It has been nearly 15 years since Vicky Bliss, Elizabeth Peters’ sharp and hungry contemporary protagonist, has had a new adventure. And while fans of Peters’ best-selling Amelia Peabody series have thrilled to each new volume in that saga, readers have also been champing at the bit for more about the spunky, six-foot-tall art historian. Their patience will be well rewarded withLaughter of Dead Kings, sixth in the series.
When Tutankhamen’s mummy goes missing from its sarcophagus in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, Vicky finds herself once again caught up in an irresistible adventure. John Tregarth, erstwhile art thief and Vicky’s paramour, is suspected at once, and the pair sets off to clear his name, careening through Europe to Egypt (stopping in Berlin to protest—with ulterior motives and while distributing sausages—Germany’s reluctance to return the famous bust of Nefertiti to its native country).
As always, Peters’ descriptions of Egypt are a delight, and she balances this richness with a well-told, tight story, full of suspense and intrigue. Vicky’s boss, Schmidt, from the National Museum in Munich, is embroiled as well, caught up in a romance that turns sour fast.
Any reader familiar with Peters knows that picking up her latest book is like sitting down with old friends. Her sharp wit and smart prose are unequaled, and she deserves every available accolade. But Laughter of Dead Kings provides more than another fantastic story. It also answers a question debated over and over by Peters’ fans: how is John related to the characters from the Amelia Peabody series?
The answer is a good one, but even better is the bit that comes before it, when readers at long last meet the woman responsible for publishing Mrs. Emerson’s journals, bringing together at last the two series in a most satisfying fashion. This scene alone is worth the price of the book—but don’t look for details here. Rush and pick up a copy right away. You won’t want to miss a single page.
Tasha Alexander is the author of the Lady Emily Ashton mystery series.
It has been nearly 15 years since Vicky Bliss, Elizabeth Peters' sharp and hungry contemporary protagonist, has had a new adventure. And while fans of Peters' best-selling Amelia Peabody series have thrilled to each new volume in that saga, readers have also been champing at…
Fans of psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis will satisfy their need for thrills with Jonathan Kellerman’s latest, Monster. Never before have the combined talents of this pair, such opposites in many ways, yet complementary where it counts, been so carefully drawn by the author.
At the novel’s start, authorities are baffled by a series of horrific murders. While police try to uncover a link among the slain, the death toll mounts quickly amid a flood of dead-end leads, investigative miscues, and bureaucratic footdragging. Milo’s dogged probing and ability to turn up the tiny, pivotal clue is sorely tested by the elusiveness of the killer. Although there is no obvious common thread connecting the victims except the method of their deaths, Alex puts together a unifying personality profile, identifying them as well-liked loners capable of social interaction but uneasy about real intimacy.
A break in the case emerges when Ardis Monster Peake, a bona fide madman who killed his mother and an entire family of do-gooders, suddenly begins stream-of-consciousness rants that contain genuine clues. Kellerman keeps the suspense taut as Peake’s bizarre ramblings lead them deeper into the inner lives of the victims. Kellerman’s knack for creating short, terrifying scenes is accomplished here with all the skill of a seasoned veteran novelist.
Even though all evidence points to Peake, Alex and Milo conclude that the answer to this puzzle goes beyond the usual follow-the-dots murder case. What stumps the team is how the killer could know so much about their next move, as if he were reading their minds.
With Monster, the reader follows clues, both big and small, until the book cranks up for its big finish. Peake is one of Kellerman’s most fully realized crazies, a character of unbounded lunacy and diminished humanity. Though its occasional nod to old genre formula sometimes gets in the way, Monster, a furiously paced mindbender, contains enough mystery to hold readers spellbound. Robert Fleming is a writer in New York City.
Fans of psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis will satisfy their need for thrills with Jonathan Kellerman's latest, Monster. Never before have the combined talents of this pair, such opposites in many ways, yet complementary where it counts, been so carefully drawn by the…
Fans of psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis will satisfy their need for thrills with Jonathan Kellerman’s latest, Monster. Never before have the combined talents of this pair, such opposites in many ways, yet complementary where it counts, been so carefully drawn by the author.
At the novel’s start, authorities are baffled by a series of horrific murders. While police try to uncover a link among the slain, the death toll mounts quickly amid a flood of dead-end leads, investigative miscues, and bureaucratic footdragging. Milo’s dogged probing and ability to turn up the tiny, pivotal clue is sorely tested by the elusiveness of the killer. Although there is no obvious common thread connecting the victims except the method of their deaths, Alex puts together a unifying personality profile, identifying them as well-liked loners capable of social interaction but uneasy about real intimacy.
A break in the case emerges when Ardis Monster Peake, a bona fide madman who killed his mother and an entire family of do-gooders, suddenly begins stream-of-consciousness rants that contain genuine clues. Kellerman keeps the suspense taut as Peake’s bizarre ramblings lead them deeper into the inner lives of the victims. Kellerman’s knack for creating short, terrifying scenes is accomplished here with all the skill of a seasoned veteran novelist.
Even though all evidence points to Peake, Alex and Milo conclude that the answer to this puzzle goes beyond the usual follow-the-dots murder case. What stumps the team is how the killer could know so much about their next move, as if he were reading their minds.
With Monster, the reader follows clues, both big and small, until the book cranks up for its big finish. Peake is one of Kellerman’s most fully realized crazies, a character of unbounded lunacy and diminished humanity. Though its occasional nod to old genre formula sometimes gets in the way, Monster, a furiously paced mindbender, contains enough mystery to hold readers spellbound. Robert Fleming is a writer in New York City.
Fans of psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis will satisfy their need for thrills with Jonathan Kellerman's latest, Monster. Never before have the combined talents of this pair, such opposites in many ways, yet complementary where it counts, been so carefully drawn by the…
Three women take center stage in Alafair Burke’s latest thriller, Find Me: NYPD detective Ellie Hatcher, attorney Lindsay Kelly and amnesiac Hope Miller, who remembers nothing of her life prior to a devastating car crash she survived 15 years ago—or so she says. Now, sans ID or history, Hope works under the radar for a real estate agent, getting paid under the table to stage houses for prospective buyers. Then, as often happens in novels about amnesiacs, a random aha! moment triggers a memory, and we’re off to the races. Hope disappears, blood is spilled and the DNA found at her last-known location matches that of unidentified blood found at an old crime scene halfway across the country. The crime in question is one of a spate of killings thought to be the work of a serial killer, and the case was supposedly solved 15 years ago. Lindsay, who has been Hope’s friend ever since her accident, begins to investigate her disappearance and eventually draws Ellie into the fray. Ellie’s father, who was also a cop, was assigned to the same serial killer case that’s somehow connected with Hope’s disappearance. The two women feverishly piece together the disparate parts of the story, and Burke’s masterful control over pacing and plot reveals will make readers just as anxious to uncover the truth.
★ A Narrow Door
Joanne Harris’ darkly humorous and deliciously evil A Narrow Door is a quintessential and unputdownable English mystery. Rebecca Buckfast, headmistress of noted Yorkshire boarding school St. Oswald’s and one of the first-person narrators of this tale, is nothing if not straightforward. She recounts the steps she had to take to become the first female head of the school in its 500-year history. Rebecca doesn’t sugarcoat anything, including the two murders she committed (“one a crime of passion, the other, a crime of convenience”), and yet it is difficult not to respect her motivations and even like her. Sort of. Meanwhile, a parallel tale is offered up by St. Oswald’s teacher Roy Straitley, in the form of a diary that outlines the discovery of what appears to be human remains in a construction site on the school grounds. As Roy’s and Rebecca’s stories unfold, both of the narrators take satisfaction in the secrets they are hiding from each other—or, more precisely, the secrets they think they are successfully concealing. A Narrow Door is an exceptionally good novel, such a masterpiece of storytelling that when Rebecca likens herself to a modern-day Scheherazade, it doesn’t feel like hyperbole in the slightest.
Silent Parade
By all accounts, 19-year-old Saori Namiki was on track to become the next big thing in the world of J-pop music. And then, inexplicably, she vanished, and stayed missing until her remains were discovered three years later in a suburban Tokyo neighborhood. Another body is found at the same place: Yoshie Hasunuma, an unremarkable woman save for her stepson, Kanichi, who is widely believed to have skated away from a murder charge years ago and looks pretty good for this latest double homicide as well. In the same way that Scotland Yard Inspector Lestrade often sought the assistance of supersleuth Sherlock Holmes, Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Chief Inspector Kusanagi regularly summons brainiac physicist Manabu Yukawa, known as Detective Galileo, to consult on particularly difficult homicides. Keigo Higashino’s Silent Parade showcases the fourth such pairing, and is in many ways the most intricate. Detective Galileo must reconsider his theory of the crime again and again, tweaking it repeatedly until he is more or less satisfied with his assessment. He is a very clever man, smart enough to stay a step or two ahead of the police department, the perpetrator (or perpetrators?) and the reader, and that is no mean feat.
★ BOX 88
The title of Charles Cumming’s latest espionage thriller, BOX 88, refers to a fictional clandestine ops organization that is jointly operated by the United States and the United Kingdom. BOX 88 does not possess a license to kill a la James Bond, but the management certainly utilizes a “license to look the other way” on occasions when wetwork is required. BOX 88 begins a series starring Scottish spy Lachlan Kite, who in this book must come to grips with a very cold case: the 1988 downing of PanAm Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Close to half the narrative consists of flashbacks to immediately after the plane crash, when Lachlan was a green recruit. In the present day, Lachlan lets down his guard at the funeral of his old friend, with disastrous results. He is kidnapped by an urbane-seeming Iranian man who turns out to be anything but urbane when it comes to securing intelligence from a perceived enemy combatant. Worse yet, the kidnapper’s team has also captured Lachlan’s very pregnant wife. If torture will not get them what they want, perhaps threats to Lachlan’s family will do the trick. Despite his mistake at the funeral, Lachlan is a seasoned operative and, if anything, more dangerous to his captors than they are to him. Meanwhile, British intelligence agency MI5 is in hot pursuit, not to help Lachlan but rather to out him as an operative of a rogue agency. The suspense is palpable, the characters flawed but sympathetic in their own ways and the story gripping. In a month of really excellent reads, BOX 88 is a clear standout.
In a month overflowing with superb mysteries and thrillers, a deliciously evil boarding school-set thriller and a pitch-perfect espionage novel rise to the top.
Must have typing speed of 55 words per minute. Must not be emotionally affected by violent or traumatic reports. All hired candidates will be required to swear an oath of confidentiality.
When I first read the job description for a police transcriber, I could hardly believe it was legit. This suspended belief percolated within me even as I applied, tested, interviewed, got hired, and sat down to type my first report.
Hello, Transcriber.
Those two words welcomed me into a world I’d never been privy to before—a world rife with death and derelicts and drugs. So many drugs. In my two years of having lived in that industrial Wisconsin city, I’d been oblivious to the underground economy that flourished there, the biggest players being heroin and crack cocaine. Sometimes prescription pills made their way into the mix. Suddenly, I knew every bad thing that happened before it hit the news. If it hit the news.
In the days and weeks that transpired as I transcribed case after case—suspects in interview rooms, search warrants, homicide investigations, cell phone logs and more—I realized something: I had become the proverbial fly on the wall. I was a nameless, bodiless thing who stole into the police department at 10 p.m. and left before most people punched in for the morning, the only trace of my having been there a stack of perfectly typed reports and completed arrest paperwork.
I slept by day and typed by night, utilizing my in-between hours to write another novel that would ultimately go nowhere. But if nothing else, it kept me afloat during a time when I was untethered and adrift. This dream of becoming a published author was my lighthouse when I feared I might never find my way out of the dark.
My office was a terrarium, a narrow space with an outside wall that was a sheet of glass—the only shield between me and the horrors I typed up every night. I learned more in that small space, in that small slice of time, than I learned during any other period of my life.
First, I awakened to the fact that I now existed in two parallel realities: one in which I was oblivious to the murders that happened just a few houses down from mine, the drug deals on the sidewalk, the car chases down Main Street; and the other in which I was the conduit between an investigator’s report and a criminal going to jail. I learned that just because the police arrest a violent criminal one day, it doesn’t mean they won’t be walking the streets the next. It’s up to the district attorney’s office and the judges to make the charges stick.
I also learned that people are people, regardless of which role they’re assigned in a report (police officer, victim, suspect, etc.). The word sonder is a neologism from John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows that he defines as “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” I think that’s important for writers and human beings in general, having the ability to see things through a different lens. When you do that, you realize how fragile your own circumstances are.
I picked up a lot of spontaneous knowledge, too, such as learning people by voice instead of face and knowing their pet words; thus, however and indicative are a handful that come to mind. I memorized badge numbers for all 216 sworn personnel, and I could guess the nature of the crime based on the length of the report. Car thefts were generally only a few minutes long, and your average search warrants were in the 7- to 12-minute range, unless you got stuck typing the report for the evidence technician. That could land you upward of 40 minutes, depending on how many items of evidentiary value were found. Homicides tended to be longer, especially if there were interviews or a neighborhood canvas involved. And so on and so on.
Finally, I recognized that I had accidentally landed in a writer’s dream position: a unique job with behind-the-scenes access to fascinating stories and all the quiet time in the world to come up with a story of my own. This was the spark for Hello, Transcriber, a book that explores this unique and crepuscular work. Contrary to popular belief, there are professions much more solitary than being a writer. Take it from a former fly on the wall.
Author photo by Alaxandra Rutella.
Author Hannah Morrissey explores how her work as a police transcriber gave her the perfect perspective for her debut novel.
Carol O’Connell’s sixth New York-based Kathleen Mallory mystery Shell Game is not the simple illusion its title suggests. Its convolution and deciphering transform penny-ante poker into high-stakes investigation, loyalties into levers to gain clues, dementia into a shield fordecades-old guilt.
Just prior to Thanksgiving, on national television, an old-school magician’s attempt at an ambitious, dangerous trick results in his death. His failings are blamed: He was out of his league; his timing was off. Unlike everyone else, detective Kathleen Mallory believes that the death was planned. When her initial attempts to gather information on a magicians’ float at the Macy’s Parade are twisted to her professional embarrassment, Mallory digs in deeper.
O’Connell’s protagonist is the veteran of a childhood on urban streets a focused, tough detective, a source of bafflement to her colleagues. But self-knowledge, stubbornness, and cyber-skills give her an edge in confronting clever, violent opponents. Be warned: Shell Game may result in lost sleep, not for its subject matter but for its relentless puzzle. You do not get what you see. Tom Corcoran is the Florida-based author of The Mango Opera and the forthcoming Gumbo Limbo.
Carol O'Connell's sixth New York-based Kathleen Mallory mystery Shell Game is not the simple illusion its title suggests. Its convolution and deciphering transform penny-ante poker into high-stakes investigation, loyalties into levers to gain clues, dementia into a shield fordecades-old guilt.
Joseph Klempner begins his tale of murder and its aftermath by describing its setting a small, ordinary community in upstate New York called Flat Rock. Flat Rock is small enough to fill every public office with volunteers, and small enough to route weekend calls to police headquarters to the Officer on Call. It is through this quite ordinary relay system that Bass McClure, Flat Rock’s volunteer Fish and Game Warden, receives a phone call that proves to be less than ordinary.
Jonathan Hamilton a 30-year-old man most of the town charitably calls slow has called to say his grandparents have been hurt. McClure, long familiar with the Hamilton family, arrives at the main house of the estate to find Jonathan rocking, making trapped animals noises, and covered in blood. Saying to Jonathan, Show me, McClure is lead to an upstairs bedroom, two bodies, and a mess of blood. An investigation begins.
The investigation, conducted by McClure and Deke Stanton, turns up what appears to be solid evidence that Jonathan has brutally killed the two people he loves most in the world. Evidence seems to suggest the motive for the murders supposedly committed by a man most would label retarded was greed.
Because a double murder carries a possible death penalty and New York has recently placed special emphasis on cases in which the death penalty applies, the state calls Matthew Fielder to defend Jonathan. A graduate of Death School, and a firm believer that death is different, Fielder collects a team to assist him in developing a defense for what seems indefensible. With the expertise of a private investigator named Gunn and a social worker named Hillary, plus input from Jonathan’s family, Fielder makes a decision on how to best defend his client only to find his decision was based on inadequacies and clouded by his own prejudices.
Klempner, who has a background in criminal defense, does the expected, delivering an intriguing look at the nuances of the law; he also delivers the unexpected. He winds his courtroom drama around the landscape, characters, and subplot narratives in the same way a favorite uncle strings together seemingly unrelated anecdotes until, without understanding exactly how it happened, you realize a powerful story has been told and you have learned something in the telling.
Jamie Whitfield is a published author and teacher. She lives in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
Joseph Klempner begins his tale of murder and its aftermath by describing its setting a small, ordinary community in upstate New York called Flat Rock. Flat Rock is small enough to fill every public office with volunteers, and small enough to route weekend calls to…
What distinguishes the recent work of Michael Connelly from other current mysteries is his emphasis on the psychological terrain of his central character, Detective Harry Bosch. A man ravaged by inner demons, Bosch struggles to control them without losing grasp of his latest case. In Angels Flight, Bosch is confronted with his most difficult challenge to date: a prominent African-American attorney’s murder.
Set in a racially polarized Los Angeles, Howard Elias’s shooting threatens to trigger a series of bloody race riots unless Bosch can find the murderer. Elias, a civil rights attorney, has a reputation as an enemy of the LAPD, arguing countless lawsuits against the embattled police force. When Elias and a woman are found dead on a train car, Bosch is recruited by police brass to solve the case as quickly as possible.
Matters are complicated by the fact that Elias was killed just two days before arguing his biggest case against the department. Although the murder resembles a robbery-homicide, certain circumstances point to a possible inside job by rogue cops seeking to silence the black lawyer.
In typical Connelly fashion, there are clever turns and twists in the plot as the city simmers toward a massive racial meltdown. Bosch races against time to find the killers, before everything erupts. His superiors do not want him to turn up any evidence that would implicate the department, but everything suggests that the people involved could be members of the LAPD.
Fans of classic police procedurals will enjoy the well-researched investigation, with its numerous clues, lab findings, legwork, suspects, and astonishing dead-ends. Bosch, walking a tightrope between protesting blacks and fearful whites, seeks the truth despite stonewalling tactics by his department and threats from the black community. With a whiz-bang ending, Bosch uncovers the bitter truth that defies all he has ever believed about his profession or his community. This is sleuthing with smarts and suspense. Connelly’s eighth detective thriller, Angels Flight sets the bar for the standard of this type of fiction even higher and clears it with room to spare.
What distinguishes the recent work of Michael Connelly from other current mysteries is his emphasis on the psychological terrain of his central character, Detective Harry Bosch. A man ravaged by inner demons, Bosch struggles to control them without losing grasp of his latest case. In…
Most mystery novelists would give their writing hand to have just one successful series. At last count, Edgar Award-winning author Lawrence Block has three a number of cloak-and-dagger espionage novels starring libidinous secret agent Evan Tanner; a darker group of suspense stories featuring alcoholic ex-cop Matthew Scudder; and the whimsical tales of Mrs. Rhodenbarr’s favorite son Bernie, a bookstore owner who moonlights as a cat burglar. Ever the opportunist, Bernie is constantly on the lookout for the unguarded bauble, the unbolted door.
A chance encounter with lovely (and lively) Alice Cottrell affords him the opportunity for some nourishing larceny. It seems Alice is the one-time lover of legendary writer-recluse Gulliver Fairborn, whose Nobody’s Angel was the coming-of-age novel of its generation. At the tender age of 14, Alice moved in with Fairborn, a free spirit some 20 years her senior. Three years later, inexplicably, Fairborn disappeared, his only contact with the outside world an occasional letter and manuscript sent to his literary agent, one Anthea Landau. If these letters could be obtained, they would be worth a small fortune. Or so Alice says . . .
Shortly afterward, in another part of Manhattan, one Jeffrey Peters, aka Peter Jeffries, aka Bernie Rhodenbarr, picks the locks of Anthea Landau’s apartment. To Bernie’s chagrin, the agent lies dead in her bed freshly dispatched, judging by the aroma of gunpowder in the closed room. A pounding at the door convinces our intrepid intruder that he must make good his getaway.
Sadly, Bernie is not as quick of foot as of wit. He is apprehended in mid-escape, and cuffed and dragged downtown to be arraigned for murder. Things take a turn for the weird when the lovely Alice turns out to be one Karen Kassenmeier, a professional thief . . . and get weirder still when the body of Karen Kassenmeier turns up on the floor of Bernie’s apartment. Red herrings abound, everyone has a secret (or two, or three), and nothing is what it seems. With the constabulary breathing down his neck, Bernie must extract the proverbial hare from his Homburg, and pronto.
The Burglar in the Rye, the ninth in the Bernie Rhodenbarr series, has a healthy dose of irreverent humor, a classic gather-all-the-suspects-in-one-room climax, and of course more twists than Lombard Street.
Bruce Tierney is a writer, songwriter, and art dealer.
Most mystery novelists would give their writing hand to have just one successful series. At last count, Edgar Award-winning author Lawrence Block has three a number of cloak-and-dagger espionage novels starring libidinous secret agent Evan Tanner; a darker group of suspense stories featuring alcoholic ex-cop…
Archy McNally, Lawrence Sanders’s sleuth in McNally’s Dilemma, takes the call one minute before he turns off his machine at midnight. It is his old friend Melva, with some bad news. Geoff Williams, erstwhile tennis pro, four-flusher cad, and husband to Melva, has met an untimely end a bullet through his chest. Melva has called Archy to report the murder and to confess that she did it. Of course, Archy and we have been around murder mysteries long enough to know that the murderer is never, never, the one who claims she did it at the beginning of the book. But unraveling the plot takes us through Sanders’s special domain, the Palm Beach cafe society set, and the parasites who live off of it.
Archy’s first job is to find Melva’s daughter and fetch her back to the murder scene. She turns out, of course, to be the requisite gorgeous twentysomething. And, of course, she finds Archy irresistible, even though he is older. In the end Archy finds the real murderer, returns to his long-term girlfriend, and enjoys his gibson at the Pelican Club, ready for the next adventure.
It may be a formula, but this book is packed with charm. There is, for one thing, Archy himself: sardonic, sartorially challenged, the son of the best society lawyer in Palm Beach, booted out of Yale Law, and now a private eye. Think Travis McGee in an ascot. He is fond enough of unusual hats that he has berets custom made in Connecticut in puce, among other colors. He also has enough quirky wise cracks to rival a Groucho Marx movie: The music was pure disco, the beat of which has always reminded me of how the ogre’s heart must have sounded when he chased Jack around the beanstalk. Even the minor characters especially the minor characters are loaded with the eccentricity and texture that make you think Sanders just can’t be making this up.
Americans, I’m told, love to read about rich people. If that is true, then Sanders has hit his market, but with a delightful band of villains and friends in this picaresque, charming whodunit. ¦ John Foster is an attorney in Columbia, South Carolina.
Archy McNally, Lawrence Sanders's sleuth in McNally's Dilemma, takes the call one minute before he turns off his machine at midnight. It is his old friend Melva, with some bad news. Geoff Williams, erstwhile tennis pro, four-flusher cad, and husband to Melva, has met an…
Set amid the glitz and glimmer of showbiz, these historical mysteries expose the corruption and abuse that exists after the shine of spotlights go out. But even more than that, they examine critical periods during which women’s roles were shifting as they demanded more freedoms.
As a teenager, Willowjean “Will” Parker literally ran away to join the circus. Stephen Spotswood’s Murder Under Her Skin (the sequel to 2020’s Fortune Favors the Dead) finds her as an adult in 1946 New York City, working at a detective agency with her mentor, the brilliant Lillian Pentecost. Fresh off an arson investigation, Will gets a telegram that her friend Ruby Donner, the tattooed lady of Hart and Halloway’s Travelling Circus, has been murdered and that another performer, Valentin Kalishenko, has been arrested for the crime. Will believes Valentin is innocent, and she and her boss set off for small-town Virginia to meet up with the circus and clear Valentin’s name.
Hart and Halloway’s Travelling Circus allowed Will to escape her abusive father and safely explore her sexuality as a lesbian. Now that she’s returning as an outsider, some of that closeness is gone and, in a melancholy but emotionally realistic twist, Will finds herself trapped between two worlds: She’s no longer completely trusted by her former peers, and she’s still working to gain the approval of her intrepid boss.
As they work the case, Will and Lillian find the world in flux around them, which Spotswood ably explores without distracting from the central mystery. In the wake of World War II, U.S. veterans are dealing with displacement and PTSD, women are being shunted into more restrictive roles now that GIs have returned, and movie theaters are filling up while circus arenas are emptying. None of the characters in this mystery quite know how to cope with these seismic cultural changes, setting Murder Under Her Skin apart from more simplistic stories set in the same time period. Despite the cultural angst swirling around them, Will and Lillian focus on finding justice for Ruby, a woman many of their contemporaries don’t consider respectable or worthy of their compassion.
Elly Griffiths jumps ahead a few decades (and across the pond) in her snappy new Brighton mystery, The Midnight Hour. It’s 1965, and when theatre impresario Bert Billingham is murdered with rat poison, his wife, actress Verity Malone, is a natural suspect. Worried that the police will look no further than her, Verity hires PIs Emma Holmes and Sam Collins to clear her name. Among their suspects is magician-turned-actor Max Mephisto, who is filming a remake of Dracula along with Billingham’s son and is rumored to have had a fling with Verity.
Much like Murder Under Her Skin, this mystery focuses on a tightknit group of performers. Many of the actors, directors and costume designers in Billingham’s orbit worked together during the war, and everyone seems to have a story illustrating Billingham’s nastiness, giving Emma and Sam no shortage of suspects.
As they navigate the complex showbiz web around Billingham and his family, Emma and Sam team up with 20-year-old rookie police constable Meg Connolly, which allows Griffiths to explore the experiences of three women at very different stages in life. The growing feminist movement has created more opportunities for women like Meg, but her male-dominated workplace still treats female sleuths as novelties. While Meg is just starting out, Emma struggles to balance her career with being a wife and mother, and she is frustrated that her detective work is treated like a hobby rather than a profession. Sam, meanwhile, worries that her own romantic interest in Max Mephisto could be clouding her judgment.
The sixth book in a series, The Midnight Hour is also full of secondary characters who have appeared in previous Brighton mysteries, so readers may want to start at the beginning before taking a stab at this one. But those who are already fans of the Brighton mysteries will be well satisfied with this installment, which tracks the evolution of Emma and Sam’s characters and careers without sacrificing one bit of Griffiths’ wit and charm.
Beyond being tantalizing whodunits, both Murder Under Her Skin and The Midnight Hour feature dynamic, complicated female characters who unapologetically stand up to and outshine their male contemporaries.
Set amid the glitz and glimmer of showbiz, these historical mysteries examine two critical periods during which women demanded more freedoms.
“Don’t stare too long at the Witching Tree / Defile it not, or cursed you will be.” So goes the saying behind the spookiest landmark in Burning Lake, New York, a small town with a dark past and an even darker present. Alice Blanchard’s The Witching Tree follows detective and lifelong Burning Lake resident Natalie Lockhart through a murder mystery that deftly addresses what happens when personal trauma and professional responsibility collide in a town steeped in complicated history.
The third book in Blanchard’s award-winning series begins with a horrific awakening. Beloved local Wiccan priestess Veronica Manes awakens from a drugged sleep, dressed in a Halloween-esque witch costume and chained to a railroad track with a freight train quickly approaching—a train she is unable to escape in time. At the same time, Natalie is enjoying a cozy morning with her wealthy boyfriend, Hunter Rose. She’s ready to leave cop life behind after working two disturbing cases, including one that involved her own family. When Natalie learns of Veronica’s murder, she’s as baffled as the rest of Burning Lake, but she knows she can’t quit the force until the mystery is solved.
Natalie is a smart, believable heroine. She’s a skilled detective with an admirable sense of duty to the place that has raised her, even though it spectacularly failed her family. Indeed, Blanchard’s writing shines the brightest when depicting all her characters’ gray areas. Despite the macabre elements of the murder and setting, the people who populate The Witching Tree are realistically drawn: No townsperson is all good or all bad. Could eccentric Marigold Hutchins, who runs the town’s Wiccan shop, be gunning for Veronica’s leadership position in the local historic coven? What about the young couple Veronica befriended, who were dealing with drug addiction and dabbling in dark magic before they disappeared completely? Natalie also can’t forget the legacy of the town, whose the citizens burned three accused witches at the stake in the 18th century. Blanchard crafts a spectacular sense of place, and though readers may fear Burning Lake, they also won’t want to leave.
While it’s the third in a series, The Witching Treeoffers sufficient background information for new readers and a town full of complex, dynamic characters, making it an enjoyable novel that stands easily on its own.
Though readers may fear Burning Lake, the creepy small-town setting of Alice Blanchard’s mystery, they also won’t want to leave.
In late ’90s Brooklyn, simple actions have a long-lasting impact, and not always for the better. The dynamic cast of characters in William Boyle’s turbulent crime thriller Shoot the Moonlight Out learn that the hard way.
Consider teenager Bobby Santovasco. Along with his friend Zeke, the pair do what kids do: They wreak havoc for fun. In their case, it’s throwing objects off a bridge at passing cars on the Belt Parkway. First, it’s harmless. Aluminum cans. Water balloons. But it’s not enough. So, the boys up the stakes—with rocks.
The result is the death of a young woman, Amelia Cornacchia.
Flash forward five years to 2001, where we find Charlie French. A brutish debt collector, he steals a horde of cash from a reluctant client, and stashes it with his friend Max Berry for safekeeping. Bobby, who now works for Max, falls for Francesca Clarke, who inspires him to rob Max’s safe so they can escape the oppressive confines of the neighborhood.
Unbeknownst to Bobby, his stepsister, Lily, has fallen for Jack Cornacchia, a student in her writing class. Jack is a self-styled neighborhood vigilante, who just so happens to be Amelia’s father.
Boyle (A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself) slowly introduces each of his players in chapters from their perspective, deepening the reader’s empathy for each member of the large cast as he digs into their individual losses, hopes and loves. Hailing from Brooklyn himself, Boyle imbues the setting with an air of authenticity and stark realism as his characters leap from the page. Readers can only grasp at the slimmest of hopes in this grim, modern-day noir, but the determination of Boyle’s characters defies expectations. He increases the suspense and intrigue of the story across alternating chapters, seemingly checking in with characters at random as Shoot the Moonlight Out subtly builds towards a collision of lives intertwined and fates inextricably linked.
William Boyle’s stark and turbulent crime thriller boasts an endlessly fascinating and empathetic cast of characters.
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