Louise Penny: The Nature of the Beast

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natureofthebeastLouise Penny’s gift is to take bits of reality and weave it into her setting and characters and make the reader really feel what she is feeling. In this novel, her eleventh in her remarkable Inspector Gamache series, the action starts, as it always does, in tiny Three Pines. The villagers are frequently disturbed or annoyed or even amused by the tall tales of young Laurent Lepage, who is always emerging from the woods with a fantastical story.

When Laurent claims he’s seen a giant gun in the woods and that it has a monster inscribed on it, no one believes him but when he goes missing and he’s later found dead of an apparent accident things turn more serious. On a hunch, Gamache calls his son in law Jean Guy, who is still with the Surete and tells him he thinks little Laurent’s death was no accident. This is a mystery novel—of course it wasn’t. read more

Anna Lee Huber: A Study in Death

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astudyindeathAnna Lee Huber’s fourth novel featuring Lady Darby, a well known portrait painter and widowed wife of an anatomist, finds our Kiera awaiting the outcome of her sister’s pregnancy, engaged, and of course stumbling over a dead body in the third chapter. Huber, as a writer, really knows how to keep things humming, and I enjoyed this book thoroughly from start to finish. Huber is deft with a good mix of romance, mystery and history, and through her two major characters, Kiera and her fiancé Sebastian Gage, she supplies a good back and forth dynamic to her storytelling. read more

Joseph Finder: Suspicion

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Suspicion_paperbackThis is the first book I’ve read by the talented Joseph Finder, who really writes a killer thriller. Some parts of this book were so suspenseful I had to remind myself I was only reading about fictional characters. There, I’ve said it, disclosed my wimp-hood, but Finder really knows how to crank up the suspense in a simple scene where a character is someplace he really, really shouldn’t be.

The story grabbed me from the opening as we join writer and single father Danny Goldman feverishly wondering how he can afford the pricey Boston private school his daughter attends, much less the $5,000 trip to Italy all the juniors go on. His tuition is late and the headmistress is happy to wish his daughter, Abby, good luck at her new school. It seems there’s no answer, until Danny discovers that Abby’s fabulously wealthy new bestie has a dad willing to foot the bill for Italy. One problem solved. read more

Linda Castillo: After the Storm

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AfterTheStormApparently, mystery writers don’t think like other people. They can see things in the mundane that create horror. As I was reading Linda Castillo’s new book, I was reminded of a store visit from Thomas Cook years ago. He was recounting the experience of watching “Little Women” with his daughter. He said when it came to the scene where one of the girls goes through the woods to deliver some cookies, he thought to himself, “Oh, this is the rape scene!” Then he remembered he was watching “Little Women.” The cookies get delivered. Cook was disappointed by the lack of drama. read more

Lauren Willig: The Other Daughter

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The-Other-DaughterThis isn’t really a mystery but it has a secret at its core, and any reader who enjoys writers like Tasha Alexander and Anna Lee Huber, who include romance in their novels, will enjoy this one. Willig writes what I would call romantic adventure stories – stories, no matter what the category, that are impossible to put down or forget.

Unlike, I think, any of Willig’s other books, this book is set entirely in the past, without an accompanying present day story line. She’s chosen the 1920’s, and she’s created a character who absolutely lives and breathes; you’ll be rooting for her, you’ll be heartbroken for her; you’re with her every step of the way. I think I’ve just described Willig’s two most salient attributes as a writer: she tells a great story, and she creates unforgettable characters. read more

Jenny Milchman: As Night Falls

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AsNightFallsJenny Milchman’s third novel is the scariest yet – so creepy, I had to keep setting it aside periodically, though that didn’t make me stop reading. And I was well rewarded in my perseverance. As the book opened, I feared it was a standard prisoners escape, hold family hostage type story, but it evolved into something far more. Milchman carefully describes the beautiful home of the Tremont family – Sandy, Ben and daughter Ivy. Thanks to an inheritance, they’ve built a gorgeous, isolated house in the Adirondack woods, a house it appears Ivy and even Sandy were reluctant to move to, though Sandy now embraces the peaceful solitude. read more

Michael Harvey: The Governor’s Wife

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governorswifeThis is a welcome return of Michael Harvey’s now virtually classic Michael Kelly series. Kelly is a Chicago P.I. who reads classical literature to relax (he loves Ovid) and the series is a lean, mean private eye juggernaut that takes no prisoners. There are very few actual private eyes left on the landscape—the remaining P.I.’s are often reluctant like Steve Hamilton’s Alex McKnight, though there are a few holdouts: Loren D. Estelman, Sue Grafton, and Sara Paretsky. All of those series are aging honorably, but the Kelly series is still in full bloom. read more

Olen Steinhauer: The Tourist and All the Old Knives

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TheTouristThe world of the spy novel can be a fascinating one. In the mystery universe murder is always lurking below the surface of our quotidian world, but it’s an anomaly, a rent in the social fabric that must be repaired. To a spy, murder is protocol, simply business as usual. Spies are soldiers fighting a patriotic war, but the battlefield is everyday life and no one wears a uniform. Only a tiny fraction of the people an agent encounters are actually hostile, but it’s the most unlikely ones that are the most deadly, especially if you’re under the impression that they are your friends. read more

Susanna Calkins: The Masque of a Murderer

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MasqueofaMurdererThese books have slowly been picking up steam and are a wonderful reading counterpart to Sam Thomas’ midwife series. Set in mid 1600’s London – where author Calkins can dig into such juicy topics as the plague and the Great Fire (see In the Charred Remains), this novel finds former chambermaid Lucy Campion working as a bookseller and printer’s apprentice, something she’s been able to do because of the massive loss of lives during the previously mentioned events. While not common for a woman at the time, it wasn’t unknown, and Calkins runs with it. read more

Jane Casey: The Kill

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TheKillAnother take on the British police novel comes from Jane Casey, whose love-life-clueless-work-life-competent Maeve Kerrigan is a fresh, memorable character. She’s young, she’s fighting tooth and nail to be taken seriously and treated equally, and she’s one of the few who gets along with her higher up, the prickly Josh Derwent.

Casey’s feminist take on the police novel is welcome and realistic – Maeve is mostly taken seriously by her boss but she’s treated in a very sexist way by Derwent, who nevertheless values her opinion and likes working with her. Higher up the chain female officers are threatened by her and Maeve handles her work life with aplomb. She’s made a pact with herself never to cry at work, no matter what happens: Josh tells her towards the end of the novel, “Don’t be that girl who cries at work.” It’s a perfect encapsulation of Maeve’s daily struggle to keep it together on the job, and reminded me of Holly Hunter’s solitary morning crying jag in the film “Broadcast News.” read more