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Hank Phillippi Ryan: Mother Daughter Sister Stranger

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Nearly twenty books in, accomplished pro Hank Phillippi Ryan can keep you entertained, squeeze your heart, make you cry, give you a bit of a scare and make the whole darn thing look easy.  But this one achieves just a little bit more, with the characters so beautifully delineated, and the family tensions and problems that gives the plot its legs so poignant, that the book had me aching to actually reach into the pages and help the compelling characters in some way.

Ryan always has a great set up – here Eliza is caring for niece Piper for a week while her sister Bea takes some time away from it all after a divorce. The problems start when the day comes for Bea to collect Piper and she doesn’t show up. At first the family rationalizes that Bea must have gotten the wrong day. The following day is the annual family “remembrance day,” when Eliza, Bea and Piper go to the cemetery to visit the grave of Eliza and Bea’s parents, who died in a plane crash many years back. Since they know Bea packed an appropriate remembrance day dress, they conclude Bea must mean to meet them there, so they head over the next morning, but, again she’s a no show. read more

Katie Tietjen: Murder in Miniature

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Maple Bishop #2

The second book in the Maple Bishop series, Murder in Miniature, finds Maple at a bit of a crossroads. Though she has started to find her place in her small town, with a thriving dollhouse business, new friends, and a new position with the local law enforcement, she isn’t quite settled. When she came out here, it was with her husband, to support his career. Maple grew up a city girl in Boston, and worked hard to earn a legal degree, something she hasn’t been able to make use of in small town Vermont. Even with all the good things going on in her life, does she truly belong? read more

Hank Phillippi Ryan: One Wrong Word

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Perhaps it’s appropriate that one of wordsmith Hank Phillippi Ryan’s best books revolves around the correct, and powerful, use of words. Her central character, Arden Ward, works for a crisis management firm, and as the book opens, she’s being fired. Even though her boss knows it isn’t true, he’s pleasing a client whose wife thinks Arden was fooling around with him. Arden is heartbroken – she loves her job – but her boss offers her a last client with a great reference to follow.  Arden agrees – she needs the reference. read more

November Book Club: The Godwulf Manuscript

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Robert B. Parker’s Spenser celebrates 50 years in 2023, with the 50th birthday book being The Godwulf Manuscript.  Our book club wanted to read a classic this month, and chose Parker over Tey, Sayers, P.D. James and Ross MacDonald (Josephine Tey’s The Franchise Affair was a close second). Is Spenser a “classic”?  At 50 years on, it’s time to evaluate.  The first review from Kirkus in 1973 said “The publishers make the comparison to Philip Marlowe (author-professor Parker did a dissertation on Chandler-Hammett) but it won’t serve him well — there’s some of the toughness and the terseness but the hat’s much too big for him and it hasn’t got the right slouch.”  Agree? Disagree?  Join us on zoom Sunday, November 13  at 2 p.m.  to join the fray. See how Parker laid out his series with this first novel, and how he set a pattern followed by many, many others, from Harlan Coben to Robert Crais to Dennis Lehane… read more

Hank Phillippi Ryan: Her Perfect Life

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This book will be published on September 14.

Hank Phillippi Ryan’s story telling style is so smooth, her books fly through your reading fingers faster than you can think, almost.  This novel may be the most emotional, heart felt story in all of Ryan’s books.  It’s the alternating story of big sister, Cassie, and little sister, Lily.  While the book opens with Lily telling the reader how perfect her sister is, it fast forwards in time to Lily’s life, which does seem actually perfect. read more

Hank Phillippi Ryan: The First to Lie

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Hank Phillippi Ryan was on the cutting edge of the new wave of what I think of as “fem jep” with a psychological edge.  Other writers like Gillian Flynn and Sophie Hannah were also early, excellent adopters of this formula.  I read many of these books – they’re a blast – but I got to thinking recently, what sets one apart from another?  Almost all of them have an insanely clever hook, and Ryan is no exception to this particular trope.

But what really, really draws me into Hank Ryan’s books is her pure empathy for her characters.  Maybe it’s her years of working as a reporter, listening and taking in other people’s stories, but however she comes by this quality in her writing, it’s an extraordinary one, and one that’s often missing from similar fem jep thrillers.  It makes you completely invested in her characters and to me, also amps up the suspense, because if you truly care about the people you are reading about, bad things happening to them are that much worse. read more