The Bullet That Missed

This is Richard Osman's 3rd installment in the "Thursday Murder Club" series and there is no letdown in the pace of challenges and mysteries to solve by our intrepid quartet.  Publishers Weekly offers this favorable review: "Osman’s diverting third Thursday Murder Club mystery (after 2021’s The Man Who Lived Twice) delivers laughs along with a nicely woven plot involving fraud, murder, and life in the Kent retirement village of Coopers Chase. At the club’s regular meeting in the Jigsaw Room, the four members—Elizabeth, a retired but still well-connected British spy; Ibrahim, a well-meaning psychiatrist; Ron, a still-feisty activist for workers’ rights; and the unexpectedly shrewd Joyce, whose diary entries enliven the narrative—decide to tackle the cold case of Bethany Waites, a journalist for the local TV station whose wrecked car was found at the bottom of a cliff 10 years earlier. The police declared it a murder, surmising that Bethany’s body had been washed out to sea. The group’s investigation stirs up a hornet’s nest and leads to another death, a kidnapping, and blackmail. The pace is breezy, the characters are intelligent and varied in their interests and backgrounds, and the humor is often pitched to readers who understand the vagaries of getting older. Osman reliably entertains.  

Library Journal calls it a "character-rich mystery" with "...investigations into fraud, murder, and threats in a case that takes the group into prisons, TV studios, and danger; romance, humor, and a clever trap to catch a villain..." Booklist concludes, "Plenty of layers, but plenty of laughs, too." Kirkus also praises and ends their review "The mysteries are complex, the characters vivid, and the whole thing is laced with warm humor and—remarkably, considering the body count—good feeling."

Death at the Sanatorium

After having read one of Ragnar Jonasson's early entries in his "Dark Iceland" series (Snowblind), I decided to read his newest book, also set in Iceland but in Reykjavik rather than the far north of the country. 

Kirkus offers this review: "The retro title introduces a valentine to Golden Age whodunits relocated to Iceland. Helgi Reykdal, a graduate student in criminology at an English university, has returned to Iceland. Last summer he interned with Reykjavík’s criminal investigation department, and there’s a job waiting for him there if he wants it. But he’s torn by his conflicting desires to return to the U.K. and to appease Bergthóra, the ...live-in girlfriend who wants him to stay. An additional inducement arrives with the possibility of writing his dissertation on the deaths a generation ago of a nurse and doctor at a sanitorium in the provincial northern town of Akureyri. When both Tinna Einarsdóttir, the nurse who discovered both bodies, and Sverrir Eggertsson, the police investigator who allegedly solved the case back in 1983 by arresting what even he came to admit was the wrong suspect, summarily refuse to talk to him, his interest is naturally piqued. The circle of possible killers is tiny—Tinna herself, along with her colleague Elísabet, ambitious Dr. Thorri Thorsteinsson, and Broddi the caretaker—and in the course of Helgi’s investigation, one of them obligingly narrows it even further by killing one of the others. Inspired by his reading of classic mysteries with similar settings... Helgi digs into the archives and questions the people who are willing to talk to him. The story, which toggles back and forth between 1983 and 2012, generates considerable suspense from a remarkably limited cast of characters living and dead. Clever, absorbing, and no more uplifting than you’d expect from this master of Icelandic noir." 

Publishers Weekly opens their review with "Jónasson follows up Reykjavik with a meticulously plotted whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie..." and concludes "With scrupulously fair-play plotting, Helgi’s tumultuous relationship with his live-in girlfriend as an emotional anchor, and a worthy payoff, this is another winner from Jónasson. Readers will be rapt."

The Undercurrent

This book by Sarah Sawyer kept me going to find out what lay at the bottom of the disappearance in 1987 of a 12-year old girl. It's 2011 and new mother Bee, who was just a couple years older than the missing girl, lived in the neighborhood where the girl disappeared; she comes to suspect that her estranged twin brother's best friend, Leo, was somehow involved. But the real tension in the story comes from her twin's disappearance from her life. It eventually comes clear why he has cut off his family, but in the intervening 15 years or so, Bee has tortured herself over this. The story is told from the perspectives of Bee, her mother at the time of the disappearance, and Leo's mother, also in 1987.

Library Journal summarizes the plot as follows: "When new mother Bee's childhood crush and neighbor Leo contacts her to tell her that her estranged twin, Gus, wants to see her, Bee travels from Maine back to her Texas home. She's seeking reconciliation and answers for why Gus vanished from her life." They go on to say that "The leisurely paced writing is oblique, with the plot unfolding slowly from different directions, coming into focus in the latter part of the novel." Publishers Weekly is considerably more positive in their review, concluding "Sawyer constructs a spellbinding mystery as she toggles between timelines and the viewpoints of three very different mothers." Similarly, Booklist sees "Sawyer's debut is a gripping and emotional domestic suspense novel that explores the complex trials and tribulations of motherhood from three female perspectives."

The NewYork Times says, "On the surface, the book follows the well-worn fictional path along which troubled young adults return to their hometowns to look anew at mysteries from their childhoods. But this is less a criminal investigation than a layered excavation of family secrets, misconceptions and the extreme measures mothers will take to protect their children....The novel features big emotions and incorrect assumptions on the parts of nearly all the characters. Fittingly, it begins and ends with Deecie, who is full of naïve wonder and innocent longing on what turns out to be her last night alive. The final, shocking twist comes at the very end."

Standing in Another Man's Grave

Recent entry in the "John Rebus" (Edinburgh detective) series by Ian Rankin. I have read others in the series and find them generally well-written, well characterized, well plotted.  Rankin's website offers maps and lots of additional info on this series.
You begin to get an inkling that the impetus for the current investigation has something hinky about it fairly early on, but it is not until the very end that it is clear what the ulterior motive of Nina Hazlitt is for finding her long-missing daughter.
Rebus is currently retired from the police, but lending his expertise as a civilian consultant to the local cold cases team. He is getting bored with retirement, though, and, since the retirement age has been raised, he is considering re-applying for his old job. But a member of the Scottish equivalent of Internal Affairs has Rebus firmly in his sights because of Rebus' history of unconventional policing methods, which include consorting with criminals as a way to get information and make arrests. Rebus just happens to be the only one in the office when Nina walks in demanding to see someone. A new missing persons case has re-ignited her belief that her daughter is just one of a string of missing young women who were all taken at or near the A9 roadway. Rebus is the only one to take her seriously, but he finally manages to enlist the help of his former colleague at CID, Siobhan Clarke, who is working the current "mis per" case. As usual Rebus is up to his old bad habits and ruffles plenty of feathers on both sides of the law, but manages to come right in the end. The title of the book refers both to Rebus' mis-hearing of a song lyric, and to the tactic he uses to get a confession from the serial killer.  As with another UK detective character whose books were made into a TV series (Inspector Morse), there are lots of references to music, although of a very different kind. Reviews: The Guardian, Kirkus, The Washington Post and The New York Times.