Genre-Busting Irish Crime Fiction from John Banville, THE LOCK-UP

 

[Originally posted at New York Journal of Books]

“What neither can say aloud is, Strafford failed to save Quirke’s wife in a shooting the year before, and there’s no forgiveness on the table.”

 

Crime may be impulsive, launched by a forgotten set of car keys dangling from a sports car’s ignition or an easily hacked online account. On the other hand, it can root deep in the history of grievance, violence, prejudice, and war—which makes a far more complex narrative and is, of course, how John Banville situates The Lock-Up. War and its profits, going back to an escape from Germany during the Second World War, mean an excuse for a twisted soul to take revenge via markets and manipulation. 

 

The death of youthful historian Rosa Jacobs, found murdered in her car in Dublin, provides the entryway for investigating both the “not yet past” past and today’s market rewards. It will take dedicated research (and a bit of provocation) to untangle the threads of motive for this crime, and in the process, two of Banville’s noted characters of previous novels, Detective Inspector St John Strafford and police pathologist Quirke, collude. This isn’t new to Banville’s work—the pair, originally introduced in separate books to probe different Irish issues, appeared together in April in Spain (2021)—but because each is enduring a personal crisis, their conversations cut deeper this time around.

 

For instance, Quirke (gulping whiskey, of course) abruptly offers an awful description of an autopsy on a child, to which Strafford struggles to make a sympathetic response. Quirke next asks Strafford, “What was your first death?” Strafford takes the question as meant, and briefly tells of shooting an IRA man who’d pointed a tommy gun at him. And what neither can say aloud is, Strafford failed to save Quirke’s wife in a shooting the year before, and there’s no forgiveness on the table.

 

“Do you dream about him, the IRA man?” Quirke asked.

 

“No. Do you? Dream about the child?”

 

“I remember him, that’s all … All that, and the plume of steam coming off the child’s brain.”

 

The novel won’t get much more graphic than that, although the clumsy dance of intimacy between these two aging men continues painfully throughout. As is the case for the Troubles that background the book, and the Second World War yet further back, there seems to be no calm resolution for the long-term effects of trauma when nurtured today.

 

Still, with Banville’s Irish home terrain in mind, it’s startling as the action begins to tilt toward distant Israel. Perhaps the ongoing presence of war and violence there provides an apt counter to the fumbled efforts to make peace in Ireland. Or between Quirke and Strafford, a matter that becomes increasingly urgent as the walls separating their private lives are pierced. Loneliness followed by attraction may force the stones of resentment to move, like water that’s been frozen, then thaws, leaving gaps where it’s been.

 

For some years, Banville separated his literary fiction from his genre work in crime by using the pen name Benjamin Black for the genre books. But The Lock-Up comes out under his own name, and stitches together the two forms of narrative, the way Quirke and Strafford also become painfully connected. The death of Rosa Jacobs? Yes, of course, the investigation brings a solution, even resolution.

 

But what about the pain of Ireland and its besetting illnesses, alcohol abuse and divisive religion?

 

“We know a great deal,” Strafford lied. “We have all the pieces, we just need to put them together. You can help us.”

“Why should I?” one likely murderer replies to him. Which is, when you think about it, a very sensible response, one that pierces the walls of genre and makes reading this crime novel a haunting and memorable experience.

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

 

Brief Mention: LAST SEEN IN LAPAZ, by Kwei Quartey

Collecting international crime fiction? Ghana-born physician and author Kwei Quartey's Darko Dawson series, set mostly in Ghana, has been a pleasure; Quartey's current series is a spinoff that features Emma Djan, a private detective always alert to gender discrimination as she works her way up in a local agency (the police force dumped her, early in the series).

LAST SEE IN LAPAZ opens with the disappearance of a young Nigerian woman, daughter of a friend of the agency owner. (Lapaz is a town in the Accra Metropolitan District -- not related at all to La Paz, New Mexico.)  The attractive and hard-working Ngozi seems to have run away from home, across the national border, and might be in Accra. If, that is, she's alive.

Emma Djan isn't yet authorized to do a lot of investigation on her own, but she has an advantage here, because she can perform a flirtatious role with the greedy (in every sense) hotel owners who seem linked to the disappearance. When one hotel turns out to be supplying female companions, perhaps forced into this upscale prostitution, Emma's both horrified and fascinated. Anything to avoid the boredom of routine PI work!

Her insight into women's lives also gives her an advantage as she investigates with Boateng, the local DI (inspector on the police force):

Boateng grunted. "You seem to be studying this room closely, Djan. What do you see?"

"No disorder, no chaos. It has a controlled feeling. Someone who has been in this room was trying to gain control over the other, but couldn't quite do it. ... This entire house is a clue."

Despite his California location, Quartey's writing continues to have the choppy feel of translated material, possibly an intentional effect to suggest the movement among local languages and dialects. The book suffers somewhat from quick changes in point of view, among investigators and criminals. But it's still a revelatory experience of urban life in Ghana, and neatly plotted, with caste and related attitudes deftly portrayed. 

Collect it for your African mystery shelf, as well as for the diverse spread of Soho Crime's continued global outreach.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Terrific Welsh Thriller from Clare Mackintosh, THE LAST PARTY

British author Clare Mackintosh exceeds high thriller expectations in THE LAST PARTY, a pulse-pounding investigation of the harsh effects of class and abuse that whips up an emotional storm of strong women and conflicting loyalties.

When a New Year's eve swimming event involving "everyone" from a small Welsh town results in the death of a local real estate developer, Detective Constable Ffion Morgan of the North Wales Police leaps into the investigation. But the death, soon likely to be called murder, took place in a lake that straddles the border between Wales and England, which means she'll have to work the case with Detective Constable Leo Brady of Cheshire Constabulary. And that's a huge problem: not so much because of the rivalry and resentments of that border area, but because the two DC's have met before ... for no-strings sex, both under assumed names. That's the trouble with online dating, isn't it?

But there's worse to come, because Ffion Morgan's small town is so very small that she knows almost everyone involved in the swim event, and as she and her unwanted partner begin to select suspects, some of them include people she know well ... very well. Family, even, whether by blood or by choice.

Mackintosh spins an expert high-risk investigation, with spicy inserts of lively humor. As the DCs struggle to place new names on each other, they're still spilling the earlier false names, to the confusion of the pathologist:

"Who the hell is Marcus?" the pathologist says. "I was told there were only the two of you coming—it's a morgue, not a séance."

"Sorry," Leo says on behalf of both of them, although Ffion doesn't look remotely sorry. Her expression is amused—a little quizzical—as though waiting for Leo to expand.

As Izzy Weaver ushers them into the depths of the mortuary, Leo feels a sense of misgiving come over him. He hopes to hell this turns out to be an accidental drowning, because Ffion Morgan looks like trouble.

The dead man is easily recognized as Rhys Lloyd, who owns the high-end resort on the English side of the lake and has made a fortune already in his maneuvers to bring in posh property owners. When Ffion and Leo split up the witness interviews, Leo finds Clemmie Northcote, an anomaly in the owners crowd: She and her son share a one-bedroom apartment in London where she sleeps on the couch, and she's financed her resort property through a private mortgage. "Although the others don't know I didn't buy it outright, so I'd be grateful if you'd keep that to yourself."

Leo's sympathy leads to Clemmie spilling more about the victim: "He looked down on us," she admits. "Me and Caleb. Because I don't wear the right clothes or drink the right wine. I didn't fit with his vision of The Shore." Leo notes the bitterness under her calm explanation. He hasn't yet said publicly that the death is actually murder, but Clemmie is already making a guess:

"If it were, I think you'd have your hands full."

"Why's that?"

Clemmie looks at him, her expression unguarded and resigned. "Because I've been at The Shore for six months, and I've yet to meet a single person who liked him."

Ffion too is finding disturbing currents in her part of the investigation. But the darkest of them are her own, and when the hunt for the murderer turns out to threaten her sister and even her mother, Ffion takes actions that she won't be able to admit to Leo, no matter how much she finds herself liking him. Envy and lust and abuse have flourished here—prying open the crime will reveal things that Ffion may not be able to withstand.

At a chunky 400 pages, this British crime novel takes time to unpack class, loyalty, and the desperate choices that desperate people make. Packed with a perfect balance of twists and layered revelation, it's a powerful novel well worth adding to the winter reading stack—and keeping on hand for later re-reading. Mackintosh already has five best-sellers under her belt (including last year's air highjacking drama HOSTAGE); THE LAST PARTY certainly deserves to be number six.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

New Crime Fiction (Paranormal Threads, Of Course!) from John Connolly, THE FURIES

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“The story of the story—the remarkable production and author–reader loyalty during a global pandemic—makes the book a must-have for Connolly readers and fans of New England paranormal twists.”

 

The cover of The Furies announces a thriller—and the title page presents “Two Charlie Parker Novels.” To find the reality of this pair of short novels, turn to the Acknowledgments: John Connolly wrote The Furies out in public, five days a week, as the Covid pandemic gripped the lives of his readers. Starting with a notion of vengeance and a pair of sisters (it’s called The Sisters Strange, and for Connolly, “strange” is a keyword for dark and dangerous), this writer of the macabre and historically haunted added a mystic rune. And then, like a gambler dealt a hand she can’t discard, Connolly resolutely attached one short chapter after another in devotion to entertaining and distracting his readers.

 

The author explains: Whatever plot items he’d quickly inserted on one day (and these chapters circulated in five languages!), he had to live with and build from. No going back for changes, when each chapter launched as soon as it had been written. Fortunately, this is Connolly’s 22nd Charlie Parker novel or novella, so in that sense, the deepest ground work already existed.  

 

Focused in the classic Parker locale of Portland, Maine, The Sisters Strange offers a returned-to-town criminal, the sisters he’s romanced, and a hoard of valuable old coins that at one point all belonged to a single aging collector. The menace and evil of that collector, named Kepler, should have prevented anyone from stealing his goods. But some thieves don’t know what’s good for them.

 

Parker get called into the hunt for the thieves: A man he likes and respects is in love with one of those sisters, and can’t bear to see her threatened. Seeing women as victims needing rescue, Charlie Parker is as likely as anyone else to fall for the call.

 

By the time the strands are painfully untwisted, Parker’s recognition of who’s masterminding both the crimes and the brutality is running a bit too late to prevent damage.

 

The second novella in this package, The Furies, invites Charlie Parker to rescue another damsel in distress. He’s overloaded; he tells his buddy Dave, the local bar owner, to tell the woman to leave a number and he’ll get back to her.

 

“I heard a woman’s voice in the background. Dave spoke again, repeating what had been said. ‘She asked me to tell you that it’s urgent,’ he said. ‘Also, she says her name is Sarah Abelli, but she used to be Sarah Sawyer. She’s Nate Sawyer’s widow.’”

 

When Dave asks Parker about that name, Nate Sawyer, Parker warns him away from the Mob connection. But for the sake of both Dave and that mythical woman in distress, Charlie Parker will take the case.

 

This time, as in many other Connolly tales, there’s a dead child involved, and perhaps a ghost, not a very nice one. That should be an opening for Charlie Parker’s dead daughter, who haunts him, to make an appearance. But she doesn’t. And although Parker’s fascinating and complex friends Angel and Louis, well known to series readers, do appear, they’re not essential and they don’t reveal more about themselves—niggling disappointments for those who always hope for more from these “familiar faces.”

 

Neither novella on its own would compel re-reading: Go once through and head toward a deeper Connolly novel in other covers. But the story of the story—the remarkable production and author–reader loyalty during a global pandemic—makes the book a must-have for Connolly readers and fans of New England paranormal twists.

 

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

New Tuscan Mystery from Camilla Trinchieri, MURDER ON THE VINE

What a pleasure to ride through an Italian crime novel in the hands of a gifted storyteller! Camilla Trinchieri's new addition to the escapades and investigations of widower Nico Doyle, an appreciative American transplant to Tuscany, weaves among the complications of life in the town of Gravigna, when an 80-year-old bartender is murdered and the loves and lusts of several families must be explored to get to the motive of the crime.

Nico is not exactly an amateur sleuth—he worked for the New York Police Department in America, but he has left that career behind and has no official standing in his adopted land. Yet his good friend the local maresciallo (officer) of the carabinieri, Perillo, depends on Nico to add more professional expertise and experience to the local investigation. 

Whether the crime was motivated by love, money, lust, or revenge, Nico is drawn to finding justice for the old man and the people who've loved him, including the lovely Laura Benati, the sorrow-haunted manager of the hotel where the bartender worked for half his life. Under Nico's efforts is a sorrow of his own: He's turned away a woman he's come to love in the town, because he hasn't resolved his issues about his own dead wife and whether he can love again fully. This mystery of life becomes as significant as the one of death he's digging into.

In the long run, rather than forensics, it's Nico's passion for this place and his friends that leads him through the tangled relationships and motivations. His friend Luciana begs Nico to talk to her husband:

"He knows something about the murder," Luciana said. "Ever since we heard about it on the local news last night, he's been odd, fidgety. Usually, he's so quiet I can't even tell he's in the room. After the news, he was picking up things, putting them down again, changing channels every minute. Going to the kitchen, coming back empty-handed. I kept asking him to talk to me. He yelled at me. Nico, he has never yelled at me. The man has always had the patience of a saint. Talk to him. He trusts you."

Smoothly written by a bilingual author and braided with neatly woven clues and red herrings, Murder on the Vine is a delightful transport into community and culture, and provides just enough risk to make the final exposure and wrap-up highly satisfying to all—even to Nico's dog OneWag.

Series readers will appreciate meeting their old friends again; newcomers to Trinchieri's mysteries can slide right into the novel and can catch up on the earlier ones in the series afterward. Published by Soho Crime, an imprint of Soho Press, and just released, in time for enjoyable armchair travel.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

FROM THE SHADOWS by James R. Benn, Intriguing Billy Boyle World War II Mystery

As the 17th Billy Boyle investigation opens, it's October 1944, and the long-hoped-for end to World War II is still a long way off in terms of daily life. Sure, the Germans are retreating from France—but what permanent changes have they left behind among the people who stay? Who's been and remains a traitor (and France has flip-flopped some ... it's been hard to tell what was right), and who's still destroying humans and landscape on behalf of "the Boche"? 

Forms of violent payback flourish. So for Billy Boyle, a criminal investigator in General Eisenhower's special staff, every step forward holds peril from two sides at once. Delivered by boat to occupied Crete, on a "simple" pickup assignment to bring a Special Operations Executive officer to France, Billy finds his blunt American assessment of good guys and bad ones under challenge right away. And he'll have to test each ally as he goes along, because nobody's telling him much that he can rely on:

The brass wanted him for some SOE business in the south of France. That's all I was told because that's all I needed to know. Need to know is a big thing in this war, a concept I never much liked. As I gazed out over the unwelcoming shore while we rolled on the dying swells, I would have preferred to know why I was risking my neck.

Series fans and new readers alike will appreciate Billy's relief when he finds his trustworthy and intriguing Polish friend Kaz joining the mission in France. But on their way up the steps to their first joint meeting with the brass, shots ring out,. "I instinctively turned to look," Billy describes, "and heard a sharp sound, followed by a sting at the back of my neck." Nicked by a bullet, Billy's wound isn't bad, although another has pierced the top of Kaz's pierced military cap. Either there are some might casual shooters on the base, or a really accurate sniper has just delivered a warning.

Part of the intense interest of James R. Benn's Billy Boyle mysteries is the way Benn assembles details of the war that aren't often taught in the American classroom. This time, in addition to a failed uprising in the French resistance, and all the friction among passionate groups, there's a remarkable addition to the armed forces at hand: the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, a unit of Nisei (men of Japanese descent born in America and eager to enlist). 

FROM THE SHADOWS refreshes the feel of a more raw America where national origins and ethic differences had high significance. From Billy Boyle's American-Irish background, it's an unusual reach to men whose Japanese families may even be suffering internment in California. Every chapter ends with a clif-hanger, and offers historical and human revelation, along with solving the conundrum of who's taken up crime in the ranks.

The book has a September 6 release date from Soho Press. Cushion the onslaught of back-to-school calendars, ends of vacation, and autumn changeable weather by ordering a copy for your reading stack. Every twist is well knotted, and Benn pulls off another satisfying investigation into the human reality of war, crime, friendship, and honor.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

New V.I. Warshawski Sleuthing from Sara Paretsky, OVERBOARD

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“One of Vic’s friends makes a comment near the end that sums up why this investigator finds her work worth the effort: Max comments, ‘If everyone sat at home watching Netflix, we’d never have any justice in this life.’”

No good deed goes unpunished. Detective V.I. (Vic, or Victoria) Warshawski may have only let her dogs out for a short run, but they take off by the waterfront and find a half-dead young woman lying among the rocks. Of course Vic calls for emergency services, and by the time the fragile teen is getting help at the hospital, the private investigator has got trouble with the police, the hospital, and, most importantly, someone from the Chicago underworld who thinks the immigrant teen was carrying a vital small item and must have slipped it to V.I. during the rescue. Not so—but is anyone going to believe Vic, or is her life going to be repeatedly in jeopardy at every move she makes?

Of course, her life is never simple enough to just have one crisis underway: She’s also trying to provide protection for some aging Jewish friends whose synagogue is under attack. Oddly, there’s a big-money real estate deal offered for the old building. Is the vandalism connected, as a form of pressure? As she gradually begins to also see parallels between the two ongoing crises, Vic also suspects someone on the police force is involved with the mob and its money.

That’s enough to concern her friends, especially after one particular officer with a reputation for torture and menace targets Vic maliciously, with both language and force.

Her trusted advisor Lotty puts it bluntly: “It’s shocking, and deplorable, that you and this young man were molested,” Lotty said. “But, Victoria, please be realistic. If the police really are covering up a major crime, you can get yourself seriously wounded physically, on top of the degradation of a strip search.” When Lotty asks Vic to back off, for the sake of the friends who love her, it seems important to do so.

Yet other forces are in action: The rescued teen vanishes from the hospital; when Vic tracks down the youth’s Hungarian grandmother, she finds collusion between a nursing home and the black-ops police officers. More assaults on the synagogue distress Vic’s elderly friends to almost the breaking point. She clearly can’t help being pulled back into this dangerous mess, can she?

One of the pleasures of reading Sara Paretsky’s Warshawski novels is that despite the threats and pressure, there’s relatively little gore spread around, so the focus can stay on the perpetrators and their motives. Even the bent police pressure on Vic amounts to little more than battering her (although, granted, much worse gets threatened). Series readers will recognize the steady build-up of Vic’s insistence on justice at any cost, a reliable characteristic of these books. New to V.I. Warshawski? Relax and enjoy the well-plotted story and don’t worry about earlier titles—Parestsky doesn’t embed anything that calls for reading the other books, and her highly professional narrative makes it easy to catch Warshawski’s motivations and maneuvers. The quirks of the Chicago waterfront add to the book’s drama, and to the factors stacked up against this lone detective. But don’t take the “lone” notion too seriously: Vic’s willingness to be a friend, with all her heart, gains an equal return, and she’s well supported.

One of Vic’s friends makes a comment near the end that sums up why this investigator finds her work worth the effort, despite its risks and her often wounded body: Max comments, “If everyone sat at home watching Netflix, we’d never have any justice in this life.”

For Vic, that’s not going to be a problem.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Aimée Leduc Risks All, in MURDER AT THE PORTE DE VERSAILLES, by Cara Black

This 20th adventure of the style-conscious and cash-poor Parisian detective Aimée Leduc takes the single parent into a collision of dates and pressures, and Cara Black ramps the tension up with page-turning plotting that never relaxes.

It's November 2001—do you recall those first few months after 9/11, when the world had become (for Americans in particular) a much more frightening place? With bomb threats and danger "codes" and new forms of airline security? 

All that and more are resonating for Leduc, as she hosts a birthday celebration for her three-year-old daughter, mourns her father (he'd died on the same date), and begins to consider leaving Paris behind, to live more safely on a farm with her little daughter's father. But wait, that would also mean leaving behind her detective agency, and her close friends and colleagues, too.

Before the pressure has a chance to reach decision point, a crime shatters the family-and-friends gathering: Boris Viard, who left the party to go back to work and pick up his forgotten gift for the child, is desperately injured in a bomb explosion at his workplace, the Laboratoire Central de Police. Now it's a crime scene, for MURDER AT THE PORTE DE VERSAILLES.

Fans of the series and newcomers alike will guess quickly that by sending her little one away with papa to the farm in order to concentrate on clearing Boris of accusations that he set the bomb, Aimée makes an unexpected gap in her emotional life—one that another investigator may sense and be drawn toward.

Or is it just her detective skills that counterterrorism pro Loïc Bellan is recruiting?

"You owe me," Aimée said. "Plus, I'm your colleague now."

She put her hand on his arm. He turned, an intent look in his eyes. She inhaled the leather tang of his jacket, realized how warm his arm was through his sweater sleeve. The heat he generated just sitting there. She noticed the length of his eyelashes.

Idiot. Stop it. Heat flushed her neck.

Never get involved with a flic.

Especially a flic her father had a history with.

The effort to clear Boris will take all the investigatory skills and connections that Leduc and her detection partner René can muster. But it may also cost her more than she can afford.

Cara Black's narrative skills and suspense-laden pacing have never been better. The absence of that adored daughter frees up Leduc to push harder and absorb extra risks, and without details of little sticky hands, babysitters, and bedtimes, the action moves with power and authenticity. 

New to the series? Don't worry, there's no catch-up needed. Long-term fan? Enjoy Black's surge into her best writing yet.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Soho Press/Syndicate Brings Joseph Hansen's Dave Brandstetter PI Series Back Into Print -- All 12 Titles! (First 3 NOW)

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

Fadeout marks the debut of one of the twentieth century’s most memorable investigators. With this re-issue, a new generation will experience both Hansen’s rich writing and taut plotting, and a compelling view of how life may have, in many ways, changed for the better.

The Syndicate Books re-issue of Joseph Hansen’s 12 Dave Brandstetter crime novels begins with three titles at once, an excellent idea—because cracking open the first one, Fadeout, is an immediate reminder of why Hansen’s writing was startling and delectable in 1970. The Californian “death investigator” for an insurance company has much of the authority of a police officer to nose into questionable deaths, without having to focus on the law so intently. And he is, as publisher Paul Oliver says, “Tall, handsome, smart and successful.”

But author Michael Nava in his introduction to the re-issue nails the remarkable aspect of this neglected series: “Hansen is not only one of America’s best mystery writers, he is a great American writer. Period.” Nava asserts that the reason crime fiction readers don’t know Hansen’s books is their focus on the lives of gay men. Hansen’s investigator struggles with his committed relationship to another man, and all the cases he focuses on in this series involve men loving men.

They also include the brassy reality of gay nightclubs, paid sex, and vulgar drooling that objectifies both young men and older ones. But in each of the books, the motives for crime (and the pain Brandstetter feels) are always linked to love. A direction of love that was, at the time of writing, downright illegal and considered immoral and “sickening” by many.

Hansen’s writing steps away from those harsh edges through elegant description as well as page-turning plot and action. It also provides gorgeous examples of the Golden Age of American detective fiction, like this:

“In twenty years you could say and do a lot you wish you hadn’t. In twenty years you could store up a lot of regrets. And then, when it was too late, when there was no one left to say ‘I’m sorry’ to, you could stop sleeping for regret, stop eating, talking, working, for regret. You could stop wanting to live. You could want to die for regret.”

Or, of course, you could decide that killing someone else would ease your pain.

Fadeout opens with Brandstetter’s arrival in a box canyon above a California ranch town. An insured man’s car has been found in a dangerously flooded river, apparently accidentally landing there from a slick and risky wooden bridge. But no body has turned up. Should Brandstetter’s company pay out the life insurance benefit? Not if the man hasn’t died. And that’s what Dave Brandstetter must determine, through tracking down family, friends, recent activities, and yes, the course of love. All this, while he’s eye-deep in grief himself at the death (from cancer) of his 20-year partner, and blaming himself for the small things he could have done better, the added love he could have displayed, across years of tenderness and loyalty.

This kind of portrait of homosexual love turned preconceptions upside down when the books came out, of course, and for many, it still may.

When the break in the investigation arrives, it comes wrapped in the moody film ambience of the time: “A smoldering Valentino in white riding breeches ought to have been waiting in the motel office. It was a silent-movie set. Slot windows in deep white walls, guarded by grilles of black iron. Black carved beams, black chandelier. Floors of square red tiles. Tapestry-backed chairs with brass studs and gold fringe. But it wasn’t Valentino. It was Ito in a tidy white jacket.”

When this motel clerk pulls out a registration card and shares the information, Brandstetter is on his way to solving the case, although more risk and death follow. Neatly twisted and elegantly resolved, Fadeout marks the debut of one of the twentieth century’s most memorable investigators. With this re-issue, a new generation will experience both Hansen’s rich writing and taut plotting, and a compelling view of how life may have, in many ways, changed for the better.

 PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.  

NOTE:  Books 2 and 3 are also out now -- and reviewed at the New York Journal of Books: DEATH CLAIMS and TROUBLEMAKER.

Third Detective Betty Rhyzyk Investigation, THE PLEDGE by Kathleen Kent

Fathers and daughters. In a swift opening chapter that has more action and revelation than many a crime novel might witness in fifty pages, Texas/New York author Kathleen Kent turns her red-haired police detective Betty Rhyzyk toward family redemption. Oh, probably not hers—unless you believe the voice of her deceased Uncle Benny nudging her along is more than just in her head—but how can she not follow up on the disappearance of the mom of a seven-month-old, much-loved baby? 

Especially when the street-rescued mom and the bright baby have been living with Betty and her life partner, Jackie, in their Dallas home.

But for the moment, that's going on hold, because Betty's needed for a downtown hostage situation with other kids at risk. Why her? Sinaloan enforcer El Cuchillo has a message for only Betty. In THE DIME and THE BURN, Betty's met El Cuchillo under nasty circumstances, including his effort to burn her alive. After all, his interests involve the Dallas drugs underworld. And as a police detective, Betty's been more than a nuisance to El Cuchillo.

But this time, the Sinaloan intends to use her as a weapon against his own competition, on the old theory of "the enemy of my enemy." Who's he aiming her at? Shudder ... Evangeline Roy, leader of a truly evil cult that in turn is cutting into the drug territory. 

And now the point of the book's opening with the baby being fostered in Betty's home comes through with all the force of a shotgun:

"Again," I say, "why don't you get one of your men to take care of it?" ...

"Evangeline is in Texas for two reasons. One, to set up operations. And two, to settle a score with you for the death of her sons. And she will want to make it as painful for you as possible."

He pauses a moment to let that sink in. "If I were betting, my money would be on you, Sergeant. I believe that you can win this battle. ... You are now the guardian of a new infant. A baby girl."

Just like that, Betty and her family of choice enter as pawns in a brutal war of pyschopaths for drug territory in Texas. Even assuming she can do what El Cuchillo wants from her, is there any way to protect her people -- and also do the job she's committed to performing?

Fair warning, there's a lot of violence and threat in THE PLEDGE. But there's also an unexpected amount of affection and respect, and a throughline of strong women who do what has to be done, with or without backing from the fathers in their lives and hearts. 

Kent's earlier novels in this trilogy gained nominations for the Edgar Award. THE PLEDGE belongs on that list, too; carve out time to read it this season, and you'll be ahead of the line when those nominations get listed in early 2022. 

Published by Mulholland Books, and released last week in both hardcover and ebook.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Soviets and Night Witches Link With Billy Boyle, in ROAD OF BONES from James R. Benn

You could spend weeks, months, a lifetime, reading your way through the evidence of what happened during the Second World War.  And sorting out heroes and villains.

Or instead, you could trust the kindness of author James R. Benn, who unearths unusual details of the war that enchant and inform, while investigator Billy Boyle pursues crime on behalf of the American forces. Blunt-spoken as this Boston Irish detective can be, he's also dedicated to supporting his friends and allies, and this 16th Billy Boyle World War II Mystery is another "keeper" for solid enjoyment and excitement.

After an exhilarating opening chapter in which Billy fills in on a bombing run in a B-17 Flying Fortress (Benn makes it easy to slipstream names and terminology in mid scene), the point of his new mission -- partnered with "Big Mike, aka Staff Sergeant Miecznikowksi -- is an Office of Special Investigations order that the team sort out a double murder at an airbase ... in Russia. More specifically, it's at an air base in Ukraine, part of a plan Billy recalls: "Take off from England, land and refuel in Russia, then hit the Germans again on the way back."

With the Russian allies blaming the Americans and sure the murderer must be a "Yank," immediate action is called for -- Billy and Mike need to identify the real murderer(s) to avoid a devastating international incident. And just to make things a bit more challenging, they'll need to collaborate with a Russian cop to smooth things over.

If that only meant the attractive and American-enchanted Lieutenant Maiya Akilina, life would be good. But complications pile up swiftly: Big Mike's transport abandoned him where he's likely to end up in a prison camp, and Billy's got to locate and retrieve his partner. Worse yet, the Russian colleague assigned is Captain Kiril Sidorov, and Billy already knows him from a London experience soaked in treachery in several directions.

"My homecoming was not as I expected," Sidorov said, a sigh escaping between his lips. "I have been in a labor camp in Kolyma. ... Little food, very cold, long hours. Many prisoners die there. Because of the frozen ground, the authorities decreed that interments be made in the roadbed as it is dug. Much more practical. Hence, road of bones."

"Why did they send you there?" I asked. I had a pretty good idea, but it seemed like Sidorov wasn't aware of the role I'd played. Otherwise, he'd be at my windpipe right now.

As the murder investigation reveals a drug component and potential inventory crime, Billy (and, he hopes, Big Mike) must watch their backs in every direction. 

Special interest in ROAD OF BONES comes from collaboration with a little-remembered group of women aviators on the Russian side, the Night Witches -- once again, author James R. Benn dips into details of the historical war and finds intrigue and adventure. Adding personalities (and charming figures) to these female heroes is par for the course in this crimesolving series, lightening the interactions among the investigators and adding charm and amazement to what might otherwise be a very male-focused plot line.

Memorable twists to the action include seeing a Russian officer demoted from NKVD status to prisoner (delicately sketched with much sorrow), and wrestling with an alliance that puts the Americans at risk of Russian betrayal. For instance, is it better for the Russians at the base to assume that Billy's been shot down in the midst of action? Billy admits, "They may think I'm already dead. It may be easier to let them think so a while longer." His host congratulates him on learning to think like a Russian: "There is an old saying. 'Close to the Tsar, close to death.'" For Billy, "it made perfect sense, God help me."

Series fans know that at least Billy is likely to survive the action, whether imprisoned or not. But the risks to his friends multiply, there's endless confusion about who's an enemy and how, and it doesn't just take the rewards of crime to produce lies and betrayal in wartime. 

This lively series makes for great reading. No need to read the other titles before this one, but there's plenty of incentive to pull more onto the TBR shelf afterward, to enjoy a gifted storyteller and a full deck of unusual historical details.

ROAD OF BONES releases on September 7, from Soho Crime, an imprint of Soho Press.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Top-Notch New "Wounded Sleuth" from Lisa Gardner, BEFORE SHE DISAPPEARED

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

Before She Disappeared introduces what may be the most powerful sleuth of the decade, an “ordinary” woman driven to uncover the truth at any personal cost. There’s only one thing to ask for by the time the book ends: please, please, a sequel and a series.

The new thriller from Lisa Gardner, Before She Disappeared, cuts remarkable new ground. An intense and fast-paced investigative novel—practically a police procedural—it features the compelling presence of Frankie Elkin. Sober more than nine years, Frankie’s on a hunt for the only thing that eases her personal cravings: finding the lost.

Her arrival in the Mattapan section of Boston comes hard. White and female, she might as well wear a target or a sign that says “hurt me” in the rough district. But she’s there to find Angelique, a vanished high school student. Whatever search there’d been for “Angel” ended months ago, as far as Frankie can tell. Drugs, prostitution, or just leaving town, those are the common assumptions made about a kid on the wrong side of life.

But not by Frankie. Looking straight at the situation, she sees no reason that a high-achieving Haitian immigrant determined to save her family from deportation would just vanish and not even reassure her mom or brother. And Frankie’s got a plan for investigating and trying to find Angelique, as she’s done with fourteen earlier missing persons. Only this time she hopes, as she hopes every time, to find the person alive.

Taking up a job as a bartender may sound risky for her sobriety, but although booze hasn’t lost its appeal, she’s committed to something more powerful, the surge of adrenaline from finding the lost. Her first task: persuade the local bar owner to give her the job, as well as the empty upstairs living quarters. In spite of her white skin.

“He shakes his head. With more glasses to dry, he crosses his arms over his chest and looks at me straight on. He still doesn’t say a word.

‘I work hard.’ I tick off a finger. ‘I’m on time, especially because I’m going to be living upstairs, and I won’t siphon your booze. I pour fast, I know how to change out a keg, and I’m an excellent listener. Everyone likes a good listener.’

‘They won’t like you.’

‘Neither did you, but you’re coming around. Give me a month. By then no one will notice my white skin or superior gender. I’ll just be another fixture behind the bar.’”

Why here? Because this is where Angelique and her relatives belong. And in a very short time, Frankie figures out why the hunt for this teen started late, ended early, and isn’t going anywhere. Partnering with a police detective who’s frustrated at the lack of progress, Frankie earns her way past his reluctance to trust her, and proves that her ability to listen—especially to teens and women—can reopen the case.

When Frankie discovers proof that the teen is still alive, and seeking help, that partnership with the local detective becomes essential. But it stays charged with anger and territory, and the hunger Frankie carries with her: consuming, propulsive, and perhaps entirely destructive. That’s similar to what drives the “kids” around her, including another missing teen, revealed as “the missing girl no one even knew was missing,” yet who sets a criminal enterprise into focus and ramps up the danger to all involved.

Gardner’s fierce and skillful blending of rage and despair and unhealable wounds makes Frankie an unforgettable protagonist. She can’t be called an amateur sleuth, because her impassioned searches have shown solid results. She has families that speak for her, because she cared enough to work for discovery of what happened to their loved ones. Yet she’s not paid by any of those. And she walks a knife edge of internal haunting.

Before She Disappeared introduces what may be the most powerful sleuth of the decade, an “ordinary” woman driven to uncover the truth at any personal cost. There’s only one thing to ask for by the time the book ends: please, please, a sequel and a series.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Billy Boyle World War II Mystery #15, THE RED HORSE, from James R. Benn

How long can a mystery series about six years of warfare last? How complicated can the plots become, when we all "know the ending" -- our side won?

The answer that James R. Benn makes me think of is, how many people have complicated stories of the war? (Hint: Many thousands.) Well then, that's how many mysteries there may be room for along the way.

THE RED HORSE takes two enthralling facets of the British side of the war -- the use of an asylum as a recovery center for people whose information and importance shouldn't be risked in ordinary medical care, and the espionage teams playing back and forth between the Allies and the Axis -- to spin a risky and highly suspenseful tale of detection that our investigator, Captain Billy Boyle, feels compelled to sort out. Not only is the conduct of the war at stake, but so are his friends. And in every James Benn mystery, those friendships forged in mutual risk are the vital threads of the action.

In the preceding Billy Boyle mystery, Boyle raced around occupied Paris confronting crime and trying to liberate his beloved Diana. Reaching the end of When Hell Struck Twelve didn't resolve all of Boyle's issues, and the new book opens with his struggles to get hold of himself again, as he's locked away in an asylum where doctors may be trying to wipe out his memories, as he sees it: He's witnessing extensive forces of guards, and terrifying maneuvers around him. On the way to an appointment with the psychologist in charge, he admits to himself that he's "scared as hell." And against his own inner rules, he admits out loud:

"Everything's wrong. Shattered. I don't know how to get back. It feels like it's going to be like this forever."

"When you were brought here, you were severely exhausted, in a state of profound confusion," Robinson said. "It takes a while to come back from that. You were physically and emotionally spent. Add to that the effects of the drugs you'd taken, and anyone would have a hard time."

"It was only a few pep pills, Doc, come on."

"You continue to minimize the seriousness of the drugs you took. It was methamphetamine, and from what you said, you took enough to win the Kentucky Derby without a horse. Just because the Germans gave them to their troops doesn't mean they're safe. We're talking about Nazis, remember."

All of Billy's instincts for self-preservation argue against letting the doctor try the rest cure suggested, a medically induced sleep for some 40 hours, to reset his mind. But there are two vitally important things Billy needs to do: find a way to help his very close friend Kaz recover from a heart ailment, and resume the effort to rescue his beloved. When it looks like he can't do those without taking the cure, he yields—and for a while, even the reader won't know whether he's made the right choice.

As it turns out, some things go well from that cure. But not everything he's "witnesssed" while his mind was malfunctioning was a delusion: He's seen a death that looks increasingly like murder, and even for the sake of helping his friends, Billy can't let go of his hunt for the criminal and justice:

So far, there was nothing anyone had said about [the victim] Holland that hinted at a motive. Or even a relationship with a single person at Saint Albans.

Except for Doc Robinson, and he wasn't talking. From what I'd learned, Holland was likely to have been as uncommunicative with him in his sessions as he was the rest of the time. Maybe the files would tell the real story.

Maybe not. After all, the SOE and the OSS were not known for their fidelity to the truth.

Of course, Billy recognizes the kinds of trade-offs being made around him. And he's honest about his own limitations: "In a place so far down in my heart and soul that I might never find my way back from it, I could sacrifice hundreds of people, maybe thousands, to get Diana back ... they could all vanish in a flash if it would bring Diana safely home from Ravensbrück."

Fortunately, he won't have to go that far. But he will have to convince his superiors that a crime (or more than one) has been committed, that he's recovered enough to be the investigator, and that he's willing to put himself into the hands of the asylum staff again, to get to the truth.

James R. Benn is in no hurry to "finish" Billy Boyle's war; there are many marvelous quirks and twists of real history for him to braid into the investigative adventures that Boyle undertakes on behalf, in the long run, of his "uncle" General Eisenhower and staff, and the Allies. In the process, readers get more than the breath-taking risks and close-shave escapes of Captain Boyle and his friends: They get to witness a brash young American growing up in the theater of war, and see the groundwork that will in turn, after the work of many more men and women, lay a basis for a lasting peace.

Benn's writing is well polished, paced with suspense and surprises, and historically trustworthy. As he lays out the war, on multiple fronts, he also lays out the strength of friendship and loyalty. His books are a smooth blend of both facets, and worth every minute of exhilarating reading. You won't need to devour the other Billy Boyle titles before this one, but give yourself the great pleasure of catching up with them afterward. 

Publication date is September 1, from Soho Crime, an imprint of Soho Press.

PS: Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.