Deadly Animals, Marie Tierney’s brilliantly plotted debut mystery, introduces readers to Ava Bonney: a 14-year-old English girl obsessed with decomposing bodies.
Deadly Animals, Marie Tierney’s brilliantly plotted debut mystery, introduces readers to Ava Bonney: a 14-year-old English girl obsessed with decomposing bodies.
John Straley’s nonstop, high-octane Big Breath In introduces the unforgettable Delphine, a 68-year-old cancer patient-turned-investigator.
John Straley’s nonstop, high-octane Big Breath In introduces the unforgettable Delphine, a 68-year-old cancer patient-turned-investigator.
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The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, by Swiss author Joel Dicker, may not tell the truth about anything, so prepare to feel cleverly fooled and marvelously misled while reading this skillful, humorous, multilayered dissection of honesty, fame, misperception, obsession and murder.

In 1975 a teenage girl goes missing in a small town in New Hampshire. In 2008 her long-buried body is discovered on well-known novelist Harry Quebert’s property, and Harry is arrested. Harry’s former student and longtime friend, Marcus Goldman, also a best-selling novelist, is currently suffering from writer’s block. He comes to New Hampshire to support his friend and to try to unravel the crime (and maybe write a new bestseller in the process).

Marcus has discovered that he’s been able to create an illusion of excellence around his accomplishments: “All that was needed was to distort the way others perceived me; in the end, everything was a question of appearances.” This powerful theme runs throughout the book, as readers must choose among a plethora of surface appearances and decide what may lie beneath. A letter is posted; a manuscript moves from person to person; bruises bloom on a woman’s body; a black Chevrolet Monte Carlo whisks on and off the scene; a couple make plans to meet and run away together. None of these actions have a one-dimensional explanation. Rather than peeling away the story’s layers, each element becomes another viewpoint to confuse or betray.

What is the real truth about the Harry Quebert affair? This contemporary yet classic whodunit puts readers through the wringer—it’s a brainteaser par excellence. Succeeding chapters, cleverly reverse-numbered, offer ever more plausible scenarios for events that occurred in the summer of 1975, as revisited through official reports, eyewitness accounts and excerpts from the novels embedded in this tale. Events are presented as fact, and then appear chapters later in a totally different light, contradicting what came before. What’s behind Harry’s Lolita-like infatuation? Is Nola actually sweet and innocent? Are the police concealing evidence? What motivates Luther, the troubled chauffeur?

All this could get to be a bit much. But sit back, read Harry’s 31 rules for writers, and decide for yourself the truth behind this clever, confounding affair.

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, by Swiss author Joel Dicker, may not tell the truth about anything, so prepare to feel cleverly fooled and marvelously misled while reading this skillful, humorous, multilayered dissection of honesty, fame, misperception, obsession and murder.

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With his new historical spy novel Midnight in Europe, celebrated author Alan Furst brilliantly illuminates an era on edge, during the troubled time preceding World War II, when a dark cloud of civil unrest and war slowly begins to envelop Europe.

Furst’s cast of characters is an amalgam of backgrounds, from gangsters to aristocrats, all bystanders that are pulled into the fray: slipping notes, trading secrets and doing whatever else it takes to stay at the forefront of the rat race. One such person is Spanish émigré Cristián Ferrar, who has adapted to life in Paris as a successful international lawyer, and recently turned spy for the Spanish Republic. Thinking his involvement will be confined to the Paris Front, Ferrar soon finds himself gunrunning across Europe with arms merchant Max de Lyon. Furst compellingly illustrates Ferrar’s clandestine exploits across Nazi-sodden Germany, the shipyards of Poland and even as far-reaching as the brothels in Istanbul. Sexual appetite aside, Ferrar’s hesitancy to play hero is endearing. He feels a certain level of responsibility, but is unsure of his ability to change the course of history, which the reader knows all too well.

Whether it is your first or fifth encounter with Alan Furst, Midnight in Europe is a captivating recreation of the late 1930s. Though fans of Furst might question yet another pre-World War II novel, his mastery of the era lends the narrative highly authentic imagery. As soon as readers open the book, they will find themselves submerged into the exotic life of espionage and the spiraling fight against the Fascist and Nazi factions that permeated Europe.

With his new historical spy novel Midnight in Europe, celebrated author Alan Furst brilliantly illuminates an era on edge, during the troubled time preceding World War II, when a dark cloud of civil unrest and war slowly begins to envelop Europe.

The fun of reading Dutch author Herman Koch is his constant questioning of normal human behavior. His commentary on etiquette and the trappings of wealth is hilariously biting; it’s like standing next to the cynical party guest who keeps you laughing all night by mocking the pretentious host. And just like that funny guy at the party, Koch can go from companionable to creepy before you realize what changed. He did it in his stateside breakout book, The Dinner, when a simple meal turned twisted, and Summer House with Swimming Pool is no different: We watch as a happy family vacation grows complicated and dark.

This time, our misanthropic narrator is Marc, doctor to the stars. His patients are artists, writers and actors who are co-dependent more than anything else, relying on Marc’s reassurance and attention more than his medical opinion. He spends his time counting the minutes until his patients leave and yawning his way through their performances. He’s not disillusioned by wealth so much as utterly bored by it.

Or is he? One of Marc’s patients is Ralph Meier, a big, hulking actor who seems to get whatever he wants. The good doctor is both repulsed and intrigued by Ralph, and he’s obsessed with learning what makes him tick—to the point of borderline stalking the actor’s family on their summer vacation.

Koch has assembled all the elements for a good summer thriller, but his style is a bit unsettling. Just when you begin to connect with the characters, he zooms wide and you lose focus. It’s fun to peek inside the windows of the rich, but it’s frustrating to be kept outside, and these characters never really let you in. They’re always hiding something, and just like in The Dinner, the real mystery here is the human condition. Summer House with Swimming Pool describes a world where hopelessly damaged people live perfect-looking lives, where all is not as it seems, and where the shadows overtake the sunshine. One thing’s for sure—Koch is not afraid to take us to the dark side.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The fun of reading Dutch author Herman Koch is his constant questioning of normal human behavior. His commentary on etiquette and the trappings of wealth is hilariously biting; it’s like standing next to the cynical party guest who keeps you laughing all night by mocking the pretentious host. And just like that funny guy at the party, Koch can go from companionable to creepy before you realize what changed.

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It can be perilous to venture into well-trodden subgenre territory, even if you have the talent that Tom Rob Smith demonstrated with his suspenseful Child 44 trilogy.

With his fourth novel, The Farm, Smith is venturing into the territory of Scandinavian thrillers, which first caught international fire thanks to the fiction of the late Stieg Larsson. It’s a field associated with deep, dark family secrets, long-buried crimes and shocking revelations. In The Farm, Smith manages to simultaneously deliver the goods promised by this subgenre and also something completely unexpected. The result is a thriller you shouldn’t miss.

When his parents sell their London home and relocate to a remote farm in his mother’s homeland of Sweden, Daniel is convinced they’re headed for a quiet retirement. Then he gets a call from his father informing him that his mother has had some kind of mental breakdown, that she’s imagining awful things. He’s prepared to go and tend to her, until he gets another call from his father, this one telling him his mother has checked herself out of the hospital and disappeared.

Tom Rob Smith weaves a satisfyingly juicy web of deception in The Farm.

The next call is from his mother, and it’s even more alarming than his father’s news. Daniel’s mother claims his father can’t be trusted, that he’s part of a terrible conspiracy in their rural Swedish district, that he’s been seduced by a powerful farmer into doing something horrible. Daniel’s father insists his mother is mad. Daniel’s mother insists his father is a monster. Caught between them, Daniel has no choice but to go to Sweden himself and investigate what’s really happening.

From the very first page, The Farm has all the trappings of a thriller with a deep, dark conspiracy at its heart, but Smith isn’t content to stick to formulas. Through a first-person narrative that allows us to view this drama through Daniel’s always engaging eyes, he weaves in and out of secrets and truths, sins and redemptions, crafting a thriller that weaves a satisfyingly juicy web of deception and is also an unpredictable page-turner. It’s a rare thing to see an author so completely embody the trappings of his genre and also surprise the reader, but Smith achieves it with The Farm. Child 44 fans as well as those looking to get lost in an immersive thriller will find this a gripping read.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It can be perilous to venture into well-trodden subgenre territory, even if you have the talent that Tom Rob Smith demonstrated with his suspenseful Child 44 trilogy.

With his fourth novel, The Farm, Smith is venturing into the territory of Scandinavian thrillers, which first caught international fire thanks to the fiction of the late Stieg Larsson.

Review by

Stephen King has been thrilling readers ever since the 1974 publication of Carrie, and it's particularly remarkable that such a long-lived (and prolific) writer can still generate buzz for doing something different. But that’s exactly what’s happening with King’s 51st novel, Mr. Mercedes, which is being billed as his first “hard-boiled detective tale.”

While diehard King fans might question the accuracy of this statement—he’s written two murder mysteries for Hard Case Crime—Mr. Mercedes is the first of King’s novels to star an actual detective. Well, a retired detective, that is. Since his last day at his Midwestern police department several months ago, Bill Hodges has been stuck in a gray world of mild depression, daytime TV and too many snack foods. That changes when a letter arrives from someone who describes himself as “the perk” of Hodges’ most deadly unsolved case. The Mercedes Killer ran over dozens of people waiting in line for a job fair. Eight people died, including an infant—or nine, if you want to count the owner of the stolen Mercedes, who blamed herself for the accident and committed suicide a few months later. Oh, and the killer says he plans to strike again.

With the help of his brainy teenaged neighbor and the victim's bereaved sister, a retired detective embarks on a dangerous investigation.

Instead of sharing the letter with his friends on the force, Hodges decides he’s the man to close this cold case. With the help of his brainy teenaged neighbor and the Mercedes owner’s bereaved sister, he embarks on a dangerous investigation.

Over the course of his career, King has taken steps away from genre with books like 11/23/63, Lisey’s Story and Under the Dome, where his signature touches of horror and magic ride alongside more complex themes. But with Mr. Mercedes, he demonstrates that he can still rock a pure genre novel like nobody’s business. Readers know the identity of the Mercedes Killer is from the start; the considerable suspense of Mr. Mercedes comes from wondering whether Hodges will discover it, too—and whether he will do so in time to save the next innocent target. (Anyone wondering whether King has gone soft will find that doubt assuaged by the number of innocent targets who are struck down in Mr. Mercedes.)

Hodges is a typical King hero: a middle-aged everyman with a good heart, a strong sense of justice and a few pithy catchphrases. He makes a stark contrast to the Mercedes Killer, a sociopath who exhibits a chilling lack of feeling for even those closest to him. While there are no big questions being asked or answered here, Mr. Mercedes is a thrilling example of King’s boundless imagination.

 

Stephen King has been thrilling readers for four decades, ever since the 1974 publication of Carrie. So it’s particularly remarkable that such a long-lived (and prolific) writer can still generate buzz for doing something different. But that’s exactly what’s happening with King’s 51st novel, Mr. Mercedes, which is being billed as his first “hard-boiled detective tale.”

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Small in size and easy on the eye, ear and virtual palette, the co-written Treachery in Bordeaux is a pleasant undertaking, light on action and suspense but generously laden with French atmosphere and extra flavor for the wine cognoscenti. In the U.S. debut of the first book in the Winemaker Detective Series already underway in France, translator Anne Trager has managed to retain the cadence of the French original with her understated and flowing narrative. Sentences that start out with documentary plainness suddenly branch out with a graceful, humorous ease, making one want to read the book in its original language.

Well-respected and successful winemaker and critic Benjamin Cooker is something of an amateur sleuth. He undertakes to help respected vintner and good friend Denis Massepain investigate the contamination of several barrels of new wine he is fermenting at his wine estate, Chateau Les Moniales Haut-Brion. The wine cellars are scrupulously clean and recently renovated, so accidental contamination is ruled out and sabotage suspected.

Benjamin is a man of curiosity and wide-ranging interests, and he and his new assistant, the young and goodlooking Virgile Lanssien, are soon knee-deep in grape-laden schemes to determine who might want to destroy Massepain’s wine and his longstanding reputation as a fine vintner.

Readers slow down a bit to accommodate Benjamin’s lifestyle, enjoying his obsession with collecting antiques, especially those associated with his trade. One such item he’s acquired is a painting, or overmantel, depicting the rural area around his own estate—and he discovers that it has a twin, another panel that connects it to a larger artwork. His efforts to track down the missing section lead to more discoveries, and this curious side-trip may connect back to the intrigue at his friend’s winery.

Treachery capitalizes on the attractions of the French countryside and its inhabitants, as they sip coffee at an outdoor café, toast a birthday with the proper vintage, light up an aromatic pipe or walk their dogs. Benjamin quiets his mind, for instance, by painstakingly polishing his shoes.

This genteel atmosphere, however, is shot through with disquieting signs that the rural beauty is fraying at the edges. Like the rest of the world, the Bordeaux region faces encroachment by seedy housing developments, traffic jams and tourism with its tacky accoutrements. This collision of old and new provides the book with its suspense quotient—for all those who love a mystery.

Small in size and easy on the eye, ear and virtual palette, the co-written Treachery in Bordeaux is a pleasant undertaking, light on action and suspense but generously laden with French atmosphere and extra flavor for the wine cognoscenti.

Rafe Solmes is a Bath, England, literature professor who has just finished a book on fairy tales, but his interest in gruesome stories like “Bluebeard” and “The True Bride” is far from academic. When Clarissa, a university assistant, lets him walk her home one night, she discovers a sinister side to this seemingly harmless scholar. An obsessive master manipulator who won’t take no for an answer, Rafe is soon everywhere she is—lurking outside her apartment at all hours, sending increasingly threatening gifts and even turning her friends against her. 

Clarissa’s life is quickly consumed by the need to predict his next move. Then she’s selected to serve as a juror on a seven-week court case. In the jury box, she finds refuge from Rafe’s attentions, but the trial brings its own terrors. The victim’s testimony—she was kidnapped and raped as payback for a drug deal gone bad—offers a frightening premonition of Clarissa’s own future if she can’t escape her pursuer. As the trial plays out, the defense attorneys methodically pick apart the victim’s credibility, recasting her ordeal as a willing exchange of sex for drugs. Clarissa learns a chilling lesson: “That’s what happens when you press charges, when you complain. They just rape you up there all over again and say you’re a prostitute.”

Clarissa delays going to the police, even as her plight becomes more urgent. The Book of You, like many a fairy tale, features a heroine who’s naturally timid and mild-mannered. But as the weeks pass, this seemingly passive protagonist realizes she must act to save her own life, and she decides to bring Rafe down by finding out the truth about his past.

Clarissa’s burgeoning romance with a hunky fellow jurist provides a narrative bright spot. Still, The Book of You is a frighteningly intimate—and accurate—portrayal of stalking. Through Clarissa’s eyes, we see the ragged nerves, sleepless nights and paranoia brought about by Rafe’s “romantic” obsession. First-time author Claire Kendal draws readers into a taut, compulsively readable tale of pursuit and escape.

Rafe Solmes is a Bath, England, literature professor who has just finished a book on fairy tales, but his interest in gruesome stories like “Bluebeard” and “The True Bride” is far from academic. When Clarissa, a university assistant, lets him walk her home one night, she discovers a sinister side to this seemingly harmless scholar. An obsessive master manipulator who won’t take no for an answer, Rafe is soon everywhere she is—lurking outside her apartment at all hours, sending increasingly threatening gifts and even turning her friends against her. 

Review by

Certain words tend to get overused in book reviews, such as “riveting.” Sorry, but Invisible City, Julia Dahl’s debut novel, is riveting. I couldn’t put it down without thinking about when I might be able to pick it up again, and it was finished all too soon for my taste. This story developed a life of its own, and the cast of characters began to walk off the pages into real life.

Dahl, a journalist herself, has painted the world of reporting and newsrooms with a welcome realism often absent from books that attempt to capture this rapidly changing profession. She is remarkable in her ability to portray the life of a tabloid journalist in today’s New York City, and then she adds another layer by setting the rush and tumble of the city against Brooklyn’s insular Hasidic Jewish community.

Rebekah Roberts, the daughter of a Hasidic mother who abandoned her and her non-Jewish father when Rebekah was a baby, becomes heavily involved in this world when she’s called to a murder scene linked to the Hasidim, as well as to people who may know of her mother’s current whereabouts. Rebekah’s narrative yields a surprising and uncompromising look at the individuals in this multilayered community, with its stalwarts and pariahs, its avid followers and secretive doubters. The reins of power wielded by law enforcement are often compromised by those of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, and it’s entirely possible that the murderer may escape into the depths of this society bound by tradition and longstanding fear.

No character in Dahl’s tale escapes scrutiny, and each one is drawn with an exacting brush to the author’s high standards. Each character becomes a surprise as the story unfolds, including several who straddle the line that separates a host of often-conflicting religious and civil constraints.

Rebekah must find her own entry into this tight-knit community, as she travels from the dark and closed homes of powerful Hasidic leaders to the shabby headquarters of a group that welcomes those who’ve come to question whether their strict religion holds all the answers. This is riveting stuff indeed, and Dahl is a major talent I am eager to revisit in the future.

Certain words tend to get overused in book reviews, such as “riveting.” Sorry, but Invisible City, Julia Dahl’s debut novel, is riveting. I couldn’t put it down without thinking about when I might be able to pick it up again, and it was finished all too soon for my taste. This story developed a life of its own, and the cast of characters began to walk off the pages into real life.

Review by

Are beginnings all that discernible from endings? Or do events and memories just pile up and bleed together, leaving one to question how things ended up that way?

In Jan Elizabeth Watson’s second novel, What Has Become of You, Vera Lundy faces just these questions. She is a seemingly accomplished woman—a Princeton grad with 40 years of wisdom—but she is wavering through life. Having recently broken off an engagement and job-hopping for the past decade, Vera has nothing to call her own but a sparse 32-page true-crime manuscript about a killer who impacted her hometown. Hoping to gain some stability, she accepts a long-term substitution position at an all-girl preparatory school in the small town of Dorset, Maine, which is recovering from its own recent murder of a young girl.

Vera sympathizes with Jensen Willard, the school’s outcast, who is equipped with a fierce intellect and a penchant for the macabre. The dark-humored girl reminds Vera of her younger self and the problems she faced growing up, and the two form a small bond. Jensen is a proficient writer—even by prep-school standards—and the intensity of Jensen’s personal essays engrosses Vera, pulling her down the rabbit hole. Soon the darkness within Jensen’s journals become more than a 15-year-old girl blowing of steam, begging the question of how far she will go to refine her craft.

The storyline is sporadic at times, creating more questions than answers, which ultimately works in Watson’s favor and leaves the reader guessing until the very end. Even if the plot leaves something to be desired, stylistically the book soars with smart, well-structured sentences that tantalize the literary senses. This entertaining tale of psychological suspense is perfect for a reader dipping his or her toe into the thriller genre for the first time.

Are beginnings all that discernible from endings? Or do events and memories just pile up and bleed together, leaving one to question how things ended up that way?

In Jan Elizabeth Watson’s second novel, What Has Become of You, Vera Lundy faces just these questions.

Review by

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s intriguing third novel, Bittersweet, takes the reader inside the glamorous world of the super-wealthy, where everything is not as it seems, and dark, long-buried family secrets gradually make their way to the surface.

The narrator is Mabel Dagmar, a scholarship student at an unnamed but prestigious East Coast college, who is surprised when her decidedly upper-crust roommate, Genevra “Ev” Winslow, invites her to spend the summer at Winloch, a secluded group of “cottages” nestled along the shores of Lake Champlain. Like her siblings, Ev was given a wildflower-named cottage of her own when she turned 18, Bittersweet. Mabel describes this rustic yet luxurious retreat as “a place of baguettes and fruit and spreadable honeycomb, idyllic and sun-drenched in a way I had never known.”

Ev’s great-great-grandfather, who died in 1931, bought Winloch, which multiplied along with the family over the generations into 30 cottages occupying the two miles of Lake Champlain shoreline. By the third week in June the Winslow tribe—Ev’s father, Birch, mother Tilde, siblings and a bevy of aunts, uncles and cousins—descend on Winloch “like bees to the hive.” Two of Ev’s older brothers are married with children; the third, Galway, is the family misfit—he works for an immigration advocacy group in Boston rather than immersing himself in the Winslow finances.

Mabel slips easily into this life of cocktails on the lawn of Trillium, the “manor house” occupied by Birch and Tilde. She skinny-dips off the shore’s secluded rocks and launches a romantic relationship with the mysterious Galway. But gradually Mabel detects some weaknesses beneath the Winslow veneer, eventually leading her to question how the family managed to accumulate such wealth while the rest of the country was mired in the Depression. And she ferrets out some shocking secrets about Birch as well—secrets which sever the strands keeping this apparently unshakable family together.

Beverly-Whittemore’s saga delves into soap-opera territory at times, but its strength lies in its elements of mystery. The result is a page-turner that will keep readers guessing until the end.

Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s intriguing third novel, Bittersweet, takes the reader inside the glamorous world of the super-wealthy, where everything is not as it seems, and dark, long-buried family secrets gradually make their way to the surface.
Review by

Colin Cotterill lives in Southern Thailand, where he's set the inventive Jimm Juree mystery series in a rural outpost village called Maprao—a funky, lackadaisical, behind-the-times setting painted in cartoon colors with a comic wash. The Axe Factor is the third in this series of imaginatively plotted, very funny crime novels starring Jimm, a 30-something freelance reporter and “English language doctor” who still misses the bright lights and big-city atmosphere of her former home in Chiang Mai. She and her off-the-wall family are the proprietors of the Gulf Bay Lovely Resort and Restaurant, a motley collection of past-their-prime bungalows on Thailand’s south coast, where not much seems to happen during the best of times.

The town’s local Chumphon News has asked Jimm to interview Conrad Coralbank, a well-known writer of crime novels who’s living in the area, and the story takes off as Jimm immediately succumbs to the writer’s considerable charms. However, Jimm’s Grandad Jah and the village’s intrepid Lieutenant Chompu are not convinced Conrad is all he’s cracked up to be, and they begin their own cockamamie version of surveillance on his activities.

But wait: Conrad’s wife has gone missing, and so has a local female medical worker, and Jimm gets embroiled in a search for clues to their whereabouts. The book cleverly ratchets up the tension, interspersing regular chapters with anonymous diary entries written by a determined and graphic-minded serial killer. Readers are left to ferret out the diarist’s identity and discover when things might get dangerous for Jimm.

To top off another layer of mystery, there’s a change in the weather: An ocean storm is brewing just as Jimm’s wacky mother (who’s prone to seasickness) takes a trip out in the bay with Captain Kow, who we learn is Jimm’s real father.

The cast of characters—many returning from previous books—can be both frightening and funny. Jimm’s “language doctor” job involves translating the malapropisms in Thai commercial signs and writing them in “correct” English, and the book’s chapters are headed by hilarious examples of what she’s up against. There’s also a tongue-in-cheek reference to Cotterill’s well-known Dr. Siri mystery series, set in Laos. Each little addition adds atmosphere to the lively text, sure to please Cotterill’s fans and attract many more.

Colin Cotterill lives in Southern Thailand, where he's set the inventive Jimm Juree mystery series in a rural outpost village called Maprao—a funky, lackadaisical, behind-the-times setting painted in cartoon colors with a comic wash. The Axe Factor is the third in this series of imaginatively plotted, very funny crime novels starring Jimm, a 30-something freelance reporter and “English language doctor” who still misses the bright lights and big-city atmosphere of her former home in Chiang Mai.

Review by

Best-selling author Nevada Barr is well known for her unique mystery series featuring national park ranger Anna Pigeon. Beginning with the award-winning Track of the Cat (1993), set in Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas, the Anna Pigeon novels have treated readers to the unique scenic beauty of an array of national parks scattered across the country. Seventeen books later, we’re still enjoying Ranger Pigeon’s thrilling adventures set in both backcountry and urban park settings.

Barr’s latest, Destroyer Angel, is an adventure of a different kind, set in the wilds of Minnesota’s Iron Range, where Anna is on a camping trip with four friends. Taking off by herself for a bit of solitude, the ranger is away from the campsite when four armed men take her companions hostage and set off with them through the wilderness toward an airfield rendezvous. One of the captives is a wealthy designer of high-tech outdoor equipment, and big money appears to figure largely as a motive in the kidnapping. The gang’s leader, called simply “Dude,” displays an oddly single-minded, steely determination to complete his errand. However, unbeknownst to the gang, Anna keeps up with the trekkers from a hidden vantage point, and she clearly holds the key to rescuing the prisoners.

Barr (a former park ranger herself) is a fine and engaging writer, and her books have never failed to capture the grandeur of her wilderness locales. Here, however, wilderness takes a back seat as we’re bludgeoned page after page with the message that these are really bad guys. The negative adjectives add up to overkill, contrasting with images of the selfless prisoners falling over themselves to lend a hand and save each other. The good-vs-evil theme soon wears thin.

Lucky for us, the four gangsters don’t know from wilderness, and they quickly fall prey to the power of spooky suggestions introduced by the hostages. This, and the advantage of Anna’s hidden presence and activities in the background, contributes to a gradual weakening of their power over the prisoners.

Readers of Barr’s usually stellar novels will not be deterred from adding this adventure to their must-read lists, and the inventive plot will serve to see us through to her next adventure.

Best-selling author Nevada Barr is well known for her unique mystery series featuring national park ranger Anna Pigeon. Beginning with the award-winning Track of the Cat (1993), set in Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas, the Anna Pigeon novels have treated readers to the unique scenic beauty of an array of national parks scattered across the country. Seventeen books later, we’re still enjoying Ranger Pigeon’s thrilling adventures set in both backcountry and urban park settings.

There’s a stranger in Claudia Morgan-Brown’s house. The Birmingham, England, social worker has what should be an enviable life: Newly married to a wealthy naval officer, she lives in a palatial house and is step-parenting his adorable twin boys. And after a string of heartbreaking miscarriages with her ex, she’s finally expecting a baby girl of her own. But there’s a problem: the new live-in nanny, Zoe Harcomb. Although this apparent super-nanny has a perfect resume, something about Zoe—a childless woman who “stares longingly at [Claudia’s] pregnant stomach”—just doesn’t seem right.

The tension ratchets up as Claudia’s husband prepares to leave on a long submarine voyage, and a series of brutal murders of local pregnant women stumps local law enforcement. The novel’s narration is shared among Claudia, Zoe and Lorraine Fisher, a police officer investigating the murders even as her marriage threatens to fall apart and her teenage daughter announces she’s leaving home. As these women’s lives become more entangled, the novel reveals the raw need and desperate yearning that often lie behind the idealized state of motherhood. Zoe wonders, “Would [Claudia] understand that I probably want—no, need her baby more than she does?”

Samantha Hayes, author of four previous suspense novels, builds tension skillfully, revealing and concealing just enough to keep readers riveted. The story’s twists and turns recall such female-focused suspense tales as Rebecca and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, culminating in a final revelation that is truly jaw-dropping. But it’s the novel’s use of iconic female fears—the loss of a beloved child, an intimate enemy under one’s own roof—that really get under the reader’s skin. The events of this plot may be lurid, but the emotions they’re grounded in are very real.

There’s a stranger in Claudia Morgan-Brown’s house. The Birmingham, England, social worker has what should be an enviable life: Newly married to a wealthy naval officer, she lives in a palatial house and is step-parenting his adorable twin boys. And after a string of heartbreaking miscarriages with her ex, she’s finally expecting a baby girl of her own. But there’s a problem: the new live-in nanny, Zoe Harcomb.

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