BEN CANAAN SERIES: historical mysteries by A.E GOLDIN featuring Jewish sleuth Canaan

DEATH ON THE PEARL RIVER (Ben Canaan #2)
A.E GOLDIN
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Ben Canaan returns in this darkly gripping stand-alone adventure mystery set in Hong Kong, sequel to the acclaimed Murder in Constantinople!

Ben Canaan is riding high on the recent string of cases he has solved successfully on the payroll of Her Majesty’s Executive. Then a notorious crime boss is found murdered on the city streets, the latest in a series of brutal killings targeting the most powerful men in the opium trade.

The scale of the danger is global. To track down the culprits and prevent more blood from being shed, Ben is sent out to the newly-founded British colony of Hong Kong: a lawless frontier town on the southern shores of China's Great Qing Dynasty. All the victims have had ties to the prominent trading firms that use the Pearl River and the South China Sea as their base of operations—ranging from the firms’ heads, to high-ranking partners, supercargoes, merchants, even sailors.

Ben is plunged headlong into a labyrinthine conspiracy, set against the backdrop of an empire in collapse and a sweeping civil war. As his hunt brings him closer to the truth and the ruthless corporate interests that want him dead, Ben is forced to choose between what is necessary and what is just.

Alfred Hitchcock meets Indiana Jones, this immersive, globe-trotting historical mystery is the second installment in the acclaimed Ben Canaan Mysteries series. Thrillingly paced and filled with enchanting historical settings, this series provides all the nostalgic reading pleasure of classic Sherlock Holmes.

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My Review: It utterly blows my mind to realize Hong Kong as we know it now is so very young as a city. It does not bear thinkiing about what is happening there now, or what that portends for its inabitants' future. Still, being a Crown Colony was no picnic...as Ben's busy finding out in this wildly improbable, very kinetic tale of derring-do in support of the British opium trade.

Ew.

Of course Ben's not responsible for this global scourge. He's been told where to go and whom he should see by his bosses. Of course there's another terrible choice of woman for him to fall in love with, this time an opium widow grieving her husband.

All the expected gadgetry, intrigue, secrets to uncover that his bosses would really rather he didn't. And then there are the fights Ben needs to win, battles to wake up to instead of the ones he was told he'd be fighting. It still barely hangs together at the plot level and then only if one exercises good will and willingness to overlook how a lower-class Jew in 1850s England comes to be trusted with such important tasks as Ben is.

It all comes out okay in the end. It has to in a series mystery/thriller. Please not this entry does not have any significant characters from the first story. If you're looking for cozy sciibygroups, this is not the read for you. Like the Bond or Bourne books, Ben's the main point of continuity in these stories.

Enjoyable as fluff, but a second outing so soon after I had read the first might not've been rge greatest idea...pace yourself.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

MURDER IN CONSTANTINOPLE (Ben Canaan #1)
A.E GOLDIN
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: squeaks to 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Alfred Hitchcock meets Indiana Jones in this acclaimed, globe-trotting historical mystery about a wayward Jewish kid drawn into a sinister plot

This entertaining historical mystery is the exciting debut novel from London-based musician and screenwriter A.E. Goldin. Thrillingly paced and with an enchanting historical setting, it launches an unforgettable new hero in a series that provides all the nostalgic reading pleasure of classic Sherlock Holmes.

London, 1854. 21-year-old Ben Canaan attracts trouble wherever he goes. His father wants him to be a good Jewish son, working for the family business on Whitechapel Road, but Ben and his friends, the 'Good-for-Nothings', just want adventure.

Then the chance discovery of an enigmatic letter and a photograph of a beautiful woman bring Ben an adventure more dangerous than anything he’d imagined. Suddenly he is thrown into the heart of a mystery that takes him away from everything he has known and all the way to Constantinople, the jewel of an empire and the centre of a world on the brink of war.

Ben’s only clue is 3 words: ‘The White Death’. Now he must find what links a string of grisly murders, following a trail through kingmaking and conspiracy, poison and high politics, bloodshed and betrayal. In a city of deadly secrets, no one is safe—and one wrong step could cost Ben his life.

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My Review: Like the TV version of The Wild Wild West that ran from 1965 to 1969 (I'm still salty it got canceled by sustained pressure from lamebrained Congressmen), the book has trouble picking a tone. It does not feel entirely intentional, so gives an impression of lurching from sweet to sour to violent to off-the-wall daffy. Had the author, a screenwriter, recalled the true statement "every reader is the director of their brain's movie" there might have been smoother transitions among fewer tonal shifts.

How did a small-time chancer whose petty crimes were the impetus for him to stow away on a Royal Navy ship heading for the Crimean War; then after jumping ship in Constantinople, how'd he end up in the iddle of international intrigues well above his social station? How did he blend in well enough not to be rumbled minunte one? Let alone how did he get the information he's needed for the solutions to immensely consequential international intrigues?

Don't look for logic is how. Either buy in or leave the table, because this game is mad, it's incredible, and it's either going to charm you or piss you right off.

Me, I'm more charmed than any other response. I like Ben's verve and bravado. It makes him exciting to follow around. I don't think a sleuth should be reckless with impunity because life ain't like that. I do enjoy someone screwing up and learning from the screwing up, as failing upwards is relatable to anyone who's ever done anything that semi-succeded knows. Ben has that infuriating knack that real people I hate have of knowing just the right person to accomplish the thing that most needs doing so he can figure a puzzle out.

There is no slowing down either. Infodumps are quite rare and mostly very short indeed. It helps that I needed the ones I got. Plenty of female badassery on display, and integral to the plot...a certain portrait subject in particular. I enjoyed Ben's encounter with a marvelous Florence Nightingale, who factually was where she's met by our (anti)hero at a most amusingly delicate juncture.

Think of this as an 1854 European version of The Wild Wild West featuring a Jewish young man with a love for gadgets and a penchant for picking the wrong woman, and there you go. Again, id any of that is not causing you to break out in purrs, stay or go away soonest, it won't suddenly become your cuppa.

MURDER ON 34th STREET: A Novel, Christmas-season story to scratch you murderous itch

MURDER ON 34th STREET: A Novel
MARIAH FREDERICKS
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the author of The Girl in the Green Dress comes a delightful and captivating novel about a fictional murder mystery at the iconic Macy's parade leading up to the holidays in historic New York City.

New York, 1932. Grace Verlander is the secret beating heart of Macy’s. She’s the “assistant to the assistant to the someone who’s in charge”, the go-to person for keeping everything running smoothly behind-the-scenes at the famous, bustling store.

It’s not every day you get a letter from Santa Claus, but three days before the Macy’s annual Thanksgiving Day Parade, Grace arrives at work to find a note from the store Santa Claus in her someone has sent him a death threat. Shocked, Grace promises to look into it and speaks to the store detective about the parade’s security, confident that they’ve found a solution that will keep everyone safe. But on the day of the parade, despite all their precautions, a dead body is found on one of the floats.

Using her wits and deep knowledge of the ways of the place, Grace is determined to find the killer and seek justice―not just for the dead man, but to save the reputation of this iconic store from ruin.

Steeped in glittering glamor and nostalgic wonder, this is a remarkable, unpredictable mystery set in the evocative world of one of New York’s most memorable institutions.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I'm being only a little disingenuous with my tag "Chrismtas romance" applied to this one. There is a romantic subplot. It exists. It isn't the focus of much action. I want all my fellow Christmas/Yule holiday fans to find this story so I'm baiting my hook.

Grace is one of those women who crop up in fiction so often, the one who knows exactly where the bodies are buried, the one who needs Stuff to be Right because that's how it all works best for people...even the ones who don't do Right. They don't know it yet, but they'll live in a better woeld because Grace and her sisters in crime fiction will make sure Right triumphs. (Of course, they'll be in jail and, if they come out, will forever have a criminal record...)

Why on Earth would a woman in 1932 New York, who works for Macy's in a sort of "minister without portfolio" way, get involved in a murder investigation? She is the only person, three days before the Thanksgiving Parade (which I called "Macy's Day parade" as a kid) who knows to call this giy not that one to fix whatever's gone wrong. That's why a threatening note against this year's Santa results in her involving Frank, head of Security for Macy's, in bringing this weird turn of events to NYPD's attention. How would it make the city look for Santa Claus to be murdered here?

Guess we'll find out, say the cops. Cranks will say anything for attention. Been true since forever, y'all, since people been peoplein'.

So when a shot is fired and someone dies, Grace takes her Rolodex (figurative) and starts flippin'. The police have a lot less institutional knowledge after all...and Author Mariah shows us that by peppering the text with really interesting to me Macy's trivia specific to the flagship store on Herald Square...plus she sees the inner workings of this small town that is the store itself every day, made obvious by the startlingly large cast of characters she interacts with. Seriously, Author Mariah...couldn't a few of them have been cut? I got very confused a couple times, expecting some one-shots to pop back up but someone else showed up instead.

That said, Grace and Frank made an effective team. The resolution to the fatal parade shooting was satisfying, and I failed to assign guilt properly, so there's your half-star gone to reader's petulance. (In truth it got added for that, to what otherwise was a four-star, too-busy story.)

What makes this fourth story by Author Mariah that I've read with pleasure so effective is her eye for the details to use from her prodigious store of facts and factoids and trivia. In days of yore I'd picture her in a huge, book-lined room that's organized by some arcane principle that's entirely her own. Now I picture a browser with umpteen tabs open in two screens worth of windows. Same stuff, different era.

I'm hopeful that y'all will trot right out to the local bookery and procure yourself this enjoyable holiday-set restoration of ma'at. It merits your time and treasure in the season coming especially, pr any time you need a Christmas-holiday story variolated into your bloodstream.

WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, second Coldren County procedural

WHERE THERE'S SMOKE (Coldren County #2)
RACHEL LOUISE ADAMS
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Following the USA Today bestselling series debut, No Rest for the Wicked, Rachel Louise Adams returns with Where There’s Smoke.

A lot has happened in Dolores Hawthorne’s life since the events of last Halloween. She’s divorced, traded being a forensic pathologist for a job as a medical examiner, and now lives in small-town Wisconsin, close—but not too close—to her family.

Dolores doesn’t have much in the way of work, but that all changes when a body is found at the local slaughterhouse. Benedict Marcy owned Marcy’s Meats, and is affectionately called Mr. Mercy across the region. This high-profile case quickly catches the attention of Dolores’s friends at the FBI.

From the very beginning, this case is full of contradictions and surprises, and the team quickly learns someone is willing to go to extreme lengths to stop them from finding out the truth behind Benedict Marcy’s murder.

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My Review: In common with her debut mystery, No Rest for the Wicked, which I mildly enjoyed and reviewed in January, this sequel is a pleasant reward for saying "yes" to the publicist in spite of thinking "...mmmaaayyybe." I wasn't excited by the small-Midwest-town-return aspect or the obsessed-by-Halloween town bit, but the story was compelling: where's my dad the US Senator, who took him and why,and after the childhood he gave me do I even care?

Now she's moved back to Circe, Wisconsin, to be the medical examiner and work on those pesky sibling relationships she was denied, the intense emotional damage her abandoned forensic science career at the heights she'd reached, and the husband...well, let's draw a veil over that.

New beginnings in old familiar places. And this murder? What a way to (re)start her law-enforcement career. We're not in cozy anymore...the victim owned a meat-packing business, where he was discovered in his slaughterhouse, and we are off to the procedural races. I was not so sure I'd last as we get a Moby-Dick level of detail very quickly in the said slaughterhouse. No one could possibly enjoy working in a slaughterhouse. Or being in one on...other business. Or even knowing what goes on in one. Or anything in it being made public.

Or, it turns out for Mr. Marcy the dead guy, being involved with the local PTB. Like anyone else whose murder garners law-enforcement attention, the life of the victim and all the lives of those around him are opened up to intense scrutiny by the most motivated nosy people on the planet. It is astonishing how many ugly secrets there are under the rug with barely a lump to give their existence away. A bit less troubling meanness and the rug would never've been moved to expose you, Mr. Marcy....

The story runs in parallel tracks because while all the investigation by Dolores' scoobygroup of Kate (a newbie in the FBI, welcome to the team hope you're a veggie or you will be soon) and Paul, whom we have met before is going on there's also Dolores' processing of her revelations from the first book. That's gonna hurt a long, long time.

Here, then, is the root of the series-appeal of this story: we-the-reader are involved in the larger life of Dolores, the colleague/friends she's lucky enough to have found, as well as in the puzzles she's required to solve as a result of the avoidant career she chose under the stress of her unprocessed trauma. It is the same for series mysteries across all modern time. If series X doesn't appeal it's the world-building that you're not resonating with. Keep shopping, someone's doing exactly, or almost exactly, what you want to read.

I've got this series in my "almost exactly" pile now. Excellent work, Author Adams, and thank you.

EVERY STORY IS A LOVE STORY, letting go of grieving

EVERY STORY IS A LOVE STORY
IMBOLO MBUE
Random House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers and How Beautiful We Were, a captivating novel about love lost—and the weight of regret

What if I’d never gotten into that car? What if I’d pulled out of the driveway five minutes earlier, or ten minutes later?

Three years ago, Wolo’s wife was killed in a tragic car accident. In an instant, the great love of his life was gone, and so was their beautiful future. In the face of a loss that seemed insurmountable, Wolo has slowly rebuilt a semblance of a life: he goes to work, hangs out with a small circle of friends, and fends off the matchmaking efforts of the older women in his family. The grief that dogged him has, with time, become a little gentler.

Until a letter arrives one day, unbidden, threatening to upend his life once again. It is from Victoria, the woman who was behind the wheel that terrible day. Wolo’s family pastor tells him the letter is the work of the devil; his mother expressly forbids him from making further mention of it; his father’s second wife calls, from Cameroon, to tell him to destroy it. But Wolo ponders it for days, and ultimately agrees to meet with the woman who killed his wife. When he does, the compassion and deep remorse of the woman affects him in ways he had never imagined, and he begins to wonder if the long road to healing can be shared.

What do we owe to those who have hurt us? Are we defined by our worst moments and our deepest regrets? And, more than anything, can forgiveness ease our suffering? Moving and full of life, Every Story Is a Love Story charts the uneven path from heartbreak to healing.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Wolo found true love with Yoma. It's the loveliest moment in someone's life: love is joyous before Life has its way with you, and Wolo? He was absolutely at the peak of joy because Yoma was pregnant!

Life had its way with him.

Victoria causes the accident that ends Wolo's happiness. It is impossible for Wolo to recover from this hideous, disfiguring agony of grief, and however loudly he tells his mother, his stepmother, his matchmaking aunties this he is still urged to date, to love again, to move on.

As if some random woman will be Yoma again, will be The One, will fill his life with laughter and excitement...impossible. And then. Will you look at that. Victoria writes to express her remorse for the awful thing she caused to happen to him. To ask Wolo to meet her and process their shared grief.

The Greek chorus of Wolo's life is unequivocal: Do not do this. Don't even think about doing this. You're morbidly obsessed with your loss already don't reinforce it is the universal subtext of their advice. Wolo's stunted, limited existence, the one he resists altering because letting go of his rage and agony feels like killing Yoma and their unborn twins again, has to change or Wolo will die. From the inside out.

So he says yes.

It was here I began to see why Author Mbue chose flashback, a style of storytelling I often find disinvolving, for Wolo's process of healing. It is reinjuring him, it is shoving his head in the waterboarding bucket again and again...it is allowing him just enough air to survive...it is letting him pull his feet under him on the wet floor and lurch and stumble away from the bucket...it is the light that shows the hand extended to him, showing a human is reaching with kind and helpful intent into his dark, drowning life.

It shows Wolo Victoria. Her pain from causing him pain. Her knowledge that she harmed Wolo, she (without malice) stole his life from him and wants so badly to do anything to help him because only that will help her.

And he reaches back.

Everything else I could say is spoilerific. I didn't give it a full-five rating because of spoilery stuff, but look how close I came. (Side note: I am so very happy to have as of October 2026 the ability to give quarter-star ratings on the country's biggest book-discovery engine.) It is Author Mbue's gift to be able to visit the darkest places in a person's life while they are floodlit in Capitalism's distracting material abundance and spiritual moonless midnight. This is another of her immigrants' tales of fitting in being less important than settling down.

It is a beautiful story with some odd edges to keep it from melting into the pleasant sameness of the bulk of entertaiment. That hard-to-differentiate mass gets so stultifyingly dull.

SLEEPERS IN THE SNOW, pretty sentences telling a supremely silly story just for fun...it is!

SLEEPERS IN THE SNOW
JOANNE HARRIS
Pegasus Crime (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A gripping and powerful suspense story of love, loss, and the mysteries of memory by internationally bestselling author Joanne Harris.

Out on the moor, in the snow, a house stands beneath a pylon. It is a house full of memories and old things. And, in the dark, when the pylon sings in the wind, it is a house full of ghosts and fading memories . . .

The house, Kirkhill, has a new occupant—just moved in, fresh from a bitter divorce and looking for a new start. The moor is the perfect place for isolated, beautiful in the changing seasons, peaceful, and with just enough of the previous owners’ belongings that it’s a perfectly self-contained and cozy home.

Only, as the nights start to draw in and the weather takes a turn, so does the house. The cozy isolation becomes menacing, animals begin acting strangely, and it seems someone could be watching the house. And the diaries of the previous owners begin to reveal a terrible tragedy which befell Kirkhill—one which its new occupant may be unable to escape.

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My Review: Midsommar meets gender-flipped Rebecca sans Mrs. Danvers. Our unnamed narrator doesn't feel to the reader like he really belongs in Kirkhill—why is he so grateful the previous occupants left their stuff behind?—but we're on a slow reveal schedule with only him to rely on for details of what exactly happened in his past as well as is happening in the present. Was getting an isolated big pile of a place isolated on the moors a particularly sound idea for a recently divorced guy? (Not really, as it happens. Not precisely unexpectedly.)

As our PoV man ruminates about how angry he is at Her (must've been infidelity, nothing makes fictional men madder), he distracts himself by nosing into Caroline and Arthur's left-behind diaries. Right on cue, the house starts moving stuff around, making small things disappear and furniture suddenly be in shin-barking places. It's left nebulous if he believes this is why stuff is moving; as he is not getting any younger it's probably the ordinary aging memory issues.

My eyes rolled so far back I saw my brain. Hauntings aren't ever going to convince me presented like this. The spooky stuff-moving-around trope is bollocks; real hauntings are memories you can't shake, love you did not give when you could have, wanted to, but didn't; memories you cherish and can not ever share because they weren't made in shareable ways. This guy reads someone else's diary and somehow it all matters enough to him that he is going a bit crazy over what he has no way to know or reason to trust is not a lie or a fantasy?

It sounds like I disliked the read. I mostly didn't. I mostly fell in love woth Author Harris's beautifully evocative sentences taking me into chilly drafts, wide vistas of unpopulated ground that can't be built on because it's that halfway point between bog and dirt that is moorland, all to the souundtrack of the huge electrical pylon that's right over the house huuming and buzzing. Of course it's there over the house...it's the only buildable land for macres around. As someone who's had tinnitus since the mumps left me with them in 1965 (I think), I can confirm the sound of electricity buzzzing and humming can be very soothing or very very annoying, depending on one's mood and/or the other ambient sounds.

It's the kiind of detail that the author had no way to know anyone would for sre have experience of, but she got the effect of that kind of eerie variable hum on a person's mood, without ever obtruding into full awareness for someone whose tinnitus is not necessarily real, would have or know. Still she got it right. And not by accident. That's excellent craft work. My headcanoon is that the narrator does have tinnitus but there is no direct factual statement to that effect.

What there is, comme d'habitude with Joanne Harris, is good writing telling a good story about a person whose feelings are powerfully agitated; and we go on the journey through those feelings with the person until...an end is reached. It was not really an ending but it definitely was the egress from the story.

Well worth the trip for her fans, and if (like me) you loved Piranesi you'll hear echoes from that megaton explosion of creativity.

THE OCCIDENTAL BOOK OF THE DEAD: A (really long) Novel

THE OCCIDENTAL BOOK OF THE DEAD: A Novel
T. GERONIMO JOHNSON
William Morrow (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and National Book Award longlisted author of Welcome to Braggsville, comes this long-awaited, visionary new novel centered on a Black cop in an Atlanta precinct, whose façade of white alliance begins to crumble after a highly publicized murder.

George Washington Jonson is determined to forge a new life. After growing up in one of Atlanta’s poorest housing projects, he enlists in the U.S. Army and finds some relief serving abroad. When events lead him back home, he joins the police force. It’s 1992, and Jonson is patrolling the streets he grew up on alongside his new partner, a shady legacy cop and self-described “redneck” who takes Jonson under his wing.

After a decade on the job, Jonson has fashioned a new life for himself in an affluent suburb with his white wife and stepson, though he’s still policing his old neighborhood, and now tasked with training hot-headed rookie recruits. One night on patrol a split-second confrontation with a white teenager takes a violent turn. That single gunshot sets into motion a series of escalating lies—all threatening to be exposed as investment in the case mounts to a fever pitch.

When the white-washed veneer of Jonson’s life begins to crack, the story splits, presenting two contrasting versions of the American experience as he’s forced to confront the history that shaped him and the compromises required of a good man in a broken system.

Employing a bold, inventive structure and spanning two fraught decades, vividly evoking the complexities of the South, and written with the same virtuosic dissonance and insight as his previously acclaimed novels, The Occidental Book of the Dead is a propulsive, pyrotechnic exploration of systems of corruption and conspiracy—and an epic, unflinching portrait of a nation divided.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Pay close attention to the format shift. Its tonal shift is obviously important; its timing might need some thought but it needs the effort to get the most out of it.

A very long read that, if you're at all like me, goes to some places so dark you will need some days off when certain sections are over.

What happens when ot's YOUR son/nephew/grandson, white people? Why does justice suddenly matter so much that millions get spent on intensive incestigations, careers are suddenly at stake, press conferences get held? I've never, in almost seventy years of life spent mainly in New York City and Texas...so among guns...had a gun pointed at me. Imagining it fills me with cold dread.

But that's all I do. I summon the image and play pretend because it's never happened to me, or to anyone I've ever known at all well. I'm not particularly unusual in this way.

I'm not Black. (Duh.) My Black friends and acquaintances are privileged, educated people. Yet I am sure we would get to gun violence faster checking in with them than with me.

Author Geronimo writes about the futility of expecting the privileged to see or to amend their access to privilege. It is a mug's game to think "ally" is meaningful and substantive label. I know this intimately from being among the QUILTBAG communities and seeing the ease with which people turn us into "them" really fast. It doesn't even need to be for a reason, there's no excuse required, you're suddenly, unexpectedly on the outside looking in.

And that, played out in a story about a man in authority, is a very powerful piece of literary ju jitsu. It is greatly to Author Geronimo's credit that he does not foreshadow things so heavily as to make them feel overly familiar when they occur. It takes considerable, and all too uncommon, levels of skill to achieve that device. It's a craft skill I wish was more widely distributed.

My criticism of this read is length. It can feel very much like we're living the story in real time. Considering it's a very weighty tale indeed, it's a big ask...let alone asking it twice in a row.

NIGHT OF A THOUSAND HELLS: A Novel, Indonesia's fascinating cultural mix made clearer than before

NIGHT OF A THOUSAND HELLS: A Novel
INTAN PARAMADITHA (tr. Stephen Epstein, Tiffany Tsao)
Europa Editions
$12.99 ebook, available now

On the 2026 Finalists for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A genre-defying feminist gothic novel blending Indonesian folklore, Islamic mysticism, horror, and political reckoning

International literary sensation Intan Paramaditha returns with her most ambitious and haunting work to date. The novel opens with a devastating the youngest of three sisters becomes a suicide bomber. In the aftermath, her surviving siblings are forced to confront the violent, buried truths of their family history. Their search leads them to long-concealed secrets, and to the prophecies of their grandmother, whose shadowy wisdom has shaped their fates.

Set across Indonesia, the United States, and Australia, the novel explores class divides, sisterhood, migration, shame, abandonment, and the politics of care—all through a ghostly, atmospheric lens that draws on Asian folktales and occult traditions.

With its blend of political urgency, mythic resonance, and psychological depth, Night of a Thousand Hells is a singular contribution to global feminist literature.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: After knocking around the publishing industry for a while, and after spending many decades thinking about stories and how they get made and sold, I've come to respond with knee-jerk skepticism to certain phrases. A particularly powerful example is "genre-defying." I read it, I hear the marketing department and the sales manager hollering "what the actual fuck IS this thing? what do we tell the Dubuque bus station kiosk owner to shelve it as?" with some poor editorial assistant saying back "it's beautiful writing!" because he has no idea what genre boxes are for yet.

It is indeed beautiful writing, Taylor or whatever, and you should be proud of your role in bringing it to market. Luckily the author and translators have track records of success because if this was a debut novel it would be on a *serious* uphill trajectory. Islam's long history in Indonesia, its region-specific folklore, and the US culture's present hostility to the mere mention of the religion is working against the country's readers finding a reason to read a book about a family's reactions to a young woman's suicide bombing done with her husband and one of her children...honestly, who would not find that a hard, hard topic to grapple with? Then we have the Indonesian cultural milieu separate from Islam, in the story they intersect of course, but the specific-to-Indonesia and its wide cultural diversity elements are not fully mappable onto religious strictures and shibboleths.

So there are a lot of issues to negotiate. Not gonna lie or frost your donut. The reason you should want to read the story anyway is the reason to read any story: It's as much fun as the effort you need to put into it. We're hearing from multiple people, most importantly the dead woman's sisters and their grandmother. We're given, at different times, words from the family's servant from days gone by; sober, factual news reports (as one might expect); phrases from the Qur’an, again expected given what's occurred; and sensational tabloid screaming, again expectedly. Maya, the sister who now lives across the globe in New York, is writing a novel, bits of which are included at emotionally relevant times. Mutiara the solid one, the one who does the maintenance on the family, and grandmother Victoria appear as very distictive voices. Annisa, the family's golden child who inexplicably did this awful thing, is met posthumously through diary entries.

It is here the fifth star sets under the horizon. As fascinating as the story is, Annisa appears to me the least-developed, thus least interesting to me, character. It was as though the author needed to tell us things to explain Annisa to us so we don't simply have a cipher dragging the story into ugly, sensationalist tabloid territory. I agree; I would've liked these diary entries to have emotional impact beyond purporting to be from a suicide bomber, and I did not get that. I got generic-feeling pronoucements and bland uninflected propaganda points.

This disappointment was clearly not fatal to my pleasure in the read as my rating should amply demonstrate. I found the cultural elucidation to be defy, not drawn out into sociology-text realms. I wasn't as immersed in the cultural exchange as a result, though it was a facet of the story it was never THE story. I might've liked that story as well, but it wasn't what I was told to expect so I didn't.

Patriarchy, religious as well as social, and its dark, evil use of secrecy to divide and conquer those it wishes to exploit and dominate comes in for a thorough drubbing. The way women in ordinary Indonesian Muslim families are indoctrinated in patriarchy's expectations, implying they are the immutable commands of God, is rotten. The isolation of these women from the outside world, and even from each other, is the tool used to psychologically warp and destroy them. Accustoming people to the horrific abusive realities of religious social control allows the religious leaders enormous leeway to foment violence as well as to commit it. No further text.

Part of the deeply unfamiliar cultural detail in this story comes from the QUILTBAG community's presence, never overstated, in these pages. It was fascinating and an enrichment of my delighted awareness of just how true "we're here, we're queer, we're not staying in your closet" needs to remain through action against high-control systems with delusions of global supremacy.

A story I'm going to think about, mull over, analyze for some time to come; and do all those things in an engaged, interested, involved way.