NETGALLEY MYSTERIES/THRILLERS/CRIME STORIES: Burgoines to read for #Deathtober 2024

Midnight at Maidenstone Hall by Alison Clare

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In the spring of 1919, a young man assumes the alias of Marsden Fisher and travels to Maidenstone Hall, the Yorkshire country residence of the Earl and Countess of Scarborough, to tutor their daughter Alice. Searching for the truth about the death of his lover, Alice’s late brother Simon, Marsden arrives to find that nothing is as he expected it to be. The house has been half destroyed by fire, the family’s financial ruin is imminent, and only a small core of frightened but loyal servants remain to serve them.

Alice and her twin sister Beatrice are feuding so terribly that they cannot be in the same room together. It is clear the family is hiding a terrible secret and the lies surrounding Simon’s death convince Marsden to fear for his own safety. The longer he stays at Maidenstone, the more he fears the family will discover his true identity and his relationship with Simon, but Marsden cannot leave until he discovers the about Simon, and the terrible screams that echo through the Hall at midnight.

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

My Review: Very fun queering of the gothic-novel tradition. The atmospherics of the story are deft, absolutely in the gothic tradition, and marred by some typos that are, I hope, corrected by now. The aftermath of the Great War is underused by gothic storytellers as yet. May that change after this.

Recommended, despite queer themes, for all audiences in search of a creepy read for #Deathtober.

Level Best Books asks $5.99 for a Kindle edition (non-affiliate Amazon link).

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The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells by Rebecca Rego Barry

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells is the first biography of one of the “lost ladies” of detective fiction who wrote more than eighty mysteries and hundreds of other works between the 1890s and the 1940s.

Carolyn Wells (1862–1942) excelled at writing country house and locked-room mysteries for a decade before Agatha Christie entered the scene. In the 1920s, when she was churning out three or more books annually, she was dubbed “about the biggest thing in mystery novels in the US.”

On top of that, Wells wielded her pen in just about every literary genre, producing several immensely popular children’s books and young adult novels; beloved anthologies; and countless stories, prose, and poetry for magazines such as Thrilling Detective, Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Harper’s , and The New Yorker. All told, Wells wrote over 180 books. Some were adapted into silent films, and some became bestsellers. Yet a hundred years later, she has been all but erased from literary history. Why? How?

This investigation takes us on a journey to Rahway, New Jersey, where Wells was born and is buried; to New York City’s Upper West Side, where she spent her final twenty-five years; to the Library of Congress, where Carolyn’s world-class collection of rare books now resides; and to many other public and private collections where exciting discoveries unfolded.

Part biography and part sleuthing narrative, The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells recovers the life and work of a brilliant writer who was considered one of the funniest, most talented women of her time.

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

My Review: Think of women writers from 1850 to 1950. Pull up some names from your memory hole. Virginia Woolf? Willa Cather? Maybe Agatha Christie? Not Anna Katherine Green, or Carolyn Wells, despite those women's sales eclipsing all the others combined. Not highbrow enough for scholars to study. A damned shame.

Resembling the masterful HAD SHE BUT KNOWN: A Biography of Mary Roberts Rinehart, this rescue of a (deliberately?) forgotten woman bestseller from the past is definitely one for your shelves be they physical or digital, if you have the slightest interest in the development of the mystery genre by and for women.

Post Hill Press charges $14.99 for a Kindle book (non-affiliate Amazon link), and well worth it in my opinion. (NB gutenberg.org has sixty-seven of her books across genres free to download)

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Lighthouse Burning (Harlan Winter #1) by Jordan Farmer

Rating: 3.25* of five

The Publisher Says: In a small Appalachian town, an amateur detective unearths a dark conspiracy and his own haunted past, in a chilling novel about sacrifice, art, and revenge.

Med school dropout Harlan Winter returns to his impoverished West Virginia hometown, where the law is scarce, arsonists are turning everything to ash, and his family’s turbulent history lingers. All he wants is to keep the peace in a community cowering from The Lighthouse, a local cult preying on people’s fears. Harlan’s own fears, too, when he’s hired to play detective and find a young couple gone missing.

The vanished artist and his girlfriend have left behind a series of paintings that enrage The Lighthouse’s Pastor Logan, who believes art can have divine power. It’s not easy to believe for a rational man like Harlan. And impossible to ignore when his investigation is haunted by visions of the dead lurking in the shadows of his own violent past.

Revelations about the disappearances are being unearthed. The Lighthouse’s grip on the community is tightening. And Harlan fears he’s losing control. As the threats against his town, his sanity, and his life begin to mount, Harlan doesn’t know which is more what’s real, or what’s in his mind.

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

My Review: This chilling story is very much a genre-blender between amateur-sleuth mystery, small-town gothic, and violent revenge thriller. The magical overtones are both obtrusive (for the resistant) and underdeveloped (for the congregation). I'm down with anti-church stories, though, so I was flipping pages.

It's easier to forgive underdevelopedness than obtrusiveness, so non-horror unsupernaturalizers are warned off. The rest of us need reasonably good #Deathtober reads. Here's one.

Thomas & Mercer say it's worth $4.99...I'd say less, but it's decent enough I wouldn't be mad if I'd spent that. (non-affiliate Amazon link)

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Head Full of Lies (Harlan Winter #2) by Jordan Farmer

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: The southbound trail of a stolen spell book becomes a nightmare road trip in a propulsive novel about the unrelenting power of evil by the author of Lighthouse Burning.

Harlan Winter has returned to his corner of Appalachia, where his fiery history with a depraved cult has made him a legend. All Harlan wants is to run his occult bookshop and get on with his life—if only his unsettling visions would let him. But when a fellow devotee of the dark arts moves to Coopersville and Harlan’s coveted grimoire is stolen, he’s pulled into a world deadlier than the one that already scarred his soul.

The foolish thieves are two local teenagers hightailing it out of Appalachia in a stolen car and heading south to Florida where a buyer for the coveted grimoire is waiting. They have no idea what evil lies on the road ahead. But Harlan does. Blood has already been spilled. He’s following them mile by mile on a mission to save them before it’s too late. Because once their prized possession is in the wrong hands, there will be hell to pay.

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

My Review: Second time around...do NOT skip #1 or lots won't make sense. The stupid kids who come for Harlan's precioussss were under relatable, saddening pressure. What happens is a lot like the violence tinged with supernatural shenanigans from before, only being #2, they turned up the volume.

It was a mistake to pound 'em down one after the other. Don't do that and you'll like the results better. Same advisories as for #1: "It's easier to forgive underdevelopedness than obtrusiveness, so non-horror unsupernaturalizers are warned off. The rest of us need reasonably good #Deathtober reads. Here's one."

Thomas & Mercer only want $2.49 for this one, which is exactly my idea of the right price. (non-affiliate Amazon link)

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Truth’s Labyrinth by Jørgen Steines (tr. Sinéad Quirke Køngerskov)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The year is 1943; World War II rages on.

Major Johann Richter of the German military intelligence service, Abwehr, is tasked with a case of great importance for the war effort. Several incidents point to a traitor among the top Nazis, and Johann starts investigating generals, field marshals and party leaders.

As the investigation progresses, Johann witnesses the extensive atrocities of the regime—atrocities that ordinary German people know little about. His loyalty to the Third Reich is severely tested, and an unexpected chain of events places him and his family in grave danger.

As Johann finally comes close to revealing the traitor, he is faced with a difficult choice that could radically change the course of the war...

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

My Review: This isn't heralded as such, but it really counts as "alternate history", as the author's endnote says it's a "counterfactual." It's also a very intense, soul-searching tale of family's daily relations under an evil, totalitarian system.

What makes this read better than average is the fact that we're in the world of Fatherland and The Man in the High Castle, among the groudlings under the Nazi Party's control. A perspective check for the triumphalist Allied viewpoint, here we're given a...not sympathetic exactly, but more human-centered narrative from Danish Author Steines.

Matador want $6.99 for a Kindle book. Those interested in alternative history should not hesitate.

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A New Lease on Death (Supernatural Mysteries #1) by Olivia Blacke

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this darkly funny supernatural mystery about an unlikely crime-solving duo that launches a commercial, unique, and genre-blending series, death is only the beginning.

Ruby Young's new Boston apartment comes with all the usual perks. Windows facing the brick wall of the next-door building. Heat that barely works. A malfunctioning buzzer. Noisy neighbors. A dead body on the sidewalk outside. And of course, a ghost.

Since Cordelia Graves died in her apartment a few months ago, she's kept up her residency, despite being bored out of her (non-tangible) skull and frustrated by her new roommate. When her across-the-hall neighbor, Jake Macintyre, is shot and killed in an apparent mugging gone wrong outside their building, Cordelia is convinced there’s more to it and is determined to bring his killer to justice.

Unfortunately, Cordelia, being dead herself, can't solve the mystery alone. She has to enlist the help of the obnoxiously perky, living tenant of her apartment. Ruby is twenty, annoying, and has never met a houseplant she couldn't kill. But she also can do everything Cordelia can't, from interviewing suspects to researching Jake on the library computers that go up in a puff of smoke if Cordelia gets too close. The roommates form an unlikely friendship as they get closer to the truth about Jake's death…and maybe other dangerous secrets as well.

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

My Review: Entertaining buddy comedy featuring a ghost, her living subtenant, and a lot of very hinky people doing crappy things to each other. I got a lot of good fun from Cordelia, the ghost, being...well, let's say herself. Trying to figure out her afterlife was a major hassle when she hadn't even figured out her life! Ruby interested me less, seeming sort-of clueless and naïve.

A lovely cozy series I'll follow as it unfolds. This is a solid series-starter and one that repays you for reading it with fun and laughter.

Minotaur Books brings this out on 29 October 2024. Available now for some smiles in your #Deathtober.

SALEM'S CIPHER, or "What the Patriarch Will Stoop to"

SALEM'S CIPHER
JESS LOUREY
Thomas & Mercer (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A troubled codebreaker faces an epic plot reaching back through centuries of America's secret history


Salem Wiley is a genius cryptanalyst, courted by the world's top security agencies ever since making a breakthrough discovery in her field of quantum computing. She's also an agoraphobe, shackled to a narrow routine by her fear of public places. When her mother's disappearance is linked to a plot to assassinate the country's first viable female presidential candidate, Salem finds herself both target and detective in a modern-day witch hunt.

Drawn into a labyrinth of messages encrypted by Emily Dickinson and centuries-old codes tucked inside the Beale Cipher, Salem begins to uncover the truth: an ancient and ruthless group is hell-bent on ruling the world, and only a select group of women stands in its way.

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

My Review: Secret history novels are always fun for me...they put a spin on the facts that usually makes very little sense, but has the lovely quality of being off-the-wall...and this outing into that garden of fantasy is no disappointment.

If James Rollins had written a woman-centered story, this is what it would feel like. Since I like James Rollins, I think of that as a compliment. Salem and Bel, with their matrilineal cultish secret society, The Underground, are in opposition to the male-dominated world-spanning cult, The Order...don't you love the harkening back to the antique world's division of authority into women/Earth::men/land?...each side ready to lie, cheat, and kill to accomplish their goals. The two (so far) stories in Salems world make it clear that the nightmare of christian nationalism and fascistic order/totalitarianism are only going to be effectively opposed by women organizing and taking their power back into their own hands.

This being a message I am totally on board with, I say go get you a copy and learn what one intelligent, observant woman thinks is worth fighting for, and how to do it. I won't say it's a roadmap since we live in mundane reality not Conspiracytopia, but I will say I agree that the stakes are existential.

When the next woman is nominated to run for president I will not be surprised if she faces some sort of threat very similar to this story's plot. There is no reason to think that the incels and MAGAts will change in the next four years. I hope that somewhere there is an actual real-life cabal of powerful women ready to blast the patriarchy that will come gunning for her. If they had the quasi-mystical powers that the Underground...do you not just love the echoes of Persephone in that name?...and if they could just use Emily Dickinsons poetry a a cipher, too....

The idea of power in the hands of women scares some men so badly that they will stoop to anything to stop it from occurring. This being amply demonstrated by the events of 2016, when the first version of this book came out, the anxiety that propeled this story reads as relevant today as it ever has. Absent some Great Dismantling of the patriarchy, the plot of this story will remain evergreen.

An excellent investment of a minimal amount of money, for very solid return of pleasure in the read.

THE LEIGH RUSSELL PAGE: JOURNEY TO DEATH, first Lucy Hall procedural & GIRL IN DANGER, the second

JOURNEY TO DEATH
LEIGH RUSSELL
Thomas & Mercer
$2.99 Kindle edition, available now (non-affiliate Amazon link)

Rating: 4* of five for suiting my exact mood

The Publisher Says: Lucy Hall arrives in the Seychelles determined to leave her worries behind. The tropical paradise looks sun-soaked and picture-perfect—but as Lucy soon discovers, appearances can be very deceptive. A deadly secret lurks in the island’s history, buried deep but not forgotten. And it is about to come to light.

As black clouds begin to gather over what promised to be a relaxing family break, Lucy realises that her father stands in the eye of the coming storm. A shadow from his past is threatening to destroy all that he holds dear—including the lives of his loved ones.

A dark truth is about to explode into their lives, and that truth is going to hit them right between the eyes.

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

My Review: The wages of sin are paid by those born of it. This is the first of a new series starring the woman who will pay for hte sins of the past. It definitely kept me going as we start the book following George in the 1970s...a time of terrible political crises and much violence, as any of us who lived through it remember. Despite the terrible things happening, we're moving at a dream-like pace...it kept me from being fully immersed and presented a problem for me throughout the read.

Landing in the Seychelles for a family vacation, Lucy, George's twentysomething daughter, is ready for a complete change because she's just broken her engagement to a man whose idea of marriage isn't like hers. Because we do hear a LOT about that subject, I was about to skip the rest of the read. I kept going because the descriptions are fully and completely involving. I can't really extract one to show you, sorry...the problem with reading a DRC is that I can't copy-and-paste the way one can with normal Kindle books.

What I found ironic is that ever-so-betrayed Lucy's mother, put in jeopardy by her husband lying by omission, doesn't seem ready to snatch some passing policeman's gun and shoot him dead. I assure you that, were my Young Gentleman Caller to whisk me off to a beautiful foreign destination where he (searching for a lost love) got me kidnapped, you would need one sheet of blotting paper and a whisk broom to clean up what was left of him once I was free.

Anyway, I love reading about tropical places, I enjoyed Lucy's complete unwillingness to accept anything told her at face value no matter whose face was uttering it, and I wanted just this level of readerly demand. It's not perfect, it's not fast-paced, but it is lush and it gives you plenty to think about. Recommended!

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GIRL IN DANGER
LEIGH RUSSELL
Thomas & Mercer
$3.99 Kindle editon, available now

Rating: squeaks to 4* of five on its mood-suiting qualities

The Publisher Says: Chasing a story, reporter Lucy Hall plunges into a desperate fight to save her own life.

Lucy Hall’s first summer in Paris promises to be idyllic. She’s fallen in love with the city and enjoys her new job as an investigative reporter. When her friend Nina comes to stay, the girls look forward to a wonderful summer. But Paris is a city of contrasts and Lucy is about to experience its dangerous side.

When an anonymous source promises her a scoop, Lucy can’t resist the chance to make her name. The deeply unsettling meeting with her informant indicates that there may be more at stake than she’d suspected. Returning home with questions instead of answers, Lucy finds her apartment ransacked and Nina gone.

Lucy knows her friend is in danger, but the police are unwilling to help. When her informant is found dead, she realises she may be next. Lucy has something the killer wants and he’ll do anything to get it back…

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

My Review: Another case of feeling the scenery is a co-star in the read and might deserve a cut of the royalties. This time it's set in a place I've been! So I felt even more connected to the locales.

Another situation where I wonder how the bloody hell the woman got there...how is a twenty-four-year-old going to get an investigative journalist's position in a city she's not from, and barely speaks the language? And what journalist's boss would chastise her for pestering people for story ideas? That is the literal definition of her job.

Well, no matter, I wasn't asked to fact-check the MS so I let it go.

I totally bought that Lucy, knowing she's dealing with a dreadful underworld figure, would go to the police the second her visiting gal-pal vanishes and her apartment gets ransacked; I also totally bought that the police, knowing what they are bound to know of the criminal in question, basically shrugged and said "come back after forty-eight hours, kthxbye" because the young visitor will either arrive back confused from being lost or in Ziploc baggies piece by piece to scare Lucy away from being a journalist investigator. Either way the police don't really need to do much.

A little harder to buy is Lucy teaming up with Alain Michel (Alan Michael, the author didn't spend much time researching names), the proverbial P.I. with a Past; of course he Knows Stuff. It's a pearl-clutcher, this level of suspense. I will say that the author makes a serious effort to add some physical danger to this entry (largely theoretical last time), but most does this with details of the aftermath of violence and that doesn't have the same effect long-term.

But as I thought these dismissive thoughts I realized I was more than half-way through the read. What?! How did that happen? It happened because the prose is direct, well-formed, and the plot is familiar enough to make few demands and still involving enough to require that I finish the read. I enjoyed the sentimental journey to Paris, I liked the resolution of the plot, and found myself exactly the right read for a sloppy Sunday in this series.

REAL BAD THINGS, a very accurate title for a twisty story

REAL BAD THINGS
KELLY J. FORD
Thomas & Mercer
$4.99 Kindle edition, available for pre-order; releases Thursday

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the author of Cottonmouths, a Los Angeles Review Best Book of 2017, comes an evocative suspense about the cost of keeping secrets and the dangers of coming home.

Beneath the roiling waters of the Arkansas River lie dead men and buried secrets.

When Jane Mooney’s violent stepfather, Warren, disappeared, most folks in Maud Bottoms, Arkansas, assumed he got drunk and drowned. After all, the river had claimed its share over the years.

When Jane confessed to his murder, she should have gone to jail. That’s what she wanted. But without a body, the police didn’t charge her with the crime. So Jane left for Boston―and took her secrets with her.

Twenty-five years later, the river floods and a body surfaces. Talk of Warren’s murder grips the town. Now in her forties, Jane returns to Maud Bottoms to reckon with her past: to do jail time, to face her revenge-bent mother, to make things right.

But though Jane’s homecoming may enlighten some, it could threaten others. Because in this desolate river valley, some secrets are better left undisturbed.

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

My Review: Like her previous novel Cottonmouths (my review linked above), this book is set in a rural area that could be anywhere but undeniably is the American South. At no point do we feel the curiously unmoored sensation that many crime-centered stories have, that eternal-now anywhereness. It starts from when Jane is released from steerage, I mean the commuter plane, onto the hot tarmac of a regional airport. Her mother's nasty phone message hissing in her newly single, newly homeless ear, "don't even think of running." Why Ma didn't say "again" is beyond me, because Jane's running hasn't stopped since it was "away to Boston, there a lesbian to be."

So now she's coming back to face the music for confessing to her stepfather's murder a quarter century ago. Note: confessing to. Not murdering. And that demented witch of a mother believes her, always has, she's been squatting in this nowhere town stewing in her rage and hate for the abnormal daughter who (she said she believed) murdered the abusive man who probably would've killed Ma by now had he lived.

Ah. Family ties.

Like many women with no options, her Ma had never met a nice guy and this latest one was the most violent yet. And the whole town knew it. Not a soul stepped in to help...except Jane's young love, Georgia Lee. Things go very Beautiful Creatures for a minute...Jane's brother Jason gets pulled in...it's all a major clusterfuck, in fact, and when it all settles down there's no Warren. I mean, he's dead, but there's no body. So, no body = no crime. Confess til ya turn purple, Janey luv, no body = no crime. She does spend a goodly amount of time in juvenile detention. The second that ends, she gets the hell out of Arkansas.

What is really clear while reading this book is the quiet insanity of country life. People are all up in each other's hip pockets, they know what's happening, but not a soul interferes. Wouldn't be proper, if a woman lets a man beat her up that's her lookout. Those kids won't amount to anything anyway, so what they suffer.

It's really like this, folks. This is what the world is. And it's ugly as all get out.

Now that everything changed because there's a body, surfaced after twenty-five years, Jane's home to face the music.

What music? She was a juvenile, she was in state custody until charges were dropped, and now there's *a* body but no one knows if it's that right one. (Lotsa men disappeared from this town over the years. No one seems to've looked into it. Not like they were anybody much.)

So we have ourselves a problem. What's Jane facing? Trial? Still no body...conviction? LOLOL

Her life. Her mother. Her ex, her first true love Georgia Lee. Even the little brother who simply existed throughout this ordeal, offering nothing to Jane. All that and more; vaster than oceans and more deep is the need in Jane for answers rather than lies or silences. The answers she finally gets are deeply unsettling. I could never call the last meeting of Jason and Jane a case of healing by honesty, but it was certainly an explanation of parts of their past that seemed weird and random.

Kelly J. Ford was formed by Arkansas and she has never forgiven it for that. As revenges go, this book is a great step.

WRITE TO DIE, Hollywood whydunit story & THE HIDDEN KEYS, Quincunx series' fourth entry

THE HIDDEN KEYS
ANDRÉ ALEXIS (Quincunx series #4)
Coach House Books
$19.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Parkdale’s Green Dolphin is a bar of ill repute, and it is there that Tancred Palmieri, a thief with elegant and erudite tastes, meets Willow Azarian, an aging heroin addict. She reveals to Tancred that her very wealthy father has recently passed away, leaving each of his five children a mysterious object that provides one clue to the whereabouts of a large inheritance. Willow enlists Tancred to steal these objects from her siblings and help her solve the puzzle.

A Japanese screen, a painting that plays music, a bottle of aquavit, a framed poem and a model of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater: Tancred is lured in to this beguiling quest, and even though Willow dies before the puzzle is solved, he presses on.

As he tracks down the treasure, he must enlist the help of Alexander von Würfel, conceptual artist and taxidermist to the wealthy, and fend off Willow’s heroin dealers, a young albino named ‘Nigger’ Colby and his sidekick, Sigismund ‘Freud’ Luxemburg, a clubfooted psychopath, both of whom are eager to get their hands on this supposed pot of gold. And he must mislead Detective Daniel Mandelshtam, his most adored friend.

Inspired by a reading of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, The Hidden Keys questions what it means to be honourable, what it means to be faithful and what it means to sin.

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

My Review: I'm not sure how to tell you about this book. Let me tell you about honorable-thief Tancred:

Tancred was a tall and physically imposing black man, but he was also approachable. He could not sit anywhere for long without someone starting a conversation. This was, his friends liked to say, because his blue eyes were startling and his voice deep and avuncular. So, when he wanted to be alone without necessarily being alone, Tancred answered in French—his maternal tongue—when spoken to by strangers. Few who came into the Dolphin knew the language.

This, I believe, explains Author Alexis's project nicely. He makes a mythic figure, of prodigious endowments of soul and talent, and sets him down at a nexus of Toronto's many worlds. He then seems to stand back and let 'er rip. It feels to me as though Author Alexis more or less "took dictation" when writing this story, and its immediate predecessor Fifteen Dogs (which I read almost a decade ago). The less-than-propulsive pace and the slightly meandering sense of place are, in my observation, best explained by this reality of the creative process. A more plot-driven project, one that was constructed not discovered, wouldn't keep this:

The city had been built by people from innumerable elsewheres. It was a chaos of cultures ordered only by its long streets. It belonged to no one and never would, or maybe it was a million cities in one, unique to each of its inhabitants, belonging to whoever walked its streets.

But, in this structure of discovery, Tancred's observation goes a long way towards making it plain that we are on a quest that surpasses its material goals. Part of the manifestation of this is the quite long time frame of the story...there is time, between Tancred meeting the woman on whose behalf he goes on this quest for and the time he actually begins the quest, for him to suffer an acutely painful personal tragedy...and its, politely said, abrupt ending.

It's a sad, death-haunted quest. It's a life-affirming choice for Tancred to take it on. It's amazing how much fun it is to watch a character decide to give up a past of anti-social thievery and remain a thief, only pro-social now. It's a book with a lot of good aperçus, and a few moments where one wonders what the heck Author Alexis was thinking. Tancred isn't a traditional series-mystery sleuth. The two books featuring him I've read aren't really properly series mysteries. They're no less delightful for that. The puzzle set by, and for, Tancred's client is resolved neatly at the end. Permaybehaps a bit too neatly...the source of the missing star.

But the reason it's got four of 'em is down to moments like this:

“I believe God is an impediment to good. All those people acting in his name don’t bother to think their actions through. They’re incapable of good...No, that’s not right...There are any number of them who accidentally do good. ... What I mean is it’s more difficult to do good with God in the equation.”

Heady stuff, philosophically in my wheelhouse, and not the only example I could've chosen. Spoiled for choice gets a book a good rating.

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WRITE TO DIE
CHARLES ROSENBERG
Thomas & Mercer (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3* of five

The Publisher Says: Hollywood’s latest blockbuster is all set to premiere—until a faded superstar claims the script was stolen from her. To defend the studio, in steps the Harold Firm, one of Los Angeles’s top entertainment litigation firms and as much a part of the glamorous scene as the studios themselves. As a newly minted partner, it’s Rory Calburton’s case, and his career, to win or lose.

But the seemingly tame civil trial turns lethal when Rory stumbles upon the strangled body of his client’s general counsel. And the ties that bind in Hollywood constrict even tighter when the founder of the Harold Firm is implicated in the murder. Rory is certain the plagiarism and murder cases are somehow connected, and with the help of new associate Sarah Gold—who’s just finished clerking for the chief justice—he’s determined to get answers. Will finding out who really wrote the script lead them to the mastermind of the real-life murder?

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

My Review: Sarah and Rory, a pair of overprivileged and overeducated entertainment lawyers, deny their hawt, sweet luuuv until they can't anymore. And then they solve a crime committed against people I could not work up enough spit to lob into their faces, still less piss on if they were on fire.

It makes it really hard to review a book when that's one's response.

The prose is prosaic, the story's not relatable because one doesn't relate to such dislikable souls. And there I was, flipping the Kindlepages...I needed to know why, not who, in this story. It was a satisfying why, so I felt my time was well-enough spent that I'm not after getting up a pitchfork parade to get Author Rosenberg. I was a lot less forgiving about The Trial and Execution of the Traitor George Washington, as you'll recall; but that was mostly pique at raised expectations being dashed. The fact is that Author Rosenberg's prose doesn't scintillate but it also doesn't obfuscate.

Easily the most effective use of his prose was the ruminations that Rory entertains as he's going through his legal maneuverings in the various trials he's involved in. Time in Rory's head is among my best memories of the read because he really thinks there in front of us. I am not a lawyer and am fascinated by the way that legal argument affects one's thought processes. It's a shoo-in, therefore, that the story will succeed for me on that level.

Sarah's "Impulse-control disorder" is where the wheels really come off for me. This person has a disorder that, in someone who was a Supreme Court Justice's clerk, would be *disastrous* and a disqualification from ever being considered for such a position. And how many Supreme Court Justices would hire such a person knowingly, as we're told Sarah was? Also, a private-investigator's license might also be unobtainable in California due to this diagnosis. If it isn't, I'm very worried.

So the read's not a hit, not a whiff, just a pleasant-enough way to spend a few wastable hours.

UNDER COLOR OF LAW, first-in-series LA-set The One Good(-Enough) Cop story

UNDER COLOR OF LAW
AARON PHILIP CLARK (Trevor Finnegan #1)
Thomas & Mercer (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle original, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The murder of a police recruit pins a Black LAPD detective in a deadly web where race, corruption, violence, and cover-ups intersect in this relevant, razor-sharp novel of suspense.

Black rookie cop Trevor “Finn” Finnegan aspires to become a top-ranking officer in the Los Angeles Police Department and fix a broken department. A fast-track promotion to detective in the coveted Robbery-Homicide Division puts him closer to achieving his goal.

Four years later, calls for police accountability rule the headlines. The city is teeming with protests for racial justice. When the body of a murdered Black academy recruit is found in the Angeles National Forest, Finn is tasked to investigate.

As pressure mounts to solve the crime and avoid a PR nightmare, Finn scours the underbelly of a volatile city where power, violence, and race intersect. But it’s Finn’s past experience as a beat cop that may hold the key to solving the recruit’s murder. The price? The end of Finn’s career…or his life.

I RECEIVED THIS AS PART OF THE FIRST READS SELECTIONS THROUGH AMAZON PRIME.

My Review: I was in a weird position in September 2021. I got my monthly free-because-you-have-Prime offerings from Amazon and, where I usually have no problem picking between two or three of the stories, I was *stuck* between two I really, really wanted to read...the situation was so bad and the deadline to make my choice was looming so I asked my bookish friends to choose between them for me.

A dark and twisty psychological thriller set in Nebraska lost out to this law'n'order-floutin' procedural thriller, though not by much. Either of them would've been fine by me. This story's victory was perfect, I figured, since its publication was set for 1 October and I was #Spooktobering with mysteries and thrillers instead of ghosts and werewolves and the like. And now, mirabile dictu, it's #Noirvember when the review comes out!

It really shows that this author is also a screenwriter. His first pages are a lights-and-sirens, pursuit-copter assisted chase that whipped past as fast as it would've on screen. The major notes in the symphony the author's prepared for us are clear; the problem he's decided to write about couldn't be more timely. What isn't ordinary is the PoV of a cop, a Black cop, on police brutality. On the department's culture, on what it means to try to be a Good Cop, a good Black man, and a decent human being in a system that has little room for any of those identities.

Trevor "Finn" Finnegan stepped off the straight and narrow early in his career at LAPD. What he did is not a mystery; but you should find out from his story. The results of his ethical compromise are simple: He climbed the ladder faster than a Black man should've and is roundly resented by all for it. He has a toxic relationship to his "high yellow" father (and hasn't it been an age since I've heard that term!), an ex-LAPD officer, that was always going to be fraught but never got better. Neither knew how to make it so...his mother's early death didn't help. The men aren't going to be besties, but they have a basic world-view compatibility: No one gives you nothing, just decide how much you'll pay for it.

But what Finn decides to pay is a price that doesn't make for good reading...or living. What happens as a result of this price, this devil's bargain, is devastating. It changes everything. I think it's a change for the better, but that's by no means sure....

Why this is only getting a 3.5-star rating from me comes down to the ghastly sexual politics. There's a pair of women with whom horndog Trevor is involved, in a weird off-kilter way, and his actions do not speak well of him. In relation to one of the women, he all but throws her privileged whiteness in her face while enacting, apparently unironically, male privilege in its most extreme form. He then imagines the other woman in his life will condone, forgive, and accept his bad behavior...and Author Clark's construct of her makes that not improbable. Ugh.

My revolted reservations aside, the writing is deft, it fails to fall into speechification as it sometimes hints at doing, and the plot is one I feel strongly needs to be told. Good people doing bad things for what they tell themselves are noble aims is an evergreen because it's not just relatable it's instructive. I'll read the next book in what promises to be a very interesting series.