Poison Study

This novel by prolific fantasy author Maria V. Snyder is set in a medieval society and a different land. This is the first in her "Study" series set in Ixia, a country divided into eight military districts, each ruled by a general, and all of those reporting to Commander Ambrose. It is a dictatorship following the overthrow of a corrupt and cruel monarch, along with the court's magicians. Ambrose seems relatively benign in his dealings with individuals, but he does have some hard and fast rules. Everyone wears a uniform and everyone has a job. Uniforms make it nearly impossible to travel outside your home region without the proper permissions.  Killing, even in self-defense, or the practice of magic are punishable by death.
Yelena, an orphaned child adopted by General Brazell, a governor of one of the districts, killed Brazell's son in self-defense; she has been sitting in the dungeon for nearly a year awaiting execution. When she is brought before Valek, Ambrose's second in command, she learns that the Commander is in need of a new food taster, and she can escape the noose if she agrees to fill the position. It seems an obvious choice--death today or death at some unforeseen time. Valek now becomes her teacher and captor. He trains her to detect and identify every known poison; at the same time, he administers a daily dose of a lethal poison for which he has the only supply of antidote. As long as she does not leave, she will receive the antidote daily. However, danger for Yelena comes not just from the Commander's potential enemies, but from her own as well.  Brazell has put a bounty on her head. Moreover, a powerful magician from Sitia, the land to the south of Ixia where the surviving magicians have fled, first tries to kill and then to recruit Yelena. She asserts that Yelena is a fledgling magician and that she must come to Sitia to be trained so she does not damage the source of the planet's magic. Eventually Yelena is moved into Valek's own apartments for her protection, and their knowledge of and respect for one another grow. When Yelena overhears gossip about a threat to the Commander, she and Valek must work together to thwart it.
The characters are well-developed, the world they inhabit is less so. But the plotting is tight and intriguing and I read this in a day. I would certainly read the sequels.

There is a fairly detailed critique (perhaps not all of it warranted) in SFReview. Publishers Weekly provides a brief but glowing review.

Never Have I Ever

I bought this book by Joshilyn Jackson at Roundabout Books as part of my ongoing effort to support my local bookstores. It was their selection for the mystery book club in November. This is one of those books that started out with such heavy handed foreboding that I did something I rarely do; I skipped to the last chapter to see if this book was going to be a total downer. It wasn't, so I resumed reading. One night as mom and scuba diving teacher Amy Whey is preparing to host the neighborhood book club, she answers the door to find a stranger. This is the woman who, according to Amy's best friend Char, had moved into the ratty rental house in the neighborhood. But she wasn't just "pretty" as Char had indicated, "she was more than that. She was the pretty that's on television: symmetrical features, matte skin, and that kind of long, slim, yoga body that still made me feel self-conscious...She smiled, and I had no premonition as I smiled back. She didn't look like my own destruction to me." She says her name is Angelica Roux and, within days, she threatens to reveal Amy's secret past that could well put an end to the life Amy has so come to love--her husband, her step-daughter and infant son, her friends. Amy has to find a way to outmaneuver this apparently ruthless blackmailer and so she begins to dig into Roux's background, starting with finding out her real name. As Amy digs, we also learn about the tragic events of her teenage years that drove her to self-destructive behavior. And she also reveals what finally saved her--diving. Being in the ocean is a meditation for Amy, where she can leave the problems and her past behind. Amy's investigations also lead her to make further amends for wrongs in the past. There are several plot twists and you'll never see them coming. Overall a good book.
Glowing reviews from Kirkus and The New York Journal of Books, and a muted recommendation from Publishers Weekly.

The Silent Patient

I suppose, as some reviewers have said, that the plot is contrived. However, this twisty psychological thriller and inaugural outing by author Alex Michaelides, definitely surprised me with the ending. We supposedly know whodunnit from the beginning of the book. “The facts, such as they were, were simple: Alicia was found alone with Gabriel’s body; only her fingerprints were on the gun. There was never any doubt she killed Gabriel. Why she killed him, on the other hand, remained a mystery.”Alicia Berenson, an artist, is housed in a secure psychiatric unit, The Grove, outside London, after shooting her fashion photographer husband six times in the face. She has not spoken a word in the six years since the event. Therapist Theo Faber applies for a job there, convinced he can get her to speak. And so the story is revealed alternately from Theo's perspective (past and present) and Alicia's diary. The author draws upon a rather obscure play by Euripedes, Alcestis, in which Alcestis sacrifices her life to save her husband, King Admetus of Thessaly, from death. When the hero Heracles learns of her death, he vows to fight death and bring her back, but she cannot speak for three days before she is returned to life.  "But why does she not speak?" (Euripedes, Alcestis)
The play is a clue of course but the role of Theo is much more complicated, which we should perhaps also surmise, given his near obsession with Alicia. He goes well beyond the usual role of therapist to uncover the dynamics of Alicia's marriage and the circumstances leading up to the murder. I was engrossed and not put off by the overly elaborate entries in Alicia's diary. Worth a read.
The Independent described it as "a high-octane, thought-provoking read reminiscent of Patricia Highsmith, but with its own completely fresh take on the psychological thriller."

Laudatory reviews from The Independent, Publishers Weekly, and The New York Journal of Books. A not particularly flattering review from Kirkus.

Sleight of Paw

This is the 2nd installment in Sofie Kelly's "Magical Cats" series; I fell in love with Hercules and Owen in her first book, Curiosity Thrilled the Cat. The two kittens followed Kathleen home one day and she has since discovered that one of them can walk through walls (or doors) and the other is capable of disappearing at will. Of course, she can't tell anyone this for fear of really being considered a crazy cat lady. A second murder has occurred in the small town of Mayfield, Minnesota, where Kathleen has been hired on a 2-year contract to renovate the town's library. She is often homesick for Boston, but has also made several good friends in Mayfield. And when one of those good friends is accused of murdering an elderly woman, Kathleen feels she needs to find the real culprit. Having been considered a "person of interest" in the previous murder, she has now come to be on better terms with the local detective, Marcus Gordon. In fact, her friends really think she should ask him to the community's holiday dinner. And although he also likes cats and helps feed the feral cat colony at Wisteria Hill, sometimes he also infuriates her. They are just too different. I would pick up any of this series for a fun cozy mystery read.

Heart Full of Lies

I have never read anything by Ann Rule and probably won't seek her out in the future. Given her wild success as a writer of true crime books, however, I must be in the minority. My mystery book group chose this book because significant parts are set in Bend and Oregon.
Liysa Northon is a smart, attractive and largely successful sociopath with a voracious appetite for sex and property. She manipulated her first two husbands with sex to get ownership of property in Kailua and also had a son with her 2nd husband. She originally got sole custody of him. Then she pressured her 3rd husband, Hawaiian Airlines pilot Chris Northon, into marrying her and had his child as well, another son. Almost from the time they were married, however, she had other plans. She had developed a fairly good reputation as a surf photographer under the guidance of her 2nd husband, Nick Mattson, an established photographer, and she pursued a career as a screenwriter while married to Chris. She made money as a photographer but never sold a screenplay, and no amount of money she made was enough to buy the huge pieces of property she desired to own. After her marriage to Chris, she would portray her husband as an abusive alcoholic to anyone who would listen, even though there was no physical evidence. She debased him in front of his friends and in public, all in service to create an image of herself as the terrified and abused wife, who would finally murder him in self-defense. Except that the circumstance of the killing just did not support her story. She says she shot at him while fleeing his violence on a camping trip. But he was found with a close range bullet through his head in a sleeping bag, his body full of sedatives but not alcohol. She served 12 years for manslaughter when her own attorneys convinced her that there was so much evidence showing premeditation on her supposedly stolen computer--which she had actually stashed with a friend--that the jury would never find her innocent. She is out of prison now and married to her 4th husband, the one who wrote the article attacking Ann Rule for slandering Liysa. 
There is a generally laudatory review from Publishers Weekly, although I would agree with their comment about the author's writing style as "flat." Apparently there was a damning review in the Seattle Weekly, which, it turns out, was written by a man engaged to the incarcerated merry widow (stories here in The Oregonian and The Daily Mail). I certainly did not find her writing compelling although it's clear she knows how to do her research and the story itself was a real-life soap opera, complete with villains and victims. There is something that feels a little too voyeuristic about this type of book to appeal to me. It's like stopping to watch a car wreck on the highway.

Dead Cat Bounce

dead cat bounce: stock market jargon for a small, temporary rise in a stock's trading price, after a sharp drop.
This first in the series "Home Repair is Homicide" by Sarah Graves, this book has nothing to do with cats and only qualifies as a cozy because it is set in a small town, Eastport, Maine. Protagonist Jacobia (aka Jake) Tiptree has fled an emotionally abusive husband and her high-flying career as a financial advisor in New York City to buy a 200-year-old house in the furthest northeast corner of the United States. And she has taken Sam, her teenage son, with her in a desperate attempt to save him both from his father and from an accelerating decline into drug use. Sam is basically fine but has dyslexia, which makes school difficult; he does have real talent in fixing things and Jacobia and Sam would like to see him enrolled in the local boat-building program when he's old enough. His father, Victor, is sure that Sam is just lazy and could excel at an Ivy League school if he would just try. You get a lot of background on just what a jerk said ex-husband is and also what a nice guy Jacobia has started dating in her new home, harbor pilot Wade Sorenson. There is a wonderful cast of characters who are all well developed, and there is abundant description of small town Maine and the challenges of winter weather faced with nonchalance by the residents.
There is, of course, a murder to be solved and it comes right to Jacobia's door, or at least to her storage room off the kitchen, where she finds a notorious local on the floor with an ice pick in his head. When Jacobia tells Ellie, her best friend and next door neighbor, of her find, Ellie is clearly upset. Jacobia calls George, who is sort of the local police, but by the time he arrives, the ice pick has gone missing, and Ellie has confessed to the crime. Although no one really believes that Ellie killed Threnody McIlwaine, apparently his fame as a ruthless corporate raider brings the law to their small town in force and Ellie is taken away to prison, leaving Jacobia with the clear instruction to figure things out.
Intermingled with her efforts to solve the mystery of who actually killed McIlwaine, we hear of Jacobia's ongoing challenges in restoring her old house, of her efforts to keep her ex from riding roughshod over their son, and of her own career as a former currency trader and then financial advisor to some not-so-savory characters. We learn a fair amount about repairing things and how to hide money. I liked this enough that I already started the 2nd book in the series, Triple Witch. Here is a short but glowing review from Publishers Weekly.

American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

This is Nate Blakeslee's 2nd non-fiction work and he has done a masterful job of weaving together written records and personal interviews to tell the story of the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone and the western United States. He focuses particularly on one female alpha wolf dubbed 0-Six who came to be beloved by people far beyond the park due to bloggers who documented her activities. According to her fans, she was a remarkable leader, exhibiting the human characteristics of intelligence, strength, generosity, protectiveness, playfulness, adaptability, and the ability to strategize. She built and guided her pack ably in the face of challenging wolf packs and fearsome weather, but was ultimately defeated by the ranchers and hunters who saw the wolves as enemies. Blakeslee also examines the heated convictions on both sides of the wolf reintroduction and the often labyrinthine politics that went along with them. He briefly touches on the cascade of environmental benefits that have resulted from the wolf reintroduction--from plants to fish, to mammals and birds of prey--as they re-established a more balanced level of predators and prey. You will find yourself rooting for the wolves if you have any humanity at all.
This book was the NY Times October book club pick. Additional reviews from the LA Times, Kirkus, the Denver Post, and The Spokesman-Review.

Curiosity Thrilled the Cat

A totally cozy mystery with magical cats thrown in for good measure. Sofie Kelly has given the two cats in this inaugural book of the "Magical Cats" series the power to walk through walls and to disappear, among other things. Not surprisingly, this comes as quite a shock to their new owner, Kathleen Paulson, who recently moved to Mayville Heights, Minnesota from Boston. Owen, who is addicted to catnip, and Hercules, who loves to listen to Barry Manilow, followed her home one day from an abandoned house in town. Kathleen has been hired to bring the town's library into the 21st century with a major remodel and upgrade of services. But things inexplicably keep going wrong and Kathleen is often on the receiving end of accidents like a shorted electrical outlet and a falling roll of plastic that nearly breaks her shoulder. Worse yet, the guest conductor for the local music festival is murdered and Kathleen, who found the body, becomes the prime suspect. There is a quirky and entertaining cast of characters. They are not all what they seem and several hide secrets that may--or may not--also implicate them in the murder. The cats offer help but it's up to Kathleen to unravel the clues.
There are now 11 books in this series and an additional 8 in her other series, the "Second Chance Cat," written under the pen name Sofie Ryan. I might just track them all down and read them.

Box 21

This novel by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström (aka The Vault in its British edition) got such rave reviews I was eager to read it. By page 85, I was so depressed with all the miserable characters that I gave up. It is Scandinavian noir at its most noir. Two young women from Lithuania have been trafficked into being sex slaves; one of them, Lydia, is so badly beaten that she ends up in the hospital. Drug addict Hilding Oldeus is just the most miserable human being you would never want to meet, constantly looking for his next hit, no matter what the cost to himself or others. Police investigator Ewert Grens seem to have a miserable personal life as well, trapped in the memory of a police bust 25 years ago that went so horribly wrong that fellow police officer and his then fiancée was left a nearly mindless invalid. He still visits her in the care home but she doesn't know him. 

The book was recommended for fans of Henning Mankel and Stieg Larsson, which I am, but I just could not persist at this point in time. Reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus.

Beloved Poison

This first novel by E.S. (Elaine) Thomson is an historical mystery set in 1850's London. This inaugural outing certainly conjures the horrors of those living in poverty and the crude approaches to so-called medical practices of the times. The author, after all, has a Ph.D. in the history of medicine. This is a period just subsequent to the heyday of Resurrectionists (aka body snatchers or grave robbers) who disinterred the recently dead in order to supply medical teaching facilities with corpses for anatomical study.
Our main character is Jem Flockhart, an apothecary in the crumbling hospital and infirmary of St. Saviour's, in one of the poorest parts of the city. It is slated to be torn down to make way for a new rail line and a junior architect, William Quartermain, has been sent to oversee the removal of hundreds of years of corpses from the adjacent graveyard. Jem is a woman but has been raised by her widowed father as a boy so that she might take over his apothecary practice. “Oh, yes, I was unique among women. There had been an apothecary named Flockhart at St. Saviour’s Infirmary for over one hundred years and I was set to inherit my father’s kingdom amongst the potions. But it took a man to run that apothecary, and so a man I must be.” She has lived her entire life at St. Saviour's in this role, dressing in men's clothing and even visiting houses of prostitution with her good friend, Dr. Bain, to support the charade. When Jem is showing Will around St. Saviour's, they discover a hiding place in the chapel that contains six tiny handmade coffins containing horrible small effigies. Jem shows them to Dr. Bain one evening and the action proceeds from there, because it's clear that he knows something about their origins. Dr. Bain, who had been a co-researcher Jem into the effects of various poisons, is found dead in his home the next day, apparently poisoned. When two more victims follow, Jem is determined to find out who the murderer is. There are several plot twists above and beyond the gender disguise but one can be sure from the outset, that some of the hospital's physicians are at the heart of the mystery. Although I remained engrossed in the story, I was also grossed out by the constant references to the extreme levels of filth that permeated everyday life in the hospital and surrounding slums. The descriptions were frequent and detailed. I also found the foreshadowing of events to come somewhat heavy-handed and too numerous.
Reviews available from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and a detailed storyline from the  NY Journal of Books.

The Incense Game

This is the BBC's read this month and I was looking forward to it as this group almost never selects mysteries. I have not read anything by Laura Joh Rowland before but she is obviously a prolific author with 3 series of historical mysteries and 18 in this "Sano Ichiro" series alone.  The series is set in feudal Japan and offers a rich look at what life was like. In spite of some non-stereotypical female characters, they make you glad you were not born a woman then and there. She has won several award nominations for her writing; two made Publishers Weekly "best mysteries of the year" lists (The Cloud Pavilion and The Snow Empress), while The Fire Kimono made WSJ's list of 5 best historical mysteries.
The book opens on the aftermath of a devastating earthquake and tsunami in 1703 which has destroyed most of the city of Edo (today's Tokyo), seat of the shogun's empire. Among the victims were 3 women who were found intact in an incense teacher's house; evidence suggests they were involved in an "incense game" where small packets of incense are burned and the students try to determine what they are.  Moreover, Sano determines the women did not die from the earthquake but were poisoned. As the shogun's Chamberlain, Sano has his hands full trying to help survivors, but two of the dead women are the daughters of a powerful lord who threatens Sano with an overthrow of the shogun if Sano does not find the murderer of his daughters.
There are lots of complicated politics and plot twists, but reading this book without benefit of having read the previous 15 installments led to some noticeable downsides. In particular, there are storylines that carry over from previous novels, which are not well explained. Also there is very little character development in this book, with the author perhaps relying on readers already being familiar with them and their relationships to one another. I am a fan of historical novels and historical mysteries in particular, but I didn't come to care much about these characters in this book.

Review from Publishers Weekly is here.

Force of Nature

This second mystery from author Jane Harper continues with the protagonist we met in her first book (The Dry) and once again is set alternately in Melbourne and the remote areas of Australia. Federal agent Aaron Falk investigates financial crimes and he is neck deep in a money laundering case in which they have invested months of time and hundreds of hours. He and his partner, Carmen Cooper, are getting pressure from the top to force their mole in the targeted company, Alice Russell, to get copies of some key contracts. But now Alice, along with four of her female co-workers and her boss at Bailey Tennants have been sent into the rugged Giralang Range on a corporate team-building exercise. And, when the group of women emerge from the trek several days late, Alice is no longer among them.
Aaron discovers this when he is contacted by the head of the search team. Apparently Alice had tried to call Aaron sometime after she disappeared, but the signal or the phone failed before he could talk to her. Now terrain as well as weather conspire to hinder an already overwhelmingly difficult search for the missing woman. Did the company execs find out that Alice was betraying them to the federal investigators and do away with her? As the remaining women are interviewed, we come to find no one liked Alice very much, certainly not her bullied personal assistant, Breeana, Breeana's formerly drug addicted twin who works in the mail room, or former schoolmate, Lauren. And there's also the 20 year old legacy of the Giralangs, which were once the hideout of a serial killer. Rumor has it the killer's son has gotten out of jail and come back.
The story is alternately told as a procedural from Aaron's point of view--with minor asides about his relationship with his father and his non-existent love life--and the recollections from the women in the group as the facade of civilization falls away and the repressed resentments and distrust emerge and then erupt in physical violence.
More detailed storylines and reviews are available from The Guardian, The Independent, Publishers Weekly, and  Kirkus who called it a "spooky, compelling read."

Beat the Reaper

The New York Times described this book as "completely outrageous and genuinely entertaining."

That pretty well sums up my reaction as well. This novel by Josh Bazell, who holds a degree in English literature and is an MD, is based on a protagonist, let's call him, Peter Brown, who is a first year resident in a miserable inner city hospital. The hours are terrible, the nursing staff is incompetent, and Peter relies on drugs to get through the day. But when the story opens he goes to evaluate a new patient and the man recognizes him as a hit man for the Mafia, Pietro Brnwa. Does Peter/ Pietro kill him right away to avoid having his new identity revealed to those who still seek to wipe him from the face of the earth, or does his Hippocratic oath prevent that?
The story moves back and forth in time, so we gradually learn how a good Jewish boy becomes a hit man and then becomes a target. The book is highlighted by footnotes that are designed, according to the author, first to entertain and secondly to inform. Thus we learn about medical terminology, the stages of grief, the reality of Auschwitz, and the total irrelevance of the fibula bone in your lower leg (this will turn out to be significant at a later point in the story). The details are gruesome at times, the humor is clearly very dark, and this book kept me distracted on a long flight home. I would absolutely read anything else he wrote. Additional reviews from The Washington Post, Kirkus, The Guardian, and Publishers Weekly.

Bellewether

Recommended to me by friend Anne Zald, Susanna Kearsley is a new author to me and a prolific writer of historic novels, often with a romance plot line to them. This is her most recent book (2018) and is told in alternating chapters by a contemporary museum curator, Charley, and by two of the historic figures she is researching, Lydia Wilde, and Jean-Philippe de Sabran, The setting is the north shore of Long Island in the present day and, alternately, in 1759, during the final stretch of the Seven Years War in the theatre of eastern Canada. Kearsley provides extended notes after the story detailing the actual historical figures upon whom many of her characters were based.
Charley has come to Millbank after her brother, Niels, suddenly died of a heart attack. His daughter, Rachel, although a young adult, was left the house and Charley has come to stay with her and taken a 2-year contract with a local group that's in the process of turning the historic  house belonging to the Wilde family into a museum. That means she's left behind her boyfriend, Tyler (who everyone else thinks is a jerk), and they are trying to maintain a long-distance relationship. You pretty much know from the beginning that it's not going to work out. The love interest in Millbank is the contractor who is rehabbing the house.
Jean-Philippe is a captured French officer who has been billeted in the Wilde household, along with another French officer, while waiting exchange. Lydia runs the Wilde house after the death of her mother. Her father and two brothers as well as a young black woman, Violet, also live there. The work seems endless to maintain the farm and Jean-Philippe soon pitches in to help with the manual labor. He falls in love with Lydia, who at first despises him because of the death of her fiancé in the war. The French are, after all, the enemy.
Charley wants to make the story of a doomed love affair between Jean-Philippe and Lydia part of the narrative of the museum, although other museum board members are adamantly opposed. The house and its ghostly inhabitants have a mind of their own and secrets are gradually revealed that tell a very different story about the  Wildefamily and the events that transpired.
It took me quite a while to get into this book, but in the end, it was worth the read. I am a fan of good historical fiction and appreciate the research that goes into grounding the stories. Brief but positive review from the Historical Novel Society, and a personal piece about Kearsley's own family history  that ties into the book in Publishers Weekly.

Desolation Mountain

I just read this recent installment (#17, published in 2018) of the "Cork O'Connor" series by William Kent Krueger. Over 5 years ago, I read the first book in the series, Iron Lake, and liked it well enough that I said I would follow up with sequels, which I did not do. Given what a compelling read this installment was, I think I will go back and pick up #2, Boundary Waters.
Cork's son, Stephen, has visions of things that come to pass--usually terrible things, such as his getting shot and crippled. A new vision comes to him repeatedly of a boy shooting an eagle out of the sky with an arrow. An egg drops to earth, and Stephen--the observer in the dream--feels a terrible menace approaching from behind, which he is too terrified to turn around and face. He is troubled that he does not understand what the vision means and consults his teacher in the healing arts, centenarian Henry Meloux. Henry also feels the evil approaching but can shed no light.
When a locally favored senator's plane crashes on the Iron Lake Reservation while she is en route to a town hall meeting in Aurora, Minnesota, the Native American first responders race to the scene. But they are quickly muscled out by the FBI and other unidentified federal agencies. When those who were first on the scene begin disappearing, Cork is convinced it is connected to the plane crash, and the urgency is heightened because his son-in-law, Daniel, was one of those first responders. Cork moves his daughter, Jenny, and his grandson, Waaboo, to a safer location, but Daniel and Stephen continue the investigation with him, along with an old acquaintance, Bo Thorsen, who Cork knows from his days as local sheriff. Although Cork trusts Bo, he is an outsider, and others are not so sure. Bo does indeed have divided loyalties, but is determined to find out who was behind the murder of the senator and her family.
This was a plot that gripped me right away. Characters are well drawn and the setting is immersive and as much a character as the people. Highly recommended. Positive reviews from Publishers Weekly, and NY Journal of Books, and an interview about the book with Krueger published in Booklist.

The Bad Daughter

This is the book chosen for my mystery book group's next read. I have not previously read anything by Joy Fielding but she is a prolific author, having written over 2 dozen suspense novels. The author says in her website bio that she focuses on character, even though thrillers are more typically plot driven.
In this book, two estranged sisters, Robin and Melanie Davis, are forced into a reunion when their father and his new family are shot in what appears to be a home invasion. Their father, Greg, was a highly successful developer and a serial philanderer;  his new wife, Tara, is Robin's former best friend and her brother's former fiancée. Tara's daughter from an earlier, abusive marriage was living with them in an ostentatious new house in the small town of Red Bluff, California. Melanie always tormented Robin, their mom's stated favorite child, and has a teenage son who is autistic; she has never left Red Bluff due to lack of education and the burden of caring for her son. Robin herself left home as soon as she could, got a college degree, became a therapist in Los Angeles, and is now engaged to a successful attorney, Blake, who is--she initially thinks--having an affair with his legal assistant. Robin has suffered from debilitating anxiety attacks in the past, which re-emerge when she gets the call from Melanie about the shooting. When Robin comes back to Red Bluff, she is confronted with all her old feelings of insecurity, guilt and anger. She still feels betrayed by Tara for dumping her brother, Alec, and marrying their father. Her perpetually angry sister still never misses an opportunity to criticize Robin's behavior and life choices. 
Robin is surprised to find that the sheriff is treating this as something other than a home invasion. Greg Davis had no end of enemies due to his extra-marital activities, and Tara may have had some deadly secrets as well. When both Melanie's 18-year-old autistic son, Landon, and the sisters' brother, Alec, become "persons of interest" in the sheriff's investigation, Robin feels she has to find the real killers or risk losing her brother. So just who is the bad daughter? Is it Robin, who left even though their mother was dying of cancer, or Melanie, who has the world's biggest chip on her shoulder and pisses off everyone she meets? The ending surprised me. 
I would describe the writing as very competent and the characters as well developed. The plot line dragged a bit in places but was sufficiently engaging to make me want to find out what really happened. That being said, I would not seek out her other books, nor would I turn one down if it came my way. Favorable review from Kirkus, and a more lukewarm review by Publishers Weekly.

The Scholar

The second installment in Dervla McTiernan's Cormac Reilly series, finds Cormac still being back benched by his boss, while resentment builds among the other overworked detectives. Cormac's partner, Emma Sweeney, is a research scientist; on her way into her lab late one evening, she finds a dead body in the parking lot at the university. She immediately calls Cormac and he initially offers to take charge of the case to help out his work colleague, Carrie O'Halloran, who has already complained to their boss that she is overworked. Because the victim is so disfigured by being run over several times, the police initially rely on a security ID card in her pocket, a card with Carline Darcy's name on it. Before Cormac can confirm the Jane Doe's identity, however, someone has leaked this information to the powerful head of Darcy Therapeutics, who is Carline's grandfather, and the funder of Emma's research. When circumstantial evidence links Emma to a subsequent death, Cormac is pulled off the case and comes to question his own judgment in believing Emma innocent. Once again, Cormac is struggling to find the perpetrator of the crime while battling those at work who would rather see him fail.
Reviews from Publishers Weekly, and The Independent (a detailed and rave review). 

The Ruin

This debut novel by Dervla McTiernan (Irish, but now living in Australia) introduces us to Cormac Reilly, a Detective Inspector who has just transferred from a high profile position in Dublin to Galway to accompany his significant other. But, for some reason, Cormac's boss is not giving him any active cases, instead giving him cold cases, even though the squad's other detectives are overloaded with work. When a young man, Jack Blake, apparently commits suicide by jumping into the freezing water of the Corrib River, everyone dismisses it as suicide, even though his partner, Aisling, doesn't believe it. Cormac recognizes the name of the victim. Jack was just a 5-year old boy on one of Cormac's first cases, supposedly a domestic dispute call, but what he finds instead is a manor house falling into ruin, a mother dead of a heroin overdose, and two children near starvation. The older child, Maude, disappears and Jack is put into foster care. But after Jack's death,Maude returns from Australia and insists that Jack would not kill himself. Apparently this creates some unwelcome attention in the police department and Cormac is now assigned to re-investigate the death of Jack and Maude's mother; the implication is that 15-year old Maude was somehow responsible for the death of her mother. Not only is it nearly impossible to find witnesses to events of 20 years ago, but Cormac does not know who he can trust in the department. Described as Irish noir, this is indeed a dark tale, very atmospheric in its portrayal of corruption in many places where one would expect to find protection. Compelling characters and well crafted scenery and plotting.
Reviews are available from The Guardian and Publishers Weekly.

Sorcery of Thorns

This fantasy novel by Margaret Rogerson is probably considered a YA entry, although the two main characters are in their 20's. Elizabeth Scrivener was taken into the care of one of the Great Libraries of Austermeer at Summershall when she was left on the doorstep as an infant. She has never known any other life. The books (grimoires) talk to her; they contain magic and secrets of sorcery. Some are fairly benign and others are so malevolent that they must be locked away in vaults to protect the populace. She is an apprentice when the story opens and wants nothing more than to become a Warden, i.e., an official protector of the Great Libraries. But someone has started attacking the Great Libraries and Elizabeth is the only one who wakes up when Summershall's wards are breached and the most dangerous of their grimoires is released, killing the library's Director. With the Director's sword, she manages to defeat the evil Malefict but is subsequently accused by a corrupt librarian of collusion in the attack and sent to the Magisterium for judgment. Her transportation is provided by Sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn and he looks cruel, and all sorcerers are evil, so Elizabeth has been taught. But he is kind to her, protects her from another attack by demons, and stands up for her in the Tribunal. Elizabeth doesn't know what to make of him. When she is taken into the home of the Master Sorcerer of Austermeer, she finds out that the attacks on the Great Libraries are being planned by him, to what end she doesn't know. He tries to have her imprisoned in an insane asylum, but she escapes and tries to convince Nathaniel to help her uncover the plot and defeat the perpetrator.
Elizabeth, Nathaniel, and Nathaniel's dedicated demon, Silas, are all fully drawn characters and the plot is intricate and well executed. This was an engaging and enjoyable read. Favorable review from Kirkus,

The Lesson

In spite of several positive reviews (e.g., Locus Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus), this novel by Cadwell Turnbull ultimately just left me scratching my head, unattached to any of the characters, and unsure of what "lesson" was intended for learning.
The premise is that, in the very near future, when the aliens land, they choose an island in the American Virgin Islands. They claim they mean no harm, just need a place to stay for a while doing some research, and offer cures for deadly diseases in trade. Skip 5 years into the future and the situation is a tense co-existence. The Ynaa appear in human skin but are infinitely stronger and apparently impervious to physical harm. They also respond to any perceived physical threat--a growling dog, a drunken shove or verbal threat--with extreme and usually deadly force. The story loosely centers around Mera, the Ynaa ambassador, and her assistant and "bridge" to the local populace, 20-something year old Derrick. Derrick is fascinated with Mera and seeks more than a working relationship. He has always wanted to look beyond his own world, his own view, or the accepted norms of his society, and he sees Mera as a way to help him achieve that. But by his own people, Derrick is considered a traitor, and his grandmother forced him to move out of the house when he took the job. Mera has apparently been hiding out among the humans on earth in various guises for a long time, and there are flashbacks to the time of the Maroon rebellions in Jamaica in the 18th C., when she appeared as a slave. She has a fondness for humans and questions her own people's purposes and tactics, making her the subject of suspicion from the perspective of both groups. 
Most of the reviewers I looked at consider this an analogy of the harms that come from colonialism. Some compare it to Station 11, which I liked. But, as I said, none of the characters were ones I cared about, and I just finished the book feeling empty.

Bad Axe County

John Galligan has written several other novels but he was a new author to me and this book sounded intriguing. It is dark and atmospheric. A winter storm followed by flash floods provide the weather backdrop for this story set in southwestern Wisconsin along the banks of the Mississippi River. In the little town of Fairfield and surrounds, many people struggle to make a living. Heidi White's parents were like that, working a small dairy farm and trying to create a good life for their daughter. She was a little wild but won the title of Wisconsin Dairy Queen during her senior high school year. While on a speaking tour, she got the news that both her parents were dead; according to the local sheriff, nothing was stolen so it must have been a murder suicide. But Heidi knew her dad would never do that. When she got back to the farm, she discovered the one and only gun her dad owned, for which he did not even have real bullets, was missing, but the sheriff wasn't interested; as far as he was concerned, the case the closed.
Years later, Heidi is married to Harley Kick, manager of the Rattlers baseball team and the mother of 3 children. She is also the interim sheriff of the county after her corrupt predecessor dies. But the supporters of the former sheriff are making her life a misery with their nasty remarks and chauvinistic behavior. Still she has her supporters, people who want her to run for sheriff in the next election.
When Heidi is called to investigate an assault at the local library, committed by an out-of-towner who has disappeared, she opens an ugly can of worms into sex trafficking, embezzlement, and murder--much of which has apparently been going on for years, subsidized by the former sheriff through county funds.  Moreover, Heidi has never given up on trying to find her parents' murderer. But the odds, some of her own colleagues, and the weather are all working against her. Her husband doesn't want her to investigate because he fears for her safety after someone rams her police cruiser into the swollen Mississippi, but Heidi is relentless. Hard to read at times, but also hard to put down.
Review from Kirkus offers more information on major characters, and the NY Journal of Books provides detailed plot information.

The Silent Corner

OK I admit I have NEVER read a Dean Koontz novel before, because I always associated him with the horror genre and that is something I stay away from. But I kept reading about his "Jane Hawk" series and decided to start from the beginning with this one, published in 2017. Jane was an FBI agent, happily married to a smart and loving man who was the father of their adorable young son. Then her husband apparently kills himself, leaving a note that says "I very much need to be dead." Jane knows her husband did not kill himself and in trying to find out who could have made him do this, she uncovers an anomaly in the U.S. suicide statistics. More people than usual are committing suicide and, when Jane investigates further, she finds a number of them were similarly well adjusted,  highly productive people with no signs of depression or mental illness. But then someone breaks into her house and makes it clear that if she persists in her inquiries, her son will be abducted and sold into sexual slavery outside the U.S.
She quickly buys a junker car, sells her house at a fire sale price, closes out her bank accounts, and drives cross country to hide her son with people she believes will not be connected to her. Then she goes on the road to interview the people left behind by the anomalous suicides. She is technically on leave from the FBI but goes completely off grid since she realizes that the conspiracy behind the deaths is probably very high up in the food chain and wide-spread. She trusts no one. She figures out that a brilliant but power hungry scientist has created a way to inject people with nano-technology that gives him control over their minds. This man, Bertold Shenneck, is her target.
The pace is relentless, the plotting intricate and scary, and the prose is excellent. You will root for Jane all the way as she battles people who are determined to kill her and who can enlist her most trusted colleagues as well as strangers to hunt her down. Can't wait to read the next installment, The Whispering Room. Kirkus calls this Koontz's "leanest, meanest thriller." And there is also a glowing review from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and good words from Booklist.

Six Years

I have certainly read other books by Harlan Coben with great enjoyment (e.g. Fool Me Once, Missing You,  Long Lost & The Woods) and this one did not disappoint. He is a prolific author of twisty thrillers, several of which have been made into films or TV series. When Professor Jake Fisher sees an obituary on the Lanford College alumni page, he is plunged into a world of well-kept secrets, which, if revealed, have deadly consequences. Six years ago, the one true love of his life, Natalie, suddenly dropped him, married a supposed former boyfriend and made Jake promise never to intrude in their lives. He made a promise. But now that man, Todd Sanderson, is apparently dead and Jake cannot help going to the funeral to at least get a glimpse of Natalie. But the widow is not Natalie and so Jake begins searching for her where they met, a small town in Vermont near an artists' retreat. But his questioning of the locals elicits a cloud of lies and ignites an attempt on his life by very scary people. When he learns that Todd was tortured and murdered by the same people who kidnapped and attempted to kill him, he knows he is on the right track--but it's one that could lead to his death or the deaths of those he most cares about.
Reviews from The Washington Post, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly.

The Darkness Knows

This debut novel by Cheryl Honigford received good reviews as a cozy type mystery. It's set in 1938 Chicago, a time when still too many people suffer the after effects of the Depression and everyone is worrying about events in Europe that threaten war. Protagonist Vivian Witchell was in the right place at the right time to pick up a good role in a popular detective series, "The Darkness Knows,"  that airs on radio station WCHI, where she had previously worked as secretary to the somewhat lecherous station manager, Mr. Hart. She is still in awe of her handsome co-star, Graham Yarborough, and in a battle with another woman actress who would do anything to get Viv's part in the broadcasts. When Viv stumbles over the dead body of another radio star in the staff lounge late one night, it turns her world upside down, not only because of the horrifying discovery, but also because there's a letter with the body suggesting that Viv's radio character might be the next victim. Is some crazed fan killing off the make-believe characters in WCHI's radio shows, or is one of the station's staff using this as a clever diversion? Station manager Mr. Hart is taking no chances and assigns the special consultant to "The Darkness Knows," P.I. Charlie Haverman, to keep Viv safe. It's a harder job than it sounds, for when Viv receives her own threatening letter, she determines to find out who the killer is before she becomes the next victim, and she refuses to stay safely tucked away at home. Sparks begin to fly between Viv and Charlie on several levels, predictably. We get some tantalizing glimpses of Chicago in the post-Depression years, and insights into the golden age of radio. This is the first of the "Viv and Charlie Mystery Series" and I may check out the next installment, Homicide for the Holidays.
Short reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, with a lengthier one with lots of info on plot and characters from The New York Journal of Books.

The Cat, the Devil, the Last Escape

This is apparently one of many cat-based novels by Shirley Rousseau Murphy, including over 20 in the "Joe Grey" cat mystery series featuring a feline P.I., but I had never encountered them. In this sequel to an earlier novel, The Cat, the Devil, and Lee Fontana, also co-authored with her husband, Pat J. J. Murphy, our protagonist is Misto, currently in ghost form, although he has had several lives in physical form. He has attached himself to Lee Fontana, a thief who is cursed by an ancestor's deal with the devil. Lee is dying of emphysema and is currently in jail, where Misto visits him daily, offering comfort and support. But Misto is also trying to look after one of his former owners, a little girl named Sammie, and eventually we will find out that Sammie and Lee are related. As it turns out  Lee's little sister is also Sammie's great aunt. Misto communicates with both Sammie and Lee, although no one else can see, hear, or feel him. Sammie has prophetic dreams, a trait shared with Lee's younger sister. When the devil uses ones of his pawns to get Sammie's dad, Morgan, mistakenly locked up for murder, their paths will cross. It's an interesting premise and the characters, settings and plot are reasonably well executed. For some reason, however, it did not totally grab me. I have checked out the first of her Joe Grey series to satisfy my curiosity.

The Address

This book by Fiona Davis was selected by my mystery book group and focuses around the (in)famous Dakota building in New York City. Two protagonists are occupants there, 100 years apart--in 1884 when it was just opening and in 1984 when it had gained infamy as the place where John Lennon was killed (1980). Theodore Camden, one of the architects of the grand apartment house brought Sara Smythe from her position as head of housekeeping at a posh London hotel to become the "manageress" of the building, which was, at the time, on the far outskirts of New York City. She and Theodore are like minded and this soon leads to a passionate affair --ended, ostensibly, when she went mad and stabbed him to death. We learn all this from Sara's point of view. The unraveling of this story will tie her to the more contemporary narrator, Bailey Camden, a recovering drug addict, tangentially connected to the Camden name through her grandfather, who was adopted by the Camdens. Bailey's cousin, who is heir to the apartment where Theodore Camden and his family lived in the Dakota, has decided to totally gut the place and remodel, hiring disgraced designer and "cousin" Bailey to live there temporarily and manage the Project. When Bailey discovers property belonging to the Camden in the basement of the building, she begins to investigate, prodded by the building manager, who points out a striking resemblance between Bailey and an old photograph of Sara Smythe.  The ending won't surprise anyone, but it is an interesting look into the Gilded Age of architecture and culture in New York City. The title is appropriate as the building itself is the most well-developed character of the book.
Reviews from the Historical Novel Society, Kirkus, The Chicago Review of Books, and Publishers Weekly.

Atomic Habits: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results : An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

This book by James Clear is another one of those I thought really useful for shifting your mindset about how to change your behavior. Focusing on systems, he tells lots of stories about how making tiny changes--i.e., setting the barriers very low--can begin to move you in desired directions. He talks about the "compound interest" of 1% changes, either in negative or positive directions. These tiny changes don't often result in visible results in the short term but have profound effects in the long run.  If you want to do something, make it obvious, make it easier to do, change your environment to support the new behavior. Lots of straighforward advice.
The Wall Street Journal sings the books praises.

Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness

I went on a self-help binge a few weeks back and checked out several books from the library, signed up with an Enneagram coach, and started French lessons online. Two of the 3 books I checked out were quite worthwhile and this was one of them. By Rick Hanson, also author of Buddha's Brain, Hardwiring Happiness and other popular neuropsychology based books, this offers ways to build up the parts of the brain that will give you stronger resources to deal with everything from daily slights from a co-worker to profound loss. I consumed this book in small doses and appreciated that he jumps right in with a chapter on Compassion--for oneself. The following chapters address Mindfulness, Learning, Grit, Gratitude, Confidence, Calm, Motivation, Intimacy, Courage, Aspiration, and Generosity. I took lots of notes. This is a wonderful book for those of us who are hard on ourselves, as most of us are to some degree. He talks about the evolutionary tendency of the brain to focus on the negative aspects of our experience and offers a strategy to balance that out and even shift the balance to more positive evaluations of self and others. He talks about how to set appropriate boundaries in our relationships while at the same time opening ourselves to closeness and having empathy for their struggles. I'm tempted to buy it so I can highlight all the good things he has to say!

The Never Game

I have read several of  Jeffery Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme thrillers in the past. This is the launch of a new series starring protagonist Colter Shaw, a largely itinerant single man who chases rewards for lost family members. He is not a bounty hunter and not interested in chasing down criminals, just in finding people whose family members want them found. He makes no guarantees about returning them if they don't want to come back. He was raised by two highly educated parents who at some point abandoned their regular lives and chose to live off the grid in California, home schooling Colter, his older brother Russell and younger sister Dorion. They learned survival skills, including, after their father became dangerously paranoid, how to survive their father, Ashton. Russell had already left home but came back to look after his siblings when their mother had to go help a sick sister and was afraid to leave them with their father. Shortly afterward, Ashton was found dead. Colter is an extraordinary tracker, able to follow the tiniest of signs to find his quarry, and yet he has never been able to find his brother since then and fears that Russell had returned and killed Ashton; but new clues have come to light suggesting there was a real danger to Ashton from outside forces. That storyline runs in the background as Colter is pursuing his most recent case, a missing college student in Silicon Valley. Because of her age, the police are not much interested in the father's claim that she would not just run away or disappear.  It takes Colter less than a day to find evidence indicating that the young woman was kidnapped, but the local detective isn't interested in Colter's theory or evidence. So Colter, while trying to sideline an ex-boyfriend who wants to help, goes looking and finds her. She was being held in an empty warehouse and left with 5 objects to help her possible escape before the kidnapper returned to kill her. With the help of an attractive professional gamer, Colter determines that the clues correspond to a popular online game called The Whispering Man. After a second kidnapping that ends in the death of the victim, Colter tries to figure out why someone would use the game to kidnap and harm people. There are a lot of red herrings, but Colter's success in finding the first two victims gains him credibility with a different detective when a 3rd victim is kidnapped. There is a fair amount of time jumping between Colter's early life and the time when Colter got involved in the case and the current situation where he is trying to rescue the 3rd victim, but you'll be able to follow and unable to put this down and you get drawn into the elaborate plot. There's a short review in The Guardian, a rave in Publishers Weekly, and a balanced hearing from Kirkus.

The Map of Salt and Stars

This novel by Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar personalizes a years-long story we have been hearing about on the news--the Syrian civil war and the resulting refugee crisis. Her protagonists are both young teens, one the heroine of a story from the 12th century, Rawiyah, told to the other, Nour, by her father. Rawiyah disguised herself as a boy so she could apprentice herself to a famous map maker (an actual historical figure, al-Idrisi) and see the wider world. She accompanies him and his other apprentice on a journey through often-dangerously disputed territories of the Middle East as he seeks to create the first accurate area map at the behest of his patron, King Roger of Palermo. Nour's father used to tell her the story of Rawiyah in installments when they still lived in New York City--but that was before he died of cancer and her mother moved Nour and her two older sisters back to Syria to be closer to family.  However the Syria her parents knew has gone and been replaced by one experiencing escalating war and destruction. Their home in Homs is bombed and they are forced to flee with nothing but a few dollars. They end up paralleling the route of Rawiyah in their quest to find safety. Both tales are full of hardship, profound love and loss, as well as heroism and determination. The language is beautiful, the thoughts about life often profound-- and that is the one element that does not really seem to fit with the occasionally very juvenile behavior of Nour. Each section of the book that deals with the country they travel through is introduced by a poem in the shape of the country. So worth the read, however, because refugees fleeing inhumane conditions  have become such a big part of our national conversation. Reviews from The New York Times, Kirkus, and The Seattle Times.

The River

I have read both The Dog Stars and Celine by Peter Heller, the latter being one of my all-time favorites. His language is so beautiful and his characters and settings so vividly drawn that the plot is almost secondary, except it isn't. All his books have drawn me in and pulled me along, and this last one especially so. Spoiler alert, this book does not have an altogether happy ending.
Our protagonists are two college friends from Dartmouth who instantly bonded over their shared love of the outdoors, fishing, and reading. In fact, between their junior and senior year, they have worked as outdoor experience instructors and are now taking a canoe trip up the Maskwa River in the remote Canadian wilderness. They are an excellent team, each bringing their own strengths, although they are different in temperament and stature. Jack is wiry and more cynical. Wynn is a big man with a trusting nature and optimistic outlook. Although their combined experiences and knowledge prepared them well to deal with a raging forest fire they discover is headed their way, their differences contribute to fatal mis-steps when they encounter some bad people. As they are heading north, trying to keep ahead of the fire they encounter a couple of boorish older men, drinking heavily who seem uninterested in their warning about the fire. In a weird morning fog, they hear a man and woman loudly arguing on the shore but are unable to locate them to warn them. Later they encounter a man coming down river alone, saying he lost his wife--perhaps the couple they overheard. Both young men immediately retrace their steps to try and find the missing woman, but only Jack is suspicious of the circumstances. When they do find her, seriously injured, the urgency to get to a town several days away increases dramatically. Glowing reviews are provided by The New York Times, Kirkus, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and The Guardian.

Save Me from Dangerous Men

I really liked the protagonist of this book by S.A. Lelchuk. Nikki Griffin loves books and owns a used book store in Oakland. She lets her competent manager, Jess, run it most of the time, however, because she is also passionate about saving women who are being abused by men. She doesn't just try to help the women stand up for themselves, she makes it her personal mission to teach these men what is feels like to be hurt and helpless so they won't do it again. She takes on what appears to be a regular PI job following an employee of a high tech company that makes baby monitors. The company CEO is afraid the employee is selling company secrets. Well, sort of. Nikki gets suspicious of the job when she sees her target, Karen, being followed and confronted by some threatening men. It turns out to be anything but an ordinary job when Karen is murdered right before she was going to meet Nikki and reveal all she knew about what the company is actually doing. Now it's Nikki who is in the cross-hairs. In the meantime, she has met a nice guy, Ethan, and she would really like to have a normal relationship, but an attempted mugging while they are on a date reveals Nikki's darker side and he's not sure he wants any part of her. We gradually learn about Nikki's traumatic history that drove her to become the avenger that she is. I would totally read any sequel to this debut novel. Several reviewers have likened Nikki to a cross between Jack Reacher and Lisbeth Salander. If you like and recognize those protagonists, you will certainly root for Nikki. There is a comprehensive summary of the plot in The Washington Post. Kirkus offers a positive review as does Publishers Weekly as does USA Today.

The Last

This is a post-apocolyptic novel by Hanna Jameson that revolves around a group of people stuck in a remote Swiss hotel when most of the rest of the civilized world disappears in nuclear attacks. Told from the perspective of Jon Keller, an historian who was attending a conference at the hotel when social media posts began coming in that Washington had been attacked, and then London and then...well it was hard after that to get news. Jon was so upset that he threw his phone across the room, cutting himself off from further communication with his wife and two daughters.  He has decided to write down everything that happens in the hotel as a sort of final historical text, just in case someone, someday, reads it.
Some hotel guests of course immediately jumped in their cars and fled, thinking they would somehow be able to get home, back to loved ones. Others, realizing that there would probably be no flights, and that it would be equally if not more dangerous to head into Zurich, stayed put. So we get to know the various people who stayed. Some kill themselves almost immediately. Others are more tenacious. There are 3 remaining children, two belonging to a Japanese-German couple, and the third is an infant, orphaned by the suicide of her mother, but taken in by that same couple.  The hotel's head of security, Dylan, becomes the de-facto leader of the group. They are fortunate to have in this international mix a doctor and one of the hotel's chefs. There are rifles to shoot deer--the hotel attracted hunters--if they can find any alive. Jon, Dylan, and Nathan, the hotel's former bartender, form an alliance to keep things in order. They are the ones to discover, when checking the water tanks on the roof, the body of a young girl. Jon becomes obsessed with finding out who killed her. People try to maintain a veneer of civilization although it occasionally breaks down. Fear keeps them in place although they do make one foray to a grocery store in a suburb an hour away looking for food and medication. There Jon comes face to face with two former colleagues who try to kill the group from the hotel. With winter approaching, they must again venture out, but this scouting party does not return. So Jon and Rob, an English student, go looking for them, are attacked but survive, and then discover there are still people living in the city. There are a lot of red herrings in the story--a haunted history of the hotel, Jon's gradually returning memories of the first couple days, etc. and some wild things thrown in at the end. Although slow to start, it was intriguing to watch the dynamics, wonder who was sane and who was losing it. Kirkus and Publishers Weekly agree it is a compelling read marred only slightly by the rather bizarre ending.

My Sister, the Serial Killer

This somewhat tongue-in-cheek novel by Nigerian author Oyinkan Braithwaite is really more about sisterly dynamics than it is about serial murder."One sister is a nurse. The other is a murderer." (NYT)
Ayoola is the favored daughter, the golden child of perfect looks and perfect temperament, according to their mother. Korede is the older sister, practical, smart and always charged with looking after her younger sister. Now that their father is dead (murdered?) the sisters live with their mother in the family estate that they cannot afford. Korede is a nurse at St. Peter's Hospital in Lagos and it is only there, in her job, that she gets any credit. Recognized for her competence and compassion, she'll soon be appointed as head nurse. Most of her colleagues are slackers, but Korede takes her job very seriously, especially because she has been secretly in love with Dr. Tade Otumu for several years and she keeps hoping he will finally figure out that they should be together.
When Ayoola calls on Korede for the 3rd time to help clean up one of her messes, i.e., a dead boyfriend, who she admits killing but totally in self-defense, Korede begins to realize that something is seriously askew in her sister. Still she cleans the scene, disposes of the body, and keeps quiet about what she knows--except to confide in a hospital patient who has been in a coma for several months. He is like her therapist--someone to talk to who does not judge. On impulse, Ayoola comes to visit Korede at work to invite her out to lunch. There she meets the kind and handsome Dr. Tade and he is smitten, later asking Korede for Ayoola's phone number. Talk about fraught love triangles! Now what will Korede do, protect her little sister or the love of her life? Darkly humorous, well written with vivid characters and setting. You get an accessible tour of urban life in Nigeria. A quick and engaging read. Rave reviews aplenty: New York Times, The Guardian, the Washington Post,  and Kirkus, plus a short interview with Scott Simon on NPR.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

This atmospheric mystery by Tom Franklin was this month's pick (June, 2019) for my mystery book group. This is Franklin's 3rd novel, which received the CWA Gold Dagger Award in 2011 for best crime novel. While some reviewers have called his prose "luminous" (Booklist), I found it evocative, so effectively creating a mood of sweltering, suffocating, ennui and apathy, that you almost start to sweat. If you never wanted to live in the rural deep South, like me, this would remind you of why. The Washington Post notes that this book "makes a haunting demonstration of Faulkner's claim that 'the past is never dead. It's not even past.'"
As a boy, Larry Ott is too nerdy, too interested in books (especially horror stories) and snakes to be the son his father wants. These characteristics don't make him popular at school either in 1970's Chabot, Mississippi. The southern way they teach children to spell the name of the state and the river  is "M-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-crooked letter-crooked letter-I-humpback letter-humpback letter-I Really!?) When a black woman and her son move into a primitive cabin on the Ott's land, Larry connects with the boy, Silas, teaching him how to hunt and fish. At school, they barely acknowledge each other, both because black and white do not mix, but also because Silas has gained some stature as the school's star baseball player and Larry is still so uncool. When a popular girl in school asks Larry on a date for the drive-in movies, he is thrilled; only it turns out that she just wants a ride to meet her real boyfriend. Larry, ever accommodating, drops her off at a designated point along the highway and goes on to the movies, pretending Cindy is with him. When he goes back to pick her up, she never shows. In fact, she disappears, and the fact that she had a "date" with Larry that night makes him the prime suspect, even though there is no concrete evidence and no body. Larry and his family are ostracized by the community, driving his father to an early death, his mother into a care home and Larry into the military, where he becomes a mechanic. When he comes home, he takes over his father's old automotive repair shop, but the small town has a long memory and "scary Larry" never get a customer.  He is forced to sell off chunk's of his father's land to the big timber company to make ends meet. Silas went away to college and returns 20 years later to be the town's only policeman. When a 2nd girl goes missing, Larry again becomes the focus of attention, and someone shoots him. Not only does Silas find the dead girl buried in the old cabin where he lived with his mother, but only he knows that Larry was not responsible for Cindy's disappearance decades ago. What he reveals to prove Larry's innocence is going to bring his life down around his ears. It's a heartbreaking book in many ways, but so well written that it's hard to put down, and there is a glimmer of hope in the end.
Not everyone was enamored of this book as the reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly demonstrate. Others, such as the Washington Post, the Guardian, and this interview from NPR are very positive.