THE DEATH AND BIRTH OF ILIANA MAREK, SFnal mysterious thrilling doings in Florida

THE DEATH AND BIRTH OF ILIANA MAREK
DAVID LISS
Tachyon Publications (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A young man with a tragic past finds an unlikely protector in a strangely altered enforcer of his backwater town. In his immutable style, Edgar Award winner David Liss (The Peculiarities) incorporates the elements of a crime novel within a satirical combination of sci-fi, justice, and mercy in 21st-century America.

Who is Iliana Marek? Is she the bully who alongside her foster father Police Chief Bryce Hillard, controls and terrorizes Tylor, Florida? Or is she the reborn guardian angel of Dan Gibson, a social pariah responsible for the suicide of Faye Kristic, a death which he cannot remember ten years later.

Dan’s once-promising future is in tatters. He lives in an apartment on his estranged parents’ property, works at a convenience store with a terrible boss, and is addicted to prescription drugs. But ten years after Faye’s death, Iliana suddenly takes Dan’s side, and a lot of bad people start dying fast.

As Dan becomes entangled in the ensuing chaos, he needs to finally discover what part he played in the death of Faye Kristic, and why the changes to Iliana make her no longer entirely human.

In a novel as though Carl Hiaasen had collaborated with Michael Crichton, David Liss’s newest work is a powerfully astute, entertaining allegory right out of today’s headlines.

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My Review: The unjustly-accused hero is irresistible to me, a story conceit I'm so sat for because Hitchcock. From The Lodger and Saboteur to North by Northwest, with stops at The Thirty-nine Steps and The Man Who Knew Too Much...my whole conscious life I've been enjoying the real hero being misjudged.

Dan's severe mistreatment at the hands...presumably...of law enforcement resulting in his concussion bad enough to rob him of his memory, well, sign me up for the cruise in first class comfort please. Iliana, a child under the care of this rotten sheriff who (presumably) led, or allowed at least, Dan's beating without knowing or caring that he was actually guilty of provoking the suicide of sweet little Faye, the dearest girl anywhere ever so of course the town went nuts! He harmed her!

Says who?

Everyone. And Iliana, plus foster dad sheriff, make sure everyone hears that version of events. Dan is beat down for ten years from all sides. You wrote these horrible, bullying things about Faye! She was a super-excellent coder and you never could be! the townsfolk spit venomously at beleaguered Dan, driving him into substance abuse and a miserable dead-end job. Why does none of this ring even a distant bell? Because you're guilty! shout the peasants, armed with the twenty-first century's pichforks and torches, chasing Dan into the town's windmill-equivalent, the local gas station/convenience store, there to suffer a miserable work life getting abused.

But Faye was working on something big, something that also cost the billionaire who hired her for the job his life (boo hoo). And that has some outsiders wondering why the entire fatal event was so tightly controlled, so free of loose ends, so improbably speedily resolved. Enough chatter about it keeps reaching Dan over the years..so heavily implicated (maybe too heavily, absent concrete proof) tat he *must* be included in the gossip, he decides to do what an outside crime reporter texts him to do: show up at the suicide site, a tower, for a meeting. It's maybe reckless, but life can't get worse than being reviled, right?

Unless you're Dan. Arriving at the tower to meet the reporter, he finds Iliana already there.

Burying bodies. And after a truly bizarre moment of unforgettable SFnal deus ex machina, acting weirdly...nice...to him. Unsettlingly, Iliana has now decided she will protect Dan from detractors defaming him...just as she did, up until now. This is all exceedingly weird, what happens and how and why are very very unexpected. It's also very welcome indeed. Having someone convert from detractor to defender...even though murderous in her execution (!) of the role...is a kindness Dan had stopped expecting anyone to show him.

What follows is an increasingly daffy and disorienting peeling of the onion's layers. No one is who they present themselves as. Nothing is uncomplicated by lies and the secrecy the entire town and attendant characters practice. It isn't just impossible to figure out who's lying, it's impossible to determine why some withhold truths and some just outright lie about the same thing.

There's a real, solid reason; you will learn it; it is not, shall we say, edifying. Dan carries trauma and guilt unjustly heaped on him. He was not, it turns out, guiltless. He never really dealt with the real guilt nor does he here, but there's an excellent reason why in the decade of cruelty he's suffered. I'd've liked to see him grow as a character but the scope of the story told here would not allow i. Nor does that scope allow for Iliana's alteration to be explicated as I so very badly wished it would be. Again, I get why, but here I sit with my teeth in my mouth....

Not a whodunit like the Benjamin Weaver stories Author Liss regaled us with, so don't expectfair-play clue laying. It's really more a mysterious, psychologically oriented, vibe-of-thrillers gone by, story. And it's good fun indeed. My quibbles are just that: quibbles. Go forth, procure, and enjoy.

SCARLET SHADOWS, The Scarlet Mysteries Book 1

SCARLET SHADOWS (The Scarlet Mysteries Book 1)
JO SZEWCZYK
Czykmate Productions (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99 Kindle, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Scarlet Jameson is a taekwondo champion with a badly injured leg, a short fuse, and absolutely no intention of becoming an amateur detective.

Then her friend Michelle is attacked by three masked strangers.

Before her failing sight ended Michelle's career as a pediatrician, Emily had been her first patient. Years later, she became her last. When a desperately needed transplant fell through, Emily died—leaving behind a tragedy Michelle thought she'd buried.

Apparently, someone else is determined to keep the past buried too.

Scarlet, Michelle, and their loyal but unpredictable friend Bean start asking questions. They should have left the past alone. Because the deeper they dig, the more dangerous the answers become—and someone is willing to make sure they never reach the truth.

Fast, dark, and full of wry, quick-witted banter, Scarlet Shadows is a modern Las Vegas crime mystery about buried secrets, the people who'll kill to keep them, and three friends who don't know when to walk away. Perfect for fans of Veronica Mars and Finlay Donovan.

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My Review: Plots centering the theft of a laptop containing the secrets that no one could possibly not desiire enough to kill for are common as pig tracks. Medical maguffins are very en vogue because, y'all, we live in a time of miracles and should all be bathed in the astonishing accomplishments of scientists, researchers, and technologists.

Ahem.

None of that's in this book, but I'm taking every opportunity I can find or create to remind anyone who sees my words that this is true.

Scarlet, mouthy sarcastic kid she is, annoyed me. So did Bean. Truthfully anyone their age is going to rub me the wrong way. But add in Scarlet's tae kwan do codified violence and I am already late for the door. Michelle's career as a pediatrician is ending, cruelly and uncomfortably for old-man me, as her sight fails. *deep prolonged shudders of horror* Being an actual doctor, therefore , at the youngest, in her later thirties, I could not understand her undifferentiated interests and communication of them from youthful Scarlet's or Bean's. If she'd been sleeping with one or both of them I could see it....

Speaking of seeing things, Jean-Claude Van Damme? While he had an epically muscular butt back in the day, he's my age and his fighting days (supported by the said epically muscular butt) are behind (!) him, so why? Never explained that I noticed.

Snappy wit is hard to pull off. Here it felt more like kids bantering. It was not The Thin Man or Slaughterhouse-Five. If I reach for a comparison to my era of youth-wit writers, I'd say its closest analogue was In Watermelon Sugar by largely and justly forgotten chronicler of the nonce Richard Brautigan.

Astute and observant as I know all my readers are, y'all will have noticed there are three and a half stars up there. The reason is...I like violent, goofy Scarlet. She's bright, she's curious, she's got a definite moral compass; she believes in taking action against injustice; she does not have any time for fools. My kinda sleuth. Her scoobygroup is probably going to change over time...what're you gonna do with Michelle after this? Or Bean?...but they'll always be quirky and scrupulous which...that's hard to do this well.

Great, no; fun, yes. A pleasantly amusing layover download.

THE PARIS FILES: A Novel, truly deeply involving alternative way of telling a familiar story

THE PARIS FILES: A Novel
EVA JURCZYK
Pamela Dorman Books/PRH (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Told entirely through police interviews, this stylish, sophisticated thriller captures the disastrous aftermath of Parisian rendezvous following the disappearance of a new lover

Genie St. Onge’s heart is broken more often than it’s not—but that doesn’t stop her from diving in head-first when she meets Jacob Ford. Their connection is instantaneous and consuming, and they agree to meet again in Paris. In a heady mix of sugared pastries and rumpled bedsheets, they begin plotting their future together. In the dreamy apartment they're renting in the 11th arrondissement, they become intoxicated by each other.

Until Jacob disappears.

Genie knows Jacob would never leave her. Not by choice. When phone calls to hospitals turn up nothing, she grows convinced that someone must have taken him. It's the only explanation.

Under the scrutiny of the French police, however, Genie’s story doesn’t quite hold up—and it sounds like Jacob might not be all he seems, either. Through police interviews with Genie and nearby residents of the 11th arrondissement, the truth remains elusive. She swears has no idea what happened to Jacob—so why doesn’t her story align with anyone else’s?

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My Review: I reviewed Author Eva's 6:40 To Montreal last year, that marvelously involving remake of Murder on the Orient Express the same 4.5* as here. The close model for the police-interview transcript format (of the answers only) used to tell the entire story...a kind of take on The Lady Vanishes... in this book is Robert Pinget's The Inquisitory, one of his noveau roman works from the 1960s. Permaybehaps Author Eva is using this stylistic, if not thematic, hopping around to participate in an unjustly underknown effort to sharpen appreciation of the novel...whatever truth there might be in that, I'm just grateful she chose not to emulate the absence of punctuation Pinget chose for his transcripts. That made for a long read.

So, Genie (!) and Jacob's mildly astounding story. A woman mets a man while she is on holiday; they feel It; they (bizarrely) being to plan a life together in Paris; and then they start the said life in Paris...without ever so much as texting each other in the months between making these plans, traveling other places, and then meet to begin their new life. Jacob promptly vanishes. Genie goes to the police.

Presented with that story as the beginning of the novel, the police begin to investigate and—to absolutely no one's surprise—can't verify Genie's story. Bits and parts of it match bits and parts of others' stories. It was, in fact, a touch odd to me that Genie annd Jacob's private lives felt as though they were pretty much a more open book than certainly *I* would be comfortable with. But a lot of that is Genie herself...she does not do demure or discreet. Her emotions run hot, her presentation of self is so deeply unnervingly *On* that I would find her a wearing person to keep company with. Jacob, now, is someone I'd look at Genie and then at him and think, "...???...maybe Jacob's just ghosted you, dear lady, so maybe lick your wounds and move on...?"

Police pursuing this line of discovery get a roaring earful. It is an uneasy thing to read about a woman being disbelieved by Authority in 2026. It is not unrealistic. And that is why it feels so...unsettling, so uncomfortable, to be with Genie as she negotiates the process of giving statement to Authority that Authority simply does not think reflect the facts when I don't entirely believe the statements myself. Compounded by the fact that it's painfully clear that every person giving Authority their statements is lying about something, and has a reason to dislike and mistrust Authority so to be dishonest.

At no time were my readerly feet firmly under me, at no point did I have any idea other than a developing one, at every turn of the page or change of chapters I had to brace myself for the next course alteration. It kept me fully engaged with this improbable story's improbable course, and ultimately its surprising if not fully convincing resolution.

It was a lot of fun, and while I was always sure there was going to come to light a huge international government-toppling plot or a dreadfully cruel revenge scheme a la the Monte Cristo gag for something Genie'd done to a grudge-holding tech billionaire, what actually happened was...condign.

No one who calumniates macarons shouuld get a HEA.

PLEASE ENJOY YOUR STAY, ghastly truths emerge about a family tragedy

PLEASE ENJOY YOUR STAY
TARA GOEDJEN
Atria/Emily Bestler Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, treorder now for delivery on 13 October 2026

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: After a true crime podcast reopens her cousin’s murder case, a woman must confront her past at a glamorous European castle-turned-hotel where she follows a trail of toxic family secrets and deadly lies.

When they were teenagers, Mia’s beloved cousin was murdered during their stay at an infamous castle in the Austrian Alps. As the only witness, Mia’s testimony put the killer behind bars, but it tore her life apart: the media accused her aunt, a controversial true crime author, of being involved. Now, a decade later, the murderer is appealing his conviction, and a popular true crime podcast starts covering the case, determined to exonerate him, and resurfacing lies about Mia’s family in the process.

Desperate to protect her aunt—and what she knows to be the truth—Mia returns to Austria. The castle is being revamped as a luxury hotel, and Mia gets a job as a nanny for the new owner, hiding in plain sight as she investigates, needing to set the story straight once and for all. But after someone mysteriously disappears on the property and sinister new evidence emerges regarding her cousin’s death, she realizes she might have accused the wrong man...and put her own life in danger.

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My Review: It disconcerts me when I read a debut novel this expertly crafted. I expect untacked hems, unblocked waists and armholes, some lumpy seams...none of that here. Comes the dawn...she's been busy the past ten years tending the story vines in the YA vineyard.

So why move to the adult side? I thought maybe some smexy content...not by my adult lights, but maybe for teens it would be? Nope, this isn't a bonkbuster. It's maybe a little deeper on the fragility of Mia's confidence in herself and in her judgment and memory than is good for YA stories, but that's a problem I have with YA stories aimed at girls a lot of the time. The gothic elements...crazy mother, brooding heroes with dark secrets who tell lies for genuinely good reasons, eville greedy men who want the heroine to fail...aren't too disturbing for any goth teen I've ever met.

Well, here we are. This solidly crafted mystery is a pleasure to read, the setting is so well evoked I put on my cardigan against the chills, as Mia's memories of the deeply traumatizing murder she witnessed are attacked and undermined I was frothingly furious with the liars abusing her for their own gain.

There's that half-star gone. In a truly effective gothic novel I expect to feel doubt about the heroine's perceptions. I expect I'll have to wonder id the lies aren't more evenly distributed. Never, not once, did I think so much as "...matbe she misremembered...?" Mia was victimized, and I truly got angry about it.

Author Tara doesn't deliver by-the-numbers gothic storytelling. She keeps the story moving, bending around some pretty sharp corners. Never once did she cheat on the ghostly horror front, by which I mean it was all revealed as regular ol' skulduggery seen from a particular, carefully engineered angle.

What provided the horror for this out-of-step old man was the true-crime podcasting angle, the way the search for Truth is weaponized and twisted and manipulated. Humans scare me far far more than "ghosts" or the "paranormal" ever could. Humans harm and kill each other for fun and profit...and that horrifies me more than spooky set-dressing ever could.

Uneasy reading for spooky season your jam? This story will deliver, though not for the usual reasons (IMO). Need a heroine to root for? Here she is. Need an ending you can close the book, smile, and say to yourself "okay, that's good"? I got that here almost in spite of Mia having less faith in herself than I had in her...that christawful true-crime podcast...and think most of y'all would too.

LUNA, PHOENIX, QUEEN, the progression will make sense in hindsight

LUNA, PHOENIX, QUEEN
JULIE ORRINGER
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery 13 December 2026

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A spellbinding tour de force from the bestselling author of The Invisible Bridge—a novel about varieties of infidelity, the provenance of a literary masterpiece, and the power of storytelling to shape identity and destiny.

Dava and Barr Pennington, professors at a Midwestern university, both harbor potent secrets. Fiction writing is his specialty, English literature is hers. But Dava is unhappy in their marriage, and secretly in love with a colleague, Svetlana White, who teaches in the Russian Studies department; spurred by their complicated liaison, she spends her nights working on a novel about two women who run a domestic violence shelter in coastal Maine. Though she loves the work and the refuge it provides, the writing becomes increasingly difficult as her memory begins to fail; tests reveal that she’s suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s. After a precipitous decline, she moves to a memory-care facility in a neighboring town. Soon afterward, her husband, alone in the house at night, discovers her hidden manuscript, which he reads with envy, and then with anger, as he extrapolates his wife’s affair from the relationship described in the novel’s pages. Over the next two years he rewrites the novel and publishes it as his own, to wide acclaim. But persistent feelings of guilt lead him to confess his theft to an unlikely party, who leads others to the truth.

Luna, Phoenix, Queen tells its tale of artistic and marital betrayal in a chorus of voices. We hear from Barr as he becomes obsessed with Luna, a horrifically injured dog at a local shelter; from Dava as she meets Svetlana for the first time, on a transatlantic flight to Dublin; from Milo, Dava’s son, as he hides in the woods with Naomi, Svetlana’s daughter; from Svetlana, experiencing the loss of a relationship that ended before it could come to fruition; from Evie, Barr’s research assistant, who witnessed Dava’s last days at home with her husband; from James, the Penningtons’ younger son, who makes a startling discovery after his father’s death; and from Milo and Svetlana again, as they grieve the injustice of Barr’s theft and confront the devastation of Dava’s disease.

In a narrative that spans four decades and four thousand miles, Luna, Phoenix, Queen illuminates the power of storytelling and explores the terror of losing the ability to make sense of our world. It is a cry of rage against our vulnerability and helplessness; an acknowledgment of the mysteries beneath the familiar surface of our world; and ultimately, if unexpectedly, a radical testament to love in its many forms.

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My Review: I'm a sucker for a revenge story. I know, I know, cheating on your wedding vows is okay when you're unhappy and also discovering your same-sex attractions in escaping your tedious, dull, humdrum, bad-heterosex marriage.

Not to me. Talk about it. Make a deal that gets you closer to a happier life. "I can't because {wafflewafflewaffle}." Yes you can; if there's no communication divorce them already and THEN go live that happier life. Be a grown up not a selfish adolescent in other words.

Happily for revenge-story lovers like me, most people are selfish adolescents. Like Dava. In love with Svetlana, not Barr her husband and father of her children, does she say "we should figure out how to get along in honesty while we finish raising the kids" or even the truthful "adios chickenfucker, my lawyer'll be in touch"? No! She lies and sneaks and Barr kinda-sorta knows it but can't be arsed to do anything about it until the horror of dementia eats Dava.

What he does is steal Dava's life of love that she led with Svetlana in the shadows and corners of theit bad-heterosex lives. Dava, you see, wrote her first-ever novel about her true love. Barr's got to clean out Dava's stuff as she disappears from the life she once led, of course; Svetlana has no legal standing to act in protection of Dava's life. (An excellent reason to be upfront with spouses being cheated on: they'll tell your lover the real deal about health and prospects for the future if only crow viciously, victoriously.)

Barr uses his creative writing teaching career's lessons to turn a good story into an excellent novel that catches a strand in the culture and rises on the blending of Dava's happiness away from him and his skill at shaping that story. And Dava can't do anything about it; she doesn't remember it. Svetlana? No legal or moral standing. A good reason to hide her sneakin' lyin' ways from her and Dava's mutual employer (I have to think it's all a fictionalized Iowa Writers' Workshop; it's in Iowa anyway). So Barr has free rein. His employer (the actual workshop) sees Dava's book's success in the wake of a terrible personal tragedy of spousal loss. He's not going to tell the real truth: he stole his cheatin' wife's tainted happiness and made it into better art than she could've, then let the market reward him.

Sleazy enough for a soap opera. But this, my olds, is not the last word on the subject.

Luna the (sadly but accidentally maimed) shelter dog gets Barr's urgent confession. She is then on a walk with her new doggy-daddy. In his declining years by now, Luna becomes the focus of Barr's need for an uncritical audience. His ever-more necessary assistant, Evie, ends up adopting Luna and renaming her Phoenix (why people think it's okay to rename animals grown into full personhood is a mystery to me) while catalyzing surprises.

Milo and Jamie, sons of Dava and Barr, reach out to Svetlana after their father's death brings the whole picture into focus. They want to know the woman Dava, obviously so different from their mother. It is Author Orringer's gift, by structuring the story as she did...alternating narrators by chapter...to keep homing in on the process of family secrets becoming known at a surprisingly effective pace. I'm aware of how judgmental I sound about Dava. I judge Barr harshly as well. I understand and empathize with them both now I've read the novel, and even willingly grant grace to Svetlana for her role in this needlessly complicated love triangle of sorts. Svetlana's utterly uninteresting daughter Naomi, and Author Orringer's use throughout these eight chapters filling under three hundred pages of the evil satanic second person for all narration combined cost the story a whopping quarter star.

Not ordinary for me. I'd've tossed it onto the Pearl-Rule pile early on most days! But I was forewarned that I'd need to read a lot of satanic second person text, so I persevered. The delicate dissection of the characters' reasons and decisions to do the things they did are so believably, humanly, laid out and so gently treated as the very difficult choices they were that I was never going to whap the story with the paddle I'd propped in the corner of my mind. I relate. Not condone but accept. I get it; I wish all y'all'd done different better things.

You couldn't. It's the human tragedy told again, told with accepting love that I hope to high heaven I receive when I go offstage the last time.

And Luna, the Phoenix...she truly got this story over the hill of my intolerance. She was my star, my belovèd dote of a character. You'll see.

Or you'll miss out on a truly delightful read.

WHAT TRIED TO KILL ME HAD MANY NAMES: A Memoir of Spirit, Sex, and Survival, "extreme" is an addiction of its own no matter what it's to

WHAT TRIED TO KILL ME HAD MANY NAMES: A Memoir of Spirit, Sex, and Survival
MARC GAUSS
Sibling Rivalry Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: What Tried to Kill Me Had Many Names is a fearless memoir of spirit, sex, and survival.

Raised in a strict Christian home where every desire was measured against sin, Marc Gauss grew up believing that love-especially the kind he felt for other men-was something that had to be hidden, prayed away, or punished. As he moves from small-town boyhood to college campuses, locker rooms, churches, and the neon freedom of gay nightlife, Gauss confronts the contradictions between the life he was taught to live and the truth of who he is.

Along the way he encounters cruelty, rejection, ecstatic freedom, and moments of devastating despair—including the kind of spiritual shame that nearly costs him his life. Told with disarming candor, humor, desire, and vulnerability, What Tried to Kill Me Had Many Names is the story of a man who survived religious judgment, sexual awakening, and the many identities others tried to force upon him. It is a memoir about reclaiming joy, owning one's body, and learning-finally-to live without apology.

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My Review: No one on Earth survives contact with high-control systems unchanged. It's not possible to be told how to be yourself without responding to that pressure somehow. Marc Gauss fell into many unhappy experiences on the road away from the horrors of his family's deeply unChristian take on christianity. His story is another block of evidence that "what does not kill me makes me stronger" is a choice of how to respond to your life's less carefree passages.

If you're hoping for non-fiction porn about sex work, not in here, you could be disappointed. Discussions of Sex are aplenty. The sex act itself isn't absent...it can't be. What's not given to you is the salacious stuff that nosy old queers (me) might've thought we were getting.

It's a better book than that. Becoming you, finding a Self in the noise of life is hard for most of us; all of us, I suspect, but I always leave wiggle room because if I don't some annoying twidgee or another will "well, actually" me and I'll be forced back to the poppet-making curse-casting ways of my English ancestors. Ways Author Gauss must've seen for the rage trap they are.

A book that will heal a hurt many gay men of every generation bear. A story that only adds to the world's stock of recovery from evil without succumbing to it examples. Well worth seeking out and spending a weekend with.

And I am positive I am not the first old queer guy to say that about, or to, Marc Gauss.

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.

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

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.