Mystery & Suspense Archives | Page 64 of 119 | BookPage

by Trisha Ping

Australian author Sarah Schmidt plunges readers into one of America’s most notorious true crime stories with her fiction debut, See What I Have Done. In August 1892, Andrew and Abby Borden were found bludgeoned to death by axe in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. Who killed the Bordens, and why? Evidence pointed to Andrew’s adult daughter, Lizzie, but she was acquitted. Popular myth never let her quite off the hook (you’ve heard that eerie nursery rhyme). But was she really guilty?

See What I Have Done is interested in this question, but perhaps not as much as some readers might be. Schmidt eschews the “whodunit” format to focus on the warped relationships and deep resentments that hover over the house in Fall River. Told in the voices of Lizzie; her older sister, Emma; the family maid, Bridget; and a mysterious stranger named Benjamin, who comes to town with LIzzie’s sinister Uncle John, the novel turns that August afternoon around and around, examining it in microscopic detail from these four separate angles like a jeweler making an appraisal of a singularly dark gem. Lizzie and Emma have a codependent yet contentious relationship, and neither can stand their stepmother. Bridget can’t get over Mrs. Borden’s refusal to let her go home to Ireland. And Uncle John is holding a grudge against his brother, Andrew.

Schmidt sketches the motivations of her characters with subtle strokes, allowing readers to fill in some notable blanks—what is Uncle John’s deal, anyway?—but she leaves little to the imagination when it comes to their physical bodies. The damage done to the Borden parents is described with visceral relish; the scents of vomit, sweat and blood are almost palpable. Like her fellow Australian Hannah Kent, whose debut novel, Burial Rites, also centered on a real-life 19th-century crime, Schmidt conjures the explosive mix of claustrophobia and frustration that life in a small community with a rigid social structure can engender. See What I Have Done is a chilling summer read.

Australian author Sarah Schmidt plunges readers into one of America’s most notorious true crime stories with her fiction debut, See What I Have Done.

Thriller, YA, YA Fiction

YA Fiction YA Thriller

It’s all fun and games until . . .

Review by Kimberly Giarratano

by Kimberly Giarratano

Best friends Izzie, Graham, Viv and Harry know their idyllic California town harbors secrets—specifically the cover-up of a teen girl’s murder five years ago—so they start a secret society intent on carrying out revenge and justice. Dubbing themselves the Order of the IV, the group tests the waters with small pranks until their antics bring the unwanted attention of the popular clique. But as the Order grows and the pranks dangerously intensify, the friends must navigate their love for one another amid the deep hatred they feel for their targets of revenge.

Alexandra Sirowy uses creepy imagery to peel back the layers of a quaint, coastal town to reveal its seedy core and to bring this twisty ride to its inevitable yet shocking conclusion. Narrated through Izzie’s haunting first-person point of view, the original Order struggles to remain true to themselves and the tight bonds they’ve formed, even as their plan to topple corrupt adults goes horribly wrong.

Kimberly Giarratano is the author of Grunge Gods and Graveyards, a young adult paranormal mystery.

This article was originally published in the August 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

Following a mystery underground

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

We have an understandable human fascination with stories of underground societies. Homeless and often forgotten people have done what seems incredible and unnatural to humankind—a species that has always thrived in the open air and on high ground. Here are the people who choose to go underground; and much has been written about the individuals who shelter in the tunnels and abandoned human byways that exist under earth’s cities.

In her outstanding new Ruth Galloway novel, The Chalk Pit, author Elly Griffiths as usual has drawn on her extensive knowledge of archaeology and history, enticing readers beneath the streets of Norwich, England, on a dark journey that will yield some strange discoveries. Archaeologist and professor Ruth travels below ground to a series of abandoned thoroughfares to investigate the age and provenance of some human remains just discovered in an area where a local architect hopes to build a very modern enclave of shops and restaurants.

At the same time, DCI Harry Nelson is looking into the mysterious disappearance of a homeless woman named Babs, and he hears a rumor that she may have gone underground. Then, two homeless men who knew her are found brutally murdered. Soon Ruth, Nelson and his detective team are pursuing separate investigations in the eerie, claustrophobic yet fascinating caverns beneath the streets where they uncover a trove of unsuspected life and activity.

Readers new to Griffith’s stellar mystery series will soon become familiar with Ruth and Nelson and their singular relationship, as well as with the unconventional, extended family of friends and acquaintances who’ve been with the series since its outset, from the meticulous Judy and Druid-inspired Cathbad to Clough and his love, Cassandra.

Griffiths’ understated, dry humor invests her characters with a special humanity that’s a cut above the ordinary. Behind each character’s façade, their thoughts can be very funny indeed—mostly not too far off from emotions we’ve felt ourselves. Conversely, when the author wants to move you to tears, she can also do that very well indeed.

The novel wraps with a zinger of a final sentence (containing a suspicion that a few skeptical readers may have had earlier in the story), and it's one that guarantees the allure of the next Ruth Galloway book that is sure to follow.

In her outstanding new Ruth Galloway novel, The Chalk Pit, author Elly Griffiths as usual has drawn on her extensive knowledge of archaeology and history, enticing readers beneath the streets of Norwich, England, on a dark journey that will yield some strange discoveries. Archaeologist and professor Ruth travels below ground to a series of abandoned thoroughfares to investigate the age and provenance of some human remains just discovered in an area where a local architect hopes to build a very modern enclave of shops and restaurants.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

A reporter searches for answers to a heart-rending mystery

Review by Lori K. Joyce

by Lori K. Joyce

A worker finds tiny bones, the bones of an infant long buried, when excavating an East London backyard for a development project. Thus begins Fiona Barton’s second psychological thriller. After the success of Barton’s bestselling and finely wrought first book, The Widow, readers have high expectations for The Child, a story that once again features Kate Waters, a thorough and “old school” reporter who has a winsome way with people. In this novel Kate’s personality and background are more developed, though the mystery remains front and center.

Spurred by a small article mentioning the gruesome discovery of the baby’s bones, Waters decides to investigate. She wants to know who buried the baby and what kind of sordid, desperate circumstances would prompt such an action. Three other key female characters also see the article and Water’s subsequent reports detailing her investigation.

One of these women, Angela, gave birth to a child in 1970 who was kidnapped from her hospital room while Angela showered. The baby was never found, and Angela is convinced the recently unearthed child is her baby girl. She tells the police and Waters what she believes. While waiting for ultimate confirmation, the story undulates and ripples with frisson. Barton again uses multiple points of view shifting between Waters, Angela and two other women—a mother and daughter—to create a continuous story line.

The mother and daughter have a solid connection to East London, but seemingly not to Angela or the baby. With Water’s skillful, empathetic questioning, she begins to recreate the events of long ago, right down to a 1980s disco-themed reunion of the residents of the block where the worker found the remains. Barton’s stories ring with authenticity as she, like Waters, has 30 years of experience in journalism. Barton fulfills all expectations in this installment: The Child resoundly delivers.

A worker finds tiny bones, the bones of an infant long buried, when excavating an East London backyard for a development project. Thus begins Fiona Barton’s second psychological thriller.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense, YA, YA Fiction

Mystery & Suspense YA Fiction YA Mystery

Shades of gray

Review by Jennifer Bruer Kitchel

by Jennifer Bruer Kitchel

Set in early 1940s New England, Emily Bain Murphy’s debut novel, The Disappearances, follows 16-year-old Aila Quinn and her younger brother, Miles. The two are struggling after the recent death of their mother, Juliet, and their father’s departure to fight in World War II. Left alone, they must travel to their mother’s mysterious hometown of Sterling, Connecticut, to stay with family friends.

When they arrive, Aila discovers the townspeople have been suffering “Disappearances” every seven years. These fantastical losses include the ability to smell, to see the stars and to see their own reflections. Aila and Miles don’t understand why everyone blames their mother until Aila begins to unravel Juliet’s mysterious past. Why was she able to break free of the curse? Why did Juliet leave notes in a book of William Shakespeare’s works?

Bain deftly weaves these threads together as Aila discovers not only her mother’s secrets but also her own identity. By setting the novel in a time before the internet, Bain thoroughly conveys the sense of strange isolation of Sterling’s residents and their troubles. In the end, The Disappearances is a delicious mix of mystery, fantasy and romance.

Jennifer Bruer Kitchel is the librarian for a Pre-K through 8th level Catholic school.

This article was originally published in the July 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

A Halloween night goes awry

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

It’s Halloween night, and the K-Bar in Bolton, Montana, is well into its annual costume party. The bar is full of Elvis impersonators competing for top dress-up honors. Drinking with her friends among other costumed partygoers and over-imbibers is local college student Grace Adams, dressed up as a prom queen. She gets spooked enough by someone she has tagged as a stalker that she leaves the party to escape the real or imagined threat.

At the same time as hips are swiveling in the K-Bar, the nearby home of well-known local residents Peter and Hannah Granger is burning to the ground, leaving the remains of two unidentified bodies in the rubble as well as a heap of smoldering questions.

Enter Detective Macy Greeley, who arrives from neighboring Helena to investigate the fire and determine whether it was accident or arson. That it was an intentional act soon becomes clear, and Macy sets out to dissect the lives and relationships of the Grangers—Hannah, an artist and teacher at the local college, and Peter, a nationally popular author who teaches a popular writing workshop.

Macy must determine the identity of one of the bodies and unearth a motive behind the murder of Peter Granger, the second victim. As more becomes known about the coterie of female students who seemed to be Granger groupies, readers may begin to share Macy’s suspicions that a lot more than manuscript critique was going on in Peter Granger’s creative writing workshop. It turns out Grace was once very close to the Grangers—taking painting classes from Hannah and a spot in Peter's coveted workshop—until they had a mysterious falling out.

The detective casts a wide net to include the volatile, often troubled young women who formed the members of the writing workshop; Jessica, a despondent art department associate with mixed motives: the Grangers’ personal assistant, Cornelia; a disaffected boyfriend or two; and the malignant stalker, Jordan.

Karin Salvalaggio’s Silent Rain builds on themes in her earlier Bone Dust White (2014). Those who haven’t read the first book may find that Silent Rain involves some heavy sledding. Both Grace and Macy were front and center there, and that past influences the present in the new entry. Unfortunately it’s often referred to with roundabout, sometimes muddy allusions. The goal may be to preserve the suspense in Silent Rain, but the result for the reader is often confusion. This book is all arms and legs—presenting too many questions that dangle without resolution. This can obscure the author’s very real talent for intriguing police procedurals, a solid core that will hopefully emerge more strongly in future novels.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Thriller

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Thriller

A legal thriller master turns an eye to Bosnia

Review by G. Robert Frazier

by G. Robert Frazier

Scott Turow takes a bold step with his latest novel, Testimony, by moving the typical legal suspense his fans have become accustomed to out of the courtroom, as well as out of the country altogether. As the book opens, attorney Bill ten Boom’s midlife crisis is already fully underway: he’s left his job, his marriage and his home. He wants nothing more than to take a year off to “follow the sun around the world,” and “spend the evening reading everything I’ve always meant to.”

But despite his disillusionment with his former life, letting go of his quest for justice isn’t so easy. He is quickly talked into a new job as a prosecutor for the International Criminal Court in The Hague, a war crimes tribunal. His first case involves the disappearance of some 400 refugees during the Bosnian war, who are presumed to have been buried alive. The only surviving witness, Ferko Rincic, claims an armed force was behind the atrocity, and it’s up to ten Boom to bring the culprits to justice. In a classic fish-out-of-water scenario, ten Boom must negotiate the political and judicial legalities in a global arena while also contending with a lack of cooperation from all fronts. His investigation takes him from the streets of Bosnia to the secret halls of the U.S. government itself. No one is forthcoming, the lies are palpable, and his own safety is ultimately placed into jeopardy.

While it’s not necessary to have read any of Turow’s previous novels, Testimony is a natural progression in Bill ten Boom’s story and one that adds a deep complexity to his character. Rather than present just another case in the same old setting, Turow reinvents his protagonist by taking him out of his element. At the same time, Turow reinvents himself and reasserts his own mastery of the genre.

Fiction, Thriller

Fiction Thriller

Big complications after murder in a small town

Review by Karen Ann Cullotta

by Karen Ann Cullotta

Arriving just in time for summer, Rosecrans Baldwin’s new novel, The Last Kid Left, is set in a New England beach town, where the bucolic, sea-swept terrain is smote by a double murder allegedly committed by a teenager, whose girlfriend’s foray into digital, private pornography ends up going viral. Indeed, readers best beware that Baldwin’s dark and brooding narrative is by no means a light and breezy “beach read,” and on the contrary, requires an appreciation for a murder mystery/love story in which the plot is inhabited solely by a cast of antiheroes, both male and female, who are not always easy to love.

Inspired by a true 1930s crime in New England and imbued with vestiges of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter—one of Baldwin’s favorite works—The Last Kid Left begins when a car, driven by 19-year-old Nick Toussaint Jr., crashes into a kitschy sculpture of a cowgirl, prompting police to discover the teen has two bodies in the trunk: a prominent town doctor and his wife. Nick is charged with the murders, thrusting his already fragile 16-year-old girlfriend, Emily Portis, into a media maelstrom fueled by a hungry pack of journalists, one of whom realizes her reluctant return to her hometown of Claymore is entirely serendipitous. Meanwhile, a recently retired veteran police officer, the beleaguered recovering alcoholic Martin, finds himself drawn to the case at precisely the moment his toxic second marriage implodes. As Baldwin writes: “The clock reads four. In less than twenty-four hours the department will throw him a retirement party. Going by previous nights out, everyone will get drunk, sing his praises, wake up the next morning, and hop in a radio car and resume routine. Everyone except him.”

When Martin meets Nick’s mother, Suzanne, a fellow alcoholic who has not yet hopped aboard the recovery wagon, their shared obsession with proving the troubled teen’s innocence sparks a relationship that proves redemptive for both of them.

Without spoiling the ending of this finely wrought thriller, Baldwin’s novel steers clear of tidy endings, remaining faithful to delivering a story that ebbs and flows with the messiness of real life.

Fiction, Gothic Fiction, Thriller

Fiction Thriller Gothic Fiction

Haunted in dreams

Review by Arlene McKanic

by Arlene McKanic

“All this has happened before and will happen again,” President Roslyn said in “Battlestar Galactica,” and this sentiment informs Gian Sardar’s strange, beautifully written thriller. Abby Walters, a Los Angeles estate jeweler, is being tormented by nightmares—one nightmare in particular—that have returned after 14 years. They are so vivid and terrifying that she feels the need to get to the bottom of them, once and for all.

Abby believes her dreams have something to do with her grandmother’s ring, and something to do with what happened to her grandmother’s best friend, a woman named Claire Ballantine. Claire disappeared a few years after World War II, and her husband, William, killed himself shortly thereafter. Abby’s high school reunion is in the offing anyway, so she leaves her recalcitrant scriptwriter boyfriend behind and returns to her childhood home in Minnesota. She arrives just in time to learn there’s a serial rapist on the loose, and her former high school crush is one of the detectives trying to hunt him down.

Sardar titles Abby’s chapters “Now” and alternates them with “Then” chapters, which center on the unhappy Ballantines and Eva, the girl whom the wealthy and guilty William has turned to for solace. Eva is poor, from a Minnesota nowheresville that she longs to put behind her for several reasons. William may be her ticket out, but she truly loves him. Cleverly, subtly, even insidiously, Sardar shows how Abby’s life parallels the lives of the Ballantines and the hapless Eva. What happened “then” has much to do with the nightmares Abby’s having “now”; the author seems to suggest that some catastrophes can be impressed upon the genes as indelibly as they can on the mind and the memory of them passed on. No, Abby is not a secret descendant of Eva or the Ballantines, but she is a descendant of her grandmother. Readers won’t be surprised to learn that Sardar co-wrote a memoir called Psychic Junkie.

You Were Here will make you wonder about the nature of reality even as it gives you goosebumps.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense, YA, YA Fiction

Mystery & Suspense YA Fiction YA Mystery

Murder in detention

Review by Kimberly Giarratano

by Kimberly Giarratano

If John Hughes turned The Breakfast Club into a murder mystery, it would be this delicious page-turner. Five teens enter detention, but only four come out. Simon, who runs a gossip app, dies from a suspiciously timed allergic reaction. He has made a lot of enemies in his San Diego suburb, but none with more motive than these four: Bronwyn, the straight-A good girl; Cooper, the unassuming baseball star; Nate, the drug-dealing slacker; and Addy, the enviable pretty girl. At first glance, they seem like high school clichés, but each is hiding a life-altering secret they’d do anything to protect. Either they’re all innocent, or one of them is lying, and it’s up to readers to find out.

Told in four alternating points of view, One of Us Is Lying is more than just a feisty whodunit—it’s an insightful look at high school life. Nothing drags in this fast-paced story, so give it to even the most reluctant reader and dare them not to devour it in one sitting.

Kimberly Giarratano is the author of Grunge Gods and Graveyards, a young adult paranormal mystery.

This article was originally published in the June 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

If John Hughes turned The Breakfast Club into a murder mystery, it would be this delicious page-turner.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

Swirling government secrets

Review by G. Robert Frazier

by G. Robert Frazier

If you are a fan of NBC’s “Law & Order” programs, you’ll probably be a fan of Peter Blauner’s new novel, Proving Ground. A staffer in the writer’s room, as well as a past Edgar Award-winning author, Blauner knows how to write compelling crime fiction. But, what’s more important, he knows how to portray the characters caught up in the midst of criminal misdeeds, bringing out their emotional and inner turmoil in gripping fashion.

Former Army lieutenant Nathaniel “Natty Dread” Dresden, already haunted by the death of a young Iraqi boy at his hands, is further traumatized when his father, civil rights lawyer David Dresden, is killed in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. While processing this latest disruption in his life, longtime family friend and David’s business partner, Benjamin Grimaldi, aka Ben Grimm, enlists Natty’s help in closing David’s latest high-profile case involving an Iraqi man suing the United States government for its role in torturing him about alleged terrorist activity.

The deeper Natty digs into the case—even while butting heads with the FBI and NYPD Detective Lourdes Robles, who each have their own investigations—the more secrets he uncovers about his father and Ben Grimm, putting family and friendship to the ultimate test.

Blauner easily gets into the head of each of his characters, creating a sense of sympathy and compassion for their individual traumas. But this is easily Natty’s tale, overall, and the majority of the book rightly follows his investigation and personal quest for redemption. Blauner writes crisp, detailed passages and sharp dialogue, giving the story an edgy, almost noirish quality. There’s even a fiery court scene between attorneys that would fit into almost any “Law & Order” episode.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

Secrets washed ashore

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

"I couldn’t put it down!" It’s an old cliché, often used to describe a book that achieves an immediate and constant hold—so much so that a reader can consume it in close to one sitting—no matter what the hour or how many chores need to be done.

Lately, such addictive reads seem to be few and far between, with many simply trying to up the ante on gore or the twist surprise factor, and most merely end up leveling the playing field.

At last, though, here’s a book that fits the bill. I Found You is addictive, and it doesn’t insult your believability quotient.

British author Lisa Jewell has penned 13 previous novels, including the creepy The Girls in the Garden (2016). In I Found You, Jewell combines several ongoing plots; all three of the storylines she’s imagined here stand on their own with intriguing characters, while at the same time seductively weaving one cloth. These stories are set in motion at differing times and places, but sooner or later they converge in a funky English seaside town called Ridinghouse Bay.

A man sits on the beach in the pouring rain: staring out to sea; soaked to the skin; silent. A middle-aged single mother sees him as she gazes from her cottage window.

Near London, a young newlywed from Kiev discovers that her husband of three weeks has gone missing. Without any new friends or understanding of British culture, she must somehow set the wheels in motion in order to discover what’s happened.

In a decades-past flashback, two teens on holiday with their family encounter an older teen who raises their suspicions in a hair-raising fashion. The scene unfolds during a visit to the beach by a traveling vintage “steam fair” (a showcase of steam-powered vehicles and machinery) that provides an appropriately seedy feel to the proceedings.

Each of these finely drawn stories tends more to gloom than to creepiness, but Jewell’s skill is such that an overriding sense of menace seeps into every page, overriding the commonplace feel of the setting. The action reaches a climax at a once-lovely seaside mansion, now overgrown with neglect—its path leading to a rusty, padlocked door hiding lonely rooms and seaswept vistas.

Jewell knows how to urge the reader on, but not in a bludgeoning way. Occasionally, the action gets a little too ordered—and perhaps winds up a bit too neatly—but by that time, readers will have enjoyed just about every minute of this captivating read.

British author Lisa Jewell's I Found You is addictive, and it doesn’t insult your believability quotient.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

Brunetti takes a holiday

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

If you haven’t read any books in Donna Leon’s stunning detective series featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, now up to 26 books, the first installment may take a bit of getting used to as everything takes place on the water. Of course it does—her detective lives in Venice, where you pop out your door and into a boat in order to get to your destination.

In Earthly Remains, the scene shifts from Venice to its nearby islands, resulting in a subtle change in pace and atmosphere in this outstanding new entry in the series.

Brunetti’s blood pressure has run a bit awry, and he ends up embarking on a trip to regroup and relax. With his wife, Paola, in agreement with the plan, Brunetti is off to stay by himself in a villa that’s owned by a wealthy relative just a short boat trip away on the nearby island of Sant’Erasmo, in the Venetian Lagoon.

Earthly Remains takes shape as Brunetti begins his somewhat solitary stay at the unoccupied villa by making the acquaintance of the villa’s caretaker, widower Davide Casati. The two begin rowing daily together in the quiet waters of the lagoon among the shimmering reaches of nature, water and sun, burning Brunetti’s mind to quiet. He grows to love the nature that surrounds him as they row: “Brunetti had the sudden realization that, though none of this belonged to him, he belonged to all of it.”

Leon paints a picture of the incessant, encompassing warmth and the quiet reaches of nature as the two men travel out among the reeds and skimming ducks under the burnishing sun. Casati introduces his friend to the bees he keeps on a number of outlying islands where, in many of the hives, the bees are dying—to Casati’s grave distress.

The sun-blanched idyll changes in an instant when Brunetti, walking to the dock in the early morning to meet his friend, finds that both Casati and his boat are missing. Brunetti must slip back into character as a law enforcement officer as he joins in the search for the caretaker. As facts emerge, the detective is forced to re-evaluate all that he knows about the caretaker and his troubled past.

Stunning descriptions of the often tranquil surroundings mingle with an atmosphere that quickly turns malignant as troubling discoveries begin to emerge and take shape beneath the surface of the calm waters.