The recipient of a heart transplant develops an obsessive crush on the husband of her donor in this spine-tingling suspense tale from Collins (Thicker than Water). While using an anonymous email service to message her heart donor’s husband, Boston-area bridal shop manager Rosie Lachlan comes to suspect that the man she’s messaging is famed local author Morgan Thorne. Rosie has always enjoyed Morgan’s novels, but after she starts following him on social media, she begins to fall for him. She develops a plan to go to Morgan’s home and tell him that she received his wife’s heart after she supposedly died of a head injury, secretly hoping that the revelation might spark a romance. Soon, however, her research into Morgan’s past unearths some unsettling dirty laundry in his marriage, and before long, Rosie lands at the center of a murder investigation that requires her to prove her innocence while dodging the real killer. Collins expertly homes in on her characters’ complexities, nailing the way Rosie’s vulnerability gradually slips into obsession. With a pulse-pounding finale and plenty of exciting plot twists along the way, this is difficult to put down. Agent: Sharon Pelletier, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/22/2024 | Details & Permalink

Doyle (The Assassination of Mary Magdalene) puts his knowledge of the Gospels to good use in this intriguing Sherlock Holmes pastiche. In 1901, Watson’s friend and former war comrade, the Rev. David Adams, asks for his help in getting Holmes to go to the scene of a suspicious death. The victim is Canon Alfred Lilly, a friend of Adams’s, who was found in his study with a fatal knife wound in his neck. On Lilly’s desk is a scrap of paper with a partial passage from the Gospel of Mark about Jesus’s journey to Jericho. Holmes quickly proves that Lilly didn’t take his own life, as the police suspect, and develops a theory that his murder was related to his translation of an ancient manuscript preserved in a Paris church. The mystery deepens when Holmes ascertains that the fragment Lilly had composed varies from the accepted text of the Gospel of Mark and includes details about what happened in Jericho that had been kept secret for centuries. The investigative trail leads to another murder and more shocking discoveries that call Church doctrine into question. Doyle seamlessly combines a sturdy understanding of Holmes’s specific skill set with the giddy puzzle-solving of a Dan Brown thriller. It’s great fun. (Self-published)

Reviewed on 11/22/2024 | Details & Permalink

At the start of Callaghan’s riveting sequel to Blink of an Eye, Warwickshire DCI Kat Frank and her partner, AIDE Lock—the world’s first AI detective—have been solving cold cases in the British Midlands for a year. When the gruesomely disfigured body of 29-year-old Gary Jones turns up, his limbs splayed out to mimic crucifixion, it ignites a panic in the typically quiet community and hands Kat and Lock their first live case. Even with Kat’s well-honed instincts and Lock’s unflappable logic, the pair struggle to find worthwhile leads. Then another young man disappears from a pub after a night out, only to be found in a grisly tableau that echoes Jones’s. Relentless local reporter Ellie Baxter and frenzied online speculation about the murders increase pressure on Kat and Lock to stop the killer before a third victim—possibly their colleague Rayan Hassan, as Kat fears—is murdered. Callaghan tweaks the traditional British detective story just enough, freshening up a well-worn formula without attempting to fix what isn’t broken. This series deserves a long life. Agent: Brandi Bowles, UTA. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Edgar winner Gaylin (The Collective) delivers a timely thriller about the nefarious workings of cults and conspiracy theorists. Meg Russo and her husband, Justin, own a bookstore in the small town of Elizabethville, N.Y. The couple lives a quiet life with their 18-year-old daughter, Lily, a musician intent on following in the footsteps of her off-the-grid grandfather, who achieved minor rock stardom years earlier. While driving to Ithaca, N.Y., to move Lily into college, the family gets in a nasty car crash; Justin dies, and Meg, who was behind the wheel, blames herself. Back in Elizabethville, she finds the bookshop vandalized and videos across the internet accusing her and her family of practicing satanism. Quickly realizing that she, Justin, and Lily have become the targets of a doomsday cult, Meg wrestles with revealing secrets she’s been hiding from her daughter for decades, including the story behind a book Meg published when she was a teenager, and details about Lily’s grandfather. Gaylin matches her lucid, propulsive prose with crackerjack plotting. This will grip readers from start to finish. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider Literary. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

In sports reporter Garcia’s complex and captivating debut, two strangers disappear after sending texts about the same mysterious man. Waitress Jasmine and TV journalist Stephanie sit next to each other on a flight from Wisconsin to San Diego. Jasmine is escaping an abusive relationship; Stephanie is on her way to a news directors’ conference. A few days later, Stephanie’s neighbor, Robert, receives a text informing him that she’s met a wonderful man named Trent McCarthy and flown to Atlanta to spend more time with him. While Robert is initially thrilled for Stephanie, her colleagues are more concerned, and everyone grows uneasy when Stephanie’s texts become increasingly erratic. Then Jasmine’s friends receive similar messages, and both women vanish, raising grim questions about their connections to Trent. Garcia toggles between Jasmine’s, Stephanie’s, Robert’s, and Trent’s points of view, planting cliffhangers at the end of each section that pay off in a series of game-changing reveals. The smoothly executed finale that feels more like the work of a seasoned pro than a first-time novelist. This is sure to keep readers up at night. Agents: Meg Ruley and Logan Harper, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

YA author Moke (Hood) makes her adult debut with this winning romantic mystery centered on a bestselling novelist. When Kate Valentine agrees to attend her ex-fiancé’s fancy wedding on a private island in the San Juan archipelago, she expects to spend most of the weekend hiding away to work on her newest manuscript. Once she arrives, however, her plans are upended. First, she’s forced to share a room with the dreamy Jake Hawkins, an ex who Kate has recently become convinced is the one that got away. Then someone at the wedding dies in a poisoning that eerily mimics the plot of one of Kate’s novels, and she enlists Jake’s help to determine who among the party might be responsible. Predictably, sparks fly between the amateur sleuths, but it’s to Moke’s credit that little else about this brisk and charming whodunit is predictable. With truly surprising twists, fully developed characters, and a satisfying balance of courtship and detection, this has more than enough for a potential series. Agent: Elizabeth Bewley, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Barry’s undercooked sequel to Double Exposure finds Hollywood PI Rainey Hall starting to feel like she’s chasing ghosts when a missing persons case throws her back into her difficult past. Rainey realizes she may be entering dangerous waters when she volunteers to search for 17-year-old beauty Chloe Delmonico, whose case shares disturbing similarities with the unsolved disappearance of Rainey’s childhood best friend nine years earlier. As Rainey begins to probe potential links between the cases, including a rock star turned political power broker and a well-connected drug dealer with a taste for underage girls, pushback from L.A.’s most influential circles suggests she’s struck a nerve—and that the stakes may be even higher than she thought. Barry is too talented a writer for Rainey’s plunge into greed, graft, and murder not to have its moments—especially the heart-pounding, cinematic climax set during an orgy at a haunted hotel. Unfortunately, many of the twists seem arbitrary, and several characters, including Rainey’s agency partner, Lola, are unconvincing. Lacking both the daring plot and sizzling queer tension of its predecessor, this disappoints. Agent: Annie Bomke, Annie Bomke Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

O’Donnell debuts with a complex and accomplished whodunit set in 1988 Ireland. After Emma Daly’s hopes for a career as a police inspector are dashed, she returns home to the sleepy village of Castlefreke and fixes up the local library. Four years later, she gets a chance to emulate her favorite sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, after hearing gunshots from the home of her reclusive, elderly neighbor, Mr. Hollis. Emma spots a man fleeing the scene, then rushes into the house, where she finds Mr. Hollis dead and a younger man seriously wounded. The survivor turns out to be Colm Thornton, who disappeared from Castlefreke 32 years earlier. The police quickly settle on Colm as Mr. Hollis’s killer, dismissing Emma’s testimony abut the man she saw rushing from house. Colm’s father, however, is convinced of his son’s innocence and begs Emma to investigate. Rekindling her police ambitions, Emma starts poking around idyllic Castlefreke with the help of a few friends, and discovers trouble beneath the town’s placid surface. O’Donnell’s keen eye for small-town life brings to mind the regional mysteries of Charles Todd, and he matches his gift for atmosphere with intricate plotting and nuanced characterizations. A sequel would be more than welcome. Agent: Charlotte Seymour, Johnson & Alcock Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

In the sprawling debut novel from biographer Wick (The Long Night), former POW Paul Beirne unearths an insidious conspiracy on Long Island. One night in 1954, an unidentified man is killed and thrown onto railway tracks in Lindenhurst, N.Y. The same night, a local woman is brutally dismembered and her husband dies under suspicious circumstances. Paul, who became Lindenhurst’s chief of police after returning from WWII, teams up with his friend, Holocaust survivor Doc Liebmann, to investigate. Soon, the pair uncover a German spy ring that has been operating in the area since the 1930s. When word of the discovery reaches Lindenhurst’s corrupt mayor, he fires Paul, who continues investigating in secret. The ring of Nazi sympathizers turns out to be connected to the long ago disappearance of Paul’s mother, the wartime theft of blueprints for the Norden bombsight, and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Wick’s wide-screen ambition leads to some uneven pacing, with plot points packed so tight it undermines suspense, and Doc Liebmann’s historical philosophizing can be heavy-handed. Still, the action brims with fascinating insight about the Nazis’ presence in the U.S. and the shifting cultural climate of the 1950s. It’s a memorable, if imperfect, historical thriller. Agent: Michael Carlisle, InkWell Management. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this sterling series launch from McMahon (the Detective P.T. Marsh novels), investigative savant Gardner Camden tracks a vigilante who targets serial killers. Camden—a member of the FBI’s Patterns and Recognition team—has history with the vigilante’s first victim, Ross Tignon, whom the investigator suspected of three murders in Florida a decade earlier. Though Camden believed Tignon died in a fire seven years ago, he’d instead moved to Texas, where a killer caught up with him. Before the team can make much progress on the Tignon case, rumors start swirling that their unit might be dissolved. Then another suspected serial killer turns up dead. With pressure boring down from all sides, the team comes to believe that the murderer has privileged information about unsolved serial killer cases—meaning that a member of the FBI is likely involved. McMahon introduces several clever wrinkles to this classic cat-and-mouse setup, while making the socially awkward Camden and his colleagues three-dimensional enough to sustain future installments. With pulse-pounding action and enough surprises to blindside even seasoned mystery fans, this is an excellent start. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/15/2024 | Details & Permalink