Deadly Animals, Marie Tierney’s brilliantly plotted debut mystery, introduces readers to Ava Bonney: a 14-year-old English girl obsessed with decomposing bodies.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Big Breath In

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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Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

Detecting duo makes sparks fly

Review by bookpagedev

Dashiell Hammett started it when he featured Nick and Nora Charles in The Thin Man. Television gave us Hart to Hart and Remington Steele, with their mixed-sex detective teams. Now Michael Baden, a former New York City medical examiner, and his wife, Linda Kenney, an attorney specializing in civil rights and criminal law, have created their own duo: Dr. Jake Rosen, a New York City medical examiner, and Philomena Manny Manfreda, a crusading attorney for the downtrodden.

Working on the theory that opposites attract, Baden and Kenney throw together Manny, an organized, fashion-conscious neatnik, and Jake, a disorganized slob who wouldn’t know an Armani from a pepperoni, in Remains Silent. When several corpses are discovered during the excavation of a shopping mall in upstate New York, Jake’s mentor, retired medical examiner Pete Harrigan, asks his former protÅ½gÅ½ to help him identify the bodies. Jake has recently humiliated Manny in court, but love starts to bloom when he tells the daughter of one of the deceased to hire Manny to find out if someone who worked at the creepy, shuttered state mental hospital that was home to the dead man several decades before should be held liable for the death. Manny and Jake may start off at odds with each other, but you know they’ll end up together when they bond during a gruesome and graphic autopsy.

The questions concerning the old corpses take on a different complexion when people involved in discovering the cause of death are murdered and Manny and Jake are attacked. Influential locals will loose a lot of money if plans to build the mall are delayed. And what did happen in the mental hospital all those years ago? Baden and Kenney dish up hairbreadth escapes, plenty of suspects, fascinating forensic details and a good old-fashioned romance. On the downside, Manny and Jake never seem quite real and the plot gets a bit farfetched toward the end, but if you’re headed to the beach or have a long plane ride ahead of you, Remains Silent will make a good companion. Phillip Margolin, the author of 11 bestsellers, including Lost Lake, his latest, lives in Portland, Oregon, where he was a criminal defense attorney for 25 years.

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

An international mystery

Review by Jehanne Moharram

by Jehanne Moharram

It is the view of every generation that they live in uncertain times, and the present era is no exception. In choosing the practice of alchemy, the science and art of transformation, as a central theme of his first novel, journalist Jon Fasman seems intent on showing us how slippery and perhaps even illusory the truths and certainty we search for may be.

Reading The Geographer's Library is like stepping into a sepia-toned daguerreotype: the past here holds all the clues. The novel's narrator is Paul Tomm, a young, sometimes painfully naive cub reporter coasting along at a weekly newspaper in a sleepy New England town. When a professor at his alma mater dies in mysterious circumstances, the reporter's research for a routine obituary leads him into an unimaginably poisonous labyrinth.

This mystery's path is littered with forged passports, ghastly murders, discarded identities and newly minted lives. The present-day narrative is interspersed with chapters telling the forgotten history of various occult objects: how they were lost, scattered and once again collected (to turn up in Connecticut), often at the cost of human lives. The purpose of this collection is nothing less than the ultimate goal of alchemy: to discover the secret of life.

The story spans nine centuries and several continents, returning again and again to the vast expanses of Central Asia and the turbulence left in the wake of the crumbled Soviet Union. The geographer of the title was banished from none other than Baghdad, and the novel's visits to places currently in the public eye add to its intrigue. Ultimately, although the novel does not follow Paul's growth into the next stage of his life, we are left with the thought that it is the process of transformation itself that counts.

Jehanne Moharram grew up in the Middle East and now writes from Virginia.

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

Patterson’s newest villainess loves ’em and loots ’em

Review by Edward Morris

by Edward Morris

Forget the title. There's no honeymoon chronicled in the latest fast-paced thriller from James Patterson. But there are plenty of lovemaking scenes of honeymoon intensity. At the center of each one is the gorgeous Nora Sinclair, who uses her body with the precision and deadliness of a sniper's rifle. Her day-to-day job is interior decoration, but her real profession is wooing and dispatching rich, handsome men and pillaging their estates. In so doing, she is constantly shuttling back and forth among her fashionable digs in Boston, Westchester and Manhattan. It's a good life, albeit one that bounces along on a trampoline of intricately woven lies and deceptions.

The qualities that humanize Nora are her circle of "Sex in the City"-like girlfriends and her devotion to her mother, who is stored away in an asylum and nursing her own dark secrets. Nora doesn't so much revel in evil as accept it as the cost of doing business.

Determined to call Nora to account for her misdeeds is FBI agent John O'Hara. (The authors have a bit of fun with literary allusions like this. One character gives another books by such crime-story competitors of Patterson as John Grisham and Patricia Cornwell and yet another passes the time reading Nelson DeMille.) Trouble is, O'Hara, who operates via a variety of guises and ruses, is as susceptible to Sinclair's charms as her earlier victims were. He also has old wounds to deal with, including a failed marriage and the reputation of being an organizational maverick. And he's working on another case as he's pursuing Nora, one that nearly gets him killed.

Unlike Patterson's more densely textured Alex Cross novels, Honeymoon has the quick-cut pacing and visual snap of a screenplay. The chapters really scenes seldom exceed four pages and generally end with a portentous declaration or a cliffhanger incident. The text twinkles with the brand names of tony consumer items, not surprising when dealing with a conspicuous high roller like Nora.

Honeymoon is the sixth novel Patterson has written with a co-author but his first one with Howard Roughan, whose solo works of fiction include the lavishly praised The Promise of a Lie and The Up and Comer. Because the focus is more on the observable scenery and action than on nuanced character development, the two authors' writing styles mesh quite well. The only dissonant factor is an occasional and unaccountable shift in point-of-view. Sometimes O'Hara's character is presented in third person, sometimes in first.

Speaking to BookPage in 2003, just before the release of his historical novel, The Jester (written with Andrew Gross), Patterson joked that he picked his co-authors out of the phone book. Then, on a more serious note, he continued, "I'm looking for somebody who, I think, can bring good things to the party, somebody I can get along with." To date, he has written three novels with Gross and several with other co-writers. "I don't really get into the process [of how I co-write]," he said, "because every time I sort of lay out what I do, the next thing you know, somebody else is doing the same thing." More significant than his method of writing, Patterson asserted, is the variety and appeal of his novels. "I think one of the most interesting things is the diversity of these books and the fact that on a pure readership level, a pure, spellbinding, can't-put-it-down level, that they're pretty successful. Forget about sales. They just move along real well."

Honeymoon does indeed move along "real well," accelerated by a handful of strong supporting characters. Among these are O'Hara's sympathetic and no-nonsense boss, Susan (whose relationship with him turns out to be a bit more complex than manager-employee); Nora's deceptively cunning mother; and a mysterious blonde woman who shadows Nora right through to the novel's unexpected conclusion. Maybe it's a bit early to talk about "beach reading," but Honeymoon should be perfect for the sands of summer if not the sands of time.

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

John Grisham’s spy game

Review by Lynn Green

by Lynn Green

How would you feel if you found out the CIA wanted you dead? Anxious, to say the least. That's the situation facing Joel Backman, the character at the heart of John Grisham's latest novel, The Broker. Once again, Grisham delivers a fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller that's all the more gripping because it feels eerily close to real-life events.

Backman, a well-known Washington power broker, is doing time in a federal prison when the president unexpectedly grants him a last-minute pardon before leaving office (an act that may bring to mind the pardon of financier Marc Rich on Bill Clinton's final day as president). As it turns out, the pardon isn't entirely good news for Backman, who is deposited in Italy with a new name and a new identity. It seems that Backman has secret information about a satellite surveillance system, and a foreign government wants to kill him to keep the secret from getting out. The CIA plans to leak word of his new identity to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese and the Saudis then wait to see who kills him.

Readers the world over can't get enough of Grisham, who now has more than 60 million books in print. The Jan. 11 release of The Broker marks the 15th consecutive year that Grisham has published at least one book a year, and all have been bestsellers. This remarkable string of publishing hits started in 1991 with his breakout legal thriller, The Firm, and has continued with a dozen more suspense novels and occasional detours into other genres (Skipping Christmas, The Painted House).

In a rare interview, Grisham recently told The Hook, a newspaper in his adopted hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, that he planned to continue turning out legal thrillers for at least the next five years. "I can't write romance or sci-fi or horror stories. [But] when you write about lawyers and the law, the material is endless, "Grisham said. As long as legal thrillers are popular, I'll keep writing 'em.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

Good to the last drop

Review by Sheri Swanson

by Sheri Swanson

Grab a cup of decaf before settling down with Goldy Schulz's latest culinary caper. Zippier than a double hit of espresso and filled with the usual array of mouth-watering recipes, Double Shot has more twists than a fresh batch of fusilli. Diane Mott Davidson's 12th culinary mystery begins as Goldy's jerk of an ex-husband, John Richard, is found murdered. No one is more surprised than Goldy when she's framed for the crime. Sure, both she and her best friend, Marla (a fellow ex-Mrs. Jerk), were still seething that he'd been let out of prison, but did they really wish him dead? With a heavy catering schedule serving most of the creme de la creme of Aspen Meadow society, Goldy barely has time to rework the menus, much less commit a murder. Of course, John Richard never had a problem making enemies, including a bushel of jilted women. Socialite Courtney MacEwan, the most recent casualty of John Richard's affections, certainly has reason to top the list of suspects. A few hundred thousand reasons, that is. No one believes for a moment that John Richard Korman could possibly afford his country club estate and all the trimmings without the help of Ms. MacEwan's checkbook. As rumors begin to boil surrounding John Richard's forays into money laundering and unpaid debts, and more of Aspen Meadow's social register comes under scrutiny, another dead body surfaces.

With questions swirling like the inside of a cinnamon strudel, Goldy is torn between investigating the murders and keeping her head off the chopping block. Perhaps worst of all, Goldy and John Richard's son, Arch, seems to be juggling his grief with a secret that could hold the key to his father's murder.

Seasoned with dicey characters from the local strip club, hints of church corruption and a dash or two of unrequited love, Double Shot serves up a mystery that even the most avid of fans won't unscramble until the last bite.

Sheri Swanson enjoys trying new recipes and heartily recommends Goldy's Nuthouse Cookies.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

An exploration of past crimes

Review by Joni Rendon

by Joni Rendon

Disparate family histories collide and long-buried secrets resurface in this ingeniously crafted modern-day suspense narrative that combines elements of a traditional detective novel with riveting psychological character studies. Kate Atkinson, award-winning British author of Behind the Scenes at the Museum and two other novels, artfully incorporates her gothic sensibility and keen observations on human nature into a compelling page-turner that explores the fine line between love and obsession, grief and recovery, guilt and redemption.

Case Histories introduces us to a convincing mix of unconventional families and imperfect individuals whose lives are pockmarked by loss, abandonment and regret. Startling connections between them emerge when three different decades-old mysteries are thrust into the lap of private detective Jackson Brodie. First, there's the disappearance of three-year-old Olivia Land, whose aging sisters discover a disquieting clue among their deceased father's possessions; then the inexplicable stabbing of 18-year-old Laura Wyre by a deranged stranger during a routine workday at her father's law office; and finally, the grisly ax murder of a hapless husband ostensibly by his young wife in a fit of despair and rage. The tragedy and horror of these bygone crimes is brought sharply into focus through the use of omniscient narration, which crisscrosses family histories and vividly allows us to examine the three crime scenes in both the past and present tense.

Although decades may have intervened and the tragic headlines are now forgotten by most, the family members affected by these traumas still crave closure, leading them to Brodie's doorstep in a final attempt to lay their ghosts to rest. The emphatic private eye absorbs the burden of their collective grief while attempting to track down new leads and piece together the missing links of the long-unsolved cases. Meanwhile, he struggles with his own host of personal problems including an acrimonious divorce, a daughter growing up too quickly, and the sudden appearance of a mysterious enemy who seems to want him dead. Increasingly, Brodie's own life takes a backseat as he becomes irreversibly entangled in the melancholic lives of his clients the quirky and spinsterish Land sisters, the lonely and grief-obsessed father Theo Wyre, and the enigmatic sister of the convicted ax murderess, who harbors a dark secret. As he begins to unravel the threads of their seemingly incongruous cases, he uncovers subtle connections and painful truths that eventually help heal old wounds as well as bring his own troubles into sharp relief.

Featuring an engagingly offbeat private detectives and an equally intriguing cast of complex and lovably eccentric characters, Case Histories propels the reader forward with a rare intensity and compassion. With an unerring eye for domestic detail, Atkinson peels back the cozy trappings of family life to expose the imperfections that often lie beneath the favoritism, selfishness and jealousy that can form dangerous fault lines. Expertly laying bare human frailties and failings, the novel exposes the indelible bonds that connect individuals and the power of emotions to alter the course of family histories. Atkinson has conjured a wonderfully inventive take on the classic detective novel that jolts readers out of complacency by combining ordinary settings with macabre twists. The result is a highly original and entertaining novel that is the author's best to date, successfully blending elements of comedy and tragedy with rich insights into the human heart.

Joni Rendon writes from Hoboken, New Jersey.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

A murder mystery for dog lovers

Review by Trisha Ping

by Trisha Ping

What's it about?
Best-selling author Rita Mae Brown is launching a series that introduces two new animal sleuths—but this time, they're of the canine persuasion. In A Nose for Justice, Mags moves in with her great-aunt Jeep after losing her Wall Street job, bringing her dachshund Baxter, who clashes with Jeep's German shepherd mix King. But Baxter and King have to put their differences aside when a killer targets their small Nevada town and Mags teams up with local Deputy Pete Meadows to solve the mystery.

Bestseller formula:
Talking dogs + romance + murder mystery + Nevada history

Favorite lines:
Baxter lifted his head, sniffed deeply. "Something's in the creek bed." . . . Transfixed, the two animals stared at the human corpse stashed there. One wouldn't see it from the road. Coyotes had eaten some of the best parts—including the nose and lips—but since it froze at night what wasn't chewed was well enough preserved.

Worth the hype?
Should be another winner for dog lovers and fans of Brown's Mrs. Murphy series.

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

Double Cross Blind

Review by bookpagedev

Joel Ross’ page-turner of a debut novel, Double Cross Blind, opens in the early months of World War II, when the British intelligence services identified almost all of the Nazi agents operating in the United Kingdom and gave them the option of being executed or becoming double agents. Enough chose the latter that the British were able to deceive the Nazis in ways that significantly enhanced Allied military operations.

Into this world in which nothing is what it seems, Ross inserts several Americans. The protagonist, Tom Wall, has volunteered to serve with the Canadian Army and has been physically and psychologically traumatized by his experiences during the battle for Crete. At the center of that trauma is his belief that his brother, Earl, who is in the American diplomatic service, is a Nazi double agent who caused the death of most of Tom’s squadron on Crete. Further complicating the situation is the fact that Tom had been romantically involved with Harriet, Earl’s eventual wife, before Earl entered the picture. Add in a couple of eccentric Nazis, the unreal chaos of the Nazi Blitz against London and other British cities, and advance intelligence about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the novel becomes a compellingly disorienting mix for the reader as well as for Tom Wall.

Double Cross Blind does exhibit some of the limitations of a first effort. The characters aren’t always quite as interesting as Ross seems to think they are, and the very gradual revelation of what is actually occurring may cause some readers to give up on the story prematurely. Still, Ross (whose editor is former Putnam bigwig Phyllis Grann, who groomed Patricia Cornwell and Robin Cook for bestsellerdom) is very good with detail and with choosing descriptive language that often seems perfectly suited to the person, place or situation and is unusually perceptive without being self-indulgently flamboyant. Even the murkiest events are imbued with a vivid immediacy. And that in itself is more than enough to carry the story. Martin Kich teaches English at Wright State University.

Joel Ross' page-turner of a debut novel, Double Cross Blind, opens in the early months of World War II, when the British intelligence services identified almost all of the Nazi agents operating in the United Kingdom and gave them the option of being executed or…

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

Sinister secrets in a small town

Review by Rebecca Stropoli

by Rebecca Stropoli

It is something of a literary tradition to portray the small town as a breeding ground for dark secrets that emerge to shatter its innocuous facade. In his gripping new novel, Lost Souls, Michael Collins effectively depicts the sinister underside of an unnamed, economically depressed Midwestern town coping with the aftermath of a horrific tragedy. As the story unfolds, long-buried secrets about the town's residents and leaders come to the surface, with ultimately ruinous consequences.

The tale opens on Halloween night, when three-year-old Sarah Kendall is reported missing. Local police officer Lawrence, the novel's narrator, is the one who discovers the child's lifeless body buried beneath a pile of leaves by the side of the road. Fittingly dressed in an angel costume, little Sarah appears to be the victim of a hit-and-run accident.

When high school football star Kyle Johnson, the struggling town's bright shining hope, is named as the prime suspect in the accident, Lawrence becomes the key player in a cover-up designed to absolve Kyle of any wrongdoing. Promised a promotion to police chief by the crooked mayor, Lawrence initially goes along with the scheme. But as his unease intensifies, he is determined to discover the truth about what happened. In Lawrence, Collins has fashioned a complex character who struggles with demons of his own. Divorced and dealing with the remarriage of his wife and custodial loss of his young son, Lawrence leads a solitary and booze-soaked existence. With his spare and haunting prose, Collins skillfully creates parallels between the undoing of the town and Lawrence's own emotional downslide. The Irish-born Collins, whose past works include the Booker Prize-shortlisted novel The Keepers of Truth, writes adeptly about a corrupt American culture. You may not want to live in Collins' version of small-town USA, but this literary visit is a dark, page-turning pleasure.

Rebecca Krasney Stropoli lives in New York City.

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

Review

Review by bookpagedev

The new CBS hit show, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and the multitude of novels featuring intrepid medical examiners are evidence of our fascination with forensics. Scientific sleuths are big business, and Karin Slaughter’s Dr. Sara Linton should feel right at home in this popular crew. The star of Slaughter’s debut suspense thriller Blindsighted, Linton brings the expertise of a trained scientist to her job as pediatrician and part-time coroner in the small town of Grant County, Georgia.

Slaughter starts the story off with a bang as the peaceful town is the scene of the horrific slaughter and rape of a blind college professor from a nearby agricultural college. The horror grows as it becomes clear that this small Georgia town is now the stalking grounds for a particularly vicious serial rapist/murderer.

The twists and turns of the mystery will hold readers’ attention, but Slaughter also creates a captivating world with other characters from Sara’s town and family. Sara is not just a crime-solver, but a sister, a daughter and an ex-wife. All of those relationships play a part in her life, particularly the thorny broken love with her ex-husband, who just happens to be the town’s chief of police.

Jeffrey Tolliver, her wayward ex-husband, wants to change that but isn’t quite sure how. Over the course of the novel, Sara fights against the man who wounded her deeply, but it’s clear to the other characters in the novel and to the reader if not to Sara that she still loves Jeffrey as much as he loves her. As Sara and Jeffrey dance around their past and search for a psychopath, they are being hunted as well.

A story that roars its way through the final pages, Slaughter’s thriller is scary, shocking and perfectly suspenseful. Already earning comparisons to Patricia Cornwell, Slaughter’s Blindsighted is a first novel that doesn’t read like one and will propel the Georgia native right onto the must read list for suspense fans. And since her publisher was wise enough to sign her to a three-book deal, more Sara Linton adventures are in store for readers who discover this talented new author.

William Marden is a freelance writer in Orange Park, Florida.

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

Casting call for a reel mystery

Review by bookpagedev

by Bruce Tierney

It is always a pleasure to pick up a new mystery and find out: a) that the book is written in the first person, and b) that it’s situated in Los Angeles, where all good murder mysteries should be set. The Wicked and the Dead by BookPage columnist Robert Weibezahl finds struggling screenwriter Billy Winnetka embroiled in an inquiry into the death of a prominent cinema producer. As the story unfolds, it turns out that several of the major players in a controversial religious movie have met accidental deaths in recent months, and Billy takes it upon himself to do a bit of discreet investigation. The suspects abound: a nutball zealot religious leader (or one of his flock); the body-building gay lover of one of the major characters; the unpleasant (and quite possibly corrupt) cop. Weibezahl worked in film production for a number of years and it shows in his writing; he offers his readers a vivid insider’s look at the Hollywood machine. Winnetka is an engaging sort, a competent screenwriter wryly disillusioned by the lack of respect accorded to his profession. We look forward to reading his further adventures.

The Wicked and the Dead is Weibezahl’s first novel, but it is not his first foray into the genre: he has been an Agatha and Macavity Award finalist for his role as editor of A Taste of Murder and A Second Helping of Murder.

It is always a pleasure to pick up a new mystery and find out: a) that the book is written in the first person, and b) that it's situated in Los Angeles, where all good murder mysteries should be set. The Wicked and the Dead…

Mystery, Mystery & Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Mystery

Testing the limits of loyalty

Review by bookpagedev

by Leslie Budewitz

In a Baltimore suburb built on dreams of success, three girls play out a variation of Benjamin Franklin’s adage, an epigraph to this engaging psychological thriller: three can keep a secret, if two are dead. As To the Power of Three opens, an unidentified high-school senior forgoes fashion in favor of a more practical method of carrying a gun. An hour later, in a locked bathroom, one girl is dead, one is critically injured and one is lying. What appears at first to be the truth behind this horrific tragedy masks what really happened in the bathroom, and among the three girls who have been friends for 10 years: Kat, sweet and smart, the daughter of a man who’s living his thwarted dreams through his only child. Perri, an aspiring actress who decides to expose the truth about her lifelong friend. Josie, the athlete, who came to the trio late and never feels certain of her position in the friendship triangle. Laura Lippman is a Baltimore resident and former journalist whose previous books, including her Tess Monaghan series, have won every major mystery award. Her experience as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun provided valuable insight into the lives of policemen, criminals and victims. In To the Power of Three, she tells the story of every community’s nightmare. But how much of the story is true? Through the eyes of several narrators students, teachers, parents and Baltimore County police sergeant Harold Lenhardt readers see pieces of the puzzle, including snapshots of the girls’ developing friendship from their third-grade meeting through its implosion. But like Sgt. Lenhardt, who appeared in Lippman’s thought-provoking Every Secret Thing, readers must wait for the final clue a glimpse of a young woman’s anger to see the full picture. Lippman knows what Baltimore County looks like. She knows what matters to its teenagers, and how insider kids torture the outsiders. And just as Lippman knows the importance of the right shoes, especially to the girl who can’t afford hundred-dollar sandals, she clearly also remembers how it feels to walk in them. To the Power of Three lets readers walk that same treacherous path. Leslie Budewitz lives in Montana and is a legal consultant for writers.

In a Baltimore suburb built on dreams of success, three girls play out a variation of Benjamin Franklin's adage, an epigraph to this engaging psychological thriller: three can keep a secret, if two are dead. As To the Power of Three opens, an unidentified high-school…

Mystery & Suspense, Suspense

Mystery & Suspense Suspense

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Best known for the hilarious Southern romp Handling Sin (just released in paperback), author Michael Malone has shown a unique ability to question what he calls the moral, political and social dimensions of the old South versus the new, while at the same time telling entertaining and well-crafted stories. After an absence of more than 10 years, Malone returns to the popular detective duo of Uncivil Seasons (1983) and Time’s Witness (1989). In First Lady, he has created another irresistible blend of mystery, romance, heartache and revenge in an appealing Southern setting. Hillston, North Carolina, home of Haver University, has been praised by both the governor and the press as being one of the safest small towns in the state. Hillston’s reputation and the reputations of the local police chief, Cuddy R. Mangum, and his best friend and chief of homicide, Lt. Justin Savile V, are called into question when a second nude female body is found mutilated in the woods outside of town. The killer leaves a body tag on each victim addressed to Justin and Cuddy, making the case a personal challenge. The mayor and the local press, attracted by the sensational nature of the murder, seem intent on impeding the progress of the case. The fact that the deputies in the local sheriff’s department act like the Keystone Kops at crime scenes doesn’t help matters. The sheriff’s office is also the cause of another headache for Cuddy. The only son of one of the town’s best families was arrested for shooting his pregnant wife on New Year’s, and the sheriff’s department tainted the evidence so badly that a not guilty verdict is inevitable. In desperation and frustration over the mounting bad press, Cuddy announces that he and his department will find the serial killer the press has dubbed Guess Who in a week or resign.

As with his previous detective novels, Malone has again created a cleverly constructed plot along with imperfect, nuanced characters. Justin, who drinks a bit too much, loves old things and considers the homogenization of his hometown a travesty, while Cuddy has been, and will always be, in love with the one woman he can’t have. Their banter is believable, smart and funny, filled with references to Colonel Sanders and other things uniquely Southern. Michael Malone’s return to this intrepid pair of detectives and their colorful small town life will delight armchair detectives everywhere. His characters, their relationships and the fictional town of Hillston charm long after the final page.

Pam Kingsbury lives and writes from her hometown of Florence, Alabama.

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Julie Mayhew

By Carole V. Bell

With her Greek-island set thriller, Little Nothings, Julie Mayhew hits the same seductive sweet spot as writers like Lucy Foley and Liane Moriarty.

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Paul Tremblay

There’s no going back in this apocalyptic home-invasion thriller

By G. Robert Frazier

Praised by horrormeister Stephen King, Paul Tremblay’s shocking new novel, The Cabin at the End of the World, is an often graphic account of one family’s ordeal when their vacation is shattered in a cult-like home invasion. We asked Tremblay about the book’s origins, its dark path and his inner fears that helped forge the novel.