Category Archives: crime fiction

Marion, by Leah Rowan*****

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Marion is the kick-ass debut novel for author Leah Rowan, and it’s hugely addictive! My thanks go to St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review. This book will be available to the public June 2, 2026.

The story is a retelling of the 1960s smash, Psycho. I am not generally a fan of retellings unless they’re brilliantly done, and as it happens, this one is. We have two points of view here; one is Marion, and the other is Hannah, a budding private detective searching for a missing girl that was last seen near the motel. However, Marion is the protagonist.

Her real name isn’t Marion, but she adopts it as an alias early on, and so it might as well be. When we meet her, she’s an overworked and underappreciated office worker, and she’s also a concerned sister. Her older sister Lauren is in an abusive marriage, and cannot afford to leave for at least a year. Marion is frantic, trying to protect Lauren. Their parents are gone, and her mother made her promise to become the big sister and look after Lauren. It is that good intention from which everything else arises.

When her bus breaks down before reaching her destination, and when all of the nicer lodgings fill up with other stranded passengers, our protagonist is guided to this motel—yes, that motel. And that’s where things get real. She adopts the name Marion because she doesn’t want her boss to know where she is, but as things become more intense, she has additional reasons for remaining anonymous.

Eventually, Marion and Hannah meet.

That’s all I’m going to tell you, because surprise is everything here, but I do want to give a shout out to the audio narrators, because they are how a very good book becomes a great one. Natalie Naudus and Tawny Platis do exceptional jobs. I did most of my reading this way, pulling weeds with ear buds in, and I stayed out in the sun way too long, because I knew that once I was in the house, I had to stop listening!

The whole thing winds up with a couple of surprising twists at the end that make it even better.

Highly recommended to anyone that likes a scary book with some dark, feminist moxie.

A River Red with Blood, by John Connolly*****

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A River Red with Blood is the 23rd book in the wildly popular Charlie Parker series. Like the books before it, this one owned me from the first page until the last. My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria/Emily Bestler books for the review copy. This book will be available to the North American public June 2, 2026. Frankly, I don’t know how you’re going to wait that long!

For the uninitiated, Parker is a former cop that decided to rely on extralegal means to avenge the murders of his wife and daughter. He left the force, tracked down the killers, and has worked since then as a private detective, albeit one with a private arrangement with an agent of the government.  As one of the bad guys muses, “the private investigator…has a deserved reputation for tenacity, resilience, and violence.”

Now he is looking into the death of Scott Theriault, a young man that died after escaping from The Spero School, a tough-love environment to which parents sometimes sent their recalcitrant teens. Parents don’t know, however, that the school is run by some of the baddest of the baddies. Dante Santopietro is its principal and founder, and his favorite source of recreation, when not working, is to travel to far flung places with a compatriot and find a young woman to kidnap and kill. This dark source of pleasure is known to himself and his partners as “the Game.” But of course, Parker doesn’t know this at the outset. He’s trying to find out why Scott died, and also what happened to Mallory Norton, the girl that Scott had been ducking out of school to meet, and who is now missing.

One of the greatest joys of reading this series is the recurring cast of characters that keeps Parker company. His two closest friends, Louis and Angel, are rough men, unafraid to use force as needed, but also fiercely loyal to Parker. Like Parker, they are no longer young; Angel is being treated for cancer, and Louis has recently learned there is a contract out on him. And it is Parker’s dead daughter, Jennifer, that comes to Louis to warn him. Jennifer is also a recurring character, and a dynamic one. The melding of these additional threads is done expertly and seamlessly.

Sometimes additional muscle is needed, often for the purpose of guarding someone involved in the storyline, and that is when the Fulci brothers are called in. The Fulci brothers are refrigerator sized men that add a unique combination of humor and satisfaction, and as with Angel and Louis, I smile whenever they reenter the narrative.

I could go on, and will do so with even the slightest encouragement, but my descriptions pale in comparison to what the novel itself does. For those that love the genre, this story, and this series, is highly recommended.

Wolvers, by Taylor Brown*****

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Taylor Brown has become one of my favorite authors. He creates believable characters and memorable plots, and his recurring themes have to do with championing the poor and dispossessed, and an urgent sense of environmentalism. My great thanks go to NetGalley, RB Media, and St. Martin’s Press for the review copies. This book is for sale now.

Trace Temple hates wolves. His family has spiraled downward since losing its New Mexico ranch, a ranch that was in the family for generations, because of a massive legal penalty incurred by shooting an endangered wolf. It’s legal to kill a wolf that has preyed on one’s livestock, but the circumstances under which that can be done are very specific ones. Trace’s father thought he was shooting the wolf that had eaten his sheep, but he accidentally shot the wrong wolf, and it cost him and his family everything. The patriarch went to prison, and Trace’s mother developed an addiction that has become all consuming. So when some sketchy characters approach Trace and propose to hire him to shoot One-Eleven, the legendary alpha of a wolf pack that ranchers have long hated, he’s all in. But an experience that occurs while he’s on the hunt causes him to change his mind.

Once Trace is out of the running, the organization hires someone else, a man called Murdoch. Murdoch wants to kill the wolf, and he wouldn’t mind killing Trace, too.

The story starts a bit slow, then gathers steam as it goes. The Gila wilderness where all of this takes place is resonantly depicted, and given that nearly everything that Brown has written to this point is set in the Appalachians or some other part of the American South, this is all the more impressive.  The dialogue pops! There aren’t many characters in this story, and the two-legged characters that get the most ink are males; it’s all the more amazing, then, that Brown’s respect for women shines through, and it does so naturally. By the last quarter of this story, nobody could have kept me from finishing it.

There’s some gore here; the story could not have been told authentically without it. Humans get hurt, and some get dead, and so do wolves; but none of the damage is superfluous or titillating. And I loved the ending.

Brown explains what’s real and what’s fictional at the end of the book, and he even includes a two page bibliography for those interested in the subject matter.

I was lucky enough to have both the digital and audio versions of this story, and it’s the first time I’ve listened to one of Brown’s books. Ramiz Monsef does an outstanding job as narrator, and for that reason, I recommend this format for those that like audio books. But whatever your preference is, this novel is highly recommended.

The Red Queen, by Martha Grimes**

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What a shame. I was initially delighted to see a new installment of this long running series, but something has gone badly wrong here. Nevertheless, my thanks go to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

The Richard Jury series was wildly successful for decades; I first began reading it in the 1990s. I was pleased to see the familiar characters, particularly Wiggins, the hypochondriacal assistant to our protagonist, as well as Jury’s friend Melrose Plant—with a brief showing of Plant’s domineering and pretentious Aunt Agatha—and Cyril the Cat, the feline that makes Jury’s boss apoplectic, yet is never truly banished. And that’s about all of the joy I found here at all.

Was there an editor involved at any point in this process? Because it sure doesn’t look like it. What a miserable jumble of elements. I couldn’t tell who was coming and who was going. At first I thought it might just be me, so I backtracked, but…nope.

I had access to an audio galley, and if there had been anything here to save, the reader probably could have done it, but the reader couldn’t rewrite the book.

Diehard fans, stay away from this thing. It will break your heart.

The Tree of Light and Flowers, by Thomas Perry****

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The Tree of Light and Shadows is the eleventh and final entry in the iconic Jane Whitefield series by Thomas Perry.  My thanks go to NetGalley and The Mysterious Press for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

For those unfamiliar, Jane Whitefield is a Seneca Indian woman with a past avocation of helping people that need to disappear. The person in question might be a woman running from an abusive relationship; an innocent person that’s inadvertently run afoul of the mafia or some other dangerous group or individual; or someone that has been wrongfully convicted of a crime. Jane combines her Native tracking skills with modern methods of blending in or hiding away. However, in recent years she’s given it up, eschewing the danger for a normal life with her husband, who is a physician, and their baby girl, May in Amherst, New York.

However, the universe has other plans for her right now. Clare, a young Indian girl who has stabbed her rapist, has learned that she is wanted for murder. The dead man was Caucasian, and he moved in powerful circles. Knowing she is unlikely to get a fair shake in an Oklahoma courtroom, she heads for New York to find the distant relative that she’s heard will help people like her.

At the same time, a Russian woman named Magda has been hired by someone with a vendetta to find and kill Jane.

The dual storylines are deftly handled, which doesn’t surprise me, since our author is Thomas Perry. But there is one misstep that happens early on that niggles at me for the rest of the book. When Clare finds Jane, Jane decides the girl is too young to be established on her own, so she tells her husband that she wants Clare to remain with them. Clare will go to school and help with the baby. And then—here it comes—she runs out to do errands and leaves the baby with Clare! Would someone as seasoned and astute as Jane leave her infant daughter in the care of someone that might be attacked by people from her past, and do so before the girl has been in her home for even 48 hours? I find this so jarring that I am unable to entirely forget about it for the duration of the novel.

Nevertheless, the book holds my interest, and I look forward to my session reading it each day. When the conclusion is near, I can’t walk away from it until I see how it ends. This doesn’t happen often. I am lucky enough to have been given access to both the audio and digital review copies. I haven’t been able to learn who the narrator is, but whoever he is, he’s good.

I just read of Perry’s sudden death while writing this review. He was such a force within the world of mystery writers that I can hardly believe it. While this book wasn’t the best thing he ever wrote, it is still quite good.

The Hadacol Boogie, by James Lee Burke*****

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The Hadacol Boogie is the 25th in the Dave Robicheaux series, and in some regards, it is the best. My great thanks go to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

All of the books in this series boast complex plots and resonant characters. Particularly rich is the relationship between Dave and his former cop partner, Clete Purcel, whom he has known since early childhood. In most stories, Clete is a loose cannon—the reason he is no longer a cop, but a private eye—and Dave is his moderating influence.  “For whatever reason, Clete could not resist swatting a hornet’s nest wherever he went.“  But this story presents a shift, in which Dave is not fully in control of his own behavior. I have never seen anyone else, whether writing fiction or nonfiction, refer to a “dry drunk,” which is when a recovering alcoholic, without having consumed alcohol, exhibits the behaviors of a drunk, with terrible impulse control and bouts of rage. Dave does some of that here, and Clete is the one to rein him in.

But that isn’t the greatest thing about this story, to be honest. I’m ready to be done with mysteries involving alcoholic protagonists, and so Burke’s excellent writing skills prevent me from throwing up my hands or rolling my eyes, but the “dry drunk” isn’t a compelling part of the narrative for me. No, apart from the fact that Burke is a compelling craftsman—the Denver Post once called him “America’s best writer”—this particular novel is interesting to me because Burke has, at last, developed a female character that doesn’t fit into the Madonna-whore dichotomy that marks most of his earlier work. (An earlier exception is Dave’s boss, Helen, but it feels as if Burke is cheating a little bit there. I enjoy reading about Helen, but it’s clear that the one and only reason she isn’t dying to hop in bed with Dave, like every other female character has, or has wanted to, is because she is a lesbian.) Valerie Benoit is Dave’s new partner. It doesn’t take long for us to be aware that Detective Benoit has a thing for Dave. She’s young, he’s 60, but damn, he’s such a hot guy. At this point I’m ready to toss my reader across the room. Please, no! No! But the story doesn’t follow the trajectory that other women tend to do in Robicheaux’s books. Benoit wants Dave badly, yes, and I wish he’d left that out of this, but he didn’t. The thing that makes this story different is that Benoit is developed as a character should be; her love for Robicheaux isn’t all that we learn about her, nor necessarily the most important. And she and Dave don’t land in bed.

How cool is it for a highly successful writer to show this kind of growth when he’s past 80? I am so damn impressed, and I hope that we continue to see Benoit, not as his wife or his lover, but as a separate character with an independent identity.

I confess that I have never understood the culture of the place where this story unfolds; there are social formalities and intricacies mentioned that simply don’t apply in 2026 Seattle. I suspect these niceties also apply to the author, so it’s just as well I haven’t met him; I have no doubt I’d stick my foot in it, probably sooner rather than later.

Like the other books in this series, this one will appeal most to readers that lean a bit to the left, and that enjoy a literary mystery. There’s plenty of action here, but those that don’t want descriptive settings and allegory should probably go find themselves something else to read.

This book can certainly be read as a standalone, but it will resonate even more to the faithful that have read some or all of the series, as it does build on earlier events. Highly recommended.

Nash Falls, by David Baldacci**

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David Baldacci is a veteran mystery writer, but the Walter Nash series is brand new. I was not one of his faithful readers, but I wasn’t sure why, exactly; perhaps in the past, I’d tried picking up one of his books, become distracted by something else, and not gone back to it. So when I was approached by NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing to read and review the first book in this series, I welcomed the opportunity. My thanks go to them even though I didn’t come away enthralled.

Our premise is this: Walter Nash is a high placed executive. He’s courteous and loving, and he works way too many hours at Sybaritic Investments. However, following his father’s funeral, Nash is approached by the FBI. Unbeknownst to him, Sybaritic serves as a money launderer. There’s a lot of money involved. Nash can work with the FBI to expose the two top criminals—his boss, Rhett, and his boss’s boss, Victoria Steers, who heads an international criminal syndicate. Or, he can go down with the ship after the Feds move in, and that will mean a great deal of jail time.

This story reads like the fever dream of a nerdy guy that wishes he were a mean, lean fighting machine. Good ole Walt would never commit an act of violence of any kind, but now, gosh, shucks, he just has to. He gets a new name, is sent out to train himself in martial arts and every other sort of physical badassery; his head is shaved, and it and nearly every other part of his physique is covered in tattoos. The new Walt is bad, bad, bad, and darn, isn’t this fun?

Meanwhile, let’s look at the female characters in this tale. His daughter, whom he loved but I did not—entitled, wealthy brat—dies. The bad guys get her, and that becomes his justification for everything that follows. (This happens early on.) His wife, it turns out, has been sleeping around and isn’t all that attached to him, despite the vast resources he has placed at her very fingertips. Victoria Steers, the boss lady, is a sociopath, ordering people tortured and/or killed without her pulse quickening. It’s just business. And then we have two side characters, Walt’s stepmother—also immoral, having slept with Walt while married to his dad—is one, and the other is Rhett’s little sister, who is intellectually disabled. In short, we have a number of women that have no redeeming qualities, and none that are both capable and decent.

So, what’s not to love here? (Eye roll.)

The end of the book isn’t an ending, and while I get it that Baldacci is starting a new series and wants to keep readers invested, I’m ready to climb off the bus. Now that I know this author’s general trajectory, I know enough.

So if you enjoy this sort of thing, don’t care even a little about plausible plots and scenarios, and have little enough regard for women that you don’t mind these Madonna/whore characters, then good for you. Pull out your plastic and dive into this series. As for me, I need a shower and some mouthwash.

Jigsaw, by Jonathan Kellerman****

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Can you think of a mystery series that is as long running and reliably entertaining as the Alex Delaware series, by Jonathan Kellerman? This is his 41st, and it’s going strong. My thanks go to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the review copy. This book will be available to the public February 3, 2026.

After so many installments, the regular characters in this series feel like old friends. When homicide detective Milo Sturgis careens into the kitchen of his longtime bestie, Dr. Alex Delaware and raids the fridge like a huge, gay version of Dagwood Bumstead, I can’t help smiling. Milo, Alex, it’s good seeing you again! Most episodes begin this way. Unlike many well-established series, however, we don’t take a great deal of time for character development, because there are three murders here and they cannot wait!

The first appears to be obvious; a young woman is found murdered in her home, and the cigarette butts nearby bear the DNA of her boyfriend. But it’s not as it seems. Next, an elderly woman—a former cop—is missing, and a welfare check finds her dead, dismembered, in her freezer. Yikes! The chief suspect, her developmentally disabled daughter, is later also found dead. And the woman in the freezer is a colleague, known to Milo.

The interesting part about this one is that the victim, the former cop, is a hoarder. Who knew? Nothing about her suggested that her home would be jammed full of trash, but here we are. Piles of newspaper, food wrappers, mouse droppings, paper sacks full of money, magazines…more bags full of money…

Huh?

Like all of the books in this series, this is a quick read. Partly that’s because it’s fast paced and interesting, and partly it’s because it’s chock full of snappy dialogue. Whereas I miss the humor that is frequently injected into these stories, I appreciate the trend away from the twisted sexual situations that appeared for a few years. All told, this is an excellent entry into a series that has never failed to engage me, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to you.

Wildwood, by Amy Pease*****

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“It was in the ratio of good to bad that monsters were distinguished from decent people.”

My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

This book is the second in a new series by Amy Pease; this is her sophomore debut. I didn’t read the first, so I can tell you with certainty that you don’t have to, either. There are frequent enough references to the backstory here that I could follow it just fine, yet I also wondered why I was invited to read this one without having read the first. I’m over it. This is a terrific series, and when the third installment is written and available, I’ll be ready for it.

The setting is an idyllic small town in Wisconsin. “There was something in the water in Shaky Lake that turned even the toughest people into extras in a Hallmark movie.” Yet things are not as tranquil as they appear. A woman is reported missing, and the authorities that enter find blood spattered all over the walls, pooled on the mattress. Why would anyone do this to a young woman that lived alone in a singlewide trailer? But soon we see that nothing is as it appears.

Our protagonist is Deputy Sheriff Eli North, a recently deployed vet recovering from PTSD and alcoholism. I cringe when I read the latter, burned out as I am on alcoholic crime busters, but happily, booze is not at the forefront of this mystery. The sheriff, Eli’s boss, is also his mother. And this is a breath of fresh air; for a while, it seemed as if every mother in every book was a terrible person.

This is Eli’s investigation, but before we know it, the Feds are involved, too. Turns out that the missing woman—she of the blood-covered trailer—was also a confidential informant of the FBI. From there, the story unfurls in a way I find captivating. The ratio of crime-solving to character development is perfect. Whereas one has to suspend disbelief a little bit, it’s not more so than in most mysteries, and I like the way the ending plays out.

Highly recommended to mystery lovers.

The Briars, by Sarah Crouch*****

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In 2024 author Sarah Crouch made her novelistic debut with Middletide, a hauntingly atmospheric mystery set in her native Pacific Northwest. This year she’s produced The Briars, which shows that where Crouch is concerned, there’s no such thing as a sophomore slump.

My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the review copy. This book will be available to the public January 13, 2026.

Annie is an Oregon game warden, but a ruined relationship sends her packing across the border of Washington State to the isolated hamlet of (fictional) Lake Lumin. There she finds friendship and a measure of solace, as well as an unexpected connection with the area’s mystery man. But all of it threatens to come crashing down when a teenage girl is brutally murdered and left in the woods near his property.

I enjoyed Crouch’s debut novel, but I love this one even more. Crouch depicts the wilderness of Washington State flawlessly, and I can practically smell the evergreen trees and damp, decaying bark as I read. But The Briars is even more about character, and I feel I know Annie, the mystery man known as Daniel, and local ranger Jake intimately. I am sure by about the halfway mark that I know exactly whodunit, but I tell myself that I don’t mind because the narrative is so compelling. In the end, the joke is on me; I don’t already know who killed that girl, and yet the solution makes sense.

I highly recommend this outstanding mystery to all that love the genre.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7803351642