THE KEY TO A KILLER, third Ruby and Cordelia Mysteries #Deathtober treat

THE KEY TO A KILLER (Ruby and Cordelia Mysteries #3)
OLIVIA BLACKE
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A woman and her ghost roommate investigate their most personal case yet in Olivia Blacke’s The Key to a Killer, the next book in the Anthony Award winning Ruby and Cordelia Mysteries.

When Ruby Young discovered that her Boston apartment was haunted, she did what any reasonable person would do: befriend the ghost. Their relationship overcame a shaky start—Cordelia Graves never wanted a roommate in life, she certainly didn’t want one in death. After working together to solve a few murders, the two are close friends, but there’s a lingering question neither of them have been able to answer: what led to Cordelia’s death?

Lately things have been adding up that suggest foul play. And when Cordelia’s memories of that day start to come back, the roommates can’t ignore it anymore: Cordelia was murdered. Ruby and Cordelia are going to have to piece together what Cordelia’s final days looked like—otherwise a killer could go free.

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My Review: Every #Deathtober I get a lovely present from Minotaur Books: a funny, fun mystery about two poorly-assorted roommates who solve crimes together. Their skill sets mesh well. They do far better together than either does apart.

Oh, and one's alive. The other isn't.

This time around the spin cycle of Life, which even the dead have, they're going after the solution to Cordelia's death. This is not a drill, this is the big one, y'all. Cordelia, in life, would've completely rejected Ruby and her youth with a curt dismissal. Now the dirtnapped fortysomething has, over two previous investigations, learned to respect and value Ruby, who returns the sentiments. As Cordelia's memories of her death are absent and as Ruby's learned more about her, she's become sure Cordelia was killed.

Cordelia can't remember if anyone wanted to murder her, or think of a reason anyone might. With fridge-magnet letters, the two go over the facts and Ruby gets a twinge of an idea. She's going to get a job at Cordelia's old firm.

Now here's where I say The Formula℠: Don't start here, or a lot of the really strange established-relationship stuff will feel arbitrary and weird instead of cute and endearing. Ruby gets UGS (United Ghost Service) delivery service of things she needs but can't afford by means I'd just rather not look into so I can keep thinking Cordelia's a mensch. I know she's a mensch because Ruby's arachnophobia means Cordelia's just assumed the role of de-spidering their environment. And Ruby's become convinced foul play that needs addressing took her pal's life before she was through living it.

See how one hand washes the other here? Then, as is reasonable and customary in our US lives in this year of our lord twenty twenty six, Cordelia's newly-released brother Ian, formerly imprisoned for, well never mind, begins breaking into the apartments in their building to search for clues to Cordelia's death.

I boggled a bit at this. As the story flowed on smoothly I allowed my hackles to relax. Ian discovers that he, oddly enough, still has his dead sister's number on a weird kind of speed dial. All us mystery series readers know the scoobygroup is most of the fun of a story in that particular storyverse and Ian is one of the most interesting ones in Ruby and Cordelia's. I'm hoping as time goes on Ian will learn from his oddly ameliorated loss to be a more mature character...I typed and erased "person" a couple times, so you see how my idea of the series is heading.

As a resolution to Cordelia's present unaliveness impends, I was struck by an uncomfortable realization: Cordelia, with her fragments of memory returning, was getting the absolute most abysmal exit interview conceivable. Ruby at her side she was going through hard-to-stomach realizations about the life she thought she was living not matching the one that was really happening. Cordelia has a lot to think about. Luckily she has a lot of leisure time to do it in. And a close supportive friend, maybe also brother, to be there as she does it.

I was a bit...um...the ending had an impact on me. That's IT? I asked my Kindle screen. No matter what the lady next door says I did NOT scream, and who asked her anyway. It's resolved, it makes sense, and I will be hornswoggled if I buy for one instant that this is the last we will hear about this.

Spending a few hours alternating between Cordelia and Ruby's PoVs gave me a real feeling that I was in the room with them as the investigations made progress. I was always happy to see Ian, I think Tosh the neighbor's a sweet nebbishy guy on course to get his heart broken, and truly enjoy the slightly edgier-than-before banter between the now more equal friends. It's been more and more fun to get to know them.

I'm not joking, though. This book's the reward for investing eyeblinks into Ruby and Cordelia. Taking a shortcut to get here won't make it more exciting to be here but less. And it really is worth it for these evolved versions of good people.

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.

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

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.

THE DYING LIGHT, ANN CLEEVES' Matthew Venn/Two Rivers series #4

THE DYING LIGHT (Two Rivers #4)
ANN CLEEVES
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Dying Light is a searing new novel featuring DI Matthew Venn, brimming with energy and taut with claustrophobic tension, as the detective peels back layer upon layer to discover the dark secrets this family is keeping.

A scorching heatwave marks the start of the summer in Devon. Detective Matthew Venn is called in to investigate a puzzling death, when the body of a young woman, Lottie, is found in the swimming pool of a luxurious holiday home. The girl’s best friend, Hannah, whose family owns the house, is missing. The girls had arrived in Devon a few days ahead of the family to celebrate the end of their school exams, and had managed to make waves during their short time there; they disrupted the folk music festival at the neighboring farm, with Lottie posting incendiary videos on social media mocking what she snobbishly considered to be a parochial community.

When further tragedy strikes, Venn and his team begin questioning a community filled with secrets. Hannah’s father, Paul Armstrong, is a rising political star, a fact that quickly draws intense media scrutiny to the case, not least because there are many who would want to take him down. With the summer heat come holidaymakers, and it emerges that some of them may have more connections with the Armstrong family than first thought.

Caught between a powerful family's secrets and a powder keg of local tensions, Venn and his team must navigate a treacherous path. He knows all too well that the real answers lie not in what people say, but in the silence that they keep . . .

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

My Review: Mean girl goes after easy target, makes already angry people angrier, gets killed.

Another case where Matthew ought to close the case with "person or persons unknown" and stamp a seal on it. Who cares if this nasty little pisher Lottie's dead? Let's take the gene-pool cleanse as a piece of luck and get on with solving terrible crimes.

Hannah, Lottie's buddy and the daughter of the man whose home Lottie was staying in, is missing. He also happens to be a big-shot political scum. Hop to, Matthew and scoobygroup...I mean, team. The locals whose police dollars are funding this investigation already resent Hannah's outsider family for "ruining" (ie moving into and making more expensive) their community. Like all resort-ifying communities the battle lines are sharply drawn. The problem for Jen, who took the initial report regarding Lottie who's her son Ben's age, and Ross who's still irked at not being seen as the genius he isn't, and Matthew himself (in the throes of a serious upheaval in Jonathan's life), is how to tiptoe down a superthin line between the sides while still extracting information that will allow Hannah, the missing young woman, to be found alive?

Oh dear.

More and more complexities and interconnections...Hannah's local boyfriend,the dead girls' mutual from the US, whose unfriendly parents are staying at the local boyfriend's parents' glamping resort...yes, it's all a bit much in a short review but honestly it's paced with Author Cleeves' usual skill and attention to misdireaction...I mean detail, of course I do. Quite a bit of time is, annoyingly, going over what feels the precise same detail with the same people. Look closer.

Jonathan loves Matthew or he wouldn't have married him. Right now, though, Jonathan is a wreck because he's set up a meeting with his birth mother. This will stress any marriage...and it's not been *that* long that Matthew's religious-nut mother was widowed and thus could at least start to rebuild bridges with her queer son; so as always, like life, the stressors are not neatly sequential.

Series fans will be delighted that Lucy and her dad make an appearance.

That's as always the series mystery's greatest appeal for readers. The puzzles are nice but the people who stay, who come back, who thread through the series make the weather. Sunny and fair here in North Devon (which is how you know it's fiction), among interesting, relatable regulars and starkly weird contrasting outsiders. Don't start here, start with The Long Call. (And write nastygrams to ITV/Britbox for canceling the TV adaptation.)

MURDER ON THE SACRED RIVER, the TWENTIETH Lady Emily Ashton series mystery

MURDER ON THE SACRED RIVER (Lady Emily Ashton #20)
TASHA ALEXANDER
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: In this next enthralling mystery in Tasha Alexander’s bestselling series, Lady Emily chases down a killer in India along the misty banks of the sacred river Narmada.

1908: Lady Emily and her husband Colin Hargreaves, along with an eccentric group of English tourists, are vacationing in India at Ahilya Fort, the old home to the Maharaja’s family, when a man is found shot along the Narmada River. Emily and Colin jump into action, but their suspect list is large, including a wonderful spinster and her not-so-wonderful companion; a local doctor; a widow who lives nearby; an English explorer; and an Englishman who now runs a tea plantation near Darjeeling.

1740: Fifteen-year-old Ahilyabai has been married to the son of Malharrao Holkar, the Lord of the Malwa territory, for seven years. Now the time has finally come to produce an heir. But though Ahilya’s in-laws have shown her nothing but kindness, her notoriously-drunken husband remains a mystery to her, having rarely spoken to Ahilya since their wedding as children. Faced with this tortured and distant man, Ahilya’s sense of loyalty is tested as she attempts to balance fulfilling her duty with forging her own destiny. Her decisions will have ripple effects across time—including Lady Emily’s investigation almost two hundred years later.

Lady Emily’s case takes a dramatic turn when a shocking new person arrives at the fort—and when the killer strikes again shortly afterwards, she and Colin must race to uncover the villain’s identity before it’s too late.

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

My Review: So, dual timelines...I did not know when I picked up this series how that was going to remain a feature of the reading experience. At least I've never, not once, felt unsure of which timeline I'm reading.

I confess the whole "sacred river" trope felt bookhorned into the plot. It's more set-dressing than it is integral to the action from my observation, a kind of local color add-on that doesn't sit very well with me when it's so emphasized in the synopsis.

Colin and Lady Emily are exactly as you'd expect them to be, and that's a good thing. Like Peabody and Emerson, they're as British as Bovril and just as unmistakable. The murder victim is the sort of person who they'd cut dead. And, may I say, dead's the exact right way for the creep to be. The interrelationship of the murder to the 1740s timeline bordered on psychometry, and wasn't a bit surprising; but it was absolutely fascinating as a piece of historical knowledge I now treasure possessing.

There was a slight air of didacticism surrounding the proceedings as we-the-reader are quite brusquely led to the conclusions Author Tasha wishes us to reach. It's not as elegantly done as I could wish, but since I agree with her, I'll look past it.

Already a fan? Here's another one to enjoy. Not yet a fan? This is a good place to start. Don't like historical mysteries? Please see a therapist at your earliest opportunity.

THE MYSTIC AND THE MISSING GIRL, first in a well-made paranormal series

THE MYSTIC AND THE MISSING GIRL
VIKKI VanSICKLE
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Reluctant psychic Drew Benson can read tarot cards and get impressions from objects—she just never expected to use her gifts to investigate an infamous cold case.

Drew Benson has a secret. She gets visions, something she hasn’t tapped into since she was a teenager, when her late aunt, a TV psychic known as Hannah Mystic, became the scapegoat in the unsolved disappearance of a local teenager. Twenty years later, Drew is happy to ignore her gift, focusing instead on keeping the metaphysical shop she inherited from Hannah afloat, wrangling her sole, astrology-obsessed employee, and dodging local rake Foster Banks in her picturesque lakeside hometown.

But when Drew's arch-nemesis from high school, now a big city reporter, decides to investigate the cold case from all those years ago, it’s Drew’s ability that could finally make a break in the decades old mystery. With bills piling up, a disapproving mother laying on the guilt, and a local vandal who wants Drew and her witchy store gone, Drew has a lot to lose. But what she stands to gain—finding out what happened to the missing teen, clearing her aunt’s name, and a second chance at belonging—could change everything.

In The Mystic and the Missing Girl, Vikki VanSickle seamlessly draws readers into an utterly charming world in this unputdownable, small town mystery.

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

My Review: Drew's a woman who just will not let unfairness or inequitable bullshit rampant in our world go unchallenged. Her "...but that's not right" meter's calibrated very finely indeed, which is probably why those who've gone before in dishonest or unkindly meant ways trust her to bring fairness and closure to their stolen lives.

What makes all that work on a story level is that Drew doesn't have evidence until she, and a very unusual partner in Nick, do the investigation to actually solve the crime. That was very satisfying to me, as was the fact that Drew had to overcome significant internal hurdles to accept and trust her psychometry practice was giving her accurate information to aim the shoe-leather-wearing investigation parts.

Nick being a normal adult and a reasonable guy who learns the right lesson...Drew can be trusted, the leads she turns up in this weird way all pan out or lead to the right data...is a relief. No disbelief carried beyond the point of learning Drew's correct, no rufftuff manly-man nonsense.

The small-town weirdness is played for laffs but that's how it goes in mysteries of a cozy bent. I didn't think any of them were incredible. Unlikely, but that's bog-standard nowadays; rolling with it was fine, especially as they were all adding their bits to the shoe-leather-wearing investigation part as well as fleshing out the history of Drew's late auntie Hannah, their former neighbor who also had paranormal abilities that quite famously failed her once...and that was all the town needed.

Drew needs to redeem her aunt's memory. Nick needs a resolved cold case. Their work styles mesh better than is the norm in cozy mysteries. It's clear we're going to get a series, sooner rather than later please, because the paranormal edge is neither overemphasized nor played for humor...that's all in the town's responses to it.

Drew's shop having a pweshus cutesypooh c-a-t was the loss of the fifth star.

SAVVY SUMMERS AND THE PO'BOY PERILS, second dangerously fattening entry in a delightful, atmospheric series

SAVVY SUMMERS AND THE PO'BOY PERILS (Savvy Summers #2)
SANDRA JACKSON-OPOKU
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The next delectable mystery featuring quick-witted, unforgettable Savvy Summers, owner of a soul food café in Chicago.

Savvy has her work cut out when an old friend hires her to cater a company luncheon at a nearby office building on Chicago's South Side. Stepping out of her traditional soul food comfort zone, Savvy whips together a menu of Creole classics, with her own spin, of course—mini po’boys with assorted fillings, sunburst salad, and bread pudding using Great Aunt Essie’s famous buttermilk biscuits.

But when someone is found dead in the company’s conference room, Savvy’s culinary creations are suddenly in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. While the focus should be on their delicious flavors and inventive techniques, Savvy’s beloved café instead becomes the center of a murder investigation once again.

Caught within a messy web of gossip, miscommunication, and fraught coworker relationships, Savvy will have to settle the confusion to clear her name. Somebody’s hiding something, and with the help of her trusty assistant manager, Penny Lopés, Savvy sets out uncover exactly who is to blame. With familiar faces turning up the heat on her investigation and her café still in hot water, will Savvy be able to save her reputation before it’s too late?

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

My Review: I gained fifteen pounds off the bread-pudding description alone. I would *kill* for some right now! I'd kill for some buttermilk biscuits, honestly, but these, and the perfect bread pudding...*drool*

As I said of Author Jackson-Opoku's work before, this series is going to fatten me right up into blimp-sized, belching satiety. Savvy's knack for landing in hot water is still credible to me, seasoned old reader that I am, because it doesn't come from some out-of-character contrivance but from accepting a job her business needs.

It seems clear that the series is going to do a lot of wandering around. It's not my first preference for the way a murder mystery unfolds, but it very much is my preference for a character-driven polyphonic novel of a community that feels real in its tight-knit gossipy love. Even though ugliness is inherent in murder mysteries, death is always a blow to a group, the deep interconnections are strong enough to heal the wound. With time, and as an aftermath to justice being served.

Savvy herself is a fun character to follow around as she talks to people, caring about them, listening to them. Penny is a scene-stealin' sass-dealin' delight as always. It's a hallmark of Author Jackson-Opoku's chops that I felt welcomed back into a charmed circle of lovely friends most of the time during this read. It takes skill to make that a reader's experience of a series story.

Savvy and Fanon (love that name, so resonant for someone born when and where he most likely was) have the kind of chemistry I myownself prefer: hot, but at a simmer that can turn into a boil quickly if there's just a *little* nudge of the thermostat. It's believable these two connected as hard as they did; it's believable they couldn't make it work full-time, but also are so finely attuned to each other that they have an unbreakable connection.

I really enjoyed being invited back into the community, welcomed with a so-enticing spread of delights, and told all the tea while everyone tried to be the one to spill it hardest. Not the greatest shakes on the mystery front...another deeply unlikeable crudbucket dead that not one soul should mourn the loss of...but as a novel, and a way to spend time rewardingly, it's up there for 2026.

THE BREAK-UP RETREAT, latest from Sweden's bright star doesn't twinkle as bright

THE BREAK-UP RETREAT
CAMILLA STEN (translator not credited)
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: An undercover journalist goes to expose an exclusive psychological wellness clinic where women go to recover from heartbreak, with dire consequences, in this creepy thriller from The Bachelorette Party author Camilla Sten.

Welcome to Himlafall Clinic, where we use revolutionary therapy techniques to heal you from heartbreak. Whether you are going through a devastating breakup, or can’t seem to stop picking the wrong partners, we are here to help you change your life, once and for all…

Isobel Anderssen has heard rumors. Nestled deep in the Swedish woods, there is a retreat. Primarily aimed at helping women who have gone through devastating break-ups, the Himlafall Clinic is meant to heal your mind and help you move on.

Sometimes people are never heard from again.

Armed with a fake story and a contraband phone to record interviews, Isobel is ready to expose Himlafall’s founder and get closure for the families of missing loved ones. But when she gets there, nothing goes to plan. Her contact is missing. The founder, Dr. Martina Hastings, knows how to get under Isobel’s skin in ways she didn’t anticipate. And all the while, the ghosts of the missing haunt her at every turn. It is clear something is going wrong and Himlafall, and Isobel must uncover the truth, before she disappears once and for all.

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

My Review: This reads uncomfortably like the transcripts of some brainwashing sessions, brutal and demeaning and very destructive. It's written in Camilla Sten's voice, but in this uncredited translation, reads more like it's not-quite-Sten enough to be all her own work. The Bachelorette Party I reviewed in June 2025 had a similar effect on me. It's not *bad* but it's not like her earlier books in that it never sparkles, its cast feels...cast from a mold, but never painted, lacquered and polished, buffed up.

It struck me as odd that Author Sten would choose to have Isobel make herself so incredibly obvious as an interloper. In 2026, you need to expend a great deal of thought on how someone even *could* assume a fake identity. Surveillance capitalism demands to know who you are, even (especially) the very wealthy who could afford this emotional Abu Ghraib for brokenhearted rich ladies (and at no time did any of the men...all men 0.o...feel worthy of more than a sneak-eaten grocery-store pastry as mourning). If Author Sten did that here, I did not see it. I was quite surprised that someone who could make me really feel how prosopagnosia affects one's life in The Resting Place that wasn't up to her earlier storytelling standard. Isobel's daft actions would've been glaringly obvious to anyone with a reasonably observant eye and a modicum of common sense, and her vaunted Plan was basically "wing it based on vibes."

Disappointing...this is a premise that the earlier Sten would've embroidered a Bayeux Tapestry of story over, yet what I got was a sampler.

Come home, Alexandra Fleming and Camilla Sten! Y'all were the dynamic duo. Whatever's gone wrong fix it and make more magic.

Please.

KILLER VIBES, the authorial and series debut novel set in "Keep Austin Weird" Austin...not Alex Jones Austin

KILLER VIBES (Peter Key Mystery Series #1)
JACK FRIDAY
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Meet Peter Key: self-proclaimed “laziest private investigator in Texas” (it’s harder than it looks), full-time bisexual, dedicated stoner, and the surprised recipient of a windfall inheritance from an uncle he barely knew. Peter’s life was a mess before he became the owner of a dilapidated house in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Austin, but now he has a mountain of debt to deal with—and pushy realtors popping up on every corner to convince him to sell the land while the market is hot.

But Peter doesn’t like to be pushed around. And when he discovers a bag full of cash and a suggestion that his uncle's death might not have been an accident, he starts asking questions. When they said “Keep Austin Weird,” they weren’t joking. Just about everyone Peter meets seems to have a hidden agenda, and he soon finds himself pulled into a lethal game where not everybody plays by the rules. Fortunately for Peter, he’s never been a rule follower anyway.

Sexy, suspenseful, and packed with Austin’s quirks, Killer Vibes is the start of an iconic new series with a singular, unforgettable cast of characters.

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My Review: I lived in late 1960s, 1970s, and very early 1980s Austin. I've got a lot of nostalgia for that world. "Keep Austin Weird" is a resonant slogan to me. So I'm primed to be this story's booster by happy association.

There is always an ugly side to any place humans congregate. Austin produced vile scum Alex Jones the Sandy Hook liar, who is my direct peer, being only two years younger than me and a product of the same public schools I went to. Every sunny meadow has shadows, great and small, or you wouldn't see any depth at all.

Peter Key, connoisseur of life's finer things (sex, drugs, skiving off anything that looks like work), has pushed his boundaries with those who toil that he may chillax. He's a slacker in the mothership of slacker culture; but he is, when we meet him, a slacker with a housing and eating problem.

His deus coming ex machina is Uncle Forrest, a barely-remembered relative with a house (mortgaged) that Peter can go live in; and whose death is...hinky. How did a retired daredevil racer lose control of his car badly enough to go over a cliff and die from the injuries he sustained? Why, in his seriously past due mortgaged house, is there a bag of cash? Where's the money from? What was his gambler/adrenaline junkie uncle up to? Did it get him murdered? Peter's aunt's hired a PI to investigate, but with a serious stake in the solution (who doesn't want a home?), Peter takes the PI's offer to keep going only if he'll help help with the investgation seriously.

Practical people who care about Peter are all encouraging him to cash in on his real-estate windfall, as housing in Austin is insanely expensive. Peter decides he wants a home, rolls up his joint sleeves, and begins looking around at the people badgering him for stuff Uncle Forrest "owed" them. It's a classic origin story. It's billed as #1 in a series. It's got modern energy, in that our man-bunned hero is both slacker and hedonist enough to be bi in that casual way younger men often are in my own experience. The pacing is good, the thriller elements are well deployed, the most important element of a series...the hero's ability to command our emotional investment in him...is finely crafted.

I stopped at four stars not for any prose flaw or characterization lack, but for a structural quibble: WHY ARE YOU BREAKING THE SCENES SO OFTEN?! There's no reason, and certainly no excuse, for this choppy execution when there is literally no change of time, of PoV, of subject, between them! I'd lop off another star if I hadn't enjoyed Peter's disastrously bad judgment all coming out okay for...Reasons. I really hope, Author Friday, you won't succumb to the temptation to prevent Peter from growing, from making *new* mistakes in a field he's still learning how to work but which he clearly has a solid aptitude for.

That said, I'm sat for book two.

LEV A.C. ROSEN'S PAGE: THE DISASTER GAY DETECTIVE AGENCY & EVANDER MILLS P.I. SERIES #1, #4

THE DISASTER GAY DETECTIVE AGENCY
LEV A.C. ROSEN
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: From award—winning, critically acclaimed crime writer Lev Rosen comes a punchy, hilarious mystery—thriller. Meet the disaster gays: They're messy. They're queer. And they're about to solve a murder… Or die trying.

Brandon is a hopeless romantic. So when a handsome stranger named Jon checks in at the hotel he works at and invites Brandon to his room, Brandon ignores the advice of his crew—a group of loveable and messy queer twenty—somethings—and accepts. What follows is a tale as old as time: they hook up, Jon promises to text, Brandon falls in love, and Jon ghosts. Case closed—or is it?

When Jon checks out early, leaving behind a bag of belongings and his cellphone, Brandon takes the phone and sets out to find him, thinking that this must at last be his Cinderella story.

But he gets more than he bargained for when he witnesses a murder—and sees Jon fleeing the scene.

Determined (and not in over their heads whatsoever), Brandon, Ollie, Nicole, and Ian decide to solve the mystery of the murder and uncover Jon's true identity…they just have to figure it out before a target falls on their own backs.

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My Review: Those heady first friendships, the ones you really learn how to adult by forming and inhabiting...they're deep and they're still important to older you because you are formed by them for better and worse.

Here we are among Brandon, Ollie, Nicole, and Ian as they navigate the first changes in the structures that supported them. It's usually a significant other arriving or one departing. Most of us have been through that.

Few of us have had a potential love discovered in what looks like a guilty act at what certainly is a murder scene, like Brandon.

What ensues is the scoobygroup all pitching in to resolve Brandon's maybeboyfriend's involvement (if any) in the murder he was seen running away from the scene of. Naturally this means they need to solve the murder. A lot like Dame Agatha's Five Little Pigs we're treated to the scoobygroup's individual PoVs on the investigation and on the unfolding issue of who it is Brandon's found himself to fall for. I think the technique is one that works or fails on your readerly taste for the writing style. Author Lev uses a solidly comedic register throughout the story, giving the different scoobygoupers reasonably distinctive voices and just enough difference in what they see to keep me focused.

I don't want to tell you there's a rom-com vibe to the proceedings because that suggests the group will be all matched up by the end of the story. It's not like that, though the bantering suggests it will be in the formula of rom-com. I was partly glad that it didn't end up in the predictable couplings. It certainly would've been...forced...unless they found partners outside the scoobygroup.

All said, I was pretty convinced this was really a screenplay made novel-like because Author Lev's a well-established force at Poisoned Pen Press. It was almost obtrusive how filmable, how designed for visual scenes, this story is. I'm not saying that as a knock, I found myself reading happily along with the movie playing in my mental Grauman's Egyptian Theater in 70mm CinemaScope. It was a hoot!

I can't quite attach a full fifth star. I felt the reality, the full gravity, of the events the scoobygroup uncovered really sat uneasily with the narrative technique. Still, four and a quarter stars for the chaotic energy of the story, the sheer verve of the cast for their different roles and discoveries as the truth and the facts begin to converge...it was immersive to me, will feel like the spin cycle of your washing machine for others.

I expect we'll see more from the Disaster Gays. I'll be there.

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

LAVENDER HOUSE (Evander Mills #1)
LEV A.C. ROSEN
Forge Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A delicious story from a new voice in suspense, Lev AC Rosen's Lavender House is Knives Out with a queer historical twist.

Lavender House, 1952: the family seat of recently deceased matriarch Irene Lamontaine, head of the famous Lamontaine soap empire. Irene’s recipes for her signature scents are a well guarded secret—but it's not the only one behind these gates. This estate offers a unique freedom, where none of the residents or staff hide who they are. But to keep their secret, they've needed to keep others out. And now they're worried they're keeping a murderer in.

Irene’s widow hires Evander Mills to uncover the truth behind her mysterious death. Andy, recently fired from the San Francisco police after being caught in a raid on a gay bar, is happy to accept—his calendar is wide open. And his secret is the kind of secret the Lamontaines understand.

Andy had never imagined a world like Lavender House. He's seduced by the safety and freedom found behind its gates, where a queer family lives honestly and openly. But that honesty doesn't extend to everything, and he quickly finds himself a pawn in a family game of old money, subterfuge, and jealousy—and Irene’s death is only the beginning.

When your existence is a crime, everything you do is criminal, and the gates of Lavender House can’t lock out the real world forever. Running a soap empire can be a dirty business.

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My Review: First in a new series of gay-led private-eye mysteries. Set in 1952 San Francisco, borning and burgeoning gay Mecca on the cusp of the Lavender Scare that was the less-famous shadow of McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare, the story concerns a murder within the quiet confines of rich queers. Queerness has always been more or less tolerated among the wealthy...Peter Thiel and Sam Altman aren't being shouted about on the screamy white guys channel, faggots though they are...whereas guys like our sleuth have to live with police harassment and the possibility of ghastly consequences for one's life if outed.

As is always the case in a mystery series, I recommend starting here at book one to get the foundational ethos of the sleuth...in this case Evander Mills, called Andy, a private investigator whose specialty will become among the queer community he once helped to oppress. These are taxpayers who cannot expect helpful, effective action on their problems from the police. Andy becomes a discreet and effective investigator. This time his talents are required by the wealthy and privileged, who *still* can't reliably command the services of police without facing ugliness. Andy's never been in that world before. He's dazzled by it...he's coming to terms with how people like he once was have perpetuated a cruelty they've inflicted as much as received.

Andy's learning how much his skills are needed among those who he honed them against. The emotional heart of the novel is his coming to terms with his own awful past, his awful actions, and what he can do as an adult (emotionally speaking) to help people who can't expect it if they're honest and truthful about themselves.

It's a story I thoroughly enjoyed, told in a voice I resonated well with, about people who belonged to a generation I had family among. I'll pursue the series with the zeal of a vice cop.

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

MIRAGE CITY (Evander Mills #4)
LEV A.C. ROSEN
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Lev AC Rosen delivers a new and captivating 1950s mystery in this dazzling, award-winning series

Private Investigator Evander “Andy” Mills’ next case takes him out of his comfort zone in San Francisco—and much to his dismay, back home to Los Angeles. After a secretive queer rights organization called the Mattachine Society enlists Andy to find some missing members, he must dodge not only motorcycle gangs and mysterious forces, but his own mother, too.

Avoiding her proves to be a challenge when the case leads Andy to the psychological clinic she works at. Worlds collide, buried secrets are dug up, and Andy realizes he’s going to have to burn it all down this time if he wants to pull off a rescue. With secret societies, drugs, and doctors swirling around him, time is running out for Andy to locate the missing and get them to safety. And for him to make it back to San Francisco in one piece.

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My Review: In the time of the Lavender Scare, there was an equal and opposite reaction from the Mattachine Society among mostly gay men and the Daughters of Bilitis among lesbians. These brave souls were fighting for recognition that is now under threat...queers are just plain ol' people, entitled by their basic common humanity to equal access to civilization's resources. Laws are applied unequally in most of the world but aggressively so among queer folk. These early rights-seekers were incredibly brave, very effective, and thus targeted.

Enter Andy Mills to a missing persons case among these pioneering souls. Investigating the possible crime(s) Andy discovers things most extraordinarily awful happening to queer people simply because they were guilty of being Other. It was a time where moral panic among high-control lunatics was at fever pitch. At this same moment the Comics Code Authority was established along the lines of the Hays Code for the movies to forestall the government imposing censorship. This also neatly sidestepped the remedy of suing the government for unconstitutional infringement of free-speech rights, ensuring the abusive restrictions on representing queer people positively could continue.

Andy's case takes him deep into the consequences of this system's probably intended consequences. It was tough to read at times. It was worse to live, as is always the case in rougher-edged fiction. Shifting Andy's field of action, however reluctant he was to do so, to LA from San Francisco, allowed me to see him wrong-footed, still determined, and ultimately successful in resolving the case. How, I won't say because the Spoiler Stasi always lurk in readiness to shout their unhappiness at your disobedience to their iron whims.

It's book four in a series I've only read book one of, yet I got the development of Andy's character that's continued on the trajectory set in the first book. It would've been an even richer experience had I read two and three, but I'll get back to them soon enough. This series combines gay history's dark corners and one man's coming into his queerness more and more in an effective mélange of meddlesome meanness combatively counteracted.

LIAR'S CREEK, Matt Goldman's Clay Hawkins mystery series book one

LIAR'S CREEK (Clay Hawkins #1)
MATT GOLDMAN
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From New York Times bestselling author and Emmy Award-winner Matt Goldman comes Liar's Creek, which asks how far we'll go to protect the people we love.

The small town of Riverwood, Minnesota is true to its name, brimming with beautiful scenes of nature. Its rural landscape is threaded with scenic trout streams, which carve their way through limestone bluffs. But beneath its picturesque facade, danger runs rampant.

Clay Hawkins isn’t a stranger to the secrets of his hometown. After twenty years away, Clay has recently returned home from abroad with his twelve-year-old son Braedon, and his relationship with his father Judd, the recently replaced sheriff, is as strained as ever.

Trouble immediately brews for Clay when his beloved uncle, Teddy, disappears. Together, the three generations of Hawkinses must overturn every stone in Riverwood and confront deep familial wounds to find the one person who brings them together. As danger looms, Clay worries that it might be too late to save Teddy—and that the rest of the family might be next.

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My Review: Author Goldman clearly invested a lot of mental energy in Clay Hawkins' life trajectory. It's all here: dead mother, grouchy prickly father, adolescent son with all that implies and entails, escapr from then return to Home after a fun, fascinating adulthood elsewhere...it's all here. Coming home has its rewards, these aren't skimped, and its risks. Uncle Teddy, who vanishes without explanation, is going to be found, by Clay, and damned if his family's ugly secrets they do NOT want splashed around will stop Clay from doing it.

Perch that determination on top of his...estranged, unliked...father making a friend of Clay's son, and the differing ways to be a father between the generations add a load of tension between them, among all three of them. The women in the story are all strong, competent people, with their own careers and concerns. They're not little ladies, nor are they ball-busting viragos, they're presented as flawed and imperfect like the stiff-necked men they choose to hang around with.

The mystery's resolved. Copious trout-fishing is done. Football/soccer is discussed. The manly men (and one about to start being a man) all do man-stuff like pointedly not talk, like ignore feelings (their own of course, but each others' too), not talk, lust after women, and not talk. It takes extreme measures to goad them into speech not about sports. When they do talk, shit gets done and in a hurry.

I'm afraid I was not surprised by the big reveal. I really seldom am, and this was not one of those times. I don't fault Author Goldman for that. I fault him a little for apparently losing track of some red-herrings that will stink up the furniture in future installments of the series. There will be future installments because no publisher works this hard to drop a promising premise. I hope the team will make some serious effort to answer young Braedon's quite reasonable questions about his past that he's too young to remember on his own.

A promising debut series that needs a bit of finesse applied as it matures.

DOUBLE SHADOW, second Splinter Effect series time-traveling archaeologist story

DOUBLE SHADOW (Splinter Effect #2)
ANDREW LUDINGTON
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this thrilling installment of the Splinter Effect series, time-traveling archaeologist Rabbit Ward returns to the past to help save his former adversary and track down a murderous thief in first century Jerusalem.

ROME, 2019. Time-traveling, Smithsonian archaeologist Rabbit Ward is back in the present, but not for long. Helen, his former adversary and growing ally, is in trouble with the law after being framed for a murder she didn’t commit. Stuck in hiding and running out of other options, she turns to Rabbit for help. "Help" in this case involves a trip to first century Jerusalem to track down a mysterious man named Einar Eshek.

But Rabbit won't have to do this mission alone; as soon as he arrives in 68 CE, he meets a younger version of Helen, one who has never met him before. Together, they work to track down Eshek, who turns out to be not only a time-traveling thief, but a murderous psychopath.

As they pursue Eshek through time, Rabbit and Helen feel something even bigger pulling them together. Torn between the two versions of the woman he knows, and with the clock ticking down on Helen’s fate in 2019, Rabbit might have no choice but to betray her past self to secure Helen’s safety in the future. Tensions rise as Jerusalem prepares to go to war with Rome, and Rabbit races to capture Eshek, clear Helen’s name, and make it back to 2019 in one piece—a feat that’s proving to be easier said than done—before everything falls apart.

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My Review: Author Ludington...are you stark staring mad?! In this absolutely bonkers passage in world history, which no matter how long the editing process on this story took you were writing while the US political landscape's ablaze with AIPAC news, you release a book set in a rebellious Judea! It's a choice....

So, aside from the geopolitical timing seeming to my eyes a bit on the nose, I was verschmeckeled at the twist of Rabbit...I really wish his nickname wasn't evocative of Rabbit bloody Angstrom, that pusillanimous milquetoast...encountering a younger version of his frenemy Helen from the first book. I know a lot of people who find time travel stories not to their taste for this very trope, to the point of not watching Doctor Who despite the glorious beauty of Alex Kingston as River Song, if you can imagine such masochism, because she meets the Doctor at asymmetric moments in each of their lives. "It can't happen! It's never happened!" Maybe...but don't you crave a Jake-and-Sadie moment from 11/22/63? I, clearly, do not share this cavil. In this particular iteration of the trope, I found a real aha! moment for some things in the first book. I really like that in a series story. I want to feel there are webs of interconnection that I sense but don't yet see because that happens in life as well.

So all that to say I found this story as much to my liking as it's ever gonna get when there are straight people centering it. Rabbit and Helen's dynamic in particular feels richly textured with powerful emotions clashing and shifting in each of them every time they meet. In this story, as Helen does not know Rabbit yet, we get the unedited version of her responses to him. If the fact she's trying to kill him says anything, it's something *good* about her character...she is a professional with clear goals. I admit that, as the story began, I was a bit surprised that Helen reached out to Rabbit for this specific kind of help, but it made perfect sense as I was swept along in the tides of developments. Einar Eshek, our villain, was villainous. Rabbit, our hero, was resourceful, determined, and required always to think on his feet; that's a feat any author who's using this character trait gets kudos from me the more successfully they pull it off. I didn't notice Rabbit navigating his altered relationship to Helen as awkward or forced into convenient resolutions to knotty conflicts. That is a rare compliment from someone like me, very experienced in reading series stories.

I found the resolution to the central conundrum...chasing Einar, exonerating *2018-Helen...fit the facts, satisfied the overarching plot, and resolved the immediate story tensions with a very clear intent to publish more of these characters' stories in the future.

Bring it. Soon, please and thank you.

STAKEOUTS AND STROLLERS, award-winning debut cozy amateur-sleuth mystery

STAKEOUTS AND STROLLERS
ROB PHILLIPS
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Amateur private investigator and new dad Charlie Shaw gets more than he bargained for when he agrees to track down a young girl’s missing father in Rob Phillips’ award-winning debut.

Charlie Shaw is low on sleep. And cash. Otherwise, life is going pretty well for the ex-crime reporter: He’s happily married to his college sweetheart, he’s a first-time dad to the most adorable baby girl in existence, and he’s making ends meet as a rookie PI. But when Charlie meets Friday Finley, a frightened sixteen-year-old runaway on a stakeout-gone-wrong, his world gets a little more complicated.

Friday is looking for her estranged father Shawn, an unreliable alcoholic who left when she was young—and who also happens to be her only shot at avoiding the foster care system since her mother’s death a few weeks earlier. At first, Charlie believes the man is simply hiding out somewhere, avoiding his responsibilities as usual, but the more he investigates, the more unsettling—and dangerous—Shawn’s disappearance becomes. When his own family is threatened, Charlie realizes he’s in over his head, but can he back out now that he’s begun to care for Friday as his own?

A perfect blend of humor and high stakes, Stakeouts and Strollers is a heartwarming story of fatherhood, family, and what it really means to be a “Girl Dad.”

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My Review: This story won the 2024 Minotaur Books/Malice Domestic Best First Mystery Novel...an "award-winning debut" just sounds odd, at least to me it does.

There's little doubt in my mind that it deserved the award, though. Charlie Shaw was a newspaper crime reporter who, when laid off as it seems all must be in pursuit of more for the ownership class, pivots to using his detecting skills as an actual detective. This is not quite as easy as it might sound, since in addition to losing his reporting job, he's just become a dad for the first time. It's important to the plot: he's so besotted with his baby girl, he has her crib monitor up on his phone at all times thus using up his battery; when he needs to use the camera to document the identity of cheating spouse's side piece, he's got no juice to make the shot. This leads to closer involvement in the perpetrator's life than is healthy...for lots of reasons, Charlie should not get deep into this divorce.

Yet here we are.

Red herrings abound. Ryan, Charlie's wife and co-parent, is in a high position in her company so Charlie's flexible PI schedule makes this job perfect for new parenting, but also means he's sleep-deprived at weird moments so Ryan's making adjustments too. It's a story that brings the stuff of real life into its fictional plot in well-judged ways. All the players in the story are embroiled in family dynamics that give them depth greater than surface level. They all move through life making themselves crazy over trifles, worrying about how to connect better with their families, thinking about what to do to face problems and fix mistakes. It's a very good enhancement to a pretty standard PI plot.

What really sold me on the read was Charlie himself. He's narrating the events with a constant self-deprecating edge of humor. When violent things occur, it's not minimized by his sardonic edge. It's a different register from most PI mysteries, so it comes across as...surprising? fresh?...not as expected, anyway, which is greatly to the story's benefit and Author Phillips' credit.

I can't offer a fifth star, however, due to some squicky stuff around sexism. It's always down to male-gazery isn't it? Noticing and complimenting other women on their appearance, barely avoiding openly comparing his new-mother/full-time executive wife's body and style changes to pretty young things. The "night nurse" Ryan and Charlie employ is more a housekeeper than a nurse, uncomplainingly cleaning, caring for Baby Callie, then taking on a new caretaking job for a teen thanks to Charlie's impulsiveness. It's a stylistic choice to make the story very talky by having dialogue function as exposition at times...why would a man's wife say out loud that his sister died when he was a kid?...which is a trap as often as a bonus chance for emotional resonance.

I'll skip past some stuff that's all on the editor, because the author needs to be able to trust the guidance he's given. Our villain ain't a mystery for long; there are enough red herrings to make it plausible the villain might just be a shitty human being but I pegged the identity early on. *tsk* on you, Editor! Not factored into my rating.

I'd recommend the read, flaws and all, because Charlie's a particular kind of Guy, not a dudebro, not a Cinnamon Roll, but a regular ol' Guy you'll meet on a barstool, at a barbecue, in a post-office line. He means well, he's got a good attitude, he isn't interested in ragey stupid testosterone-y 'tude. I like him, and I think you might too. Get it from the library, by all means, but it's worth getting.

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER, debut procedural with heart and edge

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER
REBECCA PHILIPSON
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: This fresh debut thriller finds a Scotland Yard detective trying to find the author of a self-help book that promises quite literally to teach readers how to get away with murder, which seems to have inspired London's newest murderer.

Detective Inspector Samantha Hansen has been on leave for six months, recovering from a breakdown she suffered at work, but when a fourteen-year-old girl is murdered in a local park, Sam jumps at the chance to return to the job and prove that she's still got what it takes to be the Yard's most successful homicide detective. One of the cases only leads is a copy of a self-help book found in the victim's backpack called How To Get Away With Murder by a man named Denver Brady.

Brady claims to be the most successful serial killer of our time, which is why no one's ever heard of him. Chapter by chapter, he details his methodology and his past victims, and as Sam's investigation progresses and the details of the book go viral, Sam begins to suspect that there’s more to the author than what he’s revealed. But in order to find a killer and get justice for young Charlotte, Sam must learn to trust her instincts once again, before Denver Brady—or someone else—really does get away with murder.

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My Review: I'm going to get the mean bit over: thriller it ain't. Procedural plus PTSD it is. But that's on the publisher, not the author. The author, whose debut it is, did a decent job with the story, but needs some time to sand smoother edges onto her storytelling...quit hinting, either say or or skip it. And certainly cut it out after maybe twice, really that's where it stops being hinting and becomes annoying nudging.

So that's why it's a four-star read. I think as a debut, the ending crafted by Author Philipson is complex enough to show this is a very, very promising debut indeed. The story of a book within a book, a book by a mysterious author purporting to be a confession to his murders, and a clue in the murder of an obscenely young woman, can feel, well, artificial but Author Philipson dodged that trap deftly by interweaving Sam's...that's DI Samantha Hansen on introduction, Sam thereafter...recent issues around mental health into the investigation. It was quite well done. A detective who's a reader, who's been famed for her command of detail and pattern-matching, is suddenly fuzzy and afraid of the details she battened on becoming too triggering. It slows her down and speed is of the essence, does this portend her new future? Can she be successful in this new, possibly permanent, slow mode?

Questions that I suspect anyone who has had an external event alter their affect in the world can relate to.

On we go through a constructed maze, fair-play clues concealed well enough to make them niggle at the edges of awareness, and that ending I've already praised cause experienced mystery readers like me to pause and doff our invisible caps to Author Philipson. Her editor had a very good touch, I can't see obvious editorial alterations. I suspect the trainees Sam's lumbered with were once a lot more like props because they're not as well-rounded as they will be in future. (Do posh English people really join the police as often as they do in fiction?) I think a loot of the humor in the book is going to be a barrier for US readers. Or maybe not, now that I've typed the sentence...lots more of us are tuned in to UK slang and humor. It was fun to get chuckles in surprising places.

In my never-humble opinion, this is an auspicious debut. It portends an interesting writer's arrival onto a scene that's always stuffed with talent that goes nowhere fast for lack of that little spark, that addictive personal edge, that hooks the ma'at seeking series mystery addict coming back for more.

I think Author Philipson has that. Come find out if you agree.

USING GIFT CARDS: NetGalley Mystery/Thriller Page

Now that The Big Day's come and gone, lots of us have some giftcards, or some actual filthy lucre, to spend. There being no better way to spend that haul than on books, here are some reasonably priced options you might not've thought of to get your story needs met. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DEAD MONEY
JAKOB KERR
Bantam Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Don’t call me a fixer. This isn’t HBO.

In her job as unofficial “problem solver” for Silicon Valley’s most ruthless venture capitalist, Mackenzie Clyde’s gotten used to playing for high stakes. Even if none of those tech-bro millions she’s so good at wrangling ever make it into her pockets.

But this time, she’s in way over her head—or so it seems.

The lightning-rod CEO of tech’s hottest startup has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in “dead money” frozen in his will. As the company’s chief investor, Mackenzie’s boss has a fortune on the line—and with the police treading water, it’s up to Mackenzie to step up and resolve things, fast.

Mackenzie’s a lawyer, not a detective. Cracking this fiendishly clever killing, with its list of suspects that reads like a who’s-who of Valley power players, should be way out of her league.

Except that Mackenzie’s used to being underestimated. In fact, she’s counting on it.

Because the way she sees it, this isn’t an investigation. It’s an opportunity. And she’ll do anything it takes to seize it.

Anything at all.

Featuring jaw-dropping twists and a wily, outsider heroine you can’t help rooting for, Dead Money is a brilliant sleight-of-hand mystery. Written by a longtime insider, it is also a dead-on snapshot of the Valley’s rich and famous—and a glimpse at the darkness lurking behind the tech world’s cheery facade.

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My Review: It's a great way to start 2026, this book. Don't buy into the ever-so-cheery façade that the AI-promoting shills very badly want you not to question! There is always a darker side to every shiny surface.

This twisty, really twisted thriller is not realistic, though, because it's a thriller. They're OTT by design. In this case I really liked Mackenzie's utter ruthlessness because it's all too seldom one sees that role fulfilled by a female character. Author Kerr made her legal-eagle skills more believably deployed than I expected in the novel's framework...private-practice lawyers don't get "attached" to FBI investigations, or there'd be no honest investigation ever performed...but again, it's a thriller. Told in several timeframes, with action-slowing jumps, the story still unfolds in a logical way. I'm not eager to hop around quite as much as Author Kerr takes me, but it did all hang together, and none of the hops were unnecessary.

The concept of "dead money"—funds not accessible until some legal process is complete—is very useful indeed. It added a great deal of urgency to this story, and provided a seriously powerful goad for Mackenzie to use every lever she can reach to get the murder of a man who, frankly, just needed killin', resolved. Only in a certain way...which is why she's morally ambiguous and happy to use methods, umm, unorthodox shall we say to accomplish her goal.

That this is Author Kerr's debut novel was really impressive to me. He's clearly an habitual observer. All his characters felt distinct, if not distinctive; but it is a novel set in the tech world, so there the buffet is already laid. It's not a knock, the characters are well used; but it does make me eager to see what more he decides to do beyond this framework. The plot twists are never exactly perfectly convenient for Mackenzie so he's not intellectually lazy. It wasn't entirely his fault that I figured out who committed the murder, nor that I wanted to smack the shit out of some of the entitled goofs he peoples the world with. He's an insider, I think he'd know if these were unfair stereotypes; I'll go with "not" as the answer to that.

The ending was very satisfying, and I particularly liked some of the moralizing speeches in advance of it. Others will feel differently. A very solid debut thriller introducing a new voice in thrillerdom. May he decide to keep developing his good-quality storytelling chops.

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SALTWATER
KATY HAYS
Ballantine Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$11.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: In 1992, Sarah Lingate is found dead below the cliffs of Capri, Italy, leaving behind her three-year-old daughter, Helen. Despite suspicions that the old-money Lingates are involved, Sarah’s death is ruled an accident. And every year, the family returns to prove it’s true. But on the thirtieth anniversary of her death, the Lingates arrive at the villa to find a surprise waiting for them—the necklace Sarah was wearing the night she died.

Haunted by the specter of that night, the paranoid, insular Lingate family begins to crack, and Helen seizes the opportunity with the help of Lorna Moreno, the family assistant. But then Lorna disappears, and the investigation into Sarah’s death is reopened. Everyone who was on Capri thirty years ago remains a suspect—Helen’s controlling father, Richard; her rarely lucid aunt, Naomi; her distant uncle, Marcus; and their circle of friends, visitors, and staff. Even Lorna, her closest ally, may not be who she seems. As long-hidden secrets about that night boil to surface, one thing becomes clear: Not everyone will leave the island alive.

Combining a glittering, dark atmosphere, morally-gray characters, and mind-bending twists, Saltwater is an exploration of the corrupting effects of generational privilege and the lengths people go to protect a legacy—and how no one can hold a grudge like family.

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My Review: Poor Helen Lingate...poor little rich girl...it must really feel awful to suffer inside a gilded cage.

Actually, it does. Money does not make people happier, does not insulate them against the awfulness that life chucks into the pits we dig for ourselves. That lots of it is self-inflicted is true of everyone on Earth. It also does not obviate the role of luck in the lottery we call family. Helen got some lousy luck, some decent luck, and genetic gifts out of her family heritage.

What she didn't get was a decent family. Uncle Marcus and dad Richard (!) have her locked into an ugly conservatorship à la Britney Spears. Is his control justified? Is he her concerned papa or a bog-standard greedy parent? Why is the sudden reappearance of the necklace worn by the late Sarah Lingate the night of her death such a jolt?

A gothic story of grudges nursed, retribution plotted, and cruelty from unexpected quarters, all set on the storied isle of Capri...there's a reason Tiberius used this locale as his hideaway, it's so lush...and soapishly ornate. I had a good time indeed. The big twist that family stories must always have amused me greatly. Using multiple narrative voices was a clever way to avoid giving the game away. Jumping around in time is just the way things seem to be in thrillers in 2025. I'm not the biggest fan, but it does allow us to keep a real sense of suspense here. A good way to hide clues is to put them in a different frame from the main story's narrative.

A second novel from an author whose first, The Cloisters, I have not read. I won't accuse her of sophomore slump!

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CAT'S PEOPLE
TANYA GUERRERO
Delacorte Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Núria, a single-by-choice barista with a little resentment for the “crazy cat lady” label, is a member of The Meow-Yorkers, a group in Brooklyn who takes care of the neighborhood’s stray cats. On her volunteering days, she starts finding Post-it notes left by a secret admirer in an area where her feeds her favorite stray—a black cat named Cat. Like most felines, he is both curious and observant, so of course he knows who the notes are from. Núria, however, is clueless.

Are the notes from Collin, a bestselling author and self-professed hermit with a weakness for good coffee? Are they from Lily, a fresh-out-of-high school Georgia native searching for her long-lost half sister? Are they from Omar, the beloved neighborhood mailman going through an early midlife crisis? Or are they from Bong, the grieving widower who owns Núria’s favorite bodega?

When Cat suddenly falls ill, these five strangers find themselves bonding together in their desire to care for him, and discover that chance encounters can lead to the meaningful connections they’ve all been searching for.

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My Review: I said yes to this story from the publisher because I need to keep challenging my prejudices. One of those is a strong dislike of Felis catus in all its colorways and personality types. Cat people don't tend to be sane in reference to their cult objects, which worries me for the future of humanity.

Romantic plots and sentimental results are just not my favorites. Remarkably Bright Creatures got my highest-ever rating for this kind of fiction, at four full stars; that was down to Marcellus the cephalopod not being, oh let's just say for example, a cat.

I liked Marcellus' narrative voice more than the human narrators' voices. I liked Cat's voice among these narrators more than the human ones. I was particularly amused by Cat's names for the humans. The struck me as very likely the real way that cats see their cultists. Would I have bought this book for myself? Surely you jest! (Leslie Nielsen...what do you call an earworm when it's a meme, not a song lyric?...reference only more pointed, intentional.) It's a damn sight better than those unbearable cutesy-poopsie Japanese bookshop-cat things y'all're lappin' up like they're cream.

I don't have to like something to know when it's well-made. This is a well-made polyphonic sentimental novel that's good at smoothing your emotional fur while scratching that itchy place, that "I need a happy" place, you can't reach on your own.

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PARTY OF LIARS
KELSEY COX
Minotaur Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A lavish, Texas-sized Sweet Sixteen turns deadly in this twisty, pulse-pounding new novel — serving up a fresh take on a classic locked-room whodunnit. Let the festivities begin…

Today is Sophie Matthews’s sixteenth birthday party, an exclusive black-tie bash in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, where secrets are as deep-rooted as the sprawling live oaks. Sophie’s dad has spared no expense, and his renovated cliffside mansion—once thought haunted—is now hosting the event of the season. Then, just before the candles on the three-tiered red velvet cake are blown out, a body falls from the balcony onto the starlit dance floor below.

It’s a killer guest list . . .

DANI: Sophie’s new stepmother who’s been plagued by self-doubt ever since the birth of her own baby girl

ÓRLAITH: the superstitious Irish nanny who senses a looming danger in this cavernous house

MIKAYLA: the birthday girl’s best friend who is not nearly as meek as the popular kids assume

KIM: the cunning ex-wife who has a grudge she can’t let go of . . .

Everyone is invited in. Not everyone will get out alive.

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My Review: I like the classic drama technique of setting a story during the course of one day. Of course, in line with modern trends, the story's told in multiple timelines and PoVs. It's the action taking place that's all the story's Today. It works reasonably well in Author Kelsey's hands.

I think the enduring appeal of rich-people shenanigans is the scope for soap (opera) they provide. Setting a novel at a Sweet-Sixteen party is fiendishly clever because adolescence, that time of adult-strength emotions without adult perspective to help manage them, is quite the drama-driving force. The adults in this story appear not to have resolved their own angry adolescent issues, then add the new generation's...!

Exploring these varying levels of rage, envy, and desire is the meat of this story. It makes the read absorbing...if you're reading for character. As a thriller, Author Kelsey's debut novel shows her learning curve. I would've asked her to give us real action more frequently than all at the end of the read. It's not dull before then, it is very interior. A thriller with that kind of reflectiveness is not bad, only a tad slower than many genre readers would prefer.

Getting to know these folks was enough satisfaction for me, so I recommend it to y'all who like character novels even if the "thriller" label turns you off; and y'all thriller lovers ought to give these flawed, damaged women some room to expand your repertoire.

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THAT DEVIL, AMBITION
LINSEY MILLER
Storytide (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$1.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: here is only one school worth graduating from, and it creates as many magicians as it does graves…

First in his class and last in his noble line, Fabian Galloway’s only hope of a good future is passing his elite school's honors class. It’s only offered to the best thirteen students, and those students have a single assignment: kill their professor.

If they succeed, their student debt is forgiven. However, if an assassination attempt fails or the professor is alive at the end of the year, the students’ lives are forfeit.

And dealing with the professor, a devil summoned solely to kill or be killed, is no easy task.

Fabian isn't worried, though. He trusts his best friends—softhearted math genius Credence and absent-minded but insightful Euphemia—to help. After all, that’s why he befriended them.

As the months pass and their professor remains impossibly alive, the trio must use every asset they have to survive. Or else failure will be on their academic records—and their tombstones—forever.

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My Review: Dark academia YA with murderous schools prioritizing the killer instincts of the students...shades of that ghastly Yarros series y'all're gobbling up. I really detested that farrago on multiple axes. One big one is how idiotic a parent would have to be to consent to their child being admitted under these circs.

...and then...how different is it, really, from the titanic greed mill that is the student loan racket? How different is it from this administration resuming the revolting practice of garnishing paychecks of student-loan debtors as long as those debtors are left with $217.50 from the paycheck? Debt peonage is a real threat to people's ability to live.

So, while I was sniffy at first, I had to admit the horror, the evil personified, was more than dramatically fun...it was really quite on point. The concept of "severance" in this magic system made me think very strongly of the TV show. It's a bigger take on the idea but similarly evil in its intent. I was deeply impressed throughout by the clear, unambiguous tenor of matter-of-factness...it enabled the moral stakes to stand stark in contrast to the worldbuilding. I approve of such a contrast as a didactic storytelling choice because once one sees the contrast as the commentary it is, it can't be unseen.

The same matter-of-factness points up the controversial inclusiveness of the queer people in this story...literally all of them in relationships, and all the same at risk of betrayal-for-advancement as cishet couples. In other words, no single hair's breadth of difference between them. That this is a comment on the narrative being pushed by external forces is entirely invisible, until you see it.

I'm sure you're getting my drift by now. This is a story of a scoobygroup with a life-or-death motivation to resist the narrative they're being sold. Their actions will make the world...so they need to choose how they're going to do that in the face of a death-dealing Devil who has absolute power over them.

I think over-forty readers might sigh and roll their eyes at the beginning 25%, thinking they were in for a very specific kind of read. To them I say, put it down for a week, read some porn...oops, romantasy...or something, then come back to get your surprise. Author Linsey's talking to people who don't have our frame of reference. Clear your cookies then come refreshed as she shifts registers to one more suited to the "A" bit of YA.

It isn't perfect but damn! It heartened and elevated me in my mood and affect. That is saying a lot in 2025.