling. Allie’s family ties are strong and part of why she’s in no rush to marry. That independence can make her cocky, though, and when she sees evidence on the body of a victim that is disregarded, following the lead means putting herself in danger. The village is having other problems as well: Visiting royalty and religious edicts that won’t allow burials for the dead (who are then left in trees or by the side of the road) give a real sense of the gulf between rich and poor.

While this is a true nail-biter of a mystery, many of its best moments are quiet ones, when characters have a moment alone to talk while waking up in the morning or gathering plants for medicine. Series fans will love this volume even as they grieve Franklin’s passing. Norman has done her mother proud.

A mystery can unfold anywhere at all, but there’s something about England (maybe it's the ever-present fog?). In two books, things get dark and stormy indeed.

Mystery

Mystery

Cozies: January 2021

Feature by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

A priest, a Regency lady and a snippy private investigator are all faced with fiendish puzzles in this month's cozy mystery column.

★ Hope, Faith & a Corpse

Laura Jensen Walker’s Hope, Faith & a Corpse begins a promising new series. Hope Taylor has moved to the quaint town of Apple Springs in Northern California to start over. The young widow is the first female pastor of Faith Chapel Episcopal Church, which not all parishioners are comfortable with. When she finds a widely disliked church elder dead on the grounds, she quickly becomes a suspect. After all, Stanley King had said a woman would preach there over his dead body. Walker makes great use of Hope’s job: Pastors are sworn to confidentiality when people share information, and a gossipy small town has plenty to share. By the end, justice has been served, along with English tea (for which recipes are provided) and several diner meals that are the stuff of dreams. Readers will finish this mystery already hungry for more.

Hot to Trot

If you’re a cozy fan, then you know how often a knitter or bookstore owner stumbles onto a crime and solves it, launching a new side hustle as a sleuth. So the beloved Agatha Raisin is a breath of fresh air simply because she’s an investigator by trade. Hot to Trot finds Agatha fuming as her friend (and ex) Charles Fraith prepares to marry a mean-spirited socialite. When the woman turns up dead, Agatha and Charles are both suspects. Agatha’s creator, M.C. Beaton, died in 2019, but prior to her passing, she worked with author R.W. Green to ensure the series would continue as she intended. Hot to Trot would have made Beaton proud, with no fewer than three brawls as Agatha flits between exes and new loves before returning to her cottage and cats. Brew a pot of tea and join her.

A Lady Compromised

Rosalind Thorne is on the move in A Lady Compromised, the latest entry in Darcie Wilde’s series set in Regency England. A trip to help plan a friend’s wedding also means a chance to visit old flame Devon Winterbourne, but Rosalind is soon investigating whether an aristocrat’s suicide was actually murder. Wilde writes about high society social codes the same way Phoebe Waller-Bridge makes cheeky asides in “Fleabag.” A storyline involving Rosalind’s faithful maid, Mrs. Kendricks, whose security relies upon the decisions of her impulsive, independent employer, is a harsh reminder of the class differences concealed beneath the period’s polite veneer.

A priest, a Regency lady and a snippy private investigator are all faced with fiendish puzzles in this month's cozy mystery column.

Mystery

Mystery

Whodunit: January 2021

Feature by Bruce Tierney

by Bruce Tierney

A missing laptop, a treasure map and two bizarre murders await in this month's Whodunit column.

Bryant & May: Oranges and Lemons

Author Christopher Fowler’s Peculiar Crimes Unit investigates exactly what you’d expect: cases that are far from your everyday, humdrum homicide. But as Bryant & May: Oranges and Lemons—the latest entry in the popular series—opens, it appears that the unit will close up shop, having fallen victim to budgetary cuts and some remarkably public blunders. The chief will tend his garden on the Isle of Wight, while one detective chief inspector is barely clinging to life in the hospital and the other has dropped off the radar completely. But then the Speaker of the House of Commons (the U.K. analog of Nancy Pelosi) is nearly killed by a falling crate of oranges and lemons. This would have been written off as an accident, save for the fact that it took place within spitting distance of the Church of St. Clement’s, of nursery rhyme fame (“Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement’s”). Thus, the incident appears to fall directly within the purview of the Peculiar Crimes Unit, which is quickly confirmed by more nursery rhyme-themed crimes. As is the case with other books in the series, the setup is improbable (bordering on bizarre), the characters droll, the prose exceptionally clever and often hilarious and the “aha” moment deliciously unexpected.

The Butterfly House

Scandinavian mystery novels enjoy such constant appreciation from suspense fans worldwide that they’ve become an established subgenre unto themselves, with no signs of flagging. Danish writer Katrine Engberg hit the scene in 2020 with her critically acclaimed bestseller, The Tenant, and as 2021 opens, she returns with The Butterfly House. The Copenhagen police are summoned to a rather macabre display: A young woman has been found in a fountain, her body completely exsanguinated. It is clearly a murder, which is bad enough in its own right, but when another body is found the following day, also drained of blood, also in a fountain, it becomes starkly clear that a serial killer is at large. The case falls to Investigator Jeppe Kørner, one of the two protagonists of The Tenant. The other, Kørner’s partner Anette Werner, is on maternity leave at the moment, but that won’t stop her from taking part in the investigation. Engberg has crafted a fine police procedural. She is an author to look out for, one who will be cited years hence as a key player in Nordic noir.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Katrine Engberg on crafting a murder mystery rooted in human psychology.

Picnic in the Ruins

Picture a Tony Hillerman-style tableau: a red rock desert beneath a deep azure sky, imbued with the history of the sacred rituals and artifacts of the Southern Paiute. Now add a Tim Dorsey or Carl Hiaasen-esque overlay, awash in desiccated Ford pickup trucks, characters who embody the word “characters,” ulterior motives and belly-rumbling hilarity, and you’ll get an idea of the strange trip you’re about to embark on in Todd Robert Petersen’s Picnic in the Ruins. We open with a bungled burglary that would have been screamingly funny for its ineptitude if not for its deadly outcome. Now the perps are on the lam, treasure map in hand, with the really bad guys—the smarter criminals—in hot pursuit. Other assorted protagonists include an anthropology Ph.D. candidate banished to the wilds of Utah, a somewhat shady government dude, a German tourist on some sort of personal quest (Old West folklore is huge in Europe) and a cast of off-the-grid “desert rats” who add big yucks at every turn. Beneath all this, Petersen poses some intellectual questions, such as who really “owns” land, what rights and responsibilities such ownership conveys and how the inevitable collisions between titled owners, the public good and the ancient claims of sacred ground should be addressed.

★ Someone to Watch Over Me

Reboots of major suspense series after the death of the author have been a mixed bag at best; witness, for example, the hit-and-miss follow-ups to Ian Fleming’s books featuring MI6 superspy James Bond. But some series nail the reboot from the get-go, and Ace Atkins’ continuation of Robert B. Parker’s franchise featuring mononymous Beantown private investigator Spenser and his lethal sidekick, Hawk, falls firmly into the latter category. Someone to Watch Over Me finds the ace sleuth conscripted into retrieving a laptop from an exclusive Boston men’s club. Spens er’s client is his own young protege, Mattie Sullivan, who is building an investigation business of her own. Mattie has correctly surmised that her boss will carry a great deal more authority in demanding the return of the computer amid the club’s misogynistic all-male milieu. But as often happens in mystery novels, a seemingly simple initial task explodes into something exponentially more complicated, here threatening to link a loosely knit cabal of high-ranking socialites and politicians to a human trafficking organization operating offshore in a remote and private Bahamian island. Needless to say, these people will stop at nothing to save their reputations and their livelihoods, and it will take all of Spenser’s considerable talents to stay one step ahead.

A missing laptop, a treasure map and two bizarre murders await in this month's Whodunit column.

Mystery

Mystery

Two haunting small-town mysteries

Feature by G. Robert Frazier

by G. Robert Frazier

The lead characters in Tessa Wegert’s The Dead Season and Paige Shelton’s Cold Wind are haunted by past traumas—men who forcibly held them against their will and mercilessly tormented them before their escape—and are facing new mysteries that require their unique set of skills. These suspense-filled novels may have uncannily similar concepts, but they are uniquely thrilling in their executions.

In The Dead Season, Shana “Shay” Merchant’s role as sheriff’s investigator is on temporary hold as she deals with the psychological ramifications of her previous ordeal, chronicled in the first book of the series, Death in the Family. But with a psych evaluation only days away and a pair of new mysteries begging to be solved, Shay is determined to prove she is still capable of doing the job.

She has the added fortune of her own personal mentor—affectionately nicknamed “Sensei Sam”—helping with her self-defense skills and getting her mind right. But while his lessons are helpful (and entertaining for the reader), Shay believes that staying busy with new cases will be more than enough to work through her trauma.

One of Shay’s cases involves the discovery of her long-lost uncle’s body in a remote forest near her hometown of Scranton, Vermont. Missing for 20 years, the remains show evidence of blunt force trauma to the back of the head, meaning he was likely murdered. But while Shay interviews possible suspects for clues, including estranged family members, a young boy goes missing in her new home in New York’s Thousand Islands. A cryptic note on the boy’s bloody hat seems to link both cases together and point to Shay’s cousin, Abe, as being the same man who kidnapped her a year ago, whom she knew as Blake Bram. Even as she relives her childhood memories with her cousin, Shay insists she’s not hunting or obsessing over Bram: “Bram is hunting me.” A confrontation between the two builds toward a thrilling crescendo.

Cold Wind, meanwhile, takes readers to the remote Alaskan wilderness where novelist Elizabeth Fairchild has started a new life as Beth Rivers, safe from the reaches of the obsessed fan who kidnapped her in St. Louis. Or so she thinks.

The sequel to last year’s Thin Ice, Cold Wind picks up shortly after its predecessor with Beth acclimating to life in Benedict, Alaska, where she serves as the town’s only journalist. When a pair of young girls are found, followed by the discovery of a frozen body at a remote cabin after a mudslide, Beth becomes obsessed with finding out the truth of what happened. Thanks to a highly cooperative police department, she’s able to quickly insert herself into the investigations.

While the interactions between the quirky characters of the community provides some lighthearted moments, Shelton, who is best known for her cozy mystery series, proves she is more than capable of crafting a darker, more mature tone.

The Dead Season and Cold Wind are both the sophomore efforts in their series. Reading the predecessors would be helpful but isn’t necessary, as both Wegert and Shelton ably weave backstory in where needed, while letting the chills and thrills flow freely.

These suspense-filled novels may have uncannily similar concepts, but they are uniquely thrilling in their executions.

Mystery

Mystery

Whodunit: February 2021

Feature by Bruce Tierney

by Bruce Tierney

Some of the biggest names in the genre knock it out of the park, and one half of an acclaimed Scandi-noir writing team goes it alone in this month’s Whodunit column.

Serpentine

Cases don’t come much colder than the 36-year-old murder of Dorothy Swoboda, whose burned-beyond-recognition remains were found in a similarly scorched late-model Cadillac down a steep embankment off of Los Angeles’ serpentine Mulholland Drive, thus providing the title of Jonathan Kellerman’s excellent Serpentine. Now, all these years later, the case has been assigned to LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis, who enlists consulting psychologist Alex Delaware as backup. Neither expects much to come of further investigation. The cops back in the day had their suspicions, but nothing panned out. Nowadays the case files are sketchy, and the best line of inquiry seems to be to interview some of the original investigating officers and witnesses and see what insights they might have had that never made it into the official case files. Only problem is, Milo finds that virtually everyone with any insight into the case has met an untimely death. There is no statute of limitations on murder, so it would appear that someone is doing his (or her) level best to stay one step ahead of this latest investigation, and in this case “level best” makes for a scorching good read.

Before She Disappeared

Lisa Gardner’s thriller Before She Disappeared introduces us to Frankie Elkin. For a time, Frankie struggled to find some purpose in her life, some reason to keep moving forward while in recovery for alcoholism. She discovered her niche as an advocate for missing persons, seeking out those who have disappeared, the unimportant, the hitherto forgotten. She does this on a volunteer basis, taking no payment, propelled along by a remarkable success rate, at least by one metric: She is very good at finding people. Unfortunately, the subjects of her searches routinely turn up quite dead. There is hope yet for her new case, however. Haitian teenager Angelique Badeau was a stellar and motivated student, intent on a career in medicine. Then, nothing. She disappeared nearly a year ago, leaving virtually no trace. As Frankie’s investigation progresses, it offers an up-close look into some of the issues that plague American society today—racism, antipathy toward immigrants and the trafficking of young women—while providing a blistering narrative and sympathetic characters (even an annoyingly endearing cat!). Before She Disappeared is billed as a standalone, but I’m thinking it would be the perfect setup for a terrific series.

Knock Knock

It’s likely that regular readers of this column are familiar with my gushing over mystery novels from Europe’s frozen north, a subgenre known as Scandinavian noir. After the death of his longtime writing partner Börge Hellström, Swedish writer Anders Roslund returns with Knock Knock, his first solo novel and the next installment of his and Hellström’s gripping series featuring police superintendent Ewert Grens and undercover informant Piet Hoffman. Every cop has one nagging case that they were unable to solve, a case that remains within their being, waiting for some kind of closure. For Ewert, it was the murder of a family 17 years ago in which only a 5-year-old girl was spared, although she was unable to yield any usable clues to the killings. Now there has been a break-in at the same apartment, and Ewert, who is on the verge of retirement, would like nothing more than to see this case resolved before he rides off into the sunset. Meanwhile, Piet, having been outed as an informant, is being blackmailed by lethal munitions brokers, his family threatened to the point that they must go into hiding. Roslund cleverly interlaces these two disparate storylines, and readers will marvel at just how much action can take place in a period spanning only three days. Knock Knock has handily reaffirmed all my Scandi-noir gushing.

★ Blood Grove

It is a fair bet that if Walter Mosley has a book coming out during any given month, a) it will get reviewed here, and b) there’s an excellent chance it will be the best mystery of that month. Case in point: his latest, Blood Grove. Private detective Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins is nudging 50 years of age in this novel, which is set in late-1960s Los Angeles. The Vietnam War has taken its toll on the nation. Hippies are tuning in, turning on, dropping out. Racism is rampant. And in the middle of this uneasy milieu, Easy gets approached by a vet suffering from what we now call PTSD. The vet spins an incredible story: He went to the aid of a screaming woman in distress at a remote hilltop cabin, stabbed her attacker and then lapsed into unconsciousness. When he awoke, there was no woman, no stabbed man, really no indication whatsoever that any of his memories were anything more than a hallucination. Nothing is quite what it seems in this place, in this time, in this book. Lurking just beneath the surface are a heist gone bad, a gangster or three on the vengeance trail and a trio of lethal ladies. And there are all manner of ’60s cultural references, from Lucky Strike cigarettes to Edsel cars to free-love clubs—not to mention a character who bears more than a passing resemblance to real-life record producer Terry Melcher, who was briefly associated with Charles Manson. I read it all in one sitting, as I just could not stop turning the pages.

Some of the biggest names in the genre knock it out of the park, and one half of an acclaimed Scandi-noir writing team goes it alone in this month's Whodunit column.

Mystery

Mystery

The particular terror of isolation

Feature by Elyse Discher

by Elyse Discher

From foggy moors to gritty city streets, the setting of a mystery often tells the reader what to expect in terms of tone. In A Stranger in Town and Black Widows, isolated settings keep the reader off balance, unsure and ill-at-ease, creating an extra layer of tension that dials up the suspense to 11.

The sixth book in Kelley Armstrong’s Rockton series, A Stranger in Town brings the reader to the small Yukon town of Rockton, population 150. This is not a cozy mystery small town—Rockton is completely off the grid and populated entirely by people who need to shed their old lives.

Rockton exists within our world but apart from it in a way that’s almost reminiscent of science fiction. Those looking to start fresh in the town need permission from a mysterious town council, and those who are accepted face threats not only from the wilderness, but also from a nomadic group of almost feral humans known as “hostiles” that lurk outside its borders. All of this could feel too surreal, but Armstrong makes her fictional town seem grounded in reality.

When a badly wounded hiker stumbles upon Rockton while looking for aid. Casey Duncan, the town’s resident detective, manages to save the woman’s life, but her presence only brings more questions. Casey and her husband, Eric Dalton, go looking for the woman’s companions only to find a scene worthy of a horror novel. Her fellow hikers have been killed, literally torn apart, with monstrous brutality. Casey’s careful observations lead her to believe that the murders were staged to look as though the hostiles were responsible.

Adding to her worries, Casey has noticed that fewer residents are being admitted to Rockton, and those that wish to stay beyond their two-year term are being denied an extension. The town council is silent on the matter, and Casey can’t help but feel boxed in by threats from within the town and outside it.

Armstrong’s detailed world building allows the reader to immerse themselves in the narrative, though new readers may want to orient themselves by starting with the first Rockton novel, City of the Lost.

While A Stranger in Town offers up an odd community, Black Widows by Cate Quinn relies on a sense of otherness to create its atmosphere. When Blake Nelson is strangled and his body mutilated, detectives look to the most common perpetrator—the wife. The problem is Blake had three of them. Rachel, Tina and Emily lived with Blake on their family compound in the Utah desert, 40 miles from their nearest neighbor.

Their polygamous marriage was as fraught with tension as it was unconventional. Rachel is the first, most obedient wife, but she has a past so traumatic her mind has blacked some of it out. Tina is a reformed drug-addict and sex worker who met Blake when he preached at her rehab center. She’s all too aware of how dark and cruel the world can be. Emily is the youngest, naive to point of being childlike and existing largely in a fantasy world she’s created for herself. Living in a small house in the middle of a huge desert, the women’s differing personalities and the family’s poverty make for a fraught existence.

Each chapter of this gripping and, at times, graphic psychological thriller is told from the point of view of one of the wives, and the reader is never certain if the narrators can be trusted. As the police poke into their lives, secrets are revealed, suggesting that Blake’s death may be part of something larger and darker than just a domestic conflict. Quinn does a masterful job of creating a world where her characters are isolated—both physically due to their home and socially due to the fact that they are outcasts from their church and community. Polygamy is not sanctioned by the Church of Latter-day Saints, so even Blake’s family has shunned his wives and disapproves of his choice of lifestyle. All of this means that Rachel, Tina and Emily can only rely on each other for support when their world collapses around them. With a wonderfully twisty end, Black Widows is the type of thriller you read in one sitting.

In A Stranger in Town and Black Widows, two unique and isolated settings keep the reader off balance, adding extra layer of tension that keeps the suspense dialed up to 11.

Mystery

Mystery

Properly confounding puzzles

Feature by Elyse Discher

by Elyse Discher

Historical mysteries truly allow amateur sleuths to shine. Without modern technology, forensic analysis or instantaneous communication to aid them, the historical detective must rely on their powers of deduction and observation to solve the crime.

Deanna Raybourn delivers wit and humor aplenty in her sixth installment of the Veronica Speedwell series, An Unexpected Peril. Fresh from her last case chasing Jack the Ripper, lepidopterist and amateur sleuth Veronica Speedwell is assisting with an exhibition on the small country of Alpenwald for a naturalist club in London—and enjoying some downtime with her partner turned lover, Stoker.

Trouble is never far from Veronica, however. As the club assembles items donated by the late alpinist Alice Baker-Greene’s estate, Veronica uncovers evidence that Alice was murdered, rather than dying in a climbing accident. Princess Grisela of Alpenwald, who is visiting London and the exhibition, is less than enthusiastic about the discovery. Her small nation relies on tourism for its income, and the murder of a famous English mountain climber would cause a scandal. Veronica is undeterred, and as she and Stoker investigate Alice’s murder, they find themselves embroiled in a second mystery when Princess Grisela vanishes.

Irreverent, funny and with a razor-sharp intelligence, Veronica is a delightful narrator and a keen detective. Her total disregard for the opinions of “good society” and her vicious wit in cutting down her detractors are a joy to read. As An Unexpected Peril unfolds, we see her relationship with her longtime partner, Stoker, develop as well. Fans of the series have waited five novels for their will-they-won’t-they attraction to resolve, and now that the pair are together, they must navigate the tiny irritations and frustrations that come with any new relationship. Veronica, as always, rushes headfirst into danger, while Stoker tries to maintain a tempering influence.

Best read in order, Raybourn’s Victorian-era series is never bleak, always funny and wonderfully fast-paced. An Unexpected Peril has the perfect blend of action, romance and mystery.

The Diabolical Bones by Bella Ellis is the complete opposite in terms of atmosphere. The second Brontë Sisters mystery is set in bleak, frozen West Yorkshire and begins when a neighbor of the Brontës, the eccentric Clifton Bradshaw, finds the skeleton of a young child interred in a fireplace in his late wife’s rooms.

Rumor has it that Clifton went mad after his wife’s death, selling his soul to the devil and shutting off her rooms completely. The discovery of the bones 13 years later certainly implies that something sinister occurred before her death, and the Brontë sisters are determined to identify the child and how it came to be hidden in the fireplace.

Ellis carefully weaves biographical details into her mystery, and readers familiar with the Brontës’ story will see the beginning of Branwell Brontë’s decline as well as the first glimpses of Charlotte’s relationship with Arthur Bell Nicholls. Ellis portrays Charlotte as a fierce and dynamic figure, Emily as a dreamer and recluse and Anne as the mediator between them. Isolated in their Yorkshire village, these three brilliant sisters yearn for intellectual stimulation, and solving the mystery of the bones is too intriguing for them to resist. Unfortunately, not everyone appreciates their meddling.

Easily read as a standalone, The Diabolical Bones tackles subjects as bleak as the frigid February moors where it is set, from the cruelties of child labor in Victorian England to the limitations of women at the time, as the sisters often have to drag their begrudging brother with them on their investigations. Fans of gothic mysteries will find this novel wonderfully creepy and suspenseful, even if they are unfamiliar with the work or lives of the Brontë sisters.

With espionage, secret love affairs and hidden treasure, The Dark Heart of Florence by Tasha Alexander offers a mystery set in Florence, Italy in both 1903 and 1480. Jumping in with the 15th novel in the Lady Emily mystery series may seem intimidating, but Alexander provides enough context for characters and events referenced from previous books in the series that very little is lost for newcomers.

When Lady Emily Hargreaves’ husband, Colin, is summoned to Florence, she knows it’s on secret business. Tensions are rising in Europe, and while Colin cannot admit it, Emily knows he is a spy for England. When a man is killed in their palazzo, Emily and her best friend, Cécile, launch a parallel investigation, determined not to sit by on the sidelines as danger surrounds them.

Interspersed are chapters set in the 15th century, where a young woman named Mina struggles to align with the gender roles traditionally assigned to her while the wonder of the Renaissance surrounds her. Mina enters into a forbidden affair with a young priest that will change the course of her life and entangle her in the fanatical puritan campaign of Girolamo Savonarola.

Mina’s actions directly impact the murder that Emily and Cecile are investigating in 1903, which is intensified by the increasingly tenuous political situation and the frustration Emily feels at being left in the dark as to her husband’s intrigues. The Florentine setting, both in the Renaissance and early Edwardian eras, is explored in rich detail, allowing the reader to travel vicariously through Mina’s and Emily’s eyes.

With gothic chills, laugh-out-loud humor and international intrigue, these three mysteries whisk the reader off to the past and ensnare them with carefully crafted plots and plenty of suspense.

Mystery

Mystery

Whodunit: March 2021

Feature by Bruce Tierney

by Bruce Tierney

Things aren't what they appear in some of this month's best mysteries—plus, a tale of murder during Hollywood's golden age.

Lightseekers

Many Nigerian-set suspense novels have riffed on the money scams perpetrated on gullible retirees abroad. Not so for Femi Kayode’s thriller Lightseekers, which centers the religious and class violence of Africa’s wealthiest country. Investigative psychologist Dr. Philip Taiwo, who has recently returned to his homeland after a stint in the United States, is hired to find out who murdered the son of a prominent local businessman. The assignment is a bit out of his wheelhouse, as he is much more comfortable theorizing about crime than taking part in a hands-on investigation. Plus, arrests have been made, and there is evidence galore, so Philip frankly doesn’t see what he can add to the investigation. That said, he is under a certain amount of pressure from the victim’s family, and there is a paycheck involved, so he unenthusiastically signs on. He is aided in his efforts by some unlikely sidekicks: a driver who is much savvier than one might expect; a vampishly beautiful attorney who causes Philip to question his marital vows; and a harried police chief, initially recalcitrant until Philip turns up evidence too compelling to ignore. The milieu is drawn especially well, which is unsurprising given that Kayode trained as a clinical psychologist in Nigeria. Steam-bath humidity, sizzling yams, road dust in every breath, danger lurking around every corner—welcome to Kayode’s Nigeria.

Nighthawking

The title of Russ Thomas’ latest thriller, Nighthawking, refers to a practice not dissimilar to grave-robbing—clandestine late-night metal detecting and potential plundering at archaeological sites, cemeteries or other locations of historical interest. One particular nighthawker got a bit more than he bargained for this time around: A foray into the Sheffield Botanical Garden in search of buried treasure instead turned up the body of a young woman, a stabbing victim, her eyes covered with a pair of coins from ancient Rome. It falls to Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler and his protégé, Detective Constable Mina Rabbani, to investigate. The case gains international implications when it is discovered that the victim was a botany student from a prominent Chinese family, and that her life in the U.K. was not what it seemed to be. Tyler and Rabbani are an interesting pair: He is gay, she is Muslim, both are relative outsiders with respect to the insular world of Yorkshire policing, and both routinely suffer the slings and arrows of innuendo. Nighthawking is their second adventure together, after last year’s Firewatching (also a terrific read), and I hope there will be many more to come.

Smoke

Smoke, Joe Ide’s latest mystery featuring quixotic brainiac Isaiah Quintabe, finds our hero far afield from his Long Beach, California, home. He has disappeared into the unfamiliar wilds of the Golden State’s mountainous north, on the lam from more than one person who would like to see him dead. At other points in his career, he probably would have stayed to duke it out with the bad guys, but he has fallen in love and doesn’t want to risk putting his sweetheart in harm’s way. Isaiah’s once-sidekick, Juanell Dodson, assumes a larger role in Smoke than in earlier novels as he tries to leave his dangerous former career behind in a bid to save his marriage. Dodson holds down the SoCal part of the narrative as the street hustler reluctantly morphs into an ad agency account exec, while Isaiah becomes embroiled in the more perilous pursuit of a serial killer, drawn into the case by a none-too-stable escapee from a psychiatric hospital. Isaiah is something of a sucker for a person in need who presents him with a good story, and this story is perhaps the most intriguing he has come across to date.

★ Windhall

Windhall by Ava Barry spins the tale of a modern-day copycat murder that echoes the high-profile slaying of a Hollywood movie star in 1948, at the beginning of the end of the golden age of Hollywood. The star in question, Eleanor Hayes, was found badly disfigured and quite dead in the garden of Windhall, the estate of film director Theo Langley, after a party that would have been regarded as legendary even if it hadn’t featured such a macabre coda. Initially, Theo looked pretty good for the murder—Eleanor had stopped showing up to work on his latest movie and seemed terrified of something—but as the investigation wore on, the so-called evidence became less compelling, and finally charges were dropped. Theo disappeared from view for decades. Although from time to time there were reported sightings from far afield, there was never much in the way of corroboration, and his story took its rightful place in Hollywood lore, one of the great unsolved mysteries of the golden age. The present-day murder piques the interest of investigative journalist Max Hailey, who is somewhat obsessed with Windhall and its closely guarded secrets. For years he has suspected that Theo was guilty, and when it turns out that the director has mysteriously returned to Windhall just in time for the new murder, it all seems a bit too preposterous to be simple coincidence. Windhall is Barry’s first novel, and it is one heck of a debut. She nails her protagonist’s first-person voice and vividly channels the Hollywood vernacular and vibe both past and present.

Things aren't what they appear in some of this month's best mysteries—plus, a tale of murder during Hollywood's golden age.

Mystery

Mystery

Brutal and brilliant

Feature by G. Robert Frazier

by G. Robert Frazier

Two intense mysteries feature terrifying serial killers—and the cunning detectives who catch them.

Authors Eva García Sáenz and C.S. Harris balance shocking violence with the slow and steady thrill of watching a detective meticulously unravel a case.

Sáenz’s chillingly graphic The Water Rituals follows Spanish inspector Unai López de Ayala—better known by his nickname, Kraken—on the trail of a killer who has been drowning pregnant women in ways that mimic a 1,000-year-old ritual.

Kraken, a behavioral profiler, is especially taken aback when he learns that the first victim is his former girlfriend, graphic novelist Ana Belén Liaño. Her body is found hanging upside down by her ankles, her head submerged in a Celtic cauldron of water.

Unable to speak because of a traumatic brain injury (from his first adventure, The Silence of the White City), Kraken can only communicate with his fellow detectives by writing his thoughts on scraps of paper. The trauma of Ana’s death sparks a series of flashbacks as he recalls their relationship, and the memories prompt him to seek clues to her death as he tries to regain the ability to speak. News that Kraken’s boss, Deputy Superintendent Alba Díaz de Salvatierra, may be pregnant with his child ups the tension and the stakes as his pursuit of the killer continues.

Sáenz, who began her career by self-publishing before becoming an award-winning short story writer, maintains a tight point of view from Kraken’s perspective, creating a claustrophobic, psychologically intense experience for readers en route to a dramatic finale.

Harris’ novel What the Devil Knows is equally brutal. The novel opens in 1814 London, three years after the real-life Ratcliffe Highway murders and decades before the more notorious Jack the Ripper slayings. The lead magistrate in the Ratcliffe Highway case, Sir Edwin Pym, has been killed in the same manner as the Ratcliffe killer’s victims.

Lead investigator Sebastian St. Cyr immediately voices his concern to fellow investigators: “You assume this murderer has a logical reason for what he does. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s more likely whoever did this simply enjoys killing.” So begins the methodical, purposeful pursuit of a killer who has no qualms about what he does, whether he is the actual Ratcliffe Highway killer or, as Sebastian muses, a copycat “deliberately modeling his acts on the sensational murders of the past.”

What the Devil Knows is Harris’ 16th novel featuring Sebastian, but it is easily accessible to anyone new to the series. While a subplot deals with Sebastian’s family lineage, the novel mostly follows a procedural course, building suspense and dread as Sebastian questions the victim’s acquaintances and possible enemies. Harris guides us through London’s streets with detail and dialects that firmly establish the novel’s immersive historical setting. In her afterword, Harris recounts which elements of the novel she drew from actual depositions, testimonies and newspaper reports.

Whether your passion lies with a detective’s meticulous pursuit of evidence or you thrill to the hunt for a killer, these books deliver on both accounts.

Two intense mysteries feature terrifying serial killers—and the cunning detectives who catch them.

Mystery

Mystery

Cozies: April 2021

Feature by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Cute canine sleuths, the glamour of Gilded Age Broadway and a prickly, private librarian—this month's column has something for every kind of cozy reader.

★The Unkindness of Ravens

Greer Hogan left her life in New York City behind after her husband’s murder. Starting over as a librarian in the village of Raven Hill has offered some distance from that trauma—until she finds her best friend dead in the library. Greer is still considered an outsider in the tightknit village, so she leans on her own research skills to find her friend’s killer while coming to grips with uncomfortable truths about her husband’s death. The Unkindness of Ravens pushes the boundaries of cozy mysteries: It’s moody and tense, literary and urbane, and an edgy delight to read. Author M.E. Hilliard is herself a librarian, and she gets the job’s balance of fun and drudgery note-perfect. Yes, there are bake sales and charming patrons, but there are also a lot of repetitive tasks and the occasional creep. Analytical and not overly social, Greer keeps to herself, even shying away from the reader at times, which only serves to heighten the suspense. Nods to Trixie Belden, Kinsey Millhone and Edgar Allan Poe tempt the reader to relax into the novel’s bookish atmosphere, until a fast-paced conclusion that’s truly surprising whips things to a close. The Unkindness of Ravens is an exciting debut, and I’m already eager for another installment.

Animal Instinct

When private investigator Corey Douglas was still a police officer, he responded to a domestic violence call in which he could do nothing to help the victim, Lisa Yates. Now, years later, Lisa has died in an unsolved shooting, and Corey decides to try and right a past wrong by solving her murder. Animal Instinct, David Rosenfelt’s second K Team novel, builds suspense by shifting points of view between Corey’s team and their extremely dangerous enemies, who are always a step ahead. Lisa’s job at a medical records company makes for a very data-centric thriller, but plenty of muscle is exerted as well, by dogs as well as humans. Rosenfelt has artfully spun off Corey and his K-9 partner, Simon Garfunkel, from his hit Andy Carpenter series, and Andy appears here in more than a mere cameo, which adds to the fun.

Death of a Showman

Death of a Showman finds lady’s maid Jane Prescott on Broadway, chaperoning her rich employer, Louise Tyler, to rehearsals of a show Louise has been persuaded to invest in. Jane’s not thrilled to be there; her passionate dalliance with composer Leo Hirschfeld abruptly ended when he married a chorus girl, but that doesn’t stop him from flirting with every woman he sees. It’s almost a welcome distraction when the show’s tough-guy producer, Sidney Warburton, is murdered. Author Mariah Fredericks has clearly done her research on Gilded Age New York and its colossal theaters, because she creates a real sense of being behind the scenes and behind the curtain. The murder is nearly upstaged by the drama, backbiting and infighting among the cast and crew, but it’s all told with understated elegance.

Cute canine sleuths, the glamour of Gilded Age Broadway and a prickly, private librarian—this month's column has something for every kind of cozy reader.

Mystery

Mystery

Whodunit: April 2021

Feature by Bruce Tierney

by Bruce Tierney

This month's mystery column features a globe-trotting quartet of thrilling reads.

Northern Spy

In 1998, the “Troubles” of Northern Ireland were brought to a close by the signing of the Good Friday agreement—in theory. The present-day reality is somewhat less resolved. As Flynn Berry points out in her new thriller, Northern Spy, “most Catholics still wanted a united Ireland, most Protestants wanted to remain part of the UK. The schools were still segregated. You still knew, in every town, which was the Catholic bakery, which was the Protestant taxi firm. How could anyone not have seen this coming? We were living in a tinderbox.” Two sisters, BBC producer and new mom Tessa and paramedic Marian, occupy center stage in the narrative. They are exceptionally close, so Tessa is shocked to her core when she sees raw news footage of a gas station holdup and recognizes her sister as one of the Irish Republican Army perpetrators. Now Marian is on the run, and the police are convinced that Tessa knows more than she’s saying. When Marian seeks her help, Tessa is faced with a Sophie’s choice: Should she come to her sister’s rescue, putting her baby in peril by getting involved? Berry’s thriller is an excellent and sympathetic look at family bonds, ideological enmity and the difficulty of maintaining some semblance of balance in a situation outside one’s control.

Dance With Death

Nobody born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1958 should be able to channel 19th-century London as splendidly as Will Thomas does in his well-loved series featuring private enquiry agents Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn. The latest installment, Dance With Death, is a tale of duplicity and murder centered on an upcoming royal wedding. The future Nicholas II, who will one day become the last czar of Russia, plays a pivotal role in the narrative, as does the daughter of Russian revolutionary Karl Marx, the future King George V of Britain and legendary prima ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska. These real historical figures mingle freely and seamlessly with fictional characters, some of whom are prepared to die for them, while others seek the opportunity to kill them. Barker and Llewelyn are tasked with safeguarding the future czar from an assassin known only as La Sylphide. Politics and privilege, Russian and English alike, come into play as the suspense mounts at a high-society masked ball, where identities are concealed every bit as cleverly as lethal intentions. A bit of good news for readers: If you like this book, there are a dozen previous Barker & Llewelyn mysteries to keep you entertained for the foreseeable future.

Transient Desires

European cities’ ubiquitous surveillance cameras are often criticized as intrusive, but on the occasions that they identify criminals, everyone is happy. Well, everyone but the criminals—such as the two boatmen who, at the outset of Donna Leon’s latest Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery, Transient Desires, unceremoniously unload two badly injured and unconscious American women onto the dock of a Venice hospital emergency room. The boatmen turn out to have been friends from childhood. One is now a fledgling lawyer, the other a manual laborer for his uncle’s canal-based delivery business. There are rumors, however, that said uncle is involved in human trafficking. Brunetti enlists the help of colleague Claudia Griffoni, who in turn brings on board a Neapolitan coast guard captain named Ignazio Alaimo. Italian interagency cooperation, while not unheard of, can be difficult. Vast geographical and cultural chasms separate different regions of the country (in this case Naples and Venice), raising troubling questions about whom Brunetti can trust. Transient Desires is the 30th installment of Leon’s series starring Brunetti, and like the 29 mysteries that preceded it, it’s a splendid read. Through Brunetti’s observations and ruminations, the author weaves Venetian history, architecture, aromas, tastes and snippets of daily life and family interactions into an immersive narrative.

★ In the Company of Killers

It is uncommon for a first novel to earn a starred review in the hallowed halls of this column, but Bryan Christy’s In the Company of Killers ticks all the right boxes. Far-flung locales (Kenya, the Philippines, South Africa)? Check. A protagonist of few words but lots of action? Check again. Properly villainous villains? Yep, got those. Filled to the brim with tension and suspense? Yes and yes. Central character Tom Klay is an investigative journalist for The Sovereign, a magazine that bears a certain resemblance to National Geographic, for whom author Christy once worked (though one hopes he encountered less murder and mayhem than Klay does). The reader quickly discovers that Klay’s occupation is deep cover for a clandestine position as a CIA asset. As the book opens, Klay and his closest friend, Captain Bernard Lolosoli, probe the Kenyan bush country following a lead they received about elephant poachers. But someone has set them up for an ambush; Klay survives, Lolosoli does not. Klay is sure he knows the identity of the killer, and he means to exact justice or perhaps revenge (if indeed there is any difference) for his friend’s murder. Mercenaries, global superpowers, religious leaders, environmental activists and more are players on this chess board where nobody seems to know which directions the pieces are allowed to move, nor perhaps even the object of the game. In the Company of Killers is not a long book, so my suggestion is to block out time to read it in one sitting. You will not want to put it down.

This month's mystery column features a globe-trotting quartet of thrilling reads.

Mystery

Mystery

Whodunit: May 2021

Feature by Bruce Tierney

by Bruce Tierney

Two 1940s-set mysteries, a striking new series and a real doozy of a final twist await you in this month’s Whodunit column.

A Gambling Man

To be known by only one name lends a certain je ne sais quoi to the stature of a hard-boiled PI. It has worked well for Andrew Vachss’ dark avenger Burke and Robert B. Parker’s sybaritic strongman Spenser, and it works just fine for David Baldacci’s mononymous sleuth Archer. It doesn’t hurt that Archer’s second outing, the 1949-set A Gambling Man, takes place during the gumshoe golden age, when men smoked “Luckies,” drove luxurious European roadsters and were pursued by women of rapier wit. Archer is an ex-con, so some shenanigans are required to obtain a license to ply his trade in his new home of California. The ink isn’t even dry on said license before he’s assigned his first case, an extortion attempt on a mayoral candidate in the seaside community of Bay Town. Then an alluring chanteuse who was connected to the case is brutally murdered. It will not be the last death to rock Bay Town, and the newly minted PI’s mettle will truly be tested. Baldacci establishes bona fides for this historical mystery with great delicacy, deftly navigating the cliche minefield and giving his readers a sense of the milieu without drowning them in minutiae. He delivers a cracking good suspense novel in the process.

Thief of Souls

Brian Klingborg’s Thief of Souls features one of the best opening sentences I have ever read in a mystery: “On the night the young woman’s corpse is discovered, hollowed out like a birchbark canoe, Inspector Lu Fei sits alone in the Red Lotus bar, determined to get gloriously drunk.” Lu Fei is a deputy police chief in Raven Valley, a backwater township in northeast China, close to the North Korean border. Not much happens in Raven Valley as a rule, but that somnolence is about to be upended. Almost immediately after the victim is discovered, a suspect is identified: a wannabe boyfriend whose phone yields surreptitious photos of the young woman and whose job in a meatpacking plant would afford him access to the sort of surgical knife that was used to eviscerate her. The city police officer called in to take over the investigation wants a quick solution to the case and is perfectly willing to let the “boyfriend” fill that bill. But Lu has doubts, and he conducts a quiet side investigation that turns up additional unsolved killings with the same modus operandi. Politics and turf wars ensue as Klingborg, who has lived and worked in Asia, peppers the story with narrative detours into Chinese history and pertinent commentary from the likes of Confucius, Mao Tse-tung and other Chinese philosophical luminaries. This auspicious mystery begs for a sequel. Please let it be soon.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Brian Klingborg on why modern China is the perfect setting for a mystery.

A Peculiar Combination

The title of Ashley Weaver’s series starter, A Peculiar Combination, is a sly reference to the main character’s occupation as an opener of locked boxes—and more specifically, locked boxes that do not belong to her. Set in London during World War II, the novel opens as Electra McDonnell, safecracker extraordinaire, and her mentor, Uncle Mick, get nabbed in a sting operation set up by a British spy agency. They’ll be given a Get Out of Jail Free card if they participate in a government-sanctioned safe heist in which some phony sensitive papers will be substituted for the real documents, thus misleading the Nazis. It all goes hopelessly awry when they arrive at the scene of the would-be crime and discover the safe is wide open, its owner dead on the floor. In the wake of this failure, Electra finds herself in the unusual (for her) position of wanting to see the operation through to its conclusion, even though she’s been freed from her contract with the government. In for a penny, in for a pound and all that. It’s a lighter read than many a mystery with the same setting, but A Peculiar Combination delivers the requisite suspense and misdirection that will keep the hard-boiled crowd on board as well.

★ The Final Twist

Jeffery Deaver’s The Final Twist lives up to its name admirably, even delivering said twist on the very last page of the book. (Don’t cheat by looking at the ending.) Main character Colter Shaw could scarcely be more different from Deaver’s famous sleuth, the brilliant forensic consultant Lincoln Rhyme. Colter is a mountaineer and a survivalist; he’s action-oriented where Rhyme is cerebral. And unlike Rhyme, who works closely with law enforcement, if Colter has to bend the law to serve his ends, he will do it without remorse. He supports himself by finding missing people and collecting the reward money. His life’s mission, however, is finishing his father’s work and destroying BlackBridge, a mercenary corporation that has been distributing drugs in a San Francisco neighborhood to drive down property values so they can swoop in and purchase tracts for pennies on the dollar. Shaw strongly suspects that BlackBridge had a hand in his father’s “accidental” death, and he means to dispense some Old West justice once he finds out the truth. A couple of subplots, one involving Colter’s long-lost brother and another centered on a legal document from a century ago that may have a breathtaking impact on modern-day California politics, flesh out the narrative, distracting the reader until Deaver wallops them with the shocking final page.

Two 1940s-set mysteries, a striking new series and a real doozy of a final twist await you in this month’s Whodunit column.