Terrific Sniper Thriller from Cara Black, NIGHT FLIGHT TO PARIS

[Originally posted at New York Journal of Books] 

“Black's work is leaping ahead in power and energy, and Night Flight to Paris is one of the notable thrillers of the season.”

Cara Black, well known for her long Parisian series featuring PI Aimée Leduc, has come into her own. Her new series features a woman sniper who, in last year’s first book of the series, Three Hours in Paris, faced nightmares of capture and death as she works undercover for the British, on multiple assassination targets.

In the second book in this dramatic and fast-paced new approach, Night Flight to Paris, American Kate Rees thinks her failed mission (as she sees it) from 1940 will keep her in Britain as a sharpshooting instructor for the rest of the war. But in 1942 her former handler, Colonel Stepney, has pressing reasons to send her back to the occupied City of Light on a triple mission: a delivery, an assassination, and the exfiltration of one of her close friends, Margo, who's specifically demanded Kate's assistance.

But nothing's very clear in the rushed briefing to the mission, as Colonel Stepney seems to be more than a bit obscure, telling Kate: "‘A good undercover legend is like a diamond. Crafted to meet the four Cs—the carat, cut, clarity, and color. They sparkle so brightly you can't look past them.’ Diamonds were hard. Was Stepney saying something else here? ‘Much of your mission depends on what happens on the ground after you land, and how Margo plays it. We can't know anything for sure.’ Plan. Pivot. And re-plan. Hadn't Wilkes drilled that into the trainees? Or as her pa would say, ya gotta be ready to turn on a dime, Katie.”

When Stepney issues Kate a cyanide suicide pill, that confirms how risky this mission will be. And it's complicated by the mess Kate left behind two years earlier since there is a warrant out for her arrest in Paris, and she'll have to be in heavy disguise as a result.

Black ramps up the tension in every plot twist, and offers an unforgettable experience of both wartime Paris and the sheer guts and creativity needed for undercover work. 

“She'd walked into a setup. Her own damn fault. ... Under her Red Cross Cape, she slid her 9mm Welrod's 12-inch cylinder, containing its bolt, barrel and baffle, down her sleeve. It took seconds, during which she never broke eye contact with the Nazi.”

In contrast to Black’s Leduc books, this new series avoids swaddling the action in romantic questions, which in turn leaves Kate Rees clearer about her own capacity, able to plan swiftly, and incisive in questioning what’s coming at her and responding from strength, despite some obvious flaws in her preparation:

“In the garage, Kate opened her bag in the creaking cabinet, ready to change into the Wehrmachthelferinnen uniform. Sickening Nazi symbols decorated the sleeves. Would it fit her big-boned frame? With this uniform and the stolen ID, she’d have credentials and blend in unnoticed. But the few phrases of German she’d picked up left a lot to be desired. Face it: the moment she opened her mouth she’d be dead.”

Overall, Black shows that her transition from the Leduc detective series to this thriller format is an excellent choice. Although there are a few inconsistencies at chapter jumps—maybe from all the adrenaline in crafting this high-suspense, high-threat adventure—Black's work is leaping ahead in power and energy, and Night Flight to Paris is one of the notable thrillers of the season.

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

Jane Smiley Brings Gold-Rush Women into Crime Fiction in A DANGEROUS BUSINESS

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“There’s a lot of entertainment in seeing Eliza apply the methods of a fictional detective to the hazards of her dangerous life. Well researched and smoothly told, the book is a fine entertainment and offers a fresh perspective of women’s ways of surviving the frontier.”

 

Deftly blending a clever murder mystery with historical strands, Jane Smiley in A Dangerous Business offers an entrancing view of California life in the 1850s Gold Rush days. Framing the story of a young widow working in a house of prostitution, Smiley proves once again that society when viewed from beneath can be messy and violent—but also tender and intriguing.

 

Eliza Ripple is mostly better off than during her brief marriage, despite the demeaning physical nature of her job. Her employer, Mrs. Parks, both respects and supports her, as long as she performs her duties and maintains an attractive appearance and surface persona. Despite the obvious dangers of submitting to the desires of strangers who sometimes exert anger and even violence in the bedchamber, Eliza feels well protected by both Mrs. Parks and the live-in bodyguard Carlos; if she leaves the chamber door open a crack, Carlos understands that she is frightened, and if her employer is concerned, she too will set the door slightly ajar. It’s a supportive situation.

That is, until Eliza begins to explore the terrain outside the working downtown of Monterey in the company of another young woman sex worker, Jean—who tends to the physical desires of women instead, often in terms of massage and comfort, rather than what Eliza calls, for men, “doing their business.” The new allies savor a country ride … until the moment when they find the body of a young woman, probably one of the several who’ve recently gone missing.

 

In a charming if naive fashion, Eliza and Jean attempt to apply the detective methods shown by Dupin, a detective in the popular fiction written by Edgar Allen Poe. Naturally, they are quickly over their heads, and discovering yet another corpse—this time, of a woman who’d been kind to them—is an appalling experience. Yet they feel called to focus and “detect”:

 

“Eliza said, ‘We have to look for signs.’

 

‘About who did it? Yes, but then we have to remember what we saw.’

 

‘No way to write it down.’ Eliza glanced around. She didn’t see ink or a quill.

 

Jean took a few deep breaths, then said, ‘We repeat it until we can remember it.’”

 

When Eliza reports the discovery of a body to Mrs. Parks, she finds herself on new ground: “Now seemed the right time to tell Mrs. Parks about her so-called investigations with Jean, but Eliza refrained, though she was not sure why. Perhaps there was something about the killing of [XXX] that made her distrust everyone, even Mrs. Parks.”

 

Smiley crafts a neat tale of investigation and self-discovery, while managing to maintain a portrait of prostitution as a surprisingly kind necessity of the time. Eliza is methodical and insightful, and the support around her protects her from serious harm, even from threat for the most part. As in the classic Western novels, this gentling of “a dangerous business” makes the book easy to relax with—but may not be as accurate as one could hope.

 

Even if Eliza survives her improvised murder investigation, will she still be employed? What is the future of a woman without family, in the wild West? And what kind of friendship is she developing with Jean, whose “skills” are so different from her own?

A Dangerous Business is relaxing reading, and there’s a lot of entertainment in seeing Eliza apply the methods of a fictional detective to the hazards of her dangerous life. Well researched and smoothly told, the book is a fine entertainment and offers a fresh perspective of women’s ways of surviving the frontier.

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

 

Nantucket at Christmas? Terrific Setting for Francine Mathews, DEATH ON A WINTER STROLL

Maybe you read about the way Nantucket, the island enclave off the coast of Massachusetts, protected its residents (seasonal and year-round) from COVID. But Nantucket Police Chief Meredith (Merry) Folger can't use the same strategies to keep out death.

Actually she's still reeling from the death of her grandfather Ralph, who'd held the post before her and whose love and guidance always surrounded her. Under the stresses of the job, she's more bereft than ever, missing his mentoring. Thanksgiving week included all the extra challenges of working with the federal teams that protected the President of the United States, too, with three generations of his family, snuggling into that island and historic ambience.

She gave way to wistfulness.

"Why didn't the Pres just go to Martha's Vineyard this year?" she moaned. "It was good enough for the Clinton and Obamas."

"He's not a Vineyard guy," [her husband] Peter said simply. Which was, of course, unanswerable. It was accepted fact that you were either a Vineyard person or a Nantucket one. The loyalties were fierce, utterly distinct, cultivated over generations, and immune to criticism. No one could be both.

Which made it a little easier to put up with the security craziness, Merry reflected. It was kind of cool to know that the President cherished exactly the same place she did.

What she couldn't know, in that brief unwinding once the Turkey Day festivities ended, was the stresses building within a film production enterprise at another part of the large island. And the political maneuvers aren't over, either — the Secretary of State brings her family for Christmas and Nantucket's famously colorful and playful "Christmas Stroll," with its festival atmosphere that enables two teens to connect across the social and political gaps, and hides the maneuvers of "persons unknown" toward murder. When two bodies burden Merry's holiday, it's no vacation at all. Not that she expected one.

Francine Mathews is a smooth and expert crafter of murder investigations that honor the warmth of affection, love, and friendship, even as they showcase tight plots with well-built twists. DEATH ON A WINTER STROLL continues her excellent series. Mystery readers will value the careful revelations of means, motives, and opportunities, with a fair chance to finger the criminal(s) just before or as Merry does. 

Best of all, despite the harsh reality of crime and especially murder, Mathews highlights the warmth of community and family, as well as the awkwardly won joys of creative arts and growing into one's own best hopes. 

So this book from Soho Crime (an imprint of Soho Press) does multiple duty for the season: Get a copy for yourself, to sink into for stress relief (your holiday is never going to be as stressful as Merry's!); get another for credit as the "best holiday gift giver" when you hand it to a good friend or family member; and know that you'll get great value from your own copy, because this is one to read and savor multiple times. As Merry's grandfather used to remind her, when "her" song played: "Have yourself a Merry (Folger) little Christmas."

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

Martin Limón Brings Back Sueño and Bascom in WAR WOMEN, 1970s US South Korean Occupation

As for so many of the crime fiction series from Soho Crime (Soho Press's dedicated imprint), there's a lot of eager anticipation for each year's new novel from Martin Limón. WAR WOMEN, a November 2021 release, features US Army CID (Criminal Investigation) agents George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, chasing down criminal activity -- not necessarily to shut down crime during the US occupation of South Korea in the 1970s, but to make military life easier and more profitable for their bosses.

Two major twists take this adventure into new terrain for the pair of investigators. The first is that one of their particularly eccentric fellow soldiers, Sergeant First Class Cecil B. Harvey—known to George and Ernie as "Strange," for his unending hunger for tales of romantic and especially sexual strangeness—has gone missing, along with a top-secret document. Both of these aspects are so unexpected for "Strange" that the investigators would be chasing him down no matter what, just to satisfy their own curiosity. But in fact the sergeant, who's in charge of the 8th Army's classified documents, is such an essential ally that they've got to find him and try to get him back. Digging into the disappearance will pit them against both their own army and the North Korean espionage system.

Every new moment puts them at risk, though: As George notes, "I'd just reached out to hang my coat on the rack. I held it a moment, frozen in fear. Had they already discovered the theft of the document? Had Strange told them of our involvement? As calmly as I could, I turned and asked, 'What's this about?'"

As usual, Sueño and Bascom need to manage their personal pursuits while also obeying orders. In this case, their assigned task is to manage a tabloid journalist threatening to expose their superior officers. That would be tough on its own, but the journalist is Overseas Observer reporter Katie Byrd Washington, whose brilliant ability to sneak around and use colleagues against each other has already burned the two in the past. And somehow, they're supposed to lock her up:

Katie Byrd Washington was a civilian. Her legal fate fell well outside of 8th Army's jurisdiction. The US military could pull her press pass and deny her access to our bases—if we had justification—but arresting her would be strictly illegal. Illegal not only under American law, but also under Korean law.

It turns out that their bosses expect George and Ernie to manipulate their Korean police colleague, nicknamed (with reason) Mr. Kill, into doing the job for them. Anyone who's read any of this series knows that's failure just waiting to happen. Mr. Kill isn't just non-manipulable ... he's downright dangerous when annoyed.

WAR WOMEN offers a great romp across terrain and situations, including some little-known roles of Army women and their Korean allies. There are no particularly high-tension moments, and not a lot of change in Ernie and George—but as winter entertainment, the book is a delight.

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

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.

Rock Music, Suspense, Dark Thriller: HOLD ME DOWN by Clea Simon

Clea Simon's deep dives into the crime, pain, and heroics of Boston's club music world gave a fierce and dark passion to her crime novel World Enough (2017). With HOLD ME  DOWN, Simon goes multiple layers deeper and darker—thanks to the persona of Gal, a scarred and angry woman who has held crowds in the palm of her hand as she belted out the lyrics of her own top songs, mic stand and the strings of the bass as much a part of her as her own vocal cords and rough screams of rage and sexuality.

For Gal, a Boston return, 20 years later, is fraught with potential failure. Taking a cameo role in a club performance, she falters at first, realizing the guitarist is "all metal and speed, still" -- can Gal keep up? But she finds out right away: "The move centers her ... belting out the chorus as well as she knows the tattoo on her wrist—an F clef, faded blue—as the song pours out of her, the words coming easily now. Winding up to the hook. The line with the hiccup. One extra beat that makes the rhyme different." And she's back in charge of the image she's been ready to project, of a woman and a band grown tougher with age, "blooded, in ways they can only imagine." It's about power, sexuality, control.

And then, with one tricky glimpse for a moment of a face in the crowd, she's rubbed raw again, and in danger.

Scenes of touring, of the drug-supported physical challenge of performing for one crowd after another, clawing up the charts, the band becoming a life form of its own: Simon peels these like layers of a sharp onion, tears and rage starting to flow with Gal's slow recognition of the deep punishment she's sustained in her life. Her best songs—including the iconic "Hold Me Down"—root in that festering pain and anger that only her closest friends have even a hint of. 

"That song, 'Hold Me Down,' had been their breakout. Their hit, even in the rough four-track version they'd recorded down at Randy's, burning up the college stations with a waiting list for the single. Fans asking at the record store whenever she dropped back in to pick up a shift. It was why the suits had come calling, taking the shuttle up from New York to hear them at the Rat, the Channel, Taji's."

With the "suits" had come the controllers, the people who shoved the band at a pace beyond human capacity, drugging them as needed, pressing them into alcohol and drug abuse and a demand for performance that's deadly in its effects.

As the 20-years-later brutal murder of one of the team confronts her, so long after the band's success, Gal slowly admits to herself why the killing happened and who has deliberately done damage to her and the others. Then the police get involved, demanding that she reveal information she's barely coming to terms with. "You could come in and speak with us, if you'd like. Or should I send someone to get you?" That's the investigator. And Gal replies that she'll come in, without being dragged—admitting, in that moment, that her choices are "all about control."

But you can't control what brutal crime does to you. You can only cling to your friends and what's left of who you thought you were, and keep going. Or not. 

Simon's pacing in this crime thriller offers more than plot and character: She reincarnates the demanding sexuality of the rock underground with the costs of fame and addiction. Page by page, scene by traumatic scene, there's no guarantee that Gal can even perceive a safe harbor. 

Anyone who's dreamed of the power of being a rock performer will get double the emotional kick from this raw and compelling suspense novel. Simon's particular genius in HOLD ME DOWN is shining her light into the world of tough, struggling, and brilliant women—a side of the rock world rarely acknowledged or envisioned. HOLD ME DOWN is a heartache packed into 248 pages, with the possibility of breaking always just within reach.

After multiple genres of mysteries and crime novels, this Boston-area author has come into her own, so that Gal yells the words so many have had in the back of their throats, an accusation: "You wanna, you wanna hold me down." It's all about how we fight back. Can Gal do it—and survive?

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

Indelible Darkness: THE HOUSE OF ASHES by Stuart Neville

In a fierce and powerful twist away from his crime fiction that roots in Ireland's "Troubles," Stuart Neville's September 7 release THE HOUSE OF ASHES (Soho Crime) is a stand-alone stirring the tides of domestic violence. Narrated in two time periods -- a dread-saturated present-day one of Sara Keane, newly arrived in Northern Ireland with an abusive and criminal husband (and his much more frightening father), and a set of multiple murder recollections from 60 years back, in the mind of the elderly Mary Jackson, more or less incarcerated in a "care" home -- this hardboiled thriller paints a shattering image of how absolute power becomes absolute control. Of life, itself.

More than the actual plot, the power of THE HOUSE OF ASHES comes from its blunt revelation of men's potential brutality. It's hard to connect this to the politically scented preceding Neville novels: There's nothing in either Sara's abusers (vintage mob-style dominators) or Mary's (three men who treat women as rape-able animals and kill of their babies) that can be tied directly to the emotional trauma of Irish life. Except one morsel, delivered early in the book through Sara's eyes:

[Sara] had met Damien at the University of Bath, he a postgrad architecture student, she in her second year of studying for a social work degree. She would never have imagined, even after they married, that she would come to live in the place he never ever called Northern Ireland. Always the North, the North of Ireland, sometimes the Six Counties, but never Northern Ireland. As if to speak its name would shame him.

Their move to a house that Damien's father has purchased and rebuilt for them—from a fire-struck wreck—is supposed to be a fresh start, removing Sara from the place where she'd had a breakdown and installing Damien as an architect in his father's property development firm.

But the arrival of a confused elderly woman at the house shatters Sara's preoccupation with staying obedient and blind, and as Mary Jackson's background becomes clear, Sara can't close her eyes to her own situation.

This is a work of psychological horror, drenched in blood, death, and sexual abuse. Perhaps only Stuart Neville could bend the arc of narrative in such a way as to make the story compelling. The terrors revealed and persisting match the book against such classics as Silence of the Lambs, but Neville leaves open the possibility that either Sara or Mary may escape the surrounding real-life nightmare.

It would be comforting to think that this fictional version is a wild exaggeration of abuse that doesn't actually take place in real life. Unfortunately, despite the persisting paranormal threads that are so classically Neville's, this crime novel makes real situations violently present and unforgettable. Read at your own risk ... but trust that the author also knows what impels survival and escape.

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

Crime in Winter's Harsh Landscape: SNOWDRIFT from Helene Tursten

Swedish author Helene Tursten provided a strong police procedural series featuring Detective Inspector Irene Huss, set mostly in urban Gothenburg and portraying the fierce rivalry among police detectives, including the bitter gender and ethnic gaps that persist in today's culture. And that series earned a place on many a crime fiction collector's shelf as either Scandinavian crime fiction or women's police procedurals.

But Tursten's second series is stronger, launched in The Hunting Game (yes, brace for how humans target each other) and then Winter Grave. Her 2020 release through Soho Crime (imprint of Soho Press) is SNOWDRIFT. This is one of the rare crime novels where the book really will make a more dramatic impression on readers who've taken the books in sequence.

Since many Soho Crime authors are less highly advertised than, say, Grisham or Patterson or Penny, this may still be the first Tursten book many readers pick up. So here's a quick backstory: Detective Inspector Embla Nyström tackles violent crime in more than the city of Gothenburg. An avid hunter, she's been out in the winter forests every year. She's also been a competitive boxer and still has those lightning reflexes. But at age 28, she's also landed two traumas that shape her life: One is physical, a mauling described in an earlier book that gave her so much head damage that she won't be able to compete in the ring again (though that won't limit her self-defense). The other, and the root of the plot in SNOWDRIFT, is her acute sense of responsibility for a girlfriend's disappearance under violent threat. She's been searching for her friend Lollo ever since—and suffering crippling nightmares that affect her professional life.

So when she gets a terribly short phone call from Lollo herself, at the start of the book, nothing can dissuade her from investigating where her friend may be, and under what duress. Shortly thereafter, she pays a courtesy call and discovers a mob murder. The victim is one of the criminals who abducted Lollo, years before.

Suddenly Embla and her colleagues are neck deep in international intrigue and danger, along with all the prime areas of Eastern European criminal activity, including human trafficking. Is that what's happened to Lollo?

Marlaine Delargy's translation from the Swedish provides a slight flattening to the dialogue, without the rhythms of native English. To some readers, that may make the book feel "more Scandinavian" in its stiffness. Tursten's rapid pacing and portrayal of the risks and bonds of team policing override most of the drawback of the language, along with Embla's overwhelming sense of threat and peril. 

Series readers and first-timers alike may find it necessary to ignore the phone and email, and embed themselves in this dramatic winter crime novel. Brace for a page-turner, and enjoy this fierce new police procedural turned thriller, with its engaging and memorable "wounded" detective.

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

New Denise Mina Lifts Scottish (Glasgow) Noir to New Power: THE LESS DEAD

 [Originally published in New York Journal of Books]

“Mina’s touch with the dark, gritty, and disturbing is expert, and this book is a persuasive and frightening page-turner.”

Denise Mina has written two crime fiction series set in Glasgow, Scotland, establishing memorable investigators. The Less Dead is a stand-alone, also set in Glasgow, and circles around one bizarre situation: Dr. Margo Dunlop is pregnant, so she finally wants to know something about her own unknown mother. To her astonishment, as she tackles hoeing out the house where she’d grown up, raised by a loving adoptive mother, she finds a stash of letters addressed to her and never delivered. Letters from her birth mother’s sister, that is, Margo’s aunt, Nikki.

The first meeting with Nikki takes place at an agency that facilitates such reconnection. It’s an ordinary place, with an ordinary enough counselor, a bit over the top in her staged sympathy for Margo, but otherwise tame enough. Once Nikki walks in the door, though, all ordinary moments vanish from Margo’s life in a terrifying sweep of “the past isn’t even past.”

It turns out Margo’s mother was a murder victim, probably caught up in swapping sex for drugs at the time. And all these years, her aunt Nikki—sister of the murder victim, Susan—has been pleading (those undelivered letters, remember?) for Margo to help track down the murderer and avenge the murder at last.

Not so fast. An educated professional, Margo has no intention of being dragged into some crackpot scheme by the obviously eccentric and low-class Nikki. Still, now that she knows a little, she can’t resist looking up more, and even finds a crime photo online:

Margo has dissected corpses. She has removed and weighed livers and lungs. She isn’t shocked by the sight of death or injury but she isn’t ready for Susan’s vulnerability and how young she is. She’s small for nineteen, childlike, and dead and dumped … No one was punished for this. They did this to a young woman and they’re still out there, walking around, eating biscuits, drinking tea. having Christmases. She feels the injustice of it deep in her gut, the way Nikki must have for decades, a cross between fear and nausea. It’s wrong.

It’s not surprising that Margo, despite her revulsion, begins to think she ought to do something. But in a terrifying turn of the tables, she finds that opening the door to look into her past has made her the object of someone else’s threats and hatred. Is it an unrelated creep of some sort? Or does it have something directly to do with the pervert who killed her mother?

Mina’s touch with the dark, gritty, and disturbing is expert, and this book is a persuasive and frightening page-turner. Take the tender parts when they come, as Margo must: realizations of friendships, alliances across class lines despite not wanting them, friendships among women strong enough to fight off the men on hand, whether they are uselessly well-meaning or frighteningly violent.

There’s nothing pretty about reading The Less Dead. And it’s the slowly growing desperation that Margo finally embraces, for some kind of justice for her mother and for her own safety, that pulls the book forward. Still, Mina continues to offer the distaff side of the looking-glass world that began with the classic Glasgow noir of the late William McIlvanney: Crime always involves women, whether as victims, partners, or even perpetrators. In Mina’s capable hands, they raise their voices and speak out. At last.

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

Diversion: Poetry Worth Reading More Than Once, from Jennifer Franklin

[Originally published in the New York Journal of Books]

Whether it’s God or fate or karma or randomness, how should we respond when life skewers us with loss and cruel reshaping of dreams into walking nightmares? Jennifer Franklin, whose award-winning poetry has appeared in an earlier full-length collection and in many literary magazines and who teaches this art, rips us out of complacency and away from the simple (if unjust) answers of Job, biblical deity, and bumper-sticker wisdom, to confront more than her daughter’s autism spectrum disorder—instead, she turns the blunt mirror onto her own emotions and choices, until the force of each poem ejects the mirror from the page, into the reader’s hands.

Under a title taken from a line of T. S. Eliot’s, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality,” Franklin recalls that Daisy in The Great Gatsby hoped her child would grow up to be “a beautiful little fool.” Watching her own daughter unable to take part in birthday rituals, Franklin declares:

All you read are songbooks and sing to yourself

out of tune. At least you’ll never believe in fairy tales
or blame me for walking out after each of us was betrayed.
. . .
It’s your birthday again. The few people who love you

celebrate but only the two of us know we have no cause.

It’s not enough for life to have given Franklin a speechless daughter. She’s also taken the price of loss of speech herself, in treatment for major illnesses that she never quite specifies (but can be perceived from her Facebook posts, if needed). Her wheel of challenges never ceases, and in “Waiting again for biopsy results in the second-floor exercise room,” she declares:

. . . I wish

I hadn’t been too self-conscious to learn
the basics of the Argentine tango in

the three lessons before the wedding
in Thessaloniki. Ever since I read

Brontë, I refuse to use an umbrella
and pretend I’m walking the moors even

in the city. I am never where I am.
If I told you what I look forward to,

I couldn’t bear your pity.

Torn between speechless times (one poem mentions a “trach scar”) and quandaries too intense to turn into word of mouth, Franklin carries the mythological along with the myth makers. She asks her mostly wordless daughter questions that won’t be answered: “Like if you feel sick // or if our ancestors invented cave painting / or song first. You never lie to me // because you do not speak.”
And what is the “no small gift” of the title? Hints arrive with the poem “Philomela considers forgiveness” (reminder: rape victim who in her revenge is transformed into a nightingale). Franklin offers, “He’ll / never admit what he has done, but / in the blue afternoon of regret, // I realize this is no small gift. / I need not wrestle with absolution / since he will never repent.”

With her layered images interspersed with near-playful admissions (“Still life with tongue cancer”—there’s a second way to read that), Franklin turns her journey of devastations into a multidimensional transit of human depth. If joy is to rise out of chaos and pain, there must be a composting process first, an effort of adding air and time. In “Amor Fati,” she marvels, “I didn’t / know these cuts would save // more than my body. / I wouldn’t negate any of it / now if I could.”
Far from the traditional confessional poetry of, say, Ann Sexton or John Berryman, Jennifer Franklin insists that the material of life, even the darkest, sharpest moments, be valued and named. Don’t give this poetry collection to someone in the midst of terrifying treatment for a deadly disease. Instead, purchase the copy for afterward, for the endless loop of recovery, fear, hope, and self-knowledge. In that sense: Recovery lasts a lifetime.

PS:  Looking for more reviews? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. Only interested in poetry? Try this link instead.

When Harsh Politics Prompt a Thriller, Lisa Brackmann Steps Up with BLACK SWAN RISING

Lisa Brackmann is known in the mysteries world for her two series that take place "elsewhere" -- an intriguing multiplayer game theme in her Chinese series (memorable!), and a "Mexico noir" drug-running series with plenty of violence.

But neither one delivers the shocks and political reality of her new crime novel, BLACK SWAN RISING. The plot unfolds through two women: Sarah Price (not her birth name), whose past is so horrifying that it subjects her regularly to cyberstalking, even as she struggles to hide within a massive political campaign team; and Casey Cheng, TV news reporter determined to reach national levels, no matter how much harassment her career path triggers.

For both women, just being strong females turns them into targets of an organization as nasty and self-righteous as the original Ku Klux Klan. Online, it's called #TrueMen. Not only would its members adore any politician who talked in terms of "grab them by the p---y," they've taken the theme much farther, deliberately setting up women to be bullied and even physically harmed. Maybe, as Casey Cheng discovers, even shot.

There's a lot of rough language in this book, which makes it hard to pull excerpts that capture the tension and suspense; each passage I wanted to share involved four-letter words. And a lot of vile name-calling. And yet this book rang true, matching up with the worst gender bullying I've seen and heard.

Even though I felt vaguely ill half the time, I had to keep turning the pages. How could any two women stand up against a set of hate crimes organized nationally on the Internet and propelled by brutality and punitive actions? Blackmann pulls the plot toward a high peak of danger, never losing the "truth" of each character's power and vulnerability.

But here's the passage where news broadcaster Casey Cheng, still handicapped in healing from her attack and shaken by a mass killing, realizes she has a way to fight back publicly, as she meets with her boss:

"You know," Casey said suddenly. "I'm ready to come back now. I mean not my regular job, obviously." She laughed, suddenly feeling self-conscious. "I wish I could do it, but the fact is, I can't. But ..."

Three Dead in Alabama High School Shooting.

She waved at the monitor. ... She suddenly felt herself on the brink of tears. "You know, people who get hurt, whose friends and loved ones die ... they don't get to move on. And I was thinking ..."

She leaned forward. Time for her pitch. The hint of tears might even help. "We suffered a major loss in this community. Seven dead now. Five seriously injured. And we've largely moved on from it in terms of our coverage. What do you think about a special report? A series about the long-term repercussions of a tragedy like this?"

Jordan crossed his arms over his belly. Thinking it through. "So the angle is ... you?"

She smiled. "Who better?"   

Although Brackmann's finale ties up the story's threads, disturbing echoes remain after reading the book, and each news broadcast this year has a chance of amplifying those echoes.

So in this sense, although Brackmann has whipped out a stinging political thriller with a striking female angle, she's also done something much more. The power of this crime novel resonates like a Margaret Atwood speculation on threat of our future -- pulled much closer. Like, to next month.

It's not a stretch to say this could be the dystopia next door. I sure do hope it's not. Well played, and well written. I'd recommend buying a copy at its September 8 release -- but then being very thoughtful of who else to give a copy to. And that, in itself, is a frightening statement of where we seem to be heading. Thanks, Lisa Brackmann, and Midnight Ink, which stretched outside its usual comfort zone in bringing this to print.

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Betrayal and Pain (and Crime) Between Friends, HER PRETTY FACE by Robyn Harding

Sharp, insightful, and edgy, HER PRETTY FACE from Robyn Harding takes this author, already known for her women's fiction, into crime from a new angle: What happens to the people who survive a terrible assault and who've had a role in it -- but aren't kept in prison forever? Could one of them turn up in your life, like the dark side of a WITSEC twist?

It's easy to sympathize with Frances Metcalfe. Other than her rock-solid marriage, her life is loaded with problems: a son with emotional issues who's having trouble surfing the nasty currents of an upscale private school, her own inability to look like a mom at that kind of school should, and feeling the sting of cliques -- not just for herself but for her much-loved and rather naive son.

So it looks like an amazing gift in Frances's life when gorgeous, wealthy, and, let's face it, sexy Kate Randolph steps forward to defend her, and her son. Not only is Kate willing to stand up for them, she's happy to be a real friend for Frances, the kind who wants to go out for lunch, have a couples night with a kids' sleepover, and more.

But as Harding unfolds the story of the two women and their families, she also provides peeks into a long-ago crime, one that featured abuse and murder, and we're reading the words of someone not quite identified, who's linked to that crime. What's the connection to Kate and Frances? As it all unfolds, the tension ramps high, providing an intense page-turner.

My lone quibble with HER PRETTY FACE is the person who pays the highest price as the plot spirals -- Harding's choice detracts from the painful darkness that a book like this one usually evokes. Then again, for many readers, that will be a plus: not having to cover your eyes or double check that the door is locked, or weep for someone's irreversible damage. But it comes close ... and it's not until the final twists that any assurance can come from this tangle of secrets and suspense.

From Scout Press, a Simon & Schuster imprint. Release date July 10.

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Stunning Crime Novel with Intense Twists, DEAD GIRLS by Graeme Cameron

Sick of all the book titles that use "girl" or "girls" lately? Don't let that delay your reach for Graeme Cameron's second book, DEAD GIRLS. This British author spins a complex and highly gratifying suspense novel in the most unusual "police investigation" I've ever read. And it opens with the ultimate unreliable narrator: Detective Alisha ("Ali") Green, whose brain can't handle even the basics of daily memory as she struggles to recover from a brutal attack by a serial killer who'd left her for dead. Between the pain, the understandable alcohol abuse, and the broken transmissions in what used to be a fine mind, Ali can't even tell for sure what's in her thoughts and what she's shouting out in front of her former partner, Kevin. "My heart sank, though I made the best attempt I could at keeping the horror from my face. How much had I said out loud? And why did I not know the answer to that?"

Turns out that the psychopath who's more than ready to finish the job of killing her has been killing plenty of other women, and tormenting those he's left alive. Even his "friends" know he's dangerous. And in acute twists of action and emotion, Cameron makes clear their damage and risk, as at the moment when Annie, a presumed witness to the brutality, retreating to her safely locked up home, spots a still-wet mug next to her kitchen sink, one she never ever uses:

Annie took a breath and waited for her heart to start beating. And when it finally did, she slumped to the floor in the corner of the kitchen, and shuffled back into the crook of the wall, and drew her knees up to her chest, and listened to the kettle boil, and cried and cried and cried.

Making things more dangerous is the extreme lack of experience with which Ali and Kevin's superior officer tackles the multiple victims and the hunt for the killer. There are already two dead cops -- will Ali be the next? And you're not expecting good decisions from Ali and her broken brain, are you?

The special pleasure of DEAD GIRLS is Cameron's highly believable knotting of support ties among the damaged yet seriously angry women who tackle this case. I'd suggest putting this onto the summer reading stack, but really, if you get a copy now, dump all the dull chores of the next few days and just immerse. It's worth it, with rewards in every twist, including the finale.

From Park Row Books, a suspense imprint from Harlequin.

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Memoir Worth Reading: The Girl Who Smiled Beads, by Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil

There are so many interesting things to consider with THE GIRL WHO SMILED BEADS. The subtitle is "A Story of War and What Comes After," a good description. Author Clemantine Wamariya and her sister Claire survived six dangerous years mostly on their own in seven African countries, when their family of origin was shattered and dispersed by the Rwandan genocide. A refugee program finally brought them to the United States. And then their scraped-together survival was turned upside down by an appearance on Oprah Winfrey's show Oprah, where the TV star gave the girl-turned-woman a stunning surprise: Oprah's team had located Clemantine's mother and surviving siblings and brought them to the show.

That's the center point of Wamariya's narrative in terms of time and change. But it's not the easy part and maybe not even the joyful part. Sorting out the horrors of the past, the damage of the present, and what to do within modern Western culture turn out to be both complicated and painful. PTSD? Sure. And more.

The narrative's management by distinguished co-author Elizabeth Weil -- a writer for the New York Times Magazine who's done this kind of co-authorship before -- turns what could have been a candy-sweet tale into a powerful exploration of culture, recovery, and determination. The book is an easy read in short chapters with abundant adventure, and solidly rewards the reader who follows the entire journey. It gave me a lot to think about, especially coupled with my spring plunge into Ta-Nehisi Coates, James Baldwin, and more. Hope you have a chance to add it to your stack.

And don't miss Wamariya's website, for a startling look at what she's now pursuing.

Third Thriller from Douglas Schofield, KILLING PACE

Sometimes books arrive here for review after they've already been released -- and KILLING PACE is one of those. I wasn't wild about the title, and the (misleading) cover suggested a sort of Celtic time lapse ... but I finally opened the book and then quickly lost track of time, absorbed in this powerfully told and complicated page-turning thriller set in Florida and in Sicily. It's Douglas Schofield's third, but not part of a series; he tends to write female protagonists (and explains something about that here -- in ways that interest me a great deal). And his extensive background in criminal prosecution, as well as globe-trotting, makes him an ideal source for his own plots.

In KILLING PACE, a woman's been held near-prisoner by her presumed fiancé, but it only takes a small breath of freedom for her memories of another life to flood back. Soon we're chasing major criminals in Italy with a woman of another name who works for the U.S. Customs investigation team -- same person? Some answers flash quickly; others, like who's behind the crimes around her (parts smuggling; baby kidnapping) are slower to mesh. But the twists keep coming, and so does the action.

Let's say, for the sake of not throwing any spoilers, that at least one strong woman in KILLING PACE has an Italian grandmother, which gives her definite advantages when sleuthing in Italy, of course. Here's a sample from later in the book:

She could live with being the roughly assembled product of Silvana Pace's obsessions.

Law and justice ...

Today, Laura Pace was a fugitive from the law, hunted for crimes she didn't commit.

Law and justice ...

Today, a police officer had broken the law to prevent her from being arrested.

Law and justice ...

Tonight, she was lying in a bed in a safe house run by a secret United Nations intelligence until whose activities probably violated a score of U.S. federal statutes.

Nonna would completely understand.

Intrigued? It's quite a ride, really well written, and convinced me that I want to read more from this author! The publisher is Minotaur, and I'm sure there are more titles on the way.

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Mystery of 1920s Bombay, THE WIDOWS OF MALABAR HILL, Sujata Massey

Newly released this week is a hot new historical mystery from Soho Crime -- one that's been widely anticipated for its colorful depiction of a blend of cultures becoming vitally important in global interactions today. Written by English-born and American-raised Sujata Massey, THE WIDOWS OF MALABAR HILL provides a traditional mystery format within the compelling setting of a young woman trying to find her way to a law career at a time when that was nearly unheard of in India.

Happily, THE WIDOWS OF MALABAR HILL opens with Perveen Mistry already a confident woman solicitor in her father's law firm in Bombay -- and presented with a legal puzzle that will require unraveling first a set of cultural barriers. Perveen suspects something's amiss when three women, all widows of a polygamous and prosperous Muslim client of her father's, suddenly appear to have signed over their interest in the estate of their joint husband. She wants to investigate. But the women are in purdah, that is, seclusion, and it won't be easy to reach them or to find out the truth.

From this 1921 opening, Massey takes the story back five years, to when this "modern" Parsi teen lost her half-under-the-table place at a law school in Bombay, fell in love, and abruptly married a young man from an "orthodox" Parsi family. Her excruciating struggles in this situation become the forceful background for how she develops into a problem-solving and competent adult who'll tackle an unjust situation when she discovers it.

Here's a taste of Mistry family life as Perveen argues for a chance to marry, sooner than her older brother:

Grandfather Mistry cleared his throat and said, "If a younger sister marries before her older brother, people will believe she had to marry for reasons of pregnancy. Every bead of her reputation will be sold."

"We aren't like that." Perveen struggled to keep her voice level. "And what else can I do with myself now that I am not a student, except get married?"

"The one who digs a whole falls into it," Grandfather Mistry replied dourly, and Rustom snorted.

[Perveen's mother] pressed her hands together as if she was nervous. "You were always such a dear, agreeable daughter. You appreciated what you were given, not like some others in town. How can you do this to us?"

"I didn't do anything to you! His parents have asked for a meeting. Won't you at least give them the respect they deserve by going?" she pleaded.

Count on needing the insight Perveen is gaining here, for when she attempts to unravel the mystery of the widows of Malabar Hill!

Perhaps today's best known crime fiction series set in India (in some titles; others simply deal with India as background) is Barbara Cleverly's Commander Joe Sandilands series (post World War I). But that set of titles works from the point of view of an English military man who's sympathetic but not of the culture. Massey's series, framed in a young woman's perspective and playing various cultures within India's melting pot against each other, is eye-opening and intriguing.

Well written, highly detailed, and engaging, THE WIDOWS OF MALABAR HILL shows Massey's extensive writing experience, as well as an acute eye for human frailty and conflict. I'm glad to note from her material that there's a sequel on the way. The series is published by Soho Crime, which also publishes the Cleverly series -- I recommend both.

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Backstory #3: When Your Husband Keeps a Secret, in PROTECTED BY THE SHADOWS, Swedish Crime Fiction by Helene Tursten

Helene Tursten's investigating protagonist in Göteborg, Sweden, Investigator Irene Huss, is one of the most likeable officers in today's crime fiction. Married with now-grown twin daughters, Huss depends on her husband's cooking skills -- her own are negligible -- and lives with an endless guilt about the time demands of her career that will feel familiar to many. Moreover, she works in a Violent Crimes unit where gender bias is a daily factor, as much so as personnel shortages.

So as Irene's unit teams up with the Organized Crimes Unit to intervene in a series of motorcycle gang killings (and readers of the series already know that means extra flashbacks for Huss), the last thing she needs is to have to worry about her husband's safety. Or that of her daughters. And she can't step in to do much for them -- they will have to be, as the title suggests, PROTECTED BY THE SHADOWS.

In addition to the skillful interweaving of personal and professional tension, Swedish author Helene Tursten provides memorable descriptions of the gritty reality of crime investigation, like this:

The gangster reeked of sweat and stale booze. He was wearing a T-shirt with Gothia MC's emblem on the chest; the same emblem was tattooed on his right forearm, and more or less every inch that Irene could see of his massive body was covered in tattoos. A colorful snake wound its way around his neck, ending up by his left ear. It showed up clearly on his shaven head. The snake was a skillful piece of work, but the rest of the tattoos were of varying quality.

The tread for inking is one of the best things that's happened as far as police are concerned, Irene thought. ... Per Lindström would need to wear a burka if he didn't want anyone to see his artwork.

PROTECTED BY THE SHADOWS is the ninth in this series that Soho Crime has brought to the United States. I like Marlaine Delargy's translation work -- smooth reading with just a hint of the awkwardness that sliding from one language and culture to another can insert, and in this case it adds to the sense of being transported to Scandinavia. Swedish and Finnish cultural insight add up in Tursten's books, and it's worth reading her entire series. But jumping into this ninth title "cold" is very workable -- Tursten carries the story forward skillfully. It's soon clear why Huss's husband refuses to share his dangerous secret with his police officer wife (although as a reader of all of the series, I think Huss's own backstory could have come into this one more vividly and raised the tension).

Watch for some insight into Sweden's experience of Muslim immigration, too. Ah, the benefits of reading well-written crime fiction! (Thanks again, Soho Crime, for keeping so many "foreign" investigations coming steadily across the Atlantic. Global crimesolving, for sure.) I look forward to more in the series from Tursten, whose entry into the field came after a career in medicine. Good move.

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SO SAY THE FALLEN, Belfast Noir from Stuart Neville

Last year around this time, Stuart Neville's Those We Left Behind brought us Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Serena Flanagan on the Belfast police force, an investigator whose personal commitment to determining the truth of a crime takes her into "contagious" contact with evil that drains from a generation of malice. In SO SAY THE FALLEN (Soho Press), Flanagan's struggling to find her way out of an explosive episode of posttraumatic stress disorder, PTSD. It looks like she's going to lose at least her marriage and probably her children as she clings to the structure of work to hold herself together. Work, and overwork. Who hasn't been there, done that -- or at least witnessed it?

But when work involves murderers and other malicious narcissists  -- blackmailers, cheaters, liars -- embracing it is dangerous to the soul. Flanagan's son doesn't want her to put him to bed or even read him a story. Her daughter's even more blunt: "You're never here." She knows her husband is almost ready to leave.

With a crisis like that at home, she ought to let go of the death that her supervisor wants declared a sympathetic suicide, the slide into death-by-pills of a gravely injured and maimed man. But the case clings to her, with those small indications that pull a good detective into compulsion to investigate. Along the way, torn in spirit and emotion, Flanagan confides something of her own despair to the local church rector, the Reverend Peter McKay.

And here is where Neville's powerful ability to explore what haunts us becomes vivid and compelling -- not with the paranormal strands of his earlier series, but in heartache and despair and the struggle for something to believe in. In Flanagan's confession, the pain of life along the harsh edge of community spills out in, for her, "every rotten thing that festered in her soul."

McKay has his own secrets, as we readers already know. But as he listens to Flanagan, he sets aside his urge to likewise confess, and instead becomes the blunt but kind voice of a true spiritual advisor:

"If your job's making you miserable, then quit," he said. "Simple, isn't it?"

Flanagan shook her head, fumbling for an answer. "No, it's ... it's not ..."

He smiled that kind smile of his, the one that warmed his eyes. "No, it's not that simple, is it? We have this in common, you know. Neither of us has a nine-to-five job we can leave behind at the end of the day. We don't work in some office, watching the clock, waiting for home time. You don't stop being a police officer when you go home any more than I stop being a priest. ... Then you are your job, your job is you. Same for me."

"And I am my family. I need them, even if they don't need me."

His fingers tightened on her wrist, a small pressure. "Then the answer lies somewhere between the other two. It's like two sides of an arch. One can't stand without the other."

"Then what do I do?" she asked, another sob catching in her throat.

"What you came here for," McKay said. "You pray."

Given that support, it's no surprise that Flanagan also binds herself to the catastrophe that unfolds for this kind, if somewhat naive, man.

But Neville takes her through brutal confrontations with the force of psychopathic evil, before Flanagan has a chance to try to make things right.

I am still asking myself -- because I found Neville's "Ghosts of Belfast" series so compelling -- whether this twist toward Flanagan in the Belfast author's newer series is as indelibly marked by place as the earlier books. The more I ponder SO SAY THE FALLEN, the more I think Neville is indeed framing a narrative of loss and potential redemption that belongs in this war-wounded landscape. And consider me committed to this author crime novels, here and in the future, as a way of examining the important question of what makes our lives (and deaths) not only human, but worth the effort.

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The Powerful Storytelling of Carol O'Connell and Julia Keller

Last week I caught up with the latest crime fiction from Carol O'Connell, who lives in New York City and sets her Mallory novels there, and Julia Keller, a Chicago-oriented writer whose journalism career earned her a Pulitzer there and whose novels of Belfa "Bell" Elkins focus on small-town and rural life in West Virginia. The differences are huge; the similarity that matters to me is, I trust each of these authors to take me into a crime novel where I care passionately about the protagonist and her allies.

SORROW ROAD is Keller's fifth tale of Bell Elkins, the prosecuting attorney in Acker's Gap, West Virgina. The book opens with a tip of the hat to the issue that has nearly destroyed Bell's life in the preceding books: substance abuse, especially of prescription medication, and what horrible things people do to others and themselves to feed the habit or gain the incredible profits involved. Bell's marriage is long gone; her sister, now out of jail, doesn't even phone her in this season; and most painfully of all, her grown daughter chose to leave her and live in Washington, DC, while at the same time Bell's forced a gap into her relationship with the younger man who's become important to her ability to love herself.

But of course, things are tougher than that -- questionable deaths at a nursing home in the next county become Bell's moral burden when a long-time woman friend of hers dies in the midst of probing the deaths. And Bell's daughter, caught up in a wicked case of PTSD with flashbacks, is in trouble. And, to make everything harder, the region's being pounded by high-snow-total storms.

Really good crime fiction has at least a double mystery to it -- the kind that means sorting out the crime in order to bring justice, and the deeper one that bonds readers to characters, the risky business of trying to be both strong and sane in a world that often punishes people -- especially women -- who embrace that road. Keller's West Virginia novels take Bell fiercely into that double firefight. Well worth reading ... and very satisfying. If you can make time for it, start with the first in the series, A Killing in the Hills, because the force of one book on top of the next will enrich SORROW ROAD when you get to it. If you're going into this newest title cold, though, you'll still get a very good read; you just may wonder why the rest of us like Bell enough to let her pull some of what she's up to in this one.

Carol O'Connell is one of the rare series novelists who doesn't promise a book per year -- her Mallory series comes with enough pain that I can picture the author insisting on her own timeline, to make room for recovery between drafts. Kathy Mallory was an abandoned street child/pickpocket adopted by a Manhattan police detective and his warm-hearted wife; BLIND SIGHT steps into a powerful season in her life, when her own police detective career is thriving (also very hard on her superiors) and her allies see her clearly. What they see, and what readers can access, is a brilliant detective who is driven, meticulous, wickedly humorous in her own dry way, and who refuses to socialize in normal ways -- in fact, probably she really can't. Her personality works well for the determined pursuit of a twisted criminal here, as both a blind boy and a nun in a monastic order vanish from the city streets on the same day, and turn out to be related to each other. It's up to Mallory to figure out whether there's a kidnap-and-ransom aspect involved, who's being forced to pay, and how ... while also racing the close in an effort to force the detectives around her to grapple with the investigation her way.

Years ago, I tagged Mallory as a fictional precursor to Lisbeth Salander of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. In terms of personality, there are strong parallels -- both women are brilliant, tech-minded, and emotionally closed off due to past extreme trauma. A third parallel could be Vanessa Michael Munroe, the outwardly androgenous investigator provided by series author Taylor Stevens. All three women ignore social rules when they need to, all three can hack a hard drive overnight, and all three commit criminal acts in the process of bringing justice to criminal situations. And it would be easy to slap a label like sociopaths onto them, because of the violence they seem to not regret.

Yet a recent letter to readers from Taylor Stevens firmly made the cogent point that her protagonist -- and, I think, the others I've just mentioned -- lives far differently from the lack of empathy that a psychopath (and perhaps sociopath, depending on whether you see them as similar) displays. In short, Munroe gets done what needs to be done, and since nobody else can keep up with her, she does it in the best way she can -- while accruing a cost, enlarging her own preexisting wound.

That's certainly the case for Lisbeth Salander. But the biggest surprise twist of BLIND SIGHT from O'Connell is the possibility that Mallory's network and her own choices may lead her in a new direction: away from further pain, and perhaps toward some sort of inner justice and balance at last.

Perhaps.

And that's part of why every Mallory novel is worth reading -- for the empathy that works its jagged way through O'Connell's edgy narrative style, and the sense that something in the world might end up less wrong and more right than before.