Mystery & Suspense Archives | Page 74 of 119 | BookPage

by Barbara Clark

Every Fifteen Minutes, best-selling author Lisa Scottoline’s latest page-turner, effectively draws readers in at two levels, both as gripping psychological suspense and as a vivid look into the tangled realms of the heart. The strength of Scottoline’s new standalone lies in its clever combination of tight plotting and a cast of believable characters. The spoiler in the life of Dr. Eric Parrish comes in the form of a dangerous sociopath, whose careful and deadly plan turns the psychiatrist’s life into the stuff of nightmares.

Parrish heads up a well-known and successful psychiatric unit in a big city hospital. He’s in the midst of a divorce, badly misses his 7-year-old daughter and is on the verge of a battle for custody. On the other hand, his professional life is going gangbusters, he’s respected and liked by the hospital staff and not a few women seemed tuned in his direction.

But Eric’s fortunes change—and mighty quickly—when he unexpectedly finds himself charged with sexual harassment, an unfounded claim that throws his custody fight into doubt. Then his latest private patient, a troubled 17-year-old named Max, suddenly flies out of control, throwing into doubt Eric’s belief that the boy’s not a danger to the public. After Max’s girlfriend is found murdered and the boy disappears briefly, Eric finds his career in jeopardy when he tries to exonerate his patient.

It doesn’t take long for readers, if not Eric, to figure out that there’s an outside force at work. Someone is pulling strings, intent on destroying the personal and professional life Eric’s worked so hard to secure. Scottoline provides a chilling and in-depth look at the narcissistic obsessions that inhabit the damaged mind of the sociopath, and keeps readers in suspense about the identity of the wrongdoer until the last spine-chilling moment.

The author is at her most compelling when she catches Eric realizing that, for all his careful training on how to deal with crazy situations, he’s failed to understand that one deeply disturbed person has set out to upend his life permanently, nor is he prepared for his role as intended victim. Drab title aside, Every Fifteen Minutes is filled with characters that are much more than one-dimensional cardboard cutouts, with a plot that’s disturbingly plausible, thus turning a familiar story into one full of razor-sharp suspense.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

The Strangler Vine

Review by Emily Bartlett Hines

by Emily Bartlett Hines

As The Strangler Vine opens, William Avery is a typical young soldier in 1830s colonial India: deep in debt, disdainful of Indian “barbarity,” stalled in his career and desperate to make it back to Devonshire before the cholera picks him off. His prospects change drastically when British East India Company officers give him a mission: He will accompany Special Inquiry Agent Jeremiah Blake on a 700-mile journey into the heart of India to find missing poet Xavier Mountstuart.

Avery idolizes Mountstuart, a Byronic figure who disappeared while researching a long poem on the murderous Thuggee cult. But he doesn’t exactly hit it off with his traveling companion. Blake is an enigmatic political operative and linguistic genius who has spent years “[living] as much as he could as a native.” He’s unimpressed by Avery’s naive faith in the benevolence of British rule. And as the pair journey further into the countryside, they seem to have no leads. The Company members they encounter are mysteriously tight-lipped about Mountstuart’s fate. Did the writer fall victim to Thuggee ritual murder—or is there more to the story?

The Strangler Vine immerses the reader in an India of jungles, bandit attacks, tiger hunts and Rajahs’ opulent courts, but it’s also a meticulously researched portrait of an era. First-time novelist M.J. Carter depicts a cultural climate in which colonizers are increasingly contemptuous and hostile toward a civilization they once admired. A real historical figure even appears: Major William Sleeman, who led a brutal campaign to repress the Thuggee menace (and, in doing so, legitimate British power). This suspenseful tale of intrigue skillfully portrays Avery’s dawning realization that “everyone calls barbarity what he is not accustomed to.”

As The Strangler Vine opens, William Avery is a typical young soldier in 1830’s colonial India: deep in debt, disdainful of Indian “barbarity,” stalled in his career and desperate to make it back to Devonshire before the cholera picks him off.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

A shadow over this house

Review by Adam Morgan

by Adam Morgan

Brendan Duffy’s fantastic debut novel is gloomy, small-town Gothic horror in the vein of "Twin Peaks," Alan Wake and The Shining.

After a few rough years in Manhattan, a “semi-famous” author named Ben Tierney relocates his wife and sons to a remote village in the Adirondack Mountains. He hopes that renovating a sprawling, neglected estate called the Crofts and turning it into an inn will provide his family with a new sense of purpose. But isolated on a forested cliff overlooking town, it doesn’t take long for things to get thoroughly weird.

Deer carcasses appear on the Tierneys’ property, the remains ripped apart and barely recognizable. Strange artifacts turn up in the estate’s cavernous cellar, maps and letters and ancient books. Townspeople stare and whisper about “the winter families” whenever Ben ventures down into the valley. And one night, while Ben’s wife is cooking dinner, an explosive sound vibrates through the house. Ben finds a back door swinging open and shut in the wind, the lock smeared with tree sap.

“He turned on the exterior lights and looked out the glass. Placed in the center of the stoop like the morning’s newspaper was a severed deer’s head, staring at him with black, blood-flecked eyes.”

Most disturbing of all, Ben’s older son Charlie is convinced that someone, or something, is watching them from the woods. As a neo-Gothic horror novel, House of Echoes succeeds because it contains no familiar creatures. There are no ghosts here, despite some surface similarities to Chris Bohjalian’s The Night Strangers. There are no witches or werewolves. Duffy knows that true horror has neither name nor face. Grounded by emotional realism and nuanced characters, House of Echoes is intense, addictive and genuinely creepy.

Brendan Duffy’s fantastic debut novel is gloomy, small-town Gothic horror in the vein of "Twin Peaks," Alan Wake and The Shining.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

Murder in new China

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

The mood, hustle, power and immense growing pains of today’s China bleed through Jan-Philipp Sendker’s superlative suspense novel, Whispering Shadows, which delves into the explosion of big business following China’s Cultural Revolution. The juggernaut of change reaches from high places to the mean streets and local officials of Shenzhen, southern China’s economic hub, where burgeoning growth, financial windfalls and corruption are often out of control. German-born author Sendker served as an Asian correspondent for Stern news magazine for nearly five years and writes with a wealth of knowledge about all things China.

Three years after the death of his young son to leukemia, former journalist Paul Leibovitz is still trying to hang onto the past so his memory of Justin will never fade. After living nearly 30 years in Hong Kong, the expat American is now holed up on an outlying island, limiting his trips to the mainland, hoping that nothing in his daily life will erase Justin’s image from his troubled mind. The boy’s raincoat and yellow boots still hang near the door, and Paul is permanently estranged from his wife, who couldn’t persuade him that life must go on.

Paul painfully discovers that he is unable to ward off the changes that time brings like a pebble breaking the surface of a pond. On one of his infrequent trips off-island, Paul is thrown into contact with an American couple whose adult son, Michael Owen, has gone missing and is soon found murdered. Paul and his longtime close friend, Detective Zhang, are drawn into the search for his killer.

Owen, an enterprising and rich entrepreneur with far-reaching family business interests in China, was closely enmeshed with Victor Tang, a businessman of immense wealth and influence who operates at the center of Shenzhen’s grab for a uniquely Chinese version of capitalism. Paul and Zhang walk a knife’s edge of danger as they begin to investigate these titans of corporate power.

The finely tuned Whispering Shadows, the first book in a planned trilogy, reveals each character’s back story, from Owen’s parents to Paul’s troubled lover, Christine; from Zhang’s violent past to the hubris of the ambitious, implacable Tang. Each story is expertly woven into the whole cloth of this chilling book.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

Where They Found Her

Review by Amy Scribner

by Amy Scribner

The body of a newborn girl has been found in an idyllic New Jersey town. It’s not the best assignment for a newspaper reporter who so recently delivered a stillborn child, but Molly Sanderson wants to prove to her editor that she can cover hard news. So—despite her husband Justin’s trepidation that covering this story might cause Molly to lapse back into serious depression—she dives in, determined to find out how the child ended up abandoned beneath a bridge.

Was it a homicide? Could it have been a panic-stricken student at the town’s prestigious Ridgedale University? Is there a connection to another death under the bridge two decades before? What about the mysterious mother and daughter who recently returned to a rundown apartment on the edge of town?

As Molly tracks down leads and interviews anyone who might have a connection to the mystery, she becomes immersed in the intrigue and politics of a tight-knit community. But then things take a more menacing turn, with college officials watching her every move and seemingly unconnected people coming together. When a mysterious package appears in their home, Justin fears for her safety—and her sanity. And Molly has no way to know just how close to home the story will hit.

Author Kimberly McCreight is well known for her 2013 best-selling debut, Reconstructing Amelia. With Where They Found Her, she has delivered another eerie, harrowing read. Through flashbacks and multiple narrators—some more reliable than others—McCreight weaves a deeply satisfying spellbinder that unfolds deliciously to the very last chapter.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our web-exclusive Q&A with McCreight about Where They Found Her.

This article was originally published in the April 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

A small-town tragedy reveals buried secrets.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

Rediscovering a criminal past to solve a murder

Review by Lizzie Davis

by Lizzie Davis

While away on duty, Army Ranger Van Shaw receives a chilling note from his grandfather: “Come home, if you can.” The last time the two talked was 10 years ago—a conversation that resulted in a bloody brawl. Pride and stubbornness run strong in this family, so for the old man to reach out means there’s something big happening back home.

Van had prepared himself for the estranged exchange waiting for him, but not for what he finds: his grandfather with a gunshot wound to the head, bleeding out on the floor. As the first person on the scene and in light of their complicated relationship, Van knows he’s suspect number one. To clear his name and obtain retribution, Van must return to his illicit past as a kid criminal and exploit his grandfather’s exceptional career as a professional thief. With the cops questioning his every move, Van takes to the streets to seek answers from his grandfather’s cronies. But this is not without a price—Van has worked his way up the army ranks, and one wrong move could cost him his status or his life.

Glen Erik Hamilton’s impressive debut novel fuses procedural plotting, vigilantism and noir. The seedy setting and one man’s hunt for justice create an emotionally stirring and morally ambiguous read. Past Crimes keeps readers on edge and second-guessing every character, and when that last page is turned, one question remains: Will Van return to the life he labored so hard to forget? It will have to be answered in the much-anticipated second installment in this clever, intoxicating series.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

The Fifth Heart

Review by Adam Morgan

by Adam Morgan

Dan Simmons is known for big, serious books like Drood and The Terror that mix real-life history with genre fiction. And while The Fifth Heart is certainly big, it’s also brisk, funny and a hell of a good time.

It starts with a killer premise: What if Henry James, author of The Turn of the Screw, teamed up with one of literature’s most beloved characters, Sherlock Holmes, to solve a murder mystery in turn-of-the-century America?

One step away from suicide in the spring of 1893, Henry stumbles upon Sherlock in Paris. Using his powers of deduction, Sherlock has concluded that the continuity errors in his own life—like Dr. Watson’s ever-changing wives and war wounds—mean that he and his partner are probably fictional characters. And to solve his latest mystery across the Atlantic in Washington, D.C., Sherlock needs Henry’s help—but not as a writer.

“[Y]our rendering of the most exciting adventures you and I might have in America,” quips Sherlock, “would end up with a beautiful young lady from America as the protagonist, various lords and ladies wandering through, verbal opaqueness followed by descriptive obtuseness, and nothing more exciting being allowed to occur in the tale than a verbal faux pas or tea service being late.”

Instead, Sherlock needs Henry because of his real-life relationship with the late Clover Adams, granddaughter-in-law of John Quincy Adams. Each year on the anniversary of her suicide, Clover’s brother receives a card in the mail with five embossed hearts and the typewritten words, “She was murdered.” When Sherlock’s nemesis Moriarty turns up, too, how can Henry reconcile real life with fiction?

It’s a riveting literary puzzle, and Simmons perfectly encapsulates the voices of his larger-than-life characters in a worthy, satisfying homage to Victorian mystery fiction.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

Historical figures in a race against time

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

The World War II era is fertile soil for writers of crime fiction, and Francine Mathews follows hard on the heels of her exceptional Jack 1939 (2012) with a crackerjack espionage thriller, Too Bad to Die, both set in that time. Mathews, a former intelligence analyst for the CIA, knows all the tricks of the trade, and her novel imagines the words and actions of bona fide participants in one of the seminal events of that war—the Tehran Conference in 1943, where Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin come together to plan their final move against Nazi Germany, the invasion of Europe. The three Allied leaders are portrayed as multilayered personalities weighing their own countries’ post-war welfare against the cooperation needed at this crucial moment to win the war.

Mathews brings in yet another real-life figure from that era, the soon-to-be-famous author Ian Fleming, and imagines how he might have participated in the dangerous, game-changing meeting, as the fate of the world hangs in the balance.

In real life, Fleming was an assistant to Britain’s director of naval intelligence; in Too Bad to Die, he gets to play a down-and-dirty role in Tehran after he uncovers a plot to assassinate all three Allied leaders at the conference. He must discover the identity of the assassin, a mastermind known only as the Fencer, as clues are sent to him from Britain via Alan Turing’s famed Enigma machine.

Young Fleming’s imagined early years at Eton and Sandhurst are played out in the shadow of his idol and father, Val, who died a hero during World War I, and in the details of Ian’s friendship with American and schoolmate Michael Hudson. There’s an imaginative take on how the character of James Bond takes shape in Fleming’s mind as he races against time to intercept the killer, aided—or perhaps impeded—by two women, a comely British Signals operator and a Soviet spy named Siranoush, who may or may not be leading him to his death.

We’re right behind Fleming as he races against time to discover the Fencer’s identity. The book is great sport for lovers of quick-fire espionage yarns, filtered through the lens of one of the most pivotal eras in world history. And if you haven’t figured out the identity of the would-be assassin pretty early on, you need to turn in your detective badge.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

The show must go on

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

Crime fiction groupies can usually form a pretty quick mental picture of the cop, PI or little old lady detective in any new mystery novel, and that take remains, embedded in the reader’s imagination, for the duration of the story.

In David Handler’s new series, however, it’s not easy to get a handle on Benji, whose feet meet the street for Golden Legal Services, a mom-and-son detective agency in NYC. He’s barely five-foot-six, with a baby face that looks younger than his 25 years, and he tends toward madras shorts and Converse high-tops. Still, the mental image is elusive and doesn’t intrude in the mind like Sam Spade or Hercule Poirot. Maybe it’s to Benji’s advantage, as he searches out the bad guys in Phantom Angel.

Back by popular demand after 2013’s Runaway Man, Benji is hired by aging producer and showman Morrie Frankel to find his missing “angel,” a financial backer who emerges to support—or save—a Broadway show, and who supposedly functions as an incentive for other would-be backers to pony up some cash. Morrie claims his angel is a hedge fund billionaire named R.J. Farnell, but “phantom” becomes the operative word when Farnell goes missing. Besides cultivating hedge fund managers, Morrie is in deep to the Joe Minetta crime family, who also back shows—for a hefty price. If Farnell isn’t found, Morrie claims his Broadway version of Wuthering Heights will never make it to the stage—not to mention he’ll have to watch out for Minetta’s goons.

Benji’s investigation leads to the doorstep of Farnell’s supposed girlfriend, a 19-year-old cutie nicknamed Boso. But Boso’s career as a webcam bimbo connects her to organized crime and—surprise, surprise—Minetta’s organization, and when Morrie is murdered in broad daylight on a New York street, Benji must penetrate the surface glitz to separate the good guys from the bad.

Handler’s strength lies in his stable of marvelous characters, who could be straight out of a Damon Runyon story: Benji’s mother, Hattie, retired pole dancer; Rita, his gorgeous co-worker and former erotic performer; and Cricket, an online huckster for whom no item of gossip is too sleazy.

The author has notched another urban treat full of opportunistic Broadway producers, grabby wannabe stars and the hardscrabble world of mob connections. In this book, as in New York City, it ain’t movin’ unless it’s movin’ fast.

Fiction, Humor, Mystery

Fiction Mystery Humor

A hilarious hellcat

Review by Adam Morgan

by Adam Morgan

What if your cat was secretly plotting against you? Anyone who’s ever owned a cat has probably asked themselves that question more than once. But Cat Out of Hell takes things further: What if that plot was part of an ancient occult conspiracy, a feline cabal at the beck and call of a dark lord?

Lynne Truss is best known for her humorous defense of English grammar, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, but before that breakthrough, she had published four novels. Her latest work of fiction is a nimble mix of horror, Gothic mystery and dark comedy that will delight fans of authors like Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke, who infuse supernatural stories with British humor.

In a quiet cottage on the English coast, a librarian receives a mysterious collection of files. Through audio recordings, photos and written documents, he relays the story of Will “Wiggy” Caton-Pines and his cat, Roger. But Roger is no ordinary cat. He talks—in a voice that “sounds like Vincent Price,” no less. He reads. He does crossword puzzles. And he may or may not be immortal.

Is it a coincidence that both of the novel’s human protagonists—Wiggy and the librarian—have recently lost loved ones to death or disappearance? The suspense comes to a boil in the book’s latter half, where Roger proves himself to be one of the funniest villains in recent memory, human or otherwise. Cat Out of Hell is a brisk, clever, darkly hilarious book that begs to be read in one gut-busting sitting.

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

A smart Vatican thriller

Review by Matthew Jackson

by Matthew Jackson

Ten years ago, Ian Caldwell and his co-author, Dustin Thomason, struck gold with The Rule of Four, a page-turning academic mystery with emotional depth. Now, after a decade of research, writing and rewriting, Caldwell is back with a solo effort, a new novel that promises to live up to The Rule of Four. And The Fifth Gospel delivers, with compelling characters, impeccable pacing and a central enigma that is as intellectually satisfying as it is emotionally harrowing.

The year is 2004, and Pope John Paul II is nearing the end of his time leading the Roman Catholic Church while still working to fulfill a few final wishes. The Vatican is rocked, though, when a curator turns up murdered in Rome just a week before he was set to unveil a powerful new exhibit in the Vatican Museums. When police can’t find a suspect, Greek Catholic priest Alex Andreou—a friend of the curator and expert on the Gospels—takes it upon himself to unravel the mystery, one that concerns a mysterious fifth Gospel manuscript, a legendary relic and a secret that could shake the church to its core.

Caldwell constructs the novel’s central puzzle masterfully, weaving between past and present, danger and intrigue, codes and obfuscations at a blistering pace that makes the more than 400-page novel breeze by. But the key to The Fifth Gospel’s effectiveness is Alex’s emotional, intense point of view. Caldwell has woven a tale that’s as much about brotherhood, faith, the sins of the past and what it means to atone as it is about the central mystery and its faith-shattering secrets. The Fifth Gospel is rooted in a powerful, very human emotional core.

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Ten years ago, Ian Caldwell and his co-author, Dustin Thomason, struck gold with The Rule of Four, a page-turning academic mystery with emotional depth. Now, after a decade of research, writing and rewriting, Caldwell is back with a solo effort, a new novel that promises to live up to The Rule of Four. And The Fifth Gospel delivers, with compelling characters, impeccable pacing and a central enigma that is as intellectually satisfying as it is emotionally harrowing.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

On the heels of a ghost

Review by Tom Deignan

by Tom Deignan

The great Richard Price (Clockers, Lush Life) dons a new literary persona as Harry Brandt for this crackling thriller. Haunted NYPD Detective Billy Graves' very name suggests not only his bleak working hours but also a death that landed him on the, well, graveyard shift. Det. Graves is a second-generation cop and had been a rising star until a mishap killed an innocent bystander, leaving Graves with a ghost—a crook that got away.

Several of Graves’ equally dysfunctional co-workers are similarly haunted by these “whites,” bad guys “who had committed criminal obscenities . . . then walked away untouched by justice.” To call these cops flawed would be like describing the Grand Canyon as a mere hole in the ground, but they are also dedicated. Perhaps too much so, as Graves begins connecting the dots when his “white” turns up dead.

The Whites is ultimately not quite as intricate or poetic (or long) as Price’s best work. It is a great read nonetheless, laugh-out-loud funny at times, whether the source of the humor is grim, mundane or—in the case of a handcuffed lawnmower—downright absurd. Price’s best passages are rooted in his peerless urban realism, though he also has lots of fun letting the plot drift away from the realm of strict plausibility. None of this makes The Whites any less entertaining, nor should this obscure genuinely emotional elements of the story, including Graves’ shaky but loving marriage and a touching mystery involving a hematologist.

So long as your tolerance for NYPD lingo (“One PP,” anybody?) is high, and your patience for cops who bend (or obliterate) the rules even higher, The Whites is (either) an impressive debut or a high-octane addition to the already-impressive Price oeuvre.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

Potential dangers under her own roof

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

Don’t look for a boilerplate story or predictable characters in Becky Masterman’s surprising second mystery, Fear the Darkness. There’s no letdown after Masterman’s first book, the Edgar Award finalist Rage Against the Dying. Her extraordinary heroine, 59-year-old FBI retiree Brigid Quinn, is front and center for a second time in this surprising thriller.

Who knew that all Quinn’s job-related physical and mental skills would be called into play in her life as a newlywed, as she and hubby Carlos, a priest-turned-philosophy-professor, start to enjoy their days together in sunny Tucson? As a former agent who’s lived a very private and secretive life in many different identities, Quinn is slowly adjusting to being a new wife and to making real friends for the first time. She’s shopping, gossiping, enjoying a glass of wine with new friend Mallory, hiking and attending church socials and local events.

But there are threats in the most unexpected places and hiding just below the surface in the most unlikely people. After her sister-in-law dies following a long illness, Quinn fulfills a promise by taking in her 17-year-old niece, Gemma-Kate. The girl seems oddly unemotional and occasionally disconnected, causing Quinn to wonder whether Gemma-Kate is involved in the odd occurrences that begin to crop up.

The book’s multilayered characters continue to offer surprises, including Mallory’s bedridden husband, Owen, paralyzed in an accident and unable to speak; and Owen’s doctor, Tim Neilsen, and his wan, lost-looking wife, Jacquie. There’s an added sense of menace when she agrees to look into the strange death of the Neilsens’ son, after she picks up a piece of paper on which Jacquie has secretly scribbled “Help me.”

As Quinn’s unease mounts, she begins to wonder whom she can trust. This story thrives on the unexpected and unforeseen, and as tension builds, readers can expect a plot that morphs into something bigger than a curious death or two. There’s something to boggle the mind on nearly every page and a death-defying scene near the finale that’ll curl your hair. The monsters in the shadows—the ones we thought were completely exaggerated—are only too real.