Mystery & Suspense Archives | Page 52 of 119 | BookPage

Naked Came the Florida Man, the newest novel by Tim Dorsey, is a crazy read from start to finish, and I mean that in a good way. The novel—part comedy, part thriller—follows the latest exploits of Dorsey’s oddball duo of Serge Storms and his weed-addicted sidekick Coleman on a meandering trek across the Sunshine State, with no real end goal in mind. And that’s just part of what makes this book so fun.

Longtime Dorsey fans already familiar with Serge and Coleman’s antics will have the distinct advantage of knowing what to expect heading into the novel (but they won’t be able to rekindle the feeling of discovering the intrepid pair for the first time like new readers). Admittedly, the misadventures and seemingly aimless wanderings of Dorsey’s characters take a bit of getting used to, but once you do, you’ll be all too eager to go along for the ride.

What starts out as a simple tour of the state’s historic graveyards (complete with fascinating lessons about the state and its people that you probably won’t find in tourist brochures at the state line) turns into a series of escapades resulting in Serge’s unique brand of vigilante justice. Between tombstone rubbings, the pair intervene in a so-called pastor’s scheme to bilk needy seniors out of their money through shady reverse-mortgage deals, exact punishment on a man filming birds that explode after consuming Alka Seltzer tablets and help save a young football player from a greedy pirate.

If that’s not enough to pique your curiosity, Dorsey peppers the novel with Serge’s one-of-a-kind social rants on anything that comes to mind, from tangents in internet comment threads and why the U.S. cares about soccer to the length of receipts from drug stores. At one point, Serge even admits to being completely “off his rocker” and adopts a ferret as an emotional support animal.

A former reporter and editor for the Tampa Tribune until 1999, Dorsey has shirked his commitment to serious recounts of the day’s top events in favor of over-the-top tall tales and wacky characters like Serge and Coleman. I have to admit, they are a lot more fun.

Part comedy, part thriller, Tim Dorsey's novel is a crazy read from start to finish, and I mean that in a good way.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

First Cut

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

by Linda M. Castellitto

In Dr. Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell’s First Cut, medical examiner Dr. Jessie Teska works on the victims of “sudden, violent, and unexpected deaths,” from accidents to suicide to murder. And in Jessie’s first week at her new job, a homicide case launches her life into chaos: A young woman has died from a drug overdose and, it turns out, used to work for one of Jessie’s mercurial new bosses. His reaction makes Jessie wonder if it’s an innocent connection or something darker—but how will she balance a proper investigation with complicated, unfamiliar office politics?

Questions mount and danger rises as Jessie strives to juggle a heavy caseload, leave past hurts behind and figure out whom she can (and cannot) trust. Drug dealers, detectives, lawyers and bitcoin brokers figure into this atmospheric, San Francisco-set tale, which is peppered with humor thanks to Jessie’s wit, as well as Bea the high-spirited beagle and Sparkle the whip-smart bail-bonds lady. Jessie’s forays into dating and romance add sexy fun, and her musings on our collective corporeal vulnerability are by turns humbling (“The cops could drag their feet and stonewall . . . all they want. The body never lies.”) and alarming (à la lists of cases like “jaywalker hit by a bus, a gunshot suicide, a skateboard versus a hydrant, and a stabbing homicide”).

The married authors—whose first book was the bestselling 2014 memoir Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner—expertly employ their know-how, maintaining blood-and-guts vérité while empathetically exploring what it’s like to do a job with actual life-and-death stakes. First Cut is a fascinating, entertaining series kickoff, with a particularly kickass heroine.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell.

In Dr. Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell’s First Cut, medical examiner Dr. Jessie Teska works on the victims of “sudden, violent, and unexpected deaths,” from accidents to suicide to murder.

Fiction, Thriller

Fiction Thriller

A Good Man

Review by Amy Scribner

by Amy Scribner

Much has been discussed in recent years about what it means to be a man in modern America: the belief that men should be masculine yet tender, chivalrous yet feminist, strong yet vulnerable. In the chillingly good A Good Man, debut novelist Ani Katz examines what happens when the weight of expectations comes crashing down on one family.

Thomas Martin was raised in the nightmarish tangle of an abusive home, where his father took out his disappointment on his children. After his father dies, Thomas becomes the man of the house, working his way through college and up the corporate ladder. He provides for his mother and younger sisters, who still live together in semi-squalor because they don’t know any other way.

Thomas is wary of bringing Miriam, the beautiful Parisian woman he plans to marry, to his family home, where she “would notice the skid marks of dried grease around the rims of the plates, the crusty residue at the bottom of our tumblers.” It’s as if every grubby object reflects upon him and his shame-filled childhood.

When it comes time to make his own family, Thomas is determined to attain perfection and nothing less. “We were two of a kind, my wife and I,” he says. “If my life up to that point had been like an old and battered house, she wanted to rip the rot from the rooms, banish the bad memories, throw open the windows, and fill the place with light and air and the breath of the future.”

They buy a Dutch colonial home outside Manhattan and have a daughter. Thomas makes more money and drives his daughter to private school in a Mercedes S-Class sedan. Miriam struggles with postpartum depression and suburban isolation, but they work through it.

Everything is perfect—and yet. His relationship with Miriam is fraying. Their daughter is filled with the ennui of a typical preteen. When Thomas makes a catastrophically bad decision at work, he finds everything he’s worked for evaporating around him.

This is when A Good Man—infused with a low-grade dread from the very first page—takes a seriously sinister turn. The full impact of Thomas’ childhood trauma comes into focus as he retraces how things went so wrong and admits he may not be the most reliable narrator.

Katz has delivered a whip-smart, beautifully written meditation on marriage, masculinity and the thin line between happiness and disaster.

Ani Katz has delivered a whip-smart, beautifully written meditation on marriage, masculinity and the thin line between happiness and disaster.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

Thin Ice

Review by G. Robert Frazier

by G. Robert Frazier

A title like Thin Ice immediately connotes danger, and New York Times bestselling author Paige Shelton delivers in every way. A sense of dread persists from the opening page to the novel’s surprising conclusion, with an overall tense mood and an all-too-real terror felt by the book’s protagonist, Beth Rivers.

Beth is also known as Elizabeth Fairchild, the famous penname under which she writes popular thrillers. When we first meet her, Beth is on the run from a violent encounter—a kidnapping by an obsessed fan and a dramatic escape. Her flight takes her to the remote village of Benedict, Alaska, where she hopes to elude her assailant, who is still at large.

Beth’s scars, both internal and external, are real. Internally, she suffers from an overriding fear that even though she has put hundreds of miles between her former and new lives, she may still be in danger. Externally, there is a ragged scar on her head incurred during her escape, serving as a constant reminder of her close brush with death.

Shelton methodically introduces Beth to a wide-ranging cast while swiftly ramping up the tension. It’s not yet winter, but Beth’s Alaskan environment is already harsh, cold and remote. While most of the people she encounters in the village appear to be supportive and caring, she can never quite let go of her suspicions that any one of them could mean her harm—or worse, expose her real identity.

With more memories of her ordeal threatening to return, Beth takes on a new role as the community newspaper’s only reporter and thrusts herself into an ongoing investigation of a local death. New secrets and questions abound, leaving Beth to wonder if she has escaped one threat only to have fallen into another.

Thin Ice is the first in a series from Shelton, who is best known for her Scottish Bookshop Mystery cozy series. But there is nothing cozy here, only danger.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

Trace of Evil

Review by Elyse Discher

by Elyse Discher

Set in a small town obsessed with the occult, Trace of Evil by Alice Blanchard launches a promising new series and delivers an airtight police procedural with deeply macabre elements. This is a read-in-one-sitting book that will refresh readers who are potentially burned out on the genre.

With a Salem-esque history of killing suspected witches, the spooky little town of Burning Lake, New York, has turned its link to the dark arts into a tourist attraction. When a high school teacher is stabbed to death, homicide detective Natalie Lockhart turns her attention to a disaffected student who might have ties to a coven of teen witches. As if that’s not enough to keep her busy, Natalie is also working on a cold case of nine Burning Lake residents who went missing over the years, with only strange graffiti and creepy fetishes made of dead birds left behind.

While Trace of Evil utilizes paranormal themes like witchcraft, it remains firmly grounded in reality, never crossing the line into a supernatural thriller. What we get instead is a procedural that expertly balances three mysteries at one time with tight plotting and enough clues and red herrings to keep the most experienced of mystery readers conjuring up theory after theory. And truly, Blanchard doesn’t need to utilize the supernatural to make her novel chilling. From the deeply disturbing aspects of the nine disappearances to the teenage obsession with witchcraft (I remember my own love of The Craft at a similar age), the terror here is tied to people who feel so detached from the world around them that they normalize horrifying violence.

Adding to the perfectly executed mysteries and the real-world terror is Blanchard’s careful world building. This is the first book starring Natalie Lockhart, but she appears on the page like a friend readers have known forever. She is the lens through which we view her small town, and she adds an element of empathy to characters who might otherwise feel unsympathetic to the reader. Then there’s the frisson of forbidden sexual tension between Natalie and her boss, a subplot that promises to unwind later in the series. It may seem like a lot to balance within one novel, but Trace of Evil delivers all of these elements without a single misstep.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Alice Blanchard about Trace of Evil.

Cozy Mystery, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery Cozy Mystery

A Time for Murder

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Anyone who grew up on the TV series these novels are based on will hear Angela Lansbury’s voice while reading. It’s an association the publisher encourages, as she’s pictured in character on the cover. Murder, She Wrote: A Time for Murder is book 50 in the series, and it’s quite a golden anniversary, telling two stories in tandem.

Jessica Fletcher is interviewed by a high school student and reminisces about the first murder case she was involved in 25 years ago. But another body has turned up in the present day, and we skip back and forth between these two stories that ultimately intersect. Jon Land, who shares author credit with Fletcher, gives the story plentiful twists, including when a member of the Boston mafia manages, despite being incarcerated, to send two accomplices after Jessica. They’re intimidating at first, but ultimately a source of comic relief.

Much like the show, there are emotional stakes at play—the present-day story involves a family whose luck is so awful they appear to be cursed—but also a lot of discussion over pie and coffee with friends and locals. There’s a fabulously over-the-top action sequence at the climax, but flashbacks to a young, married Jessica moving into her dream home with her husband and nephew grab at the heartstrings and pull.

A character doesn’t persist through 50 books if she’s not an all-star, and this volume shows just why that’s the case.

Anyone who grew up on the TV series these novels are based on will hear Angela Lansbury’s voice while reading.

Cozy Mystery, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery Cozy Mystery

Potions Are for Pushovers

Review by Heather Seggel

by Heather Seggel

Eleanor Wilde is back in Potions Are for Pushovers, a new installment in Tamara Berry’s series that finds the village witch running low on funds and dodging raindrops as her aging thatch roof gives way. Her not-entirely-legitimate business selling elixirs to the townsfolk would be almost enough to keep her afloat, but when neighbor Sarah Blackthorne turns up dead—from poison, no less—Ellie must find the culprit, less as a matter of justice than to keep her own doors open.

Berry (Séances Are for Suckers) has fun with the contradictions at play in Ellie’s life: She’s a fraud, taking advantage of her friends and neighbors, yet they love and accept her as one of their own. Her boyfriend is flush with cash, but she turns down his offers of help even as her roof collapses. The village and its townsfolk are a conundrum as well; the story is contemporary, but the rural English setting makes things feel old-fashioned, adding to the overall charm. When a young girl defies her mother and basically apprentices herself to Ellie without so much as asking permission, it’s not only funny but also moves the story forward in unexpected ways.

For a witch with no real powers, Ellie still has some connection to the paranormal via her dead sister, with whom she communicates. Their exchanges can be humorous but primarily serve as a more serious, grounding subplot to a story that otherwise bubbles along like a hot cauldron.

Eleanor Wilde is back in Potions Are for Pushovers, a new installment that finds the village witch running low on funds and dodging raindrops as her aging thatch roof gives way.

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

Anything for You

Review by Elyse Discher

by Elyse Discher

The moment you think you have the latest Valerie Hart thriller figured out, Saul Black takes the narrative in a new and stunning direction. Exquisitely plotted, this police procedural unravels with the deftness and striking prose that Black fans have come to expect.

The plot of Anything For You hinges on the personal dysfunctions of two women who occupy vastly different spaces—one a homicide detective and one a killer—but feel remarkably alike in their intelligence and canny ability to read others. Valerie Hart is a seasoned homicide investigator with the San Francisco Police Department, and she’s working to stifle her self-destructive tendencies (booze, promiscuous sex and an addiction to work, to name a few) in order to make her marriage work. She’s even contemplating having a child; it's an idea that terrifies her as much as it excites her.

Valerie’s latest case is an example of how her personal life and work have become toxically entangled: The victim, prosecutor Adam Grant, once spent a night in her bed. Grant was brutally killed in his own home, with his wife barely surviving the attack. At first, it seems a cut-and-dry case in which a former inmate with a grudge against Grant is the perpetrator. But as Valerie digs deeper she learns that both Grant and the ex-con were linked by a mysterious escort known only as Sophia. Valerie knows she should remove herself from the case due to personal conflict, but she’s too invested to let go.

There’s an icy self-awareness and a self-deprecation to both Valerie and Sophia that helps them transcend typical femme fatale stereotypes. Black gives Sophia, in particular, a complex and sometimes unsettling back story that makes her feel like more of an anti-heroine than a villainess. By the time Valerie is closing in on her quarry, we are so invested in both of these characters, and in the incredibly intricate plot, that it is almost a disappointment to see the mystery solved. Black blends nuanced characters, immersive prose and complex plotlines so skillfully that it feels practically magical. When Valerie and Sophia finally meet face-to-face, readers will be breathless with anticipation and the promise of delicious secrets being revealed.

Historical Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense Historical Fiction

The Accomplice

Review by G. Robert Frazier

by G. Robert Frazier

It’s hard to believe that there are stories about the hunt for Nazi war criminals yet to be told. Numerous books and films already exist and seem to cover everything that can be said on the matter. So it was with some reservation that I approached reading Joseph Kanon’s new novel, The Accomplice, which promised a hunt for one such war criminal. Fortunately, Kanon’s skill as a master storyteller quickly allayed my fears.

The Accomplice is a fast-paced, emotionally charged novel. While the subject matter is familiar—there were moments of “I’ve heard all this before”—Kanon’s characters were so well-drawn and authentic in their portrayal that it was easy to put those early doubts behind.

Kanon’s riveting story takes place some 17 years following Nazi Germany’s downfall at the end of World War II. He begins by introducing us to Max Weill, a Jewish concentration camp survivor fixated on the atrocities at Auschwitz, where he was imprisoned, and on the man who terrorizes his every waking moment, Otto Schramm. An assistant to Josef Mengele, who oversaw gruesome experiments on camp prisoners and selected those to be sent to the gas chamber, Schramm is believed to be dead at the outset of the novel. But Max believes otherwise.

With Max critically ill from a heart condition, however, his obsession of bringing Schramm to justice falls to Max’s nephew, a CIA desk jockey named Aaron Wiley. Initially, Aaron is reluctant, believing there’s nothing to be gained by dredging up old wounds. But Aaron ultimately concedes, propelling him to chase leads to Buenos Aires where he encounters (and falls in love with) Schramm’s daughter, who may be more devious than she lets on.

Kanon, who previously wrote the critically praised spy thrillers Detectors and Leaving Berlin, uses taut prose and sly dialogue to dial up the intrigue and tension to satisfy any reader, including skeptics like me.

Joseph Kanon uses taut prose and sly dialogue to dial up the intrigue and tension to satisfy any reader.

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

Strangers at the Gate

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

by Linda M. Castellitto

In Catriona McPherson’s new thriller, Strangers at the Gate, Finn and her husband Paddy Lamb have a helluva week.

Things start out promisingly enough for the couple, who are making multiple life changes all at once. Paddy’s got a new law-partner job, Finn’s going to be a deacon and they’re leaving the city to move into a gatehouse on a sprawling estate owned by Paddy’s employer. Life’s looking up, even though, to Finn, it seems almost too good to be true.

And then, things go horrifically awry: after a lovely dinner with their new benefactors (the fabulously named Lovatt and Tuft Dudgeon), the Lambs discover the Dudgeons’ very, very bloodied bodies—apparent victims of a murder-suicide. Finn and Paddy keep this gruesome discovery to themselves (they’ve got their own reasons for avoiding police scrutiny), and wait . . . and wait . . . and wait . . . for someone else to come upon and report the crime. In the meantime, they strive for nonchalance as they get to know their new colleagues and neighbors, including well-meaning church folk and the beautiful, enigmatic Shannon.

But as Finn struggles to acclimate to her new and creepy surroundings—such a dark and craggy landscape, so many looming trees—her paranoia grows. And it doesn’t really stop, as McPherson ramps up the tension with ever more creative revelations and twists that will have readers eager to see what on earth is coming next. It’s a fascinating study of what can happen when we suppress our instincts or aren’t sure who to trust, and a delightfully torturous day-by-day recounting of the aftermath of a life-changing lie: everyone seems suspicious, using the proper verb tense is suddenly crucial and eccentricity begins to feel a lot more sinister.

Fans of McPherson’s award-winning work (the Dandy Gilver and Lexy Campbell series, plus numerous standalone novels) will relish whipping right through Strangers at the Gate, guessing and gasping all the way.

In Catriona McPherson’s new thriller, Strangers at the Gate, Finn and her husband Paddy Lamb have a helluva week.

Fiction, Literary Fiction, Thriller

Fiction Thriller Literary Fiction

Your House Will Pay

Review by Arlene McKanic

by Arlene McKanic

Steph Cha’s nerve-scraping novel—with its biblical, plangent title and painfully relevant plot—could be described as triggering, depending on the reader. Your House Will Pay is based on a particularly sickening episode during a particularly sickening period in American history. In 1991 Los Angeles, Korean grocery store owner Soon Ja Du shot 15-year-old Latasha Harlins in the back of the head after accusing her of stealing. The horror was caught on video, and although Du was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, she never went to jail.

Who was this woman who pulled the trigger? Who was the girl she shot? To answer this, Cha has fictionalized the players, with Du turned into Yvonne Park and Harlins into Ava Matthews, and has brought them to life through the eyes of their loved ones. In Yvonne’s case, this means her taciturn husband, Paul, and their daughters, Miriam and Grace. After Yvonne kills Ava, the Parks escape into anonymity. They run a tiny pharmacy in a mall filled with modest Korean businesses and keep to themselves.

As for Ava, she and her brother, Shawn, were raised by their aunt Sheila after the death of their mother. Sheila’s son, Ray, is more like a brother than a cousin. The comings and goings of this African American family are far more dramatic than those of the reclusive Parks. Shawn and Ray have been in and out of gangs and, unlike Yvonne, in and out of jail. For most of the book, they’re middle-aged and determined to stay on the straight and narrow. Ray is a husband to the faithful Nisha and a father to their children, and Shawn is helping his girlfriend raise her adorable toddler. Then something terrible happens, and the Parks and the Matthewses are thumped back to square one.

The heart of the book is how alike these people are. They work, they eat, they pray, they love; their devotion to their families is painful. They are caught up in a racial pathology that came into play long before the Parks emigrated to America and before any member of the Matthews family was born. That pathology led them to turn on each other.

What Cha wants the reader to understand through her straightforward prose is that none of what happened between these two families had to happen, and everybody’s house pays.

Steph Cha’s nerve-scraping novel—with its biblical, plangent title and painfully relevant plot—could be described as triggering, depending on the reader.

Fiction, Thriller

Fiction Thriller

Conviction

Review by Anna Zeitlin

by Anna Zeitlin

When Anna McDonald’s husband announces he’s leaving her for her best friend, she finds comfort in true crime podcasts—until she recognizes the victim of her new favorite podcast as a man she once knew. When her best friend’s has-been rock-star husband turns up on her doorstep, he becomes the unwitting accomplice in helping her unravel the podcast’s mystery. Soon they’re jet-setting around Europe as Anna becomes entangled with assassins and uncovers a plot involving one of the richest, most secretive people in the world. Much of Conviction takes place in Scotland, and narrator Cathleen McCarron does a great job with accents and secret identities. Denise Mina’s latest thriller is a fun, edge-of-your-seat listen that feels very contemporary with its use of social media and podcasts to drive the story forward.

Denise Mina’s latest thriller is a fun, edge-of-your-seat listen that feels very contemporary with its use of social media and podcasts to drive the story forward.

Audio, Fiction, Thriller

Fiction Audio Thriller

Whisper Network

Review by Anna Zeitlin

by Anna Zeitlin

A North Texas-based athletic wear company gets shaken up when the “bad man list” is passed around in Chandler Baker’s Whisper Network. When one of those bad men is up for a promotion to CEO of the company, enough is enough. Four very different women—from high-powered lawyers to a member of the custodial staff—come together to stand up to him and to the company willing to overlook his history of sexual harassment. This #MeToo revenge fantasy makes for a fun listen with a bit of mystery, exploring women’s lives, their relationships to work and how they deal with the bad men they are forced to answer to. Narrator Almarie Guerra does a nimble job portraying the different women with honesty and sympathy.