New Cuban Mystery from Teresa Dovalpage, DEATH UNDER THE PERSEIDS

There's something very worrying about a free lunch: It could be provided with a dangerous ulterior motive. 

That's what Cuban-born Mercedes Spivey and her American professor husband ignore for far too long, when the couple receives a free pair of cruise tickets to the Spanish-speaking island that each one needs to revisit, for a different reason. Sweepstake winning? Accidental lottery reward? Who knows -- but the timing is so perfect that they don't question it, and jump onto a cruise boat, ready to enjoy the ride.

Within the first minutes on the cruise on the Narwhal, Mercedes spots someone from her own past ... and then perhaps a glimpse of a second person. It's a creepy coincidence, right? A chance to make things better with people she'd cut in the past? 

Teresa Dovalpage's previous Cuban mysteries are much sweeter than DEATH UNDER THE PERSEIDS, because this time we know right from the start — since Mercedes is sharing her viewpoint all along — that this "pretty woman" with her older husband has a lot to feel guilty about, and a lot left unresolved, as she's climbed her way, one affair at a time, to some sort of Floridian middle class. Soon it looks like she's surrounded by others with mixed motives. (Maybe the only truly nice person is her aging grandmother who still does the laundry by hand in the back yard of her Havana home.)

Mercedes begs us, as readers and witnesses, to believe there is one saint in her life: Lorenzo, whom she loved and left, and who then died in a fire. (Fire and blades and other threats abound!) Meanwhile, if she's the chief sinner here, are all the threats deserved? Does she still have the ability to dodge and weave, and come out ahead? Even as she disembarks in Havana, she's questioning her safety:

Two men approached the counter. One was a skinny, gray-bearded guy in a tie-dyed shirt who looked like a hippie—or at least my idea of what a hippie was. He went first. The other, who walked with a slight limp, carried a burgundy European Union passport. Our eyes met for a second, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen him before. Maybe the other guy too. They both seemed sort of familiar. My throat closed and my heart pounded faster.

Dovalpage takes quite a risk herself, in presenting such an unpleasant protagonist, whose greed and self-centeredness are not really balanced by her endless chest-thumping guilt. Yet the net of threats and complications and the Cuban setting pull the story faster and faster, until it can't be set aside: The Perseids, the meteor shower that's taking place as revelations cascade, is that too somehow a message to Mercedes that her own crimes are known and she's about to lose at last?

DEATH UNDER THE PERSEIDS is much darker than Dovalpage's three earlier mysteries. Whether you collect it for the Cuban setting or for the ongoing suspense of how this maturing author will continue to develop, it's a must for the shelf. Kudos to Soho Crime (an imprint of Soho Press) for encouraging Dovalpage to move forward so fiercely.

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

Nerve-Wracking Thriller from Katie Lattari, DARK THINGS I ADORE

The point of Audra Colfax's long seduction of her thesis professor, Max Durant, is clearly announced from the start of DARK THINGS I ADORE: She's going to make him pay.

But what he owes will only be revealed through a long, slow fan dance of characters at a long-ago summer camp for artists, the Lupine Valley Arts Collective. And if you're thinking those pretty flowers when you read the word "lupine," Audra's carefully staged punitive drama should remind you that the word has another and very different meaning.

Laced with the power exertions of manipulative professors over students, of great artists over hopeless ones, and of sadists over the mentally and emotionally vulnerable, Audra in DARK THINGS I ADORE constructs a hunt-and-prey situation that calls to mind "The Most Dangerous Game" over and over. Who's the hunter here, and who will take mortal wounds—Audra, Max, or one of the others from their linked pasts? As Audra confides:

My voice is gentle and maybe mildly flirtatious. I let him have it. This gift. A bit of the wolfishness from before creeps back into the lines of this face, the glint of his teeth. I relax. There he is. The predator I'm fully prepared to face.

The tension never lets up. This is Katie Lattari's debut thriller, but she's no neophyte in the writing world. And if the motives may not perfectly match the crimes involved—without the obvious psychopathic thru-lines of, say, a Hannibal Lector—this is a tightly paced and well spun work of suspense, promising more from the author in deeper development.

The book will release September 14, from Sourcebooks. Leave the light on, and lock the doors.

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

Summer Camp's Most Enduring Nightmare, in THE DROWNING by J. P. Smith

There was always an edge of noir about nights at summer camp, wasn't there? You were safe if you stayed in the cabin, but getting to the bathroom -- or being the last one to walk back from the lake -- what if the scary creature from last night's fireside chiller came after you?

In THE DROWING, J. P. Smith's seventh novel, that darkness goes around full circle, in a twist of persecution that steps back into the life of a former camp counselor. It's Alex Mason, whose determination to teach a little boy named Joey Proctor to swim got twisted, years ago, into something mean and frightening. The child disappeared, and Alex got on with his life afterward.

But others couldn't. The child's parents. The camp owners. The child, if he survived -- is that even possible? He must have drowned or been kidnapped, right?

Alex keeps trying to convince himself. But for sure, someone is coming after him and methodically destroying every aspect of his otherwise successful career and family. Even his wife can't buy that  he's not responsible for this devastation:

She touched his hand. "Tell me the truth. Did you do this? No, don't look at me like that. Did you or didn't you? If you did, you must have had a good reason for it. Just help me try to understand, okay?"

"You don't trust me anymore, do you," he said.

"After those photos from the bar? And you abandoning a little boy on a raft? Maybe I'm just a little less confident these days."

In a classic horror thriller (so much so that I kept looking for a quick cameo by Alfred Hitchcock), Alex loses control of everything he values. The twists are knife-sharp, the suspense excruciating. And the final twist -- well, whether you buy the last explanation or not (and I didn't quite), you will have taken a wicked rollercoaster ride. Make sure you keep your ticket.

From Sourcebooks, new for January.

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