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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.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

Baffling and gruesome murders in gaslit London

Review by Lizzie Davis

by Lizzie Davis

Mayhem is set in the late 1880s of London, when perpetual fog and crime coat the city’s cobblestone streets. By the flicker of gaslit lamps, there is an unidentifiable blackness lurking between shadows. A terrible killer plagues the streets, leaving mutilated and dismembered bodies, pieces of which are found in string-tied rages, discarded throughout the city and in the Thames.

Critically acclaimed author Sarah Pinborough methodically blends historical fact and fiction. She crafts a new monster from man and myth, pulling from the unsolved murders of London’s “Torso Killer” and Eastern European folklore.

Dr. Bond is a respected medical examiner who harbors his own black vice as a frequenter of opium dens. Frenzied Londoners are quick to assume the carnage belongs to the serial killings of Jack the Ripper, but Dr. Bond realizes distinct, nauseating differences between the cases: The bodies are crudely carved in bestial ways, and even with exhaustive searches the heads are never recovered.

As Dr. Bond pursues this unknown lunatic, he finds himself oddly allied with a Jesuit priest of an ancient Roman order and Aaron Kosminski, an oracular immigrant afflicted with trembling visions of a terrible evil baying for blood. Dr. Bond is a hard man of science, but he sinks deeper into the maddening mire of the supernatural when the monster’s suffocating presence draws closer to those he loves.

Mayhem is a disturbingly engrossing Victorian horror with a standout, menacing villain. Never have I known a smile to be so sinister and rancid, but Pinborough’s prose proves the gesture to be something terrifyingly palpable. This genre-defying novel is a ravenous read and will have you as insatiable as the malicious mischief-maker that awaits you in its pages.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

Snared in a web of lies

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

Have you ever told a particular lie for so long that now it seems like the truth to you? It’s become so much a part of you that it’s no longer a betrayal to tell it? In In the Blood, author Lisa Unger has concocted a clever tissue of lies that is the new normal for Lana Granger. The author allows readers brief glimpses that all may not be what it seems.

Readers know Lana has a troubled past. Her father is in prison, convicted of killing her mother. Lana’s mind claims certain facts about the event and discards others, creating a fragile tapestry of her life experiences. How long will it hold together? Now in her senior year of college, she has taken a part-time job looking after Luke, an 11-year-old who attends the school for troubled kids where Lana interns under the guidance of psych professor and school counselor Langdon Hewes.

Luke’s not only eerie and subject to anger; he’s also quick and devious. The two play chess, and Lana knows that he’s “confident, crafty, always five moves ahead.” But Luke may have other, more dangerous games in mind for Lana. Readers may imagine virtual warnings posted on nearly every page: Turn back now! Go no further!

Lana’s careful mental and emotional house of cards is tested when her best friend, Beck, disappears. The police investigate what appears to be a sexual subtext to their relationship. Unger sets up an intricate masquerade—a push-pull of fact and prevarication in the tense interplay between Lana, Langdon and disarming young Luke. The story includes entries from an enigmatic, anonymous diary to further ensnare readers who seek the connection between Lana’s past and present.

This fast-moving book is a rollercoaster thrill ride, withholding crucial facts and then pounding you with them as the chapters wind down. It’s a quick, adrenaline-filled read with a slam-bang climax. Unger’s skill with words, combined with a pace that never lets up, is guaranteed to keep the pages turning long past the midnight hour.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

London fog turns deadly

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

You can run, but you can’t hide—not from the acrid fog that moves over England in June of 1783, “a bank of billowing cloud, its great curves and sweeps and pillows of vapor easily visible, like the full sails of a galleon.”

In Tessa Harris’ The Devil’s Breath, the deadly cloud attacks the lungs, claiming the lives of more and more people each day, but anatomist Dr. Thomas Silkstone doesn’t believe that a biblical plague is the cause. As he examines the bodies of victims of the mysterious phenomenon, he applies all the scientific methods available in his time to determine the nature of the noxious fumes.

Amid the darkening skies, Silkstone has traveled from London to the countryside estate of Lady Lydia Farrell, the woman he intends to marry one day. The two are searching for clues to the whereabouts of her 6-year-old son, after documents surface that lead her to believe that the infant she thought had died shortly after childbirth is in fact alive somewhere in England. In their pursuit, however, a shadowy, unknown figure appears to be on the same journey—always one step ahead of them.

The Devil’s Breath is filled with lively, believable characters, from field workers struck down by the encroaching cloud to gentlefolk holed up inside their estates. The countryside is full of zealots trying to take advantage of the uncertainty and fear following in its wake, and one in particular, an itinerant knife-grinder, proves a dangerous adversary. Likewise, a neighbor, the Rev. George Lightfoot, becomes increasingly erratic, acting on his belief that casting out devils is the only surefire way to end the plague that has taken the life of his own wife.

The debut book in this series, The Anatomist’s Apprentice (2012), provided a fascinating glimpse into the state of forensic science in the 18th century. The Devil's Breath, the second entry, gives scientific phenomena star billing while describing the “soap opera” events of the day in all their drama.

The Devil’s Breath is a fascinating exploration of the conflict between old and new. At a time when natural happenings appear to have their roots in the persnickety whims of a vengeful God, the forked tongue of sin and repentance is about to give way to a refreshing breath of knowledge, in the rudiments of a new, more scientific age.

In Tessa Harris’ The…

Fiction, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Mystery

More publishing and murder from Martha Grimes

Review by Megan Fishmann

by Megan Fishmann

Martha Grimes—an official Grand Master crime writer—has returned. After the author was “let go” from her longtime publisher, Knopf, she responded with a best-selling novel, Foul Matter (2003), that tackled (and tore apart) the publishing industry. Now in a sequel, The Way of All Fish, Grimes continues to eviscerate the rapidly changing publishing world with her quick wit and colorful cast of characters.

The Way of All Fish opens with novelist Cindy Sella having a very bad year. She’s paralyzed by debilitating writer’s block and is being sued by her former agent, L. Bass Hess, who will stop at nothing to ruin Cindy. While the lawsuit doesn’t have much basis (Cindy fired Bass long before he represented her most recent novel), it could drain her of all her time, energy and finances.

Enter hit men/amateur literary critics Candy and Karl, who first made their appearance in Foul Matter. Readers unfamiliar with that story might initially be put off by the speed with which Grimes dives back into its world. But it doesn’t take long to be amused by these Mafioso men, whose mission is not to snuff out Hess but to drive him to the point of insanity.

Still, The Way of All Fish isn’t just a takedown of a money-grubbing bad guy. It’s a clever romp from the Florida Everglades through the galleries in Soho all the way to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Whether Grimes is concocting hilarious scenes featuring the stoner crowd of novice writers, alligator wrestlers and junkyard managers that Cindy happens to befriend, or characterizing nitpicky authors analyzing every minute detail of their contracts (including the font size!), this novel is a madcap mystery packed with delight. Perhaps what’s most enjoyable is the author’s rampant criticism of the stereotypical days of publishing, when two-martinis lunches were the norm. “All of this lunchtime drinking,” Grimes ponders. “How did people manage to work?”

Fiction, Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Fiction Suspense

You and me and our secret make three

Review by Amy Scribner

by Amy Scribner

When you are a rational human being, with free will and agency, is there any such thing as a point of no return? That’s the question Yvonne Carmichael finds herself asking after she’s charged with murder in this dark, intense, wholly engrossing British import, Apple Tree Yard.

A well-known London scientist, Yvonne has spent her life on the straight-and-narrow: successful career, two grown children, happy if ho-hum marriage. (“The reason he ambles into the kitchen and asks for his car keys is not that he is incapable of locating them himself; it is to remind me that after many years of marriage, he still loves me,” she muses during their morning routine.)

Then Yvonne meets a mysterious man while walking back to her office after a routine meeting, and begins an affair. She starts making dicey choices, including a public tryst in an alleyway called Apple Tree Yard with thousands of commuters walking by just a few feet away.

Later that night, Yvonne is the victim of a savage sexual assault, and soon suspects her attacker is stalking her. Going to the authorities would risk uncovering her affair, so she enlists her lover to help scare off the attacker. But things go horribly wrong, and suddenly this woman who has played by the rules all her life finds herself judged by a wholly different standard.

Novelist and journalist Louise Doughty is a masterful writer, improbably making Yvonne a sympathetic, insightful character even as she is cheating, lying and generally making the worst possible life choices. Doughty also perfectly captures the quiet details of domestic life, the erotic charge of a high-stakes affair, the crackling drama of a courtroom. She dispatches the notion that we are masters of our own fate, chillingly illustrating how quickly we can derail our own lives.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

A very peculiar mystery

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

Who knew that a pair of octogenarian detectives would become a hit with crime fans? Christopher Fowler’s mystery series about the ancillary London police team aptly called the Peculiar Crimes Unit has become just that, and his ninth book, The Invisible Code, has solidified the series’ reputation as a durable success.

Forget beautiful, young noir heroines and sexy, bad-boy PIs—the unlikely “old guys” duo of John May and Arthur Bryant have stolen the show. They aren’t exactly Abbot and Costello, but the straight arrow / nutty sidekick model describes them well. May’s the impeccably dressed rationalist, a list-maker who follows leads from A to Z, and is (fortunately) not off-putting to higher police authorities. Bryant, with his rumpled, Columbo-style wardrobe and scraggly scarf, uses eccentric methods, capitalizing on the irrational and traveling a winding mental road to detective enlightenment. The two have a longstanding friendship, and their styles complement each other. They’re at their most humorous when the author is not trying to make them funny.

At the beginning of The Invisible Code, two children play a game called “Witch Hunter” while a woman drops dead inside an ancient London church. At the same time, a government official enters fragile negotiations for an international deal that can ensure his promotion and make his career, while his wife goes off her mental rails, claiming she’s pursued by witches.

In fact, there’s more than a whiff of witchcraft in this tale, as the detectives investigate a bizarre series of murders that seem unconnected. They follow a trail that veers drastically from power games among government officials and their wives to eerie hints of the supernatural. Maybe, the detectives think, it’s all the same thing.

En route to catching the killer, the duo must think beyond the traditional borders of sanity, unravel a puzzling code, de-mystify a grim relic lying in a concealed room and travel from the famed enigma-solving Bletchley Park to the Cedar Tree Clinic for the mentally troubled. Bryant even consults with an eccentric government worker who helps on cases containing “abnormalities” and sifts clues dispensed by a character with satanic aspirations, forebodingly named Mr. Merry.

If anyone can do it, who is better suited than the mischievous, inventive detectives from Peculiar Crimes? Bryant and May are at the top of their game as they cast reason aside and challenge the halls of power and influence.

Cozy Mystery, Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery Cozy Mystery

A quaint village’s unlikely detectives

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

Death Comes to the Village marks the debut of the stellar new Kurland St. Mary mystery series, as author Catherine Lloyd offers readers an authentic picture of rural village life in 1816 England, lacing it with a plausible mystery and characters that catch the fancy.

From the get-go, Lloyd presents a depressing picture of the prescribed roles for women in the Regency period. Almost totally dependent on men for their status and livelihood, they’re expected to marry as well as their place in the social hierarchy allows, to raise a family and to stay mainly interested in local gossip, fashion and socials.

However, the author provides just a hint of hope that times may be a-changin’, if only for the book’s heroine. Lucy Harrington bears the extra burden of being the rector’s daughter; she must visit the poor and sickly, maintain an appearance of rectitude, smother her own opinions and refrain from punching the pasty-faced curate who seems to fancy her. As the eldest daughter of a widowed father, it seems she’ll never escape her bonds of responsibility to a self-absorbed father who treats her like a glorified servant.

But Lucy doesn’t quite fit the traditional mold. Somewhere along the line she’s inherited a spine, and she longs to gain her independence, unlikely as that appears at the moment. Good for her—and for us as readers.

Enter Major Robert Kurland (we learn early on that he has a “dashing” appearance), wounded at Waterloo and still largely bedridden. He’s one of the “visitees” on Lucy’s do-good list, and the two slowly begin to uncover a sinister layer beneath the tranquil surface of village life. The Major witnesses a suspicious figure passing outside his window one moonlit night, and his suspicions dovetail with those of Lucy, who is concerned about the mysterious disappearance of two village servant girls, one from Lucy’s own household. Soon the two are swapping clues and theories.

The Major’s quick tongue and quicker temper ignite Lucy’s naturally questioning attitude and penchant for adventure, and the stage is set for some sparks—albeit of a toned-down Regency nature—as their unlikely romance begins to take shape. A nicely drawn supporting cast, including a pouting fiancé, a yucky curate, a selfish father and a dangerous town drunk, fills out the pages of this well-drawn, grown-up cozy and sets the stage for future series entries with these colorful characters.

From…

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

The end is near

Review by bookpagedev

by Emily Booth Masters

When Gabrielle Fox, a 36-year-old therapist, takes a new position at the Oxsmith Adolescent Secure Psychiatric Hospital, she encounters Bethany Krall, a psychotic teen who murdered her own mother and now claims to foresee natural disasters. The relationship that develops between therapist and patient—in the midst of what appears to be the coming of the end of the modern world—is complex, intriguing and fascinating.

Gabrielle, a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair since a horrific accident involving her married lover (who died as a result of the car crash), has her own demons to exorcise. When she takes on the psychological care of the young woman who appears to be a weather psychic, the interactions between the two form the basis for more than just an eco-thriller. The Rapture is a psychological profile of a deeply disturbed and mournful woman, fighting to find a reason to go on living. Her encounter with a teen who has tried to take her own life helps Gabrielle focus her own survival instincts and move past her personal disappointments and losses.

When Gabrielle partners with physicist Frazer Melville to interpret Bethany’s electroconvulsive therapy-induced visions, she is surprised to find herself romantically involved with Melville. While Gabrielle discovers through their relationship that she is still a complete woman, they discover together that Bethany is correct in her predictions, and they must find a way to warn the world of an impending natural disaster—one larger than anything in the history of mankind.

This is Liz Jensen’s seventh novel. In past work she has tackled such subjects as embryology (Egg Dancing, 1995), using primates as substitute babies (Ark Baby, 1999), and—in what is widely considered her breakout novel (her fifth)—scientists confounded by the miraculous (The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, 2006). Jensen uses extraordinary premises to introduce readers to complex and interesting characters, and she uses the medium of fiction to illuminate fascinating moral dilemmas.

That the major twist at the end of The Rapture has more to do with Gabrielle and Frazer personally than with the doom of the modern world is fitting, since throughout the novel Jensen somehow manages to draw her readers into the idea that love and romance can exist in the midst of total devastation and destruction.

The Rapture is a must-read for environmentalists, spiritualists, romantics, eco-scientists and everyone in between.

Emily Booth Masters reviews from Nashville.

Cozy Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Cozy Mystery

An elegant whodunit

Review by bookpagedev

by Joanne Collings

I had an epiphany while reading Emyl Jenkins’ very engaging novel: When did mystery become synonymous with murder mystery? There is nary a dead body in The Big Steal—quite definitely a change from the many books that come under the umbrella heading "mystery"—but the book doesn’t suffer a bit from the lack of blood and gore. In fact, it was a welcome change to realize that no body was going to turn up anywhere.

Jenkins’ heroine, Sterling Glass (who first appeared in Stealing with Style), is an expert antique appraiser. She’s been hired by an insurance company to investigate a burglary claim filed by a manor house in rural Orange County, Virginia, just a few hours from Leemont, where she lives.

Sterling immediately senses trouble at Wynderly (think any eccentric big house designed by any eccentric American millionaire), which was built by Hoyt Wynfield and his New Orleans-born bride, Mazie, and filled with their priceless finds from all over the world. The estate is ridden with money problems, and the house has been closed to the public for years. The inexperienced curator on the case is less than helpful, and board meetings and board members keep calling Sterling away from her investigation into what was stolen and what the items were worth. Everyone has his or her own agenda, and while merely frustrated at first, Sterling becomes increasingly intrigued.

Secret rooms, hidden diaries, a mysterious handwritten obituary and lots of antiques figure in the plot. This is Nancy Drew for adults, and both Sterling and her creator are aware of that. The 50-something Sterling fantasizes about being one of “Hitchcock’s seductive heroines,” and happily she has two attractive men interested in her. But she’s on her own for most of the action—and she’s up to the challenge.

Jenkins, herself an appraiser, starts every chapter with information about an antique that will be featured in that chapter, and an illustrated guide to antiques is included at the end of the book. The lucky reader gets to be educated as well as entertained in this lively, sophisticated mystery. I’m glad Jenkins remembered what I had forgotten: in a true mystery, dead bodies are optional.

Joanne Collings writes from Washington, D.C.

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

No sanctuary for a mother on the lam

Review by Lizzie Davis

by Lizzie Davis

In Death of a Nightingale, the melancholy and triumphant third installment in the Nina Borg series by Danish duo Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis, desperation, extortion and murder push emotionally raw characters to their limits.

Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse, has a compulsive sense of social justice that has left her haggard and estranged from her husband and children. She simply can’t say no, and she finds herself involved in an especially dangerous case concerning Natasha, an illegal Ukrainian immigrant, and her daughter Rina. Sent to jail for the attempted homicide of her fiancé, Natasha escapes custody and is concerned only with one thing: getting her little girl back. But Natasha isn’t the only one after Rina.

Natasha is the perfect example of an innocent pushed beyond her limits. After years of lies, abuse and time spent in jail, the once-naïve and compliant Natasha turns primal and ravenous in the hunt for her daughter. This time, nothing will get in her way.

As Nina becomes more invested in the case, she finds herself tangled in something much larger than she could have imagined. A bloody tale, beginning back in 1934 Stalinist Ukraine, has fatal consequences for those who unearth the secrets that were long put to rest.

Death of a Nightingale is a masterfully written mystery that seamlessly blends several stories from different time periods into one jaw-dropping standstill, giving the reader just enough time for a gasping breath before the story charges on.

Nina Borg, a Red Cross nurse, has a compulsive sense of…

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

A biology department gets bloody

Review by Barbara Clark

by Barbara Clark

Skulls, feathers, claws and winged flight—all are part of an ongoing scientific controversy about the evolution of birds that winds through the pages of Danish author S.J. Gazan’s absorbing debut thriller, The Dinosaur Feather. When the bones of this contentious argument get mixed up with the time-honored academic battles for tenure and research grants, it all leads to murder.

Postgraduate biology student Anna Bella Nor is ready to defend her Ph.D. thesis, one she hopes will add significantly to the argument in the science community about whether contemporary birds evolved from dinosaurs. But her thesis supervisor is found dead with a copy of Anna’s dissertation in his lap, while her second advisor, a brilliant but eccentric specialist at a Copenhagen museum, has taken to hiding from the world in his dark office full of fossils and avian bones.

The murder, committed by means of an ugly parasitic infection that took months to develop, introduces a lengthy timeline of premeditation and sends in police superintendent Søren Marhauge, who sets out to penetrate this academic world full of jealousies and murderous intent. Dubbed by Anna as the “World’s Most Irritating Detective,” he haunts the sacrosanct halls of academe, widening his search to include experts in parasitology. Another death, this time one of Anna’s young colleagues, throws her into a tailspin—and it seems she may be in danger as well, after neighbors report a strange man lurking near her apartment.

The Dinosaur Feather contains lengthy excursions into the characters’ backstories. In some books these flashbacks might make an unwelcome break in the action, but here the earlier frames provide substance and connections to bring this compelling story to life. Each character’s intriguing history rounds out the whole, and they combine for a spirited and satisfying conclusion.

Occasional odd cadences of language and mood are a reminder to readers that the book is translated from the Danish by Charlotte Barslund. Far from being a distraction, however, the sometimes-singular turns of phrase provide a distinctive slant that enhances readers' appreciation of the story—and make the reader refreshingly aware that the author created all this in a different language. The Dinosaur Feather was named the Danish Crime Novel of the Decade, and it seems sure to attract rave notices here.