BookPage Fiction Top Pick, March 2016

On a bleak, harsh winter afternoon in Chosen, a small town in upstate New York, local art history professor George Clare comes home to find his 3-year-old daughter, Franny, hiding in fear and his wife, Catherine, murdered. George becomes the chief suspect, and the investigation turns up details about his personal life—secret relationships, temper issues, a disintegrating marriage—that cast his innocence in doubt for everyone but his closest family. Still, the police investigating remain unable to pin his wife’s murder on George, and the crime goes unsolved for decades.

Death seems to hang over Chosen; the town is rural, close-knit and poor, with a dark history—the Clares’ own house was the site of a suicide not long before the family moved in. The community struggles not only to understand who killed Catherine, but also how and why. Years will pass—and Franny Clare will have to return to her childhood home, now long abandoned—before any justice is found.

In her third novel, Elizabeth Brundage, who has an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, combines a classic murder mystery with a gripping psychological thriller, exploring the complexities of grief, relationships—romantic, familial and friendly—and small-town life. All Things Cease to Appear is a smart, original take on the mystery genre, with nuanced depictions of rural New York, the people who inhabit it and the secrets they keep.

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Bestselling author Thomas Perry loves plans, escapes and perfect getaways. He also has a low-key, sardonic sense of humor and is a master at creating witty and likable thieves that we end up rooting for, often over the more straight-and-narrow option. All of these keystones are in place in Perry’s most recent standalone thriller, Forty Thieves—and there are at least that many iffy characters tumbling around in this winning novel.

One year has passed since the body of research scientist James Ballantine was found stuffed in a storm drain, and the crime has gone unsolved. Enter two husband/wife teams, each hired for separate reasons connected with the case. Private detectives and former LAPD cops Sid and Ronnie Abel are hired by Ballantine’s former employers to pick up the dropped threads of the earlier investigation and to search out the killer. Ed and Nicole Hoyt are skilled assassins hired by a middleman to stop the Abels from completing their assignment.

Perry is skilled at developing the backstories of this at-odds quartet, and readers may find their sympathies meandering all over the place. All four are handy with their weaponry, and the good guy/bad guy labels may get a bit murky at times. Also, there’s another picturesque gang behind the Ed/Nicole hire, and readers may grow to like them, too: a bunch of Russian diamond thieves who really just want to retire quietly in southern California after an exhausting career.

For all who’ve never read a Perry novel, an unforgettable experience awaits. The author cuts the hyperbole and offers blow-by-blow descriptions of a series of game plans as they’re activated and carried out with varying degrees of success. The writing is spare, literal and droll at the same time, often reminiscent of the late Donald Westlake’s intrigues with his steely Parker and comic Dortmunder characters.

Forty Thieves is an adrenaline rush, as fast-moving vehicles crisscross like searchlights arcing across an urban night sky, as Ed, Nicole, Sid and Ronnie engage in their exciting game of search and destroy. As for the victim whose murder started the whole thing off, he may be the character you’ll end up liking least of all. And it may not be giving too much away to say that to work it all out, it’s “cherchez la femme” from start to finish.

Vincent Zandri captures readers’ attention from the opening scene of his new suspense novel, Orchard Grove, and proceeds to careen through lust and lives. Lana, as a young girl, brutally slays her stepfather who has been sexually abusing her for months. In an unusual twist, Lana relishes the power she experiences when she kills him, and he becomes the first of many men she murders throughout her life.

Fast forward about 36 years, and Lana returns to the bucolic area near Albany, New York, where her murderous spree occurred. Now, however, she’s bored, is married to a police detective and has a proclivity for topless sunbathing. Her neighbor, has-been Hollywood writer Ethan Forrester, stares at her from his bedroom window and fantasizes about a relationship with her. As his fantasy becomes a reality, the story charges up and down a razor’s edge of tension and seduction.

Ethan’s obsession with Lana only increases after they have sex, and he puts their marriages, his welfare and his sanity on the line. Meanwhile, Lana also exerts her mesmerizing sexual powers over Ethan’s wife. The Forresters recognize the havoc Lana is wreaking on their marriage, but Lana’s allure is impossible for them to resist. So when Lana devises a diabolical plan and needs Ethan’s help to execute it, he ignores his better judgement and agrees to her scheme, forever altering the course of his, his wife and Lana’s lives.

While the characters don’t have many redeeming qualities, Zandri manages to create a likable persona in Ethan for whom readers can root while head-smacking him for his stupidity. The sheer audacity of the violence and sex in the novel creates a story that, much like the Forresters' obsession with Lana, is hard to tear away from once a reader is hooked.

British author Charles Lambert’s latest, The Children’s Home, is like a strange dream in which you can’t quite tell if you’re awake. Morgan, its disfigured, 20-something protagonist, lives isolated in his powerful family’s sprawling home. His estranged sister sent a housekeeper to live with him, and soon after, children began arriving. They appear with no backstory—one, in fact, materializes out of thin air—and Morgan and the housekeeper, Engel, become parents of sorts. The resulting story is a weird, poignant journey reminiscent of Calvino that explores fear, power, revenge and redemption.

When one of the children falls ill, Dr. Crane enters the scene. He befriends the young hermit and becomes a fixture at the house. When government agents arrive inquiring about rumors of “strays” living there, Crane speaks for Morgan, who is afraid to let strangers see his face. As Morgan and Crane observe strange, sometimes frightening, behaviors in the children, eerily related discoveries are made in attic trunks and in Morgan’s grandfather’s books. Eventually, circumstances force Morgan to balance his fear of being seen against his concern for the children’s safety.

Lambert’s story is addictive, although readers looking for concrete answers to its riddles may be disappointed. But while the book leaves many mysteries intact, its potent, often brutal, images have a lasting power. Things feel just a notch off in this world, like a walk through a quietly disturbing dream. It stays with you after, like that dream, trying to tell you something gravely important.

This article was originally published in the January 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.