Robin Agnew

Julia Kelly: Betrayal at Blackthorn Park

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Evelyne Redfern #2

In Julia Kelly’s first book in this series, heroine Evelyne Redfern got a job as a clerk in Churchill’s war rooms only to discover a body on her very first day.  As she’d been asked by a high up family friend to “keep her eyes open,” she ends up investigating. and solves the crime. In book two, she’s already been sent north for training as a member of the ultra secret Special Operations Executive (SOE), where she’ll be working as an investigator.  Her maiden outing is to Blackthorn Park, which has been requisitioned by the government as a center for creating bombs for use in the field. The home office suspects some kind of theft is going on and requests that Evelyne travel there and assess how easily the property can be breached. read more

Jenny Milchman: The Usual Silence

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Series Debut

It’s been awhile since Jenny Milchman had a new book out (The Second Mother, 2020) but her brand of feminist, almost gentle, thrillers are always appealing and difficult to put down once you’ve started reading one.  Her new book is the launch of a series featuring Dr. Arles Shepherd, a therapist who, as the book opens, is in disgrace. She’s been fired from her job as she appears to have huge gaps in her memory, one of which happened during a session with a client.

Arles also has an ailing stepfather suffering from dementia, and when she visits, it’s clear there’s some kind of bad emotional backstory, and that he’s hung on to a family property that belongs to her.  She plans to take over the property and turn it into a therapeutic immersive camp for families.  It’s also clear she’s had a long obsession with a certain photograph, and she’s just found the identity of the person in the photo.  Part of the reason for her therapy camp is the woman in the photo, who happens to have an autistic son.  She’s a perfect fit for the camp. read more

Michelle Chouinard: The Serial Killer Guide to San Francisco

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I enjoy picking up a book where I don’t know what to expect, and it’s even better when the book I’ve selected doesn’t match my expectations — but in a good way. From the title, I supposed this book would be all shiny concept, heavy on clever plot, no emotional engagement, but probably funny.  It does have a shiny concept, but the concept (as it should be), is just the kick off.  Heroine Capri (like the car, the pants or the island) Sanzio, granddaughter of a serial killer, makes her living giving – you guessed it – serial killer tours of San Francisco.  She’s been quite successful, and the patrons only infrequently ask questions about her grandfather, who was known as “Overkill Bill.” read more

Tasha Alexander: Death by Misadventure

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Lady Emily #18

I’ll freely admit that I love this series.  Of course some of them are even yummier than others, and this latest one might be one of the most delicious.  The books follow Lady Emily and her dishy husband, Colin, as they investigate crimes all over the globe, and although Colin has a mysterious secret arrangement with her majesty’s government, it’s often Lady Emily’s intuition and intelligence that solves the case.  Another standard element in the books is a dual timeline, with events from the past connecting or relating to events in the present in some form or fashion, with part of the mystery consisting of figuring out how. read more

Matthew Becker: Run

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Debut

This book is by a former customer of ours, who, as a kid, used to shop with his family at our store.  He and his brother gobbled up thrillers like they were candy, and I’m happy to say, Becker has now written an excellent one of his own.  I have rules when I’m reading a thriller, and if they don’t meet them, I always feel a lack.  They are: upping the ante; the seemingly unsolvable problem; the twist; specifity; and pace.

Becker ups the ante right off the bat.  Ben and Veronica, a happy, seemingly ideal couple, are suddenly split apart when Veronica disappears after a mass shooting in a Washington DC park. Immediately, the reader is on Ben’s side as he tries to find his wife, the only clue being a mysterious text she’d sent him out of the blue before her disappearance. There’s the unsolvable problem: where is Veronica, and why has she disappeared? read more

Simon Brett: A Messy Murder

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Decluttering mysteries #4

I’m not sure why I haven’t read this series before, but this book is so good it makes me want to go back and check out the first three installments.  Main character Ellen Curtis is a “professional declutterer,” a job that sounds very silly but really isn’t.  As the story begins she’s working for a husband and wife looking to downsize, with the wife being all for it and the husband, a fading former TV host, not so enthusiastic.  Ellen is a widow, having lost her husband to suicide, and when the husband, “Humph” to his friends, dies, apparently a suicide as well, Ellen’s skills  and familiarity with grief come to the fore. read more

James R. Benn: The Phantom Patrol

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Billy Boyle #19

War is hell. In his gentle, narrative manner, James R. Benn has demonstrated through 19 and counting Billy Boyle novels this harsh verity. All of them, in their own way, are excellent, some of them more traditionally structured mysteries, like the locked room puzzler The Red Horse (2020) or the English village set Proud Sorrows (2023). But they all take place during WWII and feature at least one bravura battle or action scene.  Book 19 is set during the Battle of the Bulge, and even though hostilities would end several months later, Billy finds himself still in the thick of things. read more

Ann Cleeves: The Dark Wives

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Vera Stanhope #11

This is the eleventh book in Cleeves’ now classic Vera Stanhope series, and as always, the books are a slow burn with a smasher of an ending.  This book begins with an extremely compelling set up:  Vera is called to a local care home where one of the workers has been found murdered and one of the residents, a 14 year old girl, has vanished. Vera and her team aren’t sure whether she’s a suspect or a victim, but she’s 14 and missing, so the hunt is on to locate her.  Vera is under a bit of a cloud – at the end of the last book (The Rising Tide) she’d lost one of her team, Holly.  She’s hired a replacement for the strait-laced, disciplined Holly that’s as different as she can be.  Rosie Bell is brash and likes a drink with the girls after work, but she proves to have some unexpected qualities as the investigation proceeds. read more

Leslie Budewitz: To Err is Cumin

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Spice Shop #8

I’m a real fan of this series, two of the biggest reasons being the setting and the complexity of the characters.  Set in Seattle’s vivid Pike Place Market area, heroine Pepper Reece owns a spice shop.  Pepper is in her 40’s, divorced, and dating a fisherman who is away much of the time (fishing).  At the moment she’s helping to redecorate the house her parents have bought in the area and she spies the perfect wingback chair on the curb.  Being a big city dweller she claims this piece of street treasure and gets an SUV owning buddy to come pick her, and the chair, up.  When she takes a closer look at the lumpy seat she finds it’s stuffed with cash. read more

Frank Anthony Polito: Haunted to Death

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Domestic Partners in Crime #3

If you’re from southeast Michigan, these books really should be a must read.  This zippy cozy series is set in Pleasant Ridge and features Michigan details like Shinola watches and Sanders bumpy cake, but even if you aren’t from the mitten, these are still fun reads.  Main characters and life partners PJ and JP are, among other things, hosts of an “HDTV” home renovation series, where they take old houses and restore them to their former glory.  This charming gay couple reminds me strongly of my favorite couple on HGTV’s Detroit based Bargain Block, and like it or not, their faces have attached themselves to my reading of the books. read more