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The third installment in award-winning author Kristina Ohlsson’s Fredrika Bergman series is a crime fiction fan’s dream. With The Disappeared, Ohlsson creates both an elaborate police procedural and a multilayered mystery that engages readers in a complex case with an unexpected ending. Once again featuring the brilliant Stockholm investigative analyst who tackled confounding cases in Unwanted and Silenced, The Disappeared brings Fredrika back to work on an unsolved missing-persons case. As she tries to make sense of a gruesome discovery—the missing woman’s body is found in an apparent mass grave—Fredrika finds that nobody is above suspicion, even those closest to her.

This multilayered story builds to a shocking finale.

Ohlsson’s layered approach to storytelling can feel disjointed at first, as she delivers snippets of backstory and brief glimpses of each character’s life. Like rocks in a stone wall, however, the fragments build on one another, resulting in a sturdy structure that depends on the relationships between the pieces. Readers might consider taking notes on the fascinating—if sometimes disturbing—characters that Ohlsson draws forth. There’s an elderly children’s author who hasn’t uttered a word in decades, a former boyfriend with a troubling obsession, and a web of mystery that includes sexual assault charges, pornography and snuff films. It’s dark stuff, and Ohlsson never backs away, but instead takes us in for a closer look at the killer’s motives and methods.

If your notes fail to fully illuminate the winding path through this mystery, Ohlsson does provide guideposts along the way, as the investigators stop to consider the evidence and its implications. The action never pauses for long, however, and soon Ohlsson has us following another lead down another trail, wondering how they will all fit together. When they do, it’s in a most surprising but satisfying way.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

Unearthing the truth of Mother Hook

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

Readers who haven’t yet discovered Elly Griffiths’ wonderful mystery series set on the remote and scenic ocean sands of Norwich, England, have a delayed treat in store. Griffiths’ newest, The Outcast Dead, continues to pique our interest in her continuing characters: forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway and the stable of marvelous, scruffy characters that inhabit her life, including DCI Harry Nelson, the father of Ruth’s 3-year-old daughter. (This is mostly a secret, though not to Nelson’s wife, Michelle.)

Not the least of the major characters in these novels is the picturesque though vaguely scary setting. Ruth chooses to live in relative isolation near the edge of a salt marsh, amid sand dunes, sea grass and ocean light. Notably, in the series debut, The Crossing Places, the remains of an ancient henge are discovered amid the sands, setting the tone for the entire series.

In The Outcast Dead, while on a dig near Norwich Castle, Ruth uncovers what appear to be the remains of a Victorian child murderer known as Mother Hook, infamous in Norfolk history, nursery rhymes and horror tales for the iron hook she wore in place of a missing hand. Though she was executed for the crimes, there’s some historical evidence that suggests she may have been innocent, and Ruth is asked to participate in a popular British TV series exploring the notorious events.

Eerily and coincidentally, Nelson and his police force have arrested a local woman suspected of killing her own child, and there are limited but striking connections to an old child murder case in which both Nelson and Ruth were involved. Tensions mount when two local children go missing, and one is the son of a member of Nelson’s police team.

Among this series’ best features are its many moments of wry humor, as we’re witness to characters’ inmost thoughts and sometimes-outward rants. Storylines wander and then converge, as we’re drawn into the lives of the colorful individuals that Griffiths paints so well. There are just a few too many characters floating around—most notably, children—and it’s sometimes a challenge to keep them straight and to remember whom they belong to and who has begotten whom. But we never lose sight of the action, which is purposefully written and always enhanced by a setting that manages to be both enticing and dangerous.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

A riveting code to crack

Review by Emily Bartlett Hines

by Emily Bartlett Hines

“Cryptography involves one genius trying to work out what another genius has done—it results in the most appalling carnage,” observes one Decoded character. In this debut novel from Mai Jia, eccentric math prodigy Rong Jinzhen is plucked from his studies at N University and recruited to China’s top-secret Unit 701. There he’s tasked with deciphering PURPLE, a fiendishly difficult code used by China’s enemies. In doing so, he’s involved in an intellectual race against a shadowy opponent who’s bent on deciphering PURPLE before he does. His rival turns out to be his trusted former university mentor—or so it seems.

Despite a plot based on high-stakes political intrigue, Decoded is hardly a straightforward thriller. Instead, it begins as a family saga, narrating the lives of such figures as Jinzhen’s grandmother, a pioneering mathematics professor. Events are told out of order, through a combination of narration and after-the-fact interviews with key characters. The reader must wait to the end to find out who is telling this story, and why. And the tale builds to a final crisis that reveals the fragile nature of genius.

Along the way, it offers a fascinating window into 20th-century Chinese history, including World War II and Mao’s Cultural Revolution (one character is subjected to public humiliation as a supposed traitor to the Party). And it sheds light on a mysterious profession, one that conceals sense within nonsense, “as if a sane person had borrowed the words of a madman to speak.” Evocative metaphors convey the seductiveness of Jinzhen’s calling to even the math-averse. While some of the novel’s factual questions are ultimately answered, its psychological portrait of a brilliant man suggests that the human mind is the deepest enigma of all.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Suspense

Science Fiction & Fantasy Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense Science Fiction

A thriller with a sci-fi edge

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

There’s nothing more peaceful than a 3 A.M. jog on an ocean boardwalk with waves lapping in the distance and no one around—or is there? In Runner, the debut novel in Patrick Lee’s new thriller series, retired special forces op Sam Dryden finds he’s not jogging alone but running for his life, along with a young stranger—an 11-year-old girl who’s fleeing from some smart, devious pursuers equipped with heavy-duty hardware including thermal imaging equipment, hovering helicopters and satellite access. Who are these guys? And what’s with the extensive dragnet? And why are they after an innocent child?

These are the question that readers find answers to, page by page, as Dryden employs all his former tactical knowledge to elude the forces arrayed against him and his small charge. How coincidental that he has all that special training—or is it?

It turns out that young Rachel poses a lot more danger than most 11-year-olds, and Dryden has to scramble to keep up with all the revelations about her special past and her amazing, wide-reaching capabilities. Right now Rachel can’t remember much more than her own name, but her memory is slowly returning, and with it her potential to affect others’ lives. Not only can Rachel read minds, but she has the ability to influence them. There are big players, corporate and governmental, involved in the race to get their hands on the power she possesses.

Runner is packed with scary, fast-moving action scenes, and it moves at breakneck pace as Dryden and Rachel parachute from high-rise buildings, hole up under a seaside boardwalk, play dodge-’em on a freeway and race across Utah’s high country to a deserted lake bed—deserted, that is, except for an odd, steel-framed cell tower rising from the emptiness.

All the repetitive action shots, shoot-outs, treachery, about-faces and devious characters threaten to turn Runner into just another run-of-the-mill thriller. It has “screenplay” written all over it, and as action shot turns into action shot, the story loses some of its punch as we wait for the next predictable take.

The good news, however, lies in the author’s skill in weaving this high-tech thriller. Runner pushes at the edges of science fiction and makes an outlandish and frightening scenario seem plausible—even probable—given the advancements in genetic knowledge and manipulation that are right on our human horizon.

Debut Fiction, Fiction, Suspense

Fiction Suspense Debut Fiction

Ozark Mountain community haunted by two disappearances

Review by Stephenie Harrison

by Stephenie Harrison

Let’s get one thing straight: With The Weight of Blood, it’s clear that Laura McHugh is more than a pretender to the throne of the “rural noir” genre. If her dazzling and disturbing debut novel is anything to go by, she’s got her eye on the crown and has more than the necessary talent and skills to nab it for herself. Daniel Woodrell had better watch his back.

Lucy Dane has lived in Henbane all 17 years of her life, but she is ostracized by many of the town’s locals because of malicious rumors surrounding her mother, an exotic and bewitching outsider who disappeared without a trace when Lucy was just a baby. So when Lucy’s friend, Cheri, is found murdered, Lucy finds that the loss dredges up many of the long-buried questions about the day her mother wandered into Old Scratch Cavern with a pistol in hand and was never seen again. As Lucy digs deeper into what happened to Cheri, she begins uprooting the tenuous foundation of her own life—and discovers that some things may be better left lost.

The Weight of Blood is a tense, taut novel and a truly remarkable debut. McHugh, who moved to the Ozarks with her family as a preteen, elegantly interweaves the stories of Lucy and her mother, Lila, shifting between narratives to delicately ratchet up the tension and ensnare her audience, like a sly spider crafting a beautiful but deadly web. The pacing is swift, the writing redolent, and McHugh is not afraid to burrow into some very dark territory—readers will gasp in a mixture of surprise, horror and delight as pieces of her gruesome puzzle begin to slide into place. The Weight of Blood rewards its readers with a suspenseful thrill ride that satisfies in all the right ways.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Laura McHugh for The Weight of Blood.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

That delicate balance of living

Review by Arlene McKanic

by Arlene McKanic

If you’re very observant and know a little something about the wilder shores of human genetics, then you may be able to figure out the big mystery of Carol Cassella’s new novel by, oh, page 260 or so. Oh yes, the title also gives one a hint as to what’s going on with one of the book’s well-drawn characters. But we should start at the beginning.

Gemini concerns a dedicated and humane doctor, Charlotte Reese, who comes to be the physician for an anonymous woman who is medevaced in from an impoverished Washington town to Dr. Reese’s Seattle hospital in the middle of the night. The Jane Doe is apparently a hit-and-run victim. Conscious when she was first found lying in a ditch by a road, she slips into a coma on the operating table after a fat embolism breaks loose from one of her broken bones and lodges in her brain. Part of the story concerns Charlotte’s struggle over whether to keep Jane Doe alive, or to let her pass on with some kind of dignity.

The other part of the story has to do with Charlotte’s boyfriend of three years, a writer who’s working on a book about genetics. He’s one of the folks in this book whose DNA doesn’t work the way it should. Having inherited neurofibromatosis, as a child he was subject to seizures and later developed benign brain tumors—yes, more than one. Charlotte, who’s desperate to have a child, doesn’t know if Eric’s a good prospect for fatherhood, as the risk of him passing down his affliction is almost a certainty.

But there’s still the problem of Jane Doe. Surely, with the whole world interconnected, she must have family; she must have someone who misses her. Cleverly but incrementally, Cassella—a practicing physician as well as an author—puts together the pieces of Jane Doe’s mystery even as she ponders, through Charlotte, the Big Questions. What is life, anyway? Is it simply one’s genetics? Does it have a purpose? What’s the best way to find love, happiness, peace? Is Jane Doe still in there somewhere, in her ruined, swollen, already decaying body?

As for the mystery’s solution: It explains much, but that’s all you’ll learn from this review!

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

I read the news today, oh boy

Review by Lizzie Davis

by Lizzie Davis

William Shaw, an award-winning pop-culture journalist, does a standout job with his debut novel, She’s Leaving Home. This British crime thriller has a compelling whodunit plot staged in ’60s London, rampant with racism, sexism and an ever-growing counterculture of groupies clinging to the belief that love is all you need.

After a disreputable act of cowardice, Detective Sergeant Cathal Breen has one chance to regain face in his police squadron. Breen takes the murder case of an unidentified woman found near Abbey Road Studios, believing the victim to be a Beatles fan who frequently camps outside. Many of his colleagues are unsympathetic, wanting to call the case as it is, but Breen suspects there is more to the story.

He is joined by Helen Tozer, the first woman on his detective staff. Her tomboyish nature and brash characteristics at first unnerve Breen, who is more traditional, but their seemingly conflicting natures perfectly complement each other. Breen brings years of policing and detective methodology to the table, while Tozer, a Beatles junkie herself, empathizes with the younger generation. As the investigatory duo get closer to solving the case, they soon find themselves caught between intergenerational quarrels, racial tensions and political revolutionaries.

Shaw’s dialogue is well developed and his period detail is razor sharp, immersing the reader in the tumultuous era of swinging London with immediately relatable characters. She’s Leaving Home is the first installation in a trilogy of cultural thrillers, so keep an eye out for this dynamic duo. Whether you’re a Beatles fan or a mystery lover, this book comes highly recommended.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

A heroine and her grumpy detective

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

Who knew that in 2014, with the book world awash in knit-and-craft cozies, Scandinavian noir and genre detectives competing with hot new sleuths of every description, there’d be room for a couple of fresh, intriguing characters, or a series with both dark local realism and laugh-out-loud moments? It’s all here, in M.R.C. Kasasian’s immensely pleasurable debut mystery, The Mangle Street Murders. Set in London of 1882, the first in a new series introduces 21-year-old March Middleton and her guardian, the celebrated private detective Sidney Grice. They find themselves sharing Grice’s London townhouse after March’s father dies and she has need of a new home.

Move over, Holmes and Watson. Kasasian's debut mystery introduces our favorite new detective duo.

They seem ready to turn the science of detecting on its ear. March is outspoken and smart, and in a brief introduction she writes for the book, she appears to be a kind of chronicler of Grice’s life and escapades. But when we meet her in chapter one, we sense that she’ll be much more than that, as she takes an active role in her new life from the get-go, listening in on cases, accompanying Grice and making her opinions known—at a time when women were properly seen but not heard. There’s a mysterious past love that haunts her days and provides a hint for future intrigues.

As for Grice, he’s one for the ages, with his short stature and unpredictable glass eye. Irascible, vain to a fault, lacking social skills to the nth degree (and terrified of umbrellas to boot), he’s made a name for himself in the great city and is called upon to solve some of the day’s knottiest crimes. After March arrives on the scene, they are soon investigating the brutal murder of a young woman whose husband is the major suspect. Grice thinks he’s guilty, while March wants to prove his innocence. Guardian and ward set out to seek a killer on London’s streets and in its murky canals, visiting places where ladies never travel, in back alleys, mortuaries and the unsavory East End, all the while tossing back banter and clues in this marvelous get-under-your-skin story.

Kasasian describes Victorian London in all its vibrancy—never sparing us the dirt and details of its dingy, teeming streets—but couples this grit with an underlying sense of fun and outlandish humor. This book should hit the “favorites” list of readers who seek new criminal ground and tantalizing characters to savor.

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

Aftershock of a man’s vanishing act

Review by Sheila M. Trask

by Sheila M. Trask

Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but it can also make the mind grow suspicious. That’s what happens in Laura Lippman’s insightful new mystery, After I’m Gone, when the wealthy, charming Felix Brewer chooses to escape his shady past by simply disappearing. While Felix makes a clean getaway, it’s not so easy for his widow, daughters and mistress to pick up the pieces of the schemes and dreams he has left in his wake.

Award-winning mystery writer Lippman nimbly poses the elaborate riddle of Felix’s disappearance by asking confounding questions at every turn. Why did he set up his mistress, stripper Julie Saxony, with her own business, but neglect to leave anything for Bambi, the wife he claimed to love above all else? Why has he never contacted his adult daughters? And most unanswerable of all, why was Julie murdered 10 years after Felix skipped town? And by whom?

Underlying everything is the question of just how far the characters will go to protect themselves and each other. With her signature attention to her characters’ inner lives, Lippman develops several plausible, and sympathetic, suspects. We get to know every one of these women—and a few men—through seamless flashbacks and the unfolding of complex family dramas. Gradually, we realize that every character has something huge to hide.

After I’m Gone winds up with surprising revelations on several fronts, not just the hunt for a murderer. As we learn the truth about everybody’s whereabouts on the day Julie was murdered, we keep thinking we’ve surely spotted the killer, but Lippman proves us wrong many times before the actual culprit comes forth. The last 50 pages fly by as we race to work out what really happened after Felix has gone.

Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense Historical Fiction

The infamous Dreyfus Affair, thrillingly retold

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

In 1894, Paris was rocked by the infamous Dreyfus Affair, which reverberated in France for decades after Captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason in “a monstrous miscarriage of justice.” Robert Harris’ new novel, An Officer and a Spy, builds on the riveting trial and its aftermath, perfectly demonstrating its anti-Semitic core and the sense of justice gone awry in a rigid military hierarchy.

Unjustly tried for allegedly passing defense secrets to the German embassy, Capt. Dreyfus was convicted of treason and imprisoned on notorious Devil’s Island, and it took several long years for him to be exonerated. Crucial to his eventual release was testimony from Colonel Georges Picquart, an officer in the French Ministry of War and later the head of the army’s secret intelligence service. Harris imagines the events in An Officer and a Spy from Picquart’s point of view, as he publicizes evidence that was long suppressed in the case.

The famous story highlights the timely—and timeless—dilemma faced by whistle-blowers of any era: Which should be honored, allegiance to one’s conscience or to one’s masters? The term whistle-blower is all too familiar in today’s headlines, and this meticulously researched historical novel magnifies the issues, receiving fresh, edge-of-the-seat treatment from Harris’ sure hand, whose previous historical novels have included the mega-bestsellers Fatherland, Enigma and Pompeii.

Originally strongly convinced of Dreyfus’ guilt, Col. Picquart begins to uncover evidence that calls into question the very basis of his military conviction, as he gains access to so-called “secret” evidence that at the trial was deemed “too sensitive” to reveal. In a plot worthy of the most intricate spy thrillers, Picquart discovers an enormous military cover-up and pays for that knowledge when he is silenced by a hurried transfer to a post in outlying Africa, far from the hub of Paris. In a series of thrilling events, his evidence finally reaches higher-ups known for their integrity, and Picquart eventually returns to Paris to offer testimony that helps free Dreyfus from incarceration.

Even with this information made public, Picquart pays for his stand. He is discharged from the army, denied a pension and even serves a prison sentence on trumped-up charges. But, as they say, truth will out. And this is the story of a man whose conscience won’t let him abdicate his responsibility to the truth—in short, a man who can’t let go, no matter the personal cost.

In 1894, Paris was rocked by the infamous Dreyfus affair, which reverberated in France for decades after Captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason in “a monstrous miscarriage of justice.” Robert Harris’ new novel, An Officer and a Spy, builds on the riveting trial and its aftermath, perfectly demonstrating its anti-Semitic core and the sense of justice gone awry in a rigid military hierarchy.

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

Cold water, colder secrets

Review by Sheila M. Trask

by Sheila M. Trask

Gritty downtown Boston and the awe-inspiring but unforgiving North Atlantic coast come to life in Elisabeth Elo’s debut suspense novel, North of Boston. Elo shows us the Eastern seaboard through the fiercely loyal, ceaselessly skeptical and fundamentally fearless eyes of Pirio Kasparov. When the lobster boat Pirio is working on is struck and sunk in Boston Harbor, killing her friend Ned and nearly killing Pirio, she doesn’t believe it was an accident. For her own sake, and for Ned’s 10-year-old son Noah, Pirio starts asking questions and doesn’t stop until she has looked everywhere for answers.

Elo maintains suspense throughout by making it unclear whom Pirio should trust with her inquiries. Can she depend on her moody Russian father, Milosa, head of a perfume empire? Old flame John Oster? The mysterious journalist who turns up at Ned’s funeral? Her best friend, Thomasina, Noah’s mother and a struggling alcoholic? Elo creates likable but flawed characters all around, which keeps us guessing right along with Pirio.

It’s hard to say which is the bigger star of the novel: Pirio or the places she goes. Elo evokes city bars, harbor politics and ocean voyages with equal ease. As much as Pirio belongs to the streets of her city, she’s also magnetically drawn to the sea. When Pirio boards a ship headed for the Canadian Arctic, we see the rocky coast and feel the sea spray right along with her. The later scenes in the whaling grounds of Cumberland Sound will both shock and inspire readers with their blend of realism and majesty.

While the tangled story behind Ned’s murder leads Pirio down so many paths that the ultimate connections between them all can feel a bit forced, readers will nonetheless be rooting for the doggedly determined Pirio right to the end.

Fiction, Horror, Suspense

Fiction Suspense Horror

Let sleeping daughters lie

Review by Elisabeth Atwood

by Elisabeth Atwood

BookPage Fiction Top Pick, February 2014

“The first time I saw a sleeper, I was nine years old.” Best-selling author Jennifer McMahon (Promise Not to Tell) opens her new novel, The Winter People, with a sentence that offers a tantalizing glimpse of the horrors to come in this marvelously creepy page-turner.

Set in on a rural farm in West Hall, Vermont, this multigenerational paranormal tale alternates between the early 19th century and the present. In 1908, Sara Harrison Shea and her husband, Martin, are blessed with a little girl, Gertie, after many years of failed pregnancies and loss. Sadly, Gertie perishes in a terrible accident, and Sara seems to be out of her mind with grief. She believes that Gertie is still with her, appearing in strange places, whispering to her, even holding her hand—that is, up until her own untimely death.

More than 100 years later, Ruthie and her sister, Fawn, are living in Sara’s farmhouse with their mother, Alice. One morning, Alice is gone without a trace, and Ruthie and Fawn stumble upon Sara’s diary while searching for clues about their mother’s disappearance. It gradually becomes clear that Alice’s disappearance is related to Sara’s sad life and tragic death—and to her belief that Gertie had returned from the grave. Using Sara’s diaries, they embark on a journey to find their mother and, in turn, discover shocking truths.

In The Winter People, McMahon gives readers just what they want from a good thriller: can’t-put-it-down, stay-up-until-dawn reading. In addition to being downright creepy, this novel is also a poignant reminder of what grief can drive humans to do. Lock your doors, check under your bed and soak up The Winter People, a legitimately chilling supernatural thriller.

BookPage Fiction Top Pick, February 2014

Fiction, Suspense

Fiction Suspense

A futuristic mystery

Review by Meg Bowden

by Meg Bowden

Emma Burke wakes up in a hospital bed with no recollection of how she got there. Her husband, Declan, tells her that she is recovering from an accident that nearly killed her. Disoriented and confused, Emma can’t recall any firm details about what happened to her or who she is. Physically, Emma slowly regains her strength, but her memory is not as quick to recover. Declan stays by her side, helping to fill in the blanks. He tells her how in love they once were, and Emma begins to fall head over heels all over again. That is, until she begins experiencing frequent nightmares and hears a woman’s voice in her head—both warning her that Declan is not who she thinks he is.

The voice advises her to keep her dreams a secret, and soon enough, Emma learns why. When Emma ventures outside of the hospital, the mystery of her accident and her old life begins to unfold.

Maryland author M.D. Waters has made a memorable debut with Archetype. The story is carefully paced, slowly doling out clues about Emma’s situation, until, like Emma, the reader is smacked with a bombshell of a twist (or two!). Futuristic and suspenseful, it ends with a big question mark that is sure to be addressed in the sequel, Prototype, to be published in July. Combining elements of science fiction, romance and mystery, Archetype is a novel that will appeal to almost everyone.