Tag Archives: crime fiction

The Hunter, by Tana French*****

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In 2020, Tana French gave us The Searcher, the first in the Cal Hooper detective series. By that time I was already an established fan, but I loved that book particularly well, for reasons I’ll revisit in a moment. Now we have the second in the series, The Hunter, and if anything can reduce this crusty old English teacher to a blushing fan girl, this is it. Two books in, this is already on my short list of favorite series. My thanks go to NetGalley and the Penguin Group for the review copy. This book will be available to the public Tuesday, March 5, 2024.

The series debut introduced the characters, with the protagonist being a retired Chicago cop that found this tiny Irish village on vacation and, needing a new home far from his ex-wife, yet affordable, discovered a bargain fixer of a home and decided to stay. The story’s main problem revolved around a nearly feral tween that kept popping up at Cal’s place. The scrappy little stinker that was relieving Cal of food, occasionally, and doing other unsettling things turned out to be a girl; her name is Teresa, but she’s known as Trey. Her family was in dire straights following the departure of Trey’s father; her brother had left, intending to return, but never had. The mystery was where Trey’s brother had gone, what had become of him, and why. In the interim, she became greatly attached to Cal, who enjoyed her company and taught her some woodworking skills, but also kept a careful distance, lest rumors start and grow.

Now Trey is a bit older, and she is more civilized. She is close to both Cal and Lena, the local woman that Cal has been seeing. But as life settles into a civilized hum, one that would be comfortable had climate change not created a drought that has local farmers at the near end of their wits and their bank accounts, the unexpected happens once again: Johnny Reddy, Trey’s no-account father, has returned. Cal is prepared to step back, if need be, in case Trey wishes to bond with her actual dad rather than himself. Meanwhile, Johnny vows to visit Cal with some local moonshine, and “make a night of it.”

“Trey says nothing. If he does that, she’ll get Cal’s rifle and blow his fucking foot off, and see can he make his way down the mountain to Cal’s after that.”

Johnny never succeeds in bonding with Cal, who doesn’t like the look of him. “Johnny gives him the urge to pat him down and ask him where he’s headed. There are guys like that, who flunk the sniff test just going to the store; it’s a good cop’s job to work out whether they’re actually doing something hinky, or whether it’s just that they will be sooner or later, probably sooner.”

The village is a tiny one, and outsiders are few. Everyone in the vicinity knows that Johnny’s back; everyone wonders what he’s up to. They haven’t long to wait; he’s brought a man with him, one whose family once lived here, or so he says; and the man is interested in seeing if there’s gold on some of the local properties. “He has a rich man’s smile, easy and understated, the smile of a man who isn’t required to put in effort.”  Now the question is whether this “plastic Paddy” is a shyster trying to rip off the locals, or if he is someone that Johnny is seeking to fleece. Meanwhile, Trey has a different agenda, a private one.

The thing that makes this story so much better than your standard mystery is the characterization. If you are in search of a thriller that is all page-turning action, this isn’t your book. However, if you love a layered story with complex, convincing characters, this is for you. I said in my previous review of the first in the series that Trey is what makes an otherwise solid story a golden one, and that’s even truer here. One could even argue that it’s really her series, with Cal existing as scaffolding. Time will tell.

In particular, though, anyone that works with, or has worked with at risk youth cannot, must not miss this story. French has taken hold of my heartstrings hard, and I don’t want her to let go. Highly recommended.

Starter Villain, by John Scalzi****

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I’m not going to write a full review for this one; my spouse got it for me for Christmas, so I don’t owe anyone anything. I will tell you, though, that it’s just what I needed, funny, warm, and of course, not even close to realistic. After all, it’s fantasy. The level of unreality is well crafted and consistent within the narrative, and it’s hugely inventive. This is my first John Scalzi novel, and I will read him again in a heartbeat.

Dogboy Vs. Catfish, by Luke Garcias*****

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“Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap,

Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap.

Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap;

Dirty deeds and they’re done dirt cheap.”

AC/DC

This may have been the biggest sleeper of 2023. Dogboy vs. Catfish is a true thriller by Luke Gracias, one that grabbed me by the front of my shirt at the beginning and didn’t let me go till it was done with me. My thanks go to NetGalley for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

A couple of Goodreads friends raved about this book, and right away, I was curious. The title: not your usual formulation. Then there’s the setting; I haven’t read many books set in Australia, and fewer Australian mysteries and thrillers than fingers on my hand. And finally, the book’s premise: a well-to-do, famous, glamorous woman turns up at a lawyer’s office, and she’s excited, because she’s been married to this man she doesn’t care much about for nearly 18 months, and in Australia, that is the magic time length that will entitle her to take him to the cleaners, particularly with regard to her daughter’s support. He has a lot of money, but it’s about to be hers. She expects this attorney will be thrilled, because what a payday it will be! Sadly for her, the attorney has principles and scruples, and she backs away from the case.

But then the man—Dogboy, of course—turns up missing. He’s told his best friend that he is certain his wife is going to leave him and take almost everything, and he’s not sure what he can do about it; now he is nowhere to be found. Is he alive? Nobody seems to know.

In investigating the man and his estranged wife, the internet darling named Catfish Kelly, it soon becomes clear she is mixed up in money laundering and drugs. The search takes the cops to Thailand, where their informant is literally shot to death before their very eyes. And all of these things happen early, so I am giving nothing away. The book goes quickly at the start, then ramps up to an even more heart pounding pace.

It’s difficult, with a thriller that moves so rapidly, to find a way to establish characters. Nobody here is a truly dynamic character, but we don’t need a lot of character development. What is most admirable is the lightning quick way Gracias bonds us to Dogboy, whom we mostly don’t even see. We know three things about him. First, we know that he married a terrible woman who’s about to bleed his assets out from under him. Second, we learn early on that he is concerned that his investors’ funds will likewise be siphoned away, and to prevent this happening, he returns all of their investment moneys to them before he disappears, so that he will be Catfish’s only victim. And third, we know that he is unusually appealing to dogs, to the point where dogs that do not know him and have never met him, nonetheless seek him out, and also try to protect him when danger is present.

With just these three facts, given to us briefly, we cannot not love Dogboy. I’ve never seen this done so fast and so smoothly.

I know nothing whatsoever about Australian law or its justice system, and perhaps that helps, too. At one point, the investigators are burning through what appears to be a lot of the state’s resources without obvious or immediate results, and just as one of my eyebrows lifts and I begin to think that this could never…I realize that I don’t know whether it could happen or not. Probably not in the U.S. Most likely not in England. Australia? What the hell do I know about Australia? So instead, I just take the author’s word for it.

There is not a single misstep in this story, no slow part, no inconsistency. The ending is enormously satisfying. For all that love the genre, this book is highly recommended.

Unnatural Death, by Patricia Cornwell*****

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Unnatural Death is the twenty-seventh installment in the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell, and it’s as good as they get. My thanks go to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the review copy. You can get it now.

For those not conversant with the series, Scarpetta is a medical examiner for the state of Virginia. She’s moved around over the course of the series, decamped to Boston, and come back. So now she’s in her old stomping grounds, but all is not well. The obnoxious, obstructive secretary she was saddled with in the last book, a miserable woman that blamed her for the ouster of the corrupt man that came before, has been—finally—fired, but somehow, she is back in a different government position in the same building, along with the corrupt guy she likes working with, so it’s tense.

Our other permanent characters are Pete Marino, who’s worked with Kay forever and is now married to her sister, Dorothy, who’s a hot mess; Benton Wesley, Kay’s enigmatic husband, a forensic psychologist that works in extremely high level situations that he can’t tell Kay about, even when they have a bearing on her life; and Lucy, her adult niece whom she has raised as her own, and who is the daughter of Dorothy. Lucy is a wunderkind, a tech wizard employed by the FBI, sometimes on loan to the CIA.

I won’t go into the premise for this installment because you can get that in the promotional blurb, but I will tell you that by the ten percent mark I was riveted, and before the halfway point my notes say, “I hate being away from this thing.” A shocking development occurs that is much more impactful to those of us that have followed the series from the start. I have heard other reviewers say that they used to read the series, then lost the habit, so I will say this: if you have read most of the series but missed a book here or there, you can still get the full measure of this thriller. If you just missed the most recent one, that’s okay. But if you go into this book cold, your very first time reading a Scarpetta book, some of the magic will be missing. Perhaps you will read it and be impressed enough to go back and binge read the whole series. It’s not a bad idea!

Any author that writes a long running, successful series like this has to flesh out the main characters to keep readers’ attention. For the first few books, pure plot-based adrenaline rushes are possible, but at some point, there’s going to be a credibility issue continuing that way. I would have difficulty believing that a forensic coroner had been kidnapped by bad guys and hurled into the back of a vehicle, bound and gagged, even once, but when it happens over and over, I’m done and I’m done. Cornwell does the smart thing instead, developing crises that are sometimes more about others in Kay’s family, but that nevertheless spill over onto her in a big way. In doing this, she forces us to examine questions that have no easy answers. For example, if an extremely dangerous development comes up that could affect you or your family, but it is also a matter of national security, and one family member knows, should they break the vows of their office in order to let you or other family members know? Or should they keep it ambiguous, along the lines of, “Maybe you should stay home today?” What if two know, and you don’t?

One way or the other, this story is a wild ride. The tension is occasionally broken up by Marino’s fixation on Bigfoot. He’s obsessed, and it cracks me up when we’re worried about killer drones and enemies unseen, and then Marino pipes up about the big ole footprint he found in the woods. For quite awhile I have wondered why Cornwell hasn’t been made a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America. Hopefully, this outstanding novel will serve as a clarion call. Highly recommended.

Collateral Damage, by J.A. Jance****

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Collateral Damage is the 17th book in the Ali Reynolds mystery series by J.A. Jance. My thanks go to Net Galley and Gallery Books for the review copy; this book is for sale now.

As fans of the series know, Ali is married to B. Simpson, and together they run a small but increasingly prominent cybersecurity firm called High Noon, appropriately named given their Arizona home base. In this installment, B. is on his way to the airport when he’s run off the road. He and the man driving him are badly injured, and the police take the lazy way out, assuming that Ali is behind the crime. Who could better benefit from his death? The business is worth a lot of money, not to mention B’s fat life insurance policy. Soon Ali and her trusted High Noon employees investigate, assisted once more by Frigg, the nearly sentient AI that can go where no one is supposed to go, and find out things that aren’t legally obtainable.

Jance is a veteran mystery writer, and she’s produced bestselling novels for decades. This time around, the novel is better than what most authors can do on their best days, and yet it’s not Jance’s most riveting story. The pacing is on the sedate side, and it’s not until we are well and truly at the climax that it feels urgent. I suspect this is because the story’s protagonist, Ali, and the other repeating characters that I have enjoyed so much over the past few years are sidelined here. Once Frigg ferrets out the critical information that suggests that the crime is the work of a longtime serial killer, Ali provides the cops whose unsolved cases are involved, and we mostly follow them, alternately with the baddie.

A side note, but one worth mentioning: Jance has a couple of long-running series that are set in Arizona, and there have been times when I’ve reported that I dislike the tinge of stereotyping that I have seen in the way her Latinx and Black side characters are depicted. I feel as if she’s turned that around here, and having registered complaints in the past, it’s only fair to recognize that this time, she’s done well.

Fans of the series will want to read this in order to enjoy continuity between the last, Unfinished Business, and whatever she writes next. For new readers, I advise beginning the series with number 11, Clawback. Going back to the first entry—which of course, you can do—requires reading the series before it develops into a strong vehicle. If you start the series here instead, you will have the information you need to move forward, and the quality is as uniformly excellent as any other series I have read.

I recommend this book to Jance’s readers, and I recommend it to new readers as suggested above.

Back to the Garden, by Laurie R. King*****

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Laurie R. King is best known for her Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes historical detective novels, but I have long preferred her contemporary mysteries. Back to the Garden is her latest of these, and it is excellent. My thanks go to Net Galley and Random House Ballantine for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Our protagonist is Raquel Liang, a detective based in San Francisco. When a long-dead body is found in the garden of the Gardener Estate—a famous mansion and grounds that sound faintly reminiscent of Hearst Castle—Liang, who is working on a task force to find and identify victims of serial killer Michael Johnston, becomes involved in the case.

Rob Gardener is the heir to the estate, and he had clashed often and bitterly with his grandfather before his demise in the 1970s. Upon learning of his windfall, Gardener turned the manse into a commune, with murals on the walls of what were once imposing, grandiose rooms and vegetable gardens where more formal floral ones previously stood. Now the place is being restored, and as gardeners work to clear a thicket of overgrown hedge, a huge statue topples over, exposing the bones of someone long interred there.

Meanwhile, in a hospital in the big city, convicted serial murderer Michael Johnston lies dying. During the same period that the commune reigned, Johnston was spiriting girls and young women off so that he could murder them. Improved technology has provided a number of leads, but the window in which the cops can extract information from the old bastard is rapidly closing. Liang suspects that the body found on the estate, which dates back to the same time that Johnston was slaying women in the area, may be one of his, and so she makes frequent visits to learn as much about the place and its residents, past and present, as possible.

The intriguing bit about this mystery is that the members of the commune, other than Rob himself, didn’t use their birth names, and it makes them tricky to trace. With names like Meadow, Pig, and Daisy, they could be just about anybody. Is one of them the body beneath the statue?

King does a fine job of segueing from past to present and back again, and of juggling a moderately large number of characters. As I read, I never have to flip back to be reminded of who someone is. The reader should know, however, that this is not a thriller. It isn’t written in a way to grab you by the hair and make your pulse pound. The pace is a bit more laid back, but for some of us, that is a pleasure. I never lost interest, and I could read this thing while eating my lunch without gagging.

There’s a good deal of period nostalgia, and so I suspect that the greatest appeal will be to Boomers.

Highly recommended.

The Family, by Naomi Krupitsky****-*****

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4.5 stars, rounded upward.

The cover grabbed me first, two women in vintage sweaters—no faces even—and the title written in Godfather font. Oh, heck yes. I need to read this thing. The author is a newbie about whom I know nothing, so I know it may be a recipe for disappointment. I’ve taken review copies this way in the past, and have regretted it, because of course, the cover doesn’t speak to the author’s ability. But old school mobster books are fun, and they’re thin on the ground these days, so I hold my breath as I take a chance…and hit the jackpot!

This is one of the year’s best works of historical fiction, and you should get it and read it. My thanks go to Net Galley and Putnam for the review copy. This book is for sale now.

Antonia and Sofia grow up together; their fathers are both mobsters, and their houses share a wall. Not only are they thrown together for Family events from early childhood forward, but their peers ostracize them in elementary school, their family’s reputations having preceded them, so for several years, they are each other’s only option. But it’s enough.

Our story starts in 1928, and it ends in 1948. We follow the girls through childhood, adolescence, and into their early adult years. At the outset, their fathers are best friends, until Carlos, Antonia’s daddy, starts skimming, covertly building a nest egg in the hope of making a new start far away with his little family, doing an honest job, and leaving the Family behind.  His theft is, of course, detected, and he disappears; Joey, Sofia’s father, is promoted, and told to take care of Carlos’s widow and daughter. Thus, we have a clear, concrete reminder, right up front, that this is an ugly, violent business. The author’s note says she wants to demonstrate the strange way that violence and love can coexist, and she does that and more.

Those readers seeking a mob story full of chasing and shooting and scheming will do well to look elsewhere. We do find these things, of course, primarily in the second half, but the story’s focus is entirely on Sofia and Antonia. Whereas setting is important—and done nicely—the narrative’s fortune rises or sinks on character development, and Krupitsky does it right. These women become so real to me that toward the end, when some ominous foreshadowing suggests that devastating events are around the corner, I put the book down, stop reading it or anything else for half a day, and brood. I complain to my spouse. I complain to my daughter. And then, knowing that it’s publication day and I have an obligation, I return to face the music and finish the book. (And no. I’m not telling.)

My only concern, in the end, is a smallish smattering of revisionism that occurs during the last twenty percent of the novel. Knowing what gender roles and expectations are like in that time and place, I have to say that, while I can see one intrepid, independent female character stepping out of the mold, having multiple women do it to the degree I see it here is a reach.

Nevertheless, this is a badass book by a badass new talent, and Naomi Krupitsky proves that she is a force to be reckoned with. Get this book! Read it now.

A Small Town, by Thomas Perry*****

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This is a super fun read. An entire small town is undone by a prison break that leaves so many townsfolk dead that those that remain mostly just move away. The chief of police is a woman that lost her family and her boyfriend, and she decides to take herself on a black op to find the guys that did the killing and remove them from the map. The town council quietly backs her by steering a Federal grant aimed toward law enforcement toward her project.

I got the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons, and Christina Delaine does a sensational job as narrator. Cops that act outside the law are a sore spot right now, especially within the US, but Perry and Delaine drop me right into a make-believe time and place. It helps that the bad guys are Caucasian. I also like having the protagonist be a tall woman, bucking the trend toward tiny-firecracker female cops and detectives. The things she does on her mission seem more plausible for a tall woman, and Perry doesn’t knock himself out to make her seem adorable. In addition, there’s never a slow spot from start to finish, and never a moment when the mood is ruined by a detail done wrong. It’s about as perfect a thriller as you can get. Highly recommended, particularly in audio.

The Unwilling, by John Hart*****

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This one was worth the wait! John Hart’s new historical mystery, The Unwilling, is simply magnificent. My thanks go to Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press for the galleys; this book will be available to the public February 2, 2021. Those that love excellent fiction should get it and read it.

The French family is troubled. The father is a cop in their small hometown in North Carolina; the mother, Gabrielle, has some sort of emotional disability. Bipolar? Anxiety disorder? Who can say. All we know is that her nerves are shot, and she loses it quickly and easily. The couple have three sons; the first two are twins, but Robert, the golden one, is dead, killed in Vietnam. Jason went to ‘nam too, and rumors say that he killed 29 people there in his first year. He is rumored to be bad news and has already done a stretch in prison. That leaves the youngest, Gibson, known as Gibby. Both parents are possessive of him. As adolescence sets in, it begins to chafe, the way he is overprotected, and now that he’s a high school senior, he’d like a little more room.

And then Jason is released, and he comes home. He isn’t welcome at the family manse, so he stays elsewhere, but he wants to spend some time with Gibby before he blows town.

The title is a chewy one. Initially, I associate it with the daredevil stunt that some high school seniors—mostly boys—consider a rite of passage. It involves jumping into the quarry from a very high bluff; make the jump wrong, and you’ll be dead when you land. Gibby doesn’t jump. Jason does.

The basic framework of the story has to do with crimes Jason has done time for, and others that are committed while he’s in town. A girl he’s spent time with is viciously tortured and murdered, and many in the community make assumptions. But in reality—and we know this early on—he is being framed by a man known as “X” in prison. Truth be told, X is actually the weakest element of the story, and he’s mostly superfluous, but since this is supposed to be a thriller, the thread involving him adds suspense, particularly at the end. The climax is something else again.

But the most interesting aspect of the narrative has to do with the family, and by extension, one could say, all families. Over the course of time, a family’s story is told, and eventually labels develop. The small town setting in a pre-internet era makes this especially true, since most people’s interactions are limited to those that live in the same vicinity. And so, Robert French is the tragic hero, cut down in his prime while fighting for his country; Gibby is the baby of the family, a good kid, a good student; and then there’s Jason. Not long after the murder, Detective French speaks with the medical examiner about Tyra’s murder, and he asks the ME what would make someone do this; not just murder, but torture and mutilate. And the ME tells him that although it’s not the accepted clinical expression, “People like that are born wrong.”  And though French is reluctant to say such a thing about his own son, he wonders if he should accept this as true. His wife, mother of all three sons, tells him, “Gibby is all that matters.”

But as the story progresses, we see that there’s more to this story; a lot more. Jason has simply given up trying to defend himself. Refusing to do so is why he spent time in prison. When the world gives up on you, why try? To be sure, he’s no innocent, sad-eyed puppy. He’s seen things, and he’s done things. But people are complicated, and when we try to drop them into neatly labeled boxes, we shut ourselves off from learning details that don’t fit the picture we’ve painted.

For me, this story was less about solving a crime, and more about the characters. I was thrilled that the main story wasn’t about Robert. I’ve read too many novels lately that focus on the dead sibling, and it’s becoming trite. But Hart is a seasoned author, and he doesn’t drop into that well-worn channel. Instead, we see why various well-crafted, complex characters think and act as they do. Reading it, I find myself thinking about my sisters, and the small ways in which we developed labels as children and young adults; happily, none of us was labeled the bad seed, but if we’d been boys…? And I think also of my own children. For a brief, terrible time, I saw my eldest as that person, the one dragging his sister into trouble. Later, much later, I learned it was actually the opposite, but he figured it was better if one of them was still in good standing, and so he took blame that wasn’t entirely his. It’s not a great feeling, but at the same time, my own experience made this story more interesting, and I’m willing to bet there are a great many other readers that will read this book and think about their own families as well.

There are appealing side characters here, and the most compelling is Gibby’s best friend, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who wants to make good.

So who is the unwilling one? Is it Gibby, for not jumping off the bluff? Is it Gabrielle, for not entertaining the possibility that her son, Jason, deserves more than she is willing to give him? Is it Detective French, for not being willing to completely give up on him? You can take this title in a lot of different directions.

Hart’s literary prowess shines here. It’s not always an easy read; during the more violent patches, I took it in small bites. I received both the print and audio galleys, and I moved back and forth between them, leaning more toward the audio, whose reader, Kevin Stillwell, does an outstanding job; but at times I forgot something, or wanted to check a detail or highlight a quote, and then I dove into my digital review copy. You can go either way without fear of disappointment.

Highly recommended.

The Searcher, by Tana French*****

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I was bewildered at first why my fellow reviewers are so stingy with their ratings for this novel, which I fucking LOVE, but then I realized, it’s because of expectations. Those that are looking for a seat-of-your-pants thriller or heavy, heart-thudding suspense won’t find a lot of it here. However, if you love strong contemporary fiction and/or literary fiction, here it is.

I was turned down for the galley, and so I checked out the audio version from Seattle Bibliocommons as soon as it became available. (Serious wait list; no surprise there.) I finished it this evening, and although I have other books on board, this is the one I keep thinking about. I’m particularly taken with the character named Trey, who is at least as important here as the protagonist.

That said, once again, this is not from the Dublin Street series, which I also love; it’s a stand alone novel, and an excellent one at that. I don’t want to give spoilers, but I will say this: thank you, Ms. French, for not hurting the beagles.

The narrator does a splendid job.

Highly recommended.