Pro Bono

Thomas Perry is the author of almost 2 dozen books. Kirkus calls this a "lumpy but irrisistible thriller" and summarizes the plot as follows:

"Three years after George Ellis left a party he was hosting and never returned, his wife, Vesper, notices that some of his investment accounts have been shrinking instead of growing. Suspecting fraud, she consults Charles Warren, who’s been recommended by a mutual friend. Charlie turns out to be an excellent choice for several reasons. He’s both an attorney and accountant, so he’s good with numbers. He’s hard to bully, as any number of bankers and potential assailants learn to their cost. And he has both sympathy for the victims of fraud and extensive criminal experience, which began long ago when he raced after his fleeing stepfather, Mack Stone—who’d plundered the accounts of Charlie’s mother—running him off the road into a fatal crash that’s never been tied to Charlie except by Andy Minkeagan and Alvin Copes, two convicts who turned up at the scene of Mack’s accident ahead of the police, ran off with his financial papers, and are still bent on finding a way to cash in on their discovery. In fact, Charlie and Vesper are surrounded by so many lowlifes in pinstripes that it’s a good thing they have each other. As the story goes on, though, the obstacles to Charlie’s legal victories seem to fall away, and readers familiar with Perry’s knack for steering his tales in new directions they never saw coming may wonder what will happen during those last hundred pages. A series of completely new threats against a completely different person, that’s what. A model of suspense, though not of construction."

The Wall Street Journal praises this latest work: "Few crime-fiction authors are as skilled as Thomas Perry at keeping readers off balance and in suspense. Mr. Perry’s “Pro Bono,” a cutthroat caper of embezzlement and revenge, repeatedly shifts direction as its unpredictable plot unfolds." 

 

The Helsinki Affair

Set in relatively contemporary times, with regular flashbacks to the Cold War era, Anna Pitoniak has achieved a really engrossing and complex tale of espionage and betrayal.  Protagonist Amanda Cole is 2nd in command of the CIA station in Rome when she receives intel that a prominent American senator is going to be assassinated in Egypt the following day. In his typically dismissive way, her boss ignores the warning and the consequent death of the senator results in his early retirement and Amanda's promotion to station chief. She nurtures the relationship with the disaffected Russian bureaucrat who brought her the intel and sets up the usual channels for him to pass along anything of note. Anna returns briefly to Washington, D.C. for Senator Vogel's funeral. In the interim, the senator's aide brings a folder of notes to Amanda's father, Charlie Cole, who is still in the CIA though now in public relations, demoted after his post in Helsinki during the Cold War. He passes this information to Amanda, who is disturbed to find her father's name written on the last page of the notes. He asks to be left out of her investigation but expects she won't. 

Amanda teams up with a senior female agent, Kath Frost, to find out why the senator was killed and what role her father's past plays. The chapters on Charlie Cole's years at the Helsinki station slowly reveal the fateful events that catalyzed his downfall, but the ending will be a surprise.

Kirkus says of these two women characters: "The developing mentorship and friendship between Amanda and Kath as well as the unfolding of the Cole family’s unhappy past give the novel emotional weight and interest that add to its espionage plot. These excellent female spy characters deserve a series." Library Journal praises, " Pitoniak does everything well in this twisty spy thriller that should please the most discriminating connoisseur of the genre." The Washington Post also lauds Pitoniak for providing espionage lovers with capable female protagonists: "The novel, Pitoniak’s fourth, is atmospheric, well-researched, and packed with tradecraft, conspiracies, murder and, best of all, two fascinating women — Amanda Cole and Kath Frost, hard-nosed CIA agents who thrive on chaos and who are often smarter than their male counterparts."

The Harbor

Danish author Katrine Engberg carries forward the characters from her previous books, The Butterfly House and The Tenant, and, although you don't have to have read them to appreciate this one, you will definitely have a different understanding of the two main characters, Copenhagen detectives Jeppe Kørner and Anette Werner. When the teenage son (Oscar) of a prominent family goes missing, Jeppe and Anette begin the hunt. The only clue is a note left on the dining room table that turns out to be a quote from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, but no ransom demand is every made. With each passing day, the chances of finding Oscar alive diminish and we are privy, in random chapters, to Oscar's own morbid ruminations in his dark and damp captivity. When Oscar's Danish teacher is murdered, Jeppe and Anette are convinced the two events are related. It turns out there is quite a convoluted history of family dishonestly and betrayal that underlies both Oscar's disappearance and the teacher's death, but I never suspected the main culprit before it was revealed in the book. 

Publishers Weekly says the supporting cast of characters is "delightfully fleshed out" and that the "plot takes some unexpected turns as the detectives unearth some shocking secrets involving fraud and pornography en route to the satisfying conclusion." The New York Times favorably says, " Her characters are complex and prone to making bad but understandable personal decisions. Her writing is crisp and efficient; the pace, while brisk, still leaves room for third-act surprises."

The Talented Miss Farwell

Becky Farwell is good with numbers and so, after her mom is gone, she takes over the accounting for her father's farm machinery business. And she learns how to make a profit. Then she goes to work for her hometown of Pierson, Illinois in the accounting office and works her way up to comptroller. Here, too, she finds a way to make a profit--for herself. This novel by Emily Gray Tedrowe is perhaps an homage to Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, and also a haunting examination of obsession. For Becky discovers, quite by accident, that she has an eye for art. And, after a rocky start, she uses her ill-gotten gains from embezzling town funds to start buying an art collection. She always intends to make enough money to pay back every penny--her justification for siphoning off the much needed funds for maintaining the town's infrastructure. As with many obsessions, however, nothing is ever enough. She barely manages to survive the financial recession that renders her collection worth less than she paid for it and comes roaring back, moving into the New York market and making even more money. She remodels her father's old barn into a high tech art gallery that no one ever sees, where she stores her growing and constantly evolving collection. But we all know it must come tumbling down one day. When the town finds out that the woman they had admired for years is the worst kind of betrayer, they think her best friend must have been in on the scheme all along. This book is partly inspired by the true story of a woman who stole over $50 million from her small Illinois town. Publishers' Weekly gave this a starred review, concluding that her "unusual plot and Tedrowe’s spirited execution of it make this one sing."Although I did sort of marvel at Becky's ability to keep so many balls in the air, I never really liked her and I only kept reading because I really wanted to know how it turned out.

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.

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."