Isaiah Coleridge may have gone legit as a private investigator, but his past life as a mob enforcer dies hard. When he’s hired to investigate a killing that mimics a prior hit, his former bosses expect results—and failure to please them is not an option. Coleridge digs in, but what he finds is not typical mafia tit-for-tat but something much darker. Black Mountain is a thriller that gets uncomfortably close to pure evil and lets you breathe in the stench.

Laird Barron (Blood Standard) doesn’t spare his half-Maori hero much. The story opens with Coleridge taking a bullet while defending himself against a pair of thugs, but he can be tender if guarded with his girlfriend and her young son. When Coleridge follows the trail of what turns out to be a serial killer, it leads him into a labyrinthine world of sophisticated weapons that can debilitate with sound or light, though they’re being used by someone who is also masterful with a knife.

The ugliness of the human condition contrasts with the gorgeous Hudson Valley, and Coleridge’s country shack is a refuge from the people who so often cross his path. His office, though, is a noir gem straight out of Hammett or Chandler, right down to the smoky glass in the door, and he has run-ins with a showgirl cut from similar cloth. After a harrowing showdown as the chase concludes, there’s a scene so tender it nearly induced whiplash. For all the darkness in Black Mountain, it has a hero who burns bright.

Flora Dane, the tough-as-nails survivor of a traumatic kidnapping, is back in Never Tell, the twisty new thriller from the always reliable Lisa Gardner.

For the unfamiliar, Flora leapt into readers’ hearts in Gardner’s 2016 bestseller, Find Her. In Never Tell, Flora, though still haunted by the abuse she endured while captive to Jacob Ness for 472 days, is working as a confidential informant for the Boston Police Department. But when businessman Conrad Carter is shot dead at the alleged hands of his wife, Evie, Flora’s past trauma comes racing back. Flora dimly recalls having met Conrad once before, in the company of her previous tormentor. But how Conrad and Jacob were connected—and what, if any, role Conrad had in her abduction—remains a mystery.

Gardner gives plenty for readers to ponder as Flora’s ordeal is only part of the myriad mysteries and surprises in store in her latest novel. There’s also Evie to consider—turns out, she’s an enigma as well. Over a decade ago, the now-pregnant teacher was implicated in the shooting death of her father. Evie escaped prosecution as the death was ruled accidental, but she’s an even stronger suspect in her husband’s shooting. Evie, though, contends she found Conrad shot in the office of their suburban home and only shot Conrad’s laptop computer after seeing a collection of sordid pictures he kept on it.

Gardner’s favorite recurring police detective, D.D. Warren, who previously investigated Evie’s father’s death, has a difficult time believing her innocence this time. It’s only after Flora reveals her possible connection to Conrad that D.D. begins to suspect there may be something more lurking behind both shootings and Flora’s kidnapping.

Told in emotionally gripping chapters from each character’s perspective, Never Tell is layered with the type of mystery, surprise and suspense that Gardner is rightfully acclaimed for.

BookPage Top Pick in Fiction, starred review, February 2019

Jane Harper has had enormous success with her mystery series about loner Detective Aaron Falk (The Dry and Force of Nature), which married the gritty realism of small-town Australian life with complicated criminal investigations. Her new standalone, The Lost Man, is bound to win her further accolades. It’s a timely and riveting family drama set in a desolate area of Queensland that will keep you guessing until the final pages.

When you live under a punishing sun on a cattle ranch the size of a small European country, you know not to travel without a full complement of food, water and a working vehicle. So when Cam Bright is found dead of dehydration in the desert only a few miles from his well-stocked car, his brothers Nathan and Bub are shocked and baffled. The mystery of Cam’s death brings longstanding family tensions between Nathan, Bub, their mother and Cam’s wife, Ilse, to the fore and escalate when decades-old allegations of Cam’s assault of a summer worker resurface. The burden of understanding these complex family ties falls heavily on older brother Nathan, who is dealing with his unresolved feelings for Ilse and trying to build a relationship with his estranged teenage son.

The grim crimes in The Lost Man are as much shaped by the rural landscape as by the actions of any one individual. With thoughtful regard for the impact of domestic violence, Harper keeps a sharp focus on a handful of characters that populate these enormous tracts of land where neighbors live up to three and four hours apart. As in her previous novels, the harsh environment plays a pivotal role, as significant as any of her characters. An unforgiving wasteland, the ranch is a place where isolation takes a long-simmering psychological toll, and everyone knows being out in the sun for too long could kill you.

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.