Carver (A Haunting in the Arctic, as C.J. Cooke) delivers an engrossing if uneven destination thriller about three friends whose vacation goes sideways when a past tragedy rears its head. Darcy Levitt has splurged on a nine-day holiday with her best friends, Pilates instructor Camilla and ghostwriter Kate, at the luxurious Sapphire Island Resort in the Maldives. Ostensibly there to celebrate Darcy’s divorce from her tech mogul husband, Jacob, the 40-somethings also share a connection to a grisly murder spree that took place in Dover, England, 22 years earlier. When one of the resort’s guests turns up dead, the friends fear that history may be repeating itself. Flashbacks reveal how each woman was involved in the Dover massacre, and as the trio’s vacation turns into a sprint for survival, Carver cannily drops in clues as to their true natures, occasionally dipping into the viewpoints of Darcy’s husband and a honeymooning fellow guest for additional context. It all works like magic until the book’s final quarter, when Carver rushes to tie up too many loose ends. Still, readers will have fun predicting how the pieces of this puzzle fit together. Agent: Ariele Fredman, UTA. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Canadian crime novelist Harding (The Drowning Woman) examines the murky netherworld of internet trolling in this sturdy thriller. High school guidance counselor Camryn Lane is over the moon: she’s just published her debut novel, Burnt Orchid, to rave reviews and much admiration from her 17-year-old daughter, Liza. During the launch event, Camryn pauses to check her email and finds a scathing message that accuses her of exploiting her students’ lives for the book’s material. A shaken Camryn brushes the message aside, but then the same person posts an even angrier one-star review online, opening the floodgates for an all-out smear campaign. Before long, Camryn is doxxed, hacked, and heckled at publicity events, and she loses the support of her colleagues, boyfriend, and even Liza. After Camryn hires a digital expert to expose her harasser, he turns up dead, kicking the stakes up several notches. Harding alternates the main action with excerpts from and reviews of Burnt Orchid, slyly building suspense in the process. While the scenes detailing Camryn’s harassment can grow repetitive, Harding makes the most of her chilling premise. This provides some satsifying shocks. Agent: Joe Veltre, Gersh Agency. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Paranoia plagues a sequestered ghostwriter in Bamford’s atmospheric ode to Hitchcock’s Vertigo (after Deep Water). Maddy Wight initially balks when renowned cosmetic surgeon Angela Reynolds gives her just one month to draft and edit her memoir. The project pays a fortune, however, and Reynolds’s endorsement would be invaluable to Maddy’s career, so she resolves to make it happen. Reynolds flies Maddy to her remote Scottish compound, ostensibly to make their collaboration easier; upon arriving, however, Maddy learns the surgeon will be traveling for much of the month. The house is lonely, with spotty cell service, so Maddy welcomes the unexpected appearance of a second houseguest—Reynolds’s business partner, Scott. Attraction quickly sparks between the two, but Scott’s blackouts and violent mood swings unnerve Maddy, and she can’t shake the sense that he and Reynolds are hiding something. Suspicion and fear color Maddy’s propulsive first-person narration, heightening the tension, while a cavalcade of twists and cliffhangers distract from the less plausible aspects of Bamford’s plot. Ruth Ware fans will eat this up. Agent: Camilla Bolton, Darley Anderson Agency. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

A contentious 2024 presidential election anchors the epic latest entry in Iles’s Penn Cage series (after Mississippi Blood). Former attorney Penn—now the mayor of Natchez, Miss.—is tending to his dying mother even as he fights his own battle with cancer. After deputies respond to a shooting at a hip-hop festival on the grounds of a former Mississippi plantation by raining bullets on the crowd, a Black liberation group takes credit for arsons at antebellum mansions across the South. Ultra-conservative radio host Robert E. Lee White capitalizes on these events as he launches his presidential campaign on a third-party ticket, promising he alone will bring order. Funded by dark money and popular on TikTok, White ignites Penn’s suspicions from the get-go. As his candidacy gains steam and he risks provoking the country into a full-blown race war, Penn enlists his daughter, Annie, to help him dig up and expose the rot beneath White’s campaign. Early on, Penn muses that “in the south, mysteries that date back 150 years retain the power to wreck families and destroy fortunes,” and that sense of haunted history permeates the novel. Certain plot strands wear out their welcome across the novel’s sprawling length, but in the end, Iles delivers an insghtiful, ambitious, and satisfying saga. This is a high water mark in a strong series. Agent: Dan Conaway, Writers House. (May)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bandmates Jessie Steen, Brea Steen, and Flo Bello, the protagonists of this turbo-charged outing from Youers (No Second Chances), play bars and clubs across America while secretly working as assassins for Trace, an underground hacker network dedicated to tracking down criminals who’ve slipped through the cracks of the justice system. When a routine assignment takes the Bang-Bang Sisters to Reedsville, Ala., to deal with a serial killer, they unwittingly walk into a trap. The women’s target is nowhere to be found; instead, they’re abducted by thugs working for crooked politician Chance Kotter, who holds a grudge against the trio for killing his nephew. Turns out Chance has constructed a sadistic game of revenge: Jessie, Brea, and Flo will be released in separate parts of Reedsville and tasked with assassinating each other. If anyone refuses to participate, Chance will murder a member of her family. As the game gets underway and the bandmates fight to stay alive, signs emerge that they might be involved in a larger plot than any of them realize. Youers sketches three distinct, well-rounded heroines and gets a lot of mileage from their impossible situation. The finale drags on too long, but for the most part, this is a high-octane good time. Readers seeking fast action and strong female characters should check it out. Agent: Howard Morahim, Howard Morahim Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this exceptional story collection, first published in 1968, Gilbert (1912–2006) flexes his gifts for clever plotting and rich characterization. In 11 interconnected stories first printed in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Gilbert follows the exploits of unassuming British intelligence agents Samuel Behrens and Daniel Calder, both of whom have ostensibly retired to the small village of Lamperdown after long careers with MI6. The best friends’ quiet afternoons spent beekeeping and dog-walking belie their continued adventures defending England as part of the Joint Services Standing Intelligence Committee. “On Slay Down,” a highlight, finds the duo hatching a plan to take down a typist at the British Air Ministry suspected of passing classified secrets to foreign governments. Equally stirring are “Prometheus Unbound,” which sees a previous mission to liberate Albania come back to haunt Behrens and Calder, and “The Road to Damascus,” in which they try to determine how a bullet-riddled corpse ended up in a sealed underground shelter. Throughout, Gilbert combines the comforts of a cozy mystery with the ingenuity of John Le Carré. Espionage fans will cherish this rediscovered gem. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

A British academic receives a shock from beyond the grave in Steadman’s propulsive but ultimately disappointing latest (after The Family Game). Nina Hepworth, 34, teaches literature at Cambridge and has lived most of her life in the shadow of her brilliant mathematician father, John. After John dies of natural causes, Nina learns that he owned a piece of prime real estate in the British Virgin Islands, which he’s left to her. Stunned, she flies to the Caribbean to inspect the premises, a glass-and-steel mansion overlooking a private beach. Soon, however, Nina’s elation is tempered by her discovery that the house is rigged with all sorts of unsettling surveillance technology, prompting questions about what her father was up to. In a parallel story line set in the recent past, a young nanny named Maria takes a live-in gig at the same house, only to be ghosted by the people who hired her. She happily sticks around, but before long, she begins to suspect that she’s being watched. Toggling back and forth in time, Steadman briskly builds toward the bloody revelation linking Nina’s and Maria’s stories. Unfortunately, it’s an implausible letdown. This fails to stick the landing. Agent: Camilla Bolton, Darley Anderson Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Justice’s second legal thriller featuring Denver attorney Liza Brown (after They Can’t Take Your Name) is a step down from its predecessor. Liza has worked closely with Project Joseph to help exonerate people who’ve been wrongly convicted of violent crimes ever since her father was executed for a mass murder he didn’t commit. In 1992, Moses King, a prisoner who claims he knew Liza’s father, reaches out to the organization. He’s been convicted of assaulting and blinding a woman named Claudette Cooper, who testified that, while she didn’t see her assailant’s face, she dreamed it was King. Despite the case not meeting Project Joseph’s typical criteria—King is not on death row, nor is he facing a life sentence—Liza believes in his innocence and agrees to represent him. She loops in her friend and former colleague Eli Stone, and together, they inch closer to the truth while Liza’s superiors try to pull her attention toward cases that better suit Project Joseph’s mission. Meanwhile, Denver erupts into protests over racial discrimination by police. Clumsy prose (“Her tears fell with the ease of a spring thunderstorm upon her cheeks”) and thin characterizations keep this from taking flight. It’s a disappointment. Agent: Andrew D. Wolgemuth, Wolgemuth & Assoc. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

A legendary assassin joins a support group of murderers hoping to cure themselves of their addiction to violence in Hart’s nail-biting latest (after The Paradox Hotel). Mark, who works under the moniker the Pale Horse, has kept his murderous impulses in check for months, but his progress is threatened when he’s attacked after a meeting of Assassins Anonymous. His Russian assailant stabs him in the chest before stealing a notebook with the names of everyone Mark plans to atone to. With the help of his former medic, Astrid, Mark recovers from his injuries. When his apartment is blown up a few days later, Astrid joins him on the run, and the pair head to Singapore, where Mark hopes to track down an old contact and ferret out whether his ex-employers in U.S. intelligence are out to get him, or if someone connected to a former target has come for revenge. Mark’s continued efforts to stay “clean” from violence provide welcome humor to the otherwise breakneck proceedings. Strong characters and rattling suspense lift things further above par. Hart remains a formidable rising talent. Agent: Josh Getzler, HG Literary. (June)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

A Connecticut high school teacher stops a mass murder only to be targeted by a blackmailer in this hair-raising standalone from bestseller Barclay (The Lie Maker). Richard Boyle looks out his classroom window one afternoon just in time to spot Mark LeDrew, a “benign fuckup” of a former student, approaching the building while wearing a vest loaded with dynamite. Boyle tells his class to call 911 and lock themselves in, then goes to confront Mark. He convinces the 20-something to leave—but then Mark trips and sets off the explosives, killing himself and wounding Boyle. The fallout is swift. First, Mark’s parents, who blame Boyle for their son’s death, slap him with a lawsuit. Then Billy Finster, whom Boyle coached on the wrestling team, claims the news about Mark dug up memories that Boyle sexually abused him, and that he won’t go to the cops if the teacher comes up with an unspecified sum of cash. As Boyle scrambles to pay off Billy and hire a lawyer, he discovers links between Billy’s threat and a local crime network. Barclay makes his protagonist’s plight devastatingly immediate, and keeps readers on tenterhooks throughout. This is difficult to put down. Agent: Helen Heller, Helen Heller Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink