COFFIN ROAD, an unposted 2017 review of the best PETER MAY novel I've read

COFFIN ROAD
PETER MAY
riverrun press
$6.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In his latest mystery set in Scotland and the Outer Hebrides, award-winning author Peter May spins a tale about three disparate cases that may or may not be linked...

On the remote Isle of Harris in Scotland's Outer Hebrides, a man washes up on a deserted beach, hypothermic and completely disoriented. He has no idea who he is or how he got there. The only clue to his condition is a map of the island showing a desolate, ancient path called the Coffin Road. With a sense of dread and no clear idea what lies at the other end, he knows he must follow the trail if he has any hope of discovering his identity.

Meanwhile, homicide detective George Gunn makes the rough ocean crossing to a remote, sea-battered lighthouse on a rock in the northern Atlantic, twenty miles west of the Outer Hebrides, to investigate a brutal murder. Despite its isolation, the tiny island has seen its share of tragedy: more than a century earlier, three lighthouse keepers disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. And now there is a new tragedy, and Gunn must figure out what happened.

At the same time, a teenage girl lies in her Edinburgh bedroom, desperate to discover the truth about her father's death. Two years after the discovery of the pioneering scientist's suicide note, Karen Fleming still cannot accept that her father would willingly abandon her. And the more she discovers about the nature of his research, the more she suspects that suicide had nothing to do with it.

I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER IN 2016. THANK YOU.

My Review: Ten years ago I flew through all 400pp of this read, and excitedly left this note:

Far and away the best book of Peter May's that I've read. An exciting and involving read. More later. Or earlier, I suppose, depending on which end of the telescope you're looking through.

When I went looking for my notes made to write my weekly summary post for GBBO over on LibraryThing, I found my unposted review! (Not the notes I wanted, though.) So I'm posting it here for this year's #Deathtober blogging, and in sad acknowledgment of Author May's death on 25 September 2026. I suspect I never came back to post it because that was about the time I ran seriously afoul of the Spoiler Stasi abd decided "hell with it" and forgot it existed.

The story opens on a beach. Don't get too excited, it's a Scottish beach so colder than a Republican's heart. A man awakes cold and confused:

I have no idea where this is. And for the first time since consciousness has returned, I am aware, with a sudden, sharp and painful stab of trepidation, that I have not the least notion of who I am.

That breathless realisation banishes all else. The cold, the taste of salt, the acid still burning all the way up from my stomach. How can I not know who I am? A temporary confusion, surely? But the longer I stand here, with the wind whistling around my ears, shivering almost beyond control, feeling the pain and the cold and the consternation, I realise that the only sense that has not returned to me is my sense of self. As if I inhabit the body of a stranger, in whose uncharted waters I have been washed up in blind ignorance.

Nothing like the smell of the North Atlantic Ocean in the morning. As he searches for a name (it's Neal, for now), for a way to discover who he is, ID or any other details, belongings...anything...he encounters a woman who seems to know him as she walks near the beach. Sally helps Neal-for-now home, some data starts coming into his slippery memory and mostly slides right out again having nothing to stick to:

They say that all any of us are is the sum total of our memories…Take them away and all you are left with is a blank. Like a computer without software.

It's true, and it scares me, as it does most people or writers would not use the trope with the regularity they do (particularly in thrillers where the need for the main character to act fast and to have a great urgency to do something is acute). Our hero reflects, "{it's a}s if I inhabit the body of a stranger, in whose uncharted waters I have been washed up in blind ignorance," as he attempts to unferstand what on Earth has landed him in a situation where:

Nothing, absolutely nothing since I found myself washed up, semi-conscious, on the Traigh Losgaintir, has made sense. My memory loss. My failure to find a single clue to my identity, beyond my name, even in my own home. My affair with Sally. The book on the Flannan Isles mystery that I am not writing. Beehives on the coffin road. My missing boat...someone trying to kill me. And someone else stepping in to save me. The weight of it all is very nearly crushing.

As he puts together who he is and what he is doing, why he us at great risk of death, many truths and dacts sort themselves into an extremely ugly pattern:

Politicians and political parties, particularly in America, rely on {corporate criminals} to fund election campaigns. They are powerful lobbyists. Which is why the US has not banned the use of neonicotinoids, and thousands of tons of the stuff are still being used on crops there every year. Biggest usage is on oilseed rape. They coat the seeds with insecticide, so that, when it germinates, the insecticide is diffused throughout the plant, including the nectar and pollen that’s harvested by the bees.

Neal-for-now's discovered, conveniently near a cursed murder site in a lighthouse, evidence that chemical companies researched neonicotinoids and knew what effect the pesticide would have:

‘The first summer I was here, I landed one day to find that the Lighthouse Board had sent in decorators to paint the place. Everything was opened up. The guys were okay with me taking a look around and we got chatting. The forecast was good, and they expected to be here for a few days. So I spun them the story about writing a book and said I would probably be back tomorrow. And I was. Only this time with a pack of Blu-tack. When they were having their lunch, I took the keys from the inner and outer doors and made impressions. Dead simple. Had keys cut, and access to the place whenever I wanted thereafter.’ The final panel falls away in my hands, and I reach in to retrieve a black plastic bag. I hand it up to {Bad actor}, and he peels back the plastic to look inside. As I stand up, I lift one of the wooden panels. I know that this is the one chance I will get, while he is distracted, and I swing the panel at his head as hard as I can. The force with which it hits him sends a judder back up my arms to my shoulders, and I actually hear it snap. He falls to his knees, dropping the hard drive, and his gun skids away across the floor. {Bad actor} is so startled, she barely has time to move before I punch her hard in the face. I feel teeth breaking beneath the force of my knuckles, behind lips I once kissed with tenderness and lust. Blood bubbles at her mouth. I grab {a hostage he's rescuing} by the arm and hustle her fast down the corridor, kicking open the door and dragging her out into the night. The storm hits us with a force that assails all the senses. The wind is deafening, driving stinging rain horizontally into our faces. The cold wraps icy fingers around us, instantly numbing. Beyond the protection of the walls, it is worse, and I find it nearly impossible to keep my feet as I pull {the hostage he's rescuing} off into the dark. Only the relentless turning of the lamp in the light room above us provides any illumination. We turn right, and I know that almost immediately the island drops away into a chasm that must be two or three hundred feet deep. I can hear the ocean rushing into it. Snarling, snapping at the rocks below and sending an amplified roar almost straight up into the air. I guide {the hostage he's rescuing} away from it, half-dragging her, until we reach a small cluster of rocks and I push her flat into the ground behind them. I tear away the tape that binds her wrists, then roll her on to her back to peel away the strip of it over her mouth.

As you'll see from my rating there were some issues with the way the story unfolded, plot holes, a looseness with the timeline; but you also see how exciting the story is. This is proof Author May began writing in the vineyards of television...you can see the above in your inner TV room, I'm sure...before retiring to the vineyards of the South of France to write exciting novels. I like this one best of all of them I've read.

HEAR THE DEAD, tinnitus as haunting

HEAR THE DEAD
ANN DÁVILA CARDINAL
Sourcebooks Landmark (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$7.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From award-winning author Ann Dávila Cardinal comes an edgy, genre-bending thriller following a retired photographer who begins to hear the murders of women she knew in her punk youth, forcing her to reckon with the past she's desperate to forget.

One woman. A string of unsolved murders. Only she can hear the victims.

Elena Altieri never wanted to be famous, and certainly not at sixty-six years old. For over forty years she's been hiding from her New York City punk rock youth in the hills of Vermont, but now, the past is catching up with her in more ways than one. Not only is she losing her hearing, but the photographs she took of a recently deceased musician are going viral. Suddenly, she finds herself summoned back to the city for an exhibit celebrating her work and thrust into a world she'd hoped to keep locked away forever. A world where her best friend, Sin, is dead.

At the exhibit, Elena hears the screams of a woman ringing among the hum of her tinnitus, and she's sure something horrible has occurred. But since no one else can hear them, she convinces herself it's just her damaged ears playing tricks. She tries to put the event behind her, but when the auditory visions continue whenever she touches something of Sin's, she becomes convinced she's hearing her friend's murder. Desperate for answers, she has no choice but dig into the past, and what she'll uncover will not only force her to reckon with her own fractured memories, but might prove that Sin, and other innocent women from their youth, were the victims of an unspeakable crime that only she can solve. Old punks never die, and Elena's going to prove that.

Edgy, mysterious, and full of heart, Hear the Dead is at once an inventive and biting story following one aging woman desperate to solve crimes from her past, and a thought-provoking meditation on friendship, justice, and what it means to remember who we are.

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

My Review: Elena's not a lot younger than me; she lived in 1980s New York like me; she has tinnitus like me. I was primed to love her, to fall in love with her story. I didm't quite get all the way there. It was a slow climb up the story's mountain to the resolution, or as we in less sexually savvy times called the climax. Call it that in these pursey-mouthed prudey times and you'll get A Look from some "protect the children" overreactor.

Ahem.

Ann Dávila Cardinal uses the weird effects on what one can hear when afflicted with tinnitus to mysterious, spooky purposes for the first time in my long experience. Author Cardinal has Elena grow increasingly deaf from tinnitus by getting odd auditory hallucinations that relate, she thinks, to a hideously traumatic murder she...knows of...in her past.

I'm not being coy, there; the point of this entire story is the murder of lovely young Sin is not in Elena's memory as anything but a bald fact, unattached to details but imbued with dread and a sick discomfort buoying it up in the immense ocean of completely anonymized memories anyone over sixty knows full well. Now that the ringing in her ears is morphing into voices and a changing cast of them Elena is going to have to fish for facts among the sounds. Voices speak words. Voices have conversations. Voices resonate with the ringing of tinnitus, is the modulation into words or just...screaming? Is this Elena remembering Sin's death at last or is this Elena's guilt over...whatever happened, if she heard it is she surfacing something that could lead her to resolve Sin's long-ago murder?

Listen sharp.

From the floor I could shoot from an awesome angle. A guy’s face on the receiving end of a punch, blood and spit spraying out of this mouth. The growling expression of one of the bouncers as he pulled some kid right off his still-kicking feet. And my favorite shot of the night: tiny Josie Bluth, a powerful singer who Sin had worked with for a time, in her short plaid schoolgirl outfit and pigtails, hanging off the back of one of the goons who’d harassed me. I captured the exact moment when she bit off a piece of his ear.

A badass in her youth, a badass now: Elena listens intently to the screaming, with the intention of understanding what she is hearing. What a great way to use a very uncomfortable, isolating phenomenon. Elena was a big part of the "underground" scene of the 80s as a photographer, a visual chronicler of the times and places on the punk scene. How telling that she has no visual memory of the awful murder. She has blown-out ears ringing with voices, clamorous with screams, and her visual record of it...absent, gone, vanished, repressed. All of these? None of them? But decades of not knowing, of not consciously being able to assemble the reality into a picture, makes her photographers' eyes twitch.

There is a resolution. You get your answer.

What interested old-man me was Elena's clearly intense desire to make Sin's death right at last. She needs Sin to be in the explained column of Life's spreadsheet because, well, because Death is supposed to end, to finish, to stop. It was murder, as yet unsolved; Death does none of those things for the murdered, so Elena will now listen to her lovely friend's death until she hears the fact that is so terrible, so fearsome, that her photographer's eyes can't see it.

That's tough. That's badass.

That's love.

The astounding pounding that misogyny, that ableism, that crude powerplays wreaked havoc on Elena and her fellow women in that scene, that time, her Nuyorican culture were, I felt, overemphasized. Dramatic effect wears out, like opioid hits; at forst righteous anger burns, then punchdrunk disorientation, then numbness; Reality did all these things to all y'all but fiction has different rukes. I know Author Cardinal knows this. I can only think that she felt so strongly about this story that it *had*to*have all the blows, all the kicks, every cruelty from casual to calculated.

For this reader it stopped having the desired, needed, salutary effect.

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

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

Rating: 4.5* of five

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

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

Until Jacob disappears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No one who calumniates macarons shouuld get a HEA.

THE TAKEN GIRLS, Glenn Cooper thriller in his classic mode

THE TAKEN GIRLS
GLENN COOPER
Lascaux Media (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: From Glenn Cooper, the internationally bestselling author of the Cal Donovan thrillers, comes a gripping thriller of kidnapping, conspiracy, and what powerful men will do to hold on to what they have.

Two little girls vanish from a villa on the Calabrian coast—Victoria, five, and Elizabeth, eight, sisters, the granddaughters of an American billionaire. It looks at first like a kidnapping for ransom.

But no demand ever comes. No ransom means no one wanted money—they wanted the girls.

Years pass. Their grandmother's hair goes white. And then, on an ordinary afternoon, the girls come home. Victoria is still five. Elizabeth is still eight. The same faces, the same small hands—not a day older than the night they disappeared, and dying of something no child should carry.

Everyone wants a story that lets them sleep. The Vatican opens a quiet file on a miracle. The tabloids sell something stranger. But one man keeps pulling the thread everyone wants left alone—until it leads to an old Spanish estate, and to what the powerful will do to hold on to what they have.

Victoria and Elizabeth were not the first children taken. And they are still collecting.

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

My Review: It's never aliens. Or god. Never.

Just like the only monsters are people. For something to be SUPERnatural, we'd need to know everything that could ever happen naturally. A glance at the news will tell you we do not know everything that could happen naturally. So reading his very complex puzzle-box of a story was an exercise in seeing if the author could get me to the end without making me feel I'd been treated like a mushroom. (Kept in the dark and fed a lot of shit.)

I've read several of the author's religious-themed stories before, and found them like this one: Pleasantly diverting. I do wish he'd stop writing female characters, or take a sensitivity course...they're ciphers or stereotypes.

The patriarch who hires our omnicompetent investigator grated on my nerves. Marcus, said investigator, doesn't put a foot wrong that does not, in the end, result in the solution being moved forward. It's a bit annoying, but in line with most books in this chase-thriller genre. By the midpoint of the story there was a clutter of problems that were either going to get solved or niggle at me as unfinished business; nothing got left behind but it made the ending a breathless rush. That's fine for me but y'all who prefer endings that peel back layers will not enjoy it because it will feel rushed. I myownself would say it's calculatedly fast-paced, but that'a a poTAYto poTAHto argument I've found is not worth anyone's time getting into.

It was a read that engaged me but gave me no one to root for because the people were believably shitty. It's a good distraction that will never play games with your trust, people you don't like don't suddenly turn out to be sweetness and light playing a role (a trope I abhor) or suddenly doing other about-faces. The story resolves in line with its parameters only not quite so simply as one is led to expect. Nice work on that, Glenn Cooper!

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.

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.

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

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.

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT JULY, stalking is a real, dangerous crime with consequences

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT JULY
KAT HAUSLER
Meerkat Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Simon Kemper is on the up and up–he’s out of rehab, and his band is gaining moderate success around Berlin. But out of the corner of his eye and over his shoulder, he’s always aware of her. The stalker. She’s at every show, no matter what city. She sends hundreds of postcards to his label. Worst of all, she acts like she knows him. Like she owns him.

When the stalker disappears at one of his shows, Simon is the prime suspect. Initially an effort to clear his name, his search for July quickly becomes a deeper psychological quest: to prove that his fears were warranted? That she couldn’t have given up her obsession that easily? The threads of July’s disappearance turn out to be tangled into every corner of Simon’s life: a trusted band member, a tenuous new love interest, a resentful ex, and the self he’s supposedly left behind.

Narcissistic, insecure, and consummately relatable, Simon is the anti-hero of his own life—trying to want to be better; hoping that’s enough.

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My Review: Enjoyable story of a guy, pretty average musician, pretty average addict, making an effort to clean himself and his life up. Then there's the small issue of a woman obsessed with him, called July. There's a weirdness in her obsession: how does she know so much about him?

I really wouldn't like this oft-told tale much at all...why do men without much going for them seem to attract women so easily and then get them obsessed?...because it feels like fantasy fulfillment. Ever since Fatal Attraction it's been peopling the landscape of thrillerdom.

What caught my attention was the vanishing of July. I've been stalked online, I know the worst of it is the sheer absurdity of a person's unsought, unencouraged, obsession causing the object real consequences. But this story adds a different layer in the stalker vanishing and leaving a void that must be filled by some sort of legal resolution. This is Germany, after all, and there must always be a resolution or whatever rent on the social fabric it is remains open and actively pursued. July was always going to get a period at the end of her sentence in Simon's story.

That it proved to be a weirdly condign chapter, not sentence, in his story, one that involved unexpected other players and motives, was the reason I didn't dismiss the read. The reason thrillers satisfy me is they offer more...open-ended...solutions to the the grosser insults to Ma'at's order. In this story the results of the crime committed were equitably meted out. That they were also unorthodox felt much more satisfying than milder law-n-order solutions available to the author.

I was not initially drawn into the read. What happened was I had put the story down, thinking it would be another male-fantasy tropefest; I couldn't quite shake it though, kept processing it behind the noise of Life, because the author's a woman. Why would she choose to write that?

She didn't. I came back and finished the story thinking I'd at least get an answer to why one character felt...wrong...and, well, yes indeed that was the point. It wasn't clear to me why the ending was heading in a direction that seemed very much at odds with what I thought it was going to be. That was a satisfying twist, Author Hausler. I enjoyed it.

So, lesson learned: attend to the still, small voice that suggests you're not quite seeing what you think you are. A solidly crafted thriller about a dangerous crime that never gets the belief the victim deserves unless they're very lucky.

USING GIFT CARDS: Edelweiss+ 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. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Mr Campion's Christmas
Mike Ripley
Severn House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$2.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Campions are snowed in at Christmas, but j ust when they think it can't get any colder, their holidays take an even chillier turn.

1962, Norfolk. Boxing Day looks set to be a quiet affair for the Campions when they are snowed in at their remote farmhouse, Carterers - until a charabanc full of 'pilgrims' travelling from London to the Shrine of Our Lady in nearby Walsingham crashes into their imposing granite gateposts and the family unexpectedly find themselves playing host to the eccentric passengers.

But any lingering festive cheer is in short supply when a shocking discovery is made the following day, while a terrifying twist reveals that some of the guests are not who they seem. Which—if any—can they trust? Suddenly hostage to events, the Campions are drawn into a fiendish web of espionage as the Cold War comes chillingly close to home.

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

My Review: Set today, this final installment of Ripley's continuation of the Albert Campion Golden Age mysteries has Lady Amanda, Rupert, and Lugg doing their festive celebrating in the countryside...and Lugg piloting "Santa's Sleigh" aka Lady Amanda's works Land Rover in Yule drag.

Isn't that an image?

The passengers troop into Carterers, the family's Norfolk-countryside escape from the city, much to every Campion's distress; of course, as it's a literal blizzard outside, they make the stranded pilgrims to a Walsingham shrine welcome. They are signally lacking a driver among them,and thus kicks off the several stages of the murder investigation.

As always, the events in the story hew closely to known and checkable facts, like the blizzard that happened in Norfolk that Boxing Day. Lady Amanda's works (factory in US terms) is targeted for Cold War espionage, which I daresay is something all of us can remember taking place (the war, not the fictional spying), and so we're grounded in trustworthy reality for Ripley to base his fiction atop.

The murder, the weird assortment of religious pilgrims and US war personnel, Lady Amanda's capitalist war machine supplying works, Campion and Lugg doing their sleuthing double act...it's all good fun and results in a resolution that plays fair, still without spilling the beans too soon.

Author Ripley has continued the Allingham series creditably for a number of books. It seems a shame he's decided to make this one his final outing as the pilot of the Campion bus by crashing one into Carterers' gatepost, but permaybehaps it felt fitting to him. I will watch for the next thing he decides to do.

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

THE CONSPIRACIES OF THE EMPIRE (Judge Dee Investigation #2)
QIU XIAOLONG
Severn House (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The legendary Judge Dee Renjie returns, in this lyrical combination of mystery, history and ancient Chinese politics from the author of the renowned Inspector Chen mysteries

In Tang dynasty China, Empress Wu—seductive, ambitious and vindictive—rules with an iron fist. Her premier minister, Judge Dee Renjie, is honored to be trusted by her. But when she orders him to carry out an urgent investigation into the disappearance of disgraced poet Luo Binwang, he can't see why the matter is of such vital importance.

Luo Binwang joined a doomed uprising against Her Majesty, and vanished after the final, bloody battle. Is he missing—or dead? Either way, now that the rebellion has been mercilessly quashed, what harm could a poor, elderly poet do?

Traveling out of the great capital of Chang'an, accompanied by his loyal manservant Yang, Judge Dee launches a painstaking investigation, in the hopes of achieving what the empress' secret police could not. But the journey is marred by ill omens, and with death and disaster following his every step, Judge Dee soon begins to wonder if the empress trusts him as much as he thought . . .

This powerful mystery, set in ancient China, will appeal to fans of Robert Van Gulik's novels featuring the semi-fictional historical character Judge Dee, and includes an appendix of poems from some of China's finest Tang dynasty poets, newly translated by the author, who is an award-wining poet and critic in his own right.

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

My Review: I ate up the van Gulik series in the 1970s. I have never been so ready to get into a new take on the character from classic mystery days...Robert van Gulik started publishing his take on the Chinese character in fiction in 1951...as in this instance. I was not disappointed. Author Qiu's Inspector Chen mysteries have entertained me for twenty-five years now, so I knew I was in for a good reading experience. I liked his choice to set the story in the more appropriate seventh-century Tang dynasty, unlike van Gulik's more Western-reader friendly sixteenth-century Ming setting that we're all more familiar with.

I think my feelings about poetry are well known to most who read my reviews (I'm agin it) and here I am pushing a story centered around a poet, written by a poet and scholar, at you. I reserve the right to be inconsistent. Judge Dee, to give him the Western-accepted name, is an old man who should not be traveling over rough roads and sleeping wherever he finds himself to re-investigate a death the secret police have thoroughly raked over for plots and treason...Poet Luo died rebelling against Empress Wu. The Empress wants him to do it so off the Judge goes. You don't say "no, I'm too old and ill to do that" to someone who has ordered the horrific deaths she has lest you be next.

It's now I must tell you that this is not as much a mystery as an historical fiction literary novel with a puzzle of sorts to push its plot down the action hill. It's super vibes heavy, with an appalling tyrant creating a paranoid culture of personality, an atmosphere of unrest and resistance, and an old man who thinks he's probably going to die doing this job for the tyrant he privately disrespects. (Spoiler alert: he doesn't.)

I did object to the poetry that clogged the story's channels adding nothing but dragging like heavy, caked on clay to my readerly need for action. I was ready not to be whirled into motion like a 1950s 87th Precinct procedural, but wow is there a lot of verse. There's also some excellent food description, and good ol' Yang's as dolefully fun as ever in any version of the Dee stories.

As Author Qiu makes clear in the historical notes of the Afterword, Di Goong An is an amalgam of real crime-solver and the platonic ideal of one. Think Eliot Ness in The Untouchables. I enjoyed the history lesson and the assurance we were reading real events from this period's annals.

Not for the plot-driven reader, but catnip for the vibes-led lover of atmosphere.

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

THE CONDOR'S RIDDLE
MARCELO ANTINORI
Secant Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.00 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Who is the dead man lying in front of the convent in Santa Clara by the Sea? Was he already dead before he died in Santa Clara?

Bebéi, a simpleminded French archivist with a photographic memory, must solve an ever-deepening mystery to calm the streets. But it will also take a village of friends and a Caribbean ex-president who lives among cats; a Chinese stripper with a doll face; a Rastafarian workaholic; a Greek sea captain; even a remorseful German terrorist, who shares a vagabond life on the church stairs with a runaway Wall Street investor and a stoned Canadian hippie.

With these and other characters, The Condor's Riddle adds to the exotic literature of Latin America, where timeworn splendors provide a haunting backdrop for the tragicomedy of modern times.

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

My Review: Clever, fourth-wall-breaking narration is the main motivating force in the story, similar to the old rom-com Don Juan de Marco. The cast is *huge* as the narrator warns you at the beginning of the story. I was often just riding the wave of narrative energy,wondering if this or that character was someone I'd met before.

The book is more about the characters, all skatey-eight bajillion of 'em, than the mystery of who killed the guy who dies. Bebéi has a photographic memory, and is characterized uncomfortably often as "simple" in what regard I didn't ever get. He's like Chance the gardener in Being There. He observes fully and completely; he absorbs relatively little. So what he is in relation to the story being told is more or less a camera, so we're really in a cinematic story.

Why that was fun for me, I suppose, is that the author committed to it, was fully in that intention, throughout the read. No excursions into interiority interrupted the characters' full and complete presence on the page. I read a movie, I suppose gets at the effect on me as I rolled along being narrated to. I might not have enjoyed that experience had the story itself not been so fully visual. The sensory world of the Caribbean is, to my northern experience, intensely visual, secondarily auditory and olfactory. That's the way the Brazilian author presents it to us. It was a very immersive experience for me.

It's also a pretty tendentiously political book. I say that to allow the head-in-the-sanders to decide on it for themselves if they care to risk the reality of the life of others being laid out to them. I did feel some of the more intense physiological politics were more protracted than was strictly necessary. I was edified by the excursion into indigenous beliefs occasioned by a discovery around the identity of the dead guy that you'll need to experience for yourself.

If you're in the mood for a brightly colored exploration of Caribbean life, with dark ugly secrets making deeply contrasting shadows, in its total affect feeling like you're reading a spy thriller set in hot, bright lands, this is the way to spend that gift card.

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

RED TIDE
IRMA VENTER (tr. Karin Schimke)
Catalyst Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$10.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Deep in the South African Karoo, a small desert town runs red with old grudges and deadly secrets.

Three years after his niece is found dead the week of her wedding, Jaap Reyneke, a retired detective, is still doggedly looking for answers. Why was her body displayed so carefully, like a macabre art installation? Who erased all correspondence from her devices? But the townspeople of Carnarvon seem content to let dead bodies lie.

Desperate for help, Jaap turns to Sarah Fourie, a convicted hacker seeking reprieve from her own demons. Together, they sniff out the truth of Janien's death, setting in motion a chain of events that will tear the town apart from within.

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

My Review: South Africa fascinates me because it has so many of the same disfiguring flaws as US culture has, and an ugly side it likes to pretend it doesn't have like the US does. I've watched its soap operas in an effort to get to grips with what it thinks of itself; I read its mysteries and thrillers to find out what scares it from within.

Jaap's retired from the police force, but Janien's unresolved death, a murder without closure, refuses to let him rest. He needs more skilled help to get information from the internet age that, frankly, does not interest him nor does he want to get into its guts. Enter Sarah, convicted of hacking for profit, and now seeking redemption. How better than to get the data Jaap needs to finally close Janien's murder?

It's a good mystery, keeps a solid pace, plays fair...but wow, does the author need some computer tech lessons. This being fiction, I get the need to compress time scales but hacking is not as straightforward nor as quick to produce results as this story suggests. I felt I needed to withhold a star for that; but the reason Janien was murdered, the ugliness the solution uncovered, and Jaap's dogged quest to fix this rent in Ma'at's fabric all compelled me to keep the pages turning.

As the motive for multiple crimes came to light the story had a fascinating tonal shift. A matter-of-factness entered the narrative that, the more I thought about it, was so much more pointedly a comment on the sickness of the world that hides, empowers, allows suchlike than a more condemnatory tone would've been that I got a chill. That's the half-star returned.

I hope we'll see more of Irma Venter's work in English soon.

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

SHUDDER PULP (Charley Scott Mystery #2)
VANESSA WESTERMANN
Cormorant Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$24.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Leaves are turning red in cottage country, and Charley Scott is putting on an immersive Halloween pulp art installation based on a local lake monster legend. But life imitates art when Laura, a mercenary newcomer with a controversial agenda for the dam, claims she was attacked by a lake monster she accuses Charley of raising.

Hours later, Laura is found dead by dry drowning.

Accident, murder, or a lethal encounter with a mythical beast? Tension mounts as snaking tracks, an animal carcass, and a witch’s ladder are found near the lake, but could there truly be supernatural forces at work?

Charley teams up with chocolatier Matt Thorn to investigate, but it’ll take more than seafoam toffee to bait this trap. To find the truth, Charley will have to risk it all to look the monster in the eye.

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

My Review: Dry drowning had never crossed my attention before now; there's a reason for that. I didn't start this read all that confident in the author's basis for the story even before that, as cryptid stories make my eyes roll so far I can see my brain.

Sounds like I'm about to light into Author Westermann, doesn't it. Consider the countervailing forces, though: cozy autumnal lakeside setting; Canada, that put-upon northern neighbor of the US; and a woman declining to leave the investigation of a death the deceased had accused her of causing before kicking the bucket to the police. Even though "the police" come in the form of her sister's boyfriend.

Soldiering on was not painful, even though I was not starting out that well, because I resonated as described and because I was drawn quietly along by the unshowy, unadorned narrative voice. Charley being our PoV character, we hear her more than any other in the third-person narrative. It makes her initial confrontation with the victim much more engrossing, immediate, than if we'd been in the omniscient or even the first-person narrative voice (I always wonder how first-person narrators see such fine-grained detail in action moments.)

Laura's secrets, her private plans, all come to light with appropriate speed and timing. Meghan, Charley's sister, is a journalist so a lot is due to her efforts; Meghan's boyfriend being The Law around their town makes her access believable. Matt, Charley's boyfriend, is of some help to her in the effort to resolve this threat, but he is (believably) involved in events happening in his own business. It doesn't beggar belief how supportive he is, because he's got limits and she respects them.

A cozy story indeed with that kind of scoobygroup. Each character adds their piece to the puzzle; each piece fits in a place that looks one way before it was added, another way after that. People in their town have just had the big October Thanksgiving rush of tourists so have free energy to spend on the murder investigation...some helping, others hiding evidence or knowledge.

This is the second mystery in the series featuring Charley and the townsfolk. I haven't read the first. It was not difficult to find my way through the characters and plot; I expect it will get harder if one were to start after this story because we are in a very dense web of relationships that will only get harder to untangle, to get inside and see from its best angle.

So start here, pick the series up with your gift cards and settle in to cozy Canadian killings.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

REMI BONE, funny...serious...fun the way the best of crime novels can be

REMI BONE
WILLIAM L. MYERS Jr.
Oceanview Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.99 paperback, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Single father Remi Bone knows that his daughter’s Ivy League education will cost an arm and a leg . . . or a few bodies

Remi Bone is a good guy. He’s a hardworking mechanic, a single father raising his late wife’s daughter, and now, he’s dying of heart failure. But his daughter Kayla was just admitted to the college of her dreams. How will she afford college with two dead parents?

Before he dies, Remi decides to stockpile as much money as possible for Kayla’s future. When a chance to participate in a lucrative gun-for-hire scheme arises, Remi, out of desperation, agrees to execute a hit on a shady Philadelphia drug dealer.

This becomes only the first of several murders Remi is hired for, and soon, Remi’s the most sought-after hitman in town—both by his clients and by the police. He leaves investigators little to work with, but ear witnesses identify him by the phrase he recites before each “Tick tock says the clock, time’s up . . . ”With the police catching on to the “Tick Tock Killer,” Remi has to work quickly to earn enough money for Kayla’s school—all while ensuring he dies with a clean record. Tick tock.

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

My Review: The "good-guy-does-'bad'-for-good" trope is fun to read. I like Breaking Bad despite Walter White's odiousness, so no matter Remi's traits I was ready to give him a fair shake. Turns out I like him fine, he's a stand-up guy who faces an ugly death by thinking of the child he loves not his own little self.

The uncharitable might also say he's in denial, running away from the end of a life he thinks is not worth living anymore. I think maybe both are true, and neither are as complete explanations as Remi's character supports. Author Myers, a lawyer by trade, knows how to put on layers of implication and unstated emotional truths. Remi turning to being a hit-man, one who kills only the ones who need killin' as I often say, is factually stockpiling money for his stepdaughter's future. But why turn to it now? Because, with a deadline (!) fast approaching he isn't going to face consequences. He can do the right, but illegal, thing. He has courage at last.

Why not before? And how is this pile of suddenly-acquired money he's leaving Kayla going to be explained to the IRS without causing her huge problems? Are the Authorities and the bosses ignorant of who he is? It's the reason I give this read over four stars that the answer is no to all these questions. Remi's, umm, sordid past isn't foregrounded to the point one thinks he's expiating sins, but is added to explain things that enable him to turn forty-five degrees from a law-abiding life.

What kept the fifth star from manifesting was an ending so rushed, so chaotic, that I felt I was watching a montage of Pulp Fiction, Bullitt, and The French Connection. I'm always about the dismount as much as the story-dressage. I think this book, at under 300pp, might've benefited from ~50pp more to wind things up more comprehensibly. Still a ride I'm glad I took. I think anyone who enjoys a leavening of humor in their crime fiction, a load of pathos, and a really easy-to-root-for protagonist will enjoy this trip on Philly's dark side.

THE NOTE, ALAFAIR BURKE's latest thriller

THE NOTE
ALAFAIR BURKE
Alfred A. Knopf (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A vacation in the Hamptons goes terribly wrong for three friends with a complicated history.

It was meant to be a harmless prank.

Growing up, May Hanover was a good girl, always. Well-behaved, top of her class, a compulsive rule-follower. Raised by a first-generation Chinese single mother with high expectations, May didn’t have room to slip up, let alone fail. Her friends didn’t call her the Little Sheriff for nothing.

But even good girls have secrets. And regrets. When it comes to her friendship with Lauren and Kelsey, she's had her fair share of both. Their bond—forged when May was just twelve years old—has withstood a tragic accident, individual scandals, heartbreak and loss. Now the three friends have reunited for the first time in years for a few days of sun and fun in the Hamptons. But a chance encounter with a pair of strangers leads to a drunken prank that goes horribly awry.

When she finds herself at the center of an urgent police investigation, May begins to wonder whether Lauren and Kelsey are keeping secrets from her, testing the limits of her loyalty to lifelong friends.

What had they gone and done?

The Note is a page-turner of the highest order from one of our greatest contemporary suspense writers.

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

My Review: Every single person in this book is supremely, unpleasantly toxic. This is by design, not incompetence on the author's part; she's imbibed storycraft with her every breath, being James Lee Burke's child. As a choice, then, I can only call it questionable because most of us...even thriller readers...prefer to see someone in the cast we can at least believe will end up in a better place than they have started. It doesn't help that May, our more central character, gets a lot of carping criticism at every turn from Lauren and Kelsey (her lifelong "friends"). Which, to be scrupulously honest, she returns with interest. Not one of them seems to realize every finger they're pointing at the others has four times as many pointing right back at them.

So the cast didn't elicit my readerly sympathy. I was more interested in their barbs, their curious blindness to their own flaws, as they went away for a girls' escape weekend to the Hamptons after they've each suffered a more or less public shaming. Reconnecting amid the hustle of adulthood can work wonders and revive a relationship or crash and burn. I was sure it would be the latter as May seemed to me to be a bit too tunnel-visiony, Kelsey too unconcerned about her shaming, and Lauren too smug for Author Burke to be setting anything else up.

What kept me going wasn't suspense, exactly, since who did the awful thing that's done was not hard to guess, but the way Author Burke unfolded it. It's an episode of Real Housewives of {Awful-Place Name Here} meets Knives Out. There's slap-and-tickle levels of sex; the women are plainly out for the thrill but we're not taken along for the consummation. The violence of death isn't in your face, either, which can be the case in thrillers versus series mysteries. It isn't ever going to be my steady diet but as a menu of tapas it was fun enough and fine in the craft sense. I was surprised at enjoying the ending as much as I did.

May's Chinese heritage plays a role in the proceedings that I was mildly over-aware of but I decided early on it was me not the story. I get twitchy when "race" (loathsome inaccurate term) rears its deformed deforming skull. Her trajectory is pretty predictable. Kelsey's slightly older place and Lauren's ultra-privileged position don't make for shocking reveals. They're who they appear to be from giddy-up to whoa. It's a good afternoon's reading, it will definitely keep the holiday bustle at bay, the investment of time and treasure is modest...a winning proposition.

SALVAGIA, super-plausible drowned Florida technothriller

SALVAGIA
TIM CHAWAGA
Diversion Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A near-future, sci-fi mystery reminiscent of Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140 and inspired by John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series, in which a salvage diver discovers the body of the most infamous man in the Florida yoreshore, putting her in the crosshairs of both feds and corporate mafias.

Triss Mackey was flying just under the radar, exploiting a government loophole that let her live quietly on the Floating Ghost—her rented, sentient CabanaBoat. In exchange, she merely had to dive for recycling recovered from the underwater, formerly-coastal cities. If she happened to find some Salvagia—nostalgic salvage, valued artifacts from the beforetime, which is to say our present—well that's just between her and the highest bidder. It's not a glamorous life, but it's not so bad.

That is, until the federal government begins pulling out of the Florida coast and retreating to their OrlanDome. The corporate mafias are poised to seize power, none more so than Mourning in Miami, led by the legendary Edgar Ortiz, owner of the Astro America megahotel. Triss needs one last score, something worth enough to buy the Ghost outright and keep her free from both the feds and the corporations. And she needs it now, before the Ghost is sent to a watery, insurance-scamming grave.

But when she discovers the chained up, drowned corpse of Ortiz on a dive, Triss finds herself stuck between the investigating government agents and the Mourning in Miami elites until Riley, Ortiz’s son, offers her a third if she can help him unravel Mourning in Miami's conspiracy and solve his father’s death, they can track down a valuable piece of Salvagia, a score worth well beyond what Triss needs to save the Ghost and, maybe, find a new, better way of Florida living.

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

My Review: I knew I'd like the read when drowned Florida had something its floating inhabitants call the "yoreshore"...like today's foreshore, it's a liminal place, prone to change with the tides; named after the old, drowned shoreline. Triss is very clearly modeled on hardboiled Travis McGee, and I liked the sentient boat the Floating Ghost in an update of the Busted Flush of yore.

Like Travis on the Busted Flush, Triss wants nothing more than to be let alone to live in peace. Only we all know that ain't gonna happen, she's livin' in the loopholes of the dying society that clings harder than ever to control of its people. Travis was always buttin' heads with by-the-book sorts. Triss's boat life of salvaging the remains of our vanished lifestyle...called salvagia...is much the same: an affront to those who can't tolerate anyone not being like them.

Unless, of course, those people are playing ball and bribing Officialdom to look the other way while things happen that can benefit everyone. Like Edgar Ortiz, the "crime boss" indistinguishable from the officials unless you squint. Someone squinted hard enough to decide Edgar Ortiz didn't need to suck air anymore...and Triss, after locating excellent salvagia while dodging cyborg gators, locates Edgar chained up under the sea sucking water. "Dead" is so prosaic a term, no?

Chaos ensues, of course...not least because Riley, Edgar's son, is now with her...but also because the balance of power is wrecked. There's clearly something breaking in the world, and it's powerfully manifesting in what was once Florida...Church of the Invisible Hand, the Miami Mourners, Interluner Transport Haulers, and others are all carving out insane little fiefdoms and following looney belief systems in them. No wonder the remnant federal power preferred Edgar Ortiz.

Or did they? Triss is certainly in someone powerful's crosshairs and needs to figure out whose before they take a fatal shot at her.

You've all heard of the uncanny valley before. It's been used most often to describe the awfulness that is AI slop images. Here it is in novel form. This is Florida 2045, plausibly, and it feels really weird to think that thought. Triss is a real libertarian Florida gal, in her sentient henchboat the Floating Ghost. She wants nothing to do with the Authorities but has no choice while Edgar Ortiz's discovery is hanging over her. Her acquaintances thereabouts are motivated by Big Causes, things like climate justice and community formation and support...where Triss wants a score big enough to buy the Floating Ghost for her own, not live aboard at an owner's whim. Sure, she'll help out...but commit herself? To anything not her own?

No.

She is, then, our world's great survivor in her selfish focus. She's Travis McGee's great-granddaughter in spirit if not fact. It made her a bit hard for me to warm to; but I found the world she's in, the way she works that world for her own benefit, compelling reading.

Please don't emulate her, just read about her exploits and enjoy the dense worldbuilding. I suspect that, if you make it 10% or more in, you're in to stay. It's a fun place for you, your sci-fi adventure reader giftee, and the young STEM-interested teen in your circle to have a good Sunday's reading.