DIRT ROAD HOME, charming young-adult/coming-of-age novel I expected not to like but did

DIRT ROAD HOME
ALEXANDER NADER
Winding Road Stories (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$2.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: City kid Logan Davis is about to find the family he never knew he was missing at the end of a country road.

Logan has no interest in leaving Detroit. But when his impulsive mother shoves him and his brother, Dex. in the back of her old Buick to chase her newest husband in Tennessee, he thinks heading south will be the end of the world. A physical confrontation with a local football star on his first night in town seems to confirm his worst notions.

Prepared to encounter every stereotype in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, Logan soon discovers his new home might not be all that different. His knack for fixing up fast cars helps him fit right in with the wild and loud southern attitude. A chance encounter at a back road street race leads him directly into the path of the undeniable spirit of the south; her name is Leah.

Dirt Road Home is a novel about finding yourself and realizing that sometimes you have to travel five hundred miles away from your house to find your home.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: My god, I hear regular readers saying under their breaths, what the hell got into this old man? TWO books you can call YA in two days...with four stars!

Yep. The publisher reached out to me on Twitter before the book came out...not all the way sure why...and said "you'll like this book." And I did, really surprising myself most of all.

Logan's a kid about to become a young man. He's got some skills at car-related mechanical work. He's got a mother who's a disaster at picking men. He's got a jock as an enemy in their new town. His just-barely-younger brother is his wing man, and his fellow gearhead. It's all gonna go just swell, ain't it, thinks annoyed frustrated Logan.

Cue the girl, please.

Leah's the kind of girl who goes to the street races. Not with someone, she goes on her own because she likes it. The best thing about this story for me was the way these two slightly weird kids felt the gravity of each others' existence. There's the key to the story being a coming of age/young adult book: they have that feeling for each other and the whole time, they don't even question it. They're each thrilled with their luck.

Then there's the man his mother dragged her boys to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to be with. Another disaster, I though cynically. Another antagonist. Indeed not, cynics. Greg is the absolute best guy...patient, kind, accepting...that everyone in the family could have hoped to meet. He's a prince among men.

I *did* say it was aimed at young adults.

Why I liked it, though, was the economical prose wasn't at the expense of the characters being realized. It felt to me that the details Author Nader gave us were quite simple, but carefully chosen.

My phone beeps, interrupting my late-night, early-life crisis.

–and–

I'm trying to decide if it would look better if I dug a giant sleep-booger out of my eyeball or just left it and hope she doesn't notice.

I came away thinking Logan finally got something good out of the craptastic life his mother had led for them. I was glad for them all that Greg (for unknowable reasons) decided this was the woman he wanted out of the billions there are. Luck for them all, he did.

I'm surprised at how much pleasure I got from this long-afternoon's read. I hope y'all give the story a chance to beguile you, too.

ON SPINE OF DEATH, laugh-out-loud cozy mystery & THE STORYTELLER'S DEATH, Ann Dávila Cardinal's mystery-tinged fantasy

THE STORYTELLER'S DEATH
ANN DÁVILA CARDINAL
Sourcebooks Landmark (NON-AFFILIATE Amazon link)
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From International Latino Book Award-winning author Ann Dávila Cardinal comes a gorgeously written family saga about a Puerto Rican woman who finds herself gifted (or cursed?) with a strange ability.

There was always an old woman dying in the back room of her family’s house when Isla was a child...

Isla Larsen Sanchez’s life begins to unravel when her father passes away. Instead of being comforted at home in New Jersey, her mother starts leaving her in Puerto Rico with her grandmother and great-aunt each summer like a piece of forgotten luggage.

When Isla turns eighteen, her grandmother, a great storyteller, dies. It is then that Isla discovers she has a gift passed down through her family’s cuentistas. The tales of dead family storytellers are brought back to life, replaying themselves over and over in front of her.

At first, Isla is enchanted by this connection to the Sanchez cuentistas. But when Isla has a vision of an old murder mystery, she realizes that if she can't solve it to make the loop end, these seemingly harmless stories could cost Isla her life.

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

My Review: A young-adult fantasy-with-mystery that utterly charmed me. When Isla's unusual ability to recall, if that's the word, the stories of her family's past. If it involved one of her ancestors, she can see it! Like she was there! What a fascinating, and honestly useful, paranormal ability to have. She's got a window into her family's past that could be hugely important because, well, History is nothing but His Story and isn't it the greatest thing ever when Her Story can be told?! I was so excited!

"Reality" had to intervene, stupid boring reality!, just like it always does...not everything that happened in the past was pretty. We know this, but Isla can see it because her abuelita, on her death, passed the mantle of being a cuentista, Story-Woman, to her. Suddenly Isla's mother's sad descent into alcohol abuse and her consequent abandonments of Isla with her grandmother in Puerto Rico made more sense...it's never explicitly said, but Isla's mother seems like someone who really couldn't handle the very dark gift of becoming a cuentista. Isla's painful childhood of betrayal and loss and coping with mental illness's consequences uniquely prepares her to cope with the true burden of Remembering her family's history. And it gives her the strength to right old wrongs.

What a great idea, right?! And what a great market to target with this message, that everything that happens to you can be used to build something wonderful if you use it that way; something I truly wish more people were taught from little on up to spike the victim gun we tend to hold at our own heads. Isla's struggles with grief...her own, her mother's...at her father's early death were not dwelt on or minimized. Her mother's ongoing struggles with alcoholism are honestly, forthrightly presented as the major issue they can't help but be, yet aren't sensationalized or pounded into dust as the hobby-horse gets ridden. I was completely delighted with the storytelling voice, as well. In all, this sounds like a five-star rave, doesn't it...so why's there a "4" in front of the "5"?

Because, in service of speed I suppose, Isla faces next to no obstacles in her quest to understand the decidedly mixed blessing of becoming a cuentista. Anyone she needs to speak to, they're still alive and they're available now and they're eager to help. Hmm, that's a bit too easy...then there's the underexamined role of colonialism (internalized and not) inherent in stories about Puerto Rico's past and how that impacts her grandmother's growing up, her mother's choices, the whole kit and caboodle. The stories and their injustices were, it's true, redolent with the issues of racism and colorism, but these factors could have benefited from some further reflection in Isla's viewpoint's evolution. It's a small niggle. And it's way more than outweighed by the delight I felt in immersion into a family whose language world is Spanish-inflected English. This is something I very much enjoy and, while I'm bringing it up to you as a positive, there are readers who won't feel comfortable with it and thus might make their decision to read the story or not on that factor.

On the whole I wish they would take the plunge and get the book from the library. Try the waters! There's nothing to lose except a small investment of time in that case. The strong possibility, in my view, of broadening one's horizons a bit more is well worth the risk. It's a lovely story and Cuentista Dávila Cardinal has the chops to bring you along on one really excellent ride.

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

ON SPINE OF DEATH
TAMARA BERRY (By the Book Mysteries #2)
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$8.99 mass market, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Don't miss the second installment of this gripping and funny bookish cozy mystery series by Tamara Berry! This case isn't just cold, it's practically frozen shut...

In the aftermath of solving their first murder, bestselling author Tess Harrow and her teenage daughter Gertrude have decided to stay in Winthrop permanently. Now that they've made some updates to their cabin in the woods, they're turning to the family hardware store that Tess inherited and converting it into the town's first independent bookstore. But when renovations unearth bones from a cold case and send them toppling—literally—onto Tess's head, the work comes to a grinding halt. With the whole town convinced that her grandfather was a serial killer, Tess has to call in a fellow horror author for reinforcements. Together, they'll come up with a perfect story to make all the clues fit...and solve a mystery more than thirty years in the making.

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

My Review: Not many writers will 'fess up to their weirdest research methods. Tess Harrow doesn't have a lot of choice...she's tied to a chair in a basement struggling to get free (research!) when the floor above her collapses. That, my friends, is how you open a story!

When Tess, a bestselling thriller writer and mother of a teenaged girl, needs to make a big change in her life, the opportunity to take over her late grandfather's hardware store and cabin in small-town Washington State arises. Teenager in tow, off Tess hares. It's quite clear that she won't be running a hardware store so she does what so many writers say they'd love to do and decides a bookstore is what the town needs! (The town was not consulted, but never mind.)

In the course of renovating the store, a skeleton is uncovered in a...peculiar...place. Then there's another one! All in her dear old grandfather's store! Was her belovèd grandfather a murderer?! Or if not, was he an accessory to murder? Either way, Tess wants to know (let's face it, she's stumbled into one helluva tale) and the local Sheriff doesn't much want to speed his investigation up just for this high-handed Bigfoot author from out of town. There are Procedures. They're there to make a case solid and an answer to the Big Questions of who, what, when, and why (where being known in this case) trustworthy and that's what matters to his law-enforcement officer self.

Tess, coming at this from three angles and none of them inspiring her to patience (store owner, granddaughter, thriller writer), naturally clashes with Slowpoke McPutt-putt. The sparks must fly, mustn't they, to make the needed heat for the series to rise to new heights? Add in the teenager's discomfiting fascination with Sylvie the coroner's job (to the point that she's shadowing the poor thing really, really closely as a school project), and there's a lot of moving parts. That's what makes the read so much fun...the way Author Berry keeps all the balls in the air and manages to cast your attention into the blind alleys she needs for it to be distracted by...well, it's fun to be in the presence of a skilled practitioner at her peak.

The renovations, the bodies, the people who just *happen* to be not quite who they say they are, the motives for the locals to take sides on the uncomfortable rooting about for answers to the Big Questions...all are standard elements handled in deft ways. They aren't surprises. They aren't meant to be, and they're all the more welcome for not being. I think the series will have legs because it's already got a smile of its own. It's presenting your ma'at-sensing organs with truth and justice but they're not as simplistically presented as they can sometimes be in series mysteries. There's thoughtful commentary on the way of the world, there's a damn-near evergreen scented evocation of the way small towns in the piney woods operate, there's the always-fun fish out of water growing into a local institution trope...remember Northern Exposure?...and it's done with panache, if not philosophical depth.

Great for the season's snatch-a-chapter-in-line reading habits because it's already episodic!

THE SEISHI YOKOMIZO PAGE (2): First English translations two of four Detective Kosuke Kindaichi novels, THE INUGAMI CURSE & THE VILLAGE OF EIGHT GRAVES

THE INUGAMI CURSE
SEISHI YOKOMIZO (Kosuke Kindaichi #2; tr. Yumiko Yamakazi)
Pushkin Vertigo
$14.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A fiendish classic murder mystery, from one of Japan’s greatest crime writers.

In 1940s Japan, the wealthy head of the Inugami Clan dies, and his family eagerly await the reading of the will. But no sooner are its strange details revealed than a series of bizarre, gruesome murders begins. Detective Kindaichi must unravel the clan's terrible secrets of forbidden liaisons, monstrous cruelty, and hidden identities to find the murderer, and lift the curse wreaking its bloody revenge on the Inugamis.

The Inugami Curse is a fiendish, intricately plotted classic mystery from a giant of Japanese crime writing, starring the legendary detective Kosuke Kindaichi.

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


PAGE ONE IS HERE★PAGE TWO IS HERE☆
PAGE THREE IS HERE★
My Review: Ex post facto narration isn't a trope for me to consume in rapid succession without psychic consequences, it seems.

When elderly Sahei Inugami finally has the grace to die already, he leaves behind the most viciously hateful will I can even conceive of. Much like the way Kindaichi gets into the family ugliness in Death on Gokumon Island via a request from someone who's dead now, the Inugami family lawyer calls on him to referee at the reading of this horrible will. Of course he dies on page three or thereabouts for his temerity.

What follows is a twisting, terribly sad recounting of the endless resonances of privilege in a family's life. Privilege won, in a society like Japan's pre-war was, counted for little...it was at best a grudging thing and this warped Inugami's experience of the prosperous life he wrested from an ill-willed social milieu. The man's surname means "dog god" and, since he was without a family, he had no way to know if it was something they'd have reason to take pride in or simply some long-vanished imaginative spark's cruel jest at him, an orphan.

The Inugamis of the next generations are warped by the curse of wealth, of deference given but grudged, and their lives made purposeless by their patriarch's iron control. His life ended far too late for the family not to be cruelly torqued into self-aggrandizing defensive arrogance. The children of the old man's mistresses, since their disadvantages were somehow socially sanctioned by being obvious, weren't entirely guilty...of more than usual awfulness, anyway.

What made this into a delightful set-up for a killing spree, also made it less than perfect: the presence of a gay couple whose dirty deeds made them unclean and unacceptable...period-appropriate and not exactly unknown as an attitude in present-day Japanese society. What bothered me the most, frankly, was the awful way a seriously disfigured war veteran was treated, described, dealt with; it all made his actions feel more like a man clawing back some dignity...too late and in the wrong way.

Translator Yumiko Yamazaki made some odd-sounding choices for my ears, e.g. choosing to switch between using the proper word kōtō and the oddly off-kilter transliteration "zither"...while the instruments are related they are not identical...despite making quite a palaver about defining a kōtō as a zither, she goes on to use both in the text. If there was some pattern to when and why the different words were used, I couldn't discern it. This played into a kind of story fatigue, an unforgiving hardening of my narrative-transporting arteries.

All in all, though, this survivor from Author Yokomizo's early publications presents a lovely and involving puzzle to solve, with several ancillary riddles on the edges of the main puzzle that were very interesting in themselves. I won't say it's perfect but I will say I've greatly enjoyed more time in Kindaichi-san's company.

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

THE VILLAGE OF EIGHT GRAVES
SEISHI YOKOMIZO (Kosuke Kindaichi #3; tr. Bryan Karetnyk)
Pushkin Vertigo
$14.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The third title in Japan’s most popular murder mystery series—after The Honjin Murders and The Inugami Curse—fiendish classics featuring investigator Kosuke Kindaichi.

Nestled deep in the mist-shrouded mountains, The Village of Eight Graves takes its name from a bloody legend: in the Sixteenth Century eight samurais, who had taken refuge there along with a secret treasure, were murdered by the inhabitants, bringing a terrible curse down upon their village.

Centuries later a mysterious young man named Tatsuya arrives in town, bringing a spate of deadly poisonings in his wake. The inimitably scruffy and brilliant Kosuke Kindaichi investigates.

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

My Review: "The Village of Eight Graves" has a terrible history, and a terrible genesis in violence and unchecked greed. The common run of its people are afraid of life; they believe, and thus find evidence for, their manifold misfortunes being rooted in a curse that hangs over their heads from a long-ago unforgivable act. They are thus creating those conditions, interpreting the common misfortunes of life in that context. Superstition is a powerful drug. It allows us to Be Right, and there is absolutely nothing humans like better, need more, will work as hard to attain and maintain, than Being Right.

Bet you're nodding along....

I wanted to Be Right that Author Yokomizo couldn't tell a poorly paced story. I was...Not Right. The issue with this read is that our usual omniscient Watsonesque narrator is not here. Instead we have an irritatingly dimwitted PoV character called Tatsuya, whose chills are very much on a par with Miss Silver's cough in the irritating-authorial-choice derby. He spends our time sort of vaguely bumbling around while stuff happens and people he has reason to kill up and die, and then Kindaichi-san pops up (as we knew he must but, if I'm honest, I couldn't tell you why or how this hard-luck burg caught his attention...it was that little melded into the story). So the killings and deaths, somehow all connected to the village's ancestral curse, will all stop. Right? Right. But this time it's not Kindaichi-san doing detecting. It's the rush of events that Tatsuya has trouble keeping up with that reveals the malefactors. Kindaichi-san is here as window dressing, like a late Poirot novel! *grumble*

I sense a furtive glance up at the rating...yes, that's a "4" in front of the "*". What...the.... Well, it's like this: the translator, Mr. Karetnyk, proved more than capable of exceeding Ms. Yamazaki, the previous book's translator's, occasionally clunky choices. That was a big plus. Then there was the sheer gonzo pace of the murdering that's happening in Tatsuya's orbit. I can't quit a mystery mid-murder spree! I'm not made of stuff that stern. And the spree being so obviously calculated to implicate Tatsuya, who (poor wee lambkin) only now learned that the father who raised him was not only not his real father but knew who that person was...and Tatsuya was really thrown into emotional chaos by the entire unfolding plot to entrap and incriminate him through his parentage's revelation.

Then, while the bodies were piling up and the exsanguination was about ankle-deep, we go on an historical treasure hunt! The awful crime the villagers committed all those years ago was, you see, fruitless; they did not find the treasure they had filled the titular eight graves for. And now that Tetsuya's here, there's a reason to have a treasure hunt! Why? I don't know, whatever, treasure hunt! Does it make sense? Not to me. I am long past suchlike ponderin' when it comes to these stories. The secret to enjoying them is to flow with the river.

In the end, isn't that sort of a life lesson? Flow with the current, don't resist the pulls and changes, be there wholly and let the events unfold...I enjoyed this read's atypical ending a lot. I admit I don't want another Tetsuya narrator any time soon, but there was a reason he had to be the one to tell this story. It wouldn't have worked any other way, hence my seemingly over-generous rating. But do factor the change of focus via narrator into your reading plans.

Now, Pushkin Vertigo, it's on y'all not to dangle us over the pit for too much longer! More soon, please.

THE SEISHI YOKOMIZO PAGE: First English translations two of four Detective Kosuke Kindaichi novels, THE HONJIN MURDERS & DEATH ON GOKUMON ISLAND

THE HONJIN MURDERS
SEISHI YOKOMIZO (Kosuke Kindaichi #1; tr. Louise Heal Kawai)
Pushkin Vertigo
$14.95 trade paper, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending September 15, 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: One of Japan's greatest classic murder mysteries, introducing their best loved detective, translated into English for the first time.

In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour - it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions around the village.

Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi household are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music. Death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house. Soon, amateur detective Kosuke Kindaichi is on the scene to investigate what will become a legendary murder case, but can this scruffy sleuth solve a seemingly impossible crime?

PAGE ONE IS HERE★PAGE TWO IS HERE☆
PAGE THREE IS HERE★

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

My Review: In a very Sherlock's-Watson fashion, the events of this premarital murder are narrated to us after the fact; we know, by this very technique, that the mystery is one that can be solved if we're game to follow the clues. Which clues? Well, the mystery-writer narrator and I are glad you asked:

When I first heard the story, I immediately racked my brain to think of any similar cases among all the novels I’ve read. The first that came to mind were Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room and Maurice Leblanc’s The Teeth of the Tiger; then there’s The Canary Murder Case and The Kennel Murder Case, both by S.S. Van Dine; and finally, Dickson Carr’s The Plague Court Murders. I even considered that variation on the locked room murder theme of Roger Scarlett’s Murder Among the Angells.

You really can't get a lot more fair-play than that, can you, giving the reader the crib sheet from which the author made choices and still, not to make it too easy by telling the reader *what* was cribbed from the Greats of the Golden Age. I found it endearing. I was very amused by the conceit, and by the writer/narrator following in the footsteps of the wildly disheveled amateur detective. Now...keep in mind this is a story written in the late 1940s and set in the 1930s. The idea of a Japanese man presenting himself as less than polished and perfect is damned near heretical. There was no beatnik, or proto-hippie, movement in Japan. It is a culture of Face, something I equate with my mother's endless mantra, "but what will People Think?" It's very, very important not to insult your neighbors, or your betters, by deciding to be different, to wear your Otherness on the outside...so featuring someone who's indifferent to Face in this mystery series is quite a powerful statement of value and intent on the author's part.

What's important for your pleasure in an amateur-sleuth read? An aura of verisimilitude? A relatable cast of characters? An evocation of a place and time? I'd venture to say that no one would behave the way the characters in this mystery do...but I could be wrong...at any rate, the point for me wasn't the verisimilitude (never is with amateur-sleuth mysteries, pace all you true-crime podcasters) but the delicious evocation of the time and the place:

A honjin was a kind of inn in feudal Japan where daimyo lords and other important officials would stay on their way to or from paying attendance on the Shogun in the capital, Edo—the old name for Tokyo. Ordinary members of the public were not permitted to stay at a honjin. A family who owned such a high-class lodging house were also members of the elite, and so it followed that this was a place where the rules of high society were closely adhered to.

The author, or more likely the editor and translator, gives me such a full and satisfying sense of the place with this simple paragraph. I wanted to feel transported and I did...as well as catered to, told a story to, and one that really did leave me guessing until the end. Very satisfying that Anglophone readers are getting this series (it has SEVENTY-SIX MORE VOLUMES!!) at long last...the author's only been dead since 1981. No rush, guys.

The things I wasn't quite so pleased to read were the class-conscious snobberies of the groom's family, presented without apparent or, to my mind, appropriate negativity cast on them. This being a thing that bothers me now, in the 21st century, I can't even try to guess if I'd even have noticed it had I read the book around the time the author died...almost forty years after it appeared. The snobbish tone is grating on old-man me, anyway. And the last chapter, number 18, is such a Golden-Agey thing...the way the guilty party is dealt with, the careful recounting of the places the clues were left...it was both what I wanted, and a hair too much to swallow in one draft.

If your mystery-story shelves are a touch too light, this is a good, solid, entertaining read...my crotchets aside.

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

DEATH ON GOKUMON ISLAND
SEISHI YOKOMIZO (Kosuke Kindaichi #4; tr. Louise Heal Kawai)
Pushkin Vertigo
$15.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Kosuke Kindaichi arrives on the remote Gokumon Island bearing tragic news – the son of one of the island’s most important families has died, on a troop transport ship bringing him back home after the Second World War. But Kindaichi has not come merely as a messenger – with his last words, the dying man warned that his three step-sisters’ lives would now be in danger. The scruffy detective is determined to get to the bottom of this mysterious prophesy, and to protect the three women if he can.

As Kosuke Kindaichi attempts to unravel the island’s secrets, a series of gruesome murders begins. He investigates, but soon finds himself in mortal danger from both the unknown killer and the clannish locals, who resent this outsider meddling in their affairs.

Loosely inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, the fiendish Death on Gokumon Island is perhaps the most highly regarded of all the great Seishi Yokomizo’s classic Japanese mysteries.

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

My Review: This 1971 publication is the second case for Kosuke Kindaichi by internal chronology. I'm going by that order because it makes the most sense to do so for my little orderly brain.

But...here we go!...there's a lot wrong with this read. It's a cultural thing, permaybehaps, but any time women are victims of crime by virtue of their femaleness, I check out. I don't like or want that kind of imagery in my head. The way the author presents this heinous tontine by accident of birth as...a puzzle, a problem to solve. He goes about the solution methodically, and of course murder is wrong, but...there's a sort of "well, they were just women, after all" lackadaisicalness to the proceedings that truly got up my nose.

But I kept reading. Because there is a deeply unpleasant truth I must face in reviewing this book: I love a puzzle so much that, when I'm offered it wrapped in enough sweetly seductive mystery, I will just keep reading and ignore my squicked-out "but this is appalling!!" responses to see where we're going.

Ew. True, but ew.

The merest tinge of remorse, it seems to me, was plastered like a too-small figleaf over the fact that the whole crime...the entire murdering spree, ending three innocent women's lives...could easily have been prevented by a simple consultation with a living man's moral compass long before the events became inevitable. As it was, that crucial step now, with their deaths accomplished, the detective suffers agonies of self-reproach...they're still dead, dude. The blame's not really his, in all honesty. It's properly placed on the planner of the crimes and the idiots who blindly follow orders.

It's a solidly atmospheric piece, which I know won't surprise you as it's the fruit of twenty-three years' practice of his craft. The translator's still giving us subtle hints about the cultural context and slyly explaining objects we in the West haven't a single clue about. The temple bell's cultural resonance...the island's peculiar patriarchal culture...the delicately handled, and odd, romantic strand that would've passed by me unremarked without the translator's quiet nudges...all beautifully handled.

Culturally intriguing, nicely constructed puzzle, all get big ol' tick-marks. The last-minute application of regret, even though I think the whole story's revoltingly misogynistic, does at least gesture at some sense of the trope's wrongness. You should make your readerly decisions based on your personal tolerance for unpleasant-to-you subject matter.

I've continued the series, so clearly it's not a deal-breaker for me. I really thought it would be.

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!

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

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…

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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.

PUNISHMENT OF A HUNTER, Soviet historical thriller & DEAD AND GONDOLA, cozy cozy cozy series debut

DEAD AND GONDOLA
ANN CLAIRE (Christie Bookshop #1)
Bantam Books
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: scraped up the goodwill of the season so 4* of five

The Publisher Says: When a mysterious bookshop visitor dies under murderous circumstances, the Christie sisters and their cat Agatha call on all they’ve learned about solving mysteries from their favorite novelist in this new series debut.

Ellie Christie is thrilled to begin a new chapter. She’s recently returned to her tiny Colorado hometown to run her family’s historic bookshop with her elder sister, Meg, and their friendly bookshop cat, Agatha. Perched in a Swiss-style hamlet accessible by ski gondola and a twisty mountain road, the Book Chalet is a famed bibliophile destination known for its maze of shelves and relaxing reading lounge with cozy fireside seats and panoramic views. At least, until trouble blows in with a wintery whiteout. A man is found dead on the gondola, and a rockslide throws the town into lockdown—no one in, no one out.

He was a mysterious stranger who visited the bookshop. At the time, his only blunders were disrupting a book club and leaving behind a first-edition Agatha Christie novel, written under a pseudonym. However, once revealed, the man’s identity shocks the town. Many residents knew of him. Quite a few had reason to want him dead. Others hide secrets. The police gather suspects, but when they narrow in on the sisters’ close friends, the Christies have to act.

Although the only Agatha in their family tree is their cat, Ellie and Meg know a lot about mysteries, and they’re not about to let the situation snowball out of control. The Christie sisters must summon their inner Miss Marples and trek through a blizzard of clues before the killer turns the page to their final chapter.

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My Review: Meg and Ellie Christie, bookshop owners of Last Word, Colorado's, The Book Chalet, mystery solvers when a man who bumbles into their shop's séance turns up dead one gondola over from theirs on the funicular, and charming women trying to bring their worlds into agreement.

Meg, single mother of fourteen-year old Rosie, and her younger, newly unmoored sister Ellie, are invited by their retiring parents to come home and run the family's bookstore in their ski-resort hometown with her. It's a set-up that's an evergreen for a reason...it plays on the familiarity of a native place while still allowing the returned native a chance to "catch up on" the time they've been away. It also establishes the family's relations to each other, in that one would get a whole different idea of Meg had she seemed grudging or reluctant to accept younger, single Ellie to join the business. I think one is immersed in the sense of a happy family from the second their Gram comes onto the pages, knowing she has been their rock throughout life. That, too, sets a facet of the family's character as a system in addition to demonstrating the cozy-series bona fides Ann Claire is seeking to establish.

I'm a sucker for bookstores in fiction going back to the first mystery series set in one that I fell in love with: Claire Molloy's Book Depot in the Farberville, Arkansas, set humorous cozies by the late, lamented Joan Hess. This debut is joining a long and belovèd lineage. I am delighted to report that this is a happy meeting of fantasy (bookstores require *huge* amounts of labor and run on the slimmest of margins) and storytelling. The ski resort setting is nice, in that I'd always rather read about cold, snowy places than hot ones, but not outstandingly detailed. I suppose this is all a matter of what one wishes to have in a series-starting story...the sense of possibility is there in this story so there's plenty of room for additions and expansions.

Rosie annoyed me. She's fourteen, of course she was going to, but really this is a trope I can do without, the adolescent eyeroller. Anyway. At least she wasn't a bookstore cat, those horrible, misery-making creatures...like Agatha C. (for "cat" ickshudder) Christie. I mean, *obligatory warning of sexist stereotyping to come* I know I'm not a woman so I don't really get the appeal of cats *end sexist stereotyping*, but can there be a bookstore without a cat in mysteryworld now? Please?

What's right about the read far outweighs my grumbles about details. None of them ruined my reading experience. I am sure Author Ann Claire (also known as Ann Myers and/or Nora Page) knows her craft from practicing it for quite some time across several series. I expect a high level of polish from such an author and was not let down in this read. Recommending a book such as this is always touchy...what causes a series to soar is so often alchemical symmetry between author and reader...but consider this: I read this entire book that features a cat as a character...my most deeply beloathèd animals!...and am here writing a positive review.

This is an author with chops. Trust her, follow her through this story, and I predict a lot of y'all will have a new series to enjoy.

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

PUNISHMENT OF A HUNTER
YULIA YAKOVLEVA (The Leningrad Confidential series #1) (tr. Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp)
Pushkin Vertigo (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$16.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The debut of the ultimate noir detective series: set in Stalinist Russia, riddled with corruption, informers, and purges that takes paranoia to the next level

MURDER
1930s Leningrad. Stalin is tightening his grip on the Soviet Union, and a mood of fear cloaks the city. Detective Vasily Zaitsev is tasked with investigating a series of bizarre and seemingly motiveless homicides.

MAYHEM
As the curious deaths continue, precious Old Master paintings start to disappear from the Hermitage collection. Could the crimes be connected?

MISTRUST
When Zaitsev sets about his investigations, he meets with obstruction at every turn. Soon even he comes under suspicion from the Soviet secret police.

The resolute detective must battle an increasingly dangerous political situation in his dogged quest to find the murderer―and stay alive.

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My Review: This is a newly translated series-starting thriller. I'm eager for the second one to appear, so go buy this one now.

Seriously. The only way the publisher knows there's a market is if there are sales, so go on now.

What do you mean, "but why should I?" Oh very well. Look at this image, of the same title as the book:

Doesn't that simply say it all in artistic form? And the painting's in the Hermitage collection in Russia, too.

The 1930s were a scary, scary time to be a Soviet citizen. The surveillance state's apparatus was risibly primitive by comparison to today's hypercapitalist surveillance model, but it was effective. Like those old Hitchcock movies where men in slouch-brimmed hats smoked on streetcorners by your apartment, the pervasive atmosphere was paranoid and terrified. (Our {great-}grandparents had more sense than we complacent and indifferent acquiescers do.) To be a policeman in a state-sponsored terrorist society, to be studied minutely as one tries to achieve the ever-elusive goal of bringing justice to transgressors while avoiding the political pitfalls of society's mad/badness, adds a layer of suspense to thrillers.

Author Yakovleva does a truly creditable and credible job with Zaitsev, her sleuth. He doesn't miraculously float above The System somehow, nor does he set out to provoke The System's minions to make his points. He falls victim to the excesses of the times (CW for torture!) and he still stubbornly insists on doing the right thing by the victims of personal violence. It is very much in the vein of the "lone truth-seeker" genre of thriller. I think those stories can go wrong quickly, turning into libertarian screeds against any and all forms of government by equating them with oppression. This book dodges that bullet by being about, explicitly taking as its subject, that nightmarish oppressive government and its warped and broken victim/citizens. I wish more libertarians would read this kind of historical take because it puts into a cold, unfriendly light the mild checks on their worst selves that so chafe them.

Author Yakovleva is ably assisted in telling her story by Translator Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp. There are bursts of informative explanatory things in the text that I'm sure are her work...no one in modern Russia likely needs as much explanation of the role of the OGPU, for example (the domestic secret police, like the FBI or latter-Soviet-days KGB). That this information, among so much other information needed by Anglophone readers not Russophone ones, was woven into the text pretty darn seamlessly is a testament to Translator Kemp's grasp of and skill at presenting the reader the best version of the original text.

What makes it a perfect book to get your thriller reader giftee, or your thriller loving self, is that very thing: It's the best version of what was, if my Spidey-senses do not deceive me, a top-quality read from the get-go. Translations are often serviceable, telling the story as it was told in the original and not grasping, or conveying at any rate, whatever special sparkle the original had. It sounds weird to tell you that the cold, grim, gray landscape of Stalinist-Purge era Leningrad, peopled with terrorized victims and subjected to psychic violence, physical violence, and sensory deprivation on an industrial scale, has a sparkle to it. But it does.

Not a joyous resolution to the weird, theatrically staged and colorfully over-the-top crimes committed here...but a resolution I believed and I supported with my whole readerly heart. More of Zaitsev, please, Pushkin Vertigo. We need this kind of "history as sly social commentary" Russian fiction; we in the Anglophone West need the warning klaxon of what *real* oppression feels like, why it does to its victims, so we will stop our loud, pointless whinging.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: #BOOKSGIVING!

As holiday celebrations go, few rival Yule (Christmas, Noël, Wiehnacht, Solstice celebrations all) in the economic reach. The reason today, the Friday after US "Thanksgiving", is called "Black Friday" is not just an acknowledgment that retail workers are in a justifiably horrible mood today but because their corporate masters are "in the black" with the sales rung up today. Later additions, like "Cyber Monday" and the like, are also based around the consumers of the country getting their shop on.

Gift-giving is a joy, at least when it's done from a full-hearted and heartful place. I enjoy giving people things whenever I'm able to. I'm far from alone in that. It's a solid chunk of the reason we have a gift-giving holiday in the first place, after all. what's so delightful about the Jólabókaflóð is it's *not* about ritual exchange of stuff, property; it's about the community-reinforcing act of sharing companionship, being together, and reading instead of staring at moving images. You can make the moving images in your brain! Isn't that what a story is when it's in a book? It's words that create images and feelings and evoke the reader's full participation! (Ideally, anyway.)

There are regional variations all over the world now. There are starter kits. There are explainers and, of all things, a Jólabókaflóð Kickstarter!

I've used the hashtag #Booksgiving because, at least to my own eyes, it's easier to scan than the Icelandic version. I do love the idea of the Yule Book Flood, whose origins are in wartime scarcity, but realistically if *I* can't say it, who not fluent in either Icelandic or Old English could?

What I do for the rest of the giving season is tag reviews "#Booksgiving" all over the blog. They're the books I think merit your consideration for giving purposes...books I especially like, I found extraordinarily compelling, or simply know that there's a reason someone would love to open up as their celebratory reading.

At the bottom of this post, you'll see the "#Booksgiving" tag...click on it, and the latest reviews tagged with it will show up. All of them, from the six years I've used this custom, will appear...anything I've reviewed...and I heartily recommend them.

May the Jólasveinar, Iceland's thirteen Santas (known in English translation as the Yule Lads), leave you books in your stockings or shoes or other present-receiving receptacles and not an old potato or lump of coal (where would they even find one of those nowadays?).