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<\/a>Cara Black\u2019s Three Hours in Paris<\/em> is an incredible achievement. This ticking clock thriller feels like the book Cara Black has long wanted to write, it\u2019s so explosive, so taut, and so impossible to stop reading.\u00a0 The propulsive narrative follows Kate Rees, a young American sent to assassinate Hitler when he visits Paris for three hours in 1940.\u00a0 The set up introduces Kate as she\u2019s waiting with her sniper rifle for Hitler\u2019s appearance; then it goes back in time, very briefly, to establish Kate as a person. Black then turns her sights to her real objective: telling an hour by hour story of the hunted and the hunter.\u00a0 As its 1940 it\u2019s not a spoiler to say Kate misses her target, though she does hit another one, and the Fuhrer wants the shooter found and dispatched. This unhappy task falls to Gunter Hoffman, who is given 36 hours to find her.<\/p>\nFor a thriller to really work, the gears and inner workings of the plot shouldn\u2019t be too apparent.\u00a0 They should just naturally fold into one another in a progression that seems absolutely inevitable.\u00a0 This was definitely the case with this novel.\u00a0 Kate thinks practically, fights like a man, and has the skillset of a hunter.\u00a0 The plot never lets up.\u00a0 The characters are made human to the reader, but the main thing is the hunt and the ability of the hunter to locate his prey. Read it.\u00a0 There were so many unexpected twists and clever acts of thought and action on Kate\u2019s part I think I will be mulling it over for quite a while.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fabulous change of pace for the talented Cara Black.<\/p>\n
Ann Cleeves\u2019 9th Vera Stanhope novel, The Darkest Evening, <\/em>hits it out of the park. With now three strong series to her credit, one of the most delightful features the cranky Vera Stanhope, whose hopelessly messy and unstylish appearance conceals a sharp and perceptive mind.\u00a0 She\u2019s Columbo in the British countryside, just a shade less congenial.\u00a0 This installment finds Vera face to face with the fancier branch of her family, impoverished landholders who can\u2019t keep up the stately family home.<\/p>\n Carol Goodman\u2019s luscious prose doesn\u2019t mask her storytelling drive, and it\u2019s a haunting and unforgettable combination.\u00a0\u00a0The Sea of Lost Girls\u00a0<\/em>is set at a girl\u2019s boarding school in Maine, centering on the family of Tess, Harmon and Rudy.\u00a0 Tess and Harmon both work at the school; Rudy is Tess\u2019s son and Harmon\u2019s stepson, as well as a student at the school. The book kicks off with him texting his mother in the middle of the night, and she rushes off to find out what\u2019s wrong. As a reader, I was instantly drawn into the dynamic between Tess and her son, who has had some troubles but whom she loves fiercely.\u00a0 Her greatest goal is that of any mother\u2019s: to protect him.\u00a0 And, as it turns out, he needs it.\u00a0 His girlfriend, Lila, whom he had been fighting with, turns up dead the next morning and suspicion falls on both Rudy and Harmon in turn.<\/p>\n Goodman has created a story reflective of our own times and the changes and lack of changes that still exist.\u00a0 The idea of demeaning and shaming women, unfortunately, is still with us, but the way young women are starting to fight back and respond is illuminated in Goodman\u2019s story. Mystery novels are so often intelligent examinations of life as it is lived at the moment, and this book is an illustration of the ways an author can tell a story and write about the times she\u2019s living in simultaneously. The mystery element is also fabulous, and the ending has a wonderful twist, the kind that\u2019s a surprise but has been carefully set up by this intelligent author. There was much to think about when I finished, and much to enjoy as I sped through the pages of this wonderfully written and fully realized novel.<\/p>\n If Alice Henderson\u2019s The Solitude of Wolverines <\/em>isn\u2019t the birth of a long running series, I would be stunned.\u00a0 A definite relative of Nevada Barr\u2019s long running and beloved Anna Pidgeon series, Henderson has created an adventure suspense mystery with a foundation in the natural world.\u00a0 While Anna Pigeon is a parks ranger, Alex Carter is a biologist who studies endangered species in their dwindling habitats.\u00a0 Like Anna, however, Alex is definitely a bad ass. After a traumatic incident in the opening scene, set in Boston, \u00a0Alex gets a call that very night asking if she\u2019s willing to go to Montana to study wolverines.\u00a0 She has recently separated from her boyfriend and hates the city \u2013 she snaps up the opportunity and heads to Montana the next morning.\u00a0 She\u2019s to live in an abandoned ski lodge and work the land trust that it sits on to see if wolverines are present.<\/p>\n Henderson throws in a great deal of suspense and the element of Alex not being able to really trust anyone in town makes her solitary nature, ability to tinker with motors and all things mechanical, as well as her mother\u2019s teaching her from a young age how to survive in a wilderness situation, a rich protagonist. This is a wonderful, suspenseful novel with a fantastic main character and a fascinating background of endangered species preservation.<\/p>\n Anthony Horowitz is one of the smartest writers working right now, and this sequel to his (in my opinion) classic Magpie Murders<\/em> is every bit as good as the first one. The main character in Moonflower Murders<\/em> is editor Susan Ryeland, who has given up her successful career to head to Crete and help her partner run a small hotel there.\u00a0 It\u2019s not going well.\u00a0 The hotel is having trouble and it\u2019s a mountain of work, so when Pauline and Lawrence Treherne appear asking for Susan\u2019s help in locating their missing daughter back in England, she readily agrees, especially when they sweeten the pot by offering her \u00a310,000.\u00a0 She takes them up on it and checks into their hotel.<\/p>\n While Horowitz brilliantly sets up the\u00a0 mystery that Susan is investigating in the present, she finally must return to the book she edited all those years ago to see if she can discover what clue the missing woman found that seems to prove the accused killer is innocent.\u00a0 So, in the middle of what is actually a quite compelling story, Horowitz inserts the entire book – Atticus P\u00fcnd takes the Case <\/em>\u2013 and dares the reader to solve the case along with Susan. The clues are fiendishly clever and while I saw they were there as enumerated by Susan in her classical drawing room summing up with all suspects present, I didn\u2019t see them as I inhaled each of the stories. Throughout this updated version of a golden age novel there are clever nods to detective fiction, a genre Horowitz obviously loves and reveres.\u00a0 He has added to its luster with his contributions, both Susan Ryeland stories being, to me, instant classics.\u00a0 You\u2019ll want to re-read this one.<\/p>\n Nev March\u2019s charming Murder in Old Bombay<\/em> is the righteous winner of the Minotaur\/MWA First Crime novel prize.\u00a0 Set in 1892 Bombay during the British Raj, this novel focuses on Captain Jim Agnihotri, who has left the military after a long stint in the hospital.\u00a0 The book has an excellent opening line: \u201cI turned thirty in hospital\u2026with little to read but newspapers.\u201d<\/p>\n Jim is also a recent devotee of Sherlock Holmes, and feels his hero could have solved this crime with a more thorough vetting of both clues and circumstance.\u00a0 He presents himself to the bereaved Framji family, and agrees to help them discover what happened to the two women. This has a very traditional set up \u2013 obviously, it\u2019s based on Sherlock Holmes \u2013 but for this talented writer, Holmes is more of a jumping off point for a beautifully told, exciting, adventure\/romance with a well crafted mystery at its center. Inappropriate romance blooms between Jim and the remining Framji daughter, Diana, adding romance to the adventure portion of the book.<\/p>\n There are several things I truly loved about this wonderful book.\u00a0 I loved the unapologetic plunge into time and place.\u00a0 I loved the truly clever, slowly unfolding mystery.\u00a0 In deference to Holmes there are some excellent disguises on Jim\u2019s part as well as some very tiny clues \u2013 like a bead \u2013 that turn out to be relevant.\u00a0 And I loved the characters of both Jim and Diana.\u00a0 I absolutely cannot wait for book two.<\/p>\n The second novel in Jess Montgomery\u2019s remarkable series set in a 1920\u2019s Ohio mining town is every bit as memorable and vivid as the first,\u00a0The Widows,<\/em>\u00a0which was far and away one of the best books of 2019.\u00a0 Montgomery brings to life the story of the first female sheriff, Lily Ross, in tiny Kinship, Ohio.\u00a0 While the first novel concerned itself with the politics of mining, The Hollows<\/em> is more of a straight mystery, which veers into the unfortunate territory of racism and because of the time period, an ever present and ingrained sexism.<\/p>\n Blending the search for the old woman\u2019s starting point with a backtracking into her life that reveals a history of a woman\u2019s branch of the KKK, Montgomery skillfully balances emotion, politics, and history with a deep connection to the area she\u2019s writing about and a gorgeous prose style that make these books stand outs.\u00a0 The mystery is good, but the characters are great, and they define the story. My best advice: dive into these wonderful novels.\u00a0 They are an immersive and beautiful experience.<\/p>\n McCallister is being visited by an editor, Julia Hart, whose publisher is interested in reprinting\u00a0The White Murders.<\/em>\u00a0To that end, she reads aloud each short mystery, and then she and Grant discuss the stories, including whatever slight discrepancies there might be in each one.<\/p>\n After each story, a new element of detective fiction is discussed: suspects, a detective, a killer or killers.\u00a0 How these elements intersect provides the various, as McAllister calls them, permutations of detective fiction.\u00a0 Each story provides a different example, some very clearly based on Agatha Christie\u2019s novels. Because Christie was responsible for creating many of the tropes of detective fiction \u2013 most famously: everyone is the killer, the narrator is the killer, and everyone is killed \u2013 these are some of the tropes chosen by Pavesi in his clever, bitter little stories. The book sets itself smack in the middle of the golden age of detective fiction \u2013 a time when Christie, Sayers and others were writing \u2013 and then self-consciously looks back at the 40\u2019s not from the present but instead from the late 1960\u2019s, the perceptions then are filtered once again by our own in the present day. Pavesi is placing us at one remove from the pleasure of pure narrative storytelling and inviting us, instead, to consider and analyze detective fiction.\u00a0 I think his ultimate question is, what makes detective fiction so enjoyable?<\/p>\n The also book asks the reader if the detective novel has worn itself out.\u00a0 I think we can answer a resounding \u201cno\u201d, as long as books as clever and memorable as this one continue to be written. The permutations of suspects, detective and killer continue to fascinate us, as do the resolution and answers provided by the mystery novel.\u00a0\u00a0The Eighth Detective<\/em>\u00a0does not disappoint, as it presents these elements as well as providing the reader with a more than delicious resolution.\u00a0 This is the kind of book you may want to read again the minute you finish it.<\/p>\n Spencer-Fleming tends to write on an epic scale, and this book is no exception to that rule.\u00a0 Filling her canvass with richly drawn and memorable characters, she also creates a wonderful mystery. There are three separate cases of dead girls abandoned on the highway with no apparent cause of death, and the deaths are decades apart.\u00a0 The first one was in 1952; the next, 1972; and then there\u2019s a present day case. None of the cases were solved, and in the 1972 case, Russ was actually a suspect.\u00a0 Spencer-Fleming takes her time connecting the cases, the victims, and the investigators, but she does connect them in an incredible fashion.<\/p>\n Spencer-Fleming is expert at setting the sword of Damocles above her characters and having them operate underneath it, finding solutions in messy, human ways that strike at the reader\u2019s heart.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s one reason this series is beloved.\u00a0 Another is the rich Adirondack setting, and still another is Spencer-Fleming\u2019s pure skill as a mystery writer.<\/p>\n Spencer-Fleming\u2019s essential optimism connects her to writers like Louise Penny and William Kent Krueger, who also deal with dark subjects but whose ultimate message is one of optimism.\u00a0 There are few better ways to make a series beloved.\u00a0 The other way, and it\u2019s a skill Spencer-Fleming also possesses in spades, is writing an ending that leaves the reader hanging.\u00a0 You want more when you finish the book \u2013 you want to know what happens next.\u00a0 This is a wonderful reunion with Clare and Russ.<\/p>\n As the book opens, Maggie gets a call from her uncle (Erin\u2019s father) in the middle of the night, telling her an Irish Garda had called requesting a call back.\u00a0 Maggie is the one to call and it turns out they\u2019ve found something else of Erin\u2019s \u2013 that\u2019s all that\u2019s needed for Maggie to get on a plane and head to Ireland to find out as much as she can.<\/p>\n The book alternates timelines, mostly between the time of Erin\u2019s disappearance and Maggie\u2019s first search for her, with the present and her search for Erin with the new discoveries, but it also backtracks in time to the girls\u2019 childhood together. It also turns out that another young woman is missing, and the clock is ticking.\u00a0 Stewart Taylor very effectively alternates between the solid police work Maggie is capable of in the present, to her previous, unformed 20 year old self, grieving for her mother, puzzled and saddened by her cousin\u2019s disappearance.<\/p>\n This is not only a wonderful mystery, it\u2019s a pretty excellent police procedural \u2013 even if Maggie is mostly at a remove from the proceedings \u2013 and it\u2019s a truly lovely character study of Maggie and Erin.\u00a0 As the book concludes, with more finely drawn versions of both women, the result is both stunning and revelatory.\u00a0 I truly hope it\u2019s not another long 14 years before we hear from this talented author again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n BEST TRIP TO PARIS: the Gamaches in Louise Penny\u2019s complex, beautifully written and felt All the Devils Are Here.<\/em>\u00a0 I loved that the story centered on the Gamache family, I loved seeing Reine Marie in her environment (the library), and I loved the explication of the father son relationship, both between Gamache and his biological son, Daniel, and his son of the heart, Jean Guy.\u00a0 Another stunner from the talented Penny.<\/p>\n BEST USE OF LIPSTICK:\u00a0 Ariel Lawhon\u2019s insanely entertaining and vivid telling of the story of resistance fighter and spy, Nancy Wake, in Code Name Helene.\u00a0 <\/em>While not a mystery, it\u2019s an incredible story.\u00a0 Wake was an Australian who ended up in France and, married to a Frenchman who enlists, she gets a little restless and agrees to a courier job.\u00a0 Before she knows it she\u2019s escorting refugees to the safety of Spain and living in the woods with other resistance fighters.\u00a0 Her secret weapon: Elizabeth Arden red lipstick, which she said makes the enemy see the woman and not the warrior. It was a useful distraction. Read it. Inhale.\u00a0 Admire.<\/p>\n BEST LOCKED ROOM:\u00a0 James R. Benn\u2019s clever The Red Horse<\/em> finds our beloved Billy Boyle getting some much needed recovery time at St. Alban\u2019s, along with Kaz, whose heart problem is becoming dire.\u00a0 When Billy witnesses a \u201csuicide\u201d from the hospital\u2019s watch tower, he\u2019s pretty sure it\u2019s murder, and after a sleep cure he\u2019s on the case.\u00a0 This is a terrific installment in a now classic series that provides both WWII detail as well as polished and clever traditional mysteries.<\/p>\n BEST TRUMP TAKEDOWN: Carl Hiassen\u2019s Squeeze Me<\/em>, ostensibly about a Palm Beach\u2019s socialite\u2019s death by python but really, about so much more, as he turns his wickedly satiric eye to both Palm Beach Society and the Trump presidency.\u00a0 Is Trump really called \u201cMastadon\u201d by the Secret Service?\u00a0 Does he actually have a guy who tests his tanning bed out before he gets in it?\u00a0 Fun things to consider and as usual the plotting skills of Hiaasen are top notch.\u00a0 This qualifies as a \u201cseries\u201d entry because of the presence of Skink, the road-kill eating ex-governor of Florida.\u00a0 To which I can only say \u201cyay.\u201d<\/p>\n BEST EXPLANATION OF HALLOWEEN JACK O LANTERNS: Elly Griffiths, as usual, turns in a masterful entry in her beloved Ruth Galloway series, The Lantern Men. <\/em>She skooches Ruth ahead a couple years. Ruth is now living and teaching in Cambridge with Frank, but she\u2019s summoned to a case by Nelson, who tells her a convicted murderer will tell him where the bodies are buried, but only if Ruth does the exhumation.\u00a0 Ruth finds an extra body and the story, with threads in the past and the present, is Griffith\u2019s usual exceptional brew of folklore, character and a plot that moves like lightening.<\/p>\n BEST REASON TO BE A GOOD PERSON DEPT: The Geometry of Holding Hands<\/em> is Alexander McCall Smith\u2019s gentle, barely a mystery, story of Isabel Dalhousie\u2019s life in Edinburgh.\u00a0 Isabel is an heiress, happily married, who administers a trust that her niece benefits from.\u00a0 In everything, she tries to do what\u2019s right, from stepping in at the end of a restaurant argument between people she doesn\u2019t know to agreeing to help decide the terms of a will for a stranger. McCall-Smith provides genuinely thoughtful observations on morality and behavior, and Isabel\u2019s gentle example might inspire you to try just a little bit harder in your own life.\u00a0 A refreshment in a brutal year.<\/p>\n BEST EXPLICATION OF PRINCE PHILIP\u2019S BACKSTORY:\u00a0 Allison Montclair\u2019s delightful second installment of her Sparks and Bainbridge mysteries, A Royal Affair,<\/em> finds the protagonists (who own a\u00a0 marriage bureau in London in 1946) being asked to vet Prince Philip as a prospective groom for the young Princess Elizabeth.\u00a0 The story that follows is an absorbing hoot, complete with Montclair\u2019s witty use of language and sure hand with narrative.\u00a0 One of the happiest new series around.\u00a0 I love these books.<\/p>\n FAVORITE COZIES:\u00a0 While you can check out my Cozy Round Up<\/a> for a longer list, these two books \u00a0really stood out.\u00a0 Hannah Dennison\u2019s Death at High Tide <\/em>finds the recently widowed Evie discovering, as her husband\u2019s will is read, that she\u2019s broke, but she does own a hotel on the Isles of Scilly.\u00a0 She and her sister Margot head over to check it out, an exhausting process culminating in a lengthy and nauseating ferry ride, only to discover that the hotel is a bit ramshackle, and shortly after their arrival the manager is murdered.\u00a0 Dennison then cleverly sets up what is basically a locked room mystery \u2013 the island the hotel stands on is only accessible at low tide \u2013 and she then creates a mysterious atmosphere, populated with several eccentric and fascinating suspects.\u00a0 Utterly enjoyable.<\/p>\n And friends and book club members have shared their favorite reads:<\/p>\n Patti Lang<\/strong>, Arizona: The Angel of the Crows,<\/em> Katherine Addison; Three Hours in Paris, <\/em>Cara Black; The Gold Pawn, <\/em>L.A. Chandlar; Dead West, <\/em>Matt Goldman; Absence of Mercy, <\/em>S.M. Goodwin; The Janes, <\/em>Louisa Luna; A Royal Affair, <\/em>Allison Montclair; and Blame the Dead, <\/em>Ed Ruggero.<\/p>\n Cathy Akers-Jordan,\u00a0<\/strong>Davison:\u00a0Next to Last Stand,\u00a0<\/em>Craig Johnson;\u00a0Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit,\u00a0<\/em>John E. Douglas;\u00a0A Case of Cat and Mouse,\u00a0<\/em>Sofie Kelly;\u00a0All the Devils are Here,\u00a0<\/em>Louise Penny; Hawke’s Target, <\/em>Reavis Z. Wortham; The Last Mrs. Summers,\u00a0<\/em>Rhys Bowen;\u00a0Riviera Gold,\u00a0<\/em>Laurie R. King;\u00a0Murder on Pleasant Avenue,\u00a0<\/em>Victoria Thompson;\u00a0Come Homicide or High Water,\u00a0<\/em>Denise Swanson;\u00a0Murder in the Storybook Cottage,\u00a0<\/em>Ellery Adams;\u00a0The Diva Spices it Up,\u00a0<\/em>Krista Davis.<\/p>\n Vicki Kondelik,\u00a0<\/strong>Ann Arbor\/Albion:\u00a0Palace of Justice,\u00a0<\/em>Susanne Alleyn;\u00a0Three Hours in Paris,\u00a0<\/em>Cara Black;\u00a0The Long Call,\u00a0<\/em>Ann Cleeves;\u00a0A Death of No Importance,\u00a0<\/em>Mariah Fredericks;\u00a0The Stranger Diaries,\u00a0<\/em>Elly Griffiths;\u00a0A Fatal Finale,\u00a0<\/em>Kathleen Marple Kalb;\u00a0The King’s Justice,\u00a0<\/em>Susan Elia MacNeal;\u00a0The Right Sort of Man,\u00a0<\/em>Allison Montclair;\u00a0A Trace of Deceit,\u00a0<\/em>Karen Odden; and\u00a0All the Devils are Here,\u00a0<\/em>Louise Penny.<\/p>\n Tori and Nicolas Booker<\/strong>, Ann Arbor: Those Who Wish Me Dead, <\/em>Michael Koryta.<\/p>\n Clarissa Codrington<\/strong>, Ypsilanti: Faithful Place, <\/em>Tana French; The Diviners, <\/em>Libba Bray;\u00a0 Evicted, <\/em>Matthew Desmond; The Secret Commonwealth, <\/em>Philip Pullman; We\u2019re Going to Need More Wine, <\/em>Gabrielle Union; The Vanishing Half, <\/em>Brit Bennett; The Nightingale, <\/em>Kristin Hannah and Caste, <\/em>Isabel Wilkerson.<\/p>\n Roseann Vorce<\/strong>, Ann Arbor: Long Bright River, <\/em>Liz Moore.<\/p>\n Lisa Arnsdorf<\/strong>, Ann Arbor:\u00a0 A Brush with Shadows, <\/em>Anna Lee Huber; Miracle Creek, <\/em>Angie Kim \u2013 Lisa says: \u201cI loved the dissection of what we go through for our kids\u201d; The Smuggler\u2019s Secret <\/em>(YA), The Lantern Men, <\/em>and The Stone Circle, <\/em>all by the gifted Elly Griffiths; The Pigeon Pie Mystery, <\/em>Julia Stuart; My Sister, the Serial Killer, <\/em>Oyinkan Braithwaite; The Stonecutter, <\/em>Camilla Lackburg; The Silent Patient, <\/em>Alex Michaelides.<\/p>\n Joyce Simonski<\/strong>, Canton: The Long Call, <\/em>Ann Cleeves \u201chas a way with character development.\u201d<\/p>\n Diane Gross<\/strong>, California: The Right Sort of Man, <\/em>Allison Montclair.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2020 has been \u2013 challenging – but the upside for me was even more reading time, and I read so many books this year it was difficult to winnow my list to 10, so I added a couple extra categories.\u00a0 There should be something for most readers on this list \u2013 maybe not the lover … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3857"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3887,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3857\/revisions\/3887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>As the book opens Vera is driving through a terrible snowstorm and she comes across an abandoned car \u2013 with a baby in it.\u00a0 She leaves a note, takes the baby, and heads to her ancestral home where she interrupts a Christmas party and is treated like the help by her distant cousins.\u00a0 They take her and the baby in, though, as Vera, stuck for the duration of the storm, settles in to sort out the baby. Two girls who had been helping out at the party wait for their Dad to pick them up on his tractor during the storm, but he breaks into the kitchen and says he\u2019s found a body in the snow.\u00a0 It turns out, of course, to be the baby\u2019s mother. And here is where the golden age mystery differs from the contemporary one.\u00a0 Yes, the set up is traditional \u2013 Christmas house party \u2013 but the after effects and psychological impact of the crime are as important as the crime itself, and it\u2019s character development and the unpeeling of those characters by the canny Vera that lead to the ultimate solution. Cleeves frames the novel with one of my favorite poems, Robert Frost\u2019s evocative classic, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.\u00a0<\/em>While the book is atmospheric on its own, the Frost poem adds that extra sparkle and depth to the read that makes the book even more memorable.\u00a0 To me, this is one of the reads of the year.<\/p>\n<\/a>Tess is forced to re-examine her life and the events leading up to Lila\u2019s death as her husband and son are both taken to the police station as persons of interest.\u00a0 So much of Tess\u2019s story is about shame \u2013 as her backstory is teased out, we learn of her very early relationship with an older man who virtually kept her prisoner.\u00a0 She has obviously started over, but the scars remain.<\/p>\n<\/a>The tension in this novel, and I imagine in any future novels, comes from the hostility some feel for things like land trusts that prevent development or, as is common in Montana, cattle grazing.\u00a0 The residents of tiny Montana town Alex is living in seem generally hostile and suspicious, and the only place Alex feels safe is out in the woods. A real strength of this book, aside from the character of Alex, are the specific details of how animals in the wild are tracked.<\/p>\n<\/a>Why<\/em> they offer Susan money is trickier \u2013 to explain, at any rate.\u00a0 Susan had been the editor of the hugely successful author, Alan Conway, whose creation, Atticus P\u00fcnd, sounds very much like Hercule Poirot. The Trehernes think Susan can find their daughter because, as Alan\u2019s editor, she was most familiar with his work, and shortly before she disappeared, their daughter insisted that one of the P\u00fcnd books showed her the answer to a murder that took place in the hotel the Trehernes run, on their daughter\u2019s wedding day, eight years ago. Susan checks into their hotel and begins to familiarize herself with the death of Frank Parrish, who was brutally killed with a hammer in room 12 almost a decade earlier<\/p>\n<\/a>In said newspapers, Captain Jim reads the story of two Parsee women who plunged to their deaths from a University clock tower.\u00a0 One was a young bride, one, her younger sister in law.\u00a0 When Jim reads a plea in letter form in the newspaper from the young widower, he is sure that the details of the crime don\u2019t add up.\u00a0 The husband pleads that this was not a suicide but the recently concluded trial leaves this stain and uncertainty on the family.<\/p>\n<\/a>The book opens with the wandering of an old woman down some railroad tracks, where she ultimately falls to her death.\u00a0 As Lily is called in to investigate, she of course wonders if the frail, shoeless old woman fell, or was pushed.\u00a0 One of the strengths of both novels are the network of kin (her town is even called \u201cKinship\u201d) \u00a0and friends that Lily calls on and relies on to both help her get through the day taking care of her children \u2013 that\u2019s often her mother, raising her own late on life child \u2013 to taking care of prisoners at the jail, to figuring out the deep connections in the backwoods hollows that to any outsider would be impenetrable.<\/p>\n<\/a>Alex Pavesi\u2019s concept in\u00a0The Eighth Detective\u00a0<\/em>is entirely welcome and ingenious.\u00a0 Pavesi\u2019s central character in the novel, Grant McCallister, lives a hermit\u2019s life on a remote island.\u00a0 Twenty years ago, he\u2019d written a book called\u00a0The White Murders,\u00a0<\/em>published in the early 1940\u2019s.\u00a0 The book in our hands is a series of short murder mystery stories, interspersed with McCallister\u2019s mathematical analysis of the murder mystery. There are a certain number of required elements and within this structure \u2013 and, as mystery readers everywhere already know \u2013 there are endless variations.<\/p>\n<\/a>If you\u2019re a fan of Julia Spencer-Fleming\u2019s, you\u2019ll be delighted to know that\u00a0Hid From Our Eyes<\/em>\u00a0picks up right where\u00a0One Was a Soldier\u00a0<\/em>left off.\u00a0 Since it\u2019s been awhile I\u2019ll recap: Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson and her husband Russ Van Alstyne have welcomed their first child (read the book to find out the child\u2019s name and sex).\u00a0 Clare is in addiction recovery, and believably \u2013 for anyone familiar with addiction \u2013 she teeters from sober to wishing she wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 That\u2019s the rich background.<\/p>\n<\/a>I was a huge fan of Sarah Stewart Taylor\u2019s Sweeney St. George series, published in the early 2000\u2019s.\u00a0 Sweeney was an expert on gravestone iconography, and the books were beautifully written, thoughtful mysteries.\u00a0 Stewart Taylor has been away from mystery fiction since 2006, and her return, with The Mountains Wild,<\/em> feels more polished and more pointed in its narrative drive \u2013 it\u2019s a step up. It follows the story of Maggie D\u2019Arcy, who, as an adult, is a homicide detective on Long Island, but who, as a 20 something, lost the cousin who was like a sister to her.\u00a0 The cousin, Erin, had left the states for Ireland, and hasn\u2019t been heard from since 1993.\u00a0 There are other young women who were killed (and discovered) in the same area, and Maggie and the rest of her family are pretty sure Erin is dead, but they\u2019d like to know.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>FAVORITE DEBUT:\u00a0 Kathleen Marple Kalb\u2019s sure handed A Fatal Finale<\/em> introduces trouser diva Ella Shane, an opera singer who sings men\u2019s roles, based out of New York in 1899. When the opening night of Romeo and Juliet<\/em> goes horribly wrong \u2013 Juliet turns up dead \u2013 Ella and her complicated band of allies and friends solve the case.\u00a0 Kalb has a real knack for combining a swiftly paced story, a bit of adventure, a bit of romance, and a good mystery.\u00a0 This was a sparkly debut novel and I am already looking forward to more from this new talent.<\/p>\n<\/a>I also loved Susan Cox\u2019s The Man in the Microwave Oven, <\/em>a totally original take on the cozy.\u00a0 The heroine, Theo Bogart, is a poor little rich girl who has fled scandal at home in England and made a new, off the grid life for herself in San Francisco, where she owns a soap and candle shop.\u00a0 The shop is mainly the vehicle for helping to create and define the village-like atmosphere of the San Francisco neighborhood where she lives, and when a nasty condo developer is found dead in her car one morning (by Theo) the detection begins.\u00a0 The story includes rogue priests, Russian spies, a young man educating himself despite his father\u2019s negligence, Theo\u2019s coffee shop owning buddy and a plot that includes some hands found in the coffee shop\u2019s microwave.\u00a0 This book was a total blast and I hope Susan Cox has a good long run with this series.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n