Killing for Keeps by Mari Hannah

Posted on May 31, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Doing another short-short review of this fifth book in the DCI Kate Daniels series.

Pros: compelling plot; compulsively readable. I continue to care about the protagonist even though she frustrates me with her choices! I remain fully invested in Kate’s character arc, and would have immediately dived into book six if I had had it handy. I love secondary character Hank Gormley even more.

Cons: the writing does continue to take me out of the story, only momentarily, but over and over. There continue to be too many ‘things’ where a better noun is almost always available. Some logical leaps don’t feel quite earned for me. (I’m so sorry I did not make note of these for examples. It’s a credit to the book that I wasn’t motivated to go find a pen. Or, I was camping in below-freezing weather and didn’t want to get out of bed.) Each book’s murder mystery plot is electric, but Kate’s romantic difficulties feel stalled and I wish we would get a move on.

What can I say? The pros are absolutely winning and I suspect I’m going to rocket through the next few books as I get a hold of them. But not without qualifications. I wonder if I’ve just been missing the genre; I’m going to try Kate Atkinson next. Any other tips?

Rating: 7 parakeets.

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Fatal Games by Mari Hannah

Posted on May 20, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Book four in the DCI Kate Daniels series (following most recently Deadly Deceit) is Fatal Games, for me the most successful to date. I’ve enjoyed each of the previous three books, but always with some reservations, and wishing for a bit more of Daniels’ personal side, feeling she was a bit underdeveloped, perhaps. This time something finally really clicked for me. Don’t get me wrong: the fact that I’m still here for book four means something was working, but this one knocked it out of the park in a new way.

For one thing, I felt that we got into some personal life: not so much that of Kate herself, actually, but especially a few other characters. In fact, I’m beginning to buy that Kate is truly defined by an absence of personal life! (This is not a new message from the author, but maybe it took some convincing.) Secondary characters have more layers: I really like Daniels’ second in command, Hank, who is a real friend as well as professional Watson type. Her ex, Jo, also a professional colleague, is definitely more well rounded. And now we meet Emily, a friend to the rest, who appears mid-crisis: recently widowed, she has just returned to work as a prison psychologist, not the least stressful job to begin with, let alone grieving and struggling to parent a grieving twenty-year-old to boot. When further trauma presents itself – this being a murder-mystery series, friends – Emily does not cope well. Kate is perhaps not showing her best self when she says that her friend is “acting as mad as a box of frogs,” but she’s not exactly wrong, either. One character in particular gave me the creeps; I was not sure if he was going to turn out to be an actual bad guy (in the murder-mystery sense) or ‘just’ a really toxic dude, but ew. Throw in a manipulative psychotic sex offender and a few prison guards of questionable moral standing, and you’ve got a motley crew.

The mystery was properly complex, the cast of characters increasingly compelling, Kate herself showing the usual conflict between wanting to have a life outside work and being incapable of it. It started working for me in this book like it hasn’t before. I could feel her wanting, and trying, and then being consumed once again by the job – which, to be fair, is pretty soul-consuming, and it’s hard to be angry with someone for wanting to solve crimes and save lives… but if you’re her prospective partner, you do want some of her attention. Poor Jo.

The plot, which I’ve not even touched on yet, does involve murdered young girls. There are some truly heinous criminals. And even the law-abiding ones ostensibly on the ‘right’ side can offer some frustrations. It’s a hard-boiled mystery – note that blurb on the front cover that credits Hannah with ‘a dark heart.’ I’m on board like never before.

Rating: 8 gifts.

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Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

Posted on February 2, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Small-town dramas, sharp humor, strong characters, and a touch of romance spice up a genuinely fun mystery.

With Listen for the Lie, Amy Tintera (Reboot; The Q) offers a sexy, compelling mystery as her adult debut. Entertaining characters act out the intrigues of murder and of small-town life, with dark humor, propulsive pacing, and a properly confounding whodunit.

Lucy Chase has been living a not-particularly-successful life in Los Angeles. When the novel opens, she has just been outed by a true-crime podcast as the overwhelmingly favored suspect in the murder of her best friend five years earlier, in the small Texas town where they both grew up. Now that she’s been fired from her job and her boyfriend is trying to break up with her, she lets her grandmother (her last friend and defender in the world, it seems) talk her into coming home for a visit. Back in Plumpton, Tex., she immediately runs into Ben Owens, the true-crime podcaster who’s on his way to ruining her life. He is obnoxiously sexy, and perhaps less out to get her than she’d originally thought, but Lucy’s hometown offers her no comforts.

One morning, after they left a party together, Savvy was discovered dead in the woods, and Lucy was found nearby, walking down a back road, covered in Savvy’s blood, her skin under Savvy’s nails, and her fingermarks bruised into Savvy’s flesh. Lucy had a head injury; she’s never remembered anything about that night. Her then-husband and her parents, along with the rest of the town, were quick to assume her guilt, but there was insufficient evidence to charge her with Savvy’s murder. Lucy decided to move far away, to L.A., and try to start a new life. Not that it was going well, but being back in Plumpton, with everyone staring her down, sure of her guilt, is worse. Lucy is spirited, witty, and bold; if “innocent people don’t make sarcastic comments,” she’s guilty as can be.

Strangely, Ben, the annoyingly attractive podcaster, is the only one to question why everyone in this town (including Lucy herself) was so quick to assume Lucy’s guilt. The circumstantial evidence is damning, but Ben is able, with amateur detective work, to expose enough secrets to complicate the case considerably. Lucy is as surprised as anyone.

The murder suspect’s amnesia throws a wrench in readers’ ability to guess at Tintera’s plot twists. Even as Lucy wrestles with trauma, balancing guardedness with rare vulnerabilities, she and Savvy reveal a real sense of fun. Plumpton is a thoroughly realized setting, complete with neighborhood personalities and an authentic small-town dynamic. Listen for the Lie is quite sexy, compulsively readable, and laugh-out-loud funny, and Tintera has left herself healthy room for a sequel.

This review originally ran in the January 4, 2024 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 wineries.

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The Hunter by Tana French

Posted on January 22, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Tana French is at her best with this character-focused sequel to The Searcher, featuring humor, angst, pathos, and mystery in a tiny Irish village.

In The Hunter, Tana French (The Searcher; The Witch Elm; The Trespasser; and more), building on the success of eight previous novels, delivers the mystery, atmosphere, and feeling her fans have come to expect.

Following the events of The Searcher, French takes her readers back to the tiny Irish townland of Ardnakelty, where former Chicago Police Department detective Cal Hooper has settled to live a quiet, scenic life and repair furniture. He’s already gotten more than he signed up for, including a lovely, levelheaded girlfriend named Lena; a surrogate teenaged daughter, Trey; and a place in the local social circles (and the pub). But when Trey’s long-absent father resurfaces with a get-rich-quick scheme, he threatens the equilibrium of various village relationships, including those Cal holds most dear. The previous novel saw Cal struggle to find his role in a new place; in The Hunter, he knows what he has to lose and, even more importantly, what Trey does.

French is at her best in this novel, showcasing its sharp, scintillating sense of place (Ardnakelty is a character unto itself) and powerful mood of foreboding and that of secrets deeply held. “The overhead bulb isn’t bright enough,” she writes, “and the fringed lampshade gives its light a murky tinge; when the men stay still to listen, it smears deep, tricky shadows into their faces.” Later, she writes: “The mountain is sly. From far off, its low, rounded curves look almost harmless…. It’s a place whose dangers only come into focus when you’re already engaged with them.” This kind of ambience is cut by sudden, surprising bursts of laugh-out-loud humor.

Cal Hooper can be likened to a old western hero, with his staunch personal code; he equally recalls a hard-boiled detective: he’s retired but, despite best efforts, he’s not done investigating. The father-daughter dynamic so delicately established between Cal and Trey–who share no blood and met only two years ago in the previous novel–is heart-wrenching, gorgeously written, and under threat. He trusts her, but she’s “much too young to have something the size of her future in her hands.” Cal and Lena’s relationship is equally engaging, quietly wholesome, and firm. French has never shied away from weighty themes, and here her protagonists wrestle with vulnerability, revenge, and the danger of letting the past determine the future. French masters beautiful descriptions, easy, natural dialogue, a darkly twisting plot, high stakes, and compelling characters. The Hunter is perhaps her finest work–and leaves readers thirsty for more of Cal’s story.

This review originally ran in the December 19, 2023 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 9 jars of jam.

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Village in the Dark by Iris Yamashita

Posted on January 8, 2024 by pagesofjulia

Characters from all walks of life come together in this madcap second entry in a mystery series set in Alaska starring strong female leads.

Screenwriter and author Iris Yamashita (City Under One Roof) presents the second installment in a series featuring Detective Cara Kennedy. Village in the Dark is an alternately moody and wacky mystery set in Anchorage and rural Alaska.

The previous year, Cara buried the remains of her husband and son, recovered some time after they disappeared on a family camping trip. As Village in the Dark opens, Cara stands by their gravesites, watching the exhumation she’s requested in order further to investigate their deaths. She’s been placed on long-term disability from the Anchorage Police Department after a failed psych evaluation, so her inquiries will be a bit trickier than usual, even without the personal element. But she’s found pictures of her late loved ones on a gangster’s cell phone, along with other people who keep turning up dead.

Chapters from Cara’s point of view alternate with those of Ellie, hotelier and busybody at Point Mettier, “the city under one roof”: all 205 residents stacked in a single high-rise building in the Alaskan backcountry. Ellie “always had the best interests of the townsfolk in mind whether they appreciated it or not.” A bit later, these points of view are joined by that of a young woman named Mia, who grew up in the sealed-off community of Unity, where women and children have banded together in avoidance of the men who have abused them. Mia has just recently, in adulthood, joined “Man’s World” (the “world outside the village”), where she’s encountered even more trouble than her mother and “aunties” warned her about. Cara and Ellie, who’ve met before (in City Under One Roof) and do not particularly get along, are now bonded by loss, and must work together to keep their communities safe. Mia’s involvement is slower to become clear.

Village in the Dark offers a mystery with both steadily increasing tension and body count, plus plenty of tragedy–not only death, but abuse, neglect, and societal ills. These are balanced with comic elements and moments of zaniness, as when Ellie leads “one of the stranger posses in the history of posses. An innkeeper, a storekeeper, a Japanese lounge singer, and a cancer-ridden geezer.” These characters are just the beginning in Point Mettier, a town with an attitude nearly as suspicious and insular as that of Unity. Long-lost family members reappear and disappear; Cara hesitantly explores new romance; murders will be committed and possibly solved, and Yamashita leaves her readers well set up for the next episode in Cara’s Alaskan adventures.

This review originally ran in the December 4, 2023 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 6 cigarettes.

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Pleasantville by Attica Locke (audio)

Posted on November 20, 2023 by pagesofjulia

Attica Locke is a very strong mystery writer. I was utterly absorbed by her characters, who felt perfectly real to me, such that I worried about them when I stepped away from the book. It’s a fully-fledged world. I will say that I was a good reader for this one, too, because it’s set in my hometown of Houston, and Locke’s Houston is extremely detailed and true to the original. I loved this aspect of it as much as any other, and that won’t be quite such a nostalgic, moving experience for just any reader; but the strong sense of place and that level of detail will certainly work for anyone who appreciates those strengths.

The plot of Pleasantville is quite complex, again quite detailed, and operates at the intersection of crime, criminal and civil law, and politics, in a particular milieu. This is both a great strength and a potential liability: it asks of the reader a fair degree of attention. If you bring that to this book, you will be amply rewarded. I am still a bit reeling from it, and my admiration of Locke is solidified.

It’s 1996, and a hotly contested mayoral election in Houston is expected to hinge – as they often or always do – on the neighborhood of Pleasantville, an early-established haven for middle-class African Americans 50 years earlier and a continuing close-knit community. Then a teenaged girl disappears off the streets of Pleasantville on election night, and the criminal case clashes strangely with the political drama, and both threaten to swallow whole the man we meet on the first pages: lawyer Jay Porter, whose office has just been burglarized. Porter is still reeling from the loss of his wife to cancer a year earlier. His teenaged daughter and grade-school son are struggling in their own ways. His law practice is on its final legs. He specializes in class-action suits handling issues of environmental racism, like one at work in Pleasantville; he does not want a criminal defense case, but the most powerful players in Pleasantville have other ideas.

There are so many compelling characters in this story that my head almost spins, but it’s all woven together incredibly well, keeping me both engaged and on track (if I put in a bit of effort myself – and I’m happy to). I’m very much still thinking about Jay Porter and hoping his daughter Ellie comes through okay; I can’t wait to get more from Locke. Whew.

Rating: 8 blocks.

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The Taken Ones by Jess Lourey

Posted on July 31, 2023 by pagesofjulia

Disclosure: I was sent an advanced review copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The sun smiled violently overhead, causing the tar beneath Rue’s blue-striped Adidas to glisten and pulse.

The first in a new series from a prolific author of 20-something previous works, The Taken Ones offers mysteries within mysteries.

On a hot July day in 1980 three little girls walked into the woods in small-town Leech Lake, Minnesota. They were headed for a dip in the creek, but never made it. Instead, one girl, Rue, walked back out again, with no memory of what had traumatized her nearly to death. Her friend Amber (eight) and Rue’s little sister Lily (five) were gone.

More than forty years later, Agent Van Reed of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension strives to escape her own traumas. Forgetting is the best thing, she tells herself. Her childhood and teen years were newspaper-headline material, and she’d dedicated ten years of her life to the Minneapolis Police Department, only to be ostracized after the death of her beloved partner. When a woman is discovered dead after being buried alive, and Van is called in on the case, she pursues it avidly, partnered with the unbelievably dapper forensic scientist Harry Steinbeck. She wonders if this new partnership might represent a fresh start. As the recent victim is tied to the decades-old disappearance, though, Van may find wounds reopened and secrets bared that she can’t stomach.

Van’s trauma (and that of the surviving girl, Rue, now a profoundly troubled psych nurse) reads true, and while her story is a bit sensational (again, headline material), that stuff does happen in real life. (Being a law enforcement agent with that past is an absolutely believable plot element, and imagine how hard.) She’s not entirely well – nor would she be. Harry Steinbeck is loveable and mysterious, and definitely hiding something. Side characters who incline toward ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys have their own complicating features, too. I loved many of the sentences and descriptions, and Lourey’s eye for place.

This is a plot with many twists and side paths as dark as those Minnesota woods. Lourey excels at short chapters and cliffhangers, keeping me up past my bedtime for a few nights in a row. This is an exciting one, abounding in surprise reveals, most of them unexpected even to this trope-sensitive, genre-attuned reader. There were also some intriguing threads begun that I hope will be followed in later books in the series. This is expert work. I’m really looking forward to more Steinbeck & Reed.

Rating: 8 glasses of sweet tea.

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Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

Posted on July 10, 2023 by pagesofjulia

This is a very cute, sweet, pleasurable story: a cozy mystery, a loving family tale, with rom-com style matchups and a loveable amateur sleuth. Vera Wong is an older lady – in the world of this novel, she’s just sixty but also an ‘old lady,’ all things being relative, I guess. (Despite Vera’s starring role, the rest of the perspectives are decidedly youthful.) She’s widowed, and she misses her beloved husband, but it is in her personality (and, implied, part of her ‘Chinese mother’ culture) to soldier on. She has a small business she’s very proud of: Vera Wang’s World-Famous Teahouse, in San Francisco’s Chinatown. (Yes, she’s taking advantage of the more famous Vera Wang’s name recognition.) She lives upstairs, and wakes every morning precisely at four-thirty to start her day with a brisk walk and a text to her adult son, Tilly, who receives a number of these texts every daily, exhorting him to proper behaviors; he rarely responds. The voice of Vera’s chapters (in close third person) is resolute and cheerfully bossy; but we understand that she is very lonely. Despite its name, her teahouse is far from famous. She knows it will soon have to be shut down.

Then something terribly exciting happens: she comes downstairs one morning to find a dead body in the teahouse. Vera is thrilled! She calls the police, but they do not seem nearly as worked up about the possible murder as they should be, and they are not at all appreciative that she has helpfully outlined the body for them in Sharpie. “Vera knows they won’t do anything… but… nobody sniffs out wrongdoing quite like a suspicious Chinese mother with time on her hands, and what does Vera have but time?” And so the nosy, overbearing, but somehow magnetic Vera is on the case. If there is a case – the dead man, Marshall Chen, is originally ruled an accidental death. But Vera won’t let this stop her.

Soon other characters (suspects!) surface: there is Julia, Marshall’s widow, worn into submissive passivity by his years of verbal abuse, and her sweet toddler daughter, Emma. There’s Oliver, Marshall’s twin (who gives everyone a start when he first shows up on scene), long estranged from his bully of a brother. And then there are Sana and Riki, both of whom pose as reporters but who are each hiding a secret connection to the dead (murdered?) man. In her usual domineering manner, Vera takes each of these younger people under her wing, even charming the somewhat troubled Emma into calling her Grandma. It helps that Vera never stops cooking up wild, wonderful feasts of traditional Chinese food anytime they gather. Even as she’s befriending them and improving their lives (with a little insistent advice, not to say pushing), Vera is investigating each of the foursome as murder suspects. But as they come together to form an unusual little family of their own, she is less and less pleased at the thought of turning one of them into the police (incompetents!), especially as it is increasingly obvious that the late Marshall was not a nice man at all.

Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers trades rather heavily on stereotypes about Chinese mothers, to an extent that I think would be problematic if the author did not herself come from that culture. She pokes fun in a loving manner. Does her in-group status excuse using stereotypes as the punchline? I don’t consider myself qualified to make a firm call on this, especially as I am not in-group; I’m cautiously okay with this case, but mine is not perhaps the final judgment that matters most. I will say the book is intended in good fun and comes off as such. Jesse Sutanto has published an impressive number of adult, young adult, and middle grade novels, and the writing style of this one leans toward the cute rather than the literary. Some constructions feel quickly slapped off. It’s fine for an easy, entertaining read, and this one hits the mark.

Rating: 7 bowls of congee.

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The Nigerwife by Vanessa Walters

Posted on May 8, 2023 by pagesofjulia

In this riveting novel about a young woman’s disappearance, Lagos high society hides personal struggles and larger cultural concerns.

Vanessa Walters’s American debut, The Nigerwife, is a gripping work of suspense, a psychological puzzle, a mystery, and a critique of marriage and high society. The prologue begins: “Nicole often wondered what had happened to the body.” This foreshadowing line refers to a body floating in a trash-filled Lagos lagoon, viewed from the home of a young woman who had recently left London to join her Nigerian-born husband. This narrative perspective, “Nicole, Before,” defines every other chapter of the novel, interspersed with the viewpoint of “Claudine, After.” The pivotal event of these dual timelines is Nicole’s disappearance, which gives the prologue’s opening line new and sinister meaning.

Nicole spent years in Lagos with her husband, Tonye, and their two young sons. She ceased communication with her family in London and formed and dissolved friendships both in and out of a club called the Nigerwives. “The Nigerwives were so different, a pick ‘n’ mix of skin tones, hair textures, body shapes, and facial features, but their stories were one and the same. They had all defied the prides and prejudices of their families, sacrificed friendships and careers and independence, and followed heart and husband to Nigeria for what they believed would be an epic adventure.” For Nicole–and perhaps for other Nigerwives before her–that adventure would end badly. Between fancy dress and art openings, social posturing and boating parties, she struggled to keep her sanity and independence.

In the days after Nicole goes missing, the aunt who raised her travels to Lagos to look for answers. Claudine does not know Tonye’s family well and is dismayed to find how little the family or the police seem to be doing to find Nicole. “She could see [the household help had] been warned not to tell her anything, not even what time of day it was, though they were very respectful clams.” The more she attempts to unravel her estranged niece’s life, the greater her fear that she’s arrived too late. As their timelines progress, Claudine and Nicole each work separately to sort out the family issues that drove them apart, which will not be revealed to readers until the story’s end.

With a sense of foreboding, The Nigerwife considers overlapping loyalties and betrayals and the strict constraints of marriage, family, gender, and culture. Nigeria’s largest city is ruled by glamour, glitz and materialism; motivations for marriage include love, financial and political gain, and cultural compatibility. Various characters criticize Lagos and Nigeria, but this is not the novel’s aim. Rather, Walters’s inexorably paced plot examines institutions and the choices women face. “Nothing compensated for having family around to look out for you. But then, what kind of family?” This engrossing novel both entertains, with the mystery at its heart, and provokes questions that go far beyond Nicole’s personal story.

This review originally ran in the April 7, 2023 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 hidden knives.

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Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide by Rupert Holmes

Posted on April 24, 2023 by pagesofjulia

So you’ve decided to commit a murder.

Congratulations.

Murder Your Employer is a genre mash-up, and great fun. It purports to be a how-to manual on how to commit a murder (the Conservatory prefers “deletion”) without getting caught – in this case, specifically the deletion of one’s employer, with future volumes promised. (Other popular deletions include work rivals, financial advisors and spouses.) The book’s narrator is Dean Harbinger Harrow – Dean being not a first name but a title, as he serves as Dean of the McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts, a top-secret institution that trains would-be deletists to remain successful and forever unknown. It contains narratives within, however: short on actual training-manual-style directives, instead the bulk is made up of examples in the form of the stories of three McMasters students, all majoring in employer deletions.

The central protagonist is Cliff Iverson, who botched his first attempt to murder the toxic, womanizing, belligerent boss at his aircraft manufacturing job. Instead of criminal charges, he faces involuntary admission to McMasters (for very mysterious reasons). We are treated to his journal throughout, as well as the Dean’s notes on the progress of Cliff and two fellow students: Gemma Lindley, who needs to get rid of her blackmailing boss, and a woman known at the school as Dulcie Mown, although everyone finds her dimly familiar (the reader knows why).

So we have a how-to-manual, framing an epistolary novel (journal entries and other documents), in an idyllic boarding school milieu, on the absurdist subject of ‘an education in murder,’ filled with wordplay, puns and humor, with a certain amount of suspense as our three students aim to successfully complete their theses (intended deletions), wrapped up in a mystery (who is responsible for Cliff’s enrollment at McMasters in the first place?). Oh and the setting is historical, in the 1950s, so bookies and bad guys have a certain style and type. It is a mad, beautiful mess of genres, and I found it enormous fun (despite a rather crabby review from Kirkus, who does not think it cute). Yes: it does require a fair amount of suspension of disbelief; I would think that would be obvious, since it’s a slightly unhinged promotion of the murderous arts. (Somewhat in their defense, McMasters does have some moral standards. Make sure your target is deserving and all other options have been exhausted; no innocent bystanders; certainly no serial killings or mass murders; etc.) It’s ridiculous and it knows it (think The Princess Bride).

The pacing is not snappy, but I thought it was nice to linger with each of our characters – Harrow rather silly, Cliff earnest and serious, Gemma haunted, Dulcie driven – and in the slightly cartoonish historical setting. The McMasters world itself is a sort of madcap Opposite Day, and the ‘real’ world features caricatures. Dean Harrow is a bit of a buffoon (and yes, pun-obsessed). It was fun and, I admit, relaxing. The whole conceit is ludicrous enough that it let me let go. I don’t think real life murders are cute, but this book surely is.

Rating: 7 MacArthur-style sunglasses.

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