Carter’s brutal yet satisfying fourth case for Delia Mariola (after Boomtown) brings the chief of detectives face-to-face with a misanthropic contract killer. Delia taps Blanche Weber, her best investigator on the police force in the rust belt town of Baxter, to help her solve the murder of a teenager who’s been tortured to death. As their inquiry takes them into the murky world of the local drug trade, the women contend with pushback from those in their conservative, economically depressed town who don’t appreciate two women sniffing around so boldly. Meanwhile, a hired gun named Johnny-Boy blows into Baxter for a job, then decides to do some Dexter-like housecleaning while he’s in town, taking out drug runners and two-bit mobsters on the side. As the bodies pile up, Delia and Blanche try to determine if the deaths are connected to the teenager’s murder. Carter toggles between the perspectives of Delia, Blanche, and Johnny-Boy, which provides welcome variety, but is occasionally jarring, especially when Johnny-Boy’s sections introduce sudden bursts of graphic violence. Still, thriller fans with strong stomachs will have a blast. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Assoc. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Childhood trauma haunts a 26-year-old New Yorker in the disquieting latest from Bublitz (after Before You Knew My Name). Manhattan bartender Ruth-Ann Baker is walking to work in 2015 when an AMBER Alert sends her reeling. Nineteen years ago, Ruth’s best friend, seven-year-old Beth Lovely, went missing from a playground in Hoben, Conn.; police eventually found her body in a shallow grave. Now, another seven-year-old has vanished from the same area. In recent years, Ruth became convinced that Ethan Oswald, who was convicted of killing Beth, also murdered three other girls—a theory conceived when the victims’ ghosts started visiting her. She stopped investigating after friends, family, and the cops questioned her sanity, but now she vows to do whatever it takes to end the cycle. Though Oswald died in prison, Ruth suspects that an accomplice may have taken up his mantle, given the similarity of the crimes. Bublitz’s intricate plot relies too heavily on coincidence, but the present-tense narration imparts urgency and unease, while occasional scenes from a captive child’s perspective ratchet up the tension. Despite a few bumps, it’s a solid sophomore effort. Agent: Rebecca Wearmouth, Peters, Fraser & Dunlop. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Penrose maintains a brisk pace in her finely wrought eighth Regency-era adventure for the Earl of Wrexford and his cartoonist wife, Charlotte Sloane (after Murder at the Merton Library). At the outset, the couple has offered their country home for the wedding of their friends Christopher Sheffield and Lady Cordelia Mansfield. The festivities take a grim turn when police discover the body of Lady Cordelia’s childhood friend, mathematician Jasper Milton, beneath a nearby bridge, with her cousin Oliver’s invitation in his pocket. Cordelia enlists Wrexford and Charlotte to investigate, and the sleuths quickly become entangled in a Gordian knot of international intrigue involving Milton’s groundbreaking mathematical theories about bridge construction. Penrose elegantly weaves insights about the period’s politics and technological innovations into a splendid mystery that offers a peek at the darker corners of Eton, the elite British boys’ school, which becomes crucial to Wrexford and Charlotte’s investigation as they learn of Milton’s connections to the school. This reliable series continues its winning streak. Agent: Gail Fortune, Fortune Talbot. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Spunky New York City homicide detective Eve Dallas investigates a bachelorette party gone south in the anemic latest near-future thriller from Robb (after Random in Death). In 2061, New York’s Down and Dirty sex club is packed with partiers celebrating the upcoming wedding of marketing executive Shauna Hunicutt and street artist Erin Albright. The festivities come to a halt when the one of the brides-to-be is found strangled to death in the club’s private room. The brutality of the crime suggests a personal vendetta, so when Dallas and her colleagues, detectives Delia Peabody and Ian McNab, arrive at the scene, they waste no time interviewing the party guests, many of whom have known each other since high school. The case stirs up uneasy memories for Dallas, who was once assaulted in the same private room, and she fights to suppress her emotions as she parses Shauna and Erin’s circle of friends. While Dallas’s home life with her wealthy husband continues to offer a welcome dose of romantic fantasy, the circuitous investigation is likely to test the patience of even Robb’s most devoted fans. This series has seen better days. Agent: Amy Berkower, Writers House. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

The solid sixth entry in Ryles’s Prosecution Force series (after Fire Storm) finds former CIA operative Reed Montgomery on the trail of Abdel Ibrahim, a terrorist responsible for a deadly nerve agent attack on Baton Rouge and a Nashville bombing that severely injured Reed’s wife. When interim CIA director Sarah Aimes gets a lead on Ibrahim’s location, she texts Reed’s team of black ops specialists, and tells them to bring Ibrahim in dead or alive. Together with assassin Lucy Byrne, pilot Kersten Corbyn, and operatives Rufs Turkman and Wolfgang Pierce, Reed launches a worldwide manhunt that soon uncovers evidence Ibrahim may be planning a nuclear attack. Meanwhile, U.S. president Maggie Trousdale recovers from a near-assassination, and Aimes embarks on the arduous process of becoming full-time CIA director. Ryles keeps the pacing brisk and the stakes high, with plenty of well-orchestrated action scenes. While there’s no shortage of series centered on secret ops organizations, this keeps up with the best of them. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bestseller McFadden’s jaw-dropping latest (after The Housemaid Is Watching) keeps the author’s trademark twists coming fast and furious. Thirty-four and unhappily single, Sydney Shaw haunts the popular dating app Cynch, where she matches with a string of losers. One night, while Sydney fights off the unwanted advances of her latest date, a handsome stranger comes to her rescue. He turns out to be a doctor named Tom Brewer, and soon he and Sydney strike up a relationship. All goes well until Sydney’s neighbor turns up dead, and her ex-boyfriend, homicide detective Jake Sousa, is assigned to the case. Jake links the murder to a string of killings across New York City—many facilitated by the use of Cynch—and Sydney starts to worry that her new boyfriend is hiding something deadly. McFadden toggles between Sydney’s perspective in the present and Tom’s in the past, while he carries on a relationship with a woman named Daisy. It all comes together with a series of hard-to-predict but fair-play surprises that reward rereading. McFadden extends her hot streak with this canny exploration of love, death, and dating. Agent: Christine Hogrebe, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Combing through emails, essays, texts, and chatroom messages, a mysterious “examiner” uncovers the hidden motives of six graduate students enrolled in a multimedia art course at London’s Royal Hastings University, in the convoluted latest epistolary mystery from Hallett (after The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels). With varying degrees of skill, the students—established artists Ludya and Alyson; gallery owner Jonathan; bored executive Cameron; art supply store owner Patrick; and emerging audio artist Jem—create elaborate art installations while forming friendships and rivalries that mask their true reasons for taking the class. As the communications wear on, it becomes clear that there’s been a murder among the group, and that many of the students are concealing secret identities. With her colleague’s help, class instructor Gela Nathaniel attempts to follow the clues to uncover the killer, but her efforts only propel the narrative to a tangled, unsatisfying conclusion. The initial novelty of the format collapses under the plot’s increasingly intricate mix of climate activism, nuclear threats, and latent Cold War intrigue. This is likely to leave readers lost. Agent: Markus Hoffmann, Regal Hoffmann & Assoc. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

The mythic power of nature and the persistence of grief animate Maki’s striking if uneven debut. The inexplicable disappearance of 10-year-old Patrick Miller in the woods near his rural Montana home haunts his best friend, seven-year-old Kitty, who witnessed his vanishing. When search parties turn up no evidence of Patrick’s body, Kitty grows convinced that the friends crossed an invisible threshold into a fantasy realm, where living trees stole Patrick away. Trauma from the experience follows Kitty into adulthood, leaving her disconnected from her surroundings and eternally unsure that she lives in the real world. Decades later, coming out of therapy and a failed marriage, Kitty returns with her young daughter to the woods to confront the events of that fateful day. Their efforts bring them face-to-face with figures from Finnish and Celtic folklore, as well as quick-tempered, mysterious creatures from “down beneath the earth.” Maki’s meditative fable is crisply written, and her characters are well-drawn, but a lack of action makes the pace drag at times. Readers looking for a conventional thriller may be disappointed, but more adventurous mystery fans will find something to enjoy. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Wood’s bracing debut centers on a pair of potentially venomous best friends. Gia Torres, a wealthy heiress, and Abby Corman, whose mother was once Gia’s personal chef, have been friends since childhood. When the two were 18, Gia saved Abby’s life by killing a man who attacked her, then turned the experience into a successful memoir—though the women’s memories of the incident differed. More than a decade later, Abby gets an invitation to join Gia on an all-expenses-paid vacation to Sweden. Though initially reluctant, Abby accepts, hoping the trip will help mend the rift that developed after Gia married a shady shipping magnate. Once Abby arrives in Sweden, however, Gia is nowhere to be found. After rushing to Gia’s home in Greece, Abby discovers the draft of a memoir about the days leading up to Gia’s disappearance, but she can’t untangle fact from fiction within its pages. Alternating Abby’s perspective with passages from Gia’s manuscript, Wood ingeniously orchestrates the plot to a series of powder-keg reveals. Fans of Paula Hawkins will devour this wily, sun-soaked thriller. Agent: Sarah Bedingfield, Levine Greenberg Rostan. (July)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

An island tour off the coast of Australia turns into a bizarre locked-room mystery in this suspenseful outing from Yunker (The Tourist Trail) and Raymond (My Last Continent). Marbury Island has become known as Devils Island thanks to a successful program to breed endangered Tasmanian devils on its shores. Kerry, a naturalist who spearheaded the efforts to save the devils, takes a job with a Marbury tour company after tiring of her arduous, emotionally taxing work with the devils. Her first group consists of six guests, and not long after they land on Marbury—which is uninhabited except for a park ranger who lives there part-time—a member of their party disappears. Things go from bad to worse when Kerry discovers unidentified human remains on a trail, with wounds suggesting the victim was mauled by a pack of Tasmanian devils. Soon, however, simmering tensions within the tour group convince Kerry there’s a murderer in their midst. Then someone else dies, and a storm isolates the group from the mainland. Yunker and Raymond keep their feet on the gas, enriching the familiar setup with the grimly fun possibility that the “killer” is a band of ravenous marsupials. This is one nightmare vacation worth taking. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink