Elise Bryant
It’s Elementary (Berkley 2024) begins when Southern California single mom Mavis Miller isn’t fast enough to escape determined Knoll Elementary PTA President Trisha Holbrook at morning drop-off. It’s been a hectic morning already for Mavis since her seven-year-old daughter Pearl had a meltdown when her favorite black and silver striped knee socks were nowhere to be found. Mavis usually manages to scoot off to work quickly, but Trisha chases her down, and insists Mavis is the perfect parent to lead the new mandated DEI committee. Mavis is one of the few Black parents at Knoll, and recently spoke out about the school book fair after Pearl searched in vain for books featuring a character who looked like her, so she puts aside her reluctance to add anything else to her already over scheduled life and agrees. At the PTA meeting that evening, Tricia introduces new Principal Smith and then announces that Knoll Elementary will soon become the district’s gifted school. Principal Smith tries to correct her, explaining that that decision is still under discussion by the school board, but Tricia talks over him, insisting former Principal Brennan had already made a collaborative decision with the PTA. The parents begin shouting out questions: When will students be tested? Will students be bussed in from all over the district? What will happen to current students who aren’t in the gifted program? Tricia pushes Principal Smith to answer the questions and he blurts out that the administration team at Knoll has decided not to proceed with the application; the gifted program will be at another site. Furious, Tricia storms off the stage and Mavis overhears Tricia venting to a friend, swearing she will kill Principal Smith for ruining her plan for the gifted school. While walking her dog later that evening by the school, Mavis sees Tricia dragging first a bag of cleaning supplies and then two other heavy black trash bags to her van. The next day Principal Smith doesn’t come to work but his wife does, frantic that he didn’t return home the night before. With the help of school psychologist Jack Cohen, who is exceedingly attractive, Mavis begins to investigate Principal Smith’s disappearance. Could Tricia really have murdered him? Mavis’s first person narration is both snarky and endearing, as she struggles to add school responsibilities to her already strained balance between home and work life.

Christoffer Carlsson
Under the Storm (Hogarth, 2024, Swedish 2019) begins in November 1994 when the body of a young woman is found in an incinerated farm house in Marbäck, Sweden. At first considered a terrible tragedy that Lovisa Markström was caught in the blaze, the news that she was murdered by a blow to the head tears the community apart. Rookie policeman Vidar Jörgensson lives close enough to smell the smoke, and heads over to help out, first discovering a singed glove and then Lovisa’s boyfriend Edvard Christensson in the woods. Isak Nyqvist is only ten, and his parents try to protect him from the tragedy and then the arrest of his mother’s younger brother Edvard. Isak’s uncle Edvard is his favorite person in the world, other than his mother Eva, and he doesn’t understand why Edvard doesn’t come to visit as usual on Saturday, and then never again. Eva and Edvard’s father August was a violent drunk, getting into fights and beating his wife. Edvard had some trouble in his teenage years and the growing certainty that he inherited his father’s violent nature leads to his arrest. Vidar is tasked with checking the alibis of others in Lovisa’s life, concentrating on her two former boyfriends Billy Oredsson and Jon-Erik Pettersson. When their alibis check out, Edvard is arrested and sentenced to life in prison. Isak is devastated. Not only has he lost his uncle, but rumors at school begin to circulate. Isak looks a lot like his uncle, and the taunts about his “bad blood” take root, causing him to doubt his own capacity to control his anger. Nine years later Victor is investigating a string of burglaries in the 1990s by brothers Božo and Darko Miljanovic. In their final burglary, the homeowner returned unexpectedly, was struck over the head, and the house set afire. Looking at the dates of the Miljanovic burglaries, Vidar is struck by a gap in the sequence. Judging by their pattern, winter 1994 is missing and Marbäck is in the right location. Sorting through the evidence box from Edvard’s conviction, Vidar notices that some threatening notes to Larisa were never placed in evidence. Fearing that an innocent man has been convicted, Vidar convinces Isak to visit his uncle in prison to ask about the Miljanovic brothers. For the first time Isak hears his uncle’s declaration of innocence and his story of what happened that fateful night. This intense psychological thriller by a Swedish criminology professor examines the long-range effect of a crime upon everyone connected to it.

Ash Clifton
Twice the Trouble (Crooked Lane Books 2024) introduces Noland Twice, a former University of Florida football star turned police officer after an injury ended his football career. Noland was good at his job with an excellent arrest record until a drug dealer framed him for possession with the help of some dirty cops. Noland served two years in prison before he was exonerated, enabling him to open Ultima Fortuna Investigations, working as a private investigator with a reputation for using both legal and not-so-legal options for solving cases. Attorney Faith Carlton hires Noland to find Arthur Valkenberg, a partner in Selberis Constructors, a huge construction firm. Valkenberg has stolen 14 million from Selberis’s offshore account, and Faith explains they can’t go to the police. Noland knows he should say no to the shady job, but his mother’s hip replacement wasn’t covered by her insurance and he is two months behind on his mortgage payment. Breaking into Valkenberg’s apartment, he finds the body of a man shot through the head. Noland recognizes the man as Frank Bisby, CEO of Selberis, and calls Faith demanding a meeting of the remaining Selberis partners: William Redding, Shawn Difore, and Karen Voss. Though Karen is the youngest of the trio, with the least impressive title, it’s soon clear to Noland that she is the smartest of the bunch, explaining that there is one more partner: Victor Irinas, a Brazilian gangster, who will not be happy about the missing funds. Noland renegotiates his contract up to 100,000 plus 10% of whatever money he recovers in exchange for taking care of the body in Valkenberg’s apartment. Selberis agrees, giving Noland one week. Noland visits his old friend Kiril, a Russian former loan shark enforcer who learned the copy shop business while in prison and now runs his own with his wheelchair-bound younger brother Freddy. Together they take care of the body and Noland starts working against the clock to find Valkenberg and the money. Noland is clever and used to working on both sides of the law, but things quickly get confusing and dangerous in this high-energy debut thriller.

Emma Cook
You Can’t Hurt Me (Hanover Square Press 2024) begins when journalist Anna Tate is hired to ghostwrite Dr. Nate Reid’s memoir exploring his grief after the death of his wife Eva two years earlier. A renowned neuroscientist specializing in pain, Nate was researching the brain’s pain center when Eva was referred to him after an arm fracture because of her inability to feel any pain. Nate determined Eva suffered from CIP (congenital insensitivity to pain), an extremely rare disorder. Most people with CIP die young since their body doesn’t warn them of burns or cuts or other injuries. Eva found the diagnosis reassuring since it explained why she was so different, but she began to wonder if her inability to feel physical or emotional pain might be preventing her from true artistic creativity, like her hero Frida Kahlo whose art was inspired by chronic pain. Anna visits Nate at his beautiful home in London, where he discovered Eva’s body in her garden studio two years earlier, dead from a drug induced heart attack. At first assumed an accident caused by Eva’s inability to feel the extreme pain of the heart seizure, the inquest jury’s verdict was open; they were unable to draw any strong conclusion due to lack of evidence. Due to many unanswered questions about the bruises on her arms, the vandalized sculptures surrounding her body, her missing cell phone and glass cutting tool; Eva’s older sister Kath never accepted that Eva’s death was accidental, instead accusing Nate and calling for a new inquest. Kath believes Nate took advantage of Eva, using her condition to advance his own career, and is furious that she is not being used as a resource for his memoir. As Anna and Nate work together to transform his clinical prose into an appealing memoir, she is both attracted to Nate and increasingly concerned about his version of Eva, their marriage, and her death. Interspersed sections from Eva’s journal written during the months before her death, which Anna discovers, present an entirely different view of their marriage and Eva’s inner life. Anna herself has an uneasy relationship with her controlling brother Tony, who warns her repeatedly not to get to close to Nate. This excellent debut thriller explores the nature of trust and the secrets we prefer to keep hidden.

Kemper Donovan
The Busy Body (Kensington 2024) begins when the narrator is offered the job of ghostwriting the memoir of former Senator Dorothy Gibson, the independent candidate for president who split the vote and lost the election a few months earlier. Dorothy has retreated to her home in Sacobago, Maine, an upscale suburb of Portland, with her assistant Leila Mansour and a team of private bodyguards. The ghostwriter breaks her cardinal rule of not living with her subject in order to land the job, and finds herself enjoying Dorothy and her staff, especially Denny Peters AKA The Hot Bodyguard. After a long day of outlining the memoir, Dorothy’s son Peter comes for a visit, insisting they need to visit Betty’s Liquor Mart since he just discovered the previous guests drank all the red wine. At Betty’s, a woman Dorothy doesn’t know introduces herself as her neighbor Vivian Davis, telling Dorothy she’s a big fan, and has started a Kickstarter campaign mocking “the idiot who won” with the money going to charity. Dorothy agrees to a selfie, and a few days later Leila appears with the picture on her iPad, explaining Vivian’s Kickstarter campaign is now over $100,000 thanks to the boost of the picture followed by Vivian’s sudden death. Vivian and her husband Walter Vogel rented the Crystal Palace, an exclusive living/meeting space constructed of glass, to convince venture capitalist Samir Shaw to invest in Walter’s new dermal regeneration cosmetic procedure. Walter discovered Vivian drowned in the bathtub, an assumed suicide because of the empty bottle of sedatives by her side. Walter invites Dorothy to the funeral, accompanied by her staff and the ghostwriter. Walter is handsome and charismatic, his personal assistant Eve Turner is young and beautiful, and Dorothy’s sister Laura makes a dramatic brief appearance swathed in a poofy long black dress and veil. The ghostwriter decides to do the unthinkable and mingle, ending up next to Samir, his wife Anne, and their teenage son Alex. Anne is anxious, Samir dismissive of Walter’s ability to come up with anything worthwhile, and Alex calls his parents hypocrites and stalks off. When the autopsy reveals no sign of any drug, the police arrive to investigate the murder. Dorothy is furious to be considered a suspect and the ghostwriter is only too happy to join in the sleuthing to identify the real culprit. The two form a dynamite team: Dorothy’s years in politics have made her an expert in spotting lies and evasions, and the ghostwriter is skilled at asking revealing questions and creating possible scenarios. The ghostwriter’s witty and snarky narration adds to the fun in this clever series opener, an homage to the work of Agatha Christie.

Emily Layden
Once More from the Top (Mariner Books 2024) is the story of Dylan Read, who grew up in Thompson Landing, a small town on Lake Tahawus in upstate New York. Dylan was a shy child, pushed out of her comfort zone in seventh grade by a supportive middle school teacher who encouraged her to read some of her poetry at the talent show. Eighth grader Kelsey Copestenke was just ahead of her on the program, playing guitar and singing a country song. Deciding to save Dylan from social suicide, Kelsey stayed on stage, playing softly while Dylan recited, transforming the poetry into almost a song. The two were inseparable after that, creating music together, until Kelsey vanished at the end of her senior year. By then the two were posting songs on their MySpace page. After Kelsey’s disappearance, Dylan logs on to their MySpace page intending to delet everything and finds a message from a Nashville scout at Melody. This shocks Dylan out of her grief, and she decides to call the scout. Convincing her mother to take her to Nashville, Dylan explains to Melody that it was Kelsey’s voice on the MySpace songs singing Dylan’s lyrics to music they composed together. Dylan is encouraged to sing something she wrote without Kelsey, and is offered a deal. She spends that summer in Nashville, releasing her debut album at the age of 17, self-scrutinizing songs full of grief and guilt, fear and regret. Fifteen years later Kelsey’s remains are recovered from Lake Tahawus, launching a media storm of speculative stories about Dylan’s connection to her high school classmate. Dylan has spent the last 15 years crafting a public narrative to support her career, hiding the most important relationship that fueled her songwriting. The two fought bitterly the night Kelsey disappeared, and Dylan has always blamed herself. But at Kelsey’s memorial service she begins to suspect there was more the story than she ever knew. Alternating sections from the past and present reveal their intense friendship and the evolution of Dylan’s musical career. This intense psychological thriller is highly recommended.

Rob Osler
The Case of the Missing Maid (Kensington 2024) introduces Harriet Morrow, a new detective with the Prescott Detective Agency in Chicago. It’s 1898 and female detectives are a still a rarity, though Kate Warne became a Pinkerton detective in 1856. Harriet knows she isn’t the usual young woman interested in beaus and fashion, instead wearing men’s shoes, a plain skirt, and a man’s black bowler while riding her beloved Overman Victoria bicycle. Theodore Prescott is dubious, but agrees to give Harriet a trial as a junior field operative: one week to find his neighbor Pearl Bartlett’s missing maid Agnes Wozniak. Prescott tells Harriet it’s more of a favor than a case, but she eagerly agrees, thrilled to be leaving her boring bookkeeping job behind. Prescott offers her less than the advertised salary since she is a woman, but she is happy to be earning twice her former salary. Just 21, Harriet is supporting both herself and her 16-year-old brother Aubrey, and the extra money is much needed. Pearl Bartlett lives alone in a huge house with only her maid for company. She explains Agnes has been missing for over two days. Pearl is in her 70s and unable to climb the stairs, so Harriett ascends to the third floor, discovering that all signs point to Agnes being abducted. The small window is open, a lamp has been knocked over, the bedclothes are in a jumble, and all of Agnes’s clothes and other belongings are still in the room. Harriett visits the agency that sent Agnes to Pearl to learn her home address, and then the Wozniak apartment in the densely populated Polish neighborhood. Agnes’s older sister Barbara is worried that Agnes did not return to visit as usual on her day off, but explains her father isn’t willing to go to the police. Mr. Wozniak has promised Agnes to the unsavory Bogdan Nowak, a wealthy loan shark who doesn’t want the police in the neighborhood. At the Agency Harriet isn’t given an office like the other detectives, instead the desk nearest the lavatory with the secretaries, who resent her. Carl Somer, who investigated a robbery at Pearl’s house earlier in the year is terse and dismissive. The only kind face is Matthew McCabe, who advises her about the proper way to write a report and offers to take her to the shooting gallery. As she follows clues to criminal lairs and seedy bars, Harriet first realizes there are men attracted to other men and that she isn’t the only woman uninterested in a romantic relationship with men. This new historical series starring the endearing and determined Harriet discovering her place in the world is a winner.

Kristen Perrin
How To Solve Your Own Murder (Dutton 2024) begins in 1965 at the Castle Knoll Country Fair, when teenage Frances Adams and her two best friends Emily and Rose visit a fortune teller who predicts Frances will be murdered with a series of warnings including dry bones, a queen in her palm, betrayal by a bird, and daughters as the key to justice. Emily and Rose laugh off the fortune, but Frances can’t get it out of her head, especially after Emily goes missing almost exactly a year later. In the present, Annabelle (Annie) Adams, a 25-year old aspiring mystery novelist, receives a letter from the soliciters office of Gordon, Owens, and Martlock, requesting her presence in Castle Knoll to discuss her Great Aunt Frances’s will. Annie has never met her Frances, but takes the train from London to the small village of Castle Knoll, where Mr. Gordon explains the meeting will be held at Gravesdown Hall, Frances’s estate outside town, along with his grandson Oliver, Frances’s husband’s nephew Saxon Gravesdown, and Saxon’s wife Elva. At Gravesdown Hall they discover Frances’s dead body, deep punctures on both hands from the white long-stemmed roses she was arranging in a vase. Waiting for the police to arrive, Annie enters a small room off the library and discovers Great Aunt Frances’s obsession: a murder board stretching from floor to ceiling with colored string connecting photos, post-its, and newspaper clippings. On another wall is a smaller murder board with “Emily Sparrow, last seen August 21, 1966” in the center. Frances’s will leaves her entire estate to either Annie or Saxon, whoever solves her murder within the time limit of one week, the solution verified by Detective Rowan Crane. Annie and Saxon are to stay in Gravesdown Hall with access to Frances’s files collected over the years as she attempted to solve her own murder in advance. Interspersed sections from the journal Frances began in September 1966 fill in details from the past while Annie’s first person narration covers the present. This excellent series opener paying homage to Agatha Christie and Midsomer Murders, is the adult debut by a British children’s author.

Thomas Perry
Hero (Mysterious Press 2024) begins when Justine Poole, a security consultant for the Hollywood elite, gets a call from her boss Ben Spengler, who is concerned that Jerry and Estelle Pinsky are being watched at a charity event. There has been a rash of “follow-home” robberies in Hollywood: one robber blocking the closing of the automatic security gate with his body while others quietly enter the gated property. Justine heads to the Pinsky property, entering with the code, and hides just inside the gate. After the Pinskys drive in, a man blocks the gate and four others jump out of a car. As the five masked men run up the driveway, Justine illuminates them with her tactical flashlight, aims her gun, and shouts at them to stop. Two men immediately begin firing at her, and Justine shoots back, hitting two of the men. The SWAT team rounds up the other three men, and luckily the Pinskys, a kind elderly couple who used their television wealth to support many charities, are shaken but unharmed. Mr. Conger, the organized crime boss responsible for the follow-home robberies, is not pleased. Two of his crew are now dead and three others are behind bars. Determined to demonstrate his protection to the men who might be tempted to talk, Conger hires Leo Sealy to kill the bodyguard. Then the news breaks that the bodyguard who protected the beloved Pinskys is a woman, and Conger is even more furious, embarrassed that a lone woman successfully fought off five armed men from his crew. When Justine’s name is released by the press Sealy begins to track her down, but Justine is used to considering all angles of protection and manages to stay one step ahead of him. Conger orchestrates an appeal from the men Justine killed, claiming she is a vigilante, not a hero, hoping to draw Justine out in the open. This extended cat-and-mouse chase is riveting.

Benjamin Stevenson
Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (Mariner Books 2024) begins when Australian crime author Ernest “Ern” Cunningham gets a text from his ex-wife Erin, begging for help. Ernest is a long-time fan of fair play Golden Age mysteries and had solved two high-profile murders using his powers of observation and knack for understanding how murderers think. Erin is being held in the Katoomba police station, charged with the murder of her partner Lyle Pearse. Erin tells Ern that when she woke up in the morning her hands were covered in blood and Lyle wasn’t in bed next to her. Downstairs she discovered Lyle’s body, stabbed numerous times in the stomach. Erin claims she heard nothing in the night and has no idea how her hands came to be covered in blood. Erin says everyone loved Lyle, and Ern discovers that just might be true. After retiring from acting, Lyle started the Pearse Foundation when his brother died of an overdose of cocaine that had been secretly cut with heroin. Believing that only a passion can overcome the temptation of addiction, Lyle’s foundation uses the power of theater to motivate his crew of former addicts. The Christmas show at the Pease Theater featuring magician Rylan Blaze is a fundraiser for the foundation: Passion Creates Change. Ern identifies six main suspects: the magician, the assistant, the executive, the hypnotist, the identical twin, the counsellor, and the tech. Organized like an advent calendar, the humorous short novel is arranged in 24 chapters, each with a clue leading up to the big reveal in the final chapter. This third in the series can be read as a stand-alone, but new readers will no doubt be inspired to get their hands on Ern’s earlier adventures as well.

Ruby Todd
Bright Objects (Simon & Schuster 2024) is set in the small town of Jericho, New South Wales, near the Black Mountain Observatory. In January 1995 Sylvia Knight is driving home late one night with her husband Christopher along a winding section of Horseshoe Road. Sylvia steers around a rusted old Mitsubishi Sigma and is hit by a speeding sedan heading the other direction. Danny Ward, the driver of the Sigma, calls for help, but the dark sedan doesn’t stop. Christopher is killed instantly, and Sylvia is transported to the hospital with a severe spinal injury. Two years later, Sylvia is still in mourning, and still angry that the hit-and-run driver has not been brought to justice. She suspects the sedan was Sergeant Angus Blair’s patrol car, which collided with a tree later that same night. Blair said he became dizzy because of high blood pressure medication and Senior Sergeant Douglas claims to have breathalyzed Blair at the scene with a negative result. Douglas and Blair are old friends, and Sylvia believes Blair called him to take the report and hide the evidence of an earlier crash. Danny Ward claims to have no memory of the driver or the other car, but is now driving a shiny new Subaru he clearly can’t afford with his minimum-wage job. Sylvia meets Theo St. John, an astronomer who discovered a rare comet that will be visible to the naked eye in a few months, reappearing after four thousand years. For the first time since Christopher’s death Sylvia finds herself interested in something other than the accident, first the comet and then the astronomer himself. Joseph Evans, a local mystic who believes the comet is a divine message, gathers a following including Sylvia’s mother-in-law Sandy, who has never recovered from her son’s sudden death. Theo attends some of Joseph’s public events, speaking about the science of comets, but Joseph’s pronouncements of destruction to come catch the imagination of the public. Some are happy to buy souvenirs and comet biscuits, but Sylvia worries that Sandy and others have been drawn into a doomsday cult. This beautifully written debut thriller explores the debilitating effects of grief and the powerful attraction of the unusual.

Elisabeth Eaves
The Outlier (Random House 2024) is the story of Cate Winter, a 34-year old neuroscientist who has discovered a cure for Alzheimer’s. Cate and her partner Jia are about to sell their biotech company, and Cate is worried her secret past may be revealed in the vetting process. As a child, after her parents and brothers died in a house fire, Cate was admitted to the Cleckley Institute, a boarding school treatment center for children with certain brain patterns which indicate psychopathic tendencies. Most have a history of trauma and violence, and all had been diagnosed with little or no empathy. Because she was only seven when she arrived, Cate received special attention from Dr. Archibald Montrose and his wife Eden, learning to simulate emotions and respond to social cues. Cate visits Dr. M to confirm her records won’t be shared and convinces him to let her see the anonymous data he collected about Cleckley graduates, most ending up in prison. Cate is thrilled to discover she is not the only outlier, there is one other Cleckley graduate who has made a success of his life. Dr. M refuses to reveal the name of Patient Number 98, but Cate manages to match him with Hunter Brant, a charismatic older boy she remembers from Cleckley. Hunter had been working on nuclear fusion, but his startup failed to get extended funding and he disappeared two years earlier, the same time Patient Number 98 stopped participating in Dr. M’s extended monitoring project. Cate tracks him to Baja, living in under the name Hunter Araya and about to open a huge resort powered by a new energy source he is developing. Cate decides to take a vacation to celebrate the sale of her company, hoping that she can connect with Hunter, and can finally be fully herself without the need to mimic proper social responses to others. Then a reporter investigating negative ecological impacts of Hunter’s resort dies in what might be an accident. Cate wonders if Hunter ever did learn to control his violent tendencies, and if she may also be in jeopardy. This intense debut thriller explores the isolation of those who don’t fit the norm, and the exciting thrill of danger.

Jahmal Mayfield
Smoke Kings (Melville House 2024) begins in February 2017 when Joshua and his cousin Nate visit the New Jersey morgue to identify the body of Joshua’s younger brother Darius, who has been beaten to death by a white gang. Two years later activist Nate has formed a vigilante group consisting of Joshua; Rachel, a close friend who knew Darius from birth; and Isiah, Rachel’s Korean boyfriend who works in IT. Angered by the justice system that exonerated the gang that killed Darius, the four are consumed by grief and rage. Nate’s plan is to kidnap the descendants of those who committed hate crimes and force them to pay reparations, depositing the funds into a community fund to help those in need. Isiah does the research on descendants of hate crime perpetrators, choosing one that has committed present offenses. Their current kidnap victim is Scott York, whose company botched the repair of a sewage system that now spills over every time it rains, contaminating the water supply. Nate takes the intimidation a bit too far, nearly strangling York. When released, York contacts Mason Farmer, a private investigator retired from the Birmingham Police Department, asking him to track down his four blackmailers. Isiah and Nate argue over their next target: Isiah insisting it’s time to branch out to hate crimes against non-Blacks, and Nate immediately naming their group the Smoke Kings, after a line from a W.E.B. Du Bois poem: I am the Smoke King, I am black. Their next target is Duane “Chipper” Kelly, who recently defaced the monument to Mingo Black, a Black man falsely accused of rape who was beaten and hanged in 1886 by a mob of white men that included one of Chipper’s ancestors. Unfortunately Chipper’s older step-brother Samuel is the leader of the Righteous Boys, a violent white supremacist group, whose need for revenge is even greater than the Smoke Kings. This powerful debut thriller presents the four Smoke Kings as flawed yet sympathetic characters struggling with complex issues of identity, racial justice, and disillusion with a society that allows hate crimes to continue.

Mindy Mejia
A World of Hurt (Atlantic Monthly Press 2024) begins when 26-year-old Kara Johnson makes a late night visit to the Des Moines emergency veterinary clinic where Dr. Jillian Ostrander patches up her gunshot wound. Kara has been laundering money and running drugs for drug lord Sam Olson for years, putting herself in danger on a regular basis. Kara has CIP disorder, a rare congenital insensitivity to pain, and knows she is living on borrowed time. Most people with CIP don’t live past the age of 25, the inability to feel pain causing them to be unaware of physical wounds and infections from hot stoves and cuts. Kara is fleeing a bloodbath at one of Sam’s farms, which left both Sam and her girlfriend Celina Kendrick dead. Jillian hides Kara when the police arrive, having spotted Sam’s truck in the neighborhood. In the morning Kara follows Jillian’s advice and leaves town. That same night Iowa City Police Department detective Max Summerlin investigates a tip from his longtime friend Jonah Kendrick, a private investigator with intuitive abilities, pulling over a semi truck loaded with a twenty million dollar cargo of opiates. A year later, in August 2020, DEA Agent Santiago Morales tracks down Kara, offering her a choice: she can return to work as a DEA informant or go to jail. A hit man is targeting any remaining connections to Sam Olson, and Kara is needed because of her connections with the group. Consumed by grief and guilt after Celina’s death, Kara agrees if Morales will correct the record about Celina, who convinced Kara to work as an informant and make the 911 call that precipitated the raid. Max joins the task force and is assigned to watch Kara, a partnership neither is thrilled about. Despite their lack of trust, the two establish a working relationship melding their distinct skills and resources, finding a connection with Jonah, who was Celina’s uncle. The realities of police work during the pandemic play an important part in this compelling thriller, following To Catch a Storm, which focused on Jonah.

Allison Montclair
Murder at the White Palace (Minotaur Books 2024) begins when Iris Sparks and Gwendolyn Bainbridge, proprietors of The Right Sort Marriage Bureau, make a last-minute decision in early December 1946 to throw a New Year’s Eve Party for their lonely heart clients. Unfortunately all the available spaces in London have already been booked. Gwen is about to give up when Iris suggests they consult her boyfriend, gangster Archie Spelling, who offers The White Palace, a run down dance hall he has just purchased and is renovating as part of his plan to go legitimate. While checking the venue, Gwen goes downstairs to examine the restroom situation just as a workman is removing a brick wall. It collapses and they discover the corpse of a murdered man. The police, led by Iris’s ex-fiancé Detective Sergeant Mike Kinsey, suspect Archie is responsible, though the White Palace was closed down in 1939 and Archie has only owned it for a few weeks. The signet ring on the dead man’s hand goes missing, but Gwen is able to sketch the design from memory: oak leaves surrounding a double headed sparrow clutching arrows. The police decide that the body was bricked in for at least 20 years, his clothing from the early 1920s Iris is confident Archie doesn’t have anything to do with the dead man until she sees a photograph of Archie’s father and his two best mates just after the Great War, all wearing signet rings with double-headed sparrows. Iris and Gwen work to clear Archie’s name, creating a list of suspects who are unfortunately mostly friends and acquaintances or work for Archie. The two matchmakers are experiencing their own romantic problems. Iris struggles with her relationship with a notorious gangster, to the horror of her politician mother, while Gwen, whose husband died in the early years of the war, cautiously re-enters the world of dating. This clever sixth in the series is full of witty banter between the two very different business partners who have come to rely on each other.

Liz Moore
The God of the Woods (Riverhead Books 2024) is set in Camp Emerson in the Adirondacks. Early one morning in August 1975, camp counselor Louise discovers that 13-year old Barbara Van Laar is not in her bunk. Louise checks with the counselor-in-training Annabel, who was on night duty, and learns that Annabel was out all night and didn’t check on the girls. Louise reports Barbara’s disappearance to T.J. Hewitt, the director of Camp Emerson, who organizes a search. When no sign is found of Barbara, T.J. walks up to the main house, the summer residence of wealthy banker Peter Van Laar and his wife Alice, to report the disappearance of their daughter. Alice collapses when she hears the news, having never completely recovered from the disappearance of their eight-year-old son Peter, known as Bear, who went missing 14 years earlier and was never found. Interspersed chapters beginning in the 1950s tell the story of Bear’s childhood and disappearance at the age of eight, never returning home from a walk in the woods. Peter insisted Alice have a second child to replace Bear, but she was still grieving the loss of her son and Barbara wasn’t an easy child. Neglected by both of her parents, Barbara was sent away to school and then surprised everyone by insisting on attending Camp Emerson for the first time. Assigning as bunkmate to extremely shy Tracy, Barbara quickly became a leader. Judyta Luptack, a new investigator for the New York State Bureau of Criminal Investigation, discovers that the Van Laar servants and the townspeople are willing to talk to her, sharing a unanimous conviction that an innocent man was framed for Bear’s disappearance. Narrated from various perspectives — including Alice, Louise, Tracy, and Judyta — this compelling thriller examines the negative effect of wealth and privilege.

Jane Pek
The Rivals (Vintage 2024) finds Claudia Lin, an uber mystery novel fan, settling into her new reality as a partner at Veracity, a discreet New York City agency that verifies the truth of online dating profiles. Claudia is both attracted to and terrified by her partner Becks, and they both put up with unreliable Squirrel for his tech abilities. Veracity has learned that the major dating platforms are using AI profiles to gather data on their customers, and suspects there might be an even darker plot. Pradeep Mehta makes an appointment and explains someone has cloned his dating profile. The picture on the Silent G profile isn’t him, but all the personal details are accurate, including a detail that wasn’t in his profile. Pradeep suspects the cloned profile was created by Matthew Eperson, his former boyfriend who works as an IT infrastructure specialist at Let’s Meet. Pradeep, recently engaged to an Indian woman selected by his parents, believes Matthew plans to make Pradeep’s attraction to men public, ruining his future. Becks explains that there is nothing Veracity can do, suggesting Pradeep should report the cloned profile to Let’s Meet. A few weeks later Pradeep dies in a bike accident. The Silent G profile has been removed, and Claudia and Becks worry that the profile was built by the company, an illegal “synth” used to test compatibility. If so, when Pradeep reported the profile, perhaps claiming one of their employees was responsible, he could have become a target. Claudia tracks down Matthew, who insists he wasn’t responsible for the fake profile. Worried about the possibility Pradeep’s death wasn’t an accident, Matthew agrees to use his access as an IT specialist to examine the computers of those who could have created the profile. While not enjoying her detective work, Claudia rides her bike around the city and tries to limit contact with her dysfunctional family. This second in the series is great fun.

Lev AC Rosen
Rough Pages (Forge Books 2024) begins in the mid-1950s when Evander “Andy” Mills, a former San Francisco police officer now working as an unlicensed private detective for the gay community, returns to Lavender House at the request of butler Pat. Henry and Margo are in the process of adopting a baby and have one more meeting to go with the strict social worker, who doesn’t realize that Henry is actually a couple with Cliff, and Margo with Elsie. Pat is worried because his friend Howard Salzberger is missing. Howard owns a bookstore with his longtime friend Dorthea Lamb and runs a secret monthly subscription service for distribution of queer books with a carefully guarded address list. Howard and the address book have been missing for several days and Pat is terrified that his volunteer work with the subscription service, which includes his address at Lavender House, will endanger the adoption process. Concerned that the subscription list will mean jail time for Howard and Dorthea if found by the police, Andy searches both the bookstore and Howard’s house with no luck. He then visits the federal DA’s office, hoping to trick the clerk into revealing if Howard is being investigated for trafficking obscene material through the mail. The clerk won’t tell him anything without a badge or PI license, and unfortunately Rose Rainmeyer, a reporter for the Examiner, hears his question. Rose recognizes Andy as a decorated police officer, and asks why he is no longer on the force. Andy can’t reveal the real reason — he was caught in a raid at a gay bar — but she doesn’t believe his story of doing more good as a private investigator. Sensing a story, Rose begins to follow Andy and he is afraid he has made everything worse. Rose cares only for advancing her own career, and could put Andy in danger by revealing his address as well as blocking the adoption. This evocative mystery explores the isolation of gays in a repressive society while celebrating the realization that one is not alone in the world.

Caroline Woods
The Mesmerist (Doubleday 2024) begins in October 1894, when a young woman walks up the railroad tracks to the Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, through a violent thunderstorm. Quaker Abby Mendenhall, treasurer and board member of the Sisterhood of Bethany, welcomes the girl, soaked to the skin through her tattered silk dress with gashes on her hands. The girl doesn’t speak and the matron Miss Rhodes suggests the name Faith while Abby explains that expectant mothers are contracted to stay for a full year, learning a skill like seamstress or laundress, regardless of when the baby arrives. Faith will be allowed to keep the baby or place it for adoption. May Lombard, near the end of her year and determined to find a husband through church, isn’t happy when Faith takes over the second bed in her room, but kindly helps Faith out of her dress, horrified to find a ring of finger-shaped bruises around her neck. Faith’s strange arrival, silence, and ghostly pallor frighten the other girls, and they begin to call her Ghost Girl. As time passes May learns that Faith can speak, though she says very little, and the two become cautious friends. Faith recognizes some of the others as working girls from the local brothels in the First Avenue red-light district, and learns that Bethany House is funded by a share of the fines the working girls pay when arrested for prostitution. Whispers circulate at the Bethany Home that Faith is a mesmerist formerly known as Marguerite the Magnificent, able to bend others to her will, and she becomes even more of an outcast. A brothel owner who employed several Bethany girls is found murdered, and May fears that her handsome suitor Hal Hayward may be involved in her death. Based on an real-life serial killer stalking his victims in 1890s Minneapolis, this historical thriller reveals the hopeless plight of unmarried pregnant women with little recourse against them men who ruined their lives.