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.

“When you stopped trying to be one perfect person, you could be many.” A small-town Tennessee girl flourishes into a classic, yet never cliché, femme fatale in Rebecca Scherm’s provocative coming-of-age debut, Unbecoming.

Grace had her siren song down to the perfect ringing notes: prim cardigans, sweet smiles and a melodic laugh capable of enticing anyone. This pristine exterior did well to hide her poor and neglected upbringing, and she fooled even herself—but throughout life and love Grace realized her hands have been too often taunted to touch and possess what is not hers. Perhaps some of us are just born bad, despite all efforts to dispel the wicked. When an art heist goes awry, Grace embraces her darker side and transforms to protect herself. At every new job and in every new city, she’s someone new, her identity stunningly ambiguous. She can never again be “Grace.”

With a well-researched plot and illuminating prose, Unbecoming delivers a character that does and does not evoke sympathy. Grace is slippery, cunning and complex as she evolves into a highbrow jewel bandit living off the grid. Just as she does for herself, Grace remakes the jewelry into something unrecognizable, taking stones from this one and replacing them from that one.

From the high-end art world of New York to the dusty basement of an antiques dealer in France, Unbecoming is an atmospheric adventure from start to finish.

We’ve all been there, wondering late at night: Is that tap-tap-tap sound we’re hearing coming from the radiator pipes, or are those footsteps on the stairs? For Evie Jones, the cub reporter and amateur sleuth at the center of Elisabeth de Mariaffi’s chilling psychological thriller, anxious moments like these have become a way of life. The Devil You Know takes readers on a rollercoaster ride through Evie’s desperate efforts to rid herself of the childhood horrors that have followed her into adulthood.

Evie is 22, living alone for the first time in a Toronto apartment and working the crime beat for the local paper. Any young adult starting out this way might feel anxious from time to time. Evie, however, carries some traumatic baggage from childhood: Her best friend, Lianne Gagnon, was raped and murdered when the girls were 11 years old, and the murderer has never been found. Now Evie’s boss has assigned her to research Lianne’s case and the cold cases of several other murdered children, bringing the long-ago nightmare into the present in a very real way.

Writing in an intense stream-of-consciousness style, de Mariaffi takes us tumbling through Evie’s growing obsession with the murderer and her mounting suspicion that he’s not only still alive, but very close by. Evie’s fears seem reasonable, except that she sometimes sees shadows that aren’t really there and remembers things that never really happened. Confabulations, her therapist calls these false memories; her traumatized mind fills in the blanks so convincingly that she doesn’t always know reality from fantasy.

Evie is the ultimate unreliable narrator, yet de Mariaffi puts us right in her head, where we can’t help but sympathize. Most of all, we feel the overwhelming need Evie has to solve this thing, even if it means risking relationships and maybe her own life. By turns panicky and plucky, Evie’s determination eventually wins out, and the pieces of her past come together in a startling but satisfying conclusion.

The Devil You Know is de Mariaffi’s first novel, but she masters the art of pacing and ratchets up the tension page by page throughout Evie’s journey. Fans of psychological thrillers like Gone Girl will root for Evie’s version of the truth right to the end.

Tim Johnston’s latest novel has an unusual take on the parent’s-worst-nightmare scenario of child abduction. He doesn’t focus so much on the abductee, Caitlin Courtland, but instead on what Caitlin’s disappearance does to the men in her life.

Caitlin is snatched while the family is on vacation in the Rockies; they’re there partially because it’s a great place for Caitlin, a champion high school runner, to train. The disaster shatters the family almost at once, but things were shaky for the Courtlands even before the kidnapping. Dad Grant was unfaithful to his wife, Angela. Dudley adored his older sister, even though she teased him for being fat and unambitious. Still, both he and Grant are guilt-ridden for not being able to protect her.

Johnston’s women are tangential, but not because he’s one of those male writers who can’t write credible women. With the exception of Angela, who falls to pieces and stays that way for pretty much the whole book, the women are fairly strong, intelligent and well-rounded. Caitlin, during the brief time we see her, is a powerhouse. But it’s the men who demand answers; Caitlin’s abduction is an affront to their manhood, even if they never knew her. They speak in bursts of terse but beautifully rendered dialogue and their thoughts are just as circumspect. Johnston’s equally spare, alluring descriptions of the landscape, the weather, geriatric cars and trucks, farm equipment and firearms recall Annie Proulx.

Both suspenseful and sorrowful, Descent explores what it means to be a man—a husband, a father, a brother, a son, an officer of the law—in an uncertain time.

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